All's Well(44)

I don’t say anything. My turn to lower my head. I feel a smile. Unholy. Twitching on my face.

“Maybe it’s a flu,” Ellie offers, so kindly filling in the silence.

“Maybe,” I say.

“I’ve had one of those before once. Where it hurt to move. It hurt to text. It hurt to breathe even.”

I nod at the floor. Such a hard floor. Did she really sit out here so long?

“It is flu season, Ellie. Better bundle up. Things are going around.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

“Professor Fitch?”

“Miranda, please, Ellie. I’ve told you. Call me Miranda.”

“Miranda. I just wanted to ask you a question. I would have asked earlier but I didn’t want to bother you. When I looked in the theater, you just seemed so… rapt.”

So you waited out here for four hours? Sitting in the dark with your tangerine?

“What is it?”

“Well, I just wondered if you’d tried my bath.”

“Bath? What bath?”

“I made you a bath, remember?”

And then I do remember. The pungent little baggie of dried herbs, oils, and salt I found tucked into my purse last night when I left the theater. Peppered here and there with the petals of dried flowers. Bearing a little purple note. From Ellie. It’s currently funking up my glove compartment—making my whole car smell like a boreal forest crossed with a field of sage.

“Oh, your bath. Yes. Of course,” I lie. “It was wonderful. Just the thing.”

I look at her and smile. Does she believe it? Absolutely. She’s positively beaming.

“Really? So it worked!”

“Worked?”

“Well, I cast a bit of a spell on it. To help you heal. It’s a restorative bath, like I said.” She looks away now. Embarrassed perhaps by her dabblings in the occult.

“Did you?”

She nods solemnly. “Yes. And I have to say, I think it’s working. You seem better, Miranda.”

“I do? Yes, I do. You know, I was wondering what it might be. But now you’ve solved it, Ellie. Thank you.” I say it seriously, like I mean it.

Ellie beams again. Hideously. There is something loathsome about her intensity, her passion, I can’t deny it. The depth and breadth of it—how fiercely it burns under her unassuming skin. For a second, I see what Grace sees, which is just a plain, grim-featured girl. A wanting girl. But then all of this is what makes her a great Helen.

“Good night, Ellie,” I say. “And remember to bundle up.”

I’m walking down the hall. Feeling her watching me go.

“Should I make you another one, Miranda?” she calls after me.

“Another?” I ask her, turning.

“Another bath.” Her silhouette so hopeful. So full of faith in her own witchy powers. Can’t burst that bubble.

“Oh, yes. Sure, why not?”





CHAPTER 13


“BETTER?” MARK REPEATS. His bro face is shocked. Did I really just speak this word here in the basement gym of SpineWorks?

I’m sitting on a medical table in a row of medical tables, gazing up at Mark, who is gazing down at my right leg, how it’s swinging wildly. Better? Me? A word that I treat as verboten, a word that whenever anyone says it in my vicinity causes me to shake my head violently. No, no. Not better. Definitely not better. Not me. Never better, please. Worse, always worse. Always and forever.

“I think so,” I whisper. “I think it is better.” I say it softly, hesitantly. “Maybe it’s just been a good couple of days.” Days in which my pill bottles have remained rattling in my pockets, unopened. Still close at hand in case. “I mean, I don’t know for sure.”

I say this with my head down, looking at the carpet. The carpet is very similar to the one we have in the theater.

“Right,” Mark says.

I look up to find Mark staring at my swinging leg.

“And I mean things still hurt, of course,” I add quickly. “My back. My ribs. My hip.”

Mark nods at my leg. We’re on more familiar territory for him now. He appears to exhale for the first time. Of course things hurt.

“But it all feels more, I don’t know. Bearable?” I laugh nervously. I realize I’m shaking, I’m afraid. I haven’t dared to say the word better in a long time. I used to utter it so carelessly—declare it to my therapists so freely, hoping to get a reward, a dog begging for a biscuit—and whenever I uttered it, a fresh pain would seize me soon after. Almost as if God were mocking me and my hope. Better. You think you’re better, do you? Ha. Too funny. Well, let’s see how you do with this. Still better?

Mark’s smiling at me now, his hands in his pockets. “Well, wow, Miranda. Look at you.”

“And my leg. My leg, look.” And I straighten and bend it for Mark. “I can sit down and stand up now without it seizing up, see?” To demonstrate, I stand up. And then I sit back down. And I stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand—

“Okay, that’s enough,” Mark says. “Got it. Got the gist.”

Beside me, on the next medical table, an elderly woman lies on her back, a TheraBand wrapped around her knees, looking at me with something like fear. She’s in the middle of doing a bridge exercise. Her legs are shaking wildly. All the patients in the gym are looking at me, I realize. They’ve stopped their band-walks, their sad clamshell and bridge exercises. Stopped their slow pedaling on taped-up bikes. The PTs are all looking too. Every blue polo shirt branded with the SpineWorks logo turned toward me and Mark.