The Miracle Girl Read online

  The

  Miracle

  Girl

  A NOVEL

  ANDREW ROE

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2015

  For my parents

  “I BELIEVE IN EVERYTHING.”

  —David Ferrie, in Don DeLillo’s Libra

  Contents

  VISITORS

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  BELIEVERS

  PART TWO

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  THE ROOM

  PART THREE

  20

  PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE ARCHDIOESE OF LOS ANGELES CONCERNING THE MATTER OF ANABELLE VINCENT (AKA “THE MIRACLE GIRL”)

  THE MIRACLE GIRL

  Acknowledgments

  Spiritual Envy: A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  About Algonquin

  VISITORS

  THE CROWDS KEEP coming. More and more every day it seems. But in the beginning it was just the random neighbor or stray soul from the surrounding area, drawn by rumor and whisper and desperate wish. Word spread. Somehow they heard about the little girl on Shaker Street, the one who almost died—who should have died—but didn’t, and now she can’t speak or move, she’s paralyzed, mute, hooked up to machines and tubes, her body a living statue, but also holy, blessed, a gift from God, a child who heals and gives hope to those in need . . . And it went from there, slowly at first, a mysterious, massing thing with a life of its own. People appearing at the house, awed and urgently curious, polite as churchgoers, something ancient in their eyes.

  They find their way, clutching foldable maps and Thomas Guides and handwritten directions, in this, the fall of 1999, the much-­publicized final year of the millennium. For reasons known, unknown. Yes, the full-­on tragedies and crushing misfortunes, the kind of sorrow you’d expect, as well as the everyday, the shitty little speed bumps of life—the work problems, the marital despair, the doomed conspiracies of the heart. The little girl might be able to help. So why not go and see for themselves? They park their cars and walk up to the small one-­story house. Arriving singly, or in pairs, or in larger groups—sometimes entire families even, multiple generations seeking relief, holding hands, chanting the names of loved ones. You wouldn’t believe the traffic getting here, the freeway a nightmare crawl.

  It’s like any neglected house in any neglected neighborhood. The yellowed lawns and chain-­link fences and toppled children’s toys, the latter discarded and forgotten, the plastic leached of color long ago. Trees are sparse, infrequent. The doorbell doesn’t work. And if someone else is already inside the house, spending time with the girl, they remain outside and endure the Southern California sun. Shading their eyes, waiting their turn. Because now, sometimes, there’s a line, depending on the hour and day of the week (Saturday mornings being the worst). And if that’s the case, and the line grows and more visitors arrive, conversations spark, stories are exchanged. It passes the time and reminds them of why they’ve made this journey. They marvel at how the narratives are the same or different or a little of both, yet all share a common theme: the need to believe, the yearning for something beyond one’s self.

  “I’m here but I’m not sure why I’m here,” someone might say, waiting and looking up, briefly, at the sky swollen with light and heat.

  “You’ll know once you get inside,” another will explain. “That’s what they say.”

  Others know exactly why they’ve come: personal addictions (substance, sexual); various disorders (physical, psychological, spiritual); parents with cancer or one of the lesser-­tiered diseases; daughters who have lost their sense of smell and taste; sons who have lost their sense of love and kindness; siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces who are simply lost; friends who could not make the trip on their own due to their particular infirmity but desperately require the girl’s help, her saintly, sacred intervention, because it’s the last hope they have; the times apparently calling for a new way to understand, a new way to be.

  Once inside they are greeted by the mother and then led through the living room and down a hallway and into the girl’s room. And there she is. They behold her in her perpetual repose, Sleeping Beauty–like, but eyes alarmingly open, unblinking, unmoving, her hair long and dark and freshly shampooed. They hear the hum of machines, the ventilator’s insistent suck. They note the aroma of flowers. Stuffed animals everywhere: her bed, shelves, the floor, spilling out of the open closet. With the bed and machines and furniture there isn’t much space left, only a narrow path allowing them to get close enough to the girl. They ask if it’s all right to touch her. The mother always says yes. And it always surprises them: how warm the girl’s skin is. How it is burning. Burning with God.

  The time invariably elapses too quickly. They are never ready to leave. Just another minute, please. And so they pray harder and mumble faster and the minute expires and they go. On the way out, they linger so they can ask questions: How long ago did it happen? Was she in a lot of pain? Is she in a lot of pain? Does she know we’re here? Is there any awareness that, you know, this is happening? The mother can only answer the first question: the accident was nine months ago, another lifetime ago. For the rest, she shrugs, says the doctors don’t know for sure, no one knows for sure, but many people think yes, yes she knows, yes she’s aware, yes she’s with us, it’s all unfolding in front of her as if she’s watching a movie.

  Then they thank her, the mother, repeatedly, trying to say what cannot be said—what else can they do? There are other people waiting and it’s time to move on. The day now more vivid, more substantial, in fuller focus. Could it be that the curative has already begun? Then they exit the house and step back out into the sun, the judgment gone, the light flooding everything and everyone, light that does not cause them to shade their eyes but to open them farther, see clearer, see deeper, light that’s alive, light that’s viscous, light that connects and fills and sustains, light that reflects (inwardly, outwardly) and seemingly has no end, light that’s like a breath, like oxygen, the light, the light, everywhere the light.

  PART ONE

  MIRACLES AND WONDERS

  1

  | Karen |

  EVERYTHING NOW: A before and after. Time split, a line separating what was from what is. Actually, two before and afters: the accident itself, and when things started happening with Anabelle. And things, Karen knows, is not the right word, not the right word at all; it sounds wrong and wobbly when spoken aloud and even when it’s thought of in her mind, but what else to call it? Strange occurrences? Unexplained phenomena? Curious coincidences? Nothing is right. Nothing is adequate. And so: things.

  She does this often, distinguishing between past and present, and it’s what she’s doing now as she retreats down the hallway and toward the kitchen after having ushered the first visitor of the day into her daughter’s room, a woman who came because of her own daughter, who has cancer and is only eight years old, the same age as Anabelle. Before: visitors were rare. After: they show up almost every day. Before: she hardly spoke to anyone. After: she talks to people all the time. Before: she had a daughter that was fairly normal. After: a daughter that is anything but normal. Before: a husband. After: well . . .

  The woman had traveled all the way from Bellingham, Washington, driving straight through, stopping only for gas and coffee and M&Ms, her face manic and oily from the road, one of her earrings having gone AWOL, strands of uncooperative, graying hair escaping a l
ong ponytail, the rapid-­fire speech of a standup comedian on a roll. “It isn’t right,” she told Karen before she hurried into the bedroom. “It just isn’t right. A child. Cancer. Those two things, those two words, they don’t go together. It doesn’t make sense. And yet. The tests. The confirmation is there. She can’t lift her left arm now sometimes. This isn’t how the world is supposed to be. It shakes you to the core. It isn’t right. I’m—I’m sorry. Off I go. Rambling and such. Just ask Terry. Terry, my husband, who’s taking care of her while I’m here. Terry’ll tell you. How I start in on one thing and then end up on another completely. He’s half saint, really, Terry, after all we’ve been through. But your daughter. I’m sorry. Is it all right to touch her? I don’t want to overstep. Or be like inappropriate. How does it usually work? I’m not really religious, see. It just felt like the right thing to do. I knew I had to drive. I knew I had to come.”

  Before: she didn’t know such struggle and sadness could indiscriminately deploy in people’s lives. After: she does.

  And there in the kitchen is Bryce. With his little-­boy wonder and NFL build, like two people in one. He’s unloading the dishwasher, stacking plates and dishes on the counter. Not even nine o’clock now, and already it’s blazing outside. Inside, it’s time to close the windows and blast the air conditioning. It’s what she’ll do next. But first she needs to sit down. The kitchen table as temporary refuge, as site of intermission and much-­needed pause. Bryce turns as she pulls out a chair. The day officially underway.

  “Hey there. Our visitor all set then?”

  “Just went in. I don’t think she’s slept in days. She’s on a kind of a high. How long is it that a person can go without sleep?”

  Bryce joins her at the table, his hair still wet from the shower. He smells like morning.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Three days? Four? There’s coffee if you want. And guess what? I had an idea.”

  Bryce is always having ideas. He was one of the first to come, from La Mirada, a sweet soul and firm believer in fate, who’d been taking care of his sick mother (cancer, strokes, asthma, depression) until she finally died late last year. He’d been lost after, he told her, in a fog. Then he read about Anabelle online somewhere and came to see her the very same day. And now he helps out, answers the phone, changes Anabelle’s sheets, brings groceries and books, cooks meals, cleans. She can’t picture all this without him.

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me what that idea is,” says Karen.

  Bryce smiles. They have banter, definite banter. She’s not sure when it started. But one day it was there, in the house with them, like an old friend.

  “So there’s this little core group of people we have helping out with Anabelle—Dominique, Marnie, Meredith, you, me. And the nurses and PTs and all the delivery and medical supplies people. And I was thinking, just thinking, we needed a name. You know. Something catchy. Something like Anabelle’s Angels. We could have T-­shirts and a secret handshake. What do you think?”

  Now Karen smiles.

  “I like it,” she says, admiring the table’s immaculate gleam and the organized stacks of mail: letters to Anabelle, letters to Karen, bills, coupons, unheeded solicitations to people who used to live here, names that make her a little sad. “I like it a lot. Especially the secret handshake part.”

  “And I still want to get that website going,” Bryce continues. “I have a friend who can help out with the coding and get us up and running. But first things first: how are you doing? Are you ready for this afternoon? Today’s the big day, right? Ready for your close-­up?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. I just don’t want to sound like a spaz.”

  “Maybe we can practice a little. I could ask you some questions and you could practice your answers on me.”

  “Sure. Thanks, Bryce. That would be great. Thanks for everything.”

  She almost says more but stops herself.

  “And there’s coffee,” adds Bryce. “I can make some eggs. Just give the word. Man. It’s already a hundred out there it seems like. And you know what they’re saying about the weather. It’s not like it used to be.”

  “And when you can’t count on the weather, then what?”

  “All the earthquakes and power outages we’ve been having, too. On the drive over this morning there was a story on the radio about streaks of light in the sky, meteor showers maybe, out in the desert, near Joshua Tree. At this rate, we might not make it to January.”

  Inside Anabelle’s bedroom the woman from Bellingham begins to weep. This is not uncommon. People cry, they fall to their knees in outright supplication. Some faint. Karen understands and doesn’t understand. She’s trying, though. They come and they keep coming and they are different after. Changed. What else can she do but open her door? Some days she thinks there are more visitors than the previous day, some days she thinks less, that it’s finally dying down. But it never does. This is permanent. This is reality now. She’s never used the phrase “life’s work”—one of those concepts that she thought applied to lawyers and doctors and teachers but not to her. But it’s beginning to feel like that. Like this is what she was meant to do. People were even starting to leave donations.

  Before: she didn’t expect much to come of her life. After: she’s seriously reconsidering.

  IT’S HER FIRST real interview and so she’s picking cuticles and nibbling on nails as she waits for the Eyewitness News van to arrive. They’re late. Also: the constant reconsiderations of clothing, hair, lipstick shade, etc. But why is she worrying? This isn’t about her. It’s about Anabelle. It’s about everyone her daughter helps, those who come. Yet people would see her, Karen Vincent, on TV, note her imperfections and general blandness, and what would they think? There have been a few phone conversations with reporters, but never this, never an in-­person interview with a camera filming everything, filming her. She worries she’s not prepared, not TV worthy.

  When the van pulls up she recognizes the reporter immediately. Doesn’t know her name, but knows the face, the shower of blonde hair and drastic lips. Two men follow her up the concrete walkway; one, bearded, carries two cameras; another, also bearded, painfully lugs cables and lights and tripods. When they are at the door, waiting to be let inside after having knocked, she hears one of the men complaining about the other man’s piss-­poor directions: they’d been driving around southeastern Los Angeles for an hour and who wants to be doing that. I’ve never even heard of this town before and I’ve been living in L.A. for how long? The van is crowned with one of those large, elaborate satellite dishes, looking as if it could be driven from somewhere else via remote control.

  A deep breath and Karen opens the door. Kellee Clifton introduces herself, hands her a business card with the ABC logo. She’s tall, athlete tall, has movie-­star looks and emanates a strong scent reminiscent of the high-­end cosmetics aisle. Karen cannot bring herself to look the aromatic woman in the eye: it’s too much, the immense gulf between them. Kellee Clifton does not introduce the two men, who right away set up their equipment and continue their grumbling. “Couch’ll do,” says one. “Light will be crap with that window,” says the other. “But whatever. It’s late. We’re late. I don’t even want to think about the traffic getting back.”

  The house, the neighborhood: not TV worthy either. And briefly, while Kellee Clifton ducks into the bathroom and the men adjust tripods and test lights and criticize each other’s respective skills, she wonders about her interviewer’s life, what it’s like—the people in her address book, the late-­night meals at Beverly Hills restaurants she’s never heard of—but she can’t picture anything specific (and she’s never had a business card either, logo or no logo). Even though Karen has lived all her thirty years within the confines of Los Angeles County, she has traversed those otherworldly westside freeways—the 405, the 101, the northerly reaches of the 5—only a handful of times, and she’s never once spotted a celebrity in person or been to a party in the
Hollywood Hills. It’s all as foreign to her as, well, a foreign country. She’s from L.A., but not the bright, glittery place that everyone imagines when they think of L.A. She’s never been to that L.A. All she knows is what’s east of the 605, inland, ordinary, where people have real jobs and real noses and real lives. No Kellee Cliftons here. El Portal doesn’t even have its own freeway exit.

  “Ready when you are, Kells,” shouts the man handling the cameras, matting down his mass of facial hair. One camera faces the sofa; a second, the empty chair next to it. The other man—is the beard a job requirement? a union regulation?—walks over to Karen, takes her by the elbow, and then guides her toward the couch like she’s got Alzheimer’s or something. “Why don’t you just sit right here, K? Get comfortable. Relax. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  Are they starting? She must appear stunned. Because she is stunned. Kellee Clifton emerges from the bathroom, looking even better, younger, fresher. She must not have kids.

  “All right, Mrs. Vincent,” she says, taking her place in the chair. “We’re going to go ahead and get started. I have some questions for you. We’ll sit and talk, just like a normal conversation. And then after that, after some questions and background and back and forth, we’d like to get a few shots of your daughter.”

  “Anabelle.”

  “That’s right. Anabelle.”

  “So where do we start?”

  “Well, it’s always a good idea to start at the beginning. Howard, are we rolling?”

  “We are now. Camera one and two.”

  “So how about that then, for starters?”

  “I’m sorry,” says Karen. “How about what?”

  “The beginning. How did all of this begin? Was it one day, all of a sudden? Or was it gradual, like a buildup, where you don’t even realize because it’s so slow?”

  Kellee Clifton balances her chin with a freshly manicured thumb and forefinger, leaning forward, crossing her long, impressive left leg over her equally impressive right thigh, waiting now, waiting for Karen Vincent to speak.