It’s almost liberating, to the point where I no longer even want to be rescued.
One morning, as we bundle up—I offer her an old down vest that’s too big for her, but she wears it anyway over her jean jacket—and walk the quarter-mile dirt road together to the frozen pond, I wonder if she might be a quasi reincarnation of Albert Camus, or maybe his ghost taking on a womanly form, because she leads me there just like my little dog did, forcing me to cane my way a bit more quickly than usual—always pushing me to be more mobile and cheery than I thought possible.
But just when I’m about to buy into the fantasy, my sanity points out the fact that she has a rental car with New Jersey plates and I’ve touched her hand on several occasions when she’s handed me dishes to dry, so she is not ethereal.
She also consumes food and much wine, so I know she is no ghost.
As we’re sitting on my deck one night, bundled up in hats, gloves, and quilts, drinking said wine, I say, “Okay, tell me the story of how you came to know my mother.”
She keeps her gaze on the many stars above, rocking back and forth on the old wooden Mission rocking chair I purchased at a flea market in town. “You’re ready to talk about this? Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“Okay, then.”
My former student goes on to tell me the most unbelievable and frustrating story I have ever heard, one that makes me never want to read the letters my mother allegedly sent to my PO box. Wild coincidences. Mystical forces. The Virgin Mary supposedly appearing on an office-building window in Tampa Bay.
She even uses the word miracles!
It’s absolutely laughable, even for my mother, until my former student gets to the end where the old woman dies, which unfortunately is the most realistic part, and I’m pretty sure Portia Kane doesn’t believe half of what she’s told me because she keeps saying, “I know it sounds crazy, but . . .” and “I don’t even believe in God, and yet . . . ,” chopping her thigh with her right mitten as her wine sloshes around in her glass.
“Why didn’t my mother ask her almighty and powerful God to save her life when she found out she was sick?” I say. “Did she ever think of that?”
“She asked him to save you instead.”
“I see.” It feels chilly to be on the other side of Mom’s religious delusions. She always used to say it was me who was to do the saving, with my teaching. What a laugh!
“She absolutely thought that her death was part of her god’s plan,” Portia says. “I’m not saying I believe it is all part of any god’s plan, but you have to admit, it’s a strange coincidence at the very least. Your mother believed that this was all meant to be. And I did save you from choking to death. That is a fact we can both agree on, right? That I arrived at precisely the right moment. Just a mere five minutes later, and we might not be having this discussion. What we do with that information is still up for debate in my mind. But here I am regardless. And here you are too. Together. Despite the odds.”
Portia seems to be taking a rather objective view of my mother’s madness, and I must say that I’m impressed by her ability to consider both Mom’s religious nonsense and my current and preposterous lot in life—and also the link that we have now formed, Portia and me, whatever is going on here, right now. She seems to be absorbing all of it in stride, without getting emotional.
I think about Portia Kane showing up after twenty years simply to turn me over just before I choke to death on my own vomit. How it’s undeniably true that I might very well be dead if she hadn’t met my mother on a plane, been given my Vermont address, and been convinced to drive eight hours north to “save” her former high school English teacher, who she had mistakenly put up on a pedestal to represent the goodness of all men.
Absurd.
These are the uneducated thoughts of wacko mystics, the mind tricks of charlatans eager to control and separate the masses from their wallets, not the sort of stuff you should allow into your thought process about anything, let alone the first question.
Albert Camus would want me to answer the first question with reason and objectivity, not superstition and convenient religious mysticism.
“You know what my mother said to me when I was in the hospital, after one of my very own students beat me to within an inch of death with a baseball bat? When I looked up at her, frightened and desperate and wounded and with nothing left to give whatsoever, let alone anything left to defend myself with, not even dignity? Do you know what she said?” I ask Portia, who is now sitting comfortably with her legs up on the arm of my couch, back inside my house. “She said my attack must have taken place for a reason. Can you believe that? Isn’t that sick? Isn’t that just cruel? Can you imagine saying that to someone who has experienced such brutality? That the actions of a sick mind are actually part of some divine plan for the universe—that Edmond Atherton’s mental illness was an intentional part of some god figure’s plan. That god said, Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea to scramble some teenager’s thoughts to the point where he is willing and able to commit a chilling act of violence so that it will begin an otherwise impossible chain of events? Because it would be far too easy just to communicate directly with mortals. I am all-powerful, capable of doing whatever I want, so let’s make this into a bit of a challenge. Just for fun, or maybe a laugh. Is that not ridiculous at best and abusive at worst? It would make God either the laziest being in the universe or the most sadistic.”