Random Acts of Kindness by Lisa Verge Higgins

Author:Lisa Verge Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

Nicole wandered back to the Laundromat to find Claire pulling a T-shirt from a heaping pile.

“Holy Buddha.” Claire froze midfold. “Did you at least get the license number of the truck that hit you?”

Nicole dropped down onto the bench where she’d left Claire meditating only a short while earlier. She pulled onto her lap a half-eaten bag of Doritos.

She bit into a chip. “I just got off the phone with Noah.”

“Ahh.”

“He had a breakthrough.” She chewed but tasted nothing. “Apparently, the last year and a half of outpatient therapy with four different therapists, the six different drug regimens, and this four-week stint in a mental health recovery center are just my extreme efforts to change him into a son whom Lars and I can finally love.”

Nicole swayed on the seat. When she’d been in labor with Noah, the anesthesiologist had set her up with a spinal epidural after four hours of painful contractions. He’d pumped into her meds so strong that she didn’t feel anything from the midriff down. Now, sixteen years after the obstetrician had been forced to use forceps to bring Noah into the world, Nicole felt the same sort of paralyzed numbness.

“Noah complained about his meds again, too.” The words pressed against her sternum. “He’s got a good reason to complain. The meds ease his dark moods and stop him from isolating himself and skipping school. On the meds, he spends less time closed up in his room. But all this time I’ve ignored the side effects.” She looked anywhere but at Claire. “Imagine a mother giving her son drugs that make him slouch in a chair and drool.”

The laugh that came out of her mouth didn’t belong to her. Her torso shook with it. It was a misfiring reflex, disconnected from her conscious brain.

Claire’s warm hand on her shoulder brought her back to herself. She shut the laugh right down.

“It’s a cruel twist,” Claire said softly, “that Karma would lay at your feet a problem that can’t really be fixed.”

Nicole tried to shake away the words. Of course there were problems that couldn’t be fixed. Claire’s disease, for one. Jenna’s marriage, for another, a terrible spectacle she supposed was being played out in Seattle right now. She just refused to believe that Noah’s condition was one of them.

Maybe that was the problem.

“I can tell you a story about problems that can’t be fixed.” Claire flopped onto the bench beside her. “Eight months into my stay at the Thai temple, a Buddhist scholar came to teach. Actually, I think he just came to see the farang—me,” she said, patting her chest, “the crazy foreigner who’d taken vows. He asked me why I had come, and in my arrogance, I told him I wanted to reach Nirvana.”

Nicole could tell by the faint flush that rose on Claire’s skin that the memory was still painful.

“He told me that most farang believe that pushing forward to reach Nirvana means that the future will stretch before us in unending happiness.”

Nicole ran her fingers over her brow, distracted.

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