The Confessions of Frances Godwin

by Robert Hellenga

  I wish I could describe the sound of her breathing—or was it my breathing?—but I can’t.

  These were all stories with happy endings, and I hoped that the abrasions on her left side, where she’d hit the pavement on I-80, would have a happy ending, too. But how? We’d painted ourselves into a corner. Our story had nowhere to go.

  I went into the kitchen and got an orange and then sat back down on the edge of the bed. I was peeling the orange when Stella woke up. She turned over and pulled the sheet up and asked for a section. I put it in her mouth.

  “Ma,” she said. “You know, I kept wishing that Jimmy was dead.”

  “And now?”

  “But not like that, Ma. Not getting murdered. I told him I wanted a divorce. On the trip. Before I told him on the phone when he called here. I told him I wanted to be with Ruthy. He went crazy.”

  “Did he know you were pregnant?”

  “I didn’t tell him. I wasn’t going to. I didn’t really know myself.”

  “Do you want me to clean your face?” I asked. “With Noxzema?”

  She nodded. “Have you still got my telescope?”

  “It’s in the garage,” I said.

  “I want to see something far away.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “The farther away the better. How about two and a half billion light years?”

  “That might do it,” she said.

  “I think these big distances liberate us,” I said as I went into the bathroom to get the blue jar of Noxzema. By the time I got back she was asleep again.

  The telescope was in its box—two boxes, one for the scope and one for the tripod—behind the Christmas boxes. It had been her Christmas present the year my father died and my mother came to live with us—and I was feeling some of that sadness now, and excitement, too.

  Years earlier we’d seen a distant quasar through the big telescope at the old observatory at the college, which was no longer in use. Professor Davis had a viewing party on the roof of the new science building before packing up the telescope. Quasar 3C 273 was, according to Professor Davis, the most distant object that most backyard astronomers were likely to see. I was glad to see Stella coming out of her shell, getting excited about something. I didn’t blame her for wanting to see something really far away. I wanted to see it, too. See it again.

  Professor Davis had read a poem from The Spoon River Anthology about Professor Alfonso Churchill, who’d taught astronomy at Knox and had become known as Professor Moon.

  We set the telescope up on the deck. It was complicated enough, though not as complicated as assembling the three-burner gas grill from Menards. It was a Meade reflecting telescope with a German equatorial mount that had given us a lot of grief at first.

  Once you get the mount properly aligned to the North Star, you can move the scope along two axes, right ascension (horizontal) and declination (vertical), till you locate what you’re looking for through the finder scope. Then all you have to do is lock in the two axes and the motor will track your celestial object as it moves across the sky. Not as easy as it looks, but doable. It would be easier if the sky stood still.

  We practiced looking at the post office windows, which were frosted. A single pane filled the field of vision, but you could see moving shapes behind it. We examined the upper window of the old Carson, Pirie, Scott building, where we once saw Dick Larson dropping old TVs out the window into the alley for a TV commercial they were filming.

  The telescope was already set for 40 degrees and 57 minutes latitude, so all we had to do that night was get it balanced properly and lined up with the Pole Star.

  In the evening we sat out on the deck till it got dark and we could see the constellations rising as the earth rolled into the night. Stella went online and found the poem about Professor Moon, one of the few poems in The Spoon River Anthology that didn’t expose a life that had been petty, spiteful, and disappointing.

  They laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,”

  As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst

  Of knowing about the stars.

  They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,

  And the thrilling heat and cold,

  And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,

  And Spica quadrillions of miles away,

  And the littleness of man.

  But now that my grave is honored, friends,

  Let it not be because I taught

  The lore of the stars in Knox College,

  But rather for this: that through the stars

  I preached the greatness of man,

  Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things

  For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae;

  Nor any the less a part of the question

  Of what the drama means.

  Quasar 3C 273 is in the constellation Virgo, which would be rising in the southwest, so we wouldn’t be able to see it from the deck. We opened the south window in the living room, took off the screen, turned out the lights, and waited. If I’d estimated correctly we’d see Virgo appear from behind the locust trees on Seminary Street, cross the street, and sink down between the spire of Saint Clement’s and the building that housed the gun store.

  You can’t see Polaris from the living room window, so I had to line up the scope using Paul’s old army compass and then wait for Virgo. Virgo is not an easy constellation to see, even though our own galaxy is part of a cluster of galaxies in Virgo. Spica, the brightest star in the constellation, is a binary star, actually, though the two stars can’t be resolved through a telescope. A blue giant. It was Spica that enabled Hipparchus to figure out the precession of the equinoxes. But I’m getting carried away.

  When Spica finally did appear I sighted on it and adjusted the setting circles so that the scope was aligned with the heavens. I turned on the motor, connected to the RA gear, that would move the scope on the east-west axis in time with the motion of the stars.

  “Why is she a virgin?” Stella asked. She was sitting on the stool at Paul’s desk.

  “Not a virgin, really,” I said, “but the mother goddess—ambitious, aggressive, demanding—Isis, Ishtar, Inanna, Demeter, spreading her legs in the sky.”

  “That’s better.”

  “They probably called her a virgin because they were afraid of her.”

  I used the finder scope to navigate to Porrima, then Auva, then Eta Virginis. All this took some time. According to my star atlas, 3C 273 should be between Auva and Eta, between the virgin’s outstretched arms, that is, or between her head and her outstretched left arm. We wouldn’t be able to see it in the finder scope, but I moved the scope to the coordinates for 3C 273—Right Ascension 12:29.1; Declination: -02:03.1—and crossed my fingers.

  “Ma,” Stella said, “do you think the star of Bethlehem could have been a quasar?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Might have been a nova, or a comet, or a conjunction of the planets. But there’s no record of anything. The Chinese would have spotted it if there had been. Besides, quasars are too far away.”

  I knew it was there. But we couldn’t see it even with the shortest eyepiece. I used the fine adjustment knob to explore the area. Nothing. We took turns looking. Nothing. Given the amount of light pollution, even in Galesburg, Quasar 3C 273 was beyond the range of our six-inch telescope, a telescope that gathered enough light to reveal myriad galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters in stunning detail. But not 3C 273. Not from where we were observing. Not even with the window open and the screen off. Not even with the Barlow lens and the 12-mm eyepiece.

  “Like the dead,” Stella said. “Like Pa. Like the baby. Two and a half billion light years is nothing to the dead.” She snapped her fingers. “We’re not even getting close.”

  When Detective Landstreet came back the next day, he brought a woman detective with him. He let her do the talking. She could understand, she said, my feelings about someone who abused my daughter, could understand my fear. He mentioned the ADT home security s
ticker on the door, and the dog, who was making a nuisance of herself, and the car theft and the restraining order. “Sounds like this guy was a real bastard,” she said. “Excuse me. A real jerk.”

  Then Detective Landstreet dropped a bomb: “The ballistics matched,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything.

  I could almost feel the point of a knife at the bottom of my rib cage and thought I was going to have a panic attack. Was such a thing possible? I’d read an article in the Register-Mail that—popular wisdom to the contrary—lots of snowflakes were identical. Was it possible that two different guns could leave the identical markings on a bullet? Or (more likely) that the police could fudge ballistic evidence?

  “Then I’m calling my lawyer,” I said, “because if you think you can get away with fudging the ballistic evidence, you’ve got another think coming.”

  I thought that he could tell from my expression that he’d crossed a line, and knew that I knew that he knew. Now he tried to cross back. “Take it easy, Mrs. Godwin. We don’t need to get the lawyers involved. This is all preliminary.”

  “Preliminary? You’re telling me that my gun was a murder weapon and you call this ‘preliminary’? Why don’t you arrest me?” I was sure now that he was lying. I said, “You don’t like coincidences, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t like the fact that the murder weapon was the same caliber as my gun, both .38s. But that doesn’t give you the right to falsify the ballistic evidence.” I started to say something more, but stopped, not wanting to appear too knowledgeable.

  I went to the phone to call my lawyer. The phone number was written on the back of the phone book.

  “Put the phone down, Mrs. Godwin.”

  But I didn’t put it down. I dialed the office of Greengold and Fletcher and spoke to the secretary. “Tell David that the police are here, tell him they’re saying that I killed someone and they’re doctoring the ballistic evidence to make it look like it was my gun that was used . . . No, he didn’t say that they’re doctoring the evidence, but they are. My gun hasn’t left this house since the last time I went to the shooting range. Two months ago.”

  Camilla came to the phone and sat next to me, protecting me.

  When David came on the phone I had to slow down and repeat everything. Detective Landstreet kept protesting, even admitting that the ballistic evidence didn’t match.

  “Now he says that the ballistic evidence doesn’t match . . . So he was lying before . . . Now he even admits he was lying . . .”.

  I turned to the detective. “Is that correct? You were lying about the ballistic evidence matching?”

  “It’s called ‘trying to elicit—’”

  Now Stella jumped to my defense: “It’s lying. How can you think that my mother would shoot someone. It’s ridiculous.” I was glad to have her on my side. “Tell David,” she said, “that he says now that he was ‘trying to elicit’ and that in fact the ballistic evidence doesn’t match . . .”

  I told David.

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “It does sound like lying, doesn’t it.”

  I was enjoying myself, but I was also shaking inside.

  “I’m not going to talk to you,” I said to the detective, “unless my lawyer is present. He says that if you’re faking evidence, I should keep my mouth shut and save a lot of trouble later on.”

  The detective protested. “You’re not charged with anything. We’re just trying to sort a few things out.”

  I started to speak, but Stella interrupted. “Ma, don’t say a thing. Not a word. Till your lawyer gets here.” Then, to the detective, “She’s not talking to you till her lawyer gets here. How many times does she have to say it? What is it you don’t understand?” I sat in silence.

  The woman detective tried to explain. “It’s perfectly legal; the police do it all the time. It’s perfectly legal.”

  I just sat there. Unresponsive, I think, is the word.

  “We’re going to have to talk to your daughter, you know,” she said to me.

  “Not now you’re not,” Stella said. “You’re not talking to anyone in this house. Apartment. Either charge my mother with a crime or get out.”

  I was glad to see Stella take charge. I thought she’d turned a corner, or that we had turned a corner. And I was right. I thought this was the sign we’d been looking for without knowing it. At least the sign I’d been looking for.

  We had no more hassles from the police, at least not for a while. They’d shifted the focus of the investigation to TruckStopUSA. I pretended not to worry, and then after a while I didn’t worry, though I was always a bit uneasy when the phone or the doorbell rang.

  Stella continued to make her presence felt. She wanted a ceremony for the fetus. The hospital had nothing to offer. She asked about the priest at Saint Clement’s. “He’s a pal of yours, isn’t he?”

  “Father Viglietti? We go for a drink sometimes, on Saturdays, after confession. We speak Latin.”

  “You go to confession?”

  I laughed. “Not me. After Father Viglietti hears confessions.”

  “He gave a good sermon last Sunday.” she said.

  “You don’t hear many good sermons these days,” I said.

  “How do you know?” she laughed.

  “Just guessing.”

  “He wears trifocals,” Stella said. “They make his eyes jump around.”

  Pause.

  “You don’t have to believe, you know,” Stella said.

  “Do you believe?” I asked. Nervous, as if we were about to have a sex talk, or about to enter a sacred space.

  “Yes and no,” she said. “It’s just that there’s something inside me that’s got to come out, take on some kind of form, if you know what I mean. So you’re not at the mercy of your own feelings all the time. Like Christmas and Thanksgiving, only all year. Like this week. The feast of John the Baptist’s coming up. He’s the only saint whose birthday is observed by the Church. He didn’t take the name of his father. An angel gave him his name.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this.

  “He’s like the Virgin Mary. Free from sin. Cleansed in the womb.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  She laughed. “No, Ma, I don’t believe that. But it’s a good story. It names something, gives it a shape, externalizes it.”

  Awkward. But I was glad that she was opening up. Disclosing. Declaring herself. A door had been opened, and Stella wanted to walk through it.

  “Is he homophobic?”

  “Father Viglietti? Officially or unofficially?”

  “Unofficially.”

  “No. You’re not going to find a priest, any man, who’s nicer than Father Viglietti. No, I don’t mean ‘nicer,’ I mean deeply decent and understanding. He’s not going to trouble the universe about . . . about his own problems. But don’t you think you might find a church that’s a little less . . . a little more open to . . .”

  “Ma, things are changing.”

  “That’s not what I heard. Pope John Paul’s pretty hard-nosed.”

  “It’s not going to happen all at once,” Stella said. “Maybe you could talk to him.”

  “The Pope?”

  “No, Father Viglietti.”

  “Me? What do you want me to say?”

  “I’d like some kind of ceremony for the fetus. I called the hospital. Nothing. There aren’t any remains. Nothing. It all went down the toilet. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. Wouldn’t have known I had a miscarriage if the doctor hadn’t told me.”

  “I can talk to him. I don’t know if there’s a miscarriage ritual.”

  “Ma, there’s a ritual for everything.”

  “I’ll call him right now. But first let me ask you something.” I laid it on the line. About Stella’s string of lovers. “You’ve got to stop saying ‘yes’ to everything that comes around the corner. Look at Howard Banks, look at the writer you went to New York with, look at . . . Jimmy . . .” I was using the
kind of voice you use when you’re telling someone something for their own good. I didn’t care for the tone, but it was what came out of my mouth.

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” she said.

  “I’m your mother,” I said. “It’s something mothers have to say.”

  “But isn’t she lovely,” Stella said. “The first time I saw her I wanted to take her home with me. I never know who I am around her. She’s unpredictable. I never know how she’s going to respond to me, so I don’t know how I’m going to respond to her. It’s exciting. I give thanks for her every day. It’s like coming out of a dark tunnel into the light.”

  “She seems pretty stable to me, down to earth.”

  “And I love her for that, too. I want all of her, everything she’s got to give. Even the way she eats her eggs in the morning. And she wants all of me.”

  “And Tommy’s never, uh, said anything?”

  “Jesus, Ma. You’re a piece of work. His sister’s a Saffica.”