Delia laughed bitterly. “Look at this crap.”
Wendy drew a deep breath. She and Win used to try to hide their mother’s strangeness from Delia and Lise, but Henry’s crash had offered them a peculiar relief — since Delia had started confiding in them, they’d started confiding back. Sometimes, caught in a long exchange of “my mother said” and “my father did,” they had actually laughed. She had nothing to lose by saying what came next. “Mom said Grunkie must have told Uncle Henry about the neuro-nutritionist who’s supposed to come.”
“The what?” Delia asked.
“This nurse, this lady from the Church who’s supposed to help him. Grunkie wasn’t all that thrilled about the idea, I guess. And Mom said Grunkie must have told your father, and your father maybe took him away so he wouldn’t have to come here. You know how he hates Mom’s Church stuff. He thinks it’s crazy.”
“It is,” Delia said. “You told me so yourself.”
“Your father isn’t?”
They stared at each other until the doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Lise,” Delia said. “I told her to come over.”
Wendy groaned. “Now? You know she’ll just make things worse.” Lise knew everyone’s weak spots and hit them unerringly, and Wendy had always wondered if Lise noticed the way her words drove everyone away. The way she had of acting forty instead of twenty-three, as if she were decades older than the rest of them — Wendy felt a stiffness creeping up on her already, an echo of Lise’s rigid posture. Delia had, she knew, long since stopped telling Lise about anything important, and as they moved to the door she whispered to Delia, “Did you make up something?”
“About what?”
“Why you’re home. What you’re doing here. Roy?”
“Shit. I forgot all about that. Tell her I’m visiting you, okay?”
“Okay. But she’s going to remember Roy.”
Delia rolled her eyes and then pulled Roy to her and whispered something to him. Roy laughed. Delia said to Wendy, “Tell her Roy’s with you now. That you two hooked up after I left.”
She gave Wendy the same conspiratorial grin they’d shared as children, whenever they’d banded together to protect themselves from Use’s prying. Before Wendy could say anything, Roy left Delia’s side and moved to hers. “My darling,” he said in a joking voice. “My own true love.”
Her whole arm grew warm as he took her hand and held it. “My prince,” she said, trying to keep her voice as light as his.
Win, who had been watching all this, said, “Are we ready?” His voice was sarcastic. “Everyone got everything sorted out?”
Wendy and Roy and Delia nodded, and Win threw open the door. A woman stood there, not Lise, a woman older than Wiloma with short white hair and very white skin and a face so creased and lined and scored that it resembled a cotton shirt someone had washed and then forgotten to iron. Her gauzy printed skirt sagged almost to her ankles and was topped by a blue blouse. A large wicker basket was strapped to her back.
“Hello?” Wendy said. “Can I help you?”
“You must be Wendy,” the woman said. Wendy felt a prickle of fear. “Is your mother here?”
Win pushed himself in front of Wendy. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“I’m Christine. From the Healing Center. Your mother asked me to come.”
“Tomorrow,” Wendy protested as Christine walked past them and into the living room. “You’re supposed to be here tomorrow.”
“I always come the night before, to make sure the treatment area is properly arranged.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Win asked. “Barging in here like this.”
“I come where I’m called,” Christine said.
Delia laughed. “This is a joke, right?”
Christine gazed at the filthy living room and the dolls on the table and the spray of juice on the fireplace. “Nice,” she said. “Does your mother know about this?”
“Our mother’s away for the evening,” said Win.
“Why?” asked Christine. She wandered toward the kitchen before Wendy could answer, with her hands out before her like a blind woman’s. She touched the walls and the doorframes and the chairs and the drapes, as if she were trying to read them with her hands. As Wendy and Win and Roy and Delia followed her, she touched the stove, the sink, the dishwasher, and the refrigerator. Then she turned to Wendy expectantly. “On the counter,” Wendy blurted. “Under the phone.” She couldn’t understand what had made her speak.
Christine picked up the note Wendy had placed there earlier and read it. “But this is serious. Explain.”
Wendy told her the same story she’d told her father and then Win and then Delia, aware that it sounded worse with each repetition and afraid that she’d twisted, somehow, the already twisted tale her mother had told her. He said, she said, we said, she thought. They said, you said, I said. I said. She closed her eyes and felt the world chipped into bits around her, made up of the same small squares that formed the creatures and obstacles of Win’s video games. Nothing smooth and blended, everything sharp-edged and discrete, every word and act and person separate from every other, and the illusion that they formed a whole just that, just an illusion, visible only from a distance that blurred everything. Her voice trailed off and she opened her eyes to find Christine staring at her. “I mean,” she said faintly, “I mean that’s what my mother thinks. I don’t know what my father thinks. I don’t know why he went with her.”
“Your mother has good instincts,” Christine said. “Her hypothesis may be correct. Your great-uncle’s been a little resistant to the idea of being Healed. And if your uncle feels the same way …”
“He’s my father,” Delia said impatiently.
Christine turned toward Delia, her gray eyes shining like lamps. “Your father?” Wendy noticed that her eyebrows were almost invisible. “You’re the niece?”
“Wiloma’s niece,” Delia snapped. “Henry’s daughter. Grunkie’s grandniece. And my father feels the same way Grunkie does. He thinks you’re all crazy.”
Christine nodded gravely. “That would be consistent. Your father is the one who lost the farm in Coreopsis?”
“That’s him,” Delia said, while Wendy wondered what else this woman knew. “The one who loses everything.”
Christine moved to the stove and started heating a kettle of water. “But he doesn’t just lose things,” she said. “Does he? He takes things all the time, to make up for everything he’s lost. Other people’s land, other people’s love …”
Delia’s face turned a strange color, and Wendy felt her own face flush as she thought of the dolls in the living room. It was sickening, what this woman knew. Her mother must have told her everything.
Christine had kept her basket on her back, but now she leaned against the counter and slipped her arms from the straps. Quietly, she unloaded a bundle of branches with waxy leaves and shiny white berries, and then an assortment of small paper sacks that were folded, stapled, and labeled. She said to Wendy, “Where are the cups?”
Wendy gestured toward the cabinet over the sink, and when Christine reached in for the mugs, Wendy’s arm stole out and plucked a branch from the bundle and slipped it into her pocket. Win and Roy and Delia were all watching her but she couldn’t stop herself. She had to see if this woman knew everything. Christine looked back over her shoulder and said, “Are you very drunk?”
Wendy, suddenly speechless, turned to Win. “No,” he said. “We haven’t been drinking.”
“Not you two, the others.”
“What business is it of yours?” Roy asked.
“None,” Christine said. If she’d seen the branch disappear, she apparently wasn’t going to mention it. Wendy pulled her shirt over her pocket. “But I have some tea here, it’s sassafras. It’ll clear your heads.”