Tuesday Night Miracles (42 page)

But they jump from bed, absolutely alive, eager to use a private restroom, and even more eager to embrace one another.

When it’s time to leave, Dr. Bayer quietly escorts the three women through the long, narrow halls and to the back of the old jail. She isn’t saying anything, but she turns off lights and locks doors behind them as they come to the back of the building. Soon they’re in a tiny vestibule that looks totally different from the rest of the building.

The marble floor in the elegant room is covered with a beautiful wool rug. There’s an ornate but gorgeous brass light hanging from the ceiling. On one wall there is a long oak table that must have been part of the original furniture. The walls are painted a muted shade of blue. It’s as if the women have stepped into another world.

“What is this room?” Kit asks, running her hand gently across the top of the table.

“I’m going to tell you,” Dr. Bayer says, smiling.

The women stand absolutely still. The room feels sacred, almost like a church.

“Everyone turn around and look above the door you will be walking out of very soon,” Olivia instructs.

The women turn in unison. Painted above the door in bold black letters are the words
THE LONG JOURNEY ROOM
.

The women turn back and circle Dr. Bayer as she tells them about the sign.

“When the jail was built, there was a very wise commander who was way ahead of his time,” she begins. “He felt that jails and prisons should not be warehouses, and that everyone deserved a second chance. His goal was to make certain that once a prisoner left the jail he never came back.”

Dr. Bayer said that the commander had this vestibule built and decorated as a way of showing the men and women leaving that they were moving from one part of their life’s journey to the next. Each person who left was given money from a special fund to live for a month, nice clothes, a box of food, and handed a small card.

“Those original cards are now worth a fortune,” she continues. “They were found in the pockets of bankers, doctors, teachers, shop workers—men and women who passed through this same room and who made it and never came back.”

Dr. Bayer reaches under the table and takes out a stack of small cards. She hands one to each of the women and stands quietly while they read the cards.

“I have passed through the doors of The Long Journey Room and what happens now is up to me. Journeys are never easy, but they are what we make of them. I will try. That is my promise to myself this day as I walk though the doors and begin anew.”

Olivia advises the women to keep the card close, maybe in a wallet, to remind them not of what is behind them but of what is ahead, what they can hold in their hands all the time: bright, bold possibilities.

Before they leave, Dr. Bayer surprises them by taking their journals and telling them to watch for an email about next week’s final meeting.

And when they turn to push through the door Olivia slips one of The Long Journey Room cards into her pocket and follows them into the morning sunlight.

47

Go Forth and Be Angry No More

K
it feels as if she’s in high school and has just been elected homecoming queen. She’s so excited that she has gone to the bathroom three times in the last hour. It’s their final Tuesday-meeting night and she’s hosting it one last time. She volunteered even before Dr. Bayer had a chance to email any of them about the final class. The only thing Dr. Bayer cared about was whether Kit had a backyard grill or fire pit.

Considering everything else that’s happened during the past few months, that odd request barely registered on Kit’s radar screen. Maybe Dr. Bayer was going to cook them some kind of victory dinner.

During the past week, Kit worked like a dog. When she realized how much money she was getting from her parents’ estate (who knew?), she told Peter she was hiring some painters and spending a wad of money to do some work on the first floor.

Peter was so thrilled about the new love nest she had created in the bedroom, not to mention the woman who had apparently invaded his wife’s body, that he dared not say no.

By the time Tuesday had rolled around the living room, kitchen, and entryway had been transformed. The bathroom would have to wait a bit, but Kit felt almost as good as half of her house looked.

The walls were all several shades of blue, which totally lightened and modernized the house. There was a new couch, a lovely new glass coffee table, and all the drapes had been yanked down and replaced with wooden shades that let in a ton of light. Several of the old pieces of furniture had been relegated to the basement, and Kit didn’t miss them at all.

She had discovered how quickly you can get work done and purchase things like a new refrigerator and a kitchen table when you pay cash. Kit went crazy buying throw rugs at Pier 1, and the morning she cut up all the old kitchen towels to use for rags was such a glorious purge that she almost fainted with joy.

It was a wonder she had any time to sleep, and with barely thirty minutes to spare before the last class was due to start she surveyed her masterpiece with more than a hint of pride.

“Thanks, Mom and Dad,” she said, looking toward the ceiling. “I’m going to put the rest of the money to good use also.”

When Dr. Bayer, Leah, and Grace arrive, they all go slack-jawed in the hallway. They walk through the kitchen and into the living room, and are afraid to sit on the new couch.

“Sit,” Kit orders. “Someone has to spill the first cup of coffee on the damn thing.”

“What have you done?” Grace is bedazzled. “Can you do a makeover for my house, too?”

“I got some money from my parents’ estate and I thought as long as I was having a makeover I might as well give one to the house, too,” Kit explains, hands on hips, beaming. “And the best thing is that I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to be angry!”

“Bravo, dear,” Dr. Bayer says, applauding.

Once Dr. Bayer gets them all to sit, coffee cups are filled, and apparently the class has begun. The three class members sit in anticipation as if they are at the corner library waiting for story hour.

Dr. Bayer has a hard time not smiling when she looks at them. Grace looks as if she is losing weight, Leah somehow appears younger, and Kit has an exuberance that could roll over a small truck.

Reading their journals this past week, since she confiscated them at the jail, has been an exercise of complete satisfaction for her. Strangely, she wasn’t tired like she usually is when she returns from one of those overnight jailhouse sleepovers. She picked up Phyllis, who acted as if she had been at a doggy spa and was too relaxed to greet her. It was actually her way of saying, “How dare you leave me like this!” By the time they got home, Phyllis was snuggled against her thigh in the car.

Olivia made the mistake of starting to read the journals when she should have been in the shower and preparing for work. She sat down on the side of the bed, with Phyllis twisted between her legs, and time evaporated.

It was obvious that her alternate therapy had made a difference. Leah, Grace, and Kit gradually opened up about
everything
. While many of the revelations were predictable, because, after all, Olivia was a trained clinician, it was still an astonishing journey to digest. And there were many surprises.

Grace had long-held angst about her parents’ expectations. Throw that on top of her gay daughter, her divorce, and her assumed failure as a mother, and she had been making love to a pile of confusion for a very long time.

Leah was such a loving, sweet young woman, but she had been waylaid by forces that were much larger and stronger than she was. Dr. Bayer had a hard time herself not wanting to go kick the living hell out of all the people who had harmed her. Leah’s self-esteem was growing, and she was definitely charging forward. She so desperately wanted to hear from her mother, and who could blame her? And perhaps some of Leah’s work-yet-to-do was to examine how that had come to be.

Kit was wrapped in a tangled mess of family vines that she finally realized she had planted herself. No doubt there was enough testosterone in her familial home to choke a horse, and probably some of her angst that had turned into anger was justified, but Kit now understood how important it was for her to live her life her way—always. There was an entire section of Kit’s log that had been erased over and over. Would she be able to talk about that at the last meeting?

The newest entries in the logs were an amazement of humor, warmth, and the breakthrough Olivia had hoped for that would help them all on their journey. A journey that was far from over. Dr. Bayer got lost in the women’s writing and was dragged back to the real world only when her phone rang and it was the office asking if she was coming in for the day.

Now looking at the three women and remembering what she had read gave Dr. Bayer a sense of pride and accomplishment. It’s true that Jane had failed the class, but she hadn’t yet failed life and that was something. Yes, it was something. And for now, at least, Dr. Bayer had three success stories on her hands.

She tells the women that Jane is doing well at the hospital and wants her to say hi to all of them.

“Did you see her?” Kit asks.

“Yes. I’ve been to see her, but she’s under the care of someone else.”

“Can’t you tell us more?” Grace begs. “Is her husband sticking around?”

All three of the women are leaning forward. They look like owls checking to see if it’s night or day.

“Her husband has moved back into the house and they’re talking,” she says. “I can’t speak about their marriage. I don’t know. That’s something Jane will have to share with you.”

“Is she going to make it? I mean, you know, will she get out of the hospital and get through all of this?”

Who knows? That would be the correct answer, but these three women are filled with such hope and they obviously care for Jane. And Dr. Bayer knows that hope is a good thing. That’s what brought her and these three spitfires to this point.

“Yes, I think so. I really think so. She’s trying and, as the three of you know, once you start trying and cut the chains you put on your own ankles things seem to turn around.”

“You are onto us.” Kit says this with a half smile.

“And you must have read the journals,” Grace adds, also smiling.

“You never fooled me,” Dr. Bayer admits. “Leah gets a gold star because she was the most honest from the beginning. You two? Shame.”

Leah turns and sticks out her tongue at Kit and Grace while Dr. Bayer shakes her head.

It’s time to be serious, time to talk about what’s next, what’s still up in the air, what they must continue to do.

Dr. Bayer explains that she will be signing all of their court papers, and that once they complete forty hours of community service their arrest records will disappear. But she knows that the temptation to be angry will never quite disappear.

There will be a moment, she tells them, in a day, a week, a month, when something will happen, someone will say something and their anger will rise as if it were being pulled by an unseen force. They will be tempted to take a step back. Remembered behaviors from the past will kick in and they will have to consciously make a decision about how to act, what to do with the anger, where to put it, how to control it.

And it won’t be easy.

Anger is such a useful and important emotion, she continues. It can fuel change and strength and make you behave in ways that are absolutely wonderful.

But, she adds, you need anger tools.

She asks them to tell her what they will do the next time they get angry. And she’s very anxious to see how quickly they respond.

Without hesitation, Kit announces that she has discovered yoga and, of course, interior decorating. She’s been using one of her daughter’s videos, and she’s going to start classes at the community center next week.

“I’ve already used the breathing several times,” she tells Dr. Bayer. “I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work!”

Grace has taken up walking and has rediscovered her needlpoint addiction. She’s also getting up early every morning to go to the gym, and Evan has volunteered to show her the ropes. She says that when she feels an anger pang she closes her eyes and makes believe she’s walking. She also loves writing down her feelings, and she’s going to keep at it.

Leah has been very quiet.

“No one has really talked about this very much, but I’m just going to say it because it works for me and it’s what got me here, I think,” she begins. “I pray. I’m not sure quite who I’m praying to yet—some kind of God, who I’m also trying to forgive—but I’ve been meeting with the chaplain and it’s changed me.”

You could bounce a quarter off all the teeth Dr. Bayer is showing as she smiles.

“Well,” she sputters. “I have to be honest now and tell you that’s better than I expected. Those are all absolutely wonderful ways of dealing with anger.”

Dare she tell them what a gift this moment is for her? Dare she tell them what is happening with her own life, that they were an experiment of sorts, and that a seventy-five-percent success rate is pretty darn good?

There is something about these women, this Tuesday-night class, that some people really would call a miracle. Changed lives, new friends, serious moments of introspection, and that absolutely fabulous embrace of the second chance. If a miracle is an extraordinary event, then Dr. Olivia Bayer has just witnessed one.

But she lets the moment pass and reaches into the large tote she brought in with her and pulls out three lunch-size brown paper bags. The women look mystified and Dr. Bayer loves that.

She tells them that she spent a great deal of time going through the anger logs, which they already know, but the last time she read them she selected a mess of their angry words.

Dr. Bayer explains how she wrote those words on pieces of paper and put them inside a bag for each one of them.

The women look at her as if she has just fallen and hit her head. Words in a bag?

Obviously, Dr. Bayer decides, seeing the pinched faces in front of her, she’d better explain this a little better.

“Well, let’s use Kit as an example,” she says. “We know that her log would have contained the words
brothers, pissed, wine
, and
bottle
. Right, Kit?”

“You’ve got me nailed,” Kit answers. “But …”

Dr. Bayer is quiet. She knows Kit wants to share something.

“There’s something else. I can’t believe I’m going to be brave enough to tell you, but we’ve been thought a lot together and Peter and I talked about it and I’m already seeing Dr. Pierce about this.”

Kit drops her head, pauses, and then tells them that Mark, the brother she attacked, molested her when she was a little girl. It happened more than once, and when Kit told her mother she made her promise never to say another word. Her mother talked to Mark, but no one else ever knew, not even her father. Even though the attacks stopped, Kit never forgave her mother.

“As much as I’ve loved her and needed her I’ve hated her just as much,” Kit says. “I finally had the courage, with Peter’s help, to open a letter she wrote to me before she died. It explains a lot, but I need to deal with that issue now. And I know it has a lot to do with my anger.”

Of course! This explains so many things about Kit, and Dr. Bayer is impressed with her courage, with her sharing now, with the level of trust she has invested in all of them.

“Remember that what we share is scared, and just for us,” she reminds them. “It’s fine to talk generally about things, but be careful. Kit is sharing something very personal.”

Leah and Grace assure her that they understand.

“I wrote those words down on little pieces of paper along with many, many other words that Kit had at the beginning of her journal,” Dr. Bayer tells them. “And I did the same thing for Leah and Grace. Does that make sense now?”

They shake their heads.

“Now Kit is going to take us into her backyard for a rendezvous at the barbecue grill. Then we’re going to burn all those old nasty words from three women who have changed, who have grown and are learning to embrace so many new things. And, as much as you might think I did a lot of work, it was you. I did send you down the yellow brick road alone—think about this—and you found your way. Bravo!”