Comfort & Joy (17 page)

I never walked away from the crash.

That’s what I know.

Somehow I have to make it what I believe.

If I could
remember
the crash, maybe that would make everything real. But the shrinks who now circle me like sharks in bloody water, think I’ll never remember. “Too traumatic,” they say.

I tell them “remembering” Daniel and Bobby hurts me more.

They don’t like that, the brain experts. Whenever I mention my adventure, they make tsk-tsk sounds and shake their heads.

Only Stacey lets me talk about Bobby and Daniel as if they’re real, and that—the simple act of her silent acceptance—somehow draws us together again. It seems, after all, that I am not the only one who has been changed by my near death. The nurses tell me that Stacey was my champion throughout it all, demanding the best for me, and organizing prayer and candlelight vigils in town.

Last night, she even slept in my room; this morning, she was up at the crack of dawn, readying my discharge papers.

“Are you ready to go?”

Now she is standing by the door. A nurse is next to her, with an empty wheelchair.

“I’m ready.”

I could knit a sweater in the time it takes me to get out of bed and into the wheelchair.

No one seems to notice but me. And then we are off, tooling down the hallway. Everyone I see says: “Good bye, Joy. Good luck.” I mumble thanks and try to look happy about going home.

Outside, Stacey rolls me over to a brand-new red minivan.

“New car, huh?”

“Thom got it for me for Christmas,” she says.

Thom.
It is the first time she’s said his name to me.

We stare at each other for an uncomfortable moment longer, then she helps me into the passenger seat.

On the drive home we try to find things to say, but it isn’t easy. Suddenly, it’s as if my ex-husband is in the backseat, scenting the air between us with his aftershave.

“I got your car from the airport,” Stacey says as she turns onto Mullen Avenue.

It seems like a year ago that I turned into the long-term parking area. “How was the tree? Did it catch fire on the drive home?”

“The tree was fine. I donated it to the nursing home on Sunset.”

That’s right. The tree was only strapped onto my car for a day or so. Not the week I imagined. “Thanks.”

Stacey pulls into my driveway and parks. “You’re home.”

There are cars everywhere, and lights are on all up and down the street, but the neighborhood is strangely silent for late afternoon. For almost ten years I have lived in this house, on this street, and yet, just now, looking at it, I wonder if it ever really was my home. Rather, it was where I passed the time between shifts at the high school and tried to make a failing marriage into something it could never be.

The Comfort Lodge . . .

(which doesn’t apparently exist)

. . . now that’s a home.

Don’t go there, Joy.

Stacey comes around to my door and helps me out. She gets me situated on my crutches and together, moving slowly, we make our way around the yard.

We are at the corner, by the huge, winter-dead lilac tree that was our first investment in the yard, when a crowd of people surge out from behind the house, yelling, “Surprise!”

I stumble to a halt. Stacey places a hand in the small of my back to steady me.

There must be two hundred people in front of me; most are holding lit candles, several hold up signs that say “Welcome Home, Joy.” The first person to come forward is Gracie Leon—a girl I suspended last semester for defacing all three copies of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. “We prayed for you, Mrs. Candellaro.”

A young man comes forward next, stands beside Gracie. Willie Schmidt. Seven years ago, he was my fourth period teacher’s assistant. Now he has students of his own at a local high school. “Welcome back,” he says, handing me a beautiful pink box. Inside it are hundreds of cards.

Mary Moro is next. She’s a junior this year, and head cheerleader. She holds out a Christmas cactus in a white porcelain bowl. “I bought this with my babysitting money, Mrs. Candellaro. Remember when you said the only plant you could keep alive was a cactus?”

Then I see Bertie and Rayla from work; they stand pressed together like a pair of salt and pepper shakers. Both of them have left their families to be here.

My throat is so full I can hardly nod. It’s all I can do to whisper, “Thanks.”

They surge toward me, all talking at once.

We stand in the yard, talking and laughing and sharing the surface connections of our lives. No one mentions the plane crash, but I feel their curiosity; unasked questions hang behind other words. I wonder if and when it will become a thing I can talk about.

By the time they finally start to leave, night is falling on Madrona Lane. The streetlamps are coming on.

My sister guides me to my front door and unlocks it.

My house, on my return, is as silent as it was when I left.

“I put you in the downstairs bedroom,” Stacey says, and our thoughts veer onto an ugly road. We are both remembering the day I came home to find her in my bed.

It is not the first time our thoughts have gone here and it won’t be the last. Our recent past is like a speed bump; you slow down and go over it, then drive on your way again.

“Good thinking,” I say.

She helps me get settled in the downstairs guest room. When I’m in bed, she brings me several books, a plate of cheese and crackers, a Big Gulp from the local mini mart, the television remote and my wireless laptop. I notice a magazine in with the books. It’s the same
Redbook
I was reading in the lodge. “That’s pretty old,” I say, pointing to it.

Stacey glances at the magazine, then shrugs. “I read it to you in the hospital almost every day. There was a great article in it on refurbishing a log cabin that used to be a bed and breakfast. Remember when you wanted to be an innkeeper?”

“Yeah,” is all I can say. No wonder my Comfort Lodge was in need of repair.

Stacey props my cast onto a pillow, then steps back. “Will you be okay for the night? I could stay.”

“No. Your . . . Thom will miss you.”

“He wants to see you.”

“Does he? That’s quite a turn around.”

We stare at each other; neither of us knows where to go after that.

“It’s like napalm, the way it comes and goes,” Stacey says.

“Yeah.”

“I can stay.”

“Go home to your . . .” Despite my best intentions, I trip up. What do I call him, my ex-husband? Her lover? Boyfriend? What?

“Fiancé.” She stares at me hard, biting her lip. I know she wants to say just the right thing, as if the perfect words are a bleach that can remove this stain between us.

The silence lingers, turns awkward. I want to mention her wedding, perhaps even say I’ll be there, but I don’t know if I dare promise such a thing.

I can see how the quiet between us wounds her. She tries valiantly to smile. “Did you tell Mom about me and Thom, by the way?”

“You think that’s what was on my mind when I was dying?”

“You always were a tattletale.”

I can’t help smiling at that. Her words take us back to a time when there was no silence between us. Suddenly we’re six and seven again, fighting in the smelly backseat of Mom’s VW bus. “You’re right. And, yes, I told her.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to wake up. It’s good advice.”

Stacey reaches out, brushes the hair from my eyes. “When you were . . . sleeping, I didn’t think I’d get another chance with you.”

I don’t know what to say except, “I know.” The nurses have told me that her devotion to me was legendary.

“I was there at the hospital, you know,” she says. “From the second we heard. I almost never left.”

It’s what I would have done for her, too. “I missed you, Stace.”

She finally smiles. “I missed you, too.”

By the end of my first week at home, I’m ready to scream.

I spend the better part of my days on pain pills, trying not to move. Everything hurts, but pain is not the worst of it. What I hate most are the nights.

I lie in bed, staring up at my ceiling, trying to tell myself that the rainforest was a construct of my own mind. Before the plane crash, I was lost and lonely, desperate to
want
someone and be wanted in return. I can admit it now; losing both my sister and my husband unhinged me somehow. Without them, I was adrift.

So I made up the man I wanted to love me and the boy I wanted to love.

In the cold light of day, it makes sense. I was tired of hot, dry Bakersfield; I imagined a magical world of green grass and towering trees and impossible mist.

On paper, it pencils out, makes perfect sense in a psych 101 kind of way. At night, however, it’s different.

Then, the darkness—and my loneliness—just goes on and on and on. For the first time in my life, I can’t read to pass the time. Every hero becomes Daniel; every heartfelt moment makes me sob. Even movies are useless. When I turn on the television I remember
Miracle on 34th Street
and the Grinch; not to mention the fifteen Winnie-the-Pooh videos we watched.

God help me, in the darkness, I believe. Over and over again, I try to “return.” Each attempt and failure diminishes my hope.

I can’t stand it.

It’s time for me to either fish or cut bait. I’ve spent too long floating on a drug sea, dreaming of one place, and sitting in another. I need to believe in my rainforest, to find it, or to let it go. It’s a cinch what my shrink would advise. There’s no room in the real world for the kind of fantasy realm I’ve imagined. But I keep thinking of moments—the way Daniel and I said “fate” at the same time; the way our wish on the star was the same. The television broadcast with Stacey. I didn’t hear her broadcast from my coma; I saw it. And there’s the fix-it list Bobby had on Christmas morning. Maybe that was somehow real. If it was, I was there, however impossible that sounds.

What I need is evidence. And if there’s one thing a librarian can do, it’s research.

Throwing the covers back, I hobble out of bed, get my crutches and then turn on all the lights. In the garage, I find what I’m looking for: my files. I take several—the Pacific Northwest, Washington, and North American rainforests. Clutching the manila folders to my side, I return to the desk in my living room.

Beneath a light bright enough to dispel shadows and sharp enough to illuminate the truth, I begin laying out my materials, organizing them into piles. Then I turn on my laptop and search the Web.

It doesn’t take long to identify the core problem.

All I know about my dream life is that it took place in a rainforest in Washington State. According to a Googled statistic, the Olympic National Forest is roughly the size of Massachusetts.

And I am trying to find one—imaginary—lakeside town that probably has a population of less than one thousand people.

Oh, and let’s not forget that I don’t know the name of the town, or the lake, or Daniel and Bobby’s last name.

A woman less impressionable might say that if fate exists, it doesn’t want me to find my way back.

Still, I trudge ahead, unwilling—unable, maybe—to give up. I make my own map, underline possible towns and lakes and call information for each city I can find. There is no listing for a Comfort Fishing Lodge. Then I call realtors. There are two fishing lodges for sale in the area; I’ve gotten e-mail photos of both. Neither is the one I remember.

Finally, nearly eight hours after I begin my search, I shut my laptop and lay my head on top of it, closing my eyes. By now, the walls of my living room are studded with pieces of paper—maps, photographs, articles. The place looks like a task force command center.

And none of it helps.

I don’t know exactly how long I remain there. At some point, I hear a car drive up.

I glance up, and see Stacey’s van pull into the driveway.

I grab my crutches and head for the entry.

At her first knock, I open the door.

She is on my porch, holding a casserole pan in gloved hands.

It’s Mom’s chicken divan recipe. Chicken, cheese, mayonnaise, and broccoli. “I guess you forgot about them restarting my heart.”

Stacey pales. “Oh. I didn’t . . .”

“I’m just kidding. It looks great. Thanks.” I wobble around and make my way back to the living room.

Stacey veers into the kitchen, probably puts the casserole in the oven, and then joins me. In the living room, she comes to a dead stop. Her gaze moves from wall to wall, where papers hang in grape-like bunches.

“Welcome to Obsessionville,” I say. There’s no point in trying to explain. I make my halting way to the sofa and sit down, planting my casted foot on the coffee table. “I’m searching for the town.”

“The one you never went to.”

“That’s the one.”

Stacey sits in the chair opposite me. “I’m worried about you. Thom says . . .”

“Let’s not start a conversation like that. It’s your turn to care about what he says.”

“You’ve been home almost seven days and you haven’t let anyone visit except me. And now . . .” She lifts her hand to indicate the walls. “This.”

“Bertie and Rayla have both stopped by.”

Stacey gives me “The Look.” “Bertie called me because you said you were too tired to see her.”

“I’m in
pain
.”

“Is that really it?”

“What are you, my keeper?” I don’t want to explain the inexplicable.

“It’s that dream, isn’t it?”

I sigh, feeling my defenses crumble. All I can tell her now is the sad truth. “I can’t let go of it. I know it’s crazy—that I’m crazy—but the pictures are so familiar. I know how it smells there and
feels
there, how the mist floats up from the grass in the morning. How do I know these things? Maybe when you develop my film, I’ll get an answer.” It’s the dream I’ve clung to.

As I say the words, I see my sister frown. It’s a quick expression, there and gone, but if there’s one thing sisters recognize in each other, it’s a secret being kept. “What?”

“What what?”

“You’re hiding something from me, and, given that your last big secret was my husband, I’m . . .”