Critical Affair, page 15
“I’m going to see my wife tomorrow.”
His wife. Just the serious dose of reality she needed about now.
Her eyes slowly rose to meet his. “You see her every Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“May I go with you?”
Jennifer had never seen surprise on Michael’s face before. It gave him a different look, an endearingly vulnerable one.
“You want to go with me,” he said when he finally found his voice. “Why?”
“You want to know about Michael,” his mother had said. “Meeting Lucy will tell you a great deal.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Jennifer said. “May I?”
His calm veneer was back, but she sensed his struggle with some new emotion. “It’ll be a long drive. A long day. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty.”
THE MENTAL CARE FACILITY where Michael took Jennifer was east of Courage Bay, a two-hour drive that ended in the mountains.
It was not what Jennifer had pictured when she thought of an institution. Instead of walls, it was surrounded by gardens. The building was in the Italian Renaissance style, with upper-story pilasters, and balustrades on the side porches.
As they walked up the front steps, Jennifer spied a man standing on one of the porches. He looked to be in his twenties, wore nothing but a T-shirt and diaper, and stared out at the trees with a blank, lifeless expression.
She wondered if she were really ready for this. Of all the horrors her imagination could devise, losing her mind ranked number one. How was she going to react when she came face-to-face with a woman who had?
The clerk at the front desk greeted Michael by name and told him that Lucy was in her favorite garden. Jennifer silently followed as he led the way.
They found her sitting on a bench, a crayon in one hand, a drawing pad in the other. An older man with that indefinable air of a doctor sat beside her, watching what she drew.
Lucy wore a pink top and black slacks over her petite frame, her hair a golden-blond halo around her head. As they approached, Jennifer caught sight of large eyes as innocent a blue as the spring sky. Michael had written a lot about his wife’s emotional beauty in his book, but nothing about her physical features.
Lucy Temple was lovely.
“Michael!” she said in obvious glee as she jumped to her feet.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, picked her up and spun her in a circle. She squealed with delight, just as any four-year-old might.
For mentally, that’s all Lucy was—would ever be—despite the fact that she was in the body of a thirty-five-year-old woman.
Jennifer watched the happiness that infused both their faces as the whirling continued. Trust. Love. Even from a distance, she could see that despite Lucy’s tragedy, the bond between her and Michael was solid.
So this was what a dose of reality felt like.
“Hello, I’m Preston Zahn,” said a voice close by.
Jennifer swerved to see that the man who’d been sitting on the bench next to Lucy had risen.
“Jennifer Winn.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I watch and enjoy your weather reports all the time.”
She thanked him with a smile. “Preston Zahn sounds very familiar. Aren’t you the doctor who wrote the foreword in Michael’s book?”
“One of the benefits and curses of having an unusual name is to be remembered,” he said. A hint of speculation crept into his eyes. “You’re rather a surprise. Michael never said a word about knowing you.”
“Are you Lucy’s doctor?”
“Her primary one, yes. I’m also the director of this long-term-care facility. All of the patients Michael wrote about in his book live in this residence.”
“I didn’t know he’d worked here.”
“When I was still teaching, Michael was one of my brightest students, arguably the brightest. He gathered the data from patients in this residence for his doctoral thesis. After Lucy had her accident, he came back. Have you known each other long?”
“Not very.”
“He must really like what he knows to bring you here. You’re the only nonfamily member who has visited. He’s very particular about who Lucy meets.”
Michael approached then, Lucy at his side. She walked with a slight limp and her coordination seemed to require a concentrated effort. But otherwise, she appeared to be physically normal. He introduced Jennifer to her as simply his friend Jen.
Lucy’s face lit up with a lovely smile. “Michael’s friend Jen,” she said, and opened her arms to wrap Jennifer in them.
There were all kinds of hugs. Wimpy hello hugs. Rib-cracking hugs. Tender hugs. And then there was Lucy’s hug—full and exuberant and heartfelt. Jennifer returned it because it was impossible not to.
“Come, Jen,” Lucy said, taking her hand and leading her toward a centuries-old blue oak tree in the center of the garden.
Jennifer looked around to get Michael’s reaction, but he had turned and was in a conversation with Dr. Zahn. She told herself that if they were unconcerned with Lucy kidnapping her, she probably didn’t have anything to worry about.
Lucy beckoned Jennifer to sit beside her on a wooden bench beneath the shade of the ancient tree. Thick milkweed plants surrounded them, the fragrant, globe-shaped flower clusters a lovely deep pink.
Leaning her head back, Lucy pointed upward. “See?”
Jennifer tried to locate what Lucy was pointing at, but all she noticed were the sun’s rays dancing across the leaves of the magnificent blue oak. Then it dawned on her—that was what Lucy wanted her to see. The beauty of the light.
She recalled one of Michael’s descriptions from chapter nineteen.
Lucy takes full joy in the dawn of every new day. She is able to accept and embrace life as it is. And because she does, she lives with an intense awareness of the miracle of each moment. Maybe we could all use a little of this kind of brain damage.
Jennifer sat still and simply let herself enjoy the light.
Something wiggly dropped onto her shoulder. Flinching in revulsion, she raised her hand to flick it off. Before she could, Lucy clasped her wrist.
“Please, don’t hurt.”
Lucy’s hold was steady, but gentle. Jennifer lowered her hand.
Releasing Jennifer’s wrist, Lucy put a finger on her shoulder. A striped caterpillar crawled onto it. Slowly, carefully, Lucy swung her finger toward a nearby leaf and eased the caterpillar onto it.
“Baby butterflies,” Lucy said as she pointed.
Jennifer saw them then. Caught in the sunlight washing the leaves on the milkweed were at least a dozen striped caterpillars. And hanging from buttons of silk attached to the milkweed stalks, were the hard-case chrysalides—like tiny green-and-gold jewels—in which some of the caterpillars had already encased themselves. Lucy’s babies would soon be emerging as glorious monarch butterflies.
As Jennifer watched, one of the caterpillars slipped off its leaf and fell onto Lucy’s hair. Unlike Jennifer, Lucy did not flinch in revulsion. She glanced at the wiggling body in her peripheral vision and smiled.
“Hello,” she said to it as she held up her finger. But Lucy’s depth perception and coordination were slightly off, and the caterpillar couldn’t reach the helpful finger Lucy extended.
Jennifer bent forward, put out her finger. The caterpillar crawled on without hesitation. Its black-white-and-yellow-striped body glistened, its many tiny feet warm feathers on her skin. A beautiful, harmless little creature. And she had so nearly, so unthinkingly hurt one.
Holding the caterpillar up to a leaf as Lucy had done, she watched it gain a firm hold on a sturdy stem.
“You saved!” Lucy’s arms came around her, hugging as only she knew how. “Thank you, Jen.”
Jennifer returned the hug, deeply touched by the gentleness of the spirit she was with. And the magical moment she had almost missed.
“Thank you, Lucy.”
“THE CAR ACCIDENT happened seven years ago, the week before Michael’s twenty-eighth birthday,” Zahn said. “Lucy had gone shopping with her parents and sister, intent on buying him a special present. They’d been married only six weeks.”
Zahn and Jennifer were sitting on the bench, watching Lucy lead Michael around the garden’s blooming flowers, stopping at each one so she could tell him about it.
“A truck hit them head-on,” Zahn continued, his voice soft. “Her parents and sister were dead at the scene. Lucy was barely alive. I told Michael she’d never talk or walk again. The brain damage was too great. He saw the CTs, the MRIs. He knew. But he wouldn’t let that stop him.”
Jennifer had seen that unshakable determination.
“For the next eighteen months he worked with her here,” Zahn said. “At the end of that time, she was talking and walking, as well as saving little caterpillars and every other manner of creature that she finds in need of help.”
“Did you know her before the accident?” Jennifer asked.
He nodded. “She was another one of my students. Michael met her in class, dated her all through graduate school. I attended their wedding. Lucy was very smart and sweet.”
“I think she still is.”
Zahn looked approvingly at Jennifer. “The nurses here will tell you that she alerts them when the hummingbird feeders are empty. Her room is on the second floor in the back. The feeders are in the front on the end. There’s no way she can see them. Yet she’s always right.”
“How do they explain it?”
“When they asked her, she said the hummingbirds told her. The nurses didn’t take her seriously, of course, until one of them watched what happened when the feeders emptied. The hummingbirds flew up to Lucy’s window. There are two hundred windows in this institution, but they only hover outside hers.”
An hour ago, Jennifer would have been skeptical of such a story. But that was before she’d met Lucy.
“Let me show you something,” Zahn said as he flipped through the pad he held. When he found what he’d been looking for, he swung the page toward Jennifer.
“I asked her to draw me a self-portrait. This is what she did.”
The drawing was rough, very much like what a young child would do. Two eyes and a mouth. The slightly oblong skull had blond hair with large holes in between the yellow clumps.
“I asked her what those holes were,” Zahn said, pointing at them. “She told me that she’d been hurt there. But I wasn’t to be sad. Because that was where the light now came in.”
Jennifer looked at the drawing and then at the artist on the other side of the garden; Lucy was bathed in sunlight, holding up a flower for Michael to smell.
“He couldn’t bring back who she was,” Zahn said, “but he made possible what she is now. Still, he’ll insist it was she who helped him find the unexpected meaning in the shattered fragments of their lives.”
We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
“I think they found it together,” Jennifer said as tears filled her eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
A LIGHT RAIN SMEARED the windshield as Michael drove toward Courage Bay. A CD of his favorite songs was playing. He glanced over to see Jennifer’s head back, eyes closed, fingers tapping in tune to the music.
“I don’t remember rain being in your weekend forecast, Ms. Meteorologist,” he teased.
She opened her eyes and slanted him a look. “We are not in Courage Bay, and this is not rain. It’s a moderate drizzle.”
“Moderate drizzle,” he repeated, putting on the windshield wipers and making a show of squinting through the glass. “Looks pretty heavy to me.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Heavy drizzle would put visibility at less than five-sixteenths of a mile. This is obviously between five-sixteenths and five-eighths.”
“That obvious, huh?” he baited.
“To the trained eye.”
“And by the time we descend into Courage Bay, this light rain is going to be gone?”
“This is not light rain. These drops have a diameter of less than point zero two inches. Raindrops are larger than point zero two inches. And, yes, this moderate drizzle will definitely be gone by the time we reach Courage Bay.” She paused to send him a smile. “I hope.”
She had a great smile.
The day had been full of unexpected gifts. His wife’s condition was difficult for most people to see. The normal response was to turn away. But Jennifer had not turned away. She had accepted Lucy, even shown affection for her, just the way she was.
Michael did not have the words to tell Jennifer what that meant to him.
“In Australia, ants build high walls around their nests to prepare for heavy rain,” she said. “They know it’s coming, long before it does. Yet even with all of our sophisticated instruments and supposedly higher intelligence, we’re never sure. Makes me wonder.”
“What is it you wonder?” Michael asked.
“You know about Lucy and the hummingbirds, of course?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe like the ants with the rain, the hummingbirds connect with the important things in this world that we so often miss. Like the gentle sweetness inside her.”
If Michael hadn’t been driving, he would have hugged Jennifer for that. He wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.
“You understood what everyone in that grief seminar was going through because you’d been through profound loss and grief yourself,” she said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Others needed to tell their stories and be heard,” Michael said. “Often healing has far less to do with the wisdom of some supposed expert’s words than it does with simply being listened to.”
“Who listened to you about Lucy?”
“I wasn’t smart enough to talk to anyone.”
Jennifer twisted in her seat to face him. “You’re joking.”
He shook his head.
“But you’re a psychiatrist.”
“Which sometimes makes me blinder than everyone else—especially when it comes to myself. In medicine we’re taught that competence and expertise are what matter. I thought using mine to bring Lucy back to what she was would save us both. But it was watching Lucy welcome each day with a willingness to embrace whatever life offered that taught me to accept the unacceptable.”
“Thank you for letting me meet her. She’s…wonderful.”
Jennifer rested her head back and closed her eyes again as her fingers resumed tapping to the music.
Michael pulled into the right lane and slowed to just below the speed limit, letting cars whiz past him. There was a pleasant magic to this day. He was not eager for it to come to an end. But all too soon, he was pulling into her driveway, walking her to the door.
He was about to say that he’d call her in the morning when she surprised him speechless for the second time in two days.
“Would you like to come in?”
Every time he’d picked her up the past few days, she’d always answered the bell in less than thirty seconds, ready to go. And when he’d seen her home, she’d made it a point to give him a quick goodbye at the door.
Michael stared at her for several seconds before nodding.
She put her key in the lock.
Her house was secluded, up a private road nestled in the foothills. From the outside, its silvered redwood, stone chimney and profusion of natural shrubbery exuded a feeling of serenity and simplicity.
Michael stepped into a living room of golden wood floors and cream walls. The furniture had simple lines, the fabrics a watercolor mixture of soft pastels. Knickknacks adorned every shiny tabletop. Potted geraniums filled the windowsills. An old grandfather clock ticked quietly in the corner.
It was a warm room that invited one inside. A room where nothing shouted for attention. A room where the people in it would be the focus.
“I’ll get the jewelry box,” she said.
The name of the jeweler. He’d forgotten he’d asked her for it. So that’s why she’d invited him in.
For a moment there he’d thought…but, no, she’d made her position clear.
He moved to the mantel to study the pictures. Jennifer as a young girl with braids. A college graduation picture of her standing beside a smiling older man and woman. From the resemblance, he knew they were her parents. There were other pictures of them, this house in the background. It had been their home.
In the seminar, she’d spoken of her parents often and always with love. He could see that love in the way she smiled at them in the pictures—and the way they smiled back.
When she returned a moment later, she held out the ring box. Opening it, he found not only the jeweler’s name but also the diamond engagement ring.
“I’m going to give it to Russell’s mother,” she said, “along with the key to his house. But I’d rather wait until things are…settled about his death. Since she thinks I’m responsible, receiving anything from me now would probably only bring her pain.”
Not many people would respond to unfair suspicion with understanding and kindness. Michael wondered if Jennifer had any idea how special she was.
After making a mental note of the name of the jeweler, he handed the ring box back to her.
She dropped it into her purse. “I’d like to be there when you talk to the jeweler. I’m free most days this coming week. If I’m not at home, you can always get me on my cell.” Moving to the table, she jotted down the numbers on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
He slipped the paper into his pocket. Time to leave. But she wasn’t urging him toward the door. She seemed to have something more on her mind and was struggling to find the right words. He waited.
“Michael, I need to apologize to you for what I said last Sunday.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes, there is. Please, let me do this. Even without having completed your book, I should have known that the man you are would never…My comment about your home being a bachelor pad where you met your women was not only unjust, it was…unkind. I’m so very sorry.”
