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CHAPTER 1
I had seldom felt so drained, so exhausted, both emotionally and physically. Sessions at the bedside of a dying child were always difficult, though this was the work I had chosen — the work I could do lovingly, and in which I could find my greatest satisfaction these days.
Perhaps the understanding I could bring to these children — a sympathy that strengthened, rather than weakened — stemmed from that time twelve years ago when I had died a little myself. Those months of anguish were long behind me — except perhaps when I felt as utterly weary and vulnerable as I did right now.
When I'd taken my mail from the row of boxes in the foyer of my building, I climbed two flights of stairs, wishing for an elevator. My Staten Island apartment was in an older building, but for me it was convenient to the ferry, and a haven of peace. I loved its sweeping view over the island's lower slopes and across the Kill van Kull clear to the New Jersey hills. Much of the view was industrial these days, but it was still magical in early evening when all the lights came on. And this was country, compared with Manhattan's concrete and asphalt.
Upstairs I dropped into my favorite chair, and kicked off my shoes as I began to open my mail. The details of my day were still running through my mind. In some of my cases the adults around a child were my most difficult problem to deal with. Parents, because of their fear and grief, sometimes needed to be kept from doing the wrong thing out of the best of motives. I'd seen them lavish too many gifts on a sick child, while neglecting the needs of sisters and brothers who were whole. Often they could be manipulated by a small girl or boy who became adept at managing the grown-ups around them. Or sometimes, when my visit was in a hospital, a pediatric nurse could be possessive, and even jealous of my interloper's work.
Today there had been such an incident, calling for all the diplomacy and reassurance I should have managed. Susan, my young patient, was wonderful. I never stopped marveling at the courage and cheerfulness of so many of the children, even when there was pain. But today I hadn't dealt very well with either the nurse or Susan's mother. I had forgotten that mine wasn't a position of authority, and I was only there to help as unobtrusively as I could. My impatience added to my growing feeling that I needed a rest — time to renew myself for a struggle that had to be made over and over again if real help was to be given my patients. I knew I had so much to give — when I wasn't so tired, mentally and physically.
The heaviest burden to carry was knowing that a child I'd grown to love might be gone when I came in the next day. Yet sometimes I helped, sometimes there could even be healing.
As I picked up an envelope, the Virginia postmark stopped me unpleasantly. Now and then over the years, Meryl Asche had written to me, though I hardly encouraged the correspondence. This handwriting, however, wasn't Meryl's. The envelope was correctly addressed to Lynn McLeod, since I'd taken back my own name after the divorce from Stephen. The name on the return address read: "Vivian Asche Forster." Of course "Asche" stopped me in dismay and the return address was achingly familiar.
I knew that Larry Asche, Stephen's father, had married again after I'd left Virginia. He had died five years ago, leaving his son with a widowed stepmother. Apparently this woman — Vivian — had married again since Larry's death, but still lived in Stephen's house.
It seemed puzzling to hear from her and I opened the envelope reluctantly. The letter was an invitation to visit Virginia — to come to Stephen's house! Two weeks ago I had gone out to Chicago to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show on television, and Vivian Forster had seen me and heard me talk about my work with terminally ill children. She now presented the absurd idea that Stephen Asche's daughter — by another woman! — needed me. Not that this child was dying — apparently far from it, which made the request even more ridiculous. I reread a paragraph in the letter.
If you come — and we beg you to — you would stay here with us. You needn't see Stephen at all, unless you wish to. He needn't even know you are here. As you may have heard, Stephen has been confined to a wheelchair since his accident last year. His rooms are far away from where you would stay, and he seldom goes outside any more. It is only the child who would concern you — Stephen's daughter, Jilly.
The request, of course, aside from being foolish, was blindly insensitive and totally inappropriate. To ask me, of all people, to help Stephen's child!
When I had rested and fixed myself something to eat, I wrote an immediate reply, declining. I was extremely busy and couldn't drop my work to come to Virginia, I explained. Besides, I only counseled the terminally ill and I wouldn't be the right person for this child.
It wasn't entirely true that I didn't have time, since I'd arranged to take a month's leave from my private practice, needing the rest so badly for myself. Everything else was correct.
When I'd addressed and sealed my reply, I fell into unwanted remembering, with the envelope still in my hand.
How innocently I'd driven with Stephen to Charlottesville on that long-ago evening. We'd met Stephen's brother and his wife, and had gone together to dinner and then to see Oriana Devi's performance. The dancer claimed a grandmother from India, but her name was made-up — something that would look good on a marquee. Her dances were original and imaginative — haunted by a sense of the mystical that cast a spell over the audience, and on Stephen in particular. Oriana was altogether mysterious, as though she promised miracles that might touch any who watched her.
After the performance we'd all gone to a party given for Oriana, and the dancer had set her eyes on Stephen for the first time. Just like that. I remembered how helpless I felt and with what disbelief I'd watched what was happening. Not quite in a flash, but almost. A month or so went by, and there was no delay about the house Stephen was building. Ground breaking took place, and he brought me a beautiful big chunk of quartz rock that turned up when the bulldozers went to work. I had treasured it as something I would place on a coffee table when we moved into our new home. When I fled from Virginia a month later, I left it behind.
I suppose I never really stood a chance against Oriana's spell, any more than Stephen had. The dancer had a maturity I lacked, for one thing, being a few years older than Stephen. And there had been his own habits of lifelong indulgence that he'd never denied. He had been torn apart by what had happened — or so he claimed. He hadn't ever wanted to hurt me. But what could he do, and his conscience hadn't kept him from pursuing what he most desired in that moment of time. I had been too young and devastated to oppose a woman like Oriana, and my pride had been brutally wounded besides. So I had gone home to Staten Island to nurse my hurts and convince myself that Stephen wasn't worth having.
My father and mother had been alive then, and my mother had loved and supported me, though I sensed that my father blamed me for the breakup and for not being able to hold my husband. For once I'd stood up to him, and I moved into my own apartment. I'd taken a part time job and completed my education with my mother's help. When I had my Ph.D. as a clinical psychologist, I went to work for a state clinic for a while. Gradually I'd discovered my own special gifts, and now I had my own private practice in a field that was hardly crowded.
During these years, even my view of death had changed and broadened. I had gradually come to a conviction that some sort of "life" went on beyond the ending we called death. This had comforted me to some extent whenever a child I'd cared for died. The real miracle that I worked for and that sometimes happened was when a child recovered — and it was that hope that kept me going. I believed in the healing our minds could perform, that love could perform, yet it was in this I was failing now with Susan. It was my own fault. My body had grown too tired for the struggle, and all I wanted was to rest for a time.
The next day, when I'd mailed the letter to Vivian Forster, I tried to put the incident from my mind. My vacation was what concerned me now.
In a week, however, Mrs. Forster wrote again.
My husband points out that there are different sorts of terminal illness. Jilly is dying in her own way. That's why we believe you are needed here.
Julian also believes that you may have reached a crossroads in your life. Perhaps this is the right time for you to open up in some new direction — for your own good and development. Even though there may be some uncertainty and risk. I am not sure how he knows such things, but believe me, he does.
We would like to talk with you at least, and perhaps have you meet Jilly. Her mother is away — making a movie in California — so you would need to see neither of her parents. It is only the child who matters. Julian feels strongly that you are the one who can save her. Please don't refuse. Don't deny yourself.
This was a stronger letter than the first one, but still outrageous in what it asked. How had these people settled on me? Considering that my work was with children whose bodies were failing, why me? The fact that Jilly's mother was the woman who had taken Stephen from me should have been enough to warn the Forsters off. So what twisted reasoning had prompted them to write?
Yet in spite of the way Mrs. Forster's letter put me off, Julian Forster's words touched me with their unexpected perception. How could he know that I had reached a crossroads? My skills needed honing and new experience to help me grow in my profession — but only I could know that. What could he have sensed just by watching me on a television program? I began to feel a certain curiosity about this man.
The closing lines of Mrs. Forster's letter reached into some emotion that I'd thought was long buried and closed over.
Jilly is ten, with a mother too often away, and a father who no longer cares what happens to him or anyone else. Julian believes that you have a connection with this child — perhaps at a mystical level — and that you will come.
A mystical level? That was a bit wild. Not for a moment would I accept that I had any connection at all with these people in Virginia. Certainly I had seen such unhappy children, abandoned because their parents didn't know how to deal with their own problems and pain. Sometimes parents might oversacrifice, or sometimes they simply ran away from what they couldn't handle or face.
But this, surely, was a different situation. It was not the child, but the father who was damaged. Though I found it hard to imagine Stephen Asche without courage — a man who had lost his exuberant appetite for life. I'd read the newspaper accounts of his accident. He was noted enough by this time to make a few headlines. A year ago he had suffered a terrible fall at a construction site for which he had been the architect for some condos. His back had been broken and he was in a coma for weeks. When he came out of that phase, he'd been left a helpless invalid, his work and his life destroyed. There had been something in the original reports that I couldn't remember — something about another man who had died at the same time as Stephen's accident, though few details had been given. I had expected that Meryl might write about what had happened, but I hadn't heard from her since, and I'd really been just as glad for her silence.
Of course I had grieved all over again for the young Stephen I'd loved, but I recognized fully that he didn't exist anymore, just as the girl who had married him no longer existed. Yet this man, Julian Forster, who knew nothing about me, and had never met me, could reach out in some strange way because Jilly Asche and I were, in a sense, two of a kind. We'd both been abandoned, betrayed, by Stephen and Oriana. For me there had been time to recover, but Jilly had lost her father only a year ago, at the time of the accident.
For a week I postponed making a decision. Then I gave in because I couldn't help myself. I wrote Mrs. Forster that I would drive down, stay overnight and for one day. Just long enough to see if there was any advice I could offer. That was all I could promise. This was to be the start of my vacation time, and I needed most of it for myself.
My meager response was accepted a little too eagerly by Vivian Forster and I found myself committed. On the day agreed upon, I left early in the morning, with my suitcase, packed for a vacation, in the trunk of the car, as well as a tote bag. The drive was a long one, and I broke it up with several stops, so that I wasn't too tired when I arrived in the late afternoon.
The miles from Charlottesville to Nelson County were all too familiar and the countryside seemed almost unchanged. I remembered the clustering irregularity of small mountains — foothills to the Blue Ridge. The "Ragged Mountains" that Edgar Allan Poe had once written about when he'd attended — briefly — the University of Virginia. I found the side road I used to take with Stephen — gravel that wound upward through woods of oak, maple, poplar and various evergreens. And, of course, dogwoods. Strange that the month was early November, close to the season it had been when I'd last visited this mountain. The day was warm for fall and the bright red of the dogwood trees broke my heart a little. All this beauty was so much a part of the dream I'd shared with Stephen, and I'd begun to feel that it was stupid of me to come. Nevertheless, I'd been drawn by some pull I couldn't deny. Perhaps some need to open old wounds that had never fully healed and let out the festering.
Suddenly the house was there, emerging around a bend in the climbing road. I wasn't ready for it and I ran past the driveway and parked my car on the grassy shoulder. I didn't want to announce myself at once. First, I needed to face whatever waited for me here, and make sure I could control my own emotions. I'd been so foolishly sure that I was "cured" and could handle all this.
The path to the top was more overgrown than I remembered, though I was able to follow it easily as it wound up the last rise of the mountain. When it ended, I climbed a farther hillock where I could stand clear of surrounding trees and look down upon a house that was so vividly clear in my mind that I knew every detail — even though I had been gone from Virginia for many months by the time it was built.
Everything seemed almost exactly as Stephen had sketched it in those preliminary plans — as he had imagined it on paper and made it come to life for me. Below me the structure followed the contour of the hill, gray and low, built of cypress and mountain stone. It suited the mountain, as Stephen had intended. Terraced roofs rose in graduated segments from a long, curving base, and I recognized all of it in every detail! Even the solar panels on the topmost level were as Stephen had planned.
There was one innovation. On the far side of the house from where I stood, a small summer gazebo had been built on a promontory. Its wood matched the main house, and it occupied the edge of a precipice that dropped straight down the mountain. Its sides were open and I could see benches within — an eyrie for an eagle, though Stephen could no longer take flight.
The Forsters' apartment, as I knew from Vivian's last letter, occupied this end of the lower living area, with Stephen's rooms on the same level at the farthest point where the hill curved back. Now an outside ramp followed from deck to deck — an accommodation, undoubtedly, for a wheelchair that had never been intended in the original plans.
The second floor, smaller than the one below, probably held the guest apartment, library, and other rooms Stephen had allowed for. However, it was the top segment that drew my unhappy attention. That was to have been our place.
I could see glass doors where shadows grew long and a glint of vermilion reflected from the lowering sun. A plane had crossed the sky, and the lower point of the jet stream caught the sunset in its flying ribbon of strawberry pink. The entire encircling view was visible from this high place, as Stephen had intended. Not only would sunset and sunrise be visible here, but moonlight as well.
For an instant pain twisted inside me as I remembered — too much. When we'd first found this place we'd stayed one evening to catch a half moon floating over the mountains. A moon partly hidden by mists that changed its color from gold to hazy white as we watched, and a whimsical notion had come to me.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Singing Stones"
by .
Copyright © 1990 Phyllis A. Whitney.
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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