Tuesday Night Miracles (8 page)

“Don’t you think I can let go now? Can’t I go shopping in my sweatpants and stop worrying about what’s fashionable and what’s not? And what is so wrong about dancing in the living room with your friends? Friends! Mother, do I even have any friends?”

Derrick has never caught her like that, and sometimes she wishes he would. Maybe if he heard her he would know that she’s not always a bitch, not always ready to impale someone with a shoe, not always just downright rude.

Jane isn’t sure she will ever be able to talk to her mother the way her friends talk to their mothers. She watches every Diane Keaton movie over and over when Derrick is out of town, just to see what it might be like. But every day that passes, with every mistake she makes, Jane’s certain that she’ll never have the kind of relationship she sees in the movies.

It’s because the real sound of her mother’s voice, her tight face, the way she looks at Jane as if she’s checking for flaws so she can expel her, immediately erases Jane’s few kind and lovely memories.

Jane wasn’t just not good enough; neither was the parade of friends who came and went and came and went until Jane herself actually began believing that she was superior.

“Mother, am I better than everyone?” she asked, after her mother sent home a friend who had dared to spill juice on the living-room floor.

“You would never spill juice on
her
floor, would you?”

“Not on purpose. But it was an accident. People have accidents. It was just a mistake, Mother.”

After three days of absolute silence from her mother, Jane realized how she must play the family game. There would be no complaining, no spilled juice, no room for failure of any kind. Is it too late now? Too late to laugh into the wind and recapture the Jane who never had a chance?

The refrigerator is humming like her mother’s, and Jane pulls her head off its cold surface and for a fleeting moment looks into her eyes and then looks away very quickly

She turns and heads directly for the envelope, opens it, reads it, and is immediately totally baffled:

Next week, instead of class as a group your assignment is to drive to Johnson State Park and take the five-mile hike. You must do this alone, slowly, and notice everything that is around you. When you return home, I want you to write me a letter about the experience—and not just about what you see and what happens but also what you feel. Good luck. You have a week to complete this task, and I suggest you go in late morning. You will see why once you get there. The next class details will follow as soon as I have your assignment
.

Sincerely
,

Dr. Bayer
.

Hiking? Jane wonders who in the world this Dr. Bayer person is and if she even has counseling credentials. Is she nuts? Me? Hiking? This is totally insane! But surprisingly, after she sets down the letter Jane forgets that she was going to open another bottle of wine.

She paces back and forth in the kitchen and shouts, though no one is around to hear, “You’ve got to be kidding!” She finally sits back down and reads the letter five more times before she remembers that she owns a pair of terribly expensive hiking boots she has worn only once.

But she can’t stop telling herself that the woman in charge of her anger-management class must be totally off her rocker.

10

The First Assignment

The Red Dot

J
ane, not one to let tasks slide, has her hiking boots laced up, her water bottle filled, the directions plotted on her GPS, a sack lunch and a thermos of coffee ready, and is heading toward the state park before 9
A.M
. the day after class.

Derrick agreed that hiking might sound a little nuts, but he also noticed a small spark in his wife’s eyes while she was ironing her shorts.

“Honey, you’re going to be the best-dressed woman on the trail,” he said. “I half wish I could go along and watch. Sweetheart, you have to be the only woman in the world who irons hiking clothes.”

“Shut up,” Jane said, smiling.

Derrick stood with his hands on his hips, and Jane thought for a second how she really should run into his arms and push her face against his chest. Derrick is physical perfection. He is tall, dark, handsome, and kind. He has short wavy coal-black hair that is showing an occasional hint of gray, which makes him look even sexier. His hazel eyes always seem to be dancing, even when he’s upset, and Jane knows other women look at him not just with admiration but with pure lust.

How in the world did I land this guy?

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” he teased, taking a step toward her. “You shut up.”

“How dare you!” she said, feigning in anger. “You shut up.”

When had they last been playful with each other like this? For a second, Jane almost wished she didn’t have to go hiking. She wished everything was the way it used to be and that she was ironing a skirt for work, and helping Derrick with his tie, and then kissing him as if they had just met and were saying their first goodbye.

Instead, she brushed him off by moving her hands back and forth as if there was a fly buzzing around her head. Derrick looked disappointed but called out, “Don’t get lost, city girl,” as he turned and walked out the door.

Jane is just behind the morning traffic, which is exactly what she planned, and the two-hour drive will get her to the park a little after eleven, just what the doctor ordered.

As she drives east through the towns that fan out from Chicago, Jane tries hard to remember when she last went hiking. It had never been at the top of her activity list, though in college she’d gone to a few parks and there had been tons of hiking when her mother sent her away to camp—year after year after year. But that was a long time and several shoe sizes ago. Maybe that’s why her hiking boots still looked as if they had never been worn.

Whatever. Here she was following orders like a good girl, sipping coffee, and a tiny bit excited. She was actually excited about the adventure because it gave her something to do besides moping around the house and feeling sorry for herself. The state park, she had learned the night before, was part of a huge estate once owned by the Wrigley family, who made a fortune on chewing gum. The house was now park headquarters, and hiking trails and picnic areas spread out for miles from the entrance.

The moment she pulls into the lot, pays her fee, and parks, Jane feels different. No one knows her here. She could be anybody, and before she even gets out of the car she’s actually embarrassed by the crease in her green shorts. What in the hell was I thinking?

She quickly wiggles around in the seat to try and get a few wrinkles. After several semi-successful attempts at looking like a real hiker, Jane straps on her small fanny pack, picks up a map of the five-mile trail, and starts walking.

It is absolutely quiet except for the birds, the chipmunks, whatever is rattling around in the grass at the edge of the trail, and the sound of her boots crunching against the gravel. Walking into the almost deserted park actually feels, well, good.

Jane doesn’t bother to look at the trail map. There is only one five-mile trail. This little hike won’t take long, and then she’ll write up her simple report and that will be the end of whatever this was supposed to be. She heads off, and ten minutes later she’s standing next to a stream that looks like a small river. It is a river she has to cross by stepping on a series of rocks that have been placed in a straight path.

“Serious?” Jane is talking to the rocks. They do not answer her. She looks around to see if there’s a missing bridge or a large man to carry her across.

“Shit!”

Jane realizes she could cheat, walk back to the car, go get a latte someplace, and spend the rest of the day in her bathtub. But what if there’s something she is supposed to notice? Dr. Bayer specifically suggested late morning. Maybe there’s a trunk show around the corner, or a wine bar.

For the love of God.

Jane balances carefully in the unfamiliar boots, one foot and then the other, her arms straight out and waving so she won’t fall. And then, just before she steps off the last rock onto the other side of the river, she hears something that startles her, then screams and loses her balance.

When she falls, it’s forward and to one side, so that only half of her body gets wet and also gets more than a little muddy.

She screams as she rolls to her knees just as an elderly pair approaches from the opposite direction.

“Are you okay?” one woman asks, running to help her.

Jane looks up as if she is a dog waiting for a treat and sees that the woman and her hiking companion are old enough to be her grandmothers. She’s mortified.

“I think so,” she lies, getting to her feet.

“Here, dear,” the other woman says, dipping her hands into the water to splash the mud off Jane. “This will come off easy, and it’s lovely out. You’ll be dry before you hit the dung fields and thistles.”

“What?” Jane is aghast.

“You’ve never been on this trail before?”

Jane can’t speak. She shakes her head.

“Oh, my!” the first woman says. “You’re in for a treat. You might want to hurry so as not to miss the feeding. There’s absolutely no one else on the trail, and Bella is going to need your help.”

The two women turn and Jane watches them hop over the rocks as if they are Olympians, and then she is alone and wonders if she has gone mad.

Thistles? Dung fields? Bella?

She glances at the river and decides to keep moving forward. There must be a bridge somewhere. She’s now certain the wine bar is out of the question, and she imagines what it might be like to push Dr. Bayer into the river fully clothed. All that cotton would surely weigh her down.

Eventually Jane realizes that her heart has slowed and it’s once again quiet and she’s drying off quickly as she passes through pine trees that smell like Christmas. Without thinking, she picks up a fallen branch, smells it, and tucks it into her mud-streaked waistband. It’s warm and sunny, the sky is bright blue, and Jane doesn’t notice she’s tromping through the dung fields until she smells something nasty and looks down.

“Oh, my God!” There is some kind of poop everywhere. Long, brown hunks of goo are sticking to her shoes, and without much effort she has flung some up onto her legs. Jane starts shaking her legs one at a time because she doesn’t want to touch the poop. Sweet Mother of God this is crazy! She starts hopping as if that will clean her legs and get her out of the dung field.

Jane hops for several minutes, bouncing through the field as if she is on a pogo stick. She’s also swearing. “Damn that stupid Dr. Bayer!” Then it’s as if someone is holding up a mirror, and she realizes she’s being absolutely ridiculous.

“Here I am,” she laughs, “out standing in a field of crap.”

She laughs so hard that she’s afraid she’s going to fall over in the poop and until she hears someone calling, “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”

When she looks up, there’s a woman in the distance waving a huge straw hat in her direction. It must be Bella. Jane responds with her own “Hello!” and she can see the woman motioning for her to come. Jane doesn’t hesitate, even though she knows there must be thistles ahead. Well, maybe she’s the thistle. Maybe Dr. Bayer called ahead to warn the park. “A prickly woman is about to enter! Danger! Danger!”

The waving woman makes Jane forget about the poop, and before she knows it she can see the edge of what must be a pond or a lake and the sound of something—geese? And, of course, here come the thistles and here comes Jane in her shorts, with her beautifully shaved legs and her lovely leather belt and, yes, eye shadow and lip gloss.

“Run the gauntlet, Jane. Run, Jane. Run,” she tells herself.

Jane, even with her badass attitude, is not one to miss out on anything. She has crossed the muddy river and survived the dung fields. And already she can’t wait to write up her report for the insane woman who sent her here. She gingerly steps into the thistles and tap-dances her way forward until she’s at the edge of a pond.

And then she sees them. Trumpeter swans. Her heart stops.

“Oh, my!” The sight of the dozens of swans as white as snow, with jet-black beaks, honking as if they are playing in a holiday pageant, takes her breath away. Jane is unable to move, and as she watches them circle she is suddenly overcome by an urge to cry. But she fights the urge. Jane does not cry.

“The boys and girls are very hungry,” Bella calls out, motioning Jane toward big baskets of grain and corn on one side of the pond.

Jane watches as Bella dips her hands into the storage bins. She tells Jane that she’s a zoologist who is employed full-time, paid through a lifelong endowment by the Wrigley family to maintain, breed, and care for the swans. And every feeding is like a miracle.

“A miracle?” Jane asks.

“Thank heavens you heard me!” Bella says. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years and it’s amazing. Every single time I need to feed the swans, someone comes walking up the trail to help. I’ve never seen you before and here you are.”

And then Jane dips her hands into the grain and corn and follows Bella to the edge of the pond, where the heavenly white birds are waiting. And she witnesses another miracle: glorious birds that mate for life taking care to make sure their partners get enough to eat, long graceful wings beating in delight, the sweet melodic sounds of their trumpetlike calls, a sea of graceful white moving directly toward her.

“It is so beautiful,” she whispers, bending to place the food at the edge of the pond. “I had no idea … no idea.”

For the rest of the time, Jane forgets about anger class, her muddy shorts, and the smell of dung radiating from her shoes. And five hours later, as she is throwing the boots into her trunk and walking to the passenger seat barefoot, she is thinking about what it feels like to have a baby swan eat out of her hand while the most gracious and kind woman she has ever met tells her that surely, after this, she must believe that anything is possible.

The Green Dot

Two days after the first class, Kit spent an hour after dinner looking through the
Chicago Sun-Times
entertainment section.

“Trolling for laughs,” she told Peter when he asked about her secret assignment. “That’s what I have to do. Go to a comedy club and laugh.”

Peter was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. Kit looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. And, seriously, how long had it been since she noticed him, focused on him, bothered to see him instead of whining or worrying? His rugged good looks always turn into something surreal when he smiles, and he was smiling at his wife. Her eyes scanned his perfect teeth, an almost-always dark five-o’clock shadow, his dark hair and deep-blue eyes. He’s modeled for three firefighter fund-raising calendars in a row. His fellow firefighters pick on him endlessly because of it, too.

“A comedy club? That’s amazing,” he said seriously. “But what the heck, Kit? I wish I could go along. Try and find someplace close so you can have a few drinks and walk home, will you, please?”

“I wish you could come, too,” she half whined. “I get kind of lonely.”

“Things will change again,” he reassured her. “You just have to be a good girl.”

“I thought you liked it when I was a bad girl?”

“Not that kind of bad girl. Not the kind of bad girl who has to go to naughty class,” he teased. “Maybe laughing at a comedy club will be good for you.”

“Maybe,” she said, dropping her eyes, and wishing she could erase the last few weeks from her life.

Kit has yet to think about the assignment as fun. She’s hard-pressed to remember the last time she did something that was fun, come to think of it. The funeral, the mess she’d gotten herself into, her job, which has apparently been eliminated. Peter’s schedule kept him gone so much lately that they haven’t even gone out to get their favorite pizza. How sad is that?

Chicago and its Second City comedy theater are major icons in the entertainment world, but Kit likes Peter’s idea of finding something close, and she was startled to see that the pub six blocks down has been having a comedy night for several years.
Have I been a hermit that long? Crap!
The show starts in thirty minutes, and Kit smells like an old shoe.

She forgoes a shower, splashes water on her face, combs her hair, puts on the one pair of jeans that doesn’t look filthy, grabs a clean shirt, sprays herself excessively with perfume, and all but runs down the street.