by Nancy Rue
The walls were a soft textured yellow, exuding health. The round tables, set in uncrowded fashion, each had its own Himalayan salt lamp, which, Mickey told me a few minutes after I walked in, provided negative ions that neutralized the harmful effects of electronics such as fluorescent lighting. The minute I breathed an air that breathed with me—an air of potted rosemary and drying basil and the zest of grated lemons—I believed her.
Mickey ordered my coat off and took me on a tour.
Only tea steeped in the pots on the uncluttered sideboard, each a different color for its matching brew.
“Coffee can totally tax the adrenal glands,” Mickey told me. “We refuse to serve something that can injure the stomach and the esophagus with all that hydrochloric acid splashing up when the sphincter muscle between them relaxes too much.”
I stared at her back as she led me into the beverage area. “This is Washington,” I said. “How can you stay open without serving coffee?”
“Because people innately want to be healthy. And when they find out you don’t have to eat what looks like the weeds somebody pulled out of their garden to do it, they go ahead and try.” She turned to me in the doorway and smiled, eyes closed, so that she looked more marvelously gnome-like than ever. She opened her eyes and grinned at me. “Now, I’m starting you in beverages because I’ve already figured out you haven’t waited tables before. I’m right, aren’t I?”
I grinned back—and wondered what else she had figured out about me. My heart reached for her, yearned to tell her what was eating away at me. A woman who cared about the esophageal sphincter muscles of complete strangers might actually understand me. Even when I didn’t. I ached to get it out—like the toxins she and Oscar were so eager to purge from their customers.
I didn’t meet Oscar Gwynne until I’d made my first batch of carrot juice “cocktails,” which people, amazingly, bought and, even more amazingly, drank. I stood at the sink—trying to scrub an impressionistic-style splatter off the organic cotton T-shirt that served as the top half of the Daily Bread uniform—when he emerged from the kitchen like a fuzzy bear. A pellet of frizzy grizzly-colored hair tumbled down his neck and seemed to continue into the quarter-inch beard that filled every crevice of his dimpled, clefted, chubby face. More hair peeked out of the neck of his T-shirt and rippled on the sizable arm that stretched out to me.
“You must be Demi,” he said.
“And you’re Oscar,” I said, hand lost in his paw.
“Yes, and thank you for not adding ‘the Grouch.’” He laughed soundlessly, shoulders shaking. “Mick always does.”
“Are you?” I said.
“Absolutely not.” He reached to an upper shelf, revealing yet another generous tuft of hair on his underarm. I wanted to scratch behind his ears.
“Grouch is Mick’s MO,” he said, bringing down a half-gallon bottle of olive oil in one hand.
“I heard that.” Mickey appeared with a handful of paper slips and clipped them deftly to the revolving order holder. “Here’s a demonstration— get back in the kitchen where you belong. I need two Synergy Smoothies and a Walla-Walla Omelet with a side of sauerkraut.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Sauerkraut for breakfast?”
Mickey nodded. “Most of our regulars eat—”
“—lacto-fermented vegetables—”
“—with every meal.”
“Great for the digestion,” they said together.
A long, sparky look circuited back and forth between them. Mickey punched one of his furry arms. “So why don’t you go in there and make it happen?” she said.
“Maybe I will.” Oscar grinned hairily at me and lumbered toward the kitchen.
“Big lunk,” Mickey said.
She disappeared back into the dining room, and I knew I had just watched a couple make love.
How did you do it? I wanted to cry after her. How did you make it stay?
One thing I was certain of: Mickey Gwynne had never been unfaithful to the big lunk. And she wouldn’t be, no matter what he did.
Shoving my hair behind my ears, I went back to the juicer, turning it up high and loud so I wouldn’t have to hear the thoughts that came next. My only hope was that this Dr. Sullivan Crisp could help me shout them down for good.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sully always prayed before he saw a client—or counseled one of his therapists—or did anything that involved helping people make sense of themselves. In his view, if God wasn’t in it, what sense was there to be made?
He sat that Monday afternoon in a sage green bowl of a chair he’d picked up at Great Prospects—the most extensive thrift store he’d ever frequented, and he considered himself to be a connoisseur. With finds from G.P. he’d transformed the grimy office into a session room, which, he admitted, would set the Healing Choice Clinics back fifteen years. But the two unmatched papasans, the lamp made from a parking meter, and the coat rack carved with a chain saw to look like reindeer antlers were an improvement over the orange plastic chairs he’d tossed out the back door along with the two-year-old Playboy calendar that had held a prominent greasy place on the wall. He’d completed the look with a great river rock he’d collected on the Hood Canal as a paperweight, and a Point No Point Lighthouse mug for holding pencils. Eclectic described it.
Sully pretzeled his long legs into a bow in the chair so that his knees shot up and provided props for his elbows. Resting his face in his hands, he cupped his image of God to his forehead.
Light. God was light for him, the only way to get his mind around the existence of life. And Christ—Christ, the Light from that Light, the only thing that made the path of life one he could continue on.
He watched the light behind his eyelids swirl, and he prayed into it. God in Christ, the one Light, shine through me. Cast a ray from me onto her path—this child of Yours You’ve sent to me—
And if Ethan was right, the woman he was about to see was trying to make her way through a tunnel that didn’t allow her even a crack—
Dang. Sorry, God. Bunny trail.
Please—You are the Light—shine through me—shine through me—
A car pulled up, and Sully brought himself back. He couldn’t resist the anticipation. You could tell so much about a client by the kind of automobile she drove.
High-pitched engine, probably a four-banger, light on its wheels. He’d guess some toylike vehicle, a car that had purpose, though clearly not cruising Main like Isabella. Practical, but with whimsy. Probably not a good idea to introduce himself to the driver with, “Hi. Let’s start out with a good cry.”
He untangled himself from the chair, tangoed between it and the pebble-colored one he’d bought for her, and stood in the doorway that opened into the garage. Through the big doors he could see a white Jeep Wrangler, and he grinned. Dead on.
A tallish woman climbed out and stood beneath a dark green umbrella, squinting at his building through the rain. She consulted the piece of paper in her hand, looked up again, and got a wry look on her face.
Sully chuckled. His digs were clearly not what she’d expected.
However, as she finally seemed to decide that this was the place and moved closer, Sully felt his brows lift. He’d consciously banished the boat photos to a far corner of his mind, but he brought into memory the faculty picture Ethan had shown him. This Dr. Demitria Costanas was far different from that.
That Demitria had seemed fully loaded with confidence. The wispy hair thing women of class seemed to do that made it at least look like they didn’t have to spend hours in front of a mirror. Direct brown eyes, inviting opinion and promising hers would embrace yours. Level chin, straight shoulders announcing that they could haul a cord of wood and curve around a nursing baby, maybe even simultaneously.
Holy crow. Now her hair drooped, as did her posture, and her face was a mask, straining, he guessed, over an emotion beneath the surface. The hang of her head gave him a hint to what that was. “Skulkin’ like a sheep-killin’ dog,” Porphyria
would say.
Demitria Costanas—come on down. You’re our next contestant on Your Life Is Right.
You just haven’t found it out yet.
She kept the mask firmly in place as her sneakers squeaked their way to him across the garage. “I’m Demi Costanas,” she said. “We talked on the phone?”
She extended her hand.
“Was that me?” Sully said as he shook it. “Or my secretary?”
Her eyes lifted in obvious surprise. A little light there—not much—but it flickered out. Her lips did twitch, though, as she looked around the garage and said, “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
“You haven’t seen the session room yet,” Sully said.
He wafted a hand toward the office and followed her in. She barely looked around, obviously not there for the décor. What she was there for came out of her mouth before Sully even sat down.
“I don’t want to be psychoanalyzed or therapized or whatever you do,” she said.
We’ve prepared a little speech, Sully thought. He sounded his mental buzzer. Sorry, Mrs. Costanas, here on Jeopardy you must put that in the form of a question.
“All I want to do is get my family back. That’s what I’m here for. Whatever I have to do to change myself so that can happen, that’s what I want you to tell me. If you can do that, I’ll talk to you.”
Sully stifled a grin. She still had spunk.
“Goals are good.” He didn’t point out that the therapist and the client usually formulated those together—after they tried to get acquainted. He decided to go with the spunk, which appeared to be all that was holding her together.
“So,” he said. “Do you have any idea what you think needs to be changed?”
“It’s something heinous. You know my story—I’m sure Ethan has told you, and I really don’t want to go into it.”
Totally against contest regulations. I need to hear it from you.
But once again Sully skirted the rules and leaned back carefully in the papasan. “So the things that have happened to you have made you heinous?”
“No. The things I’ve done have happened because I am heinous.” She kept her eyes directed at his knees. “There has to be something wrong in me to make me do what I’ve done to my family after all they’ve already been through—before.”
They.
“They” brought the emotion pulsing behind the mask. We’ll select a question from that category.
“You mean before you were unfaithful,” Sully said.
The mask stiffened.
“What did happen—before?”
She sat further back in the chair, though her spine still didn’t touch the back cushion. She kept her hands clenched around the purse in her lap, and Sully realized she was still wearing a navy P-coat, which she hadn’t even unbuttoned.
“Can I take your jacket, by the way?” he said. There was, after all, that great coat rack.
She shook her head, but she still took it off and held it across her lap, under the purse. She was now two layers deep.
Sully was surprised to see her wearing what appeared to be a server’s uniform. The words DAILY BREAD spread across the T-shirt, and in the baggy-legged drawstring pants, she looked as if she were wearing someone else’s clothes.
“You want to tell me your story?” Sully said. “About that pre-affair time?”
The way she searched the floor before she began, Sully was sure she hadn’t rehearsed this part.
“I don’t know if Ethan has told you,” she said, “but my husband—”
“Excuse me, Demi. What’s your husband’s name?”
“Rich. He was a fireman in New York City on September 11. He got there after the second tower fell.”
She stopped, as if that were enough trauma for a man to have gone through in a lifetime. Sully had to agree. She was obviously controlling everything she said, but the hands she used to clench and unclench the purse also spoke.
“He lost a lot of friends, I’m sure,” Sully said.
“He lost his twin brother. Eddie. Since then, he’s never seemed the same.”
“Because he isn’t the same.”
She finally pulled her eyes up to his. It was shame he was seeing, but it was murky now, as if something else were surfacing too, and muddying its color.
“It’s not like he’s a different person,” Demi said. “It’s like he’s not a person at all.”
Sully winced.
“The counselor who talked to all the wives told us it was survivor guilt.” Her voice grew clearer, as if she were in territory she knew. “Almost three thousand people died, 343 of them firefighters, and the ones that made it couldn’t help feeling it was their fault—why weren’t they taken?” Her eyes flinched. “For some it helped that eighteen thousand people did survive, but that didn’t do it for Rich. I mean, he lost his brother.”
She glanced at Sully. He nodded her on.
“The thing is, Eddie only became a firefighter because Rich did, and because their father was one. It might have been in his blood, but it wasn’t in his soul.” Her voice thickened like a sauce. “That’s what he used to say.”
“Did Rich go to therapy?” Sully said.
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t. I tried everything, short of threatening to leave him.”
Sully heard her breath catch. Don’t go there yet, he told himself.
“So what brought you to Washington?”
“There was nothing left for us in New York after Rich was suspended from the department. Before that he kept working, even though his captain advised him—practically begged him—to take a leave of absence and get help.”
“He didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t. He was the officer in charge at a call one night, and he made a tactical error—ventilated the wrong spot, and one of the other firefighters almost died.”
For the first time, she sank against the back of the chair. “I know it was his fault, and it wasn’t the first mistake he made after 9/11, but losing Eddie was so ripping for him, for all of us.”
Ripping was exactly the word. Sully could almost hear the tear.
“He hit rock bottom, then?” Sully said.
“It was more like he was disappearing right there in front of us.”
Sully watched her neck muscles go taut. He couldn’t push her too much, or she’d have her purse and her P-coat and her pinched-in self out of there so fast, it would make the wheel of fortune spin. This would have to be about safety.
“So—how did that affect you?” he said.
“Me?” She shrugged. “I was desperate. I thought I was going to lose him, but I didn’t even know to what. I talked him into coming out here, to start over. I’m from here originally, and it’s so different from New York City. It was the only thing I could think of to do.”
Sully propped up a foot on the papasan. He dug this part—hearing the story, starting to put together the puzzle. It was too soon to buy a vowel though.
“How did you feel about New York?” he said.
She blinked. “How did I feel?”
“Yeah.”
“I loved New York,” she said. “I went to NYU, and I met Rich in the city. We lived there all our married life, close to my in-laws, but with Eddie gone, and Rich’s parents, there was nothing left for us there.”
“When did they pass?” Sully said.
She furrowed her brow. This apparently wasn’t on the script she’d prepared either. But she said, “Papa Costanas—my father-in-law— had a massive heart attack in 1997. Mama died before 9/11— Alzheimer’s—she was in a nursing home. Then, of course, Eddie.”
“That’s a lot of loss,” Sully said.
“Which is why Rich needed to get help—”
“No, I mean a lot of loss for you.”
She squirmed, setting the chair at a tilt. She righted herself and said, “Rich suffered more than I did. I just wanted to help him.”
Sully waited.
“Now I know I only m
ade things worse.”
“How so?”
Demi bugged her brown eyes at him. “I had an affair. I think that qualifies as worse.”
This lady was determined to make everything her fault. Sully itched to take that road, but instead he said, “Let’s stay with before the affair for a minute—can we do that?”
“Sure—I guess.” She shook her hand in her hair as if she were stirring up anything that might be hiding there.
“Tell me about your relationship with Rich once you moved here, before the affair.”
“At first I thought it was going to work out.” She seemed to be taking out thoughts she’d stowed. “We bought the log home he used to dream about. I got the professorship at CCC, so he didn’t have to worry as much about the pay cut he took coming out here.” She stopped. “That might have started it. He never used to care that I had more education than he did, or that I made more money. But here it bothered him. A lot. And then I went and slept with a professor, for Pete’s sake.”
She put up a hand. Sully wasn’t sure which of them she was stopping.
“You want me to go on?” she said finally.
“I’d like to hear more.”
She fingered her purse. “At first everybody at the fire station— Orchard Heights—was great to him. He was a 9/11 hero.”
No pressure, Sully thought.
“But that wore off—and then he didn’t get promoted.”
“How come?” Sully said.
“Something about his attitude. I don’t know—that was about the time he started shutting down again.”
“And where did that leave you?”
“This isn’t about me!”
The sudden shrill seemed to surprise even her. She jerked in the chair and tried to steady herself with both hands, but the bowl tilted again.
“Look—” she said. “I want to know why I would hurt a man who’s already been through hell and can’t get out.” She talked between her teeth. “I want to know what’s wrong with me so I can fix it and get him back.”
