The Shadow Wife (13 page)

“I think it helps to view a patient as a human being rather than merely as a diagnosis. We should treat them the way we would want to be treated.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He waved his hand through the air. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” He tilted his head, his eyes on hers as he waited for her answer.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You have some sort of…for want of a better word…
gift,
don’t you?”

It was Carlynn’s turn to stare into her coffee cup. “I’m still not sure what you—”

“I think you understand me,” he said. “You weren’t just listening to Betsy’s lungs this afternoon, were you? As a matter of fact, I’m not sure you listened at all.”

She felt herself color. “Of course I listened,” she said, uncertain if she was being chastised.

“Carlynn…please be honest with me.” He leaned forward.
His blue eyes were clear and lovely, his long face handsome. “If you’re doing nothing special, at least nothing that you know of, just tell me and I’ll drop it. But the truth is, I have a great deal of interest in other ways of treating patients. Other than the usual, that is. I’ve studied Edgar Cayce and other purported healers, and I’ve come to believe there’s something to it. But if I’m wrong about you, I apologize and—”

“You’re not wrong,” she said. Her hands began to tremble, and she lowered them from her coffee cup to her lap. Not since those long-ago days when her mother had dragged her from soldier to soldier in Letterman Hospital had she let the outside world in on her secret.

He looked excited. “Then Betsy, and Mr…. I don’t remember his name…the man with nephritis, and that woman with what we thought was a brain tumor…they all got better unexpectedly. Did you have a hand in that?”

“I may have,” she said. “I never really know. Sometimes I’m able to do something, and sometimes I’m not.”

“Tell me everything,” he said, shoving his coffee cup away from him with disinterest. “Tell me how you do it. What you’re feeling. Is religion involved in some way? Are you praying?”

His sudden enthusiasm freed her tongue. Suddenly she was the teacher and he the student. “I don’t know how I do it, and no, religion is not involved, at least not religion as we usually think of it.”

“Do you feel it happening?” he asked.

“I’m still not certain what the
it
is, but yes, I do feel something happening. A surge of some sort. And I feel…” This was hard to explain. “I feel as though something’s been taken out of me and given to them.”

“You nearly fainted after you examined Betsy this morning, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I felt weak. I don’t know if I was going to faint, though. I never have.” She launched into the explanation of how she treated a person, an explanation she had given only a few others
over the years. She felt not only safe with Dr. Shire, but thrilled that he might give her the opportunity to work in her own way with the patients she saw.

It grew dark outside the cafeteria windows as she told him about her childhood and how she first became aware of her gift, and about how she had determined she should keep quiet about it once she was in medical school, so as not to be seen as a kook.

“You were wise to do that, Carlynn,” he said soberly. “I’ve kept my own interest to myself, and I have to admit, I am incredibly thrilled to discover someone I can talk to about it.”

“Dr. Shire—”

“Alan. Call me Alan.”

She smiled at him. “Alan. Is there a way…I mean, if I see a patient whom I think I might be able to help…can you arrange it so that I can have more time with them? I’ve had to do this so surreptitiously.”

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll work it out. But we have to be cautious. You must know that the other students and some of the staff talk about you. They know you’re different. They just don’t understand in what way yet.”

“I know.”

“Right now they think it’s because you’re a woman and you have this nurturing side to you that can’t resist sitting and chatting with patients.” He grinned at her, his teeth straight and white. “We’ll let them think that for now.”

“One thing about…what I do…” She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Why does it work sometimes and not others?”

“I don’t have the answer, but I’d be happy to share some of the books I’m reading with you. I have a library on the subject.”

“Oh, I’d love to see it!” she said.

“Then you will. It’s at my house, though. Do you mind that you’ll have to come over and—”

“No. Of course not.”

“We’ll have to keep that quiet, as well, you understand. A
female medical student and a physician… People would really talk then.”

She suddenly had a thought. “Do you have this…this gift, too, Dr. Shire? Alan?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t, but I wish I did. I’ve wondered if any ordinary person could develop it, but I’ve come to think not.” He ran a hand through his light brown hair and shook his head. “I just have a deep belief that we’re missing the boat somehow in medicine, Carlynn.” He looked her squarely in the eye. “I’d love for you and me to be partners in trying to find it.”

S
AM RAN INTO
L
IAM’S ARMS ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE THE
nursing home, and Liam lifted the little boy up and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Leaning back in his arms, Sam placed his two small palms on Liam’s cheeks.

“I love you, Dada,” he said, clear as day. They were his new words, and he used them frequently, but always appropriately. Delighted, Liam hugged him tighter. At fifteen months, Sam was either getting bigger, or Liam was getting weaker, because he could really feel the weight of his son in his arms now. Before, carrying Sam had been like holding a pillow filled with feathers.

“I love you, too,” Liam said, but before he had a chance to truly savor the moment, Sam began wriggling to be let down again. Reluctantly, Liam lowered him to the ground and took a seat on the bench next to Sheila.

“How are you, Sheila?” he asked, his eyes still on his son.

Sam began running in circles around the white wishing well, which stood on the lawn near the sidewalk. He could actually run now, not very steadily, but with some genuine speed, and Liam grinned as he watched him chase his invisible prey.

“Oh, I’m all right.” Sheila sounded tired. She rubbed her hand on the back of her neck and rolled her head on her shoulders. “Sam and I had a bit of a rough day,” she added. “He had his first spanking. At least, his first from me.”

“What?”
Liam turned to look at her, unable to hide the shock in his face. Sheila didn’t seem to notice, though.

“He threw a tantrum in the grocery store.” Her eyes looked tired as she watched Sam lift himself awkwardly to his tiptoes as he tried to peer over the edge of the well. “He’s advanced for his age, I guess.” She chuckled. “Moving into the terrible twos at fifteen months.”

Liam tried to stay calm, afraid that if he let her see the anger building inside him, she wouldn’t tell him the truth about what happened.

“What do you mean by tantrum?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. The usual.” She glanced at him. “Or maybe you don’t know, not having had a child before. He was grabbing things he thought he wanted from the shelves, yelling his head off when I took them away from him. He sat down on the floor in the middle of the aisle and wouldn’t stop screaming.”

“He probably just needed a nap.” Liam watched Sam drop into a sitting position and begin slapping his hands against the stucco of the wishing well. He tried to picture Sheila hitting the little boy in the middle of the grocery store.
Hitting
him. For being a normal fifteen-month-old boy. Liam clenched his fists in his lap.

“He’d already had a nap,” Sheila countered. “He was just being a bad boy. I told him if he didn’t settle down, he’d get a spanking. And he kept right on screaming. So, when we got home I turned him over my knee.”

Liam practically jumped from the bench, turning to face Sheila with his hands held in front of him, fingers spread as though he was trying to keep himself from strangling her.

“Not okay!” He said the only two words he seemed able to
force from his mouth. “That’s not okay, Sheila! I don’t want anyone hitting my son.
Ever.
”

“Oh, Liam, I didn’t
hit
him. I didn’t leave a mark on him.” She put one hand over her eyes to block out the sun as she looked up at him. “I
spanked
him. Parents have been spanking their kids since Adam and Eve. Weren’t you ever spanked?”

“No. I wasn’t.” His voice was growing louder, and a woman walking up the path to the nursing home glanced at him as she passed by. He didn’t care who heard him. “Not ever,” he said. “It’s barbaric. It teaches children that violence is a solution. How could you do that to him? How could you hurt him? You, who made me baby-proof every inch of my house? He—”

“Liam, you’re really being silly.” Sheila wore a patronizing smile he wanted to wipe from her face. “I gave him a few gentle swats on his bottom while he was turned over my knee. How else can you teach a fifteen-month-old right from wrong? You can’t explain it to him.”

“Do you honestly think he had a clue why he was being punished?” Liam asked. He paced three feet in one direction and three feet back, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand. “He misbehaved in the grocery store for whatever reason. For a reason our grown-up minds can’t fathom. For reasons that had meaning to him. Then you warn him you’ll spank him, when he hasn’t ever heard the word before. And then you do it when you get
home.
How is he supposed to make a connection? I mean, even if it could possibly be considered an appropriate form of punishment?”

“Well, he knows the word now.” Sheila pursed her lips. “He’ll know what I mean the next time I say it.”

“There won’t
be
a next time, Sheila.” Liam stopped pacing to look at her. “I mean it. This is absolutely nonnegotiable. No one is hitting Sam.”

“When they’re too young to reason with, there’s no other way to—”

“
I
turned out all right,” he said. “My parents somehow
managed to teach me right from wrong without resorting to…the humiliation…the physical violation of smacking the crap out of me. And Mara would never approve.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sheila said. “You’re overreacting, Liam. I didn’t smack the crap out of him, and you know it. And, as for Mara, she was spanked any number of times.”

She was? He hadn’t known that. They had never gotten around to discussing how they would discipline their child.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I still don’t think she would approve.”

Sam suddenly ran over to him and wrapped his arms around Liam’s leg, clinging, obviously aware that something was wrong between his father and his grandmother. Liam rested one hand on top of Sam’s head.

“Look,” he said to Sheila, attempting to lower the angry pitch of his voice, “I appreciate all you’ve done for Sam. But please, just promise me you won’t hit him again.”

“I can’t promise that, Liam,” she said. “I think you’re being absolutely ridiculous.”

“I don’t want you hitting him!”

Sam let out a wail and clung harder.

“Then I just won’t take care of him anymore,” Sheila said, standing up. “You can find someone else to do it. And you can pay for it yourself.”

Liam closed his eyes in frustration. “That’s not what I want,” he said. Bending over, he lifted Sam into his arms again, and this time the little boy buried his face against Liam’s neck.

“Then I’ll spank him when he needs it.” Sheila folded her arms across her chest.

Liam couldn’t respond. He felt helpless and realized that, if he tried to say something, anything, more to Sheila, his voice would break. He pressed his cheek against Sam’s head.

“When Mara is well enough,” Sheila said, “she’ll agree with me. I can assure you of—”

“She’s never going to get well, Sheila!” he said angrily, eliciting
another cry from his son, but he couldn’t stop himself from spitting the words at her. “Don’t you understand that?” he asked. “
Never.
She is in this nursing home for the rest of her life. She’s never going to understand that Sam is her son. She doesn’t even know you’re her mother.”

Sheila’s face was red, her cheeks puffed out as though they might explode. Turning on her heel, she walked back down the pathway toward the parking lot.

Liam sat on the bench, his body shaking, and watched her go.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he whispered, and the little boy relaxed against his neck once more. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

Although he couldn’t see the parking lot because of the landscaping, he heard Sheila’s car door slam and the engine turn over, and he felt pleased that she was leaving. He would have to find a way to repair the damage he’d just done to his relationship with her, but he didn’t want Sheila in Mara’s room with him and Sam today.

“I’m sorry you had a rough day, Sam,” he said, rocking the boy a little. “I’m so sorry.”

Damn, this was hard! There was so much he wanted to talk to Mara about, so much he
needed
to talk to her about. He wanted to tell her what Sheila had done to Sam, to ask if, perhaps, Mara
did
approve. How did she feel about it? Maybe he had projected his values about parenting onto Mara, since she could no longer speak for herself.

He wished he could tell Mara that her mother was stuck in denial. That he was, too, at times. It was so comfortable there, in that imaginary place where there was always hope. Hope was both friend and enemy, he knew: it kept him going, but it also prevented him from planning realistically for the future. And in his darkest moments, he was certain Mara’s future was in that bed in the nursing home. He honestly didn’t know how to plan his life around that indisputable fact.

When he and Sam arrived home after their visit with Mara, they played with blocks and read books. All the while, Liam had only one thing on his mind: he wanted to talk to Joelle. He told himself it would be a mistake, but the thought would not leave his head.

He managed to avoid calling her until after he’d gone to bed that night, when the image of his confused baby son being turned over Sheila’s knee filled his mind. Without stopping to think, he lifted the receiver from the night table and dialed Joelle’s number.

“Hello?” Her voice was thick, and he knew she’d been sleeping.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he said. “I just have a quick question.”

“What is it?” She sounded instantly awake. He pictured her sitting up in bed, her long, dark hair messy from sleep and her heart beating quickly as she realized it was him on the phone.

“Do you know how Mara felt about spanking?” he asked.

There was a beat of silence on Joelle’s end of the line. “I…I don’t know specifically,” she said, “but my guess is she wouldn’t want to handle discipline that way. Are you having some trouble with Sam?”

He laughed, the sound almost alien to his ears. It had been a long time since he’d laughed about anything with Joelle, but he quickly sobered. “No,” he said. “I’m having trouble with Sheila. She spanked Sam today.”

“What happened?”

“He was screaming in the grocery store,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter what happened. He’s a baby. He can’t do anything bad enough to merit a spanking.”

“You sound so upset.” The tenderness in her voice made the muscles in his chest contract. “I
am
upset,” he said. “But then I realized I had no idea how Mara would feel about it. About spanking.”

Another beat of silence. “Hon,” Joelle said. “It doesn’t really matter how Mara would feel about it. What matters is how
you
feel.”

“I can’t stand the thought of anyone hurting him,” he said.

“Then don’t let them,” she said. “He’s
your
son. You make the rules.”

“I…” If he said another word, he’d lose his resolve. “Thanks,” he said quickly. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at work.” He hung up abruptly. He pictured her staring at her phone with a puzzled look on her face, wondering if she’d said something to make him hang up like that. He’d wanted to ask her more questions. How did he stop Sheila from hitting Sam, for example, when he was completely dependent on her in so many ways? But he’d been afraid that any more conversation on the subject, any more words of loving comfort from Joelle would put an end to his carefully maintained defenses. It had happened before, and he feared it could happen again, because what he really wanted was to have her here in bed with him, holding her close, his hands tangled in her hair, one of her legs nestled between his, all night long.