“I didn’t want to let go of her,” she said wistfully. “I felt so strongly connected to her.”
“Because you saved her life,” Lisbeth said.
“I guess,” Carlynn agreed. She told them about the tiresome food she’d eaten that week, and Lisbeth laughed, promising to go out early in the morning to find some bacon and eggs to bring back and cook in the cabin.
It was nearly four in the morning when the three of them fell asleep, Alan and Carlynn wrapped in one another’s arms, Lisbeth stretched out on her twin bed alone. Outside the cabin, the fog began creeping in from the ocean, hugging the coastline and easing its way through the trees, silently covering Big Sur in a milky-white shroud.
34
JOELLE WAS TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS PREGNANT AND ATTENDING her first childbirth class, which was held in one of the large, carpeted meeting rooms at the hospital. Gale Firestone, the nurse practitioner in Rebecca’s office, was the instructor, but everyone else in the room was a stranger to her, and she was the only pregnant woman there without a partner. A couple of the women had other women with them instead of husbands, but she had no one.
Her mother was going to be her birth partner, and Ellen was going to sit in on childbirth classes in the Berkeley area to prepare herself for that role, but she would only be able to attend a couple of the classes in Monterey. Joelle told her that didn’t matter, just as long as she got herself to Monterey when she went into labor, and her mother had promised to be there for her.
They were watching a movie in the class tonight, and everyone was either sitting or lying on the floor of the dimly lit room, absorbed in the film. Joelle found it hard to concentrate on the images on the screen. She’d seen birth movies before, and she’d seen the real thing plenty of times, given that she worked in the maternity unit. But lying on the floor, a pillow beneath her head, she was having difficulty putting herself in the place of the spread-legged woman in the movie.
She was beginning to have nightmares about labor and delivery. The dreams were always the same: during labor in one of the birthing rooms, she would get a raging headache. Liam would be there, and he would run out of the room, and Rebecca and the nurses would abandon her, as well, saying they had other patients to take care of. She would be left there with that terrible headache, about to give birth, and no one to help her. She felt abandoned in the dream, just as she was feeling abandoned in her life.
The woman on the movie screen was panting now, and Joelle closed her eyes, her mind wandering to the visit the day before with Carlynn and Liam in Mara’s room. Mara had actually made a sound while Liam was playing the guitar, a “woo-woo” sort of sound, and she and Liam had looked at each other, stunned.
Did that sound mean something? Was Mara trying to sing? To communicate? When she lifted her arm in the air, was she reaching out to Liam? Or were they just seeing what they wanted to see?
Joelle’s bulging tummy was an ever-growing object in that room, something none of them discussed, and she wondered if at some point Mara might notice it. Would she ever have the ability to think to herself, “Joelle is pregnant,” and would she wonder then who the father was? She wished she knew how many questions Mara wanted to ask but was unable to. But maybe there were none. Maybe that was why she was able to smile so easily.
Joelle was beginning to have a terrible fear, one she hadn’t voiced to Carlynn, and she wondered if Liam shared it with her. If Mara were to get better, but not well enough to truly function in the world outside the nursing home, would that be a positive thing? What if she could only get well enough to know what she was missing? Right now, Mara was not suffering, and there were moments when Joelle wondered if they should be tampering with the blissful ignorance she seemed to enjoy.
No matter what was happening to Mara, though, there was a miracle occurring in that room. The miracle was that, as long as she and Liam were with Carlynn and Mara, they could talk and laugh together. Sometimes Joelle felt as though Carlynn was saving her life all over again.
35
Big Sur, 1967
A THICK WHITE FOG WRAPPED ITSELF AROUND THE CABIN THE following morning, and Carlynn woke up before her sister or Alan. It was chilly, and she snuggled closer to her husband, but she was too wide awake to stay in bed for long. She nudged Alan gently, hoping he would wake up and go out with her to get something for breakfast, but he was snoring softly, the way he did when he was deeply asleep.
Carefully, she extracted herself from his arms and got out of the narrow bed. She opened her suitcase, which was resting on the floor of the dimly lit cabin, and pulled out a pair of socks, her jeans and a heavy sweater and went into the bathroom to change.
She should go back to the commune, she thought as she brushed her teeth. She needed to say a real goodbye to Penny and the other people she had befriended over the last week. She’d forgotten to leave the antibiotics for anyone who needed them. And she wanted to hold the baby one more time. If she were being honest with herself, she would have to admit that Shanti Joy was her primary motivation for wanting to go back to Cabrial. Since she and Alan had started the center, she didn’t see as many babies as she had as a pediatrician, and she missed them.
She left the bathroom, her flannel nightgown bundled in her arms, and walked across the bedroom to put it in her suitcase.
“Good morning.”
Carlynn stood up from her suitcase to see her sister smiling at her. Lisbeth was still lying in bed, her arms folded behind her head.
“Sorry,” Carlynn whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Lisbeth said. “I was already awake when you went into the bathroom.”
“I was thinking I’d like to make just a quick trip back to the commune to say goodbye to everyone.” Carlynn looked at Alan. “I have a feeling he’ll be out for another couple of hours. Would you like to go with me and we can let him sleep?”
“Sure.” Lisbeth sat up. “Let me change and then we can go.”
Carlynn wrote a note to Alan and then walked onto the porch to wait for her sister. She sat on the step in the fog, thinking back to those socked-in mornings in the mansion, when she and Lisbeth were kids and would go out to the terrace and sit on the lounge chairs, pretending they were in a cloud.
“There you are,” Lisbeth said as she stepped on the porch behind Carlynn. “Didn’t see you for a minute.”
“Doesn’t this remind you of mornings at the mansion?” Carlynn asked.
Lisbeth stood next to her, looking out at the shifting cloud of fog. “I don’t like to think about the mansion, actually,” she said.
Carlynn stood up and put her arm around her sister. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know how much you miss it.”
“We should probably get some food to bring back to Alan for breakfast,” Lisbeth said, changing the subject.
They started walking down the shrouded path toward the parking lot of the lodge. “We can ask at the commune if there’s a store where we can get some bacon and eggs,” Carlynn said, “but I don’t think there will be one close by.”
“The lodge serves breakfast,” Lisbeth said. “We can eat there if we can’t find anything else.”
The fog in the parking lot was translucent enough for them to make out their cars. “I have no gas in mine,” Carlynn said. “We’ll have to take your bug, okay?”
“Sure.”
They started walking across the small dirt lot toward the Volks wagen. Carlynn looked out toward the road, where the fog seemed thicker as it hugged the coast.
“Maybe we should wait until later,” she said. “We’re really socked in here.”
Lisbeth stopped walking and followed her sister’s gaze to the road. “What do you think?” she asked.
Carlynn remembered her drive through the fog a week ago to reach the commune. This couldn’t be any worse than that. “Oh, let’s do it,” she said.
They got into the car, and Lisbeth carefully turned around and headed toward the road. She hesitated at the e
xit from the parking lot and looked to her left.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” she said with a laugh.
“Well, if anyone’s coming, they’ll be driving very slowly, I would think,” Carlynn said. “Are your fog lights on?”
“Uh-huh.” Lisbeth turned right onto the road, gingerly, the car jerking a bit with her apprehension.
Carlynn looked through the front windshield at the swirling fog. The foliage at the side of the road was quite visible, and the road itself suddenly slipped into view.
“That’s better.” Lisbeth sounded relieved, and she gave the car a little more gas.
“Just keep close to the side here,” Carlynn said.
Lisbeth glanced at her once they were under way. “I know why you really want to go back to the commune,” she said.
“Why?” Carlynn asked.
“You want to get your mitts on that baby again. What’s her name?”
“Shanti Joy.” Had she been that obvious? “Well, I really just want to say goodbye to Penny. But seeing the baby again would be a bonus.”
“Right.” Lisbeth smiled at her, and Carlynn knew she didn’t believe her. Her sister knew her too well.
“I have been having sort of a sick fantasy,” Carlynn said.
“What’s that?” The fog had suddenly thickened again, and Lisbeth’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, her head pitched forward in an effort to see the road.
“My fantasy is…well, I’m appalled at myself for it. My fantasy is that her parents would die. Maybe not die. Maybe just be unable to take care of her for some reason and they’d give her to me.”
A small smile came to Lisbeth’s lips, but she didn’t take her eyes from the road. “You still long for a baby, don’t you?” she asked.
“I thought I was past it,” Carlynn said. “I love my work at the center. And I’m thirty-seven years old, for Pete’s sake. But that little life in my hands…” She shook her head with a smile. “She’s so beautiful. She has a ton of dark hair, and…”
Lisbeth suddenly stopped the car.
“What’s wrong?” Carlynn asked.
“I can’t do this, Carly,” Lisbeth said.
“Can’t do what?”
“Drive in this fog.” Lisbeth nodded toward the invisible road ahead of them. “I’m sorry. We have to go back. My legs are shaking.”
Carlynn turned in her seat to look behind them, but she could see nothing other than the fog. “We can’t turn around here, honey,” she said. “And we shouldn’t just stop like this. Another car could come up behind us and hit us.”
“Could you drive?” Lisbeth seemed frozen behind the wheel.
“Okay,” Carlynn said. “It was like this when I drove here from San Francisco, so I got pretty used to it.”
Quickly, the two of them got out of the car and exchanged places. Once Carlynn was in the driver’s seat, though, she understood why Lisbeth had panicked. The road was gone. Even the foliage along the side of the road was hidden.
“Yikes,” she said. “I see what you mean.” Putting the car in gear, she began inching it forward. The fog was far worse than it had been the day she’d driven to the commune, and if there had been a way to turn around on the narrow, winding road, she would have. But they were stuck now.
“So,” Lisbeth said, “were you tempted?”
“Tempted?”
“To sleep with someone at the commune?”
“Lisbeth! Are you crazy?” She stole a quick glance at her sister. “Of course not. Would you be?”
“No, but I was just wondering if, you know, the atmosphere would have gotten to you after a week. You said Penny was doing it with everyone.”
“But Penny’s always been that way. I hope she doesn’t get herself preg—”
“Carlynn!” Lisbeth shouted. “Watch out!”
The headlights of a car were directly in front of them, in their lane, and Carlynn had no choice but to quickly swerve to the left to avoid crashing head-on into the vehicle. The Volkswagen skidded on the wet pavement, sending them sliding across the road, and Carlynn knew the second the wheels left the pavement. Something crashed into the bottom of the car, which tipped precariously, teetering for a moment on the edge of an unseen precipice, and then they were falling.
Lisbeth tried to grab the wheel from her in a futile attempt to save them, but it was too late.
Carlynn caught her sister’s arm. “Oh my God, Lizzie!” she screamed. “I’m sorry. The road…”
She thought the car was falling sideways, although she couldn’t have said for certain, because every window offered only a view of fog. But she felt a jolt as they hit something, some outcropping from the cliff. She heard Lisbeth scream once more, and then, suddenly, the world was still and dark.
36
ONLY PAUL WAS SITTING AT THEIR USUAL LUNCH TABLE, EVEN though Joelle was late getting to the cafeteria. She carried her tray to the table, glancing over her shoulder to see if Liam might have been in the line behind her, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Paul stood up and pulled a chair out for her, and she laughed.
“I’m looking that pregnant, am I?” she asked.
“Just trying to be chivalrous,” Paul said. “When are you due, again?”
“New Year’s Day,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. How could I forget that?”
“I’m thirty weeks today,” she said.
“You look great,” Paul said.
“Thanks. Where’s Liam?” She tried to sound only mildly curious.
“He’s had a rough morning in the E.R.,” Paul said. “It’s been like a Saturday night down there.”
She popped a prenatal vitamin into her mouth and swallowed it with a few sips of milk. “And how are your units today?” she asked.
“Not bad, actually. How about yours?”
Her pager buzzed as he asked the question, and she looked down to see the E.R.’s number on the display.
“Speak of the devil,” she said.
“E.R.?” he asked as she got to her feet.
She nodded. “Be right back.”
She walked over to the wall phone near the cafeteria exit and dialed the number for the E.R.
It was Liam who picked up on the other end. “Are you in the cafeteria, Jo?” he asked.
“Yes. What’s up?”
“I’m sorry to drag you away from lunch, but I could really use your help down here. I have a couple of accident victims I’m tied up with, and a woman just came in who looks pretty beaten up, but says she just fell. Any chance you could see her?”
“Sure. I’ll be right there.”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
She hung up the phone and returned to the table, but didn’t take her seat again.
“Just leave this here for me in case this doesn’t take too long, okay?” she asked Paul, pointing to her tray.
“I’m almost done, Joelle,” he said. “Want me to take the E.R. case for you?”
“That’s all right,” she said. “It’s a possible battered woman, so it’s probably better if I do it. But thanks for offering.” She gave him a quick wave of her hand. “Have a good afternoon.”
From the hallway of the E.R., she could see into the waiting room, and Paul had been right. It looked like a weekend night in there. Mothers bounced irritable babies on their knees, a couple of kids held ice packs to their legs, and several men slouched in their chairs, looking in the direction of the reception desk, waiting for their names to be called.
A nurse spotted Joelle and walked toward her, handing her a chart.
“She’s in four,” she said. “Bart stitched her up and set her broken arm and tried to get her to admit what happened, but she insists she fell down the stairs.” The nurse shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she did. But we didn’t want to let her go until one of you guys had a chance to assess her. She wants to get out of here, though. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep her.”
Joelle nodded, glancing quickly thr
ough the thin chart. Twenty-four-year-old Caucasian woman. Katarina Parsons. She didn’t bother trying to read Bart’s nearly illegible notes. She’d get the story soon enough.
She pushed open the door of the treatment room to find the young woman sitting on the edge of the examining table, arms folded across her chest, a look of boredom on her bruised face. The blasé expression masked fear, Joelle was almost certain. She’d seen the act before.
She held out her hand to the woman. “Hi, Katarina,” she said. “I’m Joelle D’Angelo, one of the social workers in the hospital.”
The woman shook her hand limply. “Why are they making me see you?” she asked.
“Well—” Joelle leaned against the counter “—when someone comes in looking as though there’s a possibility that she might have been beaten up, we want to make sure she’ll be safe when she leaves the E.R.,” she said.
“I told that doctor I wasn’t beat up,” Katarina said. “I fell down some cement stairs.” She pronounced cement “see-ment.”
Joelle smiled at her. “I like your accent,” she said. “Where are you from?”
“Virginia.”
“Oh.” Joelle took a seat on the wheeled stool. “Near Washington?”
“No. Southwest Virginia. Right near North Carolina.”
“I bet it’s pretty there,” Joelle said. “What brought you out here?”
“My boyfriend.”
“Oh. Did he live here, or…?”