The Shadow Wife (5 page)

She’d lost track of the conversation and nearly jumped when her mother put a hand on her arm. “Are you with us, honey? You look like you’re a million miles away. What’s troubling you, love?”

Joelle drew in a long breath. “I was thinking about Mara,” she said. “If anyone deserves a miracle, it’s her.”

“Mara’s perfect for Carlynn Shire to work with,” her father said.

Joelle felt like screaming in frustration at his one-track mind, but she managed to make her voice even as she responded. “You haven’t seen Mara since the aneurysm,” she said. Her parents knew Mara quite well. Over the years, Joelle had brought Mara to Berkeley with her several times. “The doctors say she’ll be this way forever.”

Her father leaned toward her. “What do you have to lose by going to see Carlynn Shire?” he asked.

“I’d feel like an idiot,” she replied.

“And if there’s the slightest chance Mara could be helped,” her father said, “wouldn’t that be worth feeling like an idiot?”

“Of course, but…” She shook her head. “I doubt people can just call her up and ask her to heal someone.”

“But if you told her who you were,” her mother said. “If you told her you were that baby she saved in Big Sur thirty-four years ago, I bet she would—”

“Although,” her father interrupted, “she might not want to be reminded of that time.”

“Why not?” Joelle was puzzled.

“Because of the accident,” her mother said.

“Oh.” Joelle had heard the story any number of times, but she had never really listened. She knew what she was risking by asking her parents to repeat it to her once again—they would go on and on and on—yet suddenly she had a real desire to know.

“Remind me,” she said. “What happened, exactly?”

“Carlynn and her husband—”

“Alan Shire.” Joelle recalled his name from the previous recitations of this tale.

“Right. They were both doctors. And Carlynn had the gift of healing. Alan Shire didn’t, but he was very interested in that sort of phenomenon. So they founded the Shire Mind and Body Center to look into the phenomenon of healing.”

Joelle knew the center still existed and was somewhere in the vicinity of Asilomar State Beach. It was viewed with skepti
cism by the medical establishment and with total credibility by California’s alternative practitioners.

“Yes,” her mother said, “but they didn’t call it that back then. What was it called?”

Her father looked out toward the new birdhouse for a moment. “The Carlynn Shire Medical Center,” he said.

“Right,” said her mother. “It was just getting off the ground then. Penny Everett showed up at the commune one day, without a voice. She came there to get away from stress, because her doctor said that was what was causing her hoarseness.”

“She went on to be in
Hair,
” her father added.

“Who did?” Joelle was getting confused. “Carlynn?”

“No, Penny,” her mother said. “And she knew she couldn’t get a part in
Hair
if she had no voice. She’d been an old friend of Carlynn’s, and so she called Carlynn and asked her to come heal her voice. Carlynn dropped everything and came down to the commune.”

“Of course,” her father added, “we always believed some other force brought her there right at that time, because it was just the day after she arrived that you were born. If she hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t be here now.”

The thought made her shudder despite her skepticism.

Her father continued. “So, she’d been there a few days when—”

“A whole week,” corrected her mother. “That’s why Alan Shire and her sister were so freaked out.”

“Whatever,” her father said. “She’d been there a while, and of course we had no phone or any way for her to reach her family without leaving the commune, so I guess her husband and sister got worried about her and drove down to Big Sur to find her.” He looked at his wife. “What was the sister’s name?” he asked her.

“Lisbeth.”

“Oh, right. Alan Shire and Lisbeth, the sister, got a cabin over near Deetjen’s Inn—remember Deetjen’s?”

Joelle nodded quickly, wanting him to get on with the story.

“They checked into the cabin,” he said, “then started looking for the commune. We weren’t the only commune in Big Sur, as I’m sure you remember, and they probably didn’t know where to start looking. It was dark, I guess, by the time they got to the right one.”

“Actually, it was only Alan who got there,” her mother said. “The sister had stayed behind in the cabin.”

“That’s true. And Carlynn was in Penny’s cabin then, but she’d been in our cabin just an hour or so earlier. Rainbow.” He grinned. “Remember it?”

“Sure.” She smiled at the memory of the small, dark cabin. She could smell it right at that moment—the scent of ashes mingled with the earthy, musky odor inevitably present in a wooden cabin surrounded by trees and fog. What a strange existence she’d had for the first ten years of her life!

“We’d had her come over to Rainbow a couple of days after you were born because we thought you were running a fever,” her father continued. “
You
thought she had a fever,” her mother corrected him.

“I still think she did,” her father said. “I think it disappeared as soon as Carlynn touched her.”

Even Joelle’s mother shook her head at that, but Joelle felt moved. Her father had always been a nurturer, and she liked to picture him, a kid of nineteen, skinny little Johnny Angel, aching with worry over his baby girl.

“Well, anyhow,” her father said, “she went back to Penny’s cabin after curing you—” he winked at her “—and Alan Shire showed up and spirited her away without letting her even say goodbye.”

“And the next day, Carlynn and her sister were driving on Highway One, looking for a phone or a market or something, and they didn’t know the roads, and they flew off the side of
the cliff in the fog. The sister, Lisbeth, was killed, and Carlynn nearly died herself.”

“Scared the shit out of us because we knew that could happen to any one of us on those roads,” her father said. “Those of us with vehicles, anyhow. We all felt terrible. Carlynn had helped Penny and had saved your life, and yet her own sister died without her being able to do a thing about it.”

“I know Penny felt terrible,” her mother said. “If Carlynn hadn’t stayed with her so long at the commune, her sister would never have had to come to Big Sur to find her.”

“It was so long ago, though,” her father said. “I doubt someone of Carlynn’s…you know, internal resources, would still be grieving over something that happened that long ago.”

“How old is she now?” Joelle asked.

“Well, she must have been in her mid-thirties then,” her mother said, “so that would put her at about seventy by now.”

“You know, I really wish you could go see her.” Her father dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin before resting it on the table. “Whether you ask her for help with Mara or not, she’d probably feel great seeing you. Knowing that you’re alive, that something good came out of that time at the commune, even though it meant the loss of her sister. That you’re the wonderful person you are because of her.”

Her eyes burned again. What was wrong with her? Was this part of being pregnant, growing weepy over every little thing?

She set her own napkin on the table. “I’ll think about it, Dad,” she said, and to her surprise, she knew she meant it.

T
HE SOCIAL WORK DEPARTMENT HAD NOT BEEN GIVEN MUCH
space in the hospital. Located on the second floor, it consisted of one large room divided into four small offices, or “cubbyholes,” as the staff referred to them. The largest of the cubbies was the central office, where the coffeepot, mini-refrigerator, watercooler, mailboxes and reception desk were located. The three other offices were aligned in a row, separated only by paper-thin walls, through which a whisper could be heard if someone was really trying to listen.

For that reason, Joelle waited until she had the social work offices to herself before making the call to Carlynn Shire. She could hear Maggie, the department’s receptionist/secretary/office manager, talking to her boyfriend on the phone in the central office, but both Paul and Liam were in other parts of the hospital, and she wanted to take advantage of the quiet. Dialing the number for the Mind and Body Center, she wondered if Carlynn Shire would really remember an infant she had “saved” more than thirty-four years before.

“Shire Mind and Body Center.” The voice that answered the phone was that of a very young woman.

“Hello, my name is Joelle D’Angelo.” Joelle heard Liam step into his office next to hers as she was finishing the sentence.
Drat.
Swiveling her chair to face the far wall, she lowered her voice. “I was wondering if I could speak with Carlynn Shire,” she said.

There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end of the phone.

“Carlynn Shire doesn’t actually
work
here,” the young woman said.

“Oh,” Joelle said. “I thought…”

“She’s retired. You might catch her at some kind of function or whatever, but she’s almost never actually here.”

“I see.” Joelle wondered whether to dig further. She needed to use the bathroom very soon. In just this past week, she’d learned the location of every public and staff restroom in the hospital. She’d had some teasing of nausea, as well, and couldn’t even think about the liver she’d eaten the week before without gagging. It had been only a little over a week since she’d learned she was pregnant, before which she’d felt completely well, which made her wonder how many of her symptoms were psychological.

“Well, I’d still like to talk with her,” she said. “Could you tell me how to reach her?”

“I can’t give out that information.”

“How can I get a message to her?”

That hesitation again. “Hold on a sec,” the young woman said.

Not too long, please,
Joelle thought, squeezing her legs together. She could hear Liam on the phone in his office, and the sound of his voice made her want to weep.
Everything
made her want to weep these days. Liam hung up his phone and left his office, much to her relief, and she heard his footsteps travel down the hall.

In the old days, before the night that had ruined their friendship, he never would have come and gone from his office without ducking into hers for a quick hello. Often, he’d ask if she wanted
to go for a hike the following weekend, sometimes with Sam in a carrier on Liam’s back, sometimes without.

The last hike they’d been on, shortly before Sam’s birthday, had been at Point Lobos. The hike had been, she’d thought later, a turning point for both of them, a warning they’d chosen to ignore. They’d hiked together many times, both of them finding the exercise a great outlet for the stress they were under and an opportunity to talk. But on this hike, something had been different. Sam had not been with them, and when Liam held her hand to help her climb a boulder or cross a dry creek bed, she’d felt something new in his touch.

That morning, she’d given him a book of meditations related to the loss of a loved one, and he’d brought it with him on the hike. They sat on a rock, back to back, while he read aloud from it. They were high above the Pacific, and below them, cormorants flew from rock to rock and sea lions floated and bobbed in the water. Oh, what a strange mixture of emotions she’d felt that day! Surrounded by all that nature had to offer, she’d listened to Liam read about feelings they both shared over Mara’s illness. Those words, and the warmth of his back against her own, had made her both tearful for all that Mara was missing and filled with joy that she, herself, was alive and healthy. Afterward, Liam plucked a small yellow flower from some ground cover and slipped it into her hair, the tips of his fingers sending an electric thrill through her body as they brushed against the shell of her ear.

“That’s probably an endangered flower,” she’d said, but she picked one of the pale yellow blossoms and slipped it behind his ear, as well. They’d held hands as they walked along the smoother part of the trail, neither of them addressing the fact that the way they were relating to one another went beyond the sharing of grief to something more.

Joelle thought she could wait no longer for the bathroom. She was about to hang up when the voice of another woman, sounding slightly older than the first, came over the line.

“I understand you want to speak with Carlynn Shire?” the woman asked.

“Yes, I would.”

“What is this regarding?”

Joelle hesitated.
I want her to cure a friend,
sounded ridiculous if not downright presumptuous. “I wanted to talk with her about a friend of mine who’s very sick and—”

“She doesn’t take special requests any longer,” the woman said. “She hasn’t for years. I’m sorry.”

“Wait!” Joelle said, afraid the woman was about to hang up on her. “I, um, Car…Dr. Shire saved my life many years ago, when I was born, and I just wanted to meet her and…reconnect, I guess.”

“What did you say your name was?”

This time, Joelle said, “Shanti Joy Angel,” and she was willing to bet the woman didn’t bat an eye as she wrote down the information. She probably heard similarly eccentric names all the time in her business.

“And when did she save your life?”

“Thirty-four years ago. I was born on the Cabrial Commune in Big Sur, and she happened to be there visiting a friend. I wasn’t breathing when I was born. My parents said she saved my life.”

There was a long silence from the other end of the phone, and Joelle hoped the woman was jotting down the story.

“Give me your number,” the woman said, “and I’ll pass the message along to Dr. Shire. It’ll be up to her whether she gets in touch with you or not.”

“Sure, I understand.” She gave the woman both her work and home numbers and hung up, wondering why she was now feeling an almost desperate need to speak with Carlynn Shire. Her father’s words were still in her mind:
If there’s the slightest chance Mara could be helped, wouldn’t that be worth feeling like an idiot?