What am I doing here?
Maybe I should go. I feel like a foreigner, or an alien, new to this unfamiliar world and unsure how to inhabit it.
Then, out of the corner of my eyes I see the photos. They are side by side on the internal wall of the lab, away from the windows. They seem to hum, to pulse with light, and my feet pull me to them. Each one holds an image of a single person, with a tiny card below that gives their name followed by their age and talent. They aren’t normal talents. Not like gymnast or pianist or even math whiz. They are the strange kind that most people think are fake, the kind you might find in a circus or on a show about magic or, well, at a church like the one that grew up around me.
James Halloway. Sixteen. The Weatherman.
Nicole Matthews. Thirteen. Telekinesis.
Chastity Lang. Eighteen. Internal Sonar.
Will I end up on this wall? Is that what Dr. Holbrook hopes? To add me to her collection of freaks?
I am about to turn around and leave this place, grateful José promised to wait outside, when Dr. Holbrook appears in the doorway.
“Marlena! How wonderful to see you.” The warmth in her voice is soothing. She is dressed in a loose-fitting button-down shirt and flowing pants that end at her calves.
“Hi, Dr. Holbrook.” I tug at the bottom of my tank top, then hook my fingers into the belt loops of my jeans. It’s so strange to do these things with my clothing. It’s strange not to be dressed like a ghost who might haunt someone’s attic.
“Please call me Angie. Let’s talk in my office.” She beckons me into the big bright space around the corner.
There is a simple white table that must be her desk, with only a laptop and a lamp on it. Facing the glass walls and the ocean are an overstuffed white chair and a fluffy couch to match. They seem out of place among the minimalism and machinery. A thick knotted white-gray rug lies across the floor. Dr. Holbrook, Angie, slides open a tall glass door in the wall, and the warm breeze and the sounds of the waves surround us. She gestures for me to sit in the big white chair. I watch as she kicks off her heels and sits on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her like we are friends having a visit. I sink down into the soft cushions, my feet still flat on the floor, hands tight on my knees. My muscles are tense. I am still ready to flee.
“What brought you here today? Why now?” Angie asks, when I don’t speak.
I shake my head, side to side. I don’t know where to start.
How can I possibly start?
SEVEN
I am eighteen. It is three months ago, in early June, the start of summer. This is the day everything around me comes crashing down. The day I meet Finn.
So many things about my audience are typical that morning. The church is packed to the brim. My mother, ever more the expert pageant director, has everything under control, fitting more and more seekers inside the room. In the corner, petitioners chant and pray on their knees. Their pant legs are grass- and dirt-stained and shredded. There are people from the town. I see Mr. and Mrs. Almeida, who own the bakery. I don’t need to see Gertie to know she has a table set up out front, selling her souvenirs.
But one thing is unusual. Mrs. Jacobs is here, arms crossed tight, wearing an unreadable expression. She’s never come to an audience, not that I remember. Maybe she decided to see what in the world we do here on Saturdays. Most people in the town have come at least once.
José is helping with crowd control. During the audience, he plays the part of bodyguard, always somewhere nearby, making sure that no one takes a dive at me, some desperate soul who has no idea where else to turn. But now he is making sure I will have space to walk through the aisles. Gently, he clears a path. The room is tender, like a wound. Tourists aside, the people who fill the seats toward the front are the vulnerable, the needy, the sick. I watch the preparations through a hidden window backstage. I am ready for them.
Fatima futzes with my dress as I stand there. The air has grown warmer, the heat capturing the smells of the sea and drawing them inside.
“Marlena,” Fatima commands. “Stay still.”
I do as I’m told at first, but not for long.
“Stop touching your hair. You’re going to make the comb fall out, and the veil is just right!”
I don’t have to look at Fatima to see her exasperated expression. I do my best to stop moving as she begins the labored work of figuring out the complicated bustle.
My mother knows exactly where I am, exactly where to look. She catches me watching through the window and smiles. I give her a wave.
The roller coaster of our relationship has flattened itself into a taut sense of peace. I’ve been painting and creating my visions on a near constant basis. Collages take over the house and I’ve even tried my hand at sculpture, though only once and probably not again. The work occupies me, brain and body, heart and soul. It pushes other things out of view. When I give myself over to my work, those strange and uncomfortable questions and thoughts fade so far into the background of my mind they’ve nearly disappeared. My mother is only too happy to get me whatever materials I need to feed my art. Clay. Metal. Paper. Oils, watercolors, canvas, paper.
It was probably just a phase.
That’s what my mother said the other day, in passing, with respect to our recent fights and friction, with respect to the things that were upsetting the balance of our lives. Her words have been ringing through my insides since.
“Turn and look at me,” Fatima says.
Fatima stares down her nose at me, since she is taller, appraising my dress, the state of my hair, the artful folds of the veil that trails down my back. She makes a circling gesture with her finger and I do one slow twirl. “Lovely,” she says, more to herself than me.
“Really?” I ask.
She looks at me strangely. “You always look lovely at your audiences, Marlena. Don’t you feel lovely in your beautiful dress?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. “How I look is not supposed to matter,” I say, parroting my mother’s words.
Fatima is on the verge of saying something else when José enters the back room. He nods to tell me that we are about to begin. I resume my place at the window, watching for my mother’s cue.
In the third row on the right are five girls dressed the same, with ponytails high on their heads. They are wearing some sort of sports uniform. They must play together on a team. Maybe soccer or lacrosse or field hockey. I decide that it’s soccer, and wonder how they found their way to doing something like getting up on a Saturday morning, putting their hair up, and running around outside chasing after a ball and trying to make a goal in a net. How do normal girls decide who and what they’d like to be and do? What would it be like to wear a soccer jersey? To kick the ball as hard as I could, shouting to other girls on my team? To let my limbs go wild instead of keeping everything so still and controlled?
The girls stare at their phones, occasionally sharing whatever is on their little screens, pressing their heads together and laughing. Jealousy scuttles across my insides on its little crab legs.
My mother is on the stage making her opening remarks, talking to people about the history of my healings. “The History of Marlena the Living Saint,” it actually says in the program.
One of the soccer girls leans her head on the shoulder of the one next to her.
No one has ever asked me what I want to be or do with my life. The question has never occurred to anyone, I suppose. It’s never even occurred to me before now. What would I be if I wasn’t a healer? What if I could be anyone I wanted? Maybe I would work as a waitress in a diner, and wear my name on a pin stuck to the pocket of my uniform shirt, or be a teacher of mathematics, or even a competitive swimmer who goes out each morning to practice different strokes, gliding through the ocean. Or maybe I would be a doctor, like Hildegard, but the real kind who wear stethoscopes around their necks and do things like deliver wailing, squirming babies to their exhausted but happy mothers.