Healer: A Novel

by Carol Cassella

  Her door has smashed into the guardrail, and through her window she sees a freefall down the mountain, eight inches and a ripple of metal away. She unbuckles her seat belt and crawls across the seats to step into the snow, gets on her hands and knees to look under the car. The mysterious spaces beneath the frame and body disappear into black shadows. She takes the flashlight out of the glove compartment and gets onto her back to wriggle underneath the car. Ice is impacted between the tire and the axle and she slams at it with the butt of the flashlight until it cleaves away. With a surge of relief, she shines the light over the braces and bars and bolts of metal four inches above her face. And then she sees that the fender is jammed into the rubber grooves of the tire.

  She shimmies out from under the car and rests beside the front wheel, combing chunks of icy mud out of her hair. Her lips are chapped from breathing through her mouth. After a moment she stands up, her legs shaking. The view from here is actually quite spectacular. She’s driven across this pass four or five times and never really paid much attention, always too intent on getting there and back. She pulls a few calming words together in her mind to break the news to Jory that they will have to start walking.

  Jory looks at her in amazement, as if she has been told to fly. “It’s ten miles to anybody’s house!”

  “Downhill. But we need to start now. We’ll probably see another car soon.” Claire says this at the same time she admits to herself they had not seen a single car on the drive up. The back of her jeans are soaking wet; she shivers in the light breeze. “The snowplow should be coming by sometime.” Jory’s door takes an extra jerk from the outside, but finally pops open.

  They haven’t gone half a mile before Jory stops. “Why aren’t there any pay phones out here if they know there’s no cell service?”

  Claire keeps walking, not even looking back. “There aren’t any stores up here. Or houses. Who’s going to use a pay phone?” A half mile farther, Jory sits down in the middle of the road. Claire finally turns around and comes back to her. It’s beginning to snow again, lightly. She squats in front of Jory and grasps her hands. “Honey, we have to walk. We have to keep moving. It’s the only way out of here. I cannot carry you.”

  Jory stares hard at her mother, as if with enough fight she could bend the truth to her liking. After a long moment she says, “One of your earrings is gone.”

  Claire reaches up to her right earlobe and feels the blue glass pendant, then touches her left earlobe. Empty. She collapses to her knees and starts patting the front of her coat, running her fingers through her hair, twisting in every direction searching the snow for the earring she knows is lost underneath the mangled bumper, buried deeper and deeper with every falling flake. “Did I have it on in the car? Did you notice?”

  Jory shakes her head. “So. I guess you wish they’d put pay phones up here, too, now?”

  Claire lets out a sob and Jory looks ashamed. Claire slaps her bare, freezing hands into an inch of wet snow, sits down flat on the roadway until her legs burn. Finally she looks at Jory, aware that her expression must be alarming to her child, knowing she should try to scrounge up some comforting optimism. All she can do is scream out the only truth she is sure of right now: “There is no ‘they,’ Jory. Get that through your head before you go any further in your life. There is no ‘they.’ Nobody is going to rescue you every time you fuck up. We are on our own out here.”

  • 23 •

  They walk a little over two miles before a snowplow radios for the state patrol and they get a lift all the way back to the house, which makes Claire feel better about having paid their taxes. Jory barely spoke to her before they were picked up, stomping ahead with her eyes on the road whenever Claire stopped to take in the vista of snow across the freshly plowed fields, spread like a diamond-studded washboard miles below them with the river whipping hard and silver down the middle of the valley floor.

  The shared warmth and safety of the house finally shakes Jory loose again—that or the fact that the necklace is at this moment being towed to a garage, and who knows if they’ll retrieve it before the return date expires. She fixes a plate of cheese and crackers and brings it to Claire. “We could see if the store has another pair,” she says. Claire looks at her quizzically and Jory adds, “Another pair of your earrings.”

  Claire nods, trying to act like it’s as simple as that. She builds a fire in the woodstove and upends their wet boots on a bench to catch the heat before she starts a dinner of baked chicken and rice. Jory turns the stereo on. If there is any unintended benefit to locking up her iPod, Claire figures, it is that she can hear the lyrics of her daughter’s music. Jory comes into the kitchen and fleetingly rests her arm on Claire’s shoulder before asking if she can help.

  Claire hands her a tomato and a knife. They work side by side in silence for a moment. “You’ll have to pay us back, Jory,” Claire says. “You understand that?” Jory rinses the cutting board and starts slicing the tomato, focusing all her attention on the task. Claire tries to recollect all the other cries for attention she’s been too busy or preoccupied to address. “Leaving Seattle has been tough. I know.”

  Jory interrupts her, blurts in a high voice, “Mom!” She blinks and looks away for a minute. “Can we please not talk about it right now? Please?”

  Over dinner Claire starts with something safe. “So who’s on Facebook tonight?”

  Jory is lining up grains of rice between the tines of her fork, neatly filling up the empty spaces. “Shannon. Wyatt. Brenna broke up with Eli and Emma’s not speaking to her anymore.”

  It’s like walking into a movie at the halfway point over and over again. “Why does Emma care about Brenna breaking up with Ian?” Claire asks.

  “Eli. Because she talked Eli into asking Brenna out in the first place.”

  “So, where do they go when they ‘go out’?” Claire asks.

  Jory shrugs. “The movies, mostly. Hang out at the mall.”

  Claire puts her knife down. “There isn’t a movie theater here. Or a mall.”

  “These are Seattle friends, Mom. I don’t chat with anybody in Hallum.” She pours salt over everything on her plate and takes two bites, then pushes it aside. “My toe shoe ripped last week.” She lifts one shoulder when she says it, either in acceptance or defeat. Claire can’t read her.

  She reaches across the table for Jory’s hand. “Babe, until we move back I don’t think we should get new pointe shoes. They cost over a hundred dollars.” This she says, but does not say, and all you can do with them is dig a deeper hole in the corner of this living room floor. She doesn’t feel hungry anymore. “Jory. Look. What if we go to the jazz teacher’s studio this weekend. People say she’s really good. It isn’t ballet, but… Just take a look.” Jory stands up and carries her plate to the kitchen, washes it carefully and puts it back in the cabinet.

  After dinner, Claire calls Frida and arranges to be picked up in the morning. Then she dials Addison’s cell phone, which rings through to his message. She listens to the whole recording of his name and professional title, followed by the phone number for his secretary if the message is urgent. The secretary, of course, has long since taken a new job. His title, Claire credits, is a matter of definition and imaginative spin—CEO of a shell game, the elusive die always one sales pitch ahead. Listening to the recording now, she hears the change in his voice. The Addison that drove away from Hallum two days ago seems to have forgotten the man who made the message.

  She hangs up, not yet decided how to tell a cell phone that she has wrecked the car. She practices a couple of variations and then dials him again. “Hi. I wrecked the car. Long story, nobody’s hurt.” After she hangs up she pushes Redial and waits through the message again. “Forgot to say I love you.”

  Jory’s light is already out when Claire comes in to say good night. She lies on the bed and rests her cheek against Jory’s, wishing the world could be condensed into this sensation. Jory stretches her arms above her head and rolls onto her back.<
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  “Were you asleep?” Claire asks.

  “No. It’s okay.”

  “Need another blanket?”

  Jory pulls Claire’s arm tighter around herself. “No.” She is quiet for a while, then, “Mom, you remember that lady?”

  Claire is lost. “Who? The jazz teacher?”

  “That lady from Nicaragua. With Dad’s coat. We drove her out to those cabins.” In the dim light Jory’s face looks even younger. She pulls away from Claire and props herself up on her elbow. “She’s at the bakery sometimes.”

  “Miguela Ruiz? Did she recognize you?”

  “Sure. We talk. A lot.”

  Claire feels a defensive instinct rising in her. “What does she talk to you about?”

  “I don’t know. Snow. Birds. Volcanoes. She taught me a poem. She’s nice, Mom. Quit looking like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that. She’s nice. She’s teaching me Spanish.”

  Claire sits up and combs her fingers through Jory’s hair. “She seems nice to me, too.”

  Claire kisses Jory and starts to leave the room. Just before the door shuts Jory calls to her, “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “I will pay you back.”

  Claire’s phone doesn’t ring until she is almost asleep; the memory of the accident floods back when she hears Addison’s voice. “You’re sure you’re both okay? You don’t think you should see a doctor?” Then, even before she can answer, “Is the car totaled?”

  “Well, since we only have liability insurance on it, I couldn’t say. If it still moves I’ll still drive it.” She can picture him sitting on the edge of his bed at the Four Seasons, leaning over his knees with his head in one hand. She rolls over on her stomach and looks out the window, a three-quarter moon setting over the patchwork of snow in the fields. “Do we have any money in the savings account?”

  “Not enough for a car. Why were you driving over the pass if the roads were snowed in?” She tells him about the necklace and the stolen Visa cards. “Well. They weren’t really stolen,” he says. “She charged them to us.”

  “Then she was stealing from us!” Claire pauses a minute, wanting him to agree. When he is quiet she says, “I’m worried about her. She’s here by herself too much.”

  “What can we do about that? She’s too old for babysitters. Can she take the bus to the clinic after school? Wait for you there?”

  “There is no school bus to the clinic. We should get a housekeeper or something.”

  His voice grows agitated, “Oh God, Claire. Maybe this whole move to Hallum just isn’t working. Maybe we should rent something in Seattle.”

  “We need to put the money into your meetings. Are you giving up on vascumab?”

  “No. But at the end of the day, all I really have to sell is my brain. Maybe I should get a job in somebody else’s lab.”

  At the end of the day. Claire is irritated by the trite phrase, as if disasters of any proportion could be wrapped up by sunset, in time for drinks and dinner. She blurts out, “Who would hire you if they knew everything?” But she hates herself as soon as she says it and stumbles toward an apology. He only makes it worse when he tells her she has a point, the defeat in his voice sounding both pitiful and infuriating. After a long silence she says, “Look. We’re both worn out. Can we talk about it later?”

  She spends the night tangled in half-formed dreams, hearing Addison confess how hard it is to be optimistic in a meeting of skeptical venture capitalists, to keep explaining the life-changing possibilities of his molecule to people who only ask about profit and cost.

  She has kissed Jory awake and started out the door to wait for Frida’s car when the house phone in the kitchen rings; she answers it ready to convince Addison that he can’t give up. But the call is for Addison rather than from him. As soon as she hangs up she dials his cell phone to give him the message, “The Super 8 motel in Chicago called to say they found a pair of your pants in a drawer.” Addison doesn’t say a word. “Not quite the Drake, Addison. Does this mean even your business account is empty?”

  He sighs so deeply she can almost feel his breath traveling to her from across the mountains. “I was just trying to save money. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Claire remembers the last time Addison had said he didn’t want her to worry. She had picked Jory up after school on the one afternoon she didn’t have a ballet class. They’d planned it for weeks—find Dad’s Christmas present together, separate long enough to choose something for each other, then dinner at Il Fornaio, Jory’s favorite. They made a game of it, hunting through the men’s department for a hot-pink tie, a jingle bell sweater, a rhinestone and blue velvet cuff link case, a green plaid beret, imitating Dad’s appalled reaction and faked pleasure on Christmas morning. Claire finally suggested they’d do better at Fox’s Gem Shop, since he’d hinted around about a TAG Heuer watch. But as soon as they stepped past the windbreak of the building her umbrella was whipped inside out. Jory pulled her into Gap, where a stack of mini Totes were piled at a cash register.

  The salesgirl zipped the magnetic strip down the card reader slide and waited. Frowned. She held the card up, flipped it over and pulled it through the reader for a second and third time. Claire smiled at her. She was probably only a couple of years older than Jory. “They’re finicky sometimes. Do you want me to try it? Or if you have a plastic bag—sometimes if you wrap it in a plastic bag it’ll read the card, I have no idea why.”

  A couple behind her in line moved to the next register. Another woman rested her bags beside Claire’s umbrella on the counter. “It’s so exasperating,” she offered. “We were in Vancouver a couple of months ago and I bought a new purse. Two hours later we couldn’t charge dinner. They’d frozen the card. I had to stand outside in the parking lot on my cell phone convincing somebody in New York I hadn’t stolen my own account number. Security’s gone too far.” Claire finally gave up on the umbrella and paid for the parking garage with quarters and dimes scrabbled out of the glove compartment and her coat pockets and seat cushions.

  When she pulled into her driveway Addison’s car was already under the porte cochere, the house ablaze, the stereo throbbing to David Byrne. He stood in their kitchen wearing a Santa Claus apron over his white shirt, suit pants and loosened tie, rocking the steel blade of a knife in an arc across the cutting board. His face was flushed. She thought he might be chopping bones and gristle violently enough to break a sweat, until she noticed the tumbler beside him.

  “You’re home early.” Claire picked up the tumbler and sniffed it. “Scotch? Rough day?” Jory, still upset about the spoiled shopping trip, tossed her book bag on the breakfast table and disappeared into her room.

  “Mais oui!” he quipped. “Come and give me le juicy whomping kiss I deserve,” all poured forth in a lugubrious French accent. She slid her purse off her shoulder onto one of the counter stools and leaned against him, pushed into the solid muscle of his arm and pressed her mouth into the warm, fragrant gully of his throat.

  It was a scene familiar to the evening ritual of their coupling. But it was occurring two hours earlier than it should, and the music was a decibel too loud, the tumbler a finger’s breadth too empty, the smell of his sweat tinged with the edgy musk of anxiety. And now Claire knew the credit card rejection was not a fluke. Some silent and majestic turning had occurred, was becoming discovered in the filamentous cracks before their glass house shattered.

  She straightened her back and watched him for a minute, studied the mute victims of his knife. “What is it?”

  “Homemade salsa.”

  “No. I mean, why are you home so early?”

  He lifted a shoulder without looking at her and scraped the cilantro into a porcelain bowl, the cutting board bleeding green juice across the granite counter. He cracked the lid off the picante, stirred it into the cilantro with a fork and held the tines up to her lips. She turned away, and so he put the fork into his own mouth, followed it with a swig from
the tumbler and began chopping a fresh bunch. Claire watched his hands as he worked, the knuckles blanching each time he pressed the weight of the knife deep enough to scar the wood, taking a quick breath each time he swung the blade above flawless ruffled leaves. She winced when the steel crushed the bright herb.

  She turned the stereo down and asked him, before she had intended, before she had readied herself, “Did the credit card company call today?”

  She wanted him to act surprised, at least. To huff and blame it on the new laptop he bought yesterday. She wanted him to gesture toward his coat, slung across an armchair, gesture casually with his chin or elbow and tell her to grab the Master Card or his own Visa until he had a chance to track down the mistake.

  He placed the fork in the sink and rinsed and dried his hands, took off the apron and poured her a glass of wine. “Sit down,” he said.

  He grasped her lightly around her wrist and led her into the dark living room, started to sit next to her on the long sofa, then was up again, pacing along the walls. He ran his hand across the stone mantelpiece, fingered their embroidered Christmas stockings, aligned the corner of a recently purchased landscape painting, flicked the tiny angels on a candle carousel into a shimmer of brass bells that quickly fell silent.

  She waited. He stood at the wall of windows facing the patio, and stared out at the lake, ink in the early winter night. Someone, probably the housekeeper, had plugged in the Christmas tree, and the multicolored bulbs lit the broad plane of his half-turned face, made his cheek look ruddy and young so that she wanted to pull him next to her and slip her hands beneath his sweater, warm them against his warm skin and pretend this evening was no different from any other.

  Addison gestured toward the lake with a shoulder. “Fenster was smart to put this patio off the living room. Remember how we argued about that? Works, though.”