Vinita Hampton Wright

by Dwelling Places (v5)

  So little bunches of flowers and Bible verses should be okay, shouldn’t they? Flowers are kind of lighthearted and happy. And sharing Your Word is always the right thing to do.

  Please help Dad find some comfort in these little gifts.

  Love and praise,

  Kenzie

  6

  SEEING GHOSTS

  I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,

  No sudden rending of the veil of clay,

  No angel visitant, no opening skies;

  But take the dimness of my soul away.

  —“Spirit of God, Descend upon My

  Heart”

  Mack

  Sunday evening, Mack hears Jodie’s truck pull up outside the stone house. The engine stops, and the headlights go out. Jodie emerges, then gets something off the passenger seat. She walks up, her breath a little fog.

  “Is it against the rules to bring you food?”

  He can’t tell if she is joking or not. She holds out a small cooler, looking apprehensive.

  “No rules.” He takes the cooler. “Thank you. Want to eat with me?”

  Her fine eyebrows come up a notch, and she shrugs. “Only if you want me to.”

  “I do.”

  “You do?”

  He can see a measure of hurt in her eyes, the evidence of the rejection she feels in spite of anything he says.

  “Yes, I’d like you to stay.” He leads the way into the house. He can feel her a step or two behind, looking the place over.

  “You warm enough?” she asks, standing near the woodstove. She extends her hands toward the heat.

  “Yeah. Drafty when the wind kicks up, but there’s not much space to heat.”

  He sets the cooler on the table.

  “It’s beef stew,” she says.

  “Great! It’s still warm.” He holds the container in both hands and smiles at her.

  “Biscuits too. But you’ll need to heat them.”

  He places the foil-wrapped biscuits on the stove and puts out bowls and plates and spoons while she takes quiet steps around the room. They sit at the small table in silence.

  “This is good, sweet.”

  “Thank you.”

  They blow on spoonfuls of stew and take several bites.

  “How are the kids?” he asks.

  “All right.” They keep eating as fire pops inside the iron stove. Wind whispers down the vent. “Kenzie’s with the youth group. Young Taylor’s out somewhere. I didn’t go to church today.” She glances at him, and he takes the cue.

  “I didn’t either. I hoped nobody would look for me.”

  “People ask about you. But I only make it there once or twice a month myself.”

  “It doesn’t feel the same, does it?”

  “What?” She looks at him, and he catches a hint of fear in her eyes.

  “Being in church.” He takes the biscuits off the stove and hands her one.

  “Oh.” She looks back at her food. “Well, it hasn’t been exactly a haven, has it? At least not for me.”

  “No. Me either.” He reaches toward his mother’s cast-off utility shelf that serves as storage space for everything, grabs two napkins, and hands her one. “I don’t know if it would help to go back, you know, on a regular basis.”

  “You don’t have to decide today.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you out here because you need to be away from me?” The emotion behind those words does not show in her eyes or sound in her voice.

  “This isn’t because of you. I just need to be here.” He looks at her over his raised spoon. “I can’t explain why I need it.”

  “Maybe I put too much pressure on you.”

  “Right now everything feels like pressure, even things that should just feel normal. Standing in the garage feels like pressure. Picking up the morning paper.”

  “But what can you do for yourself isolated out here?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “But if you weren’t all right, no one would know it.”

  “I’m at work every day. You and the kids see me all the time.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  Mack sits back in his chair and gazes at his wife. Her face is all shadows and angles. A light in her has gone out. He can’t confess that seeing her like this is in fact part of the reason he’s in the woods now. She would think it was her fault. But Mack knows that she isn’t responsible for snuffing out her own light. He has done that. But he snuffed out her light because he was groping after his own light, which had gone out. And he didn’t put out his own light. Something else started all this, broke into their lives and stole their lights.

  “Sweet, I promise, if I have a rough time I won’t stay out here. I’m keeping my appointments. I’m on my meds.”

  She looks as if she might cry, that trickling tearfulness that is usually her emotions’ way of conserving energy. But at the moment her eyes are simply tired.

  “You didn’t stop by the house last night,” she says.

  “I worked late. And didn’t want to barge in past suppertime.”

  “It’s not barging in when it’s your own family.”

  “All right, I’ll stop by every night, if you think that’s best.”

  Then he launches into what he hopes is a humorous diatribe about his mother’s latest efforts to make him better.

  “Brought all these damn bottles of herbal remedies. Saint-John’s-wort and who knows what else. Don’t know where she got them or how long she’s had ’em.”

  “Oh, probably leftovers from one of the people she buys medicine for. She’s a traveling pharmacy.”

  “Probably cleaned out the medicine cabinet of whoever’s kicked the bucket lately.”

  She’s just taken a bite and puts a hand to her mouth to avoid spitting when she laughs. He enjoys seeing this. It is still possible to reach past all those other things to whatever it is that releases her specific kind of chuckle, deep in the throat, almost a man’s chuckle only with more melody to it.

  Before she leaves, they stand in the center of the small room and hold each other. She is as familiar to him as he is to himself, but he doesn’t feel her as he did in the old days. Every sensation between them is pleasant but muted, as if they touch through some middle space or substance.

  He sees her glance at the narrow bed before walking out into the cold air. Someone in the back of his heart wants to keep her there, to lie with her in those good, well-remembered ways. But that possibility seems furthest away of all.

  Jodie

  She has just wandered through the drugstore section of Wal-Mart for twenty minutes. She awoke this morning full of longing, and although the economic situation of recent years has prevented her from using shopping as an emotional outlet, the longing has brought her here, to rows of shampoo and conditioner, skin care products, and hair fasteners. She now stands at the head of the aisle for bath products—shower gels, bath crystals, loofahs, and the like—and marvels at how much merchandise there is. This is her experience more and more when she comes to Wal-Mart: amazement at the sheer abundance of stuff. It makes her anxious. How can all this bounty appear regularly in a place where so many people cannot stretch paychecks from one month to the next? What law of nature is being upended? Who is paying for all of this?

  Putting her apprehensions aside for now, she stares hungrily at the milky-toned containers of bath oils. All she knows is that she wants, she’s not sure what. Two neighbors walk past, on their way to cleaning supplies, and Jodie feels like diving for cover. She is an alien in this section. A teenager brushes past to study facial products the next aisle over. Beauty products are for young women, girls who still hope for love and take some pleasure in their own reflection. Kenzie should be standing here, deciding between lipstick shades, looking for lotions and shampoos that smell like peaches. The panic rises as Jodie stands fixed between the shelves on the right and the left. What is she doing here? What could she possibly squeeze out of a bottle that would make things
better?

  Well, she needs makeup at least. She’s run out, and her skin is more rough and red all the time. She maneuvers the cart to the far aisle, where she is faced by a thousand options. The first choice, however, eliminates most of them: she skips the brand names that have their own TV commercials. Her price range eliminates all but two brands, so she stands before those sections, down at the end, and ponders what to put on her face.

  Choosing the right color of foundation doesn’t take long, because there are only four. She picks the best and throws it into the cart, then grasps the handle of the shopping cart as if to get on with her real business, which is to pick up some household necessities. But she can’t move. Her sight rests upon the racks of ascending colors—blushes, eye shadows, eyeliners, mascaras, lipsticks, lip brushes…

  She settles on a powder blush that is somewhat bronzy. Next comes the lipstick. She contemplates all the warm colors—the cinnamons, the coffees and berries—and chooses one that is dark but muted, well suited to autumn. Black eyeliner is more dramatic, so she picks it, along with matching mascara, the “thick and luscious” kind. To go with that she finds a smoky brown eye shadow. Finally, a translucent loose powder and a separate, long-handled brush for applying it—not that she knows how to use the brush. Jodie looks in her cart at forty dollars’ worth of items to use on nothing but her face. The blood rushes up her neck, and she looks around to see if anyone has witnessed her extravagance.

  She stares at the cosmetics but doesn’t put back a single thing. She rolls the cart to Housewares and buys the laundry soap, skips the bleach, picks up toilet paper but no tissues, loads an economy-sized generic disinfectant cleaner, and ignores the remaining three items on her list.

  She makes tuna sandwiches for supper, opening a can of pork-and-beans and putting out a half-empty bag of potato chips. The kids don’t expect her to really cook. Mack comes by and enjoys the food, mainly because he is where he has promised he will be, and she and the kids talk with him easily enough. When Mack leaves for the stone house, Young Taylor and Kenzie both go out—Jodie realizes only then that it’s Halloween. Her insides shake as she clears the table and washes dishes. She takes half an hour to straighten the rest of the house and put in a load of laundry. Then she goes upstairs.

  The Wal-Mart sack is stuffed into her bottom dresser drawer, along with the heating pad and extra set of sheets. She takes the bag into the bathroom and shuts the door, then places each new item on the vanity. She doesn’t dare look in the mirror; if she sees herself, she might lose courage. Her hands tremble as she tears off the packaging and lines up the products, in order of their use.

  She really should take a bath first, soak in the tub and get relaxed. But that would take too long. So she scrubs and moisturizes her face instead, pulls her hair back and out of the way, and begins with the foundation.

  Thirty minutes later, Jodie stands in the still air of the closed bathroom and studies her face. The colors seem to work. For a moment or two, she imagines that her eyes look brighter and her skin more taut. Yes, she does look better. She smiles at the reflection, trying to help the makeup’s effect. No, she merely looks like someone else. She turns away from the mirror and cries. Then she washes it all off, brushes her teeth, and goes to bed.

  Her body is numb. It wants nothing and gives nothing. There was a time when an hour to herself late in the evening might have led to her own pleasure. Especially after Mack got sick, she learned, tentatively and with a little guilt, to please herself. No big deal. But it was nice sometimes, even liberating, to know that she did not depend on Mack for her sexual life. And he seemed relieved that she no longer brought it up.

  But tonight she might as well be dead. She is free and alone and has lost all desire.

  “Why bother?” she asks the late evening sky. “Who am I primping for? Why do I think it matters?” The makeup is packed away, back in the bottom dresser drawer. No point in throwing it out. She’ll use some of it anyway. To attend someone’s wedding or graduation. Or something.

  Kenzie

  “Thanks for letting me spend the evening here.” Kenzie is tucked into Mitchell’s couch, cocoa in hand. He walks in with a bowl of popcorn. A video is in the player. Mitchell sits on the couch, a few inches from Kenzie, and hits the remote.

  “No problem.”

  “Everybody makes like Halloween is just a party or something. But its meaning goes a lot deeper.” Kenzie takes a handful of popcorn. “I don’t even want to think about what my brother’s doing.”

  “Well, we can pray for him, if you want.”

  The video begins. A slender man with thick, smooth gray hair and wearing a dark green suit stands at a lectern.

  The man begins by raising both hands and launching into a fervent prayer to the Holy Spirit, his eyes closed tightly and a beam upon his face. This is tape two of the five Mitchell owns. He’s gotten them through the mail, from the Francis Dowell Ministries. Mitchell says he is headquartered in Lawrence, Kansas, but comes from Tennessee or somewhere in that region. In a clear, striking voice, with a hint of southern accent, the Reverend Francis (as he prefers to be called) expounds upon the Book of Revelation.

  “Brothers and sisters, let me proclaim to you the prophecy found in Revelation six, verses nine through eleven:

  “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, doest thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.”

  Reverend Francis straightens his green and gold tie, which shimmers against a gold shirt. He brushes one wave of hair while turning first to one side and then the other. The camera scans the audience, rows of people in a darkened theater, all looking at a single point behind the camera. In the first row several Bibles are held open on laps.

  “God did not say that there would not be death and suffering. God has clearly told us that many servants will die for the sake of the gospel. But what we must understand is that death is sometimes not physical death.” He bends at the waist for emphasis. “We die a lot of deaths in this life. Your loved one, who loves the Lord and has never drunk a drop of liquor, is killed or maimed by a drunk driver. Or the bank—which, you must remember, is controlled by big government—forecloses on your property, even though you have been faithful as is humanly possible, even though you have honored God your whole life. You suffer at work because you pray to the Lord Jesus on your lunch break—and you notice that those promotions just pass you by. Or some bunch of secular humanist judges miles away from here makes it so your little girls and boys can no longer pray at school. People, there’s a lot of death in this world, and it’s the death of people who are God-fearing, who pray faithfully and who fast, and who know the word of the Lord!”

  The camera pans again, as people nod and say amen. Then back to Reverend Francis, who has stepped from behind the pulpit and taken a stance at the very front of the platform. It reminds Kenzie of when Coach Arbuch stands before the gym bleachers to explain something that he wants to explain only once. In contrast, Reverend Francis’s face looks full of concern about eternal things, not just rules or warnings.

  “When these good people are killed off, then it’s clear as day that Revelation has come to pass. This is the Tribulation, brothers and sisters. The Anti-Christ is here, and he’s already got the government in his pocket, the educational system in his pocket, even most of the stores you shop at are in his pocket.”

  Kenzie takes notes and glances at Mitchell, who is entranced.

  She thinks about earlier in the week, when she worked up the nerve to knock on Mitchell’s back door. He welcomed her with a huge smile and soon put water on to boil. He brought out
cinnamon rolls, the kind you buy in packages.

  “Hey, I want you to watch something,” he said. Then he put a cassette in the VCR.

  “What is it?”

  “Somebody I think you’ll like.” And then the teaching began. After a few minutes, Kenzie pulled her own Bible from her backpack, just to keep up. This guy went through more Scriptures faster than anyone she’d ever heard, even the special speakers who came to the youth group retreats.

  It was hard for Kenzie to concentrate on the lesson because she was so thoroughly enjoying herself. Here she was in Mitchell’s cozy kitchen, having cocoa and cinnamon rolls, with Mitchell smiling at her the way a real friend smiles, and on top of all that listening to really good Bible teaching. It just didn’t get any better than this. When God answered a prayer, he wasn’t stingy. When the tape was over, Kenzie hurried home, but they agreed to watch the other tapes together too.

  She brings her attention back to the present, as Reverend Francis describes the world they live in—full of people turning from the faith and turning to the occult, controlled by a government that has become atheistic, even anti-Christ. He describes it with such vivid phrases that Kenzie and Mitchell just stare at each other. Then Reverend Francis states that “what I’ve just read is not from some newspaper, not from some talk show, not from some opinion poll. These prophetic words were given to us thousands of years ago by the Apostle John, and they are right in the Bible you hold in your hand. God knew we would need this comfort. He looked ahead at the America we have today, and he told the apostle, ‘John, your brothers and sisters of the future are gonna need these visions. You see before you a vision of what those poor folks will be living in the middle of. So write it down. Write it down. Write it down.’”