Miriam's Well

by Lois Ruby

  CHAPTER NINE

  Told by Adam

  While Miriam was gone, everyone talked about her situation, but now that she was back, they treated her as if what she had, either the cancer or the religion, could spread and infect them all. Before she got sick, everyone just ignored her. Now they kept her at a safe distance. I was the closest thing to a friend she had, and the only one, as far as I know, who visited her in the hospital, except for Diana who would have visited Freddy or Orca. But what could I do? I had friends of my own.

  Sitting in English, I caught Miriam out of the corner of my eye, looking pale but determined, with her elbow propped up on her desk to support her head. It honestly hurt me to look at her. I looked behind me at Diana’s empty seat. Her cold had run to bronchitis, and she missed Miriam’s first days back at school. I missed her, and kept looking for her, listening for her undercurrent of commentary.

  “Adam, is your head on a swivel this morning?” Mrs. Loomis asked.

  “He’s like the girl in The Exorcist,” Brent said. “Did you see the thing on 60 Minutes about the exorcisms?”

  “Irrelevant, Brent.” Mrs. Loomis had spoken, and the bush was not consumed.

  By Thursday Diana wasn’t contagious anymore, and she invited me over, with all the homework assignments. She had a real set-up in the library of her modest little villa. She lay back on three pink pillows fluffed up on the arm of the circular couch. A fire sizzled in front of her and blew warm air out into the room through some black tube thing they had rigged up. The stereo played softly—Chopin, she said it was; you could have fooled me.

  “Oh, Adam,” Diana said, from the depths of her pillows, “I’m so glad you came. It’s been incredibly boring around here.” She wore a bright pink robe, the kind that doesn’t button, but folds over itself, and the only thing holding it together was a tie at the waist. I considered infinite possibilities as she stretched her arms out to welcome me.

  I sat on the floor beside her pillows, in the perfect spot for her to smooth my hair and trace my ears and make the hair on my neck stand straight up. In fact, everything came to attention. I was in love.

  My mother had a famous saying: “Don’t confuse love with lust, and if you do, keep your pants on.” Diana rolled toward me, and, what luck, her robe fell open just enough to show me a hint of a brown tip I’d always suspected was there. Here at last was living proof.

  I climbed on the couch. Diana scooted back to make room for me. It was a narrow, curved couch. We had no choice but to be pressed together like a grilled cheese sandwich. I was in love, I was in lust; big difference.

  The door of the library opened. Diana shoved me to the floor. Her mother, a huge woman even eye-to-eye, stood over me with one of the pokers from the fireplace in her hand. For a crazy second, I thought she might run it through my gut.

  “Lucky I stopped by,” Mrs. Cameron said. “The fire was a bit too intense. I’ll give those logs a stir.” She turned toward the fireplace and viciously jabbed at the crusty logs. “I’ll be back,” she threatened, this time leaving the library door open behind her.

  As soon as Mrs. Cameron was gone, Diana burst out laughing. She slid to the floor beside me, tightening the sash on her robe. “A sense of humor is everything, Adam. My mother cracks me up.”

  “Oh, yeah? I thought buns were everything,” I muttered.

  “Buns, and a sense of humor. Two of the most important attributes in the human animal.” She reached back for a tray of snacks, sprayed a mound of creamy jalapeño cheese on a Triscuit cracker, and stuffed it in my mouth. “‘Lucky I stopped by,’” she said, imitating her mother down to the mealy Boston accent. “‘The fire was a bit too intense.’” I chewed and laughed and sprayed crumbs all over the place. Diana brushed them under the couch and pinched my lips shut until I’d swallowed.

  “You want to look at the homework?” I asked, hoping she didn’t.

  “Not really. They’ll give me the weekend to catch up. I’d rather tell you about something revolutionary I found out this week.” She sat on her knees in front of me, all seriousness now. “My mother’s bridge club met here on Tuesday, and all they talked about the whole time was Miriam Pelham.”

  “Why her?”

  “It’s all anyone talks about anymore. The whole city is divided over it. One of the bridge ladies thought they should leave Miriam alone and let her family decide what to do. That’s what a lot of people think, but of course they’re wrong.”

  I felt a knot growing in my stomach. Maybe it was the crackers.

  “Another lady thought the judge should get a panel of doctors to decide what’s the best treatment—surgery or chemotherapy or radiation or whatever—and then the judge should order it, no matter what. That’s basically my position, with subtle variations.”

  I was getting more and more uncomfortable with the conversation. First, I didn’t really want to discuss Miriam with Diana. She’d be shocked to know I’d been spending a little time with Miriam. And second, it wasn’t clear to me how the case should be handled, and I was mad that Diana was so sure of herself. Finally, I said, “My father’s representing her.”

  “Oh, Adam, I heard that. I was just sick. I mean, how can I respect the son of a man who defends a primitive religious group that lets innocent children die?”

  “Hey, listen, I’m not responsible for my father’s weirdo ideas, and who’s talking about dying, anyway? It’s just a case of abridgment of First Amendment rights.” How often had I heard that in my kitchen?

  “What about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?” Diana asked.

  I had no answer.

  “I just can’t believe your father would do such a thing.”

  “Why do I have to defend my father?” I felt this big gully grow between us, a canyon people could fall into. We didn’t talk. Diana played with the fringe on her sash, and I clicked the top on and off the cheese can. I wanted to leave, but I was too stubborn to get up. I’d make Diana give in, for a change. But then I knew I’d have a white beard down to my ankles before that would happen. I thought, I’m surrounded by steel-willed Amazons. My mother’s infallible like Pope John or Igor or whoever’s pope this year. And Diana never compromises on anything. She’s always right, right or wrong. When she was born, she probably popped out saying, “You weren’t expecting me until next week, but I thought this would be a better time, so here I am.”

  And Miriam, wimpy and plain as vanilla in a Baskin Robbins world, was ironclad, too. She was determined as hell to believe that God would heal her, when any sane, rational person could tell it would never happen that way. Diana and my mother and Miriam were boulders; even my father was a rock. Me, I was the only one like dust in the wind.

  I was startled by Diana’s voice. “There was another lady at the bridge table. She’s into metaphysical healing.”

  “Pardon me?” So polite, so formal, just like this ugly room.

  “It’s basically mind over matter. She says you can heal yourself by energizing your mind and applying that mental energy to the disease or pain. My mother got me the book she recommended. It’s by some lady named Manice O’Rourke, who cured her own diabetes nerve damage.”

  “You believe this stuff?”

  “Well, no,” Diana admitted. “But Miriam might. As religious as she is, she’s really suggestible. I was thinking that while nothing’s being done for her now—”

  “Something’s being done. That Brother James guy we met is praying for her and so’s her whole family, and she’s praying, too.” Okay, it sounded dumb, but Miriam believed in it, and that had to count for something.

  Diana gave me the look she used on debate opponents, the one that said, “Pure bunk.” “As I said, while nothing’s being done for her now, maybe we can teach her some of the exercises in this book.” She pulled the book out from under a pile of art books on the coffee table. “It might at least help her with the pain. What have we got to lose?”

  I reluctantly agreed, which is how, on Satur
day afternoon, Miriam came over to Diana’s house, and we began our Twilight Zone adventure into metaphysical healing.

  We settled Miriam into the center of a wicker couch on the sun porch, with her feet propped up on an ottoman and fluffy pillows all around her.

  “Now, just turn yourself over to this,” Diana said, thumbing through the book. In another minute, she’d be an expert. “Take a deep breath … exhale. Deep breath … exhale. The first thing to remember is that you have to relax your body, from the top of your hair to your toenails.”

  I remembered the toes from that night in the hospital, crossed so hopefully.

  “I don’t know about this. I never should have come.”

  I reassured Miriam: “What have you got to lose?”

  “Repeat after me,” Diana commanded. “My body is in harmony. I am in perfect peace.”

  “I can’t say that because it isn’t true.”

  “Say it, and it will become true,” Diana said. “Are you self-conscious because Adam’s here?”

  “No,” Miriam said. “He can stay.” She looked like she was near tears again.

  Diana flopped down beside her and took her hand. “We’re doing this for your own good, Miriam. Brother James wouldn’t mind.”

  Miriam pulled her hand away.

  “Just listen. It doesn’t involve any medicines, and it doesn’t violate your religion, but it’s guaranteed to make you feel better. Forty thousand people swear by it. It’s the perfect solution. Now, say after me, ‘My body is in perfect harmony.’”

  “I think I’d better go home. I can’t believe I came here in the first place.”

  “I’ll take you home.” I pulled out my mom’s car keys.

  Glaring at me, Diana said, “Wait, wait. At least check it out first. Pray about it, or whatever.”

  Miriam nodded. Then I watched her sort of crawl into herself, contract into a small ball, her eyes shut, her nose wrinkled up. She bit the corner of her lip and twiddled with a strand of hair.

  Diana rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Oh, God!”

  Finally, Miriam’s eyes fluttered open. “I’ll try.”

  “Okay, ‘My body’s in perfect harmony.’”

  “My body’s in perfect harmony,” Miriam said.

  “I command all stress to leave my muscles.”

  “I command all stress to leave my muscles.”

  “Good. Now say”—she read from the book—“‘I am a magnificent creature. I am capable of anything.’”

  “I am a magnificent—can’t I just think it instead of saying it out loud?”

  “If you promise you’ll think it and not something else.”

  “I promise.” I was relieved. Diana could get by with saying “I am a magnificent creature,” but it would sound so ridiculously hollow coming from Miriam.

  “Now, the next part is tricky. Close your eyes.”

  I noticed that Miriam had very long eyelashes, although she didn’t wear any make-up.

  “You’re going to imagine a total picture of yourself healthy and strong. You took biology, didn’t you? Don’t talk, just nod.”

  Miriam nodded.

  “Okay, start by picturing your circulatory system. Imagine your blood flowing all through you, carrying all that poison out of your body. Get a picture of your heart, beating in perfect rhythm like a symphony drum.”

  Miriam was deep in concentration, nearly hypnotized. I whispered to Diana, “I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

  “I’m fine,” Miriam said. “Go ahead.”

  Diana took her through most of the major body systems, until she got Miriam to focus on her bones, and especially the one where the tumor was, and to imagine the tumor breaking into minute fragments and disappearing, like in a Nintendo game.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Well.” She got out of the chair and walked around the porch. “Right now there’s no pain.”

  “Of course not,” Diana said, “because you are experiencing metaphysical healing. It’s foolproof,” she boasted, as if she had invented it or plucked it out of the cosmos.

  “But that’s enough for today,” Miriam said. “I have to think about it.”

  On Monday, Miriam looked much better. I walked with her from English to physics, since Diana had to stay and get an assignment from Mrs. Loomis. Miriam’s cheeks had a little more life in them, but not like the stuff girls brushed on between classes: it was real color. She clutched her books to her chest and almost bounced as we walked down the hall. She asked me, “Did you finish your physics problem set?”

  “I’m finishing it in class.”

  “You’re impossible, Adam. Don’t you ever do any homework?”

  “Not since we finished the poetry worksheet,” I admitted, which wasn’t exactly true. Lockers were slamming all around us, and we slid in and out of crowds of people who all seemed to be going in the opposite direction. It was a typical passing period. Two girls threw open the door of the lavatory and bopped me in the face. I never saw Miriam laugh so hard.

  After school, the Incredible Psychics were back to do their job on Diana’s sun porch. In November, the afternoons gathered enough sun to make the porch decent until about 5:00 when the chill set in that let us know Thanksgiving was coming. Diana got the scene set, mesmerizing Miriam into relaxing, opening her mind, and painting mental pictures of her healing. I was almost starting to believe it myself, as I saw the color rise in Miriam’s face. Her feet were crossed at the ankles, and one foot tapped on the brick floor. She was pretty loose.

  I’d just about convinced myself that we had the most incredibly simple cure for cancer, that we’d win a Nobel Prize and be fabulously wealthy. Diana, Miriam, and I would travel in our own jet all over the world, demonstrating our miracle. Miriam would do cartwheels and handsprings to show how healthy she was, while Diana and I signed autographs and passed out pamphlets that had lots of exclamation points in them. The lame and the twisted would come to us, and we’d settle them into wicker wingback chairs and work our magic with the mental paintbrush.

  Diana’s hypnotic voice droned on, feeding my wild fantasy. Exotic ports with topless natives of all sexes. Gorgeous but ailing women who would be eternally grateful to me and would eagerly grant my every wish, starting with a Jaguar.

  “Now, repeat after me,” Diana said, “‘I know no limits. My will is the strongest force in all of creation.’”

  Suddenly fame and fortune and grateful women vanished.

  “NO!” Miriam shouted.

  “Relax. What’s wrong?” asked Diana.

  Miriam’s eyes shot open, and she pinned first Diana, then me with them. “Satan sent you,” she hissed.

  “Are you kidding?” I couldn’t believe things had turned so fast.

  “You fooled me into believing you, but now I know the truth about you.”

  “Where did things change?” Diana asked. I shrugged. It didn’t make any sense.

  “You both pretend to be so innocent, leading me like a lamb into the lion’s den. But you failed, because you see, I will never say, and I will never even think, that my will is the strongest force in all of creation. That’s pure and simple blasphemy.” She grabbed the book out of Diana’s hand and ripped it to pieces. Suddenly she spun around and turned her new, hateful eyes on me. “Brother James was right about you, Adam.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Told by Miriam

  Praise be to God, it was all so simple once again. Brother James had been right all along, but he’d allowed me to discover for myself that he was the only one I could believe. Just as he promised, now I felt I could “mount up with wings like eagles, run and not be weary.” I felt renewed, reborn, because I had recognized the face of Satan, disguised so well, and I had sent him away. I had been tested, and now anything was possible, even separating in my mind Mr. Bergen, my lawyer, from his dangerous son.

  “I hear you had a disagreement with Adam,” Mr. Bergen said. He’d just subtly dismissed Mama by saying, “Mi
riam and I will be fine. Don’t let us keep you from your work.” “You going to patch it up with him?”

  “It isn’t possible,” I said.

  “You really think he’s the devil?” Mr. Bergen said, chuckling. “He’s always been a pretty decent kid.”

  “He told you all about it? I’ll bet you two had a good laugh. But it doesn’t matter anymore, you see, because I’ve had a renewal. I’m not going to be sick anymore.”

  “Fine, fine,” Mr. Bergen said, smoothing out the pages of his yellow pad. “But we’re going to need more than a little heavenly miracle to win this case. Let’s get down to business. You’re required to take your temperature twice a day, and it’s been showing normal for a week. Your blood test this week was also normal.”

  I smiled. Of course they were normal.

  “Dr. Gregory says everything looks okay. You’re reporting no pain?”

  “None.”

  “And you’ve had no treatment other than personal and collective prayer—oh, except that excursion into la-la land with Adam and Diana?”

  I hesitated for just a second, wondering how I could have believed that that hocus pocus might actually help. “Nothing but prayer,” I responded.

  “Okay, next week you’re scheduled, by court order, to have another bone scan, so the doctors have something to compare the other one with. Then we’ll know where we stand.”

  “I already know.”

  Mr. Bergen gave me a playful look, so like Adam’s. “It must be nice,” he said, “to have all the answers.”

  At first it was hard going to school after what happened with Diana and Adam. Diana, being a cheerleader type, still smiled and said hello to me every time she passed me, but she didn’t call me by name. Adam didn’t speak to me at all. Though I sat rows ahead of him in every class we had together, and I never turned around, I was always conscious of his eyes on the back of my head. And if I didn’t get out of the classroom first, and he had to walk by me, he turned his eyes away or got busy talking to someone else. Every time I passed him in the hall, he was in animated conversation with someone, or howling with laughter. I thought of Jeremiah: “Why, O Lord, are those who deal treacherously happy?” I put a lot of my energy into ignoring him. Still, when several people were talking at the same time, I could always pick out his voice. When Mr. Moran passed out physics papers, I didn’t listen for, but always heard, Adam’s name toward the end of the pile.