Chamberlain, Diane - The Shadow Wife

But the Bay Area was full of people who were full of hope, and the next day the office she shared with Alan was crammed with walk-ins. The phone rang continuously, and they had to call in a temporary worker in the middle of the day to give the receptionist they shared a break. Carlynn worked until ten that night and until midnight the following night, and when she failed to wake up with the alarm on the third morning after the appearance of the Life article, she knew she could not continue this way. She couldn’t see everyone who wanted to see her. The work drained her, both mentally and physically. Yet, how could she turn people away? Even more distressing to her was that she was not able to help all of those people she did treat, and she didn’t understand why that was the case.

Some people, like Brian Rozak, were relatively simple for her to heal. With others, she didn’t know where to begin. It was as though her intuition left her when she sat in a room with certain people. Why did one approach succeed with a particular patient and not with another? Why did talking sometimes help and other times hinder? She simply didn’t know the answers to her own questions, and the more patients clamored to see her, the more her lack of knowledge disturbed her. Sometimes she felt alone. She was the only person who could do this. Invaluable. Irreplaceable. And that scared her more than it honored her.

Alan both supported and envied his wife. He pleaded with her to teach him everything she knew about her method of healing, but no matter how long Alan spent with a patient, no matter how intently he spoke to them, looked into their eyes, held their hands, he made no difference in their physical condition.

Carlynn knew he was proud of her, though. Proud and thrilled by the newfound fame that brought them more patients than they could handle. He tried to protect her from overdoing it by putting an end to the walk-in appointments and by hiring nurses to screen the patients so that she would see only those in the greatest need. Some, she turned away herself, knowing from talking with them on the phone or in person that she could not help them. She just knew. There was something in their voice, or in the words they used, that told her. And it was nothing she could explain to anyone who asked, not even her husband.

Her own mother was one of those people.

She tried to visit her mother every month, sometimes with Alan, sometimes alone. Delora never asked Carlynn about Lisbeth, and if Carlynn offered any information about her sister, Delora feigned deafness in addition to her failing eyesight and arthritis. Once, Carlynn overheard an interviewer ask Delora the question, “How many children do you have?” and her mother replied, “One” without a moment’s hesitation.

Carlynn had felt guilty at first, continuing to see their mother, but Lisbeth insisted that she did. Someone needed to be sure Delora was all right and getting her eyes checked regularly, Lisbeth said. So she encouraged Carlynn’s contact with their mother, and Carlynn was relieved. No matter how horrid one’s parents were, she thought, it was the duty of the family to look after them.

Her mother had grown rather famous in Monterey County, not that she’d truly ever been an unknown. But now that word had spread about Carlynn’s healing powers, newspapers and magazines were always after Delora for an interview. Sometimes they tried to contact her to see if she might be able to get them an appointment with her daughter to treat their cancer or their ulcers. It annoyed Delora tremendously that she, herself, wasn’t a better advertisement for her daughter’s skills. Carlynn had been unable to heal her arthritis or the macular degeneration that was stealing her vision. Not for want of trying, certainly, and with every visit she tried again, sending her energy into her mother’s body until she was drained and had to sleep for hours. But nothing worked, and Carlynn was never surprised. Her mother was one of those people she would turn away from her office, knowing that no matter what she did, this woman would not get better. Not her eyesight nor her knees. Not her narcissism. And certainly not her cruelty toward her unwanted second daughter.

30

L IAM WALKED INTO M ARA’S ROOM CARRYING HIS GUITAR CASE.Joelle smiled at him from the edge of Mara’s bed, and Carlynn looked up from where she was sitting in the recliner.

“Good!” Carlynn said. “I’m proud of you.”

He had not brought the guitar the week before, when Carlynn had initially instructed him to do so. He hadn’t touched it since the day Sam was born. It would need new strings, he told himself. The calluses on his fingers were no longer as tough as they should be. He’d had a world of excuses. Mainly, he just did not want to have to look at, hold or play something that was so strongly connected to his life with Mara. He was afraid of how it would make him feel, and he didn’t want to be that vulnerable, especially in front of Joelle and Carlynn.

He was annoyed at Carlynn’s intrusion into his life. Yet, he had to admit, it was kind of spooky in Mara’s room when she was there. There were changes in Mara since Carlynn had been seeing her. Even the physical therapist admitted it. Mara was tracking better with her eyes as she followed the little stuffed toy the therapist moved through the air. She was awake for longer periods during the day, and her right hand and arm were not only getting stronger, but seemed to move now with a purpose, something he had never seen before Carlynn’s involvement.

The therapist said, though, that this was not a miraculous change in Mara. Often, after a period of little or no progress, a person with the sort of damage Mara had suffered could begin to show signs of improvement. Liam should not expect too much, though, the therapist warned him. Mara’s cognitive impairment was likely to remain at its current level, even if she did make small strides in the use of her muscles.

Even though he had not brought his guitar to their last meeting in Mara’s room, he had to admit that the visit had been almost fun. He’d brought a couple of tapes that he and Mara had made of their performances, instead. They’d listened to the music while Carlynn did whatever she was doing to Mara’s hands, and the songs brought back memories of various concerts and made him and Joelle laugh again. The laughter had seemed alien the first week, when he and Joelle obediently talked about their memories of being together with Mara. How long had it been since they’d laughed together? But last week had been better. Joelle didn’t seem like so much of a stranger, or an enemy, or, as Carlynn had pointed out to him weeks earlier, an evil person to be avoided. She seemed actually quite harmless, and it felt okay to enjoy his time with her as long as it was to help Mara. That was how it had been the first year after the aneurysm: he and Joelle had done many, many things together, all in the name of helping Mara. It wasn’t until they did something just for themselves that their togetherness felt wrong.

Joelle was back at work now, a week sooner than her doctor’s recommendation, but she seemed fine. Pregnancy looked good on her. There was something about her small size and long hair and the clothes she was wearing, which drew attention to her expanding middle, that led everyone to talk about how cute she looked. Was he the only person who thought she also looked very, very sexy? He’d always found something provocative in her petite body and in the way her long dark hair fell over her breasts. He could still remember the weight of that hair on his chest and his thighs and the feeling of it in his hands. That memory would come to him at the most unexpected and inappropriate times—when he was working with the family of a cancer patient, for example, or in the midst of a meeting with the E.R. staff—and he was annoyed with himself for being unable to control it.