16

Bethel House was expecting her to come back to work on Monday. Wren had taken ten days of vacation. Her coworkers thought she was thoroughly unplugged at a resort somewhere. And she had no more days to use until after the New Year. Jamie managed to coax this information out of her over breakfast Friday morning.

No more sick days. No more personal time. She had used it all. Jamie didn’t want to cause her any more anxiety, but she didn’t see any possible way for Wren to continue, not in a job with that much stress, not without margin to be unwell. After Wren went upstairs to shower and get dressed—a good sign, Jamie reminded herself—she conducted her own online research about what type of accommodations Wren might qualify for, given her illness and diagnosis. After visiting a number of websites and making several phone calls, she thought she had the gist of it. And there was no time to waste.

“Bethel House doesn’t have more than fifty employees, does it?” she asked Wren while they sat outside later that morning.

“No.”

Okay. She wouldn’t benefit from the Family and Medical Leave Act. “Do you know how many there are?”

Wren stared at her a moment, then said, “No.”

“Do you think you could run it through your head? Count up the number of full-time employees? Just an estimate?”

Wren did not reply.

“Would you say you have more or less than fifteen?”

“I’m not sure.”

Well, they would need to find out that information. If Bethel House had fifteen or more employees, she could be protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

She decided to share what she’d learned while it was still fresh in her mind. “I’ve been doing research this morning, trying to see what accommodations you might be entitled to at work and whether you could take a leave of absence, and it’s possible. Taking time off could be viewed as a necessary accommodation for someone with a disability, which, by the way, is a legal term, not a medical one—”

“Mom—”

“Hang on. You would need to have a conversation with your boss and possibly grant limited access to your medical records to prove that you qualify. The guy on the phone was really helpful, and he sent me lots of links to look at. Now, the way I read it, there’s no guarantee Bethel House could accommodate a request for a leave, not if that leave would cause them”—she signed air quotes—“‘significant hardship.’ But it’s worth looking into. What do you think about that? Do you think you could call your boss and ask?”

Wren rubbed her temples. “I don’t know. I can’t think about it right now.”

“But we’ll need to move quickly to get the process started, and with the weekend coming, we’re running out of time because—”

“Mom. Please. I can’t.”

Wren stared off into the woods and spoke slowly, softly. The fog of the past couple of days was only just beginning to clear, she said, and she needed a day just to be. To sit. And maybe to draw. She had left her sketchbook at her apartment. “Would you please go pick it up for me?”

Jamie hesitated. Was it safe to leave her? “How about if we go together?”

She couldn’t, she said. She wasn’t ready to see her place again. She couldn’t bear to be—

Right. Of course. To be where Theo had been. To see the place where he’d been struck. Which meant she wouldn’t even be willing to go and wait in the car.

Wren appeared to read her thoughts. “I’ll be okay by myself. I promise.”

Jamie couldn’t monitor her constantly. She knew that. She had no control over the choices Wren made. She knew that too. She gripped the acorn in her pocket. “Okay. I’ll go get it.”

Wren thanked her. There were also some Van Gogh books on a shelf in her bedroom, she said, some volumes of his letters and a couple of books with his art. Could she bring those? Jamie was happy to. If Wren had art and Vincent on her mind, then that was also a sign of hope.

“And there’s a gray beanie. It might be on the couch or in my room. Could you get that too?”

“Sure.” Jamie touched her daughter’s cheek. “But no wandering off while I’m gone, okay? Please?”

She would stay right there, Wren promised, and wait.

After what she’d put her mother through yesterday, Wren thought, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, her trying to take control this morning. But she didn’t have the capacity to make sense of the intricacies of medical or legal provisions. Not today. She hadn’t even managed to check almost two weeks of texts and emails. That task alone seemed daunting enough.

She buried her hands in her sweatshirt pockets and stared up at the sky. She wasn’t going to grant anyone at work access to her medical records, that was for sure. Her supervisor didn’t need to know that one of her social workers had mental health issues and might be pushed over the tipping point at any time. It was a miracle that in the three years she’d served there, she hadn’t publicly crumbled. Somehow she had always managed to conceal the panic attacks. And the depression had been under control—or at least, she had thought it was.

That only fed the anxiety—never knowing when the darkness might return and swallow her again. It took so much energy to keep it at bay. She was tired, so tired, still so tired.

“Let the prayers of others carry you right now,” Hannah had said in her office. Like the paralyzed man whose friends carried him on his mat to Jesus. She needed to let others carry the mat for a while.

But how could she let others carry her on the mat when she needed to be carrying lots of mats come Monday? She didn’t have the strength to carry anyone. So how could she possibly go back to work? But if she didn’t go back to work, they wouldn’t have enough people carrying mats for the ones who were traumatized. For the women. The moms. And the kids who had seen violence like she had never seen. Those kids needed to be carried and cared for. But a rescue mission needed rescuers with strong backs and shoulders. Strong stomachs too. Not someone who couldn’t even bear to check her messages.

An orange maple leaf fluttered lazily to the ground near her feet. She stooped to pick it up, then traced the delicate veins with her index finger.

She couldn’t risk returning to work and having a breakdown in front of all of them. Kingsbury was too small a town. But beyond the fear of personal shame and failure was the more important issue of the well-being of her clients. A rescue mission needed rescuers who could carry buckets, keep the stranded from suffocating, and coax them out into freedom. They didn’t need someone who herself was still too weak to swim to safety. That would be a liability.

“This is frontline stuff,” Allie had said. “You’ve got to be able to fight back against the darkness. You’ve got to be able to pray. Constantly. To fix your mind on Christ. You’ve got to be rooted and grounded in the Word. It’s the only way to survive work like this. The only way.”

It was true. And Bethel House had every right to expect she would be capable, dependable, and fit to serve. She was not fit. She was not mentally, emotionally, or spiritually fit. They needed better. They deserved better. Her case manager had been right. She needed a job change.

She went inside and got her phone. She would turn it on just long enough to call her supervisor and tell her she was resigning. If she pressed for reasons, Wren would say she had health issues she needed to attend to. That was the truth. She was sorry, but that was the truth.

What were you thinking? Jamie wanted to exclaim. She had been gone only forty-five minutes—forty-five minutes!—and to return to find out that Wren had quit her job? They hadn’t even explored the disability provisions yet. There were accommodations that could be made, she knew there were. Wren couldn’t have been fired for mental illness. There were protections against that. What in the world had she been thinking?

But she didn’t say these things. Instead, she sat in stunned silence.

Wren leaned forward in the patio chair. “Please don’t be mad. I can’t handle you being mad at me.”

Well, then, Jamie wanted to say, you shouldn’t have done something so impulsive. Instead, she said, “I wish you had given it a little more time, a little more thought. I could have helped you. We could have figured it out.”

And what about your health insurance? she wanted to ask. How will you pay for that? How will you afford your rent? Where will you live? What will you eat? What about the hospital bills?

But she did not ask these things. She didn’t know where they stood in proximity to that invisible cliff edge. They were probably teetering right on the brink.

“I can’t go back, Mom.”

Jamie didn’t disagree, which was precisely why she had done all the research that morning. She rubbed her forehead. “Okay. So, what exactly did you say to your supervisor?”

Wren said she told her she had done a lot of soul-searching on her vacation and had come to the conclusion she could no longer serve Bethel House well. It was too stressful an environment, and she had some health issues to attend to. Her supervisor was disappointed but didn’t seem surprised. If Wren was sure she couldn’t help them out for another couple of weeks while they searched for a replacement, then she could clean out her desk on Monday.

“Where is she now?” Dylan asked after Jamie called him with an update.

“Sitting outside, drawing in her sketchbook.” She watched Wren through the kitchen window. “And please don’t tell me I don’t have control over any of this. I know I don’t. But what will she do? How will she survive? She needs meds, counseling appointments, psychiatry appointments—how in the world will she survive?” This was how the mentally ill ended up on the streets, unemployed, sleeping under bridges, with no way to pay for the goods and services they needed.

“She won’t be homeless,” he said. “She can come here to regroup if she wants to. Or maybe Kit will put her up for a while. Have you mentioned it to her?”

“No, she’s at New Hope today. She’ll be back at dinner.”

“Well, have a quiet conversation with her. Wren doesn’t need to know you’re working on contingency plans behind the scenes. See what the possibilities are. And let me know, will you? I’ve got more work to do on my sermon, and then I’ll pick Phoebe up from school. She’s still waiting to Skype with you.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Maybe Wren can get on with her too.”

“I’m sure she would love that. Call me later?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll keep praying, Jamie. Wish there was something else I could do for you.”

“You’re taking good care of the kids. That’s plenty.”

And what did it mean for her to take good care of an adult daughter? An “emerging adult” who didn’t seem capable of making rational, well-considered decisions? Wren wasn’t usually impulsive. Usually, she was cautious and conscientious, excessively so. This was uncharacteristically reckless and alarming. Was this a side effect of one of the meds?

She set her phone down on the counter and brewed herself another cup of coffee.

Never make an important decision in the midst of desolation. That was one of the most basic principles of discernment. And though Wren said she felt a huge sense of relief, how would she feel once the reality of what she’d set into motion began to sink in? Who would pick up the pieces then?

The patio door opened. “Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“Could you come be a hand model for me? I’m trying to draw something.”

Yesterday if Wren had made such a request of her, Jamie would have felt a huge sense of relief. Now she heard only the familiar, insidious hum of fear. She wiped her palms on her jeans. “Sure, love. Be right there.”

Her mother’s hand was beautiful—delicately boned with fine wrinkles like complex quilling on milk-white skin. Casey’s hands had been beautiful too, not large and rugged but the soft and graceful hands of an artist. The hands of Jesus were probably the rough and calloused hands of a carpenter, strong and sturdy.

And wounded.

Someday she would try to sketch a hand gouged like the cliff face she had seen when she prayed with Hannah. But for now, she would sketch her mother’s hand as the hand of God, upholding and comforting.

On Hannah’s desk was a small bronze sculpture of a curled infant sleeping peacefully in a hand. Wren would not draw an infant cradled in a hand. She would draw a woman kneeling, head in her hands, weeping. The tears would land in the wounds and become healing pools. But, as Vincent observed, the best drawings, the finest works, were the ones you dreamed about but never painted. Her vision would always exceed her talent and execution. She would never be able to render what she saw.

She held up her sketchbook and squinted at it. Not great. She might never master a hand. But it was adequate. “All done?” her mother asked.

Wren shaded a bit more. “Almost. I need one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I need to draw a woman kneeling. Like this.” Wren rose from her chair and knelt on the grass, head in her hands. Then she stood and brushed off her jeans. “Would you do that?”

Without speaking, her mother lowered herself to the ground. “Even lower,” Wren said. “With your elbows on the ground. Yes. Like that. Curved just like that, and then with your face in your hands.”

Yes. That was perfect. She did a quick contour drawing to capture the shape, then began to fill in details. The hair would conceal most of the face like a mourning veil. The hands could be crudely drawn, a mere suggestion of fingers splayed. Yes. Like that. Just like that. Everything about her mother’s form embodied the pathos she longed to convey.

If she herself were kneeling as her own model, Wren thought with a pang of sorrow and guilt, it could not have been more true.