“One of the best in the world. I organize a study abroad program there
for students. It’s highly competitive and extremely demanding. You
might not be accepted, but if you are, it may give you some idea of your
abilities.”
I walked to my apartment wondering what to make of the
conversation. I’d wanted moral advice, someone to reconcile my calling
as a wife and mother with the call I heard of something else. But he’d
put that aside. He’d seemed to say, “First find out what you are capable
of, then decide who you are.”
I applied to the program.—EMILY WAS PREGNANT. THE pregnancy was not going well. She’d nearly
miscarried in the first trimester, and now that she was approaching
twenty weeks, she was beginning to have contractions. Mother, who
was the midwife, had given her Saint-John’s-wort and other remedies.
The contractions lessened but continued.
When I arrived at Buck’s Peak for Christmas, I expected to find
Emily on bed rest. She wasn’t. She was standing at the kitchen counter
straining herbs, along with half a dozen other women. She rarely spoke
and smiled even more rarely, just moved about the house carrying vats
of cramp bark and motherwort. She was quiet to the point of
invisibility, and after a few minutes, I forgot she was there.
It had been six months since the explosion, and while Dad was back
on his feet, it was clear he would never be the man he was. He could
scarcely walk across a room without gasping for air, so damaged were
his lungs. The skin on his lower face had regrown, but it was thin and
waxy, as if someone had taken sandpaper and rubbed it to the point of
transparency. His ears were thick with scars. He had thin lips and his
mouth drooped, giving him the haggard appearance of a much older
man. But it was his right hand, more than his face, that drew stares:
each finger was frozen in its own pose, some curled, some bowed,
twisting together into a gnarled claw. He could hold a spoon by
wedging it between his index finger, which bowed upward, and his ring
finger, which curved downward, but he ate with difficulty. Still, I
wondered whether skin grafts could have achieved what Mother had
with her comfrey and lobelia salve. It was a miracle, everyone said, so
that was the new name they gave Mother’s recipe: after Dad’s burn it