Sliding the vegetables off one of the skewers, she listened to her parents tell their stories about Carlynn Shire, and quite unexpectedly, she saw Liam’s face in her mind. She saw him with Mara in the nursing home, where he would touch his wife with affection, making himself smile at her when he felt anything but happy. It broke Joelle’s heart to see him that way. There had always been so much love in Liam’s eyes when he was with Mara, and that love was still there these days, although Mara couldn’t return it with anything more than puppy squeals. Then there was Sam and his ingenuous acceptance of his mother just the way she was. Soon, he would realize what he was missing. Soon he would be old enough to be embarrassed about it.

She’d lost track of the conversation and nearly jumped when her mother put a hand on her arm. “Are you with us, honey? You look like you’re a million miles away. What’s troubling you, love?”

Joelle drew in a long breath. “I was thinking about Mara,” she said. “If anyone deserves a miracle, it’s her.”

“Mara’s perfect for Carlynn Shire to work with,” her father said.

Joelle felt like screaming in frustration at his one-track mind, but she managed to make her voice even as she responded. “You haven’t seen Mara since the aneurysm,” she said. Her parents knew Mara quite well. Over the years, Joelle had brought Mara to Berkeley with her several times. “The doctors say she’ll be this way forever.”

Her father leaned toward her. “What do you have to lose by going to see Carlynn Shire?” he asked.

“I’d feel like an idiot,” she replied.

“And if there’s the slightest chance Mara could be helped,” her father said, “wouldn’t that be worth feeling like an idiot?”

“Of course, but…” She shook her head. “I doubt people can just call her up and ask her to heal someone.”

“But if you told her who you were,” her mother said. “If you told her you were that baby she saved in Big Sur thirty-four years ago, I bet she would—”

“Although,” her father interrupted, “she might not want to be reminded of that time.”

“Why not?” Joelle was puzzled.

“Because of the accident,” her mother said.

“Oh.” Joelle had heard the story any number of times, but she had never really listened. She knew what she was risking by asking her parents to repeat it to her once again—they would go on and on and on—yet suddenly she had a real desire to know.

“Remind me,” she said. “What happened, exactly?”

“Carlynn and her husband—”

“Alan Shire.” Joelle recalled his name from the previous recitations of this tale.

“Right. They were both doctors. And Carlynn had the gift of healing. Alan Shire didn’t, but he was very interested in that sort of phenomenon. So they founded the Shire Mind and Body Center to look into the phenomenon of healing.”

Joelle knew the center still existed and was somewhere in the vicinity of Asilomar State Beach. It was viewed with skepticism by the medical establishment and with total credibility by California’s alternative practitioners.

“Yes,” her mother said, “but they didn’t call it that back then. What was it called?”

Her father looked out toward the new birdhouse for a moment. “The Carlynn Shire Medical Center,” he said.

“Right,” said her mother. “It was just getting off the ground then. Penny Everett showed up at the commune one day, without a voice. She came there to get away from stress, because her doctor said that was what was causing her hoarseness.”

“She went on to be in Hair,” her father added.

“Who did?” Joelle was getting confused. “Carlynn?”

“No, Penny,” her mother said. “And she knew she couldn’t get a part in Hair if she had no voice. She’d been an old friend of Carlynn’s, and so she called Carlynn and asked her to come heal her voice. Carlynn dropped everything and came down to the commune.”

“Of course,” her father added, “we always believed some other force brought her there right at that time, because it was just the day after she arrived that you were born. If she hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t be here now.”

The thought made her shudder despite her skepticism.

Her father continued. “So, she’d been there a few days when—”

“A whole week,” corrected her mother. “That’s why Alan Shire and her sister were so freaked out.”

“Whatever,” her father said. “She’d been there a while, and of course we had no phone or any way for her to reach her family without leaving the commune, so I guess her husband and sister got worried about her and drove down to Big Sur to find her.” He looked at his wife. “What was the sister’s name?” he asked her.

“Lisbeth.”

“Oh, right. Alan Shire and Lisbeth, the sister, got a cabin over near Deetjen’s Inn—remember Deetjen’s?”

Joelle nodded quickly, wanting him to get on with the story.

“They checked into the cabin,” he said, “then started looking for the commune. We weren’t the only commune in Big Sur, as I’m sure you remember, and they probably didn’t know where to start looking. It was dark, I guess, by the time they got to the right one.”

“Actually, it was only Alan who got there,” her mother said. “The sister had stayed behind in the cabin.”

“That’s true. And Carlynn was in Penny’s cabin then, but she’d been in our cabin just an hour or so earlier. Rainbow.” He grinned. “Remember it?”

“Sure.” She smiled at the memory of the small, dark cabin. She could smell it right at that moment—the scent of ashes mingled with the earthy, musky odor inevitably present in a wooden cabin surrounded by trees and fog. What a strange existence she’d had for the first ten years of her life!

“We’d had her come over to Rainbow a couple of days after you were born because we thought you were running a fever,” her father continued. “You thought she had a fever,” her mother corrected him.

“I still think she did,” her father said. “I think it disappeared as soon as Carlynn touched her.”

Even Joelle’s mother shook her head at that, but Joelle felt moved. Her father had always been a nurturer, and she liked to picture him, a kid of nineteen, skinny little Johnny Angel, aching with worry over his baby girl.

“Well, anyhow,” her father said, “she went back to Penny’s cabin after curing you—” he winked at her “—and Alan Shire showed up and spirited her away without letting her even say goodbye.”

“And the next day, Carlynn and her sister were driving on Highway One, looking for a phone or a market or something, and they didn’t know the roads, and they flew off the side of the cliff in the fog. The sister, Lisbeth, was killed, and Carlynn nearly died herself.”

“Scared the shit out of us because we knew that could happen to any one of us on those roads,” her father said. “Those of us with vehicles, anyhow. We all felt terrible. Carlynn had helped Penny and had saved your life, and yet her own sister died without her being able to do a thing about it.”

“I know Penny felt terrible,” her mother said. “If Carlynn hadn’t stayed with her so long at the commune, her sister would never have had to come to Big Sur to find her.”

“It was so long ago, though,” her father said. “I doubt someone of Carlynn’s…you know, internal resources, would still be grieving over something that happened that long ago.”

“How old is she now?” Joelle asked.

“Well, she must have been in her mid-thirties then,” her mother said, “so that would put her at about seventy by now.”

“You know, I really wish you could go see her.” Her father dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin before resting it on the table. “Whether you ask her for help with Mara or not, she’d probably feel great seeing you. Knowing that you’re alive, that something good came out of that time at the commune, even though it meant the loss of her sister. That you’re the wonderful person you are because of her.”

Her eyes burned again. What was wrong with her? Was this part of being pregnant, growing weepy over every little thing?

She set her own napkin on the table. “I’ll think about it, Dad,” she said, and to her surprise, she knew she meant it.







4






THE SOCIAL WORK DEPARTMENT HAD NOT BEEN GIVEN MUCH space in the hospital. Located on the second floor, it consisted of one large room divided into four small offices, or “cubbyholes,” as the staff referred to them. The largest of the cubbies was the central office, where the coffeepot, mini-refrigerator, watercooler, mailboxes and reception desk were located. The three other offices were aligned in a row, separated only by paper-thin walls, through which a whisper could be heard if someone was really trying to listen.

For that reason, Joelle waited until she had the social work offices to herself before making the call to Carlynn Shire. She could hear Maggie, the department’s receptionist/secretary/office manager, talking to her boyfriend on the phone in the central office, but both Paul and Liam were in other parts of the hospital, and she wanted to take advantage of the quiet. Dialing the number for the Mind and Body Center, she wondered if Carlynn Shire would really remember an infant she had “saved” more than thirty-four years before.

“Shire Mind and Body Center.” The voice that answered the phone was that of a very young woman.

“Hello, my name is Joelle D’Angelo.” Joelle heard Liam step into his office next to hers as she was finishing the sentence. Drat. Swiveling her chair to face the far wall, she lowered her voice. “I was wondering if I could speak with Carlynn Shire,” she said.

There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end of the phone.

“Carlynn Shire doesn’t actually work here,” the young woman said.