A Small Matter

by M. M. Wilshire

  She went to the bathroom to comb her hair. It did not need combing--Vito had seen to that. The short hair was a shock, but it was her blood-soaked side that really set her back. She tenderly felt the area, realizing that somewhere in the tussle with the electrified dress and the trapped cat she’d torn open the butterfly bandage holding her biopsy incision together. She was bleeding like a stuck pig. Behind her, in the mirrored shower door, she glimpsed her back and gasped in horror. Her gown was in tatters, literally shredded by the action of the current melting the gold thread work running through the linen. The burning threads had sliced deeply into her skin, like the cuts from a whip. That she was feeling no pain was a tribute to the lasting power of the prior doses of Mulroney Specials.

  She walked back to the kitchen where Kilkenney sat perched on the counter, his face in the box of chocolate macaroons. She’d never seen a cat eat macaroons before--it was a messy business.

  “Well Mulroney,” she said. “For awhile there, we made a handsome couple. I wish I could say the same for me and your cat. If you’d lived a little longer, we might have covered some territory, the three of us.”

  She picked up the cocktail napkin, scribbled with Mulroney’s last wishes for her life. She considered visiting the address on the napkin. Did it matter if she did, or didn’t? Outside the kitchen window, the lights of passing cars were hazy under the storm as the vehicles ushered in the morning commute, moving slowly along the flooded avenue, the water already at mid-hubcap. She missed Mulroney--she’d really grown attached to him, appreciated the way he’d glorified her without sacrificing his essential raw masculinity. She missed him so--why didn’t she cry or feel anything? Was it because she was too worn out? Or because she couldn’t actually fathom that he was gone?

  On her finger was the ring. A solid reminder of what had evaporated in front of her only a few short hours earlier. In better times, there would have been more than a ring--there would have been a warm marriage bed full of love, and champagne and roses on the night stand. Here in the kitchen there was nothing but a view of dark water, bare trees, and a smelly cat.

  “God,” she said, “I think there’s been a huge misunderstanding, here--I don’t like it where I am now. I’m not supposed to be here. This isn’t making any sense.”

  She removed her ring, thought better of it, and slipped it back on.

  It stays on from now on, she thought. These are my last weeks, possibly last days. I’ve experienced what was no doubt the worst day of my entire life. The ring stays on.

  She thought of her mother and a lump rose in her throat. Mom had made the journey before her, was even now awaiting her on the other side--a distance not all that great, but apparently impossible to traverse until exactly the right moment. Until that moment, heaven and earth would fight you tooth and nail, even if it took a thirty pound cat and near-electrocution to force you to stick it out.

  It had been a bad idea to come to the house. She realized it now. The house held too many memories. Here she stood in her old kitchen. Dalk was gone, translocated by the resourceful Mary-Jo into his new Santa Monica estate. Mulroney was lying dead in an ICU in Westwood, hooked up to Heaven-knew-what kind of machinery. No dignity in dying there. The kitchen was quiet save for the sounds of the storm outside and the implausible macaroon mastications of the cat on the counter.

  Something had drawn her back to the house. She understood suddenly the importance of the cocktail napkin enscrawled with Mulroney’s hopes for her healing. An invitation from him to her to attend a miracle on her behalf. An invitation she, in her pride, had yesterday refused. Today, the message looked different against the hard flat landscape of her failed suicide attempt. Today, images of healing began to punctuate her thoughts. What if there was a chance?

  Of course, there would be no healing. But it was his last request.

  She went to her closet to change--the closet was empty! Somebody, in their well-meaning haste, had moved all her clothes out of the house along with Dalk’s stuff. She had nothing to wear but the bloody, torn, wedding dress.

  She returned to the kitchen, closing the cocktail napkin with the North Hollywood address into the datebook, tucking it under her arm before grabbing her keys and, as an afterthought, picking up the suitcase containing the Virgin Mary-embossed bridal train before heading out the back sliding door into the storm and towards the garage.

  Upon opening the car door of her red Camaro, Kilkenney appeared out of nowhere and leaped in, dog-like.

  “Fair enough,” she said to him. “You might as well go along for the ride. After all, in the game of life and death, your vote counts as much as anybody’s.” She backed out into the alley and slowly made her way through the streets awash from the flood, steering the vehicle slowly eastward towards North Hollywood and her appointed destination with Mulroney’s Virgin Mary lady. The cat sat in the jump seat, remaining completely calm. It was a moment of almost unbearable intimacy--the first between them.

  “Don’t get excited,” she said, “but I’m starting to like you. Only a little, though.”

  Kilkenney didn’t overdo it when he heard this, choosing instead the self-effacing demeanor which made it appear that he hadn’t understood a word. He sat heavy in his seat, shoulders hunched, his voice low and purring, offering to her wounded mind and body the extreme virtue of his stolid, stoic support.

  In that fashion, the pair slowly vanquished the flooded streets, coming at last to their destination on Kling Street, where, it had been said to Mulroney, as the song had once been sung:

  There’s a stranger in town,

  And she's healin'

  She’s healin’ all the folks around.

  Chapter 26

  Kilkenney watched dolefully from the Camaro while Vickie stepped out into ankle-deep water and made her way around the car and up the sidewalk to the front door of the house. She’d brought the suitcase with her, reasoning that if she indeed was venturing into an enclave wherein the Blessed Mother was duly respected, and healing was indeed taking place, what better gift could she offer for her healing than the priceless wedding train which, like the whisper of an angel, conveyed so beautifully the essence of the Holy Mother.

  The house was typically North Hollywood, a nondescript yellow stucco-covered box with a frayed brown lawn dominated by an aged and overbearing walnut tree. The windows were covered with decorative iron bars for repelling any predators who made it past a couple of faded wooden ducks beside the sidewalk who sat sentry over a terrazzo pot filled with rocks and the leafless stem of something she couldn’t identify. The two-step concrete slab serving as a porch sported a welcome mat, a ribbed rubber job, worn threadless in times past.

  Vickie stood on the porch and couldn’t help but wonder why somebody’d taken the time and trouble to nail a small white plastic crucifix over the sill. The faded front entrance offered her a choice of push-button doorbell or brass knocker. She pushed the button and heard nothing and gave the knocker a couple of quick hard raps, preparing to camp out if necessary, but inwardly praying that someone would answer soon to save her from the slanting rain, which was now coming down like a monsoon.

  Silently, Vickie started to cry. She cried for Mulroney and for her own drowned, bloody and wounded wretchedness. She looked down and saw the blood rivering from the wound in her side down the outside of her dress onto the porch, mixing with the water at her feet.

  Someone did answer soon and she found herself face-to-face with a woman in a bright pink robe. The woman was Hispanic, in her late forties, and a bit thick, with placid brown eyes radiating compassion. Her persona, that of quiet inner strength, infused Vickie with a sensation of fragility, like that of a wounded bird. The woman said not a word at this apparition on her doorstep, but instead gently led Vickie by the hand across a living room entirely bereft of furniture to a breakfast nook off the kitchen wherein was staged a small plastic and chrome kitchen dinette, seating her carefully before quickly assembling on the table top various items of first aid a
nd comfort, including a blue plastic first-aid kit, a pair of soft bedroom slippers, and a large white flannel sheet. Soaking a clean washcloth with warm water and mild soap, the woman began gently cleansing Vickie’s wounds, starting with the lacerations on her back from the electrified gold chains, slowly peeling away the now tattered and defunct Flower of Ireland gown, carefully maintaining Vickie’s modesty all the while by substituting for the gown the flannel sheet, which she loosely wrapped around Vickie’s trembling frame while she worked.

  After a time, when Vickie was cleaned up to her satisfaction, the woman made tea, using a tea ball filled with a mysterious herbal material from a plastic pouch, and Vickie found herself carefully sipping the hot, tangy, aromatic liquid while the woman frowningly examined the puckered opening in her side from where the biopsy incision had opened.

  “This should be cleaned out and closed up by a doctor,” the woman said. “The best I can do is close it tight with a gauze pad and adhesive tape.”

  “Please,” Vickie said, “I don’t want the bleeding to start up again.”

  “Here we go,” the woman said. She performed the closure, taping it tight before gently helping Vickie to her feet and leading her to a back bedroom, otherwise empty save for a blanketed mattress and box spring which sat on the floor without benefit of frame or headboard. “Please lie down,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The blankets and pillowcases smelled clean and fresh. She stretched out, feeling vulnerable, yet relieved. Her newfound helper returned and offered Vickie a glass of cloudy white liquid.

  “To help you sleep,” the woman said.

  Vickie drained the glass, realizing as she did so, the oddity of surrendering herself to a stranger. Only a few hours before, such an act would have been unthinkable. But she was no longer operating in her old zone.

  “Your wound indicates you had a biopsy,” the woman said. “What was the result?”

  “Malignant,” Vickie said. “I have pancreatic cancer. My husband wanted me to come here--he said there was a chance of a miracle.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Vickie.”

  “I’m Theresa. I’m a poor woman, but the Virgin has blessed me with a gift for helping others.”

  Again the woman left the room, returning with a three-foot-tall statuette of the Virgin Mary, noting Vickie’s widening eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Theresa said. “If you kiss the statue, you will get better.” She extended the face of the statue towards Vickie’s lips. There was a sticky reddish brown liquid seeping from the Virgin’s eyes. Vickie kissed the statue, and as she did so, the liquid dripped on her face. Reflexively, she wiped it with the back of her hand and examined it.

  “This looks like blood,” Vickie said.

  “The Virgin is weeping blood for you,” Theresa said. “That’s a good sign.”

  “I have something for you,” Vickie said. “In my suitcase. Please open it.”

  The woman opened the suitcase and drew out the train, revealing the Mother.

  “Ay, Jesus, Maria y Jose,” Theresa said. “This is indeed a gift from Heaven.” The woman left with the train and returned with a small plastic rosary. “Here,” she said. “This is for you. It has a drop of blood from the Virgin on the crucifix.”

  “Thank you,” Vickie said.

  “You need rest,” Theresa said. “Sleep now. When you wake up, we’ll talk.”

  Vickie put her head back and closed her eyes. The tender ministrations of the woman in the bright pink robe had induced within herself a sense of childlike security, the first she’d felt in weeks. She’d been prepared, upon her arrival at the house, to slide into her usual pit of self-loathing and recrimination over everything that had happened, but found that the negativity couldn’t get a spark, couldn’t get started in the presence of her benefactress. Never before had she felt she’d come to know anyone so fast, trust anyone so completely. But now she did. She’d been expecting a room full of little old ladies, heads covered in lace mantillas, reciting rosaries in front of a statue. She’d not been expecting the simple, solitary straightforwardness of Theresa.

  Outside her window, a howling blast of rainy wind slapped the windows, accenting her sense of warmth and security under the soft but comforting weight of her blankets. She wasn’t sobbing, but she knew she was crying again. She cried for all the things in her life that had passed, and for all the things that would never be. Most of all, she cried for her mother and the torments she’d endured before her death. Vickie realized in the deepest part of herself that she loved her mother in a way that would never accept their parting. Her mother’s face appeared before her--a face young, unlined, peaceful, radiating love, a face that said to her Everything Is All Right. You Are My Beloved Daughter. Her mother kissed her forehead and then the lids of her eyes, sealing them shut.

  An image of a Christmas tree entered her mind and she remembered a happier time when she’d helped her mother decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. She’d been a tiny child, but mother had let her help with the icicles, praising her greatly for her efforts to string the shining strands over the boughs. The shining strands formed into a sparkling waterfall in her mind, and she stood before the falls under a cloudless sky. The music of the falls was joyful, and connected to her soul in a way that brought forth mirth from the depths of her being. It was a laughing waterfall, running through her, bringing it’s waves of joy into her heart. The waterfall began to sing and was joined by voices from somewhere overhead, the voices merging with the water until the great intensity of the performance lifted her up and carried her skyward into the sun. She drank the sun eagerly into herself in a way which filled her with light.

  Vickie slept.

  Chapter 27

  “I hope you don’t mind that I brought your cat in,” Theresa said. “He’s certainly a big animal.”

  “I don’t mind,” Vickie said. “But I still don’t understand why you took me in. Most people would have simply called the paramedics.”

  Theresa and Vickie sat talking together at the dinette while Kilkenney slept on a towel in a laundry basket on the kitchen countertop. Atop the dinette sat the statue of the weeping Virgin. Vickie realized for the first time that, apart from the bed she’d slept on, the dinette was the only furniture in an otherwise empty house. Wrapped in a heavy blanket from the bed, she was feeling somewhat better after a rock-solid thirteen hours of sleep. The day she’d slept through had given way to a crisp, cool evening, in stark contrast to the earlier storm which, leaving much devastation in its wake, had mercifully passed. The two women had shared a simple meal of Mexican sweetbread and even sweeter coffee and talked at length about the past several days of Vickie’s life, allowing Vickie the opportunity to unburden herself to this sympathetic stranger.

  “You ask why I took you in,” Theresa said. “It’s because this place is my home, but it also belongs to Our Lady. When I saw you at the door, I felt Our Lady was telling me to take you in. This is not an ordinary place. You yourself have now seen the statue of the Virgin weeping her tears of blood. A lot of people have come here and many miracles have happened. They even came here from Channel 5 a few weeks ago--but the statue wouldn’t weep for them.”

  “You speak very good English,” Vickie said.

  “I learned my English in San Diego when I lived there for four years when I was a young girl,” Theresa said. “But I returned to Mexico to marry my husband. We came up here together last year, but it hasn’t gone well for us. I can’t complain. Everything is as it should be. Our Lady sees to that.”

  “Where is everybody?” Vickie said.

  “Unfortunately,” Theresa said, “They had to go back to Mexico recently. I have to stay here because I have a job and can send money home. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably be leaving soon myself.”

  “Where does your family call home?”

  “A little town called Alamos, in Sonora,” Theresa said. “You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s a place
a few hundred miles south of Nogales where a stream runs through. It’s where the weeping statue came from, though, so I guess you could say Our Lady hasn’t forgotten about us.”

  “Are people still coming here to be healed?”

  “Truthfully?” Theresa said. “Nobody has come since La Migra rounded up my family. You’re the first visitor I’ve had in a week.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your family,” Vickie said.

  “Thank you,” Theresa said. “But tell me--do you believe in miracles? I hope you do--you might need one to beat the cancer.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Vickie said. She examined her rosary, the one she’d received from Theresa as a gift in exchange for the priceless train. There it was--the spot of dried brown blood staining the crucifix. Was it possible that such a thing could harness the powers of Heaven on her behalf?

  “Do you believe in miracles?” Theresa repeated.

  “Yes,” Vickie said. “I believe in miracles. Perhaps this rosary will help me. Thank you for giving it to me.”

  “You came here looking for a miracle,” said Theresa. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me,” Vickie said.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” Theresa said. “When I saw you on my porch, something inside me told me to take you in and try to help you. Besides, I believe you’re a good omen. You’re an answer to a dream.”

  “That’s the first time anybody’s called me that,” Vickie said. “What was your dream?”

  “In my dream, my family and I were inside a cave, where somebody was getting married. We were all together and very happy. That’s why I took you in when you showed up in your wedding dress. You looked like the lady in my dream. I took your arrival as a sign that my dream of being together again with my family will come true.”