Four Wives

by Wendy Walker

  “It’s all about the mind-body connection. It makes perfect sense.” Yvonne was bubbling with optimism.

  “It’s completely out there, Mother. Even for you.”

  “And using leeches to cure disease’that was rational?”

  “That was like a hundred years ago.”

  “And a hundred years from now sensory-motor therapy could be the standard for treating illness.”

  Love sighed. “Thankfully, I’ll be dead by then.”

  “Love!” Yvonne was exasperated by her daughter’s cynicism, and Love could almost hear her thoughts. This was going to be it’the answer they’d all been searching for since the fall. Yes’the evil medical community, with all its sophistication and wisdom, had failed to come up with a damned thing. And she wasn’t wrong on this point. Lupus, Lyme, cancer, and a whole host of other diseases had all been ruled out. Disc trauma, muscle tear’also eliminated. They were down to Love’s muscle-strain theory, though Bill insisted this was wholly inadequate to account for the intensity and duration of the problem. He had his own theory’some mystery virus that had settled in her tissue and was making plans to attack her entire being. No one could agree, and this was playing right into Yvonne’s hands. That’s right, she now reasoned. When in doubt, the doctors make something up.

  Back and forth they had gone, testing, hoping, researching and arguing. It had become unbearable. So Love had come up with her own plan. She humored her husband by going for tests. Now she had to find a way to appease her mother.

  Love looked at the woman’really looked at her. The wide eyes, the knowing smile. It was all coming back to her’the wacky world of Yvonne Welsh. She had tried it all through the years. Menstrual cramps? Acupuncture. Headaches? Meditation, aromatherapy, shiatsu massage. Got a cold? A cleansing fast followed by vitamin supplements that make you shit all day for several days. Yvonne was always immersed in some time-consuming (and usually expensive) regimen, and Love had come to hide her ailments just to avoid the treatments her mother would subject her to. Was it any wonder Dr. Bill Harrison had been so appealing? God bless Motrin.

  But this was making the woman happy. Perhaps it would even buy a few days of peace.

  Yvonne spoke as she read. “Dr. Luster has a booming practice in Hunting Ridge. Doesn’t that say something?”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  “We were lucky there was a cancellation’she’s booked for months!”

  The door opened and out came a mother with her daughter. The girl was around six, maybe seven, and Love wondered what could possibly be so wrong with someone so little. No matter’it was their turn. Yvonne patted Love on the knee.

  “Time to go.”

  She helped Love to her feet, then braced her as they made their way into the office. Dr. Luster was waiting.

  “You must be Love Welsh!” she said, extending her hand. She was a small woman, maybe five feet, with a round figure and china white skin. Her gray hair was pulled up in a clip, exposing dainty diamond stud earrings. Her clothing was casual but oddly preppy’mid-calf khaki skirt, button-down oxford, leather loafers. She seemed lost in the 1980s, and all of this fed directly into Love’s theory that the woman, and her practice, must be out to lunch.

  Even so, Love greeted the woman politely and followed her to the treatment area. It was a pleasant room, brightly painted and cluttered with toys in one corner and a soft examination table in the center.

  “Why don’t you lie down while I go over a few things. I can sense that you’re in pain.”

  Love smiled. What was your first clue? she thought to herself, though Yvonne somehow heard it and pinched her lightly on the arm.

  “OK,” Dr. Luster began. “So I assume you had a chance to read some of the literature outside?”

  “Yes,” Yvonne answered for them.

  “So you know that what I do is a blended approach. I have studied many methods’Hakomi, Rubenfeld, among others. I like to focus on integrating past traumas into present feelings so they can be released from the body.” She leaned over the head of the table and laid her palms on Love’s forehead. “You see, trauma that is not assimilated or acknowledged is held in our bodies, resulting in energy blocks that can cause tension, imbalance, and quite often pain. I use the body as the point of entry to treat this’to release the emotional pain so the energy can flow freely as it was meant to.”

  Love’s eyes were closed, but she rolled them anyway. Standing beside her, Yvonne was intrigued. This was everything she had always believed about the human body’the intricate connection between the physical and emotional. The body and mind. And now it was actually a field of practice.

  “So what do you need to do?” she asked.

  Dr. Luster smiled warmly, reassuringly. “I’m just going to do some body work on Love. I will ask questions and talk to her, and while I do this I will place my hands on different parts of her body to see how they react. If we can find where the trauma is being held, we can help to release it as an emotional feeling’freeing the body of physical pain.”

  Yvonne nodded.

  “Does that sound OK to you?”

  Love shrugged. “Sure.”

  Her answer was quick and riddled with indifference. Dr. Luster took a long, cleansing breath.

  “Have you worked on your body before’massage, acupuncture, anything like that?”

  Love looked at her mother. “You could say that.”

  But Yvonne refused to be embarrassed. “I am a strong believer in the mind-body connection.”

  “That’s good. Then why don’t we begin?” Dr. Luster directed Yvonne to a small wooden chair in the corner of the room. Then she asked Love to roll over onto her stomach.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Sure,” Love said. As ready as I’ll ever be. She was telling herself to relax and get through the session’how bad could it be? It wasn’t shock therapy. Still, something inside her was growing uneasy.

  Dr. Luster asked Love to raise her right arm into the air and try to resist her attempt to push it back down to the table. “I will apply some pressure’ see if you can hold firm.”

  Then, with her eyes closed as though she were summoning ghosts from Love’s past, Dr. Luster began whispering things to Love, each time pushing against her arm. I am a child … I am safe … I am not safe … I am scared. Love’s arm broke its hold and was pushed to the table.

  “You see,” Dr. Luster explained, “when your muscles can’t hold, that tells me there is a break in the energy forces within your body. The energy gets blocked by the negative reactions your body is holding when these thoughts are introduced.”

  She continued with the left arm. / am seven … I am nine … I am eleven … I am thirteen. Again, her arm released.

  They continued this way for close to twenty minutes, Dr. Luster mumbling things as she tried to push Love’s arms and then her legs back to table. She touched Love’s stomach, then reached underneath where the pain was, letting Love’s weight fall against her hands, whispering statements that were at the same time generic and intensely personal. Things about her father, her mother, her children, lovers, friends, self-esteem, guilt, shame, and regret. Each time she broke the hold, Dr. Luster let out a little sigh’an aha! that was growing more and more annoying to Love. Wasn’t there a more precise way to measure the body’s energy blocks? Some sort of electromagnetic detector with special probes that could be attached to the skin? Wouldn’t that be more scientific than pushing her arms and legs to the table?

  My body … my person … my space … I am fifteen … I am twenty-one. Yep’Love was an easy patient. Every year since her birth had been difficult. Her warped intelligence had made her a problem child, thinking things before she could physically speak. She was chronically bored and frustrated until she was “diagnosed,” and then she was bombarded with knowledge that she pressured herself to grasp. Pick a year, any year, and Love could think of something that had been terribly dysfunctional. She wasn’t in denial about it. She thought about it al
l the damned time. If her body was still holding on, what could she possibly do about that?

  Still, she felt unnerved as Dr. Luster continued’her voice soft and even, inviting the emotions to come to the surface. It was the last statement that caused a tear to roll down Love’s face.

  I am at peace with myself.

  “We’re almost done,” Dr. Luster said. She walked around to the head of the table again and pressed her palms to Love’s face. She brushed the tears away without saying a word about them, then placed her ringer tips on Love’s temples.

  “I’m going to say some reaffirmations, then we can talk, OK?”

  Love nodded as she fought like hell to pull back the tide.

  I can be at peace with myself and my past. I can feel the pain from what happened to me and let it go. I can be well again.

  The doctor paused for an interminable moment. Then she drew a long breath and returned to her normal voice.

  “There. All done. Why don’t you sit up and I’ll tell you what I found.”

  Love climbed off the table and joined her mother in a chair by Dr. Luster’s desk. She could feel the flush on her cheeks and prayed it had gone unnoticed. Almost finished, she told herself. Keep your shit together.

  “So,” Dr. Luster explained again, “what I was doing was called muscle testing. You see, when I said something that triggered a subconscious emotion, the energy was blocked and you were unable to hold firm. I was able to push your arm or leg down. The body is amazing’it holds the truth about each of us.” Her face was lit up with the wonder of it all, and Love was thankful for the comic relief. Casting her most cynical light over Dr. Luster, she could feel herself returning to reality. To the kids, the house, Bill. Even the pain. A return to a life that was far too full to dwell on her displaced emotions.

  “Your mother told me that you fell?”

  “I was carrying both kids.”

  “And your muscles couldn’t hold strong,” the doctor continued in an earnest voice, almost as though she were desperate for Love to understand. To believe. “You have suffered great trauma in your past. I’m sensing something in your early teen years. It has to do with a man, and I’m sensing something physical as well as emotional. Also, I got something when I spoke of your father. I’m not sure if it is a separate trauma’perhaps a developmental trauma rather than a particular incident. In any case, your body is holding on to these things.”

  She paused then to let it sink in. “I’m guessing they were not assimilated, or properly felt, at the time and now they are living inside you’physically. I think there is more, much more’enough to make you fall’and now the pain has no place to go. But we have done what we can for the first session.”

  Yvonne sat quietly, though her heart was in her throat. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted? To prove that Love’s illness was linked to some kind of depression, something that wasn’t going to do her in? She thought about the letter, the book that sat untouched next to Love like a noose waiting to be tightened around her neck. She believed in this, maybe too much. Maybe that was why Dr. Luster’s treatment felt so dangerous.

  Dr. Luster waited for some elaboration on the traumas she had identified to see if she was right. But Love was silent, her mind shut down now as she waited for this to be over.

  Yvonne cautiously pushed forward. “So what do we do next?”

  “Well, I’d be happy to work with you. We can do more body work to integrate the feelings’to give them a proper home by attaching them to the events. We would do more muscle testing and perhaps talk about whatever events might be the source of the blockage. I can see if I have any cancellations this month’try to fit you in?”

  Love looked nervously at her mother.

  Yvonne sighed. “Why don’t we call you? I don’t think Love brought her planner.”

  Love shook her head. “No’no I didn’t. We’ll have to call.”

  Dr. Luster smiled. She’d seen this before. They weren’t ready.

  “That’s just fine. I wish you luck with your pain.” Her voice was kind and warm. She shook their hands and saw them to the door.

  When they were down the hall, Yvonne stopped walking.

  “I think you should come back. Alone next time.”

  Love was quick to respond. “No.” She had agreed to one session, and that would have to be enough for her mother.

  “But what if she’s right? She knew all those things’things about your childhood …”

  “That’s what these people do, Mother! Every thirteen-year-old girl has trauma about men. It’s puberty! They tell you things that are just specific enough for you to tie it to your own life, but it’s really stuff that happens to everyone. Oh, I’m sensing something when you were an infant’birth, maybe. It’s a trick.”

  “And what if it’s not? What if all of this is about that night … ?”

  “It’s a goddamn muscle pull! Leave it alone.”

  Love kept walking, leaving her mother behind in the hallway. Even as she put distance between them, she could feel the pull of her mother’s guilt. Yvonne had done everything imaginable to fix Love when her life got turned on its head. Everything but stand up to Alexander Rice.

  From down the hallway, Love heard her mother call after her.

  “I will not leave it alone. Not this time.” And Love knew exactly what she meant.

  THIRTY-THREE

  REJUVENATION

  AFTER A NIGHT OF fitful sleep, Love willed herself out of bed, got dressed, and walked slowly down the stairs. She was getting better at this. She’d been to the hospital twice for tests that had proved futile. She’d stood up and walked around the room so Bill could examine her posture, and she’d gone to see Dr. Luster for her mother. Now Love was getting out of bed for herself.

  Marie was waiting.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  Love leaned against the kitchen counter, fighting the pain. “She took the kids to the park.”

  Marie nodded as she held out her hand. “So this is a jailbreak?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Great. I’m gonna catch all kinds of hell.”

  Marie helped Love out through the garage and into her car. The weight was substantial against her as they moved, a clear indication of the pain Love was in, and Marie began to wonder if she shouldn’t have refused the pleas to take Love to the meeting.

  When they were on the road, Love caught her breath. “I really needed this,” she said.

  And she did. All night she had thought about Dr. Luster, the things she’d said and the demons she’d provoked. Now she was in need of distraction, and the busy work of the benefit planning was just the thing.

  Marie did the driving, taking it slow, avoiding the bumps of potholes left over from the winter months, giving the curves a wide berth. When they got to the gates of the Haywood-Beck estate, Love turned to Marie.

  “Have you spoken to her since the other day?”

  Marie shook her head. She’d left Gayle alone, and Gayle had done the same.

  “I see. Well’this should be fun.”

  Marie brushed it off. “It’ll be fine. Gayle’s a master of avoidance and I’ve been working on my self-control. Anyway, you’re going to be the talk of the day. Out and about like there’s nothing wrong with you. They’re going to want a rundown, you know.”

  “I have nothing to tell. It’s just a pull. I was carrying both kids, for God’s sake.”

  Marie sighed as she waited for the gates to open. Denial. That’s what this was. No one was really believing the pulled-muscle theory anymore’ not even Marie. And how could they when Love’s esteemed husband now looked like a little boy who’d lost his way in a crowd? Not to mention Yvonne’s melodrama. Still, she let it go as they drove up the driveway and slowly made their way into the house.

  “You made it!”

  Seated at the table were Gayle and Janie Kirk.

  “I have to lie down.” Wasting no time because the pain was gathering speed, Love dropped hers
elf to the oriental carpet and let out a sigh. The remaining three women gathered over her to observe.

  “You OK down there?” Janie asked.

  Gayle rushed to the doorway that led to the living room. “I’ll get a pillow.”

  Still standing over Love, Marie tried to minimize the growing concern in the room. Love wanted distraction and she was going to have it.

  “You look like one of those dead animal skins people throw on the floor and use as rugs.”

  Love managed a smile. “Just keep the NRA away and I should be fine.”

  Gayle was back with a pillow, which she carefully slid under Love’s head. “There,” she said, as if the pillow had just saved the world from certain disaster.

  “Thanks. Now everyone sit down. Please! I get enough of this at home. I have a pulled muscle. End of story.”

  Marie grabbed some linen samples from the table and handed them to Love.

  “OK. OK. Don’t get all bitchy on us,” she said, returning to the table. Gayle sat, too, but said nothing to honor her friend’s request.

  “This one,” Love said, reaching out with one of the swatches in her hand.

  Marie took it from her. “See’isn’t this easy? Now look at napkins.”

  A collective sigh followed. No one had mentioned the events of their last meeting, and the tension between Marie and Gayle was felt by all.

  Janie stepped in with characteristic ease. Small talk was a suburban necessity and she had it down cold. “Does anyone have a good ob-gyn? “

  Trying to make nice, Marie was the first to answer. “The Hunting Ridge group is good.”

  Janie looked first at Marie, clearly surprised, then covered her mouth with one of her manicured hands.

  “What?” Marie was now agitated.

  Love spoke from her spot on the floor, her voice reaching Marie from under the table. “You might as well tell her.”