Sue takes her hand. “How did this happen to me, Shelby?”
It’s a big question. Shelby asked the very same thing of the psychiatrist who saw her right after the accident. It was in the ER, before she stopped talking, before she realized she would never be the same. The shrink didn’t have an answer then and Shelby doesn’t have one now. Her mother didn’t even smoke. It doesn’t run in the family.
Shelby throws herself across the bed. She used to come into her parents’ room when she was a little girl and couldn’t sleep. “I must have brought you bad luck.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Sue says. “Your dad wants me to get a wig. He thinks I’m depressed, but the real reason is that it depresses him to see me this way.”
“You seem depressed. Which would be totally normal, you know.”
“I’m not depressed,” Sue says. “I’m devastated.”
They both laugh again. Hysterical laughter. The kind that hurts your stomach.
“Maybe I should get a blond wig,” Sue muses. “Maybe your dad and I will get back together if I look more attractive.”
“You are together,” Shelby says.
“I mean in love.”
Her mom looks so wistful, something twists up inside Shelby. She hates shopping, but she says, “Sure. Let’s go. We’ll leave Dad in charge of the dogs.”
Shelby sits with her dad in the kitchen drinking coffee while her mother gets ready. “Can you be nicer to her?” Shelby asks him.
“I am nice. It just changes when you’ve been together for close to thirty years.”
“Well, pretend it doesn’t,” Shelby says coldly. “Pretend you’re her knight in shining armor.”
Shelby’s mom comes out of the bedroom wearing slacks and a sweater, a scarf around her head.
“You look great,” Dan tells his wife. He glances over at Shelby for approval, and for a second she feels bad for him even if he is a creep and selfish. She grabs Blinkie and plops him on her father’s lap. “Oh, great, the blind one. Jesus, Shelby. What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Take good care of him.” She stares at her father. “Try to do something right.”
They go out to the driveway, but when Shelby starts for the passenger side of the car her mother stops her. “I can’t drive,” Sue says. “They did a surgery that affected my arm.”
“Well I can’t either.” Her mom knows she hasn’t driven since the accident.
“Damn it, Shelby! You can drive me where I want to go this one fucking time.”
Shelby is so shocked by her mother’s language she immediately gets behind the wheel. She should be able to do this. Any idiot can drive a car. She starts it up. She’s got that tremor in her hand again.
“Make a left and turn onto Sycamore,” her mother tells her. “Go to Lewiston.”
“That’s not the way to Main Street. I thought we were looking at wigs.”
“I want to go see Helene,” Sue says. “I’m not going to argue with you about it.”
At the beginning there were often hundreds of pilgrims milling around the Boyds’ house, patiently waiting their turn in the driveway, each one hoping for their own healing encounter with Helene. TV stations sent reporters when prayer vigils were held on the front lawn. But there are new miracles and new healers and people have forgotten about Helene. Eight years have passed since the accident, and nowadays only the faithful and the desperate still appear. There is one old woman who drives out from Queens every day to say prayers on the lawn, even in the depth of winter or during rainstorms. She began visiting the family the week after the accident. Now she says she is waiting for Helene to rise from her bed, to give hope to the world. This devotee of Helene’s carries all of her earthly belongings in a paper bag. The Boyds will no longer let her into the house. Sometimes this woman calls out to Helene and begs for her to rid her of her demons, and then the police are phoned and they gently escort her to the tiny apartment where she lives with her daughter, who has never been able to speak or walk.
When Shelby parks across the street from the Boyds’ house, she’s shaking from the stress of driving. She hasn’t been behind the wheel since she was seventeen. She hasn’t seen Helene since then. “I’m not going in there with you,” she tells her mother.
“I didn’t expect you to.” Sue flips down the visor and checks to see if she needs to straighten her scarf.
“She can’t really heal people, Mom. If she could wouldn’t she have healed herself?”