The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (115 page)

He smiled, and once again she had the feeling of something closely guarded miles below his calm surface. “I know what you’re going through. It’s the least I can do.”

“Your mom or your dad?”

Something flickered in his depthless blue eyes, then he shook his head, answering softly, “My wife.”

He hadn’t meant for it to slip out. It was just that he couldn’t think of a reason not to tell her. Which surprised him. Normally he avoided any mention of Faith. Not because it was a secret—everyone on staff knew—but because of the reaction it usually elicited: comments ranging from well meaning to insensitive to downright cruel. In general, he’d found that people approached the subject the way they might a growling dog. Even incest, thanks to
Oprah
and the like, was more openly discussed than mental illness. Paranoid schizophrenics, in particular, had all the appeal of lepers.

“I’m sorry.” Anna gazed at him with those soft eyes that on more than one occasion, he was ashamed to admit, had followed him into bed. “It must be hard for you.”

“I manage.”

“Where is she now?”

“Thousand Oaks—it’s a psychiatric hospital.”

Anna’s sweet face crumpled in sympathy. “Has she been there long?”

He was pleasantly surprised. Few people ever asked that; usually they dropped the subject. “Eighteen months,” he told her. “The time before that—” He broke off with a shrug. “Schizophrenia is treatable, but not curable.”

“But most schizophrenics aren’t institutionalized.”

“Hers is an extreme case. It’s better this way, believe me.”
She’s where she can’t hurt herself.
“In time, who knows?” Hope, he’d discovered, had a life of its own.

“It’s ironic. I mean, you being a therapist and all.” Color crept up into her cheeks. “I’m sorry, that was out of line.”

“It’s okay. I’ve thought the same thing myself … on more than one occasion.”
You don’t know the half of it.
“For the longest time I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was my job to fix her.” He gazed at the photo on his desk. It had been taken the summer they’d rented that farmhouse in the Dordogne, their last real vacation. Eight years ago—had it been that long?

She nodded slowly. Anna’s eyes were a clear, guileless blue. For some reason just looking at her gave him hope—if not for himself, then for the human race. She said softly, “Most people don’t have the slightest idea, do they? What it’s like. The person you love is there … yet they’re not. Sometimes I think death would be preferable.” The color in her cheeks crept higher, forming ridges along her cheekbones. “I know that sounds terrible.”

“Not at all.” He smiled to let her know she wasn’t alone in thinking that.

“My mother was …” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. He knew the frustration—how to sum up in fifty words or less a person about whom volumes could have been written. “She had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to read—our house was full of books. She was good with her hands, too. For years she sewed all our clothes, all these adorable matching dresses. When we were little, people used to think Monica and I were twins.” Her smile was one of such earnest sweetness, it went through him like a knife. “What’s your wife like?”

Marc understood now why he felt so drawn to her. There were none of the usual artifices with Anna; what you saw was what you got. He glanced down at her hands resting lightly in her lap, their fingernails no longer chewed to the quick. Hands both soft and capable, the small opal ring she was nervously twisting their only adornment. He felt something loosen a half turn in his gut, and found himself wanting to reach across the narrow space that separated them and cup a hand over hers.

“My wife …” He paused, finding it difficult to summon the memories he spent the bulk of his waking hours trying to suppress. “She was …
is …
a lawyer. We used to joke that the only way to end a debate in our house was for one of us to fall asleep. She was so fierce in her opinions. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with her.”

He pictured Faith at the government-issue desk in her shithole of an office at WCF—Women and Children First. Not that she’d paid any attention to her surroundings; she could have been working out of a cardboard box on the curb for all she cared. The only thing that mattered was her clients—poor women, single moms mostly, for whom she’d battled tirelessly, everything from deadbeat dads to the INS. There were no lengths to which she wouldn’t go, and it wasn’t unusual for him, on nights when he’d arrived home late from work—usually after stopping at a bar along the way—to encounter a blanket-covered figure stretched out asleep on the sofa.

“How long has she been this way?” Anna eyed him with compassion.

“It seems like forever.”

She sighed in commiseration. “I know just how you feel. The worst is how it creeps up on you. Instead of losing them all at once, you lose pieces. Sometimes I want to scream at my mom, as if it were her fault she can’t remember things. Then I hate myself.”

Marc found her frankness refreshing, and he let his guard down a little further. “With Faith it was nothing I could put my finger on at first,” he recalled. “Just a lot of little things. Comments she made that were out of context. The way she’d look at me sometimes, as if she thought I was out to get her. Then she started obsessing about the people next door.”

“What about them?”

“She was convinced they were spying on us.”

She nodded. “My mom sometimes gets it into her head that my dad’s after her—never mind he’s been dead for seventeen years. She’ll get this petrified look on her face, and I swear I have to look over my shoulder to make sure he’s not there.”

“The fear is real even if the demons aren’t.”

“The thing I hate the most is feeling so … so …” Her hands clenched and unclenched. “It’s as if I’m on the other side of a locked door, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get in. Do you ever feel that way?”

“All the time.”

Did she have any idea how lovely she was? Probably not. He knew from talking to her that all
she
saw was her size, which was blown out of proportion in her mind. What made her beautiful, far more so than Monica, was a purity of heart he rarely saw except in children.

Dr. Fellows, the founder and director of Pathways, would surely look askance at his volunteering to help her choose a nursing home for her mother. He’d wonder aloud if Marc had an ulterior motive. And in the fleeting moment of indecision that had accompanied his impulse, Marc had wondered himself. But he wasn’t looking to bed Anna. Aside from its being on the line professionally, he didn’t want to see her get hurt. She wasn’t anything like Natalie, his current lady friend, who didn’t care that he was married and wouldn’t have wanted more if he weren’t.

His intercom buzzed, sparing him any further thoughts along those lines. “Monica’s here,” announced Cindy in Intake. “Is her sister in with you?” Her voice was strained. Clearly, Monica was being her usual demanding self and Cindy was eager to be rid of the patient he’d overheard her refer to the other day as Her Royal Pain in the Ass.

“Tell her we’ll be with her in a moment.” He couldn’t help feeling discouraged. Monica had been a tough nut to crack. Even after a month of daily groups, one-on-one sessions, and AA meetings, the progress she’d made was incremental at best.

He rose to see Anna out, and as she stood, something in the curve of her cheek, the tilt of her chin, brought to mind his mother. She didn’t resemble her in the physical sense— Essie had been short and dark, with direct brown eyes and a mouth to match—but in the air of resolve she wore. His mother had come to this country with nothing, and she’d raised her fatherless brood with little help from anyone. From what he knew of Anna, she was cut from the same cloth.

She took his hand at the door. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t mention it.” He remembered how hard it had been for him when he’d been looking at facilities for Faith—and he was a doctor.

Once again, he wondered if his impulse had been a good one.
Was
he interested in more than playing the Good Samaritan? Maybe. But nothing untoward would come of it, so what was the harm?

“Roll up your window. I’m freezing.”

Anna compromised by rolling it up halfway. Was it going to be like this the whole way home? Monica seemed determined to give new meaning to that old saying, A leopard never changes its spots.

“Why don’t you put your sweater on?” It lay crumpled on the seat, a cashmere cardigan the pale yellow of clotted cream that had cost more than Anna made in a week.

Monica only crossed her arms over her chest. She looked a little pale, though it might have been because she wasn’t wearing makeup. “I don’t know why you didn’t send a limo. That’s all I need, to be stranded along the road in this old heap.” She glanced out at the guardrail that was the only thing standing between them and a two-hundred-foot drop into the ocean glittering below.

“I thought it’d give us a chance to talk.” Anna struggled to maintain an even tone, thinking,
Let’s start with the reason I can’t afford anything better than this old heap.

“Talk?” Monica snorted. “All I’ve done these last few weeks is talk. I’m so sick of it I don’t care if I never speak to another person for the rest of my life.”

Which would suit me just fine.
“Well, it must have done you some good. I don’t know when I’ve seen you looking more … refreshed.”

“As opposed to what, exactly?”

“You know.” Anna wasn’t going to play this old game.

She waited for Anna to wade in deeper, and when she didn’t, Monica sighed heavily. “Okay, I admit it. You were right to ship me off. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“All I did was give you a push in the right direction.” Good or bad, she didn’t want this on
her
head.

“Either way, a month in the gulag would have been a breeze in comparison. Mind if I smoke?”

Anna opened her mouth to ask nicely if it couldn’t wait until they stopped for gas, but realized that would have been the old Anna talking. “Actually, I do,” she said.

Monica eyed her narrowly. “Well, well. Miss Assertive. I suppose next you’ll be telling me to shut up.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” The calm with which she spoke amazed her. Where had it come from? It was as if she’d been suffocating for years and all of a sudden she could breathe. “Look, it’s going to be a long drive and you’re not making it any easier.”

Monica looked as if she were going to say something nasty, then slumped back with a sigh. “Sorry. It’s just … I’m scared, you know?” Her voice was small, almost childlike. “Back there everything was taken care of. No decisions. No—” She broke off, pulling in a shaky breath. “I’m not sure I can handle being on my own.” Her eyes shimmered with tears, and she reached out to grab hold of Anna’s hand. Her fingers were icy. “Forgive me?”

Anna shrugged. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

She felt a tug of sympathy, but resisted it. Why was it always about Monica, never anyone else? Their mother, for instance. She hadn’t once asked about Betty.

Anna gathered up the courage to broach the subject. She felt stronger since her talk with Marc. And here she’d thought
she
had it bad. “Listen, there’s something—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. “Just one itty-bitty little cigarette?” Monica wheedled. “I’ll roll my window down.”

Anna was on the verge of caving in when a snippet from a poem popped into her head:
For want of a nail … the kingdom was lost.
If she waffled on even something this small, she might lose her nerve … and ultimately the battle. “It can wait,” she said briskly, and out of the corner of her eye saw Monica’s jaw drop. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” Monica asked sullenly.

“Mom. She’s worse.”

“So?” Monica didn’t even pretend to care.

“So …” Anna took a deep breath. “It’s gotten to be more than I can handle.”

“Isn’t that what I pay Edna for?”

“Edna isn’t there all the time.”

“Well then, have her work an extra hour or two a week.” Monica spoke as grandly as if she were offering a million dollars.

“That’s not what I had in mind.”

“Come on, how bad could it be? All she does is sit in front of the TV.”

Like you would know.
“You have to watch her every minute. Last week she almost set the house on fire.”

“What do you expect
me
to do about it?”

“I think you know.”

Monica glanced at her in surprise. She wasn’t used to Anna’s being so direct and it had clearly taken some of the wind out of her sails. “A nursing home, you mean.” Her voice was flat.

“I don’t see any other choice.”

“Have you talked to Liz?” Monica hedged.

“She’s all for it.”

“Easy for her to say.” Monica didn’t have to spell it out: Liz wouldn’t be the one footing the bills.

A pulse in Anna’s temple began to pound. If Monica didn’t go along, she’d be left with no choice but to put her mother’s house up for sale. And even then the money it would net wouldn’t be enough for long-term care in one of the better homes. Betty would end up in one of those dreadful places that were little more than warehouses for the elderly. “Obviously, we can’t do anything without you,” she said as evenly as she could.

“Damn straight.”

Anna slowed going into the next turn, thinking of the steep drop-off ahead. If she were to accidentally drive off a cliff, it would solve everything, wouldn’t it? Then she remembered Marc … and Liz … and her dear friends Laura and Finch. The life that only weeks ago had seemed intolerable was all at once precious. “I’m not going to get down on my knees,” she said sharply. “She’s
your
mother, too.”

“I’ve done more than my fair share.”

Anna fought back the sharp retort on the tip of her tongue. “Look, I’m not saying you haven’t been generous.” Without Edna,
she’d
be in an institution.

Like Marc’s wife.
She’d felt a flicker of selfish joy at his revelation, but seeing the pain in his face she’d instantly been flooded with guilt. Envy, too. Would any man ever love
her
that much?