‘It’s nice to have grandchildren . . . satisfying.’
‘That’s just it, Martha. Seeing Roma makes me want to have a child of our own. Bob says it doesn’t matter, but it does. The boys only see their father a few times a year, and I know that breaks his heart and little Roma is being raised in London. Robbie Junior has a big job over there with Merrill Lynch.’
‘Have you tried?’
‘Oh God we’ve tried, believe me we’ve tried. You name it and either Bob or I have done it: fertility clinics, insemination, test tube, hormone treatment, nothing works! It’s been humiliating for both of us. And in the end it made no difference. I’m just some barren woman that fills her days doing things that are at the end of the day totally unimportant.’
‘Gina, don’t say such things. Look at all the good you do helping people with your fund-raising, and charity benefits. Mike’s always telling me what a Trojan worker you are for so many causes.’
‘Oh, that’s just money, and Bob is such a generous man that everybody wants his wife on their committees.’
Martha heard the bitterness in her admission, and was doubtful about what to say. ‘What about adoption?’ she suggested, thinking of the wonderful home and life they could provide for some child.
‘No,’ insisted Gina firmly. ‘We want a child of our own.’
Martha was shocked. She couldn’t just produce a child for the Forresters no matter how much they wanted one.
‘Martha, do you think you could possibly help? I’ll understand if you say no and think I’m just a vain, self-centred woman looking to satisfy some whim, but believe me, having a child of our own is the most important thing in both our lives at the moment. It’s all either of us wants.’
Martha was uncomfortable and embarrassed by the fact that she had been made privy to such intimate details.
‘Will you try to help me, do one of your healing sessions on me?’ Gina asked gently.
‘I’m not sure if I can be of any help, honest I’m not. My healing ability might not work for something like this, I . . .’
‘Please, Martha.’
‘Are you going to tell Bob?’
‘Maybe later, but for the moment no, I don’t want to get his hopes up.’
Martha considered. It was ludicrous to believe that laying her hands on Gina could accomplish what doctors and fertility clinics and drugs had failed to do but she could see the hunger and need for a child of her own in the other woman’s eyes. She herself had always assumed her own fertility and remembered the joy and naturalness of discovering after about only three months of marriage that she was pregnant. Mike had swooped her up in his arms and kissed and hugged her as if she had achieved some complicated and amazing feat.
‘I can’t promise anything,’ she admitted, ‘but . . .’
‘Please, Martha, it would mean so much to me, to both of us. Dan told me what you did last week for his arm. I know this is something totally different and that I shouldn’t expect or hope for anything but surely it can’t do any harm.’
Gina Forrester was if anything persuasive and to tell the truth Martha could only imagine how hard it must be for a woman not to have children. Money and privilege were nothing in comparison to motherhood.
‘Of course I’ll try, Gina, though I’m not sure that I can really do anything more than your doctors – but if it’s what you want . . .’
‘Oh, thank you, Martha. Thank you!’
Gina’s eyes were shining, triumphant as she embraced Martha.
‘Where do you do it?’ she asked. ‘Is it like a massage, do you want me to lie down on the bed or couch or something like that? I’ll show you upstairs to my room.’
‘It’s all right, Gina, that won’t be necessary. All I need is for you to maybe lie down somewhere. What about the couch over there in the sunroom?’
A magnificent rattan recliner couch, covered in luxurious pale mauve and cream cushions lay between an enormous terracotta pot and a coordinating low table. Martha followed Gina over and sat down near her, trying to talk to her and discover what her expectations of the healing truly were.
‘Martha, all I want is a baby, a child of our own!’
Martha drew back, realizing that this middle-aged woman was literally hoping for some sort of miraculous conception, for Martha to wave her arms around, say a few words of hocus-pocus and create a child, pure bloody magic! Did she actually really believe that Martha could do that! She almost giggled aloud.
‘Gina, I can’t give you a child, make you pregnant, if that’s what you are after!’
‘No, Martha, I didn’t expect . . .’ she protested.
‘It’s better I’m honest with you,’ Martha said. ‘But I will try to discover the reasons why you haven’t yet conceived, try to ease them if that is at all possible. Now show me the area where you’ve had your medical problems and hopefully I’ll pick up something from there.’
‘Do you think I’m just far too old and menopausal?’
‘Ssshh now! My hands might feel kind of warm when I touch you.’
Gina lay down, with a look of concentration on her face, as the palms of Martha’s hands touched the firm taut skin and stomach muscles that were tanned a perfect honey gold. On the outside her body looked young and perfect but Martha felt the unease almost at once. On one side there was so little sense of female energy. It was as if everything had stopped there and fresh tissue had hardened and died away.
‘I had an ovarian cyst when I was about seventeen,’ Gina confided, ‘and when it burst the pain was so bad I’d thought I’d die but my mother drove me to the hospital and demanded they got me the best doctor in town, an old guy called Sheldon. He told me I might have problems in the future but I guess when you’re young you don’t like to think about those things and manage to push them to the back of your mind, hoping they’re so far back that eventually the problem will have disappeared.’
‘Problems tend not to go away.’
‘Tell me about it. We’ve spent a fortune, and I mean a fortune trying to . . .’ Gina’s voice wavered, her eyes filling up.
‘Hush, Gina, just let me work,’ advised Martha, stretching her hands into circles and moving them around and around and around, circles of warm pulsing energy, flooding the area. She watched as Gina closed her eyes, her lips moving soundlessly.
Martha moved her hands to the other side, feeling a normal rhythmic pulse, and smoothed her fingers along the other woman’s ribs and chest. There was tightness around her throat, a suppression of thoughts and anxiety, something which was pretty unexpected in someone so articulate and outgoing. She tried to ease it, to draw out that pain. She smoothed Gina’s forehead and, concentrating on her head, tried to create balance, feeling Gina’s energy almost bounce off her own.
‘That’s it!’ she whispered softly.
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
Gina seemed puzzled.
‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ Martha asked.
‘I could feel the warmth of your hands, and this strange pulling inside me as if things were unravelling and unwinding, like you were untying knots and tangles and stretching me all at the same time.’
Martha smiled. It was a good description of what she had experienced during the healing too. ‘Did you pray?’ she asked.
‘When I closed my eyes I could feel that warmth, and for some reason my mother came into my thoughts and I asked her to help me,’ Gina said.
‘Do you pray to her often?’
Gina looked embarrassed.
‘I’m not a religious woman, Martha, I don’t hold with churchgoing and bible thumping, but my mother was a saint, a truly good person. She never said a bad word or hurt anyone during her lifetime. That woman lived the Bible every day of her life.’
Martha helped Gina sit up.
‘Take it easy for the rest of the day. People often feel sort of tired and sleepy after a healing. It’s just that your body needs to rest.’
‘I was going to
have a game of tennis but I guess I’ll phone and cancel it.’
‘That’d be wise.’
‘Is that it?’
Martha shrugged. ‘I’m afraid so, Gina, that’s all it is.’ She could see a look of disappointment flash across the other woman’s features.
‘Would you like to stay for lunch? I could fix us up a nice chicken salad or a little pasta.’
‘Thanks but no, I really have to go. I need to get to the market and get some food before my lot get in from school. Patrick’s eating me out of house and home at the moment. He’s on some sort of high protein diet and I promised I’d try out this braised beef and garlic recipe for dinner.’
‘I’d say you are a great mom, Martha, your kids are very lucky.’
Gina stood up and they began to walk back out to the hallway.
‘You have such a beautiful home, Gina,’ Martha said.
‘A home!’ She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Where you and your children live, Martha, that is a home. I live in a beautiful, beautiful house, but it’s not a home, not really.’
There was such a poignancy in Gina Forrester’s words that Martha was tempted to abandon her plans and turn on her heel and march back into that gleaming perfect kitchen and sit herself right down at the table, eat the chicken salad and just talk to the woman, but one look at her tilted face and fixed smile was enough to determine Martha to admire her pride.
Chapter Fourteen
AS THE EARLY morning sun slanted in the windows, Martha stretched lazily out across Mike’s side of the bed, watching her husband perform his daily routine of showering, shaving and dressing. Martha told him of her plans to visit Cass Armstrong again.
‘Have you actually gone mad!’ he remonstrated with her, almost nicking himself with the razor blade. ‘Getting involved with such a seriously ill child is plain crazy.’
‘But I promised her, and I want to keep my promise.’
‘You’re getting yourself deeply involved with a child and her parents, and God knows what they’ll expect of you.’
‘If you just saw her, Mike, you’d understand. She’s sick and scared and her mother’s just stressed out with it all. Maybe I can really do something to help her,’ she said softly, not wanting the kids to hear them yelling at each other so early in the morning.
‘Jesus, Martha! I worry about you! You are actually beginning to believe the things they’re writing and saying about you.’
Martha stared at him in disbelief, realizing that he had absolutely no faith in her abilities.
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Of course it’s fair!’ he argued. ‘You’re my wife and the mother of my children, not some bloody religious do-gooder saint. You have our kids to look after, isn’t that enough for you without wanting to become some kind of Mother Teresa ministering to the sick?’
‘Don’t you believe that I can heal?’
He turned away from her, pretending to put on his shoes and search for his jacket.
‘Mike!’ she demanded.
‘Listen, Mar, I don’t know. Call me a doubting Thomas, whatever, like that guy in the Bible. For me the jury is still out. I’m a simple guy and I ain’t sure of what’s going on. Why God would choose my wife over some holy nun or something beats me! I don’t understand it and I’m not going to bullshit and lie to you about it.’
Martha drew in a deep breath. If there was one thing sure and certain about Mike McGill it was his honesty. It was a part of his attraction and she supposed one of his most valued traits, though at times like this it hurt like hell to be on the receiving end. ‘Thanks a bunch for your support,’ she replied, raising herself up on the pillows. ‘I don’t understand anything you do in CPI, and yet it’s never been a problem for me. I listen to you talk on and on about work and the office and systems and chips and protocols, and support you as much as I can. Yet when I ask you for a little bit of support it’s just not there.’
He hesitated for a second.
‘I’m not getting into an argument with you, Martha, I’m already running late and this is not the time or the place. I’ve given you my opinion,’ he added as he walked out the door. Martha almost howled with frustration as she jumped into the shower, relieved that she had not told him about her meeting with Gina.
Evie seemed equally cautious about the idea of the visit. For once Martha’s best friend was somewhat in agreement with her husband.
‘Maybe you might be getting yourself in too deep. I know your intentions are good, but that little girl has been sick most of her life. You might get too emotionally involved,’ Evie told her.
Martha gave it some consideration but in the end ignored both of them. Deciding to follow her own instincts, she drove up Longwood Avenue towards Boston’s landmark Children’s Hospital later that day.
Visiting Cass Armstrong again, she was almost relieved that her mother Beth wasn’t there. The child was dozing, eyes closed, when Martha peeped in the door of her hospital room. Perhaps she was interfering and getting far more involved than she should, but one look at the ten-year-old’s unnatural pallor and the gurgle of the oxygen mask hooked up beside her bed was more than enough for Martha to sense the child’s distinct need for help. Cass’s eyes fluttered and flicked open, aware of the arrival of a visitor.
‘I can go if you’re too tired, Cass. I was just popping in to say hi.’
Cass shook her head, tossing the mask from side to side and gesturing for her to pull up a chair and sit down close by the bed. Martha did.
‘How you doing?’ she asked.
Cass shrugged her shoulders.
‘You are obviously not feeling any better.’
The young girl shook her head. Martha could tell she was forcing herself not to cry. She had that same expression on her face that Alice often got when she was trying to be brave about something and not let Patrick and Mary Rose know how upset she really was. Without thinking, Martha took hold of her hand and squeezed it. The two of them were silent.
Still and quiet, Martha could sense the sheer misery and hopelessness that the young girl felt. The loneliness of the hospital room and the sheer immensity of her illness were stifling her.
Cass lifted up the mask a second. ‘I had to go on this two nights back. Dr Hopkins says I need it until they get me a heart,’ she told Martha.
‘You must be anxious waiting like this,’ suggested Martha gently.
Cass nodded, her deep brown eyes serious.
‘I hate it! I don’t want some other kid to die just so that I can have their heart. Honest I don’t!’ she protested. ‘I don’t want their stupid heart. Even if I have the operation, it mightn’t work. I might reject it. All kinds of things could happen.’
‘Cass, someone else’s dying has absolutely nothing to do with you, get that straight! You needing the transplant isn’t going to make something bad happen to someone else. Believe me.’
‘That’s what Mom and Dr Hopkins say,’ she admitted.
Wordlessly Martha slipped the mask back over the girl’s face. ‘I’ll just sit with you awhile, Cass, if that’s all right.’
They sat quietly, Martha watching the light rhythm of Cass’s breath and heartbeat, sensing how truly fragile the girl really was and how much strength was needed for her to be fit for surgery. Anything she could do to help she would do gladly. She couldn’t imagine how distraught she would be if one of her own children had suffered this fate. Cass was watching her too, equally curious.
‘My mom says that you can heal people, that you got a gift of healing and making people better. Is that really true?’ Her voice was filled with doubt and disbelief, which Martha had no intention of destroying with some inane promise.
‘Some people say so. But to tell the truth, Cass, I just don’t know. I’d like to help people if I can, but that doesn’t always mean I can make them better.’
‘Do you think that I’m going to get better?’
‘I’m sure Dr Hopkins and all the doctors and nurses here are doin
g their best to help, Cass. It’s probably just a matter of waiting and . . .’
‘I’ve been waiting it seems most of my life,’ whispered Cass. ‘I’m fed up of waiting and being in hospital.’
‘I know it can’t be much fun stuck here instead of back home with your friends and family.’
‘My dad doesn’t like hospitals. He says they make him feel sick. One time he fainted when he came to visit me after one of my operations. He tried to pretend he slipped on the floor but I knew that he’d fainted. Mom doesn’t mind, she says she’s used to them, like me.’
Martha tried to disguise her dismay at what the Armstrong family must have endured over a number of years; she doubted herself and Mike would have been so strong. Cass wriggled around in the bed. She looked uncomfortable and out of place in the pristine starkness of the hospital room. Despite the attempts to disguise it with balloons and posters and get-well cards, she was still a small scared little girl in a place she did not want to be.
‘Would you like me to read to you?’
‘Yep.’
A pile of glossy pre-teen magazines lay strewn on the bottom of the bed, covered with pictures of the latest film and pop idols. Concerts, films, discos! Martha wondered if Cass would ever enjoy the things that teenage girls cherished.
Under the pile, Martha discovered a copy of Frank L. Baum’s Wizard of Oz. She remembered reading and re-reading it for Patrick and Mary Rose and Alice. Her own children had been entranced by the story of Dorothy and her quest to find the Great Wizard. Removing the bookmark, she took up where Cass had obviously left off and the child’s eyes relaxed as she listened to the familiar words. Right up close together, Martha kept reading as Cass leaned towards her. Laying her hands along the child’s shoulder and arms Martha was shocked by the overwhelmingly intense emotions Cass was feeling. She could feel the immediate weakness and irregularity of her heart but could also feel the child’s bewilderment and sadness. Cass needed to cut loose from all that and have some kind of a normal kid’s life, even if it wasn’t going to be for ever.
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