CHAPTER 18

Pulling into the driveway at Rebecca’s house that evening was like stepping into a time warp of his teenage years. Everything was exactly as Sean remembered it, down to the overgrown rhododendrons and the seasick-green color of the shingles.

They must have painted it in the past twenty years, thought Sean. And they picked that same pukey color again.

Rebecca answered the door. “Hey, it’s Smokey the Bear,” she teased.

“Complete with a whole new set of camping-related aches and pains.”

Inside, the same oversized brown leather couches crowded the living room, the same heavy brocade curtains shut out what little light slipped around the edges of the rhododendrons. Sean didn’t say a word, but Rebecca responded as if he had. “It’s like being trapped in a Groundhog Day of my childhood,” she said, sighing.

He looked at her. She shook her head. “They like it this way, and it’s their house.”

“They come back for the summer?” he asked.

“No. They actually never come back. They think Florida is the Promised Land, but with better amenities. But it’s their house,” she repeated. “They don’t like to change anything.”

Sean flopped down onto an enormous leather recliner. “I’ve sat in worse,” he said.

She slipped into the corner of the couch nearest his chair. “Way worse, I’m sure.”

“But it’s not about comfort, is it?”

“No.” She sighed again and muttered, “I really have to get out of here sometime soon.”

“The holding pen versus jumping-off point problem. What’s stopping you?”

“Money, for one thing.”

This surprised him. He paid eighty dollars for an hour of massage. Admittedly he didn’t have much experience with what a normal paycheck should look like, but that sounded like a lot to him. “Tree of Life doesn’t cover the bills?” he asked.

She let out a disgusted little hiss. “I know—eighty bucks, right? You’d think I was rolling in dough. But Eden doesn’t give us much of a cut.”

Sean thought she was making a play on words, but she explained, “Eden’s the owner. Her real name’s Edna, but she changed it to Eden when she came up with ‘Tree of Life’ for the spa name. It’s a chain now. She’s got about ten of them spread out all over New England.” A little play of mirth came over her face. “She drives a lime-green Mercedes. Specially painted.”

“Come on,” Sean scoffed.

“I kid you not.”

“Sounds like a piece of work.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. Missy hates her. Apparently she comes in for free massages and doesn’t even tip!”

“Why don’t you go somewhere else?”

“It’s steady. She offers health insurance, which most places don’t. It’s a bare bones policy, but if I come down with malaria or something, I don’t have to pay the whole tab.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s just inertia.” She glanced up at him. “I guess we should get going.”

“What did you do before you went to massage school?” he asked, anxious to get to the massage but somehow even more interested in the story of how she’d found an occupation she was so good at.

“I was a copy editor. At the time I was doing medical texts, and I was editing a book on neurology that had some really interesting sections on alternative treatment. The massage thing hit me like a bolt. I started reading books about it.” She grinned. “I actually started by practicing on my grandmother. She was the one who pushed me to go to school for it.”

“She was your jumping-off point. She must be really proud of you.”

“She was,” said Rebecca, a soft sadness creeping into her smile. “She died a couple of years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” He reached out over the expanse of the chair’s cracked leather arm to squeeze her hand, a reflex from when news of a loved one’s death was a daily occurrence. Rebecca looked down at his freckled hand covering her olive-toned fingers. He withdrew it, feeling suddenly uncertain.

“So,” he said, searching for something to say. “You must be pretty exhausted by the end of the day, with all that physical labor.”

“Yes and no. I mean, it’s work, and it can be tiring. But it’s also very . . . it’s good for me. I’ve gotten a lot of clarity doing massage.” She started to shift in her seat as if to rise. But Sean stayed put, hoping that she would settle back and say more.

“When you’re treating patients,” she asked, “do you ever pick up on their mood, or their . . . sense of things? Do you ever feel what’s happening below the surface?”

He had to think about it for a moment. He wanted to say yes, wanted to have that talent in common with her. But he couldn’t lie. “Not really,” he said. “Generally they’re just in pain and unhappy. It isn’t all that hard to pick up on.”

She nodded, but he could tell she’d hoped for more from him. “In massage, we’re trained to recognize energy. I know that sounds New Agey, but once you learn to do it, you can’t not. It’s more than just someone’s mood, or how they’re feeling in the moment. Our bodies are constantly struggling to achieve balance, and we do that with energy. Does that make sense?”

“Sort of . . .”

“Okay, so if a client comes in and his energy is really out of whack, I can feel it. And I have to be careful to keep my energy in balance, because we affect each other, right? You know how some people just make you feel good because they’re calm and clear, and other people bring you down, and you don’t even really know why? That’s energy.”

“Hmm,” he murmured. “How’s mine?”

“How’s your energy?” She was obviously stalling.

“No, my cholesterol,” he said wryly.

“Um . . .” She grinned. “I’d say you need to cut down on the fried foods.”

* * *

The room she led him to, up the half flight of stairs from the living room, had metallic wallpaper with a dizzying pattern of little brown and blue circles.

“Nineteen seventies?” he asked.

She nodded. “It was the guest bedroom. Can you imagine anyone getting any sleep in here?” She had moved the bed into one corner, but the room was still crowded with an oversized chest of drawers, a desk, and a floor-to-ceiling pole lamp with five orange metal shades. The massage table stood in the middle, as incongruous as a sunflower growing in a crowded parking lot. She left him to get undressed and he surveyed the room. It wouldn’t take much to make it more conducive to her business. She could take a few things out, maybe take down the wallpaper.

He slid under the sheet, put his face in the doughnut cushion, and, mercifully, the room’s décor ceased to exist for him. When she came back in, she turned on a CD of soft instrumental music. “I could help you move some stuff out of here,” he said.

“I’d have to get the okay from my parents.”

“Maybe not. Maybe we just move it, and if they visit we move it back, no harm done.”

Her hands began to swirl across his back, and he felt his body ­respond, every nerve curling to her touch like a cat around its owner’s legs. He barely noticed when she changed the subject without answering the question. “Tell me more about Africa,” she said, and he complied, knowing that if she’d told him to rob a bank, he would have done that, too.

The small hospital in which he’d worked had open-air buildings, he told her. “Even the operating room. Flies landed in open wounds all the time.” After surgery, if they were crowded and didn’t have enough space, which was often, they’d put two patients in the same bed. The families of the sick would often sleep under the bed, especially if it was the mother. The children had to be with her. “Child care is strictly women’s work. There’s no such thing as a stay-at-home father. A man might be home if he’s unemployed, but he doesn’t watch the kids.”

“What did they think of you being a nurse?”

“The patients usually assumed I was a doctor, just not a very good one.”

He didn’t mind that, though, he told her. He’d been all over the globe, and generally people found a way to make you fit into their worldview. Once they got to know you, you stopped being a failed doctor and were just the guy they could bring a sick child or injured friend to. “And they could tell me their stories. I think they liked that almost as much as getting fixed up. When I stopped being able to listen, that’s when I knew I had to take a break.”

“Why couldn’t you listen, do you think?”

“I just got burned out.”

“Was there anything that triggered it?” She had worked her way to his feet, and he braced himself against the pain he knew would come. “Relax,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

He felt the strength of her hands, though she squeezed only gently at his heels. “How’s my energy now?” he said, trying not to grit his teeth.

“Unstable,” she said. “How’s mine?”

“I have no idea.”

She laughed. “Good. Then I’m keeping it in the background, like a good massage therapist should.”

Once he’d made it through the ordeal of his feet, he could feel the tension drain from the rest of his body, too. It was time for him to flip over, and she held the sheet for him. She came around behind and began to work on his neck and shoulders, and he found himself gazing at her through half-open eyes. Her oddly shaped face was so familiar to him. Her wavy brown hair bounced slightly as she moved.

“I stopped believing in a God who cared,” he confessed to her, surprising himself.

She thought about this. “You lost your faith in the face of all that suffering.”

He closed his eyes. It was embarrassing to admit, but it wasn’t really the suffering that had gotten to him. “It’s way more selfish than that,” he said. “I stopped believing in a God who cared about me.” He felt tension rise in his throat and behind his eyes. Her fingers moved down from his scalp and around his eye sockets, as if they were following the pain across his face.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I wasn’t who I thought I was. I thought God had chosen me. Yes, I would die young, but I was called to do something extraordinary. By God. Do you see?”

Her warm fingers pressed at his temples. “And now it feels like God pulled a fast one.”

He let out a groan. It sounded so childish and self-centered. But it was a belief born in the self-absorption of adolescence and in the wake of loss. His mother and then his father. An abbreviated future. There had to be a reason for it. God had given him that reason. And now it appeared as if he’d lived a life of hardship and self-denial for no reason at all. A fast one, indeed.

“So now you know why my fucking energy’s unstable.”

She rested a hand on his chest for a moment. “It’s a really good reason,” she said. In silence, she continued down his arms, and then to his legs, corralling his pain—his energy—in that way she had. He understood it a little better now.

“You know,” she said, as she kneaded his calf. “I think you might be a Jew.”

A quick laugh burst out of him. “How d’you figure?”

“We consider ourselves God’s chosen people, and look how that’s turned out. Pure trouble for the entire history of Judaism.”

“You’ve got a point,” he admitted.

“But also, your life has been one long mitzvah—an endless good deed. That’s very important to Jews.”

“So you’re saying I should go to Hebrew school now?”

“No.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m just saying you’re in good company. Isn’t it what your patients wanted? First to get fixed up, and then to know they’re not alone.”

* * *

After she left the room and he got dressed, he loosened the screw that held the hideous pole lamp to the ceiling and took it down to the living room where she was waiting. It felt like some kind of postmodern spear in his hand. “You have a closet I can put this in?” he said.

“Sean . . .”

“Consider it a mitzvah.”

She sighed and led him to a small storage room near the garage, where he stowed it carefully. “Mazel tov,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulder and giving a little squeeze. “Am I saying that right?”

“Yeah, you’re practically Rabbi Schechter.”

“Who’s that?”

She smiled and closed the storage room door. “Never mind.”

* * *

He didn’t feel like leaving. She’d always told him to drink lots of water after a massage, so he asked for a glass and sipped it slowly. They sat in the living room, on opposite ends of the vast cracked leather couch.

“Just one room,” he said. “Why can’t you have just one room the way you want it?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“How about giving me a shot?”

She shook her head in frustration. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to . . . it’s just . . . my situation is the opposite of yours. You never felt the pressure to stay and be what people wanted.”

He hadn’t thought of himself that way—in fact he’d felt enormous pressure to do what he thought God had wanted. But he could see her point. And he remembered her parents. “Your folks were kind of hoverers, weren’t they? They kept a close rein.”

“Yeah, a little,” she said sarcastically. “I guess, in fairness to them, they were just worried.”

“Why? You were a good kid. You were smart and never got in any trouble that I knew of.”

“Sean, look at me.”

“What?”

“Jesus, Sean. Either you’re being dense or you’re faking.”

He was startled by this. Becky was generally so nonconfrontational. But he remembered that she could pack a punch when she felt pressed.

“My face, Sean,” she said, an index finger twitching up toward the side of her head that swelled out like an unexpected hill on an otherwise smooth landscape. “Kids teased me constantly. I was shy. I cried a lot. And I was their only child—there was no one else to take a share of their worry off my plate. Of course they hovered.”

“All right. But that was a long time ago. You’re a grown-up now. They don’t still need to control your every move.” It was obvious by the look she gave him that he still didn’t get it. “Beck, do you feel like you owe them something for taking care of you all those years?”

“Uhh!” she groaned, her hands flying up in frustration. If there was anything to this “energy” theory, Sean could feel it then. Definitely very unstable. Rebecca took a deep breath and let it out. “Look, here’s the difference between you and me.”

She told him a story. One day back in high school, she had stayed late to work on a science lab and missed the bus. She was walking home in a heavy rain when a car pulled up. “It was your aunt, offering me a ride.” Rebecca had been feeling particularly sorry for herself that day. Someone had said something mean. When Aunt Vivian questioned why she hadn’t taken the bus, Rebecca had admitted somewhat bitterly that honors chemistry was just too hard.

“You know what she said? She said, ‘You’re an intelligent young woman. I’m sure you’ll find a solution.’ Not one ounce of sympathy for the poor, sad deformed girl! In fact, when she dropped me off and I thanked her for the ride, her answer was, ‘Consider investing in a raincoat.’ It was a total kick in the pants!”

“Vintage Aunt Viv.” He nodded. “She never put up with whining of any kind.”

“She expected you to manage your own needs, and she didn’t ask you to manage hers. You see the difference, right? With my parents we manage each other constantly. Trust me, when your whole relationship is built on it, that’s a tough habit to break.”

* * *

It was late, and though he could have sat there and talked all night like they used to, he knew it was time to leave. He pulled five twenties out of his wallet, glad he’d remembered to cash his paycheck from the Confectionary before he left for the Mount Frissell trip.

“I only charge fifty when it’s at my house,” she said.

“Why? Are you any less effective here?”

She rolled her eyes at the obviousness of the point he was making. “No. But even at fifty I end up with way more than I’d get at Tree of Life.”

“Speaking as your average self-centered client, I really don’t care what you end up with. I care that I got a kickass massage, as good as or better than what I’d get at that nuthouse you call a spa.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He took her hand and closed her fingers around the bills. “Tip’s included,” he said. “And since I plan to have all my massages here from now on, I should warn you that every time I come, I’m taking something out of that room.”

* * *

On the ride home through the lamplit streets of Belham, he ruminated on what she’d said about the difference between her parents and his aunt. Opposite ends of the spectrum, from “We’re involved in every move you make” to “You’re on your own.” And although as a kid he’d always wished for someone who’d look out for him a bit more, Becky had a point. At least he didn’t feel he owed Aunt Vivvy the way Becky seemed to feel she owed her parents. He’d earned the right to go his own way. It was something to be thankful for.