And so they left too, and soon stood among many others waiting for the light to change. They were seeing dimly in the dark rain, their backs to the stadium. Miracle or mere coincidence, they had waited on the game long enough to be exactly there, poised on the edge of the curb, to see Willy stepping down into traffic and then stumbling his way toward them across the intersection.
The accident happened fast. Amazement, impact, the collective cringing gasp. Before anyone might plunge toward the victim, he was grasping for the curb, seizing on the toe of Vincent’s shoe, crawling into standing and then, inconceivably, walking away, heedless of expressed concern, promises to call an ambulance, that he ought to be seen by a doctor.
Afterward strangers might have muttered to one another about what ought to be done. They stared behind them, squinting in the rain and the stadium light, watching the retreating figure of the man in the parka who soon disappeared into shadow. The driver of the car stood with hands limp in the whiteness of his own headlights. He was being talked to by someone, but he wasn’t listening. He was staring toward the stadium; his jaw hung loose.
But there was nothing left to do. With the others, Vincent and Maddie recalled that their hair and clothes were soaking wet. They stepped down into the street and headed home.
That was all there was to it: an accident they witnessed after a rained-out baseball game. Maddie wasn’t horrified by it at the time, not really. The brief event was a shocking, would-be tragedy that, happily, wasn’t: clearly Willy was fine. It was a story to be told to their parents when they got home, to their friends, to Nicky and Amy Tedesco.
And of course they told it.
R
The summer of Vincent became, also, the summer of the Tedescos. Maddie came to know their house by heart over the course of those months. Before then, she had been to their home a handful of times, and mostly for youth group events in the backyard.
And now she was there all the time, and the floor plan, even twenty years later, was locked into her memory: a small, somewhat enclosed entryway held a coat closet on the right and a sign reading “Bless this House.” The entry opened to the living room, which then joined, under a narrow arch, the dining room—the room to which they had fled on an evening in late June when a thunderstorm had put an end to their backyard picnic. The dining room rather predictably gave on to the kitchen, a room so small it had no space for a table but which had once housed Nicky and Vincent’s glee over the brand new microwave. The TV room was at the back of the house and was large enough only for a narrow couch, the television stand, and a recliner.
The detached garage was where Vincent and Nicky would lean under the open hood of Nicky’s car. Their driveway was where they would shoot hoops. On that back patio (where Vincent and Justine had discussed Communion) Nicky taught Vincent how to grill the perfect hamburger. And late at night in that living room, he instructed Vincent as to the finer points of Billy Joel’s earlier albums and the music of The Cars, all of which he played very loudly.
It was a simple floor plan, probably the same as many of the other houses in the neighborhood, but for Maddie it was singular.
Vincent was her point of access. Vincent, whom the Tedescos loved and had taken under their wing like an adopted little brother, pitying him, perhaps, for his background, for coming from the other side of the tracks. Or maybe it was something of the shared experience blooming into friendship: twenty years prior, Nicky’s football coach was the same man who coached Vincent’s team now. Same high school, same locker room, same plays. Amy said that Nicky relived his glory days in Vincent.
Not that they needed a reason to love him. Everyone should love him because he was Vincent.
Vincent loved them, too. He had asked about them early on, when he was brand new to the Bethel Hills Church—and Maddie had let go all she knew about them: Nicky and Amy had been at the church all their lives; he had played football and she had been a cheerleader in high school; they had been the youth group leaders for nearly forever; they were so cool. Everyone at the church loved them. And also they couldn’t have kids.
Here was a story she knew by heart, failing to comprehend that Nicky and Amy had opened intimate details of their lives to the congregation so that she could have such knowledge. Amy had had five or six miscarriages and those kinds of pregnancies where the egg gets attached to the fallopian tube (and wasn’t she brave and also maybe somewhat cool herself, to so casually mention such a thing as a fallopian tube to Vincent Elander!). The whole church had been praying for them for years—for years—and one time, when he was sharing his testimony about it in a Sunday evening service, Nicky had even cried about it. Nicky had cried. In front of everyone.
Her mother had taken them a meal that week, and Maddie had gone along for the ride (because everyone loved the Tedescos), and Amy had told her later that it was the best baked ziti they had ever had.
Maddie finished, a little breathless, oddly pleased.
“Wow,” Vincent said quietly. “That is really, really sad,” at which Maddie felt something within her fold slightly. Moments before, she had felt almost exultant. She wasn’t sure why. But Vincent, of course, was right.
“Yes,” she said, and she felt sad.
“I mean, they would make really good parents,” he said.
It was the first time Maddie had considered this. Always it had just been a question of Nicky and Amy Tedesco becoming pregnant. It had been miscarriage after miscarriage and fertility treatments or adoption and their ability—or inability—to afford either of them. Now she could see it: Nicky and Amy and a laughing baby between them, and she felt suddenly and passionately that these two, of all people, should have children.
She might imagine, then, that she and Vincent were of some comfort to this childless couple, maybe even that Vincent’s friendship with Nicky was somehow a gift to them. But that wasn’t what she was thinking when she and Vincent dropped by or were invited over, when, once again, Nicky and Amy made room for them in their busy lives. Instead, her thoughts circled around the church altar-call, that realm of Maddie’s inexperience. Before Vincent, she had felt left out of church life in some indefinable way. The Tedescos were a reminder of Vincent’s words to her: God had chosen them for each other.
Maddie understood, too, that this friendship was good for Vincent. Her own mother had commented that Nicky was like the father Vincent had lost, and Maddie was glad of that.
Nonetheless, there were moments of discomfort in it—or one anyway: that awkward conversation, maybe the first or second time that Nicky and Vincent had headed out to work on the car. Maddie and Vincent hadn’t been together for very long, and Amy had asked how it was going. Maddie had never had a boyfriend before, right?
“No,” Maddie answered. “Vincent is my first boyfriend,” a phrase that suddenly struck Maddie as odd. Was Vincent merely the first? Were there to be more? Vincent was her boyfriend; he was the only one she ever wanted or could want. Vincent had said—and Maddie believed it—that God had chosen them for each other. Would God choose this only for a period of time? Didn’t God’s choosing it mean it would last forever?
And were these the kinds of things she could talk to anyone—Amy—about?
Yes, she had answered. Vincent was her first boyfriend. Had Nicky been Amy’s first?
Amy smiled. Yes, in fact, he was her first boyfriend. But they had still waited until after they graduated college to get married. Amy and Maddie talked for a while about those years: dating in high school, breaking up when they went to college, getting back together again. It was a long time, Amy said, between their first date (the homecoming dance in tenth grade) and their wedding.
“It’s the waiting that can be difficult,” she had said, looking at Maddie without the hint of a smile.
Then and years later Maddie wondered if Amy had meant something more by that, if even so early in Maddie and Vincent’s relationship, Amy had been gently trying to pry the lid off the taboo topic of sex before marriage, if—had M
addie allowed her—Amy might somehow have been of help.
Maddie hadn’t wanted her help. That lid was firmly shut. She and Vincent were devoted to God and would, therefore, remain innocent—wasn’t that obvious?
R
On an afternoon in late August, Maddie and her mother took the trolley downtown. They had come through the tunnel and were rattling along the level slip of land next to the river when Maddie caught sight of a familiar parka moving along the sidewalk. The trolley made a stop there and Maddie stared as Willy walked towards them, pushing a shopping cart laden with bags.
Certainly she and Vincent had talked about Willy. The accident and Willy’s stunning reaction to it were topics of frequent conversation, and they had looked for him every time they had gone to a game. In truth, not seeing him since had worried them, but how to find a homeless man in a city as big as Pittsburgh? They hadn’t really tried.
Now here he came, and as he drew nearer, Maddie realized he wasn’t holding one arm against his chest. Maybe it wasn’t Willy. But he and Vincent had talked for a while; she had had time to study him, and now she recognized his face. He had been none too clean in their earlier encounters; here, in the full light of a summer afternoon, she saw that his face was still dirty, his hair greasy and matted. It was definitely Willy pushing the cart, and the atrophied arm that had been folded and useless in front of him was now normal, functioning in tandem with the other.
He was nearly parallel to her window when the trolley started up again, but she got a good look at the grip of his hands on the handle, the fingers curled around it like they should be. She rose up in her seat and stared as the trolley pulled away, confirming the vision to herself.
All afternoon while window-shopping with her mother, Maddie was preoccupied with the two accidents, laying them beside one another in her mind. Vincent had held his hands to her thigh, and later he told her he had been praying for her. The healing had seeped through her body during the ambulance ride, the pain had slowly dissolved. The X-rays dismissed her without crutches. The bruises and cuts on her face and body disappeared.
Vincent had grasped Willy by the shoulders, trying to help him to his feet. Did he have the presence of mind, even in the shock of the accident, to pray? She hadn’t asked him; he hadn’t said. And how had Willy experienced it? Drunk as he was, was he aware that night of a change? Or did he wake to it blinded by a hangover, only later in the day coming to realize that his useless arm and hand had been functioning normally all day?
Had it happened to anyone other than a homeless man, this would have been in the papers: Accident Causes Miraculous, Overnight Transformation! There would have been doctor’s visits, x-rays, maybe even studies exploring connections between car accidents and rare recoveries from long-standing disability. Vincent would have been found, contacted, interviewed—this much, at the very least.
As things stood, the miracle didn’t appear to have altered Willy’s life at all. There he was: parka, garbage bags, dishevelment—and now the normal use of both hands.
Maddie told Vincent about it in a rush: “You will never believe who I saw today!” followed by the flood of details. She hadn’t considered what his answer might be or what it ought to be, yet when she finally gave in to waiting, his reaction was unexpected: “What does it mean?” he said.
“It means that you can heal people. It wasn’t just me—a one-time special event. You can heal people!” She surprised herself. It was a little audacious, wasn’t it, to declare with such confidence something that, really, wasn’t proved. But that was the substance of faith, right? Believing where one couldn’t see? Saying it aloud affirmed her conviction. She had stepped out in faith; she had done what the church—what God—wanted her to do, like going forward for prayer during the altar call. Vincent could heal people. She had said it, and it was truer now than it had been even seconds before.
Vincent returned to what Maddie had seen, pressing her again to retell it; and with him, Maddie compared the evidence: Willy’s healing and her own. Then Vincent fell silent for a while, considering, she supposed. Certainly it was a leap of faith—but not a huge one. Vincent would see it, too.
Finally, he spoke: Did she know others who could heal people? Was this something that happened to Christians? To church people? Had it ever happened before at the Bethel Hills Church?
Vincent’s questions did—just the slightest bit—rattle her confidence, but she held firm.
“No,” she answered. But people in her church had been healed before, she went on. And she reminded him that her parents believed she had been healed—or divinely protected, anyway—when she was hit by the Camaro.
“Well then,” Vincent asked, “what does it mean?”
Maddie felt that she ought to have an answer, and the fact that she didn’t gave the smallest tremor to her faith. She was the traditional church-goer, product of a life-time of Sunday school. Mentally, she cast about for a reply. It occurred to her that Justine might have one, but this she immediately rejected. Certainly Pastor McLaughlin would know. Or Nicky. Vincent should ask him, and she said so.
But Vincent said he didn’t want to ask anyone about it. He didn’t want to talk about it with anyone—not yet, anyway, he said. He needed time to think about it, and to pray about it, too.
So for a time it was something they kept between them like a secret. Vincent joked with her: sure he could heal people, but only if they’d been hit by a car. Maddie laughed—but she also found herself watching for car accidents. She had been quiet about her own healing: that tacit yet indelible mark of God’s blessing on their relationship. But this with Willy clearly, to her mind, signified something more. It suggested something in the line of God’s expansive movement through Vincent. It demonstrated—better than she had seen in any other Christian—God’s approval of Vincent himself. It was an amazing revelation, and while she believed it, the silence and lack of further confirmation (if only they could talk with Willy; if only Vincent had seen him, too) haunted the periphery of her faith.
She hadn’t planned on telling the Tedescos, but then Nicky brought it up one day, when they were talking about going to a baseball game. “Whatever happened to that guy?” he said, and they all knew he was talking about Willy.
Maddie spoke without thinking. They spent so much time with the Tedescos that it seemed natural they should know. It had been weeks, anyway, since she had seen Willy; it was early September now. She and Vincent had been quiet about it long enough.
And so it wasn’t Vincent she was thinking of when she told them—shyly, quietly, not looking at anyone but studying the tabletop. And then she didn’t say too much. She just told them what she had seen from the trolley window.
“What are you saying?” Nicky said, and Amy asked for clarification such that Maddie had to go over the details and connect the dots for them (the atrophied arm that was no longer atrophied), a verbose paragraph or so that gave her time to meet Vincent’s eye. He was just looking at her, mouth closed, not necessarily (she decided) in disapproval.
For a time, the conversation was focused on Maddie—what she had seen, and when, and where. She was relieved when the Tedescos sought confirmation from Vincent, who willingly and without annoyance candidly affirmed his experiences with Willy and then expressed full credulity in what Maddie had seen, while also confessing he had not laid eyes on him since the accident in July.
This gave rise to more questions. Nicky and Amy fired away: Was Maddie sure it was the same guy? And were they sure he’d had a gimpy arm? (that was Nicky’s description). Could she have made some mistake? How could they know that something else hadn’t happened—some other intervention for Willy between the accident and, months later, Maddie spotting him on the sidewalk?
Maddie found herself growing defensive. What had become of the faith she had been raised with, the sense that, at any time, one might experience God’s tangible intervention? She knew what she had seen—and didn’t questions like these suggest doubt in Maddie herself? T
he slender peninsula of faith onto which she had boldly stepped was under siege—and the attack was coming from friends.
Vincent came to her rescue. He took them all back to the accident in April—Maddie’s accident. The Tedescos had known about it. The whole church knew about it and regarded Maddie’s protection from injury as a miracle. Maddie’s father had given a testimony about it in the Sunday evening service. But no one knew what Maddie and Vincent knew, which was what had actually happened: that Maddie hadn’t been protected at all but had been badly injured—and Vincent had healed her.
The Tedescos were silent for a moment, looking from one of them to the other. Finally, Nicky said, “You healed Maddie.”
Vincent nodded.
“And this guy Willy?”
Vincent nodded again, and then quickly added, “Well, God healed them. I was just there.”
“You were just there,” Nicky repeated, smiling. He looked at Amy, who was smiling back. And then to Vincent and Maddie: “And you told no one about this because…?”
Vincent answered: Who were they supposed to tell? And what good would it do? The thing with Maddie was—he thought—an isolated incident. Who was to say that this with Willy wasn’t the same way? Telling people might make them think it could happen again—and was that something they could—even should—assume? Two miracles. Gifts from God. It was enough.
This was revelation even to Maddie: Vincent believed it more ardently than she did.
“Vincent,” Amy said, “people have been given gifts of healing before. If you’ve been given a gift, then you should use it.” She spoke gently, wanting to tread lightly, perhaps, on ground that was so uncertain.
“Well,” Vincent answered, looking across the table at her without smiling, earnest. “I guess I have then. Twice.”
All of them were silent for a moment, regarding one another. Unwittingly, Maddie held her breath, waiting as if for a verdict.
Healing Maddie Brees Page 15
