I do not know. I have never heard her talk like this. She is not looking at me or Mab or Mirabel or Pastor Jeff. She is looking above our heads.
“And then he tripped over a branch or something. It was buried in the snow, and he couldn’t see it. He fell right over, and we laughed so hard, and when I tried to help him up, I slipped too, and then we were just lying in a pile together in the snow, laughing, tears streaming down our faces. I made it upright finally, and I reached out to pull him up, and he took my hand but resisted when I tugged his, and then he said, ‘As long as I’m down here…’ and he was on his knees and I was standing there, and he said, ‘I think you better marry me.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I think I better.’ And then he got up, and he walked me home. And then at my door he said, ‘I am pretty sure I love you more than anyone has ever loved anything ever.’”
She is quiet then. Even I can see there is more to say, but she does not want to say it. She has sucked her lips inside her mouth like she is afraid of what will come out of them next and wants to keep the words in. Her eyes are wet and pink and still not looking at us but no tears fall out. Then she closes them and scrunches them up and then she opens them and makes them wide and then she blinks and shakes her head and shakes her head some more. And then, after a long time, she starts talking again like she is right in the middle of her sentence and did not interrupt it with a very long silence. “And he said, ‘But wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll love you even more.’” Then she swallows a lot and does a little cough and then she says, “And you know, they never shut the park. All these years, the park’s still there. Hardly anyone goes anymore because you wouldn’t go in the lake for anything, and going to the park with that lake just calling to you and you not being able to go in, that’s just cruel. Plus, you know, all those memories. It’s hard. But it used to be a really nice place.”
Pastor Jeff reaches over and squeezes Mama’s hand which squeezes his back.
No one has anything they can think of to say next.
I look at my sisters. Their faces show confused which is just how I feel too because Mama and Pastor Jeff answered the question. But it did not answer the question.
Three
I’m doing English homework in the clinic waiting room. King Lear. Now there’s a character with three daughters who has a rough time of it. Aside from that, though, he and Nora don’t have much in common. Lear bought his own troubles, and that’s a luxury Nora’s never had. Maybe he’s right that he’s more sinned against than sinning, but Nora is not sinning at all. Nora is sinned against instead of sinning. Maybe if she’d had the chance, she might have liked to sin a little in her life, but her whole world has been taken up with being sinned against, so there hasn’t been time. It’s not that the well-connected, well-endowed, and powerful don’t have troubles. It’s that they’re so much more likely to have earned them than the ones who are isolated, poor, and defenseless. And not the king of anything.
My own sins include telling my mother I wasn’t well enough for school this morning when really I just wanted to come to work with her so that I could be here for Apple Templeton’s appointment this afternoon. I don’t know why it’s important that our library is her lineal home, but it must be. Bourne is too small for it to be a coincidence that her forebears lived in this town and then she married into the family that destroyed it. I don’t know whether what she’s looking for has anything to do with what we’re looking for, but I do think if it were in their attic, in their plant, or in the files Omar let her look through, she’d have found it already. After all, unlike me, she knows what it is. All of which means, whatever it is, there’s a chance it’s in our house and has been there all along. And if only I knew what it was, we could find it.
Chris Wohl emerges from his appointment, pulls his jacket off the coatrack in the waiting room, and winks at me. “Miracle Mirabel, how’s it hangin’?”
“I am good, thank you,” my Voice says mechanically. “How are you?”
He stops like I’ve unplugged him. “I’m not so great right now, actually.”
“No,” says my Voice, and I hope he knows I don’t mean “No, don’t talk to me” or “No, I don’t believe you” but “No” like “Oh no.”
“The usual.” He gestures over his shoulder. “I was just telling your mom. Leandra’s cancer is back. Soon there won’t be anywhere left for it to spread. I know it’s my job to cheer her up, but who’s going to cheer me up? There are drugs that help, but only she’s allowed to use them. It blows.”
“No,” my Voice says again.
“But at least I can say so whereas you…” He waves at me, my chair, my Voice. Chris has no filter. Nora says it’s part of his recovery. You stop doing drugs, you also stop lying, even the little ones that make conversation less awkward. Not that non-awkward conversation is an option available to me either. Or maybe when all your energy goes into staying sober and taking care of your wife, you have no reserves for masking your social anxieties.
“It is okay,” my Voice whirs.
“It is?” I am surprised to see he has tears in his eyes. “Life is kicking my ass up and down Main Street. How are you okay? How do you do it, Mirabel?”
He waits patiently while I type. Then my Voice says, “I am Miracle.”
“Miracle Mirabel.” He grins through tears. “Yes, you are.”
He squeezes my hand and leaves. This happens all the time, as if I’m an extension of my mother: patients leaving her sessions only to confess to me in the waiting room, even the ones who aren’t recovering addicts.
Nora comes and stands in her doorway.
“You are, you know.”
I duck my head at her.
“You are a miracle. Some people’s bodies make it easy for them to get through life.” I am thinking of Apple and wondering if Nora is too. “And some people’s bodies make it hard, but your body, your body makes it miraculous.” She pauses so I can agree or reject this. I do neither. “I’m so proud of you.”
Yes, I nod. Yes I know, not Yes I agree.
“You know what else? You’re great at this.”
At what? I flip my hand up.
“This. You’d be a great therapist.”
A pause again. Again, I neither yes nor no.
“For one, you’ve had a lot of practice.” She laughs. “You listen well. You’re thoughtful, which is the most important part. You raise good questions.”
Raise, she says, as if I cannot ask them.
“I don’t mean the sight of you or the fact of you.” Nora, of course, can read my mind. “I don’t mean you inspire people with how brave you are or any bullshit like that. I mean you are mindful, and mindful is contagious. You have perspective, so the people around you seek some too. Your effort is apparent, which reminds people of its virtue and necessity. You could help people if you want to, Mirabel. And you should. Because you’re good at it. And because people need help. And because it will help you too.”
Part of the perspective she means is If Mirabel can smile in the face of such soul-crushing constriction, my dead end doesn’t look so bad. But it is true I look for bright sides, not because I am an optimist by disposition, not because I don’t know any better—I do—but because I am so slow. It takes me so long to do everything I do. And if you go slowly enough, every moment of the day becomes its own journey, either its own triumph, which you get to celebrate, or its own failure, which you get to move on from, by definition, in the very next moment. If you operate at speed, each word is not a victory, each swallowed piece of food or sip of water is not a conquest. If you operate at speed, you need bigger things to vanquish than a sentence or a muffin or a single line of King Lear. It’s not that slow is not also frustrating—for me, for Nora, for my sisters—but frustrated is what people are supposed to make their sisters feel, what teenagers everywhere are always provoking in their mothers. It’s not that slow isn’t painful, maddening, restrictive. It is all of those things. Plus it’s not like I have a choice. But slow is also one of the blessings of being me. Mixed blessings. Slow is one of the mixed blessings of being me.