Loreena's Gift Read online

  Uncle Don paused and knocked on the bedroom door. “Russell? It’s Reverend Clement.” No response. “Russell?”

  The bed creaked.

  Uncle Don turned the knob and stepped inside, Loreena behind him. Radio music hummed softly from the far side of the room. The scent of sweat-stained sheets, old chicken soup, menthol, and disinfectant filled the air, as if no windows had been opened for months.

  “Russ? It’s Reverend Clement. How are you feeling?”

  The man coughed, a grinding sound that made Loreena wince.

  “Do you feel any better?”

  Russell coughed again, his voice rattling with the remnants of a thousand coughs. A smoker, Loreena thought, or at least he’d been one in the past. She imagined his face marked with deep forehead wrinkles and a large nose, ears close to the side of his head, his Adam’s apple prominent on a wasted neck sagging with skin and unshaven hair.

  Uncle Don helped him to a sip of water. When Russell spoke, it was in a whisper.

  “Today?”

  “It’s Sunday,” Uncle Don said.

  Russell’s raspy breathing filled the room. “Sunday,” he said.

  Loreena licked her lips, wishing she had tried the tea. Why wasn’t Crystal home? A daughter should be here at a time like this.

  “Is there any way we can help you?” Uncle Don said.

  Russell shifted, the springs squeaking within the mattress. Lying on his back, he kicked his leg three times. Loreena heard the hiss of cotton against skin and imagined his foot poking out. The radio hummed a new song. Russell sniffed, coughed, and snuffled. Loreena grabbed onto the footboard to steady herself. The man was crying.

  “Everything okay in here?”

  Deborah stood at the door. When no one answered, she came in and turned the radio off. “Can I get you anything, hon?”

  Silence settled over the room. Russell took another drink of water, his swallows audible now. When he lay back again, he stopped breathing a moment, as if even the effort of drinking was too much. They all leaned forward, waiting to hear if he would take another breath. When it came, Loreena sighed in relief. His stopped heart would have freed her from what she was there to do, but still she prayed for his last moments of life. A chance to make peace with what was to come. A chance to say goodbye.

  “I’ll let you be, then.” Deborah tapped Russell’s arm and started out.

  “Wait. Deb,” Russell whispered.

  She stopped behind Loreena, near the door. When Russell said nothing more, she walked back to the bed. Loreena heard the blankets slide against the sheets and imagined Russell reaching out. After a moment, he started to cry again.

  “All right, now,” Deborah said, patting his hand. “All right.”

  Loreena shuffled sideways until her shoulder touched the wall. She felt the cool plaster next to her skin, the solid boards secure and stable. Near her ear hung a picture frame, and she wondered if it contained a portrait of Deborah and Russell. Were they smiling?

  “You okay?” Uncle Don whispered to her.

  She was unable to answer, blinking back tears.

  He squeezed her arm. “Shall we pray with Russell?”

  The patting stopped. Russell sniffed and exhaled a long sigh.

  “Yes,” Deborah said. Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “A prayer would be just the thing.” She lingered a moment, kissed Russell softly, and then hurried out the door, shutting it behind her with a quiet click. Loreena wondered then if she knew somehow—if she were hurrying away so they could get it done before she had a chance to interfere. Maybe she hurried away because she couldn’t take it anymore, the suffering, the sadness. Or maybe she hurried away because she was afraid of caving to temptation and begging him to wait, to spend one more day with her.

  If Loreena were Deborah, that’s how she would feel.

  After Deborah left, Uncle Don tapped Loreena on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go to the other side?” he whispered.

  She hesitated. “Should I take his hand?”

  “When you’re ready.”

  Her fingers trailed along the edge of the mattress as she made her way around the bed. When she stopped, she knew Russell’s head was turned her way, his exhales weak, the heaviness of his body like a railroad tie flat and worn, burnished from the sun, the earth damp and moldy underneath.

  Uncle Don took up his post across from her. “We’ll pray,” he said in a quiet, soothing voice. “Dear Lord, this man, Your faithful servant, is suffering now and desires Your mercy. After a long and fruitful life, filled with hard work and kindness to his fellow man, Russell Pearson is ready to come home, to join You in everlasting peace and joy.”

  At times like these, his voice reminded Loreena of the cello, like the smooth, sonorous tone she achieved when she pulled the long bow over the thick strings, the vibration steady between her knees. It was one of the few things they had in common, this ability to produce sounds that soothed the human spirit. As she listened, her heartbeat slowed, and she gradually lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, trying to cause little disturbance so as not to unsettle the dying man. Once down she rested, taking deep breaths. The next step was to pull off her gloves, but then there would be no turning back. Then it would happen, like that day with Ben—or it wouldn’t, and all of this would be over.

  Russell’s labored breathing slowed, the silent spaces lengthening between each inhale and exhale. Loreena imagined reaching for his hand and trembled at the memory of what had happened when her palm touched Ben’s, the blackness that surrounded her as she fell through some sort of tunnel. She had screamed then, for it felt like she was really falling, like she had dropped off the side of a cliff to plunge headfirst toward a hard ground. But then she had looked beside her, and for the first time she’d seen Ben’s wrinkled face.

  “And as you take his hand, Dear Lord,” Uncle Don said, angling his voice toward her, “take all this pain from his body, and let him rise up to be with you forevermore.”

  Loreena pulled off her gloves and set them in her lap. Now. She had to do it now. The man was dying. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. It wasn’t like Ben—stocky, robust Ben, who radiated life like the snowcapped mountains around Stillwater and still had so many more years to grow roses. This was different. This man was in pain, and she could help.

  Her fingers found Russell’s bony shoulder and trailed down his arm. His left hand still rested on top of the blankets where Deborah had left it. Uncle Don’s voice droned on, words about peace and an end to pain, about the value of a well-lived life, and about the final resting place waiting with the Lord. Sitting so close, Loreena could feel the labor in every one of Russell’s breaths, and her own lungs seemed to close in, until she had to force herself to breathe deeply to keep from panicking.

  “Hand in hand we will walk with the Lord,” Uncle Don said, his voice rising for her benefit, “and never again shall we want for anything.”

  Finally, Loreena lifted Russell’s hand and pressed his left palm against her right.

  His skin was cold and dry, not the warm touch she sometimes dreamed about—but still, it was a living hand, and the sensation felt foreign, it had been so long since she’d felt skin against skin. At first it was just his fingers weakly lingering on top of hers; then his grip tightened, and she squeezed his hand in return and felt the blood pulsing through her flesh and his, reverberating through her body, a gentle pulse at the base of her spine.

  For a moment that’s all there was: two people holding hands. She thought how frail he seemed, the knuckles prominent under paper-thin skin. This body had suffered much. The knowledge helped her relax, and she exhaled, sinking into the mattress and closing her eyes for whatever would come next.

  The power built up inside her like a tidal wave. Her lips moved into a smile. The sadness of this man’s death was slowly leaving her, shifting to the ecstasy of touching another human being, of feeling his spirit through the plush of her hand, and through that conduit between them s
ensing the force of two merging consciousnesses. Russell’s breath slowed, each raspy inhale longer than the last, the space between them growing in time, and she began to see behind her closed eyes a long narrow pathway stretching out before her like a dirt trail through a redwood forest at sunset, a brilliant orange light glowing up ahead. Loreena was walking barefoot, hand in hand with Russell, and as it had been in the times before, she could see.

  Russell’s hand jerked, but she held fast to him as the path became clear, the details in the tree trunks and the fern leaves sharpening. A young buck flitted up ahead, his steps light on the forest floor. He watched them, tubular ears trained on their approach.

  Beside her, the ghostly shadow of the man whose hand she held gradually brightened and solidified into true form. Her smile widened, for she could see that she’d been right. He had a large onion-shaped nose, deep forehead wrinkles, and kind blue eyes. Now she could see too that he had oversized ears, but considering his height—he was over six feet—they seemed to fit him perfectly. As they walked, he gradually stood up straighter, his strides hesitant but his eyes gaining clarity with every step. Loreena kept pace with him, her being swelling with the visions around her.

  The buck darted away, the trees cleared, and up ahead sparkled the blue and silver of a sunlit lake. They were approaching a rise, the path widening under their feet. As they drew near the edge, Russell turned to look at her. Loreena smiled again, her body charged with the sensation of someone else’s eyes gazing into her own.

  For a moment he didn’t speak, and then: “Do I keep going?”

  The lake stretched out endlessly in front of them. To their right, the narrow path wound down to the water’s edge. At its end rested a green canoe. Loreena pointed to it. “There. That is where you must go.”

  A slow smile spread across Russell’s face, his blue eyes sparkling in the auburn glow. “It’s just like the one I used to have when I was a boy.”

  “Do you know this lake?”

  He looked out on the water. “No.” Fear lit in his eyes and he turned back to her. “Will you come with me?”

  Loreena blinked. Go with him? She looked out on the lake. How far could she go?

  “Come on.” She led him onto the path.

  They descended, the light glowing brighter with every step, illuminating the many shades of green in the trees and ferns and wildflowers, though there were no birds. The air seemed to breathe with a gentle, effortless quiet, marred by neither insects nor engines. Loreena took it all in, the subtle shades of brown and black in the bark of the trees, the spacious branches towering over them, the toothpick strands on the spiny leaves, the teardrop outline of the light sparkling on the tips of the lapping waves. A soft breeze blew her hair back from her face and for a moment she forgot where she was, that she was leading Russell into his version of Heaven. It seemed this was her paradise, and she had no desire to leave.

  The warm water licked her toes. She took another step.

  “Do I row the boat across?”

  Russell sat in the canoe, the oars in his hands. His hair had changed from gray to a deep brown, his body from that of a fifty-some-year-old devastated by disease to a healthy, robust thirty-something, and it seemed to grow younger even as she gazed at him.

  “Is that where you want to go?” she asked.

  He looked left, then right. “There is no other way.”

  As he said the words, the orange glow seemed to narrow and focus until a fiery path burned across the lake. Russell pushed off, rowing on one side and then the other, moving into the beam of light. After he’d gained some distance from the shore, he twisted back to look at her.

  “Tell Deborah she was the best wife any man could ever have.”

  Loreena nodded and waved goodbye.

  Russell dipped the oars gently, making little plurping sounds like jumping frogs. Still Loreena watched him, the water up to her chest. She had been walking farther and farther into the lake until she was up to her neck, and now the bottom was falling away, the depths drawing her forward until she pushed off and started to swim. She wanted to close her eyes but couldn’t bear to miss anything, so she lay back and gazed up at the orange sun until she was floating as easily as an oak leaf, arms spread wide, skirt billowing around her legs. Was this Heaven?

  Loreena!

  The voice shattered the air around her. She jerked up and scanned for the caller, but there was no one in sight.

  Loreena!

  Uncle Don’s voice. He sounded worried. Out on the water, Russell’s boat was just a dot in the distance. Looking back, Loreena saw the shoreline had receded, the trees blending together in a long swath of green and brown. The water slipped into her mouth, sweet like honey. Closing her eyes, she savored the taste and started to sink. Not until she felt the water sting her nostrils did she come awake again and try to swim back to shore.

  It was farther away than she’d realized, and she tired quickly, her limbs heavy and unused to the effort of swimming. She kept at it, lifting her arms one after the other, her hair falling thick on her neck, her skirt clinging to the backs of her thighs.

  Loreena! Come on, now!

  Uncle Don sounded desperate. The edge of the forest stood empty and green beyond, the waves flowing toward it. She kicked harder and reached out for the shore, but no matter how many strokes she took, it seemed to remain the same distance away. After what felt like an eternity of useless struggle, she stopped, panting, and looked at the evergreen trees, envisioning herself touching the bark, feeling the rumpled hardness under her palm. The sensation flooded her body, and then the shore was there and the ground came up to meet her toes and she stood, dripping, in the shallow lip of the water.

  The rope that had secured Russell’s boat to the shore bobbed up and down, listless. But it wasn’t the rope that held Loreena’s gaze. Something she hadn’t noticed when she and Russell descended the path to the lake now stood before her.

  A rose bush.

  It grew near a tree trunk, short and neglected, yet offering her a single deep purple bud. The color was her mother’s favorite—she’d ordered it from her flower catalog years ago, and cherished it from the first day, giving it only the best specialized fertilizer and mulch. When it finally outgrew the pot, it was a family affair to transfer the plant to its place of honor in the flowerbed, just to the right of the front door. The three of them combined their efforts—her brother Saul worked the shovel and Loreena held the bush while their mother supervised, until six hands gently lowered the plant they’d named Salvador, after one of their mother’s favorite artists, into the hole and pushed the dirt back in to fill it. Then they accented the plot with a miniature white fence to protect Salvador during his first few tentative days in the outside world.

  Loreena sloshed forward in the water, her gaze clinging to the rosebud, afraid if she blinked it would disappear. The mud clung to her heels, making sucking sounds with every step. She teetered once, nearly falling, but regained her balance.

  Thorns covered the single stem, sharp and threatening. They brought back memories of stinging wounds on her fingers and arms, the ones she always suffered when she cut a particularly elegant bloom to take inside. She’d never amputated one from Salvador. No one cut roses from Salvador but her mother.

  Bending low to study the plant, Loreena took note of the dark, elegant leaves that hung tired and listless from the fragile stems. There was only the one bud. Her mother’s words echoed in her head, something about the plant needing more food and nourishment, for how could it sustain itself without the proper tools?

  Trembling, she reached out until her fingers touched the soft flesh of the petals. Nothing happened. The flower didn’t disappear or shrink or die as she had feared, but felt firm and strong, like any other rosebud she might have held in her hand. Bending toward it, she inhaled deeply, and the sweet scent flooded her nostrils and swept down her throat. She closed her eyes.

  “Loreena! Wake up!”

  Her eyes shot open. T
he rose was gone. Gray shadows took its place.

  “No,” she groaned.

  She was lying on the bed, her back braced against the headboard. Her uncle hovered over her. She could feel his breath warm on her face.

  “Thank God. Are you all right?” he said.

  “I can’t be back already.” Loreena felt around, but Russell lay dead beside her, the hand she had held now stiff against the blankets. She could smell the distant scent of sulfur, the same as she had smelled after the others, and imagined the fresh burn on Russell’s skin, her own tender to the touch. The radio was still quiet, the sheets warm underneath her; her feet were dry inside her shoes, as if she had never been near the water.

  Her uncle stood up. “What happened?”

  The images flooded her mind as if she were watching a sequence of photographs, the deer and the setting sun and the water and the boat and Russell rowing away and the rose, the rose sitting there like a precious jewel among all the evergreen trees, the single bud angling toward her like a signpost alongside the road.

  Uncle Don touched the back of his hand to her forehead, then her cheek. “Here, let me help you up.”

  “Wait, my gloves.” They were lying between her body and Russell’s, crumpled on the sheets. She slipped her hands inside. “Was it all right? Was he okay?”

  Uncle Don took her hand and pulled.

  “Wait.” Loreena resisted, wishing she could see Russell’s face one more time. As she rested her hand on his shoulder, an intense longing flooded her body, a pain she hadn’t felt in so many years she’d almost forgotten how bad it was. Dark and deep, it had driven her and Saul, at ages nine and eleven, to sit by Salvador for many nights afterward, legs crossed, faces pointed toward the roses that continued to bloom even when they shouldn’t have, because their mother was gone, and who could ever take care of them that way again?