Marrow (12 page)

So I listen. Underneath every story of rejection or attack, I begin to hear a common tune, the shadow theme song of our relationship:
I am too much; Maggie is not enough.
After a while, the therapist tells Maggie to face me and ask me something she's always wanted to ask.

“Why did you always have to stand up to Dad?” she says with uncharacteristic boldness. “Why couldn't you just let him run the show without always having to confront him? The conflict scared me. And it made me mad at you.” She says this without attack. I can tell that she only wants to understand and be understood. This allows me to answer truthfully.

“I always felt like I was doing the dirty work for everyone in the family,” I say. “Meanwhile, you pretended everything was OK, and then you snuck around and did what you wanted anyway. What's the point of that? Why not confront things head-on? I thought I was standing up to Dad for all of us.”

“Well, no one asked you to,” Maggie says.

“You have a point,” I admit.

“But so do you, Liz,” Maggie says. “You have a point too. I secretly admired you for confronting things head-on. I was glad someone was standing up to him. I didn't know where you got the courage to say what you thought, to ask for what you wanted. It impressed me, and it frightened me. Both.”

“I should have toned it down,” I say. “I should have talked to you! We could have been a team. We could have been Maggie-Liz back then. I'm sorry I barged forward without including you.”

“I'm sorry I was such a chicken,” Maggie says. “I'm not a fighter. You are. One's not right or wrong. It was just you being you. Me being me. I see that now.”

I see it too. I close my eyes and see everyone in the family—all the girls and our parents, all of us just trying to be ourselves in a sea of selves. Bumping up against each other, without the where
withal to talk things over, to meld and mend, to work things out as a whole.

“And what about high school?” I hear Maggie asking me.

I peel back the cobwebs of my memory and go back to a time that I have tried to forget—those awkward, lonely high school years. But I can't place Maggie in any of the tableaus, even though we were at the same school, even though we waited together for the same school bus, knew the same kids, did the same crazy things at the same parties. “I don't really remember you in high school,” I say.

“Exactly,” Maggie snorts. “You basically ignored me.”

I know she's right. High school had felt like a struggle for survival. Besides the usual angst of being a teenager, it seemed the whole world was in free fall. Every year another national figure was assassinated, another boy I knew shipped off to Vietnam, and racial tensions were high. There were marches and strikes, riots and lockdowns in the school. And at home, the year I graduated, a crazed neighborhood man broke into our house on Long Island through the window of our youngest sister's bedroom. She awoke to find a man with a stocking on his head leaning over her bed. My father heard her screams and frightened the intruder out of the house, but my parents were so shaken that within a couple of months they had packed up and moved full-time to Vermont.

I try to place Maggie in the halls of our high school, at events, on the bus, anywhere. “I'm sorry,” I say to her. “It's as if you weren't even there.”

“Your loss.” She laughs. “But it was always like that. I always wasn't there. You were the big sister, the one Marsh favored, the smarter one, the one going places. I never measured up.”

“Really? That's how you saw me? That's not how I see it. That's your story of how it was, but—”

The therapist interrupts me. “Just listen to what Maggie says. Take her word for it. She's telling you how she felt.”

I look at Maggie and she looks back at me, her big brown eyes shining with a strong and steady light.

“I didn't know,” I say. “I never bothered to know. I'm sorry.”

“I'm sorry too,” Maggie says. “I spent the next years paying you back.” Which is also true. All during the years when we were in college, and first getting married, and raising our children, we spent time together—some of it wonderful time—but when I tried to get close, Maggie rebuffed me. Now I tell her how much I had wanted to be in her life, how confused I was every time I visited and she kept herself shielded, unwilling to share herself with me.

“I so much wanted to be your friend, Maggie,” I cry, telling her for the first time a deep hurt I have carried around with me. “I always wanted more of you than you wanted to give.”

My tears shock her. She says she knew she had kept me at arm's length, but she had no idea I even cared. “You were so strong, Liz,” she says to me. “You were living this big life out in the world. I thought you were looking down on me, and my funky log house at the end of a dirt road, and my little job, and my little family. I was just a fake artist and a fake doctor, and you were the real thing. I never in a million years imagined anything I did would have an effect on you.”

I shake my head. “That's crazy,” I say. “You made that whole story up!” I suddenly feel the great loss of those years. And the great irony of our relationship. “Maggie, I never thought of your life as little, or you as a fake anything. Quite the opposite! Your house, your family, your job, your art: to me all of that was the real deal. I was the one living the counterfeit life. Your rejection of me just confirmed something I feared was true. That I had messed up
my life; that I was too intense; that I was unlovable because I was just too damn much. And I should be more like you—unassuming, restrained, down-to-earth.”

“That's pretty crazy too,” Maggie says. “The very things I secretly admired in you—your courage and strength and self-confidence—you were ashamed of around me. And meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was ashamed of the things you admired in me. How sad is that?”

“Very sad,” I concur. “Because all I ever wanted from you was you. Not what you did or where you lived or anything like that. Just you. Because you're my sister, because I love you, because who you are is enough.” I take Maggie's hand. “Do you believe that?”

“I'm trying to. I want to.” She looks at me. “Do you believe that you are enough? Do you believe that you are who you are, and that's all I want from you?”

“I'm trying to,” I answer.

“Is there a moral to this story?” the therapist asks.

Maggie says, “Yeah. We're all a mess, but we're all enough. That's the moral to this story.”

We sit quietly. For several minutes no one says a thing. All we can hear is a slight hum of the little refrigerator and the random thumping of the dog's tail. The room begins to fill with a feeling, almost a presence.

Maggie says, “Do you feel that? I think we're in the field. The field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing.” She turns to me: “Liz, all these years I had no idea you were hurt. In my mind, you were the strong one. I was struggling with things I thought you had already figured out. I was ashamed of what was going on in my life.”

“Like what? I never knew anything except what I saw. And
what I saw looked pretty perfect. An intact family living the good life. I was divorced. I was a single mother. For a few years I dragged the kids from place to place. But you were doing everything right. You never talked to me about any problems. What were you ashamed of?”

Maggie just shrugs.

“Do you want to talk about that, Maggie?” the therapist asks.

“Not really. It's not worth going into now. It's the past. Let's just say my life was far from perfect, and I wanted it to look perfect, and if I let you in too close back then, I knew you'd want to talk to me about my marriage. And he knew that too,” she says, referring to her ex-husband. “He thought you were a bad influence. So it was uncomfortable when you visited me, Liz. I tried to smooth it all over, but I guess you felt it anyway—that push-pull. I wanted to be your friend, but I had to keep you away. And I can't just blame him. I made you wrong so my life would be right. I made you the bad one—you were living out in the world, you had money, you were running a business, you had bought into the system. All of those things were ‘wrongdoings' in our rule book. Then you got divorced and became a single parent. Now I really was the good one. The perfect one! I had to see it that way. Black-and-white. If I let any gray in, my whole world would crumble. I didn't know that's what I was doing then. But now I do. And I'm sorry. And I'm glad to be in the field now. Here, with you.”

As promised, the therapist gets up to make himself a snack. The dog waddles over to see what's going on. The therapist stirs a small pot of soup on the hot plate and gives the dog a treat. Maggie and I sit close to each other on the couch, but really, we're in a field that is filling with light.

“I wonder what would have happened if we had talked to each
other like this back in the day. Back when we were young mothers, or even before that?” I say to Maggie. “What if we had talked like this sitting on the school bus?”

“We would have been best friends, that's what,” Maggie says. “We would have seen each other for who we are. We would have helped each other. We would have had much more fun. And do you know what else we would have been?”

“No, what?” I ask.

“The perfect match! We wasted a lot of time figuring that out—that you don't have to be perfect to be a perfect match. It's kind of laughable.”

“You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect match,” I repeat. “I like that. And you're right. We wasted a lot of time figuring this out. It's like we were acting from a script we were given when we were kids, and then we kept saying the lines for fifty years without ever checking if they made sense.”

The therapist returns to his seat. He looks out the window at the darkening sky and then at his watch. “Liz, if you put down that script and speak from your heart, who do you think Maggie is? Who is she to you? Who was sitting on that school bus? What have you always loved about her? Look at her and tell her what you see.”

I look at Maggie and say what I see: “Maggie is a hummingbird. Dancing with life. Full of color and energy and mischief. She's life itself,” I tell the therapist.

“Turn to Maggie and tell her that. Tell her what you love about her.”

I say to Maggie, “Girl, you might be the most lovable person in the whole wide world. You're like the flowers you pick and press—everyone wants to take you home, to make you theirs. You're
bright and beautiful and wild. You're funny and capable and curious about everything. You take care of your patients, your kids, your friends. You cook and bake and garden and make incredible art. You never stop moving, giving, caring for people, children, animals, the earth . . . you take care of everyone except yourself! If you saw yourself the way everyone else sees you—the way I see you—you would bow down to yourself, you would be so kind and gentle to yourself, you would—”

Maggie hits me in the arm. “OK, I get it. That's all I can take. Can I say who I think Liz is? What I love about her?”

“Sure,” says the therapist. “Tell her.”

“Liz! You
are
the Big Shit. But that's a compliment. Don't you see? All my life I have operated with a timid nature, but you haven't. And it's inspiring to me, and it always has been, contrary to what you think. You're not too much. You're yourself! You're not perfect—nobody is perfect. Certainly not me. But if you could see yourself like I see you, wow. I see you walk tall, stride into a room, be gracious and loving yet firm. You don't apologize for just being your big-ass self. It doesn't matter where you are—talking to my doctors at the hospital, or talking on national TV, for God's sake. I would love to muster that kind of inner strength. I'm just a tiny runt of the litter who at this late stage in life is finally trying to walk upright.”

“So you think I have a big ass?” I say. We both laugh. We need to laugh. The field is getting pretty gooey. And it's getting late. I am beginning to feel the flu-like effects of the Neupogen shot; Maggie looks as if she might keel over at any moment. It's almost six p.m. We have been in the field for three hours.

The therapist tells us to close our eyes and bring our attention to our bodies, to our cells, and to the harvest and the transplant.
“Based on what you and Maggie have discovered today,” he says, “what do you want to tell your cells, Liz, as you go into the harvest process?”

I keep my eyes closed and let that question penetrate my bones. I put one hand on my hip bone, where I feel the pressure of the stem cell growth. I put my other hand on my heart because I feel movement there too as the old stories release and the truth rises to the top. Deep in the marrow of the bones the stem cells quiver with pure and generous intentions. And touching my chest, I feel the goodness and purity of my heart's intentions; I remember who I am in the marrow of my soul. The waters of forgiveness wash over me—forgiveness toward myself, forgiveness toward Maggie. I vow for the thousandth time in my life to be true to myself and to love others for whom they really are—all of us flawed miracles, each of us straining to follow the trail left in the woods by our Juno, our Genius.

“Tell Maggie what you are seeing,” the therapist says, as if reading my thoughts.

“I see who we really are, Maggie. And we're good. And we're strong. And we're enough. And we can do this. We can do this transplant. We've already started.”

“What do you see, Maggie?” the therapist asks.

“I see love,” Maggie says. “That's all that's left. That's all that matters. I see that we are deeply connected in love and light. What more could I want?”

“Yeah,” I say. “All those stories were just covering the truth. And the truth is I love you.” Even those words don't express the huge, abiding sense of love that has been filling the room, lubricating our ability to let go of the past and arrive, finally, in the
safe harbor of each other's hearts. As if sticks and gunk had been damming a river, and now the water pours into the space between us, around us, within us. And it's love. And it's real. It's the only thing that ever has been real.