Song of Renewal (12 page)

Seeing Garrison’s lack of rejoinder, the squirrel thrust into spread-winged flight to other regions of forest refuge. Garrison sighed, relishing the moment.

In the next breath, intruding on the golden moment, came a replay of the last picnic here together. Teenage Angel’s visit that day with Troy’s family had given Garrison and Liza solitude, a rare gift. A perfect setup for romance, right?

Garrison huffed at that line of thought.

Kaleidoscopic images of that outing swarmed in, merciless in their insolence. Liza’s picnic basket had sported deliprepared fried chicken and potato salad.

Garrison remembered how cheated he’d felt when she told him she was too busy with the charity drive to cook her own specialties.

“Isn’t deli food pretty expensive?” he’d retorted, seeing her back stiffen, her fine nostrils flare ever so slightly as she laid out paper plates and plastic cutlery.

“Some things are more important than saving a few dollars,” she’d snapped back.

Stung by her “skinflint” insinuations, he’d countered, “From where I’m sitting at the helm of this boat – that keeps us afloat, by the way – I’d put it right up there at the top.”

She turned to him, eyes sad, and slowly shook her head. “Above my sanity and peace?”

He’d been the first to break eye contact, but his brooding did not escape her notice because she’d grown morose and then prickly.

They ate in silence. Birdsong and cricket chirrups broke it into bearable increments and the lily pond’s shimmery surface provided rest and pleasure to the eye. But they didn’t look at each other.

“Why didn’t you dress comfortably?” There was a mean edge to her voice as she refilled soft drinks into iced cups, fizzing them over the sides and onto the tablecloth. “You’re wearing a suit, for heaven’s sake.” She snatched wads of napkins to soak up the spills.

“I have an important appointment with a prospective client, so I’ll have to cut this short.” His clipped response came out cold, even to his own ears.

“I don’t know why I even bother,” she muttered, obviously pissed.

“Hey!” Garrison’s temper flared. “Somebody around here has to work. Remember? Don’t shoot down the golden goose.”

Unexpectedly, she’d burst into laughter. Then, seeing Garrison’s lack of amusement, she’d bitten her lip, turned away, and begun clearing picnic supplies, her fine features turning more solemn by the heartbeat.

Apathy and disenchantment seeped into the excursion, rendering them silent and distant with each other.

Passionless, he now admitted.

He recalled how she’d turned back to him and touched his arm, halting him in his fierce packing away of the picnic remains. “Garrison,” she said quietly, entreatingly, raising his on-guard antennae, “sometimes I feel like an afterthought with you.”

Challenge slapped him in the face, with gloves. “What more do you want me to do, Liza?” he’d asked sharply, exasperated, the words flooding his throat like bile. “I’m already giving blood. Can’t you see that?”

The sadness pooled in her eyes still haunted him

She’d looked at him steadily in the cricket-chirping, frogcroaking quiet of the forest. For long moments she’d gazed into his eyes, searching for something he could not fathom. He felt her urgency, her need to reach an inaccessible place in him, saw disappointment gather in her features. He felt helpless and confused as she turned away, her eyes downcast, cheeks flushed, lips pressed together.

Flayed by needs he could not meet, Garrison clamped his teeth together, tightened his jaw, and, in stony silence, helped Liza repack their gear and leave. After all, he was only one man and there were just so many hours in a day in which to cram all the work it took to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, and to perform the hundred and one other things indexed under “Garrison’s Duties.”

With his blessing, Liza had chosen to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. At times, though, in the earliest days of establishing his graphic arts business, he’d felt torn by her decision. Even with his parents’ generous gift of land, making ends meet had been rough. An extra paycheck would have come in handy during that struggling time.

Today, Garrison jolted back to the present with a fresh shock of guilt. Liza had dedicated her life to being a wife and mother. And here he was resenting it. The thought hung there, obnoxious and taunting. Real.

Grinding his teeth together, he pushed the guilt away – adding one extra weight to the current self-reproach. “I can’t do this,” he muttered hoarsely between his teeth, scruffing a hand over his face and shaking his head as if to stave off the onslaught.

The life-and-death struggle now facing them had to take prominence over all other issues. Would any of them survive it?

“I’ve got to,” he muttered, feeling the heavy plodding of blood through his veins and the weary drag of his heart. Despair slammed him, leaving him struggling for his next breath.

At just that moment, the pond’s sparkling demeanor began to shift. Late summer storm clouds loitering overhead intercepted the sun’s rays and scattered The Oasis’s golden enchantment – turning the atmosphere gray.

Garrison felt the wind pick up, then begin to gust. He watched the strong air current whip crimson and white lily blossoms into flutters and curls and the water into angry little waves.

A chill passed over Garrison as he felt the first cold drops of rain.

Where?
he wondered. Where had the magic gone?

Angel’s condition remained alarmingly the same. The timewill-tell mantra rang more and more like a death knell.

“Isn’t there any medication that can stimulate the brain to consciousness?” Liza asked the nurse checking Angel’s vital signs. She was in Angel’s curtained-off ICU cubicle for her bihourly twenty-minute allotted visit.

“’Fraid not, Liza.” By now, the medical staff was on first name terms with the Wakefields. Other patients were in and out of ICU within a day or two. Angel’s stay now stretched well beyond that, lending more familiarity. And the end was not in sight.

Nurse Brenda updated Angel’s chart as she talked. “There are currently no medicines known that will shorten the duration of a coma. Remember, most actually deepen the state of unconsciousness. Others are used to paralyze the body temporarily. Both kinds are involved in Angel’s treatment for seizures, so she’s pretty deeply comatose.” She shrugged and smiled sympathetically. “The effects of the medicine may have to be tolerated for the well-being of the patient.”

Liza watched her leave and wanted to share the update with Garrison. He’d gone to the office. And though Liza found herself feeling a bit forsaken, she was not truly uncomfortable being alone.

Her committees and causes had disappeared behind a cloud of dust as she rallied for her daughter. The only thing she missed about them was the fact that they no longer diverted her from the reality of the widening gulf between Garrison and herself.

She did not regret for a second her choice to be a stay-at-home wife and mother, but after Angel reached wobbly, selfreliant adolescence and then boogied into her sovereign teens, Liza’s Supermom image slowly eroded, then fizzled away.

Garrison, by then accustomed to Liza’s full-time calling as a mother, operated under his own profound drive and ambition for excellence. The melancholy, artistic strain pivoted him in whatever direction he aimed, forcefully and full of steam. Wakefield Creations, his graphic arts company, had, by Angel’s adolescent years, become his zealous focus.

Liza had not set out to neglect Garrison by taking on more and more good causes. He’d just seemed so fanatical in his business venture and not truly aware of their veering off in opposite directions. In self-help books she’d read that this was the way of career-building men, so she’d taken it in stride and given Garrison space to do what he had to do.

Through the years, she’d shed, layer by layer, the little things wives do for husbands. She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering that she’d not cooked his special dish of limas, tomatoes, and smoked sausages, nor bought him a new outfit for no reason at all, nor planned sexy weekend getaways – not in years. Shame washed over her in waves. And regret.

She called the Wakefield Creations office. No answer. She pushed back the disturbing fact of Garrison’s inaccessibility.

Dr. Abrams came by the waiting room later. He remained, as with his earlier briefings, up front. “The longer she’s in the coma, the lower her chances of complete renewal. But she’s hanging in there.” His abrupt departure left her reeling.

Liza felt the pierce of the double-edged sword.

Angel’s friends, in awe of the tragedy, came quietly, one by one and in clusters. Liza recalled her own youthful sense of immortality and knew that to them Angel’s prone, intubated, near-lifeless body was like a horrific dream that would end with
everyone waking up to find it wasn’t real at all. Ah, to have such notions now.

Of all Angel’s friends, Penny most grasped the situation’s gravity. Garrison needed to work for the better part of days now, or his business would go under financially. So Liza soaked up Penny’s company. Her presence broke up endless waiting hours. The monotony and confinement relentlessly bore upon Liza. Yet she knew that it would be worse not to be there.
Suppose Angel wakes up?
The possibility incessantly loitered in her mind.

She wouldn’t even consciously entertain the flipside of that coin. But of course, it was there, hovering in the dark periphery of her psyche.

The day-to-day suspense and tension bore upon Penny, too. “I miss her,” she said as she and Liza sat in the cafeteria, eating a sandwich. “She
is
going to get better, isn’t she?” Penny seemed, at times, somehow older, mellow in her youth. Emotions skittered across her lightly freckled face as Penny reflected. “I mean, she’s so swollen and – ”

Liza raised her brows. “But she does look better now, Penny. Remember how much worse she looked in the beginning?”

“Yeah. The dark bruises are faded and her eyes aren’t nearly as puffed up.”

“Oh, yeah. She’s come a long way. And is she going to get better? I certainly want to believe that she will.”

“Me too.” Penny took a sip of iced tea and sighed. “Our Youth at St. Joseph’s is holding prayer vigils for her every day.” Her green eyes suddenly glimmered with hope. “And the kids at school are doing the same thing every morning before homeroom.”

Liza’s eyes gathered moisture. “Then she’s in good hands, huh?” She lifted her tea glass. “To Angel’s recovery.”

Penny’s glass lifted to hers. “To Angel.”

“Charlcy?” Liza’s cell phone reception wasn’t the greatest at the hospital and the voice was breaking up. Her heart already sang just hearing her sister’s voice. She moved out into the corridor and it cleared.

“Yeah, it’s Charlcy, dodo. Who’d you think it was?”

Liza burst into laughter. This greeting was typical Charlcy. The more dire and murky the emotional register around her, the more levity in Charlcy’s reaction. Charlcy adored Angel. Thus, she would avoid the gravity of the situation as long as possible. Liza understood that her sister simply could not abide heaviness except in infinitesimal increments, spaced out to kingdom come. She was an all-or-nothing misfit. And to Liza, she was absolutely beautiful inside and out.