(Dysentery, Connie marveled. It was a disease from novels, not from life.)
Privately, Connie used these stories to assemble a landscape of Bill’s Africa, where a brown river meandered across a savannah, and colorful birds studded the rushes. A warm breeze made the grass bow and rise in waves, as if it were being stroked by the hands of an invisible giant. She visited Bill’s Africa every night before she drifted off to sleep.
Was Connie in love, as Sue had suggested? If she was, she didn’t know it, or, at least, would never allow herself to use the word. There was a dramatic change in her feelings, though, even at a physical level, as if she were breathing more deeply, as if she had climbed one of the walls she had built around herself and was now gulping fresh air and taking in the view. She asked herself questions, just as she had after Reverend Raleigh’s sermon—different questions but in the same dizzy manner: Where was her husband? Was he still alive? Had he tricked another girl into marrying him?
On the latest church visits, while Bill gave his presentation, Connie busied herself: if there had been a meal before, she would wash dishes; if there were children, she would watch them. She told herself this was to make herself more useful, but really it was because only when she heard a group break out in laughter when they saw the upside-down slide did she feel the fact of Bill’s dishonesty painfully lodged in her, like a burr.
Once, a woman picking up her baby from the nursery said, “You and your husband are doing great work, Mrs. Howard.” Connie didn’t correct her. To do so might have embarrassed the woman.
“Milk, hon?” Sue called from the kitchen.
“A little,” said Connie.
Sue returned holding the handles of two mugs in one hand and a box of sugar in the other. Spoons rang the mugs like bells when she set them down.
“All right, change of subject,” Sue said. “Did you hear Marlene Bailey got engaged?”
“No. To who?”
“Angie Wilder’s boy. He’s been livin’ in Boise the past few years. Good kid. Quite a bit younger than Marlene, though.”
“Well, I hope she won’t be leaving us,” Connie said. Marlene was the church organist whom Connie revered.
“No, Angie said Jeff’s gonna move back to Eula.”
“It’s Jeff?” Connie remembered this boy, and he was young for Marlene. In fact, he had sung in the youth choir—Connie remembered his strong baritone voice. Marlene would have led him in youth choir when he was in high school.
“Yep, Jeff,” said Sue. “Connie, are you all right?”
“That makes me so sad, for some reason,” Connie said, forgetting herself.
“Because he’s so young?” Sue asked.
“No. I don’t know why.”
With effort, Sue scooted toward Connie. She took the mug from Connie, set it on the table, and held both Connie’s hands in her own. “I know why, hon.” Connie gave her a dazed look as if Sue really could tell her. “It’d be good for you to find a fella,” Sue whispered.
“Oh,” said Connie.
Sue nodded.
“Sue, I thought you knew. I’m still married,” Connie said, pulling her hand away from Sue to show her her ring. “I never divorced.”
Sue, who could cry at the mention of a pet’s illness (Connie had witnessed this at the Dorcas Circle), released Connie’s hands to grab a tissue. She inhaled to say something, thought better of it, and lifted her glasses to wipe her eyes.
That evening at dinner, Gene surprised Connie by breaking the silence with his loud, high-pitched voice. It made her jump. “Don’t be sad, Mom,” he said.
“Thank you, Gene,” Connie said. “I am a little down. It’ll pass.”
Gene finished his meal and went to his room to work, Connie assumed, on his charts and drawings, but Connie stayed at the table staring down into the crinkled aluminum shell that had held her potpie. Marlene Bailey was, to her, an inspiration, a model Christian—talented, bright, and exceedingly humble. Sunday mornings she would sway crazily over the organ, her long, frizzy hair falling over her face, unself-conscious, in an ecstasy, playing for the Lord. Music and the church were the whole of her life. Now the church would lose her to this boy. Connie didn’t want Marlene to get married, because it would taint her and make her less holy. But Connie checked herself. These thoughts seemed Catholic and, therefore, wrong. Didn’t the Bible say, “to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband”? Devout Protestants were encouraged to marry.
It dawned on her: while Marlene was single, Connie could hope that her own abandoned state would make her holier. Now she would just be alone.
WALKING INTO THE Eula Public Library, one might wonder for a moment if one had mistakenly entered a daycare. Tattered picture books were crowded into short bookshelves, which were arranged in a ring around a center area filled with bean-bag chairs and child-sized tables. The walls were covered with children’s drawings, and there was even a terrarium containing two despondent tortoises. One had to pass through this children’s area to find the circulation desk and, beyond it, a small reference section. Books of fiction were shelved on a narrow mezzanine, and everything else was in the low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit basement.
It was here that Liz found the book that corresponded to the card, Pierson’s Guide to American Universities. It was thick and paper-bound, like a phone book. She took it to a table and, yes, there was a note between the pages. When she opened the book, though, she started. The pages between which the note had been hidden contained a profile of Stanford University.
The note said:
You have the thickest eyelashes of anyone I’ve ever seen.
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!!!
WHO AM I???
You’ve always known me. I’ve always watched you. Maybe I’m like your eyelashes, too close to see.
Liz had been curled over the catalog, but now she straightened with a chill. Who knew she had been accepted to Stanford? Only her closest friends, all girls. But Winston knew, and he could have told anyone. Feeling a bit miffed and invaded, she tore a strip from the bottom of the note. She wrote, “You could be anyone,” fit the strip between the pages like a bookmark, and put the book back on the shelf.
The creepy idea of being “too close to see” and the suspicion that her secret admirer was a friend of Winston’s kept Liz from returning to the Eula Public Library right away. Of course, it could have been Eddy Nissen, the cutest and least annoying of Winston’s friends. It would be a little thrill to find him out, tease him, promise she wouldn’t tell, then spend the rest of the year trading good-natured, flirtatious smiles with him in the hallway. But then again, Eddy had arrived at Eula High sophomore year. He couldn’t really say to her, “You’ve always known me.”
So it was curiosity much more than hope that brought Liz back to the Eula Public Library. She again found the college guide, and when she took it from the shelf, something dropped onto the floor. A key had been placed on top of the book. She picked it up by the plastic card that was attached to it by a ring. The number 21 was printed on the card. The key itself wasn’t flat like a house key, it had a plastic grip, the type you twist in order to free the key after you’ve inserted your quarter. This was a key to a rental locker. Where did they have lockers like that, the Greyhound station? Locker 21, she thought. She quickly thumbed through the college guide and, finding no note, returned it to the shelf. Then she examined the key more closely and turned over the little plastic card. There was a logo on the other side: a top hat on a roller skate. A troubling new possibility occurred to Liz: could a junior high kid be sending her on this treasure hunt? This was the logo of the Rollerdrome, a place where high school seniors never went.
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Adele Burnham had a tiny stroke. A blood clot stopped the blood flow to her brain, and the dream that she was having, dim and indistinguishable from waking life as it was, flickered out. A minute later, the clot dislodged and the blood flowed again. Adele didn’t die—her
lungs continued to pull air into her body and push it out—but she did die. In the morning she woke up, but she didn’t.
At breakfast, the aide, who sat at the center of the semicircular table feeding Adele and three other clients, noticed Adele was more lethargic than usual. She chewed, but her tongue misbehaved, pushing the food out rather than swallowing it. Finally the aide gave up and wiped Adele’s face. Maybe she would wake up a little by lunchtime.
Adele spent the morning dozing in the hall. This was what she always did. But, inside, her life was gone.
Connie had rituals with some of her charges. When Mr. Ellis was in a stupor and couldn’t get up, she’d give him a piece of chocolate. Within a few minutes his confusion would lift and he’d go on his shuffling rounds. When Mrs. Horn got cranky, Connie would get her started on gardening. “You know, my marigolds are wilting,” Connie would say, even in the dead of winter.
“Are ya soakin’ ’em?”
“Not for the past few days.”
“Marigolds, you gotta soak!” Mrs. Horn would say, her bad mood forgotten. “Put sugar in the water. That’ll perk ’em up.”
And, of course, Adele Burnham liked to be placed in the sunlight.
But when Connie, who still had a residue of sadness on her heart from learning yesterday that Marlene Bailey was engaged, rolled Adele through the craft room and placed her into the great square of light before the sliding glass door, Adele didn’t respond. She didn’t tilt her head so the sun would strike her eye, and she didn’t warble happily. Thinking that, with the chill that radiated from the glass door, Adele might not yet feel the light, Connie gave her a moment. She adjusted the wheelchair so the light hit her eye more directly. Then she knelt and tucked the blanket in more firmly around Adele’s tiny, curled feet. “Mrs. Burnham, we’re here. You’re in the sun,” she said. But the woman’s eyelids hung low, the light didn’t reach her pupils, and the whites of her eyes were a milky blue.
Connie took Adele’s long, powder-dry hands. “Lord,” she said, “please take her soon.”
Connie never would have said this in front of Adele before, not aloud, but after years of work in the nursing home, she knew how a life could be snuffed out in an instant, even if the heart continued to beat away like a soldier who hadn’t gotten word that the war had been lost. She thought of that day of the power outage, when she looked up and the world was dark, just like that. Adele was gone.
Connie went to the nurses’ station and called the church office. Sissy, the church secretary, answered.
“Well, hello there, Connie. How are ya?”
“Fine, Sissy. How are the boys?”
“Well, Reverend Keane is out sick today, but Reverend McNally is in eatin’ his lunch.”
Connie had meant Sissy’s sons. She would never have referred to the pastors, both grown, married men, as “the boys,” but she let it go. “I was hoping to make an appointment to see Reverend McNally,” she said. “Should I call back after lunch?”
“Oh, he don’t mind. Hold on half a sec.”
The church did not have a fancy phone system where calls could be patched through; Sissy just walked back and forth to the pastors’ offices. Reverend McNally sat turned away from his desk, staring out the diamond-paned window. An open book and a bag of Cheetos lay on the desk. “Ed?” Sissy half-whispered.
He turned a smile on her.
“Connie Anderson’s on the phone. She’d like to make an appointment.”
“Have her come in this afternoon.”
Ed McNally enjoyed meeting with Connie. She was one of the few members of the congregation who made appointments rather than simply dropping by the church offices. It was Ed’s job as junior minister to answer the ethical and theological questions of the congregation, but, aside from children, Connie was the only one who ever asked such questions.
“Thank you for seeing me so quickly, reverend,” said Connie when she arrived. In her ugly, flat-fronted dress and white loafers Connie looked, as always, like a puritan nurse. Her bun had loosened over the course of the day, though, and Ed could see the luster of her dark hair, which he couldn’t on Sunday mornings when it was as hard and glossy as polished wood. “Please sit, Connie. It’s nice to see you.”
Connie sat and stared at her hands, which she sandwiched between her knees as if to warm them. Ed allowed her some time to gather her thoughts.
“Is it wrong, reverend, to believe the words of Jesus over other parts of the Bible?”
After a moment’s thought, Ed answered, “We are to consider the Bible, the whole Bible, the word of God. However, as you know, Christ released us from many of the laws of the Old Testament.”
“And gave us some new laws. He made some of the laws stricter.”
“Yes,” said Ed. This was, he guessed, about divorce. He clearly remembered Connie’s speech to the board of deacons regarding the formation of the divorcées’, support group. He had found it almost comical to watch the group confronted by the harsh realities of the scriptures. Of course, it was against God’s law to divorce, and of course, in this day and age, the church allowed it, as every modern Protestant church did. The only other option was to become a conservative relic of the past with few members.
Connie said, “A woman I take care of at the nursing home became unresponsive today. Maybe it’ll pass, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen it before. Her eyes were open, but she’s no longer conscious.” Her voice changed for a moment: “She couldn’t have gone to heaven already, even though her body is still here?”
“Not yet, Connie.”
Her eyes fell again and she returned to her previous line. “When I was sitting with her this afternoon, I thought, This will be me, if I’m lucky. I’ll be lucky to have someone notice when I go. I’m being self-pitying, I know.”
“You have your son.”
“I don’t think he’ll be able to care for me, reverend. He doesn’t . . . support me in many ways.”
They were quiet for what seemed a long time. Ed wondered if Connie was waiting for a reaction from him, but by the way her eyes searched the floor, she seemed to be formulating a question.
“Moses allowed for divorce,” she said at last. “Men could give their wives a certificate of divorcement and leave them. But Jesus said that divorce was not allowed.”
“Moses,” said Ed, “had incorrectly interpreted God’s law in order to appease the Israelites.”
“Jesus said that to divorce was forbidden, and to marry a divorced person was to commit adultery.”
“That’s right,” Ed said cautiously. It was an interesting theoretical discussion when it led to the point he had assumed Connie would make—that the church was wrong to bless second marriages—but by the look of extreme pain on Connie’s face, Ed knew that she was not merely looking to put down the other women in the church, she was talking about her own situation.
“He was correcting a mistake in the Bible,” said Connie.
“Well,” said Ed, tipping his head from side to side in a gesture of balance, “I wouldn’t use the term mistake. But he was clarifying an interpretation, and giving his followers the true meaning of God’s law in Genesis: ‘What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ ”
“To remarry is to live in sin,” said Connie with finality.
“Connie, Christ himself said that adultery dissolves the marriage bond. And in First Corinthians an allowance is made for those who are abandoned.”
Connie shook her head in a way that made clear that she had already considered this. “Only if you are abandoned by an unbeliever.”
Ed gently asked, “Was your husband a Christian man?”
“He had been saved, but he wasn’t . . . devout.”
“You’re free to marry again, Connie.”
“No, I’m not. Not if he’s still alive and single and living a Christian life.”
“Do you believe that he is?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea.”
“You’re free to marr
y again,” Ed repeated.
Connie smiled ruefully. “Aren’t you just trying to make it easier for me, reverend, the way Moses did?”
Ed smiled also, a smile of submission. He didn’t have an answer. Connie was one tough customer.
Connie said, “The goal of my life, reverend, is joy. I want to claim the joy that God has for me in this life. I’ve lived most of my life without it. It’s right to want joy, isn’t it? I used to think my sadness would get me into heaven, but that was wrong. So I’ve asked and asked for joy, and the answer God has given me is that to claim it, I must live by His laws. Following the laws in the Bible is the way both to eternal life and to joy in this world, right? But following those laws seems at odds with happiness. Tell me I’m wrong, reverend!”
Ed shook his head.
“Well, it’s simple, then. It’s so simple,” Connie said in resignation.
Ed leaned forward on the desk. “Connie, can I tell you something I absolutely know? I know that God wants you to be happy, and happiness is achieved by following His law and by taking our own steps. The two are not mutually exclusive, Connie, especially in your case. You have been abandoned, and you have no idea if your husband has remarried, or if he’s still a Christian, or, for that matter, if he ever was. You are allowed to remarry by the spirit of what Paul wrote in Corinthians, if not the word.”
“Don’t Paul’s writings seem less . . . authentic . . . to you than Christ’s words?”
“Not in the least,” said Ed. “God was speaking through Paul.”
“The way He spoke through Moses?”
“Connie.” Ed laughed incredulously. “Do you realize, in your rigidity, you’re approaching blasphemy?”
Both words seemed to hit Connie harder than Ed had meant them to. “Rigidity,” she said. “Rigidity, in interpreting God’s word, can’t be wrong. We’re encouraged again and again all through the Bible to be rigid. I’m rigid because I want that joy.”
There was a long silence. “Connie,” said Ed finally, “you are an inspiration to me, do you know that? There are times when I hold my actions up to yours, because you are an example of Christian living.”
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