Healing Waters (28 page)

“Shall we save our tightrope and our bears for tomorrow?” I said.

“You aren't going away, are you?”

I drew in a breath. She searched my face with her eyes, just the way she had done as an infant, when she first realized I was another being and not just the bearer of bottles.

No, Bethany, never
, I longed to say to her.
I'm going to stay with you until you know that you are worth more than what you're getting
.

But I didn't even need the mother voice to shout that down and tell me she wasn't mine, that I couldn't be with her forever.

“No, Bethie,” I said. “I'm not going away yet.”

And I would make sure that when I went, I didn't leave behind a little girl who would turn out just like me. I prayed that Sullivan Crisp could help me with that. Dear God, please.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

S
ully always prayed before a session. He pressed his palms to his forehead, elbows resting on his knees, and breathed in.

This time, for an agonizing minute, nothing came.

Well, to borrow Lucia's expression, what the Sam Hill did he expect? He was sitting in an Adirondack chair three yards from the Cumberland River.

The praying had always been easy—opening up and letting the light pour in, asking God to channel it through him and into the sad and painful depths of his client. It was hard enough to begin with, now that he knew for himself the agony that could arise from shining that light in there. It seemed almost sadistic to ask someone else to take that risk.

But to have to do this mere feet from the river? He couldn't get away from the thing. The water smelling of slimy green algae and boat fuel. The crickets setting up their taunting racket. The moon cutting a swath straight into his memory.

When he asked Lucia where she would be comfortable meeting with him, she'd said here, as far from the house as possible without leaving, because of Bethany. Which was also why she asked if they could get together at night, after the little one had gone to bed. He'd thought she'd take about five minutes of the mosquito population and want to escape inside, but when he'd arrived for his alone time, there were already two lighted tiki torches stuck in the ground. It was like being on
Survivor
.

He just wasn't sure if either or both of them could see this thing through. Lucia was sure to balk when he tried to get her to talk about
her
issues, as opposed to Bethany's. And what about himself? This was his first session in two months. Did he even know how to do this anymore? Did he even have the right to try—when he'd obviously failed miserably with his own wife? Podcasts and some friendly advice to Sonia were one thing, but—dang.

He felt the tikis' light flicker over his face. Maybe he ought to just vote himself off the island right now and be done with it.

Except that he could hear Porphyria saying the words self-doubt couldn't argue with:
Dr. Crisp, until you're dead, you're not done.

So he let his hands cup his face, and he breathed and he found the only thing there.

Use me, Father. Use me as you will.

“Should I wait?” someone whispered.

Sully jolted in the chair. Lucia was there, looking so firmly packed up, Sully wondered if she was even allowing herself a pulse.

He stood up and slung a hand toward the other Adirondack. “No, no, I was just talking to God.”

She frowned at the chair.

“These were the only ones down here,” Sully said. “It's not as uncomfortable as it looks.”

He half-hoped she'd suggest they go inside, where every surface was padded in something opulent, although he didn't think he could do therapy in that living room without black tie and tails. But she sat down tentatively at the chair's edge and slid slowly back.

Scared to death. And her fear had to trump his.

“Were you done?” she said.

“Done?”

“Talking to God.”

“Oh. No, never. It goes on pretty much all the time. I figure the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

It was meant to put her at ease, but her frown went deeper.

“I brought us some sweet tea,” he said, nodding toward the pitcher and glasses he'd set next to the Kleenex on the small table between them.

“Do you think I'm going to cry?”

“I'm sorry?”

“The tissues. Does that mean you think I'm going to cry?”

“I don't know,” Sully said. “But
I
might. We're going to be talking about Bethany, and that is one sad little girl.”

She seemed to breathe into that.

“Just so you know,” she said, “I don't cry. Is that the kind of thing I'm supposed to tell you?”

Sully gave a soft buzz and waited. If his shtick didn't work, he really would flounder.

“What was that?”

“Do you watch many game shows, Lucia?”

Her eyebrows went together. “Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“No. I'd rather be shot.”

“That's a shame,” he said. “Because I like to think of therapy as something like being on a game show.”

She stared at him.

“If we find an answer that takes us somewhere, we ding ourselves.”

“Ding?”

He let his voice go up to bell level. “Ding-ding-ding. And if we hit a dead end, it's a buzz. The best part of this game show is that nobody loses. Our goal is for you to win.”

“For Bethany to win,” she said.

She did like that category.

“So, me asking you what I was supposed to tell you got a buzz?”

“Only because there are no ‘supposed tos' here,” he said. “I don't know if you've ever worked with a counselor or anything before . . .”

She shook her head.

“It's like playing
Jeopardy.
The answers are all there—we just have to ask the right questions, and we'll do that together.”

“May I go first?” she said.

He was surprised, pleasantly.

“Absolutely.”

She folded her hands in her lap and composed her face, looking every bit as if she were about to deliver a prepared speech.

“I didn't think of this when I asked you to work with me,” she said. “And I apologize if this makes a huge difference and I've wasted your time—”

He stifled a buzz.

“It's just that I don't know anything about your work, as a minister, and I don't want to offend you, but, I mean . . .” She gave herself an exasperated sigh. “I'm not one of Sonia's ‘followers.' Do I have to be for us to do this?”

Now he smothered a ding-ding-ding.

“Not at all,” he said. “In fact, quite the opposite. And I can say this to you because I have always been honest about it with Sonia. Your sister and I are on different sides of that fence.”

“What does that mean?”

“To be blunt, I think parts of her belief system are toxic. There's a lot of taking Scripture out of context, viewing suffering as punishment, that kind of thing. But you heard what Wesley said to Sonia yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“That's where I'm coming from too.” He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “It's a pity you don't watch game shows. Just about everything I needed to know I learned from the Game Show Network.”

She gave him a wry look. When she did allow herself a facial expression, it spoke volumes.

“All right, so that's an exaggeration,” Sully said. “I actually think of it as Game Show
Theology.
”

“Like a religion?” Wry morphed into incredulous.

“No, no—more like a way of expressing religion, though I'd rather call it faith.”

“Ding-ding and buzz-buzz is faith.”

She seemed to be increasingly surprised at her own chutzpah. Sully liked it.

“Take
Wheel of Fortune
, for example,” he said.

“My father watched that. I know the premise.”

She rolled her eyes, and Sully grinned.

“Just humor me for a minute,” he said. “The Gospel According to Pat Sajak: when we set out to seek our fortune in life, whatever that is, we don't know what the turn of the wheel is going to bring. We just have to keep spinning, even when it makes us lose a turn or bankrupts us, because if we don't, we're out of the game.”

She watched him with less skeptical eyes.

“To me that's like taking what God sends and working with it. We do have some choices—we can decide what consonant to guess, when to buy a vowel, whether to try to solve the puzzle. We know how to do that by listening to God, reading what He's already said in the Word, experiencing the love of Christ.” He sat back in the chair. “You don't have to share my faith for us to work together, but I would love to know where you're coming from, if you feel comfortable telling me.”

She clearly didn't see how this would get her where she wanted to go, but she said, “I believe in God.”

“Did you go to church as a kid?”

“My grandmother took us. My father's mother. She lived next door and she always made sure Sonia and I went to Catholic Sunday school, until she died.”

“How old were you then?”

“Ten. Sonia was five.”

Interesting how she included Sonia in every fiber of her story. Interesting, but not surprising. He wasn't sure how many more questions she'd answer before she realized what she'd revealed, but he risked another nudge.

“What about your parents? They weren't churchgoers?”

Lucia gave him a deadpan look. “The extent of my mother's religious teaching was to explain to me that God didn't like little girls who weren't nice to their baby sisters.”

Ouch.

“I always was, but she seemed to feel that I needed frequent reminders.”

Sully pulled one foot up onto the chair. This part he hadn't lost: his love for the unfolding of a client's story.

“So after Grandma died . . .” he said.

“Grandma Brocacini. We called her Grandma Broc.” Lucia rolled her eyes again. “I guess you don't need all the details.”

“Actually, I love them. I think God is in the details. So after Grandma Broc died, did you continue on some kind of path with God?”

“I kept talking to Him. I still do. He doesn't ever answer, but I keep talking. Mostly when I'm desperate. I don't know—maybe I just hope He'll love me a little more if I do. So far I don't think
that's panned out.”

She blinked, as if she'd just discovered she was telling this near stranger a thing she hadn't uttered before.

Sully eased into the space. “I hear that,” he said. “Prayer can seem futile sometimes.”

“Not according to my sister,” she said drily.

Sonia again. Sully might as well pull up another Adirondack and get her down there to join them. But it did give him a way to keep Lucia adding brushstrokes to the picture she was painting for him.

“Tell me about that,” he said. “About your experience with Sonia's belief system.”

“I didn't even know she had one,” Lucia said, “until one night when Bethany was nine months old.” She scowled into the past for a moment. “Blake—her husband-had died.”

“Right. I know about that.”

“And she had been telling me about having this ‘salvation experience.' ” Lucia put the term in quotation marks with her fingers. “This one night she talked me into going with her to the church she said had pulled her out of the pit of despair and saved her life.”

She was still quoting, heavy on the irony.

“She told me I was going to see Jesus for the first time—not the pretty, Sunday morning Jesus who Grandma Broc had been content with, but the living, breathing, personal Savior who could heal me.” She gave Sully the blank look again.

“I take it you didn't think you had anything to be healed from,” Sully said.

“No. But I sat through the sermon, and I tried to sing along with the music. I didn't wave my hands in the air, though. I didn't get that.” She peered at him. “I hope that doesn't offend you.”

“Buzz,” Sully said.

“What buzz? What did I say?”

“You don't have to worry about what offends me. I want you to feel free to say whatever you want here.”

Lucia looked doubtful, but she went on. “I didn't see Jesus, but I was convinced they all did, and I didn't want Sonia to be embarrassed by me. So when the pastor smiled right at me and said anyone who wanted to be saved should come forward, I did. Sonia went with me and sobbed and prayed, and when someone asked me a string of questions, I nodded my head to all of them.” She gave a soft grunt. “I was thirty-seven years old, but they said I'd been born again.”

Sully hiked the other foot onto his chair and rested his wrists on his knees. “Did Sonia follow up on that in any way?”

Lucia shook her head. “She never even asked me about it after that night—thank heaven. I didn't want to make her feel bad, but I did not have a ‘salvation experience.' ”

At any later point in therapy he would have called her on
I didn't
want to make her feel bad,
but if he did, she might shut down. He was amazed she'd said this much.

“Why do you think she never talked to you about it?” Sully said.

“She got completely enmeshed in that church, and then right after that she wrote her first book and did the promotion tour, where everybody found out about her singing voice and what a charismatic speaker she was.” Lucia gave him the most ironic look yet. “The rest is Abundant Living history.”

“And what was going on with you at that time?”

“I met Chip that year and we got married.” She smiled sheepishly. “I guess I thought that was my salvation.”

Every therapeutic cell in his brain pulled Sully to take that train, but from the way she resituated herself in the chair, he knew he couldn't even keep her on this one for much longer before she asked “what the Sam Hill” this had to do with Bethany. If he could just take her one more inch . . .