The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (ebook reader online txt) 📗

she cried, ‘Oh God, it just never ends, it never ever stops. How can this be real? I’ve always looked outward, towards infinity. Now, having to look inward, to find a way to coexist in this life with pain, finding a way to hope, to believe. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want to do it, Jet. It just hurts too bad.’

Jet reached over and took Clair’s hands, holding them in her own.

‘It is, Clair. I’m so sorry but it is real. You’re real. And this is what happened. Now we have to find a way for you to live through it and into a future. Healing happens now, in the present moment. This one moment, then the next. That is all any of us have. And for you, it is a journey towards peace. A way to find something more enduring than self.’

‘But why?’ Clair asked. ‘Seriously, I am asking this as a scientist, not as a mournful mother. Why must I live?’

‘Oh shit,’ Jet said, standing up, brushing the sand from her bottom. ‘I was wondering when you would ask this question.’

Clair looked out to sea; her eyes focused on a ship passing through the barrier rock cliffs creating the small cove. Out there, in the vast dark deepness, was her son. His blood, bones, flesh, hair, everything mixed with the salt and water, and all living things. She knew that energy never dies, it just changes form. She turned to Jet. Noticed how her hair, so fair, like light itself, formed a halo around her head. She remembered that hair, that face.

‘You were there, weren’t you? When they brought me in after my suicide attempt?’ Clair asked her, standing up beside her.

Jet turned, eyed Clair. ‘Yes, I was. And I was there before; the first time. After Devon. I saw your pain, Clair, your devastation. I knew you’d be back.’

Neither spoke for a few minutes. The wind had picked up, as it did in the afternoons, when the valley warmed, drawing the cooler air from the ocean, creating wind and fog.

‘What happened to you, Jet?’ Clair asked. ‘Why are you always there, at the hospital? Don’t you have a home to go to? People who care?’

Jet shook her head, smiling. ‘Oh, the patient becomes the therapist, the therapist patient,’ she said, looking at Clair with amusement.

‘Let’s walk. Yes, I do have a home, with Maggie, and a cat named Midnight. I swim laps every morning and teach yoga at a local gym three evenings a week. I also play piano, garden, knit, and read voraciously. I have several women friends with whom I enjoy lunch and an occasional movie. Satisfied?’

‘Hmm, that sounds much like the life I had before Adam and Devon, which means, not much of a life at all. Why not?’

‘You mean, why don’t I have a husband and children? The female dream?’

‘Yes. You’re young, beautiful, smart. Why the fuck not?’

‘I had a twin. Gwendolyn, Gwen. She died of leukemia when we were seventeen, just after graduation from high school. Our parents had been killed in a small plane crash when we were eleven. We lived with our grandmother but it was really just the two of us, together. When Gwen got sick, I contributed bone marrow and it looked like she would beat it, survive. But she got a bug bite, that turned into staph, that turned into sepsis, that killed her. I keep waiting for my turn. You know, my turn to get sick. So, I’m not going to subject any man, or child to that. End of story.’

‘I get it. Some of us are accursed.’

‘No, Clair, that’s not it. Each of us is an infinite number of possibilities. I love my life. I don’t need a husband and children to have meaning and purpose. I am aware, informed, and intentional in my choices, yes. But, cursed, no. My sister was, is, a blessing in my life. I feel her near me always.’

‘Then you understand,’ Clair cried, stopping beside the small stream that ran down through the forest onto the beach. ‘Oh, when I was dead, you know this time, Jet, I saw what it was like. And it was beautiful. Calling me in, not terrifying. I felt such love. He was there, not in his precious little boy form, but vast, ancient, unnamable. I wanted to stay. How I wanted to stay. But I felt a jolt in my chest, in my heart. Pounding, gagging. Hands, pulling me away from him, from that miracle of a billion lights. The warmth, then cold, so cold. So, you see, my yearning for death isn’t a running away from, it’s a running to.’

The cold fog had rolled in to the cove, shrouding the cliffs overhead. A bell buoy sounded its warning to all ships entering the dangerous waters of the Coos river cut.

‘Let’s go, Clair, it’s getting late.’

Clair tripped over a root stepping onto the forest path. She unconsciously cushioned her left breast with her palm as she righted herself.

‘What’s going on with your left side? It looks like it hurts,’ Jet asked Clair.

‘Oh, just a tender area. It feels like when I had mastitis, while I was breastfeeding. It just sort of started, on the walk down here.’

‘OK, we’ll have Dr Bernstein take a look when we get you back on the unit. You’re going to be OK, Clair. You must be, for him. Won’t you?’ Jet asked.

‘Thank you for this, Jet. For bringing me here. I do feel better.’

‘That’s not the same as telling me you’re going to live. To accept life as it is.’

‘What else can I do, right? Radical acceptance? Come on, let’s get back, I’m freezing and starving,’ Clair said, walking away into the darkening woods.

Chapter 10

Adam

The bright yellow dump truck sat in the grass, parked, as though waiting for the boy to race out into the yard, lay his hands on either side of its sturdy metal bed, and push it over to his beloved sand-box.