The Healing (7 page)

“How can you go to a dance dressed like that?” Grandma protested when Karen trotted down the stairs in hip-hugger jeans and a black halter top. Unable to voice all of her complaints in English, Grandma resorted to her native Czech, which Karen understood well enough.

“It's okay, Grandma.” Karen realized she was trying to placate a woman who had grown up back when women didn't even show their ankles. “This isn't a dance where people get dressed up, I swear. It isn't like the Czech socials or the dinner dances we go to. Everyone there will be wearing jeans. Some people even come in shorts.”

“Is Anya going?” Grandma asked.

“Yes, and Danny, too,” Karen answered patiently. She didn't particularly feel like listening to her grandmother question the morals of an entire generation or lecture her about teenage life in the 1920s. Karen was too excited about going to the dance on the wharf and seeing Mike there. She recalled what he had said about slow-dancing and imagined what the night might hold in store.

Karen never wore makeup, and she rarely let her hair down. But in trying to see herself through Mike's eyes, she found in herself a newborn vanity that forced her to look in the mirror with greater attention to detail. A little mascara accentuated her lively hazel eyes, and the clear, roll-on lip gloss she had bought at the town pharmacy tasted like strawberries. Her hair, which also smelled like strawberries from her favorite shampoo, fell in silken, sun-streaked strands around her perfectly oval face and past her shoulders. She even fastened a strand of puka shells around her neck and adorned her earlobes with small silver half-moons. At quarter after seven, she was ready to go.

“You be home by eleven?” Grandma asked without leaving much room for debate.

“I think it ends at eleven, so can I have until eleven-thirty?” Karen asked.

“Who will bring you?” came the inevitable question.

“If Aunt Vera doesn't drive us home, then one of Danny's friends will give me a ride,” Karen replied as vaguely as she could. Deep down she hoped to be chauffeured back in a green Mustang. Just the thought made her breath catch in her throat.

Karen exploded out of the porch door and trotted toward the road. When she turned around to wave, Grandma was standing in the doorway, making the sign of the cross.

Karen quickened her pace as the wharf came into view. She could see the swarms of teenagers and young adults who were congregated on the overlook and on the wharf porch. Some were even strolling on the beach. The place pulsated with the sound of a live band. And Karen's whole body pulsated with anticipation.

She immediately spotted her cousins and her friends near the entrance. A few feet away from them stood Mike, leaning against a porch post with his hands in his pockets. He had already seen her; he looked like his wish had come true. Karen saw Danny hit him in the arm and say, “Here she is.” As if he didn't know.

She stepped up to the gathering, not sure if she was out of breath from the brisk walk or the sight of Mike in tight faded jeans and a clean white T-shirt that seemed to glow against his suntan. His arms and chest looked enormous, his hips tight and narrow. His eyes shone like cobalt out of his face, and his freshly washed hair was a black mane spilling from his head in layers of tousled waves.

“Hi.” It came out in a giant exhale. As always, she avoided looking directly at Mike so he wouldn't read what was going on inside of her.

Danny's friends erupted in a few sociable whistles and catcalls, letting Karen know she looked damn good and all her preening had been worth the effort. But she didn't hear any of it. She was focused on just one person.

The group loitered on the porch before heading inside to invade one whole corner of the dance floor, and Mike waited until Karen came through the doorway to take his place at her side. When she felt the warm weight of his arm wrap around her shoulders, her pulse began to race. It was the first time he had really touched her. It was the first time he had made any move to let her know where this whole wonderful joyride was going.

“You look great,” he whispered in her ear.

“Thanks,” she said, but it was just a spurt of consonants. “So do you.” Unable to believe that such a reply had escaped her strawberry lips, Karen turned crimson. Maybe in the dim glow of the dance hall it would go unnoticed.

Mike's arm tightened around her and then retreated, but he stayed in such close physical proximity that Karen could feel the tickle of his skin at her elbow. The people around her were talking and laughing, but she only saw their lips moving. Some of them paired off and wandered away to dance, but Karen paid no mind. It seemed like everything around her was going on in another dimension. Yet when Mike took hold of her hand and asked her if she wanted to dance, the blood rushed to her head so fast she thought she might sway on her feet.

“Sure,” she said, trying to be casual. But Mike had to sense all that was brewing beneath her cool exterior. His hand was hot compared to hers, and he led her through a maze of gyrating bodies to where they could face each other and move freely.

“I really like this song,” he said as they got caught up in the rhythm of “Magic Carpet Ride.” They were both good dancers, athletic and confident, and Mike didn't try to hide his head-to-toe critique of Karen's form in action.

It was out of character for her, but for once Karen didn't mind. As a matter of fact, she was doing her own critiquing. She just happened to be a little subtler about it. “The band is pretty good,” she said, feeling her inhibitions float away on the music, leaving her at the mercy of a brand-new experience.

Mike smiled as he sang to her, his eyes inviting. She smiled back at him to let him know she was on top of the world. She raised her arms and turned around and around with a dancer's grace, her feet never missing a beat. Mike matched her enthusiasm movement for movement, providing the perfect masculine complement to her physical expression. By the time the band wrapped up their long instrumental interlude, Karen felt a little dizzy. But she hadn't had anything to drink, not even a soda. It was simply the combined effect of the atmosphere and Mike's unwavering attention. Together they were venturing beyond the comfort zone of chatting at the lifeguard chair or exchanging histories on a rainy day.

When the song was over, they applauded like everyone else, but Karen knew the rest of the evening was going to sweep her away in its inescapable tide. She was sweaty and breathless, and so was Mike—a perfect prelude to the slow dance he had foretold.

“Let's change the mood for those who want to get a little closer,” the singer announced in his sexiest front man voice. In the next breath, the lights were dimmed as the first few measures of a familiar ballad issued from the speakers.

Karen's face felt like it was on fire, and a new rush of blood went to her head when Mike reached out his hand. She took hold of it, highly aware of how his fingers squeezed hers as he pulled her to him. Their smiles faded as they moved close together for the first time, and Karen savored every detail. Just when she thought she wouldn't be able to breathe, Mike's arm went around her back and drew her even closer, pressing her against the hard wall of his body. She almost gasped with the surge of new sensations.

Her face was half buried in his shoulder, and she inhaled the heady combination of freshly laundered, sun-dried cotton and moist male skin. She closed her eyes, allowing her other senses to take their pleasure, and heard him breathing in her ear, inhaling the scent of her hair. When Mike let go of her hand to hold her in both his arms, she clasped her hands around his neck. Now they were simply rocking back and forth in a full embrace.

Karen could feel his heart thumping wildly in stark contrast to the slow rhythm of the music. Her own heart was keeping pace, beating against her breastbone and making her light-headed. On her bare midriff she could feel the tight bumps of his abdominal muscles, and against her legs she was keenly aware of the movement of his lean thighs as he stepped from one foot to the other. In his jeans she could feel something happening to his body that she had only heard about . . . something she probably wasn't supposed to feel on a dance floor in a public place. At first she naively thought he might not want her to know, but he only held her tighter.

As her legs trembled, she held on to his neck for dear life. As her insides churned with a need she didn't recognize, her hips stayed boldly pressed to his.

Karen listened to the words of the song. It provided the perfect score for their first dance because it expressed how she felt. She only needed the air she breathed, and to be with Mike.

Her nose found its way to the exposed part of his neck, and she reveled in its clean, natural scent. Mike wore no cologne and used no fancy spiced soaps. If anything, he smelled a little bit like the beach . . . salt and fresh air and sun-warmed skin. To Karen it was like an opiate, and she was instantly addicted.

The music stopped, and they peeled away from each other. Karen slowly opened her eyes, which felt heavy and unfocused, and Mike's eyes looked the same. He blinked at her as though he were suddenly drunk. And she understood.

Mike led Karen outside by the hand, weaving through the crowd without a word and striding toward the overlook. Once he found a place under the maples where they would only be shadows in the moonlight, he stopped short, whirled her around, and kissed her until she thought she would faint. Karen's hands explored—innocently and indulgently—reveling in every new discovery along the hardness of his arms, across the expanse of his shoulders, down the bumps of his spine, and up the nape of his neck.

“You taste so good,” Mike said against her mouth, and he went back to kissing her like he wanted to devour her.

Maybe it was the sweet strawberry lip gloss.

Finally, he broke away and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked at her like he had never seen her before. And then he laughed.

Out of breath and off balance, so did Karen. She had never felt more alive.

The next kiss was slower, more deliberate.

Karen knew that even if she never saw Mike Donnelly again, she would remember this night for the rest of her life.

chapter nine

June 2004

Karen sat at the picnic table just a few yards from where that first kiss took place. The backdrop was the same. Like an observer in a dream, she watched the whole scene unfold under the maples as though it were happening in the present. She couldn't believe it had been almost thirty years ago. How could it be so easy to remember every detail of that night at the dance on the wharf when she couldn't remember how she had managed to lift Mike off the floor that morning?

She had not allowed herself to think about the summer she'd met Mike since he got sick. Now the memories seemed to be escaping from some stockpiled vault in her mind simply because she had opened it to retrieve one precious thought.

Karen drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. But there was no protecting herself from the memories.

There was the ride home in the green Mustang.

The sunsets they had witnessed together.

The stars they had dreamed upon.

The inevitable transition from Southold to Queens.

The easy fusion of their families, friends, and interests.

His baseball league, her swimming meets, their evenly matched tennis skills.

Her graduation. His acceptance into New York's fire department.

The proposal. The engagement. The wedding . . .

The wedding night. They had waited, unlike most of their friends.

And the honeymoon, which had lasted a blissfully long time.

Karen hugged her knees tighter. Her inner torment, so deeply buried and well guarded, bubbled closer to the surface as her life played out before her like a movie. Throughout all of it, there was one constant.

Mike. Always Mike.

She couldn't get pregnant for a long time because of a high-maintenance reproductive system, but he never exhibited the slightest hint of impatience or disappointment. Karen would get her period, feeling the weight of failure month after month, and Mike would hold her while she cried, telling her that everything was going to be all right, that they had years to keep trying.

She remembered how he'd wink at her. Then kiss her. And they'd end up making love.

Lori was born seven years after they were married, and it was as though they had been granted their own personal miracle. But she was to be their one and only. Karen had a partial hysterectomy when she was thirty-four, and Mike took an entire month off work to wait on her hand and foot.

Karen let go of her knees. She put her head in her hands. These rapid-fire realizations were not something she could ward off by curling into a fetal ball. They were erupting from within. She could never separate the journey of her own life, for better or worse, from the dreamy lifeguard who kissed her under the maple trees. His life had been entwined with hers since that night, and without him, it all unraveled.

Her mother had passed away suddenly, and Mike was there to hold her up. Her father had been sick for a few years before he died, and Mike was there to hold her up. Lori began to suffer from depression in her young teens, and Mike was there to hold them
both
up.

A few years after Karen's surgery, he began to stumble a lot. His feet constantly fell asleep. He blinked hard and often because his eyes drifted out of focus. His handwriting became illegible. He began having problems with impotence. This had gone on for nearly two years before he finally went to the doctor and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Soon after, he had been forced to retire from the FDNY.

Karen knew how much Mike missed his job. He was eligible for a pension after twenty years, but he had been a lieutenant at a ladder house in Manhattan and on his way to becoming a captain when the illness got the best of him. The pension was good, but he could never come to terms with having to quit on account of his disability, especially since he felt someone died in his place at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Losing so many friends on that fateful day—friends who were indeed like brothers to him—only depressed him more.

If their daughter hadn't needed him so desperately, Karen was afraid to imagine what Mike would have done in the agonizing days following the terrorist attacks. But he was such a wonderful father that he always put Lori's needs ahead of his own. He told her he would always be there for her, even though he was sick himself. And he tried.

God knows, he tried.

“Mike.” Karen spoke his name out loud without even realizing it. It was one syllable, with no tone in her voice, but it had the effect of a tidal surge. She was powerless to stop the force behind it. “Oh, Mike—” she said again, but this time it was a strangled sob.

Then Karen began to weep. In the shade of the maples, where the bay breeze kissed her tears, she finally allowed her heart to purge itself. How could she reconcile all that she had just remembered with the man suffering at home? He had carried so much inside of him without burdening anyone. And now, rather than burden his family at all, he simply wanted to die.

How could Karen look at him without falling apart? Especially now, when her most precious memories of him lay strewn around her like smoking wreckage. How could she, after recalling their first words . . . their first dance . . . their first kiss, ever let Mike gaze into the depths of her eyes and get a tragic glimpse of all they had lost? How could such a perfect husband and father become so ravaged by disease and circumstances that he was no longer the man she once knew? Over 90 percent of those who came down with MS never became so severely disabled, and they went on to live quality lives. Why not Mike?

It was too much to bear. Karen felt like her chest was caving in as the despair exploded out of her. She sobbed until she couldn't breathe, rocking back and forth on the bench with her knees drawn up and her head in her hands. “Oh, God,” she choked, praying for it to stop.

Finally, the wracking sobs gave way to exhaustion. Karen didn't lift her head from her hands for a long time; it took too much energy to move. She unfolded with a groan and let her feet drop to the ground. She opened her eyes, and the sunlight blinded her for a few seconds. Her heart jumped. A dark figure was watching her from the road.

Karen squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. It was the woman in black. No . . . it was Grace Mitchell. Not the priestess of black magic who cast spells on giggling sisters in the middle of the night, but the dignified woman who bought tea and lunch meat at the Wayside Market.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Karen's brain was still sluggish. She wiped the wetness of her tears away and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Blinking to clear her vision, she looked toward the road again. The woman was still there, wearing her black linen shift and carrying her straw tote. But she wasn't walking by like someone detached from the rest of the human race. Even with her trademark sunglasses on, Karen could tell she was gazing directly at her.

“I don't mean to intrude,” Grace said, because Karen, whose throat was raw, had yet to find her voice. “But I didn't want to leave without asking if there's anything I can do.”

“I'll be okay,” Karen muttered thickly. She was still trembling. “Thank you for stopping.”

“You look like you could use a cup of tea,” Grace said. Her voice had an oddly soothing tone, fitting her calm demeanor and her tendency to float by in defiance of a hurried world. “My name is Grace Mitchell, and I live in the house at the end of the road. I was just on my way home, and you're welcome to come in and rest for a few minutes before going on your way. Maybe some tea and a splash of cold water on your face will help.”

Karen thought she was hearing things. Was she being invited into the House of Five Gables?

“Oh, that's awfully kind of you,” Karen said, “but I wouldn't want to impose.”

“It's no imposition, really. I'm going to fix myself some tea when I get home, and if you'd like some, just knock on my side door.”

“Thank you, Ms. Mitchell,” Karen said politely. “I just might take you up on that.”

“I hope you do. And call me Grace.”

Karen watched the mysterious woman, who now had a name and a voice, stroll down Terry Lane toward the property with the impressive wrought-iron gate. The thought occurred to her that the timing of Grace Mitchell's appearance was too coincidental to be real. Yet her neighborly manner and apparent sincerity made the encounter more real than anything Karen had experienced in years. Grace had happened upon someone in obvious distress and had reacted with simple kindness. For Karen, it was like tripping into a storm cellar in the midst of a cyclone.

She took a deep, restorative breath and found that her lungs were burning. The meltdown had been a long time coming, and it was a cathartic experience. She had never cried like that in her whole life. Not when her grandmother died, not even when her parents died. Feeling physically drained, she glanced at her watch and was glad to see she had some time to spare before heading back home.

It wasn't going to be an easy hurdle, but maybe a cup of tea would indeed help her pull herself together.

It was only late morning, yet Karen felt as if she had spent the entire day in an altered state. Passing through the black gate at the end of Terry Lane and walking up the driveway to the house she always dreamed about made it all the more surreal. She made her way past the overgrown formal garden and the stately trees that were centuries old, trying to envision how it all looked when it was well tended. At closer range, Karen could see the house needed a lot of cosmetic work, mostly a paint job and repointing of the chimneys, but the windows were clean and were adorned with curtains and drapes. A few of the floorboards on the front porch needed to be replaced and the stair treads were slightly warped, but Karen spotted a rocking chair and concluded she would have been quite content to read a book there.

The side entrance was an anteroom that was actually a large bay off the kitchen, and Karen scaled the three steps in a sort of daze, trying to take in as much of its architectural character as she could. Before knocking, Karen took note of the old door, which was half oak and half glass. She couldn't see inside because a short lace panel covered the panes of glass on the inside.

Rapping her knuckles on the wood, Karen didn't realize she was holding her breath.

Grace didn't just call, “Come in.” She opened the door herself and gave her visitor one of her enigmatic little smiles. “I hope you're feeling a little better,” she said.

“I am, thank you,” Karen replied. “It's amazing what a good cry can do.”

“Come in,” Grace offered, stepping aside. “I'm sorry, I didn't even get your name before inviting you over.”

“Karen. Karen Donnelly. I live near the main road.”

The smell of home-cooked food, clean linen, and old furniture hung heavily in the air despite the open windows. It was a comforting smell, one that made Karen feel at home. She looked her new acquaintance in the eye and smiled warmly, even though she knew she looked like hell.

The long-standing image of Grace Mitchell as the mysterious woman in black was dispelled in an instant when Karen stepped into her kitchen and spoke with her face-to-face. Without the barrier of sunglasses, Karen saw a wise but gentle soul. There was a timeless beauty about the older woman that transcended age, although there was no indication she exerted any effort on outward appearances. Her straight, graying hair was pulled back in a clip, which suited her even hairline and emphasized the chiseled symmetry of her jaw. She wore no jewelry, with the exception of a plain gold crucifix around her neck. She was much taller than Karen and carried herself with the kind of poise and posture acquired at charm schools.

“I've brewed some Earl Grey,” Grace said while leading Karen into the large kitchen. “I find the aroma of bergamot is good for clearing the mind on a bad day. Is that to your liking? If not, I also have English breakfast or Darjeeling.”

“The Earl Grey sounds wonderful,” Karen replied, looking around.