Song of Renewal (7 page)

Time passed in a blur of panic one minute and hope the next.

“Mrs. W.?” a small voice quavered. Liza looked up from her seat in the ICU waiting room on the vigil’s second day. Garrison had gone for a walk and some coffee.

“Penny?” Before her, quaking with teen angst and grief, was Angel’s best friend and fellow Byrnes High cheerleader, Penny Johnson.

Liza stood and opened her arms. The girl fell into them, bawling like a three-year-old.

“Shh,” Liza soothed and consoled until her bosom was moist with tears. Only then did the spiked dark head lift.

“H-how is she? Is she – ?”

Liza nodded and forced a smile. “She’s holding her own, thank God.”

Penny snatched a tissue from a box and blew her nose soundly. She then joined Liza in the wait for the next visiting time window. The girl sat quietly, contemplative and nonintrusive. Liza reached out and took her hand, gently squeezing it. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Penny was a part of Angel’s world. Suddenly, Liza didn’t feel quite as alone.

Penny smiled, her red, swollen eyes lighting up a bit, her fingers returning the squeeze. “Me too.” Her near-black spiked hair added drama to her pale features.

Several others on the Byrnes cheering squad drifted in and out during the next two days. Teachers and administrators came and went, expressing care and support. Liza tried to allow them moments with Angel during the brief visiting-time span. It became a finely tuned balancing act, loosing Angel’s young world upon her while carving out a tiny slice of space for Garrison and herself as well.

“Perhaps, just perhaps,” she told Garrison on the drive home one of those nights, “having the people she relates to around her will somehow bring her back. It can’t hurt.”

Garrison was silent as he drove. She thought he wasn’t going to reply at all, but he finally said, “What hurts is seeing all those kids moving around, laughing, living…like she did before. Why – ” His voice choked off.

Liza felt her heart splinter again. She didn’t have to clarify the question he was asking. She knew. And she knew not to offer consolation just then because he would not receive it from her.

This would be another long, lonely, restless night.

Liza followed the path her mother had taken up the hill, her steps quickening as she lost sight of the tight green slacks and white tube top. Small fingers clutched Barbie’s blond ponytail as tears trickled down Liza’s cheeks. Swiping her face, she snuffled hard and her mother’s Armani fragrance ambushed her nostrils, making her cry even harder.

Oh, how she missed Mama when she set out on these treks, ones that separated Liza from her for days, even weeks at a time, and ones that left her daddy pale and gone off inside himself and explaining fervently how sick Mama was to do such a thing.

Treks that made her thirteen-year-old sister, Charlcy, blazing mad and cursing and bitter.

Liza took off again, dashing toward the last place she’d glimpsed the glitter of Mama’s ear and wrist accessories. Trash littered the trail into the woods, beer bottles strewn like dead leaves. Liza’s foot caught on a protruding root and she tumbled face-first hard onto the ground. She lay there for moments, dazed – then remembered the reason for the chase. Mama knew all the routes to the bus stop. Daddy had taken her car keys long ago and only relinquished them when her mind intermittently leveled out.

Hurry.
She must hurry and catch Mama before she tumbled headlong into that black hole outside her family, one that seduced and sucked her in.

She scrambled to her feet, clapped the dirt from her hands, and snatched Barbie up from the weeds to clutch to her chest, a gesture that somehow comforted her, but as she cast her gaze about in a frantic search for some sign of her mother, the emptiness, the absence of the familiar maternal presence, howled at her.

“Mama?” Liza croaked tentatively. The silence was deafening, bouncing like Ping-Pong balls against her eardrums and making the fine hairs on her arms take on a life of their own. Mama’s fragrance no longer wafted to her on the breeze.

Liza slowly turned, her gaze lifting to scan the trees, whose limbs suddenly morphed into monstrous black fingers that linked together as one to block out the sunlight. Liza shivered and looked around for the trail.

Where is the path?
She turned around and around, growing more confused by the moment.

“
Mama!
” Her scream pierced the air. “Where are you, Mama?” She sobbed, collapsing into a heap, face buried in her hands, Barbie forgotten.

Daddy always excused Mama’s lapses, insisting that she must take her medicine every day. When Mama failed to comply, Daddy seemed to take full responsibility for her actions. This infuriated Liza’s big sister, Charlcy. Liza had not yet figured out why Mama was so sweet most of the time, enjoying Liza’s blossoming ballet talents and making ridiculous desserts such as bunny cakes with silly hats and then, lightning-fast, became this other eerie creature, who frightened yet beguiled Liza to search beneath that bizarre coating for the Mama whom she adored and who adored her. Her weeping revved up.

“Liza!”

Liza didn’t register the summons, so great was her grief.

“Liza! Thank God!”

Charlcy burst through the undergrowth like a volatile genie and scooped her into her arms. “You scared me half to death!”

Liza bawled as her sister plopped onto the ground, pulling her onto her lap, holding her close with frenzied care.

“Shh.” Charlcy stroked a bit heavily, kissing the top of the tow head. “What were you thinking, Liza? You can’t just go running off like that, scaring the daylights out of us.”

Liza looked up at Charlcy then, swiping tears from her face with the back of her hand. All at once, she felt unaccountably self-conscious and disoriented. Where had Mama vanished to this time? She scrambled off the comfortable lap, one that didn’t hold her as often lately. After all, she was six and no longer cuddly sized. She stood awkwardly as her big sister arose.

Liza could not hold the searching, concerned gaze of her sister. She dropped her head. “I-I’m sorry,” she whispered, guilt-ridden. She looked up into worried eyes and snuffled hard, shuffling her feet. “B-but I w-want M-Mama.” Tears splashed over and ran down her cheeks as she tried unsuccessfully to gulp back the sobs.

“I know, baby, I know.” Charlcy gathered her again to her. Liza could feel tension gather beneath her sister’s budding bosom. Knew when she ground her teeth together to suppress the rage that always came with their mother’s frolics. Charlcy didn’t cry for Mama anymore. Rather, anger braced her up and got her through these crazy times. Even in the midst of it, Liza felt Charlcy’s love, knew that she, Liza, was not the target of that rage.

“Stupid woman,” Charlcy hissed into Liza’s hair. “Who in God’s name throws away pills that keep ‘em from going nuts? Huh? Her, that’s who. Stupid, stupid,
stupid!”

Liza shifted to loosen the arms that began to squeeze a little too tightly. All the emotions flailed at her, pummeled her.

When Liza’s grief welled up anew, Charlcy quickly backtracked and soothed. “C’mon, honey. It’ll be okay. Daddy’ll find her and bring her home.” She snorted and muttered, “You can count on
that
.”

Finally, when Liza quieted, Charlcy matter-of-factly took her hand and tugged her back through the thick foliage. Liza gazed around one more time over her shoulder, this time glimpsing the distant, phantasmal figure of the woman who’d birthed her, who loved her except these times when she slid into this hellion persona who disregarded everybody and everything dear to Liza.

Only now, long white chiffon billowed about the thin figure whose lovely gaze cast away from Liza to some faraway world “Mama!” Liza yelled, tearing her hand loose from her sister’s to dash back into the forest. As she drew nearer, the shimmery white phantasm appeared to lift into the treetops, growing more and more transparent until only the face, transfixed intently on some point in space, remained.

“Mama!” screamed Liza, fresh tears cropping and spilling over as she reached out with both arms.

Somewhere in the distance Charlcy called “Liza! Come back!”

Before Liza’s eyes, that dear face turned toward her, slowly morphing into gray skeletal features whose black sockets stared but did not see.

Liza screamed ….

“Ahh!” She bolted upright in bed, hands to damp face, mouth wide open.

“Liza!” Garrison, startled from his own restless slumber, gazed blearily at her.

“Nightmare,” she gasped, gulping in air then taking long, dragging, calming breaths to slow her frantic pulse. Garrison was accustomed to her bad dreams and knew of her deep fear of abandonment.

Only this time, he did not take her in his arms until the monsters eventually slinked away. Rather, his reaction was that of someone placating an addled stranger. She rocked slowly, arms anxiously hugging herself, immersed in a black realm of ghoulish, bone-chilling portent. The brush of Garrison’s hand on her arm stilled the frantic motion.

“Try to get some rest,” he coaxed in his most polite tone. Her jerky nod seemed to satisfy him because he turned over and pounded his pillow before sinking into it.

Thanks, Garrison.
But in that instant she had not the lucidity to muster up umbrage.

Still reeling, she turned over to face the opposite wall. Nightmare-hangover images of abandonment assailed her. Pummeled her. Tonight she felt as vulnerable as she had at age six. She’d decided long ago that she would never do that to a child. Liza recalled too vividly why she’d decided to leave the ballet to be a full-time mother to her daughter.

Her daughter.

A daughter who now faced possible death.
At least
, she swiped a tear from her cheek, she didn’t have to feel guilty on that count. She had never abandoned her child.

Would never, ever abandon her.
Please, Angel, come back to me.

No regrets there. But the guilt wrenched from her fateful decision that rainy night was enough to cover a multitude of sins and saturate several lifetimes. Liza quietly wept as she watched daylight drive back the night.

Liza and Garrison lunched on hospital cafeteria sandwiches with Garrison’s Floridian parents, who’d flown in the night before. Then they returned to the ICU waiting area for the two o’clock visiting window. The older Wakefields were, to Liza’s relief, perfectly sympathetic and subdued. The usually talkative Ruth had little to say beyond offering compassion and assistance. As soon as the ICU door opened, Liza and Garrison rushed to their daughter’s side. The grandparents acquiesced and waited outside until the very last moment.

In the small cubicle, on opposite sides of the bed, Liza and Garrison gently held their daughter’s horribly swollen hands. Liza despaired at the near lifelessness of the once vital girl lying there, one unrecognizable in her injuries.

Dr. Abrams appeared in the entrance doorway. “Angel nearly left us through the night. Again.” The doctor rubbed the back of his neck and then faced them squarely. “Fortunately, we were able to bring her back. We’re running tests to try and determine why her blood pressure dropped so suddenly.” He shrugged tensely, shaking his head. “But the bottom line is that she’s a critically injured girl who’s holding her own so far, beating all odds of survival.” He gave them a terse smile and disappeared.