Wake (61 page)

“What’s in that?” I ask when she uncovers the cereal bowl.

“Mostly chickpeas, with some carrots and other things.” Then she does something very strange—she takes off her gloves. Willa takes the small amount of dark meat she set aside from the chicken and begins to shred it between her fingertips. She drops it in with the chickpea mess and mixes the whole thing together with a fork. A serving of chickpea salad goes onto each of the plates, and she closes it to make sandwiches. Willa cuts the crusts off one.

She can see I’m worried.

“It’s rice bread; very easy on the stomach. I made it this morning,” she says. “You’ve handled chickpeas before, and you’re okay with semi-solids now. And the chicken is in small chunks. Chew it slowly.”

She picks up her sandwich and takes a bite. “Let me know if I made the relish mild enough.”

“What?”

“I made extra-mild relish to go with the chickpeas.”

She made relish? What is she, eighty? Willa smiles and tells me she left a jar of it in the fridge, in case I like it. I can’t believe she remembered. I only mentioned relish in passing, weeks ago.

I pick up one half of my crustless sandwich and inspect it. It looks reasonably edible, except that it’s solid. I hate getting sick, but it’s even worse in front of company, and there are three guests in the house.

Willa picks up our plates and carries them into the living room, away from the others. How did she know?

She sets the food down on the coffee table and takes another bite of her sandwich.

“Just try it,” she says. “If you don’t like it, don’t swallow.”

I suck it up and try a small bite. The bread is soft and bland, which is perfect for me. The chickpeas fal apart easily as I chew, and I don’t even notice the shreds of chicken. I can see the relish in the mix—little flecks of orange and green—but its taste is nothing more than a sweet kick to balance the richness of the chickpeas. I can chew it thoroughly without being overwhelmed by the taste.

“It’s good.” Willa beams at the compliment. I hear an unfamiliar laugh in the kitchen that must be from Elise’s crush
,
but it doesn’t bother me so much at the moment. I keep enjoying my sandwich—the simple fact that I can eat a sandwich again, and that it sits comfortably in my stomach without making me sick. It takes me thirty minutes to eat it at my slow pace, but at the end I’m pretty damn proud of myself.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll leave you the rest of the rice loaf. It makes pretty good toast. There’s some low-sugar jam in the fridge with the relish.”

“When did you make all this?”

Willa shrugs. “When I had the time.” She stacks our empty plates and says, “I was going to give them to you Wednesday before last, but…I sort of blew it.”

“Oh.”

She shrugs again. “You have it now.”

Willa looks uncomfortable with this line of conversation. It makes her vulnerable. So I take a turn, because I owe her: “I’m weaning off Oxy.” My stomach is feeling better, but it’s a tough process. I haven’t even told my siblings. I don’t want to worry them, in case I have to go back on the drug.

“You’re ready for that?”

“We’ll see.”

Willa nods understandingly. She gets it. She always gets it. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“I’ve been trying that, uh, heartbeat thing…to fall asleep.”

“Is the pain worse then?”

“At the end of the day. And when I first wake up. Lying still for so long…”

Willa nods, but I’m not sure she’s really listening. She’s got that very thoughtful expression in place.

The fingers on her right hand absentmindedly trace the long scar on the back of her left. Maybe it’s a sign of trust that she’s kept her gloves off around me for the better part of an hour.

“Have you tried rosemary tea?” she says.

“What?”

“It’s good for joint pain and circulation.”

“Did you make that for…her? When she wouldn’t take painkillers?”

Willa nods. “Lots and lots of tea. My Oma knows a lot about herbals.” She stands up suddenly to clear away the plates. “I’ll write down how to make it. Maybe your mom will help you with it.”

She leaves before I can say anything else. I sigh and wait a few seconds before getting up to follow.

Willa must have told some wild lies to her old therapists, because even a touch of the truth is enough to upset her. Tomorrow is going to be…interesting.

Sunday

Mom drops me off at the Kirk house bright and early. Frank is polite, if not exactly friendly, and I have a feeling he would be a lot less welcoming if my mom wasn’t with me. Willa is wearing a skirt ‘because it’s church.’ She looks pretty but miserable, and Frank is wearing a nice jacket, which makes me think that the skirt wasn’t her idea.

We take Frank’s car to Perth. It’s a long drive and we don’t even have the benefit of music to make it go by faster, since conversation is out of the question. Frank keeps the tuner on the local news and traffic station the whole time.

I can’t wait to get out of the car when we get to St. Paul’s church. It’s an older church, built from chunky gray stones. A steeple stands at the head of the nave, and the heavy wooden doors are open to welcome parishioners. Then I see the sign beside the door welcoming us on behalf of the Catholic Diocese of Perth.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” I whisper to Willa.

“We’re not,” she answers without bothering to lower her voice. “Mom is, sort of, but Frank and I are heathens.”

I’ve only been to a Catholic church once before, when Morgan and Ava had their confirmation ceremony and invited a few friends to the party. Every church is different, but the bones are much the same: the columns, the elaborate altarpiece, the stained glass windows and carvings of saints along the walls. As we enter the foyer the lady ahead of us dips her fingers in a bowl of water and makes the shape of a cross in front of her chest. Frank doesn’t imitate the gesture on his way past the water bowl, but Willa shrugs and gives it a try.

We find a pew and Frank takes a moment to inspect the kneeler curiously. I guess it’s been awhile since he was in a church.

I’m not sure what to expect. In the back of my head I think of when the pope’s funeral was broadcast on TV, and there were a lot of old white guys in robes burning incense and wearing funny hats while chanting. I wonder if there will be any of that here.

As it happens, there is. The organ in the balcony starts up with an opening hymn and a guy dressed in black comes down the aisle swinging a thurible. The smoke smells nice at first, until it’s
everywhere
, and then it’s suffocating. He’s followed by four altar servers and a priest in a green robe, carrying a fat leather bound bible.

There’s a lot of ritual at the front before we’re all owed to sit down. It seems pompous and excessive, and when it’s all done they
still
keep us on our feet. The opening prayer is in Latin. Why did I agree to come to this?

Within twenty minutes, I’m glad I wasn’t born into a Catholic family. There’s a lot of singing, chanting, repeat-after-me, hand gestures, and we move so often you’d think the priest was trying to keep us awake by force. Stand, sit, kneel, stand, kneel again! We’re told to ‘give each other a sign of peace,’

whatever that means, and Willa gets a weird look for giving an old lady the live-long-and-prosper sign.

The three of us stay in the pew while the rest of the crowd lines up for communion. I’m pretty sure you have to be a member to receive it, which disqualifies our little group.

“How much longer, do you think?” I whisper. Willa can only shrug. Thankfully it isn’t too much longer.

We kneel, then sit, then kneel one more time, and then we stand and sing one last hymn while the priest and his entourage file out the back. I’m happy to be free until I realize I’m not—therapy starts now.

*

The ‘youth group’ as it is so wittingly call ed, is held in the parish hall next to the main church. It’s a rectangular building that looks like a bare reception room, the kind that businesses rent out for weddings and occasions. There are about twelve folding chairs arranged in a circle. The group leader, a guy in his mid-twenties, sits across from the door with a few pamphlets and a bible in his lap. I hope he doesn’t quote from that too much. Willa and I take seats a few spaces away from him, but not directly across. If we’re in his direct line of sight he might pick on us to
share.

Willa scoots her chair so close to mine we’re practically touching. The other kids give us weird looks for it, but Willa pretends not to notice.

The group leader, Arthur, welcomes us all and starts the meeting off with a prayer “that we learn to accept ourselves and others and to become better people in Christ.” This whole thing sounds wildly optimistic.

“Let’s all introduce ourselves,” he says, and we go around the circle. I feel like I’m in kindergarten. “It’s nice to have new faces here,” Arthur says to Willa and me when we introduce ourselves.

“Oh, I’m not really ‘here,’” I tell him. “I’m just supporting her.” I point to Willa and she elbows me.

“He is not.”

Arthur smiles and kindly ignores this irregularity. “What brings you here today?”

Willa and I stare at each other with a mutual expression of
You go first.
Neither one of us speaks, and after the silence gets awkward the girl across from me asks, “How long have you been in treatment?”

I wonder if I could get away with punching a troubled Christian girl in the face, because I sure as hell want to. My illness is none of her business. I stand up to leave and Willa grabs my arm. She pulls me back down to the chair so hard I almost fall into her lap.

“He’s in remission,” she says stiffly. “And I watched my sister die at home.” That’s a nice, tidy way to abbreviate assisted suicide into something people can stand to listen to. She gives Arthur a hard look and he moves on to the other group members.

One of them is a recovering user. He makes himself seem pretty badass, but then it turns out he just liked to smoke a joint or two on the weekends before he saw the light, and who hasn’t gone through that phase?

One of the girls is here as part of bereavement counseling. She lost her brother in a drunk driving accident. The boy beside her as bul ying issues, and no wonder, because he’s got ‘victim’ written all over him. The guy next to me introduces himself like he’s at an AA meeting, except he just says, “It’s been thirty-four days,” without specifying what he’s free of.

“I think he’s lying,” another boy pipes up. Arthur gives the kid the eye and says we don’t belittle our fel ows here.

Willa leans past me to ask AA Boy what he’s thirty-four days clean of, and this stel ar specimen of human intel igence replies that he’s overcoming a crippling addiction to pornography.

Willa gives him the look I so desperately want to. “Really? Isn’t watching that stuff just a regular hobby for teenage boys?”

Arthur chimes in with some points about how pornography and the viewing thereof violates the temple of the body. He even pulls out a few bible passages to support his argument.

“So, what are you into?” Willa asks. “Solo? Doubles? Fetish? Gay? And isn’t it a damn shame that RedTube put up a pay wall?”

Arthur cuts Willa off before she can say more. “Let’s not discuss this in any further detail. We’re all very proud of Greg for overcoming his addiction.”

“Yeah, overcoming,” Willa whispers. “Coming over and over and over…” I try not to laugh so Arthur won’t call on me, but he does anyway.

“I suppose congratulations are in order,” he says. “Remission. That’s a big step.”

And you, my dear sir, are a joke.

“Yeah.”

“May I ask what type of cancer you had?”

“No.”

My abruptness doesn’t bother him. Arthur’s voice goes all gentle and he asks, “So what brings you here today?” Willa did, but apparently that’s not a legitimate answer. Willa notices my hesitation and slips her little hand into mine.

“Bereavement,” she says.

Arthur turns to her. “For your sister?”

“Not me.” Willa nods to me. “Him. It’s like that line from Arnold, ‘Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.’” Clearly the quotation of a work non-biblical throws Arthur. “The old him is dead. The new one is in transition. Grief is involved.”

Arthur turns his benevolent gaze on me. “Jem, would you say that’s a fair assessment?”

Yes, but that doesn’t give her the right to answer for me.

“She blames herself for her sister’s death.” None of them know she really killed Thomasina, but that’s beside the point. Arthur is mildly amused by the way Willa and I contribute each other’s issues to the group instead of just dealing with our own shit.

“Clearly the two of you are very close. It’s obvious you have a real connection.” His eyes flit to where our joined hands rest on my knee. Willa and I don’t say anything.

“How long have the two of you been friends?”

We both have to pause to think about that. The answer feels ridiculous: “Three months.” The short length of time surprises Arthur, too.

“well , it’s clearly quite a bond.” He asks some more questions about Willa, some of which she answers herself, but I end up fielding all the personal ones. Willa deals in facts: it’s been more than two years since Thomasina died. She had lymphoma that spread to her liver and intestines. She died of internal bleeding. The emotional shit—that Willa and Thomasina were close, that she still carries a lot of guilt and self-loathing, are things she doesn’t want to talk about, so I do, because this is stuff that Arthur needs to know if he’s going to help her.

“Is there anything you’d like to share, Willa?” Arthur offers. She declines, and the floor goes to the girl whose brother died. She’s clearly been here before. She’s good at the whole personal sharing thing—

has a whole monologue of her feelings prepared.

My ass is numb from sitting by the time we break. The session ends with another prayer, and we’re all free to go. Most of the group hangs back, waiting to talk to Arthur one-on-one or to say goodbye to other group members. Willa and I just leave, back to the main church building to find Frank.