A Small Matter

by M. M. Wilshire

  “You had a dream about a wedding,” Vickie said, “and the next thing you know, I was on your doorstep in my bridal gown. Perhaps that’s a miracle all by itself.”

  “And you were wearing a torn and bloody bridal gown,” Theresa said. “Not only that, you bear on your body some of the marks of Our Lord’s passion. You have a wound in your side and stripes on your back. That’s why I think you’re an answer to my dream. You showed up from out of nowhere seeking sanctuary and I was able to provide it. The Lord will reward me--perhaps he will send me back to my family soon.”

  “You’re a good Samaritan,” Vickie said. “I was at the end of my rope. I tried to commit suicide. I failed miserably. It was right after that I came looking for a miracle.”

  “Once you’ve tried suicide and failed,” Theresa said, “your life will never be the same--but your life can be better than it ever was before. The brush with death can encourage you to learn a new way to live.”

  “When I got the news about my malignancy,” Vickie said, “I felt terror as I’d never felt it before. It was a terror that had no solution--no matter who tried to help me, no matter who held me or comforted me--the terror filled my every waking minute. I think that’s part of the reason I tried to kill myself by taking the pills. I wanted the terror to stop.”

  “Once you stop trying to control the uncontrollable,” Theresa said, “Our Lady will help you. But you must first learn to stop thinking only of yourself and begin thinking of ways in which you can help others.”

  “I’m not so sure Our Lady will help me,” Vickie said. “Suicide is a mortal sin. Perhaps I’ve tied God’s hands.”

  “God is not angry,” Theresa said. “He loves you. Your suicide attempt could also be viewed compassionately as your way to try to control the spread of the tumor. By killing yourself, you were killing the tumor as well.”

  “You’re right,” Vickie said. “I don’t want the tumor eating up my body. I wanted to stop it. It has no right to be eating me alive.”

  “Do you want to get well?” Theresa said.

  “I don’t even know the answer to that anymore,” Vickie said. “I’m not sure I have a life to return to. When I left my husband, he was on life support at UCLA Medical Center. If they fail to revive him, I’ll have to make the decision to pull the plug. Once the plug is pulled, I have to fulfill my promise to him and seek treatment for my cancer--I’ll have to undergo chemo by myself, and that scares me. Part of me wants it all to be over, but part of me is deeply saddened that I may be passing from this world, and I feel like I want to stay. What scares me is that I don’t know which part is going to win. I don’t know if I’ll simply end it, or stick it out.”

  “Why don’t you stay with me for another night?” Theresa said. “You can rest here and nobody will bother you. Later, perhaps you will take Our Lady’s tears to your husband. Perhaps Our Lady will speak to him and he’ll come back.”

  “No,” Vickie said. “I’ve been enough of a burden already. I really should get going.”

  “Going where?” Theresa said. “Out there is nothing but a big traffic jam and a lot of drying mud. No, I think you should stay with me.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden to you,” Vickie said. “And I don’t want to keep you from your work.”

  “This is my work,” Theresa said. “I am helping Our Lady. I receive a little money now and then when somebody gets healed. It keeps me going.”

  “But now nobody is coming,” Vickie said.

  “You’re somebody,” Theresa said. “You came. Perhaps you’re enough. If you get healed, you can make me a little present or something.”

  “Okay,” Vickie said. “I’ll stay awhile. You’re right. There’s nothing for me out there. I need to use your phone to call my brother and let him know I’m all right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Theresa said, “but I have no phone.”

  “That’s okay,” Vickie said. “My phone is in the car.”

  “I’ve got some bad news,” Theresa said. “Your car has been stolen.”

  The news left Vickie feeling a bit stunned.

  “It’s the neighborhood,” Theresa said. “I apologize for it, but the sight of the fancy red car must have been too much for the thieves.”

  “I forgot to set the alarm,” Vickie said. “Usually I set it. But yesterday, in all the confusion, I forgot.”

  “What’s done is done,” Theresa said. “Tomorrow, we can walk down to the phone and call your brother.”

  “Walk?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have a car.”

  “I’m going to lose my mind before all this is over,” Vickie said. “I’m sure of that.”

  “We’ll say a rosary together,” Theresa said. “We’ll dedicate it to your miracle, and for your husband to come back. And then we need to get you back to bed. Sometimes, when you feel that all of life is too complicated, it takes rest to make things right again.”

  “I’m getting really worried,” Vickie said. “I’m afraid my pain will return. I’m out of medication.”

  “You probably consider your pain as fixed and permanent as a chunk of stone,” Theresa said. “but Our Lady can take away your pain. The pain was her way of allowing you to come to terms with your own mortality.”

  “But what if it comes back?”

  “Then you tell me and I’ll go for help,” Theresa said. “Otherwise, if the pain does not come back, then you have to give the Virgin credit. Perhaps that’s what you’re really scared of.”

  Vickie realized that she’d become habituated to the pain, accustomed to accepting as natural its insatiable desire to torment her. Now she was being led to break that habituation, to imagine that somehow, a statue weeping blood, or rather, the heavenly being whom the statue represented, held the answer to her problems. In the past, she’d invoked insurance companies and doctors to help her cope with the unknown. In one stroke, all that had been swept aside.

  “I’m trapped,” Vickie said.

  “No,” Theresa said. “You’re in a new place where you don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s nobody you can call. It’s just you and me and your cat.”

  “You win, Theresa,” Vickie said. “I’ll stay here with you for awhile. Besides, it’s getting late. I should tell you, though, that I don’t know the rosary like I should. I hardly remember the prayers at the end.”

  “It’s time you learned them again,” Theresa said. She began to pray, not grandiosely, but simply, and Vickie soon found herself preoccupied with the images of the mysteries, and the words, and the limitless possibilities of living beings and surrenderings to something other than cruel fate.

  Chapter 28

  “My child,” the lady said. “What is the matter?” The voice was honeyed, and bright--but soft--a whisper, but with an edge.

  “Where am I?” Vickie said. “Is this a dream?”

  She was sitting on a bright green lawn under the bluest sky she’d ever seen. There was nothing on the lawn save herself and the lady. The lawn stretched into infinity. Vickie decided it was a dream, but it was a nice one.

  “It’s not a dream,” the lady said.

  “Am I dead?” Vickie said.

  “No,” the lady said. “You’re not dead. Now tell me, what is the matter?”

  Vickie threaded her fingers together, examining her nails. She was still in the flannel sheet Theresa had wrapped her in. She examined the lady before her, a youngish woman wrapped in a flowing, pale blue cloth, her face placid and serene.

  “I am dead, aren’t I?” Vickie said. “It’s finally over, isn’t it.”

  “It’s not over yet. Now tell me, what is the matter?”

  Vickie knew she had to answer. The lady seemed taller, thinner, brighter, somehow, than the folks back home, and mentally agile, too, prepared for whatever psychic approach Vickie could muster.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” Vickie said. “Do I start with the death of my first husband or my second husband? Or do I begin with the de
ath my mother endured under the tortures of cancer and chemo? I suppose I could start there, not forgetting that my dog, Sheebie, also died under the onslaught of malignant tumors. Or maybe I could begin somewhere back in my childhood, where these future horrors were shielded from me by virtue of my youthful innocence. You ask me, what is my problem? It seems to me you should already know what it is. After all, the view of things from up here is pretty much unobstructed. The weather’s perfect, and I imagine it’s always this way. Perhaps I should say quite truthfully, that this matter runs quite deep. My problem is that I was born and had to live on earth in a world full of pain and broken dreams. I could say that was my problem, but even that would be minimizing the real issue--which is cancer.”

  “Cancerous tumors do not live forever,” the lady said, “but you will.”

  Vickie allowed herself to drink in the presence of the lady, to feel herself enfolded in the aura of her. “I thought my life would be different, somehow,” she said. “When I was young, I had big dreams. I was going to use my talents to help the world. I was going to be revered and admired for so doing. But in reality, all I managed to accomplish was to grow older. I’ve made a proper mess of most of my endeavors to fulfill my dreams. Now it seems that not only can I not fulfill my dreams, it seems that I’m only getting in the way. I’m a nobody to the world because I can’t even take care of myself. I have cancer. That’s all I am now--a cancer victim--and nothing else.”

  You’re cancer is cured,” the lady said.

  “What?” Vickie said.

  “You were healed by my tears.”

  “I think I understand now,” Vickie said. “I know why I’m here talking with you like this. This is the last judgment, right? You’re asking me these questions to see if I’m eligible to go to Heaven. Last night I died in my sleep. I probably bled to death from the tumor and now I’m here.”

  “No,” the lady said. “This is not the last judgment. And you’re not dead--you’re only sleeping. You came here to find the graces given to you with the gift of your cancer.”

  “Graces?” Vickie said.

  “Everything happens for a reason,” the lady said. “Even that which appears to you as evil has within it the seeds of good.”

  “If only I could believe you,” Vickie said. “I guess you could say that I’m a bit jaded. When you asked me to tell you about my life, I felt ashamed, because I had nothing to tell, no grand account to give you. I have spent my entire life in baseless mediocrity.”

  “There’s no such thing as baseless mediocrity,” the lady said. “Every life is precious, forged as it is on the anvil of earthly adversity. Your feeling of shame arises out of your pride, your belief that you didn’t measure up to some false earthly standard of behavior--which, by the way, is nothing more than thinly disguised selfishness--your lack of compassion for others has left you unable to solve the riddle of your disease.”

  “You sound like Father Larry,” Vickie said. “I guess his talk with me has bled over into this dream I’m having now. I’m not really in Heaven, am I? I’m sleeping at Theresa’s house, recycling all the babble I’ve been hearing lately from all the do-gooders who want to help out the poor little cancer victim. But I have a question for you, even if you aren’t real. If I’m not dead yet, when will I be? How much time do I have before I die? And another thing. I have a cat. When the cat dies, does he go to heaven? And another thing--is there really a Pearly Gate? Or is that something somebody made up?”

  The lady waved her hand and Vickie began to fall.

  “Wait!” Vickie said. “Don’t send me back! You didn’t answer my questions? Who are you?”

  She awoke with a jolt in the bedroom of the Kling Street house. Kilkenney, forming a large ball, still sleeping under the covers at the end of the mattress, warmed her feet with his glorious fur-iosity. The bedroom door was opening. A couple appeared in the open doorway, a man and a woman, thirties-something, well-dressed, with sharp faces pulled back into concerned grimaces.

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  “Who are you?” Vickie answered.

  “This is our property,” the man said. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  “I should ask you the same thing,” Vickie answered. “The lady who rents from you--I’m staying with her. She let me in out of the storm two days ago. Why don’t you ask her and see for yourself? And shut the door while you’re at it. I’m not dressed for visitors.”

  “What are you talking about?” the man said. “There’s nobody renting from us. Listen, lady, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got to leave. You’re trespassing. I strongly suggest you get yourself together and go.”

  “What are you talking about! I can’t just up and walk out the front door! I have nothing to wear and no car! I have cancer! But I’ll tell you what. Let me borrow your phone and I’ll have somebody come and pick me up.”

  Kilkenney picked that moment to emerge from the foot of the bed and stretch. At the sight of the surprisingly large beast, the couple backed away from the door.

  “Get back, honey,” the man said. “She’s got a Tasmania devil or something--it might be rabid!”

  “This is getting too weird,” the woman said, extracting an ultra-thin phone from her purse. “C’mon--don’t antagonize her any further. We’ll leave her here and wait outside until the police get here.”

  “You’re right, honey,” the man said. “The woman is obviously deranged. You know how these homeless are. There’s no telling what she might do. We don’t want this to turn violent. Look at her! She’s all scratched up and from the look on her face, my guess is, she’s probably got AIDS. Let’s get out of here before she pulls a hypo on us.”

  The couple slammed her door behind them as they hastily exited the house. Vickie, thus left alone, pondered this new development. She looked heavenward. Somewhere up there was the lady. The lady who said she was cured. Had it all been a dream? She took a deep breath. No pain. Not only was there no pain, she felt pretty decent. She laughed out loud. Maybe Theresa and her tears of blood had been for real, after all. Theresa--Vickie’s good Samaritan--who, for whatever reason, must have packed up her statuette of the crying Virgin and split during the night, leaving Vickie sleeping there alone to face whatever music might be playing the next day.

  Something caught her eye. The rosary, the gift from Theresa, carefully hung on the doorknob, the crucifix still swaying from the slamming of the door. She stood up to retrieve it and examined it closely--there it was, the thick spot of blood on the crucifix, like a drop of heavy paint. The rosary in her hand gave her a sense of peace. Nothing heavy or overpowering, simply a sense of relaxation over the knowledge that the recent hours with Theresa hadn’t been a complete hallucination.

  Vickie felt strong. The storm had passed and it was a new day. Perhaps her battle with the tumor was over. If so, she had other, more important work to do. Wrapping her sheet tightly around her, she headed for the kitchen. It would be awhile before the cops got there. Might as well see if there was any way to make a cup of coffee--and, of course, if fortune was truly smiling, there was always the chance of some of that terrific leftover Mexican sweet bread.

  Chapter 29

  “I haven’t been hungry in days,” Vickie said. “But I am now--and I’m talking about raw hunger, here, the kind people lost in the forest have when they eat a lizard or a bug.”

  “Then we’re in luck,” Dalk said. “Du-par’s is not in the habit of turning down hungry people. Of course, whether or not you’ll score a bug all depends.”

  Having earlier met the two uniformed cops and straightened out the Kling Street incident with one clean surgical phone call to Dalk, and having been joined by him, he providing her, for the moment, with temporary clothing in the form of a pair of regulation PD sweats, and a pair of old running shoes two sizes too large, Vickie, in the jump seat of the Mercedes Black Diamond Edition roadster, having sketched in for Dalk the details of the prior twenty-four hours--omitting
the fact that she believed herself to be completely healed--was looking forward to traipsing into Du-par’s Restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, a hair east of Laurel Canyon, whereupon she expected to be served the best breakfast in Los Angeles, complete with pie, for which said eatery was famous throughout the Valley and beyond.

  “We’ll have them fry some hash or something for Kilkenney,” Vickie said, referring to their traveling companion who’d fashioned a nest of sorts out of the sheet they’d stuffed behind the driver’s seat.

  “He can’t eat in my new car,” Dalk said. “It’s enough that he’s allowed in the back. I really don’t want him in here at all. Did you see the way he rubbed his pheromones all over the back of my seat?”

  The Mercedes barreled south down Lankershim Boulevard, through the impressive sub-strata of Universal City, a swelling, steel-shouldered, glass-faced extravaganza of tourist delights and hard movie deals, where too much money and power daily corrupted absolutely the Lilliputians who ran the place, and who oversaw the strapping down of the Gulliver of public consciousness.

  “Dr. Lerner’s been going crazy trying to locate you,” Dalk said. “They’ve got Mulroney’s body moved to a private room. They need a decision as to how to proceed.”

  “Proceed?” Vickie said. “You mean they want me to decide about shutting off the life support.”

  “Well,” Dalk said. “If you’re going to have a heart attack, you might as well have it at a major hospital. The crash team did an awesome job--they managed to get him functioning on his own again. The only problem is, he’s in a deep coma. They don’t know if he’s really in there or not, but if he is and he chooses to come back, in Dr. Lerner’s opinion, he’ll probably find himself not too much the worse for wear.”

  “So what do they need me for?” Vickie said.

  “I’d rather have Lerner explain that to you,” Dalk said. “And I think we should eat first.”

  “I am hungry,” Vickie said. “If I don’t eat something soon, I’ll be on life support.”