ISABELLE KNOCKED ON VANESSA’S door.
“Please, no,” said Vanessa. Isabelle knocked again. “I said, please no.”
Isabelle didn’t knock a third time. She opened the door and came in.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Vanessa said, the covers up to her neck. “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
“Vanessa . . .” Isabelle sat at the foot of the bed and soothingly rubbed Vanessa’s leg. Isabelle knew that if Vanessa didn’t yank her leg away, there was a possibility of conversation. Vanessa didn’t yank her leg away.
“I know you’re upset,” Isabelle said.
“No, you don’t. This is nothing to you. What do you care where you live, in my beautiful home or a hovel. But it matters to me.”
“Your husband did everything,” Isabelle said. “He didn’t want this, and he doesn’t want this now—no more than you do. Who would want to leave this place? It’s home.”
“You don’t understand. No one does.”
“You don’t think I understand? My home was Ukraine and now I’m in your house.”
“Okay, whatever, but no one appreciates how hard this is for me.”
“I do,” said Isabelle.
“I can’t get out of bed,” whispered Vanessa. “The more imperative it is that I get up, the more I can’t do it. I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t have to explain to me,” Isabelle said, her voice full of sorrow and sympathy. “There was time not long ago when I was where you are right now. I knew there was no choice for me, yet I couldn’t get out of bed. I simply couldn’t take one step toward my future. My sons were waiting. My husband was waiting. My brothers were waiting. I was making danger for everyone by not moving. I knew I had to move, but I couldn’t.”
“But you moved.”
“I got out of bed, Vanessa, because if I didn’t, everyone I knew was going to die,” Isabelle said. Her head was deeply lowered. She squeezed Vanessa’s leg and raised her eyes to the tearful, pitying, pitiful yet terrified woman. “Your children, your father, your mother and sister, Finn’s parents cannot be made homeless. You cannot live in Hooverburg. You cannot beg on streets. Finn cannot keep turning to life of crime to feed his family.”
“What do you mean . . . what do you mean keep turning?”
“My English not so good, I mis-speak, use wrong word,” said Isabelle. “But you know what I try to say, yes? Once you accept you cannot stay, then you must look for best solutions. Homeless is bad. Hoover-tents bad. Lucas house not very good—because it’s only five rooms and Lucas can’t feed your whole family on his poor dead mother’s insurance tiny money sum.”
Vanessa shook her head. “I’m so scared, Isabelle.”
“I know,” Isabelle said, rubbing Vanessa’s leg. “You think you weak, but you not. You strong. You don’t know what strength you have. You will only learn when you get out of bed.”
Vanessa sat up and the two women embraced. Isabelle was comforting Vanessa, but Vanessa’s hands were on her back, patting her. She thought she was comforting Isabelle! “Where are your children now, dearest Isabelle?” Vanessa whispered into Isabelle’s stiffening shoulder.
“With my husband, I hope, I pray,” Isabelle said, pulling away gently but unequivocally. “I don’t talk about that. Talking about it makes me want to crawl into hole in your basement and never come out.”
Vanessa began to apologize, but Isabelle cut her off there too.
“It’s okay,” Isabelle said. “I would like to never use my voice to speak of them except to say that how I made it to America—against many deprivations? destitutions? devastations? what is word? like miracle—I hope my husband and sons will make it one day same as me. But without shipwreck. I don’t wish for them shipwreck.”
Vanessa swallowed. “A few years ago, I had a miscarriage,” she said haltingly. “No, no, it’s fine, it was a long time ago. But at first, I was feeling quite low about it, as you might imagine. My doctor, to make me feel better, told me the story of Kisa Gotami and the Buddha. Do you know it?”
Isabelle shook her head.
“Kisa was a young mother in Japan whose baby was—sick. Dying,” Vanessa said. “Desperate to save her child, Kisa went to the Buddha for help. He said he would heal her baby if Kisa would bring him back a single mustard seed. But the condition was, the mustard seed had to be given to her by a family that had not suffered a death.” Vanessa fell quiet.
Isabelle waited. “There is more? I hope that’s not end of story?”
“It is.”
“How possibly did that help heal dying baby?” Isabelle exclaimed, skeptical and dissatisfied.
“I suppose it helped Kisa to know that there was suffering everywhere.”
“Does that ever help?” Isabelle was upset. “Kisa’s child was sick,” she said. “So what is story about? Is it story about having sympathy for others, or is it story about mother trying to save baby? Because doctor’s Buddha story fail bad both ways.”
“Maybe it’s a story about how death is universal.”
“We need story for that?”
“I think her baby was already dead, and she couldn’t cope,” said Vanessa, her eyes vacant, her lips pale. “When she didn’t find the mustard seed, Kisa realized she had to learn to let go of her grief.”
“Aha,” said Isabelle, scrutinizing the blonde, weary woman. “And did Kisa’s story help you—to let go?”
“Still working on it, I suppose,” Vanessa said, her nails jabbing into the pads of her fingers.
“Indeed,” said Isabelle. “So let me get straight. Story is, Kisa goes to Buddha because she desperately needs help, and Buddha with zero sympathy for her universal condition says, leave me alone, dumb mother, don’t bother me, everybody got trouble.”
Vanessa chuckled.
“My advice is to find yourself new doctor, Vanessa,” said Isabelle. “If his medicine anything like his advice, you may be in great danger.”
“Isabelle, it’s time to go. You know it is. Please get up.
“Isabelle, if you don’t get up, we’re ruined.
“Please. I know you’re afraid.
“Isa? I’ve dressed the boys. Gotten our supplies together. Just get out of bed.
“You’re pretending to sleep, Isabelle. I know you’re awake and can hear me.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “I can’t hear you. Can’t, and don’t want to.”
“This was your idea,” said Mirik. “Yours and Roman’s and your damn Cici’s. You can’t be getting cold feet! I should be getting cold feet. I didn’t want to do it, but now that we are here, we have no choice but to see it through, no matter the outcome, no matter the cost.”
That’s where the paralysis came from. The uncertainty of the outcome. The immensity of the cost.
To run, to flee, to leave the old country.
And when things went belly up, as things inevitably must, who was going to be blamed?
If there was one thing Isabelle hated, it was to be blamed for anything.
Yet she also wanted, no, needed, to make all the decisions.
Quite a pickle she found herself in. Her whole life, this was so.
I’m the one who did this.
The blame is mine.