by Jan Karon
"Miss Sadie, when you consider all those harpists crowding around in heaven, and the mansions and streets of gold, well then—I believe the Lord knows something about big doings, himself."
"She's my only family, Father."
"Absolutely. I agree one hundred percent. Make that a hundred and twenty."
"I've never had anyone to do for 'til now."
"You can't take it with you, Miss Sadie, and I don't believe Lord's Chapel could bear the blessing of...your further generosity."
"Guess who I'm thinking of inviting?"
"I can't guess."
"Absalom!"
"Excellent."
"But his sister won't come. I'm sure of it. Wouldn't you think, Father, that a person who calls themselves a Christian would have forgiven and forgotten after all these years?"
"What makes you think she hasn't?"
"I asked Absalom when he was preaching at Lord's Chapel and you were in Ireland. I said, 'Absalom, has Lottie forgiven me for not marrying you?' I was very direct!"
"The only way to be."
"Absalom just shook his head, and said, 'No, Sadie, I'm afraid not.' I could see it troubled him. And I blurted out something I've been wanting to say for more than sixty years. I said, 'It seems to me she'd be grateful I didn't marry you, so she could keep you for herself!'"
"Strong words," he said, smiling.
"Absalom laughed, but deep in my heart, Father, I felt mean as a snake for saying it."
"Christians hardly ever live up to our expectations, Miss Sadie."
"I think you should know, Father, that I've forgiven her for not forgiving me."
"That's the spirit!"
She sighed, and he heard the rare weariness in it.
"It seems to me you could use a hug."
"A hug?"
"Have you had one since Sunday?"
"Not that I can think of, but the man doing the plasterwork shook my hand."
"I'll be right up," he said.
Miss Sadie leaned on her cane in the rubble of the ballroom and peered at him. "What about Dooley?"
"What about him?"
"Haven't you done your part yet?" she asked tartly. "You're supposed to do your part and be looking into schools."
"Yes, well, how right you are. And I haven't done my part because, to tell the truth, I hate the thought of sending the boy away. Now, don't flog me, Miss Sadie. I'm just telling you the way it is."
"I hope you don't mind my saying so, Father, but that is very selfish thinking."
There was a meaningful silence. "I'll do it," he said at last, feeling as if he had choked down a dose of paregoric.
"Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart," he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files.
"Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness...and looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished..."
Barnabas dropped his head on his front paws.
Was it true that without love, life is unfinished? Without Christ's love, yes, no doubt, definitely. But the love of another earthly being? He had never thought his bachelor life without love was unfinished, but then, he'd had plenty of love coming from other quarters.
"The bosom that does not feel love is cold, the mind that does not conceive it is dull..." His voice trailed off. Still snowing. Dooley studying. Barnabas snoring. The house chilling.
"What is to be sought is a companion, a congenial spirit...who, under any given combination of circumstances, would be affected, feel, and act as we ourselves would...
"This is a companion who is already united to us by the ties of spiritual harmony, which union it is the object of courtship to discover."
Already united to us by the ties of spiritual harmony...
What a man wanted at a time like this was a good pipe, but he didn't smoke. What a man might crave at such an hour was a dram of old whiskey, but he didn't drink. Then, the thing he yearned for most became plain as the nose on his face:
He needed someone to talk to.
Who would it be? Not Walter. Walter had already put in his two cents worth. Not Katherine, who would give him a proper upbraiding for not having done the thing already.
He thought of Marge Owen, the first friend he had made when he came to Mitford. They had shared many confidences over the years, but he hadn't seen much of her since Rebecca Jane came to Meadowgate and Dooley arrived at the rectory. Besides, he knew precisely what she would say:
"Follow your heart, Timothy."
Blast it, that was the problem. One moment, his heart was filled with longing for Cynthia, and the next moment, the mention of marriage could turn it to stone. His heart was jerking him this way and that, precisely as Barnabas had done when being leashtrained.
What did he want to talk about, anyway? What was his question?
He sat at the desk in the study, staring into the hedge at the rear of Baxter Park, unseeing.
Could he love her fully, freely, without betraying his love for God? Wasn't their love, after all, from God? He believed this.
Well, then, how would marriage affect his ministry? What might be lost? No, he thought. That's not the question. Try this: What might be gained?
But he was avoiding the real issue, and he knew it. The issue was not love, nor betrayal, nor even whether his labors might gain or lose meaning.
The real issue was fear.
He tried to name the fear and felt the discomfort of naming it. It was the fear of giving in, of going under, of losing control.
He had made a full surrender once, thinking it the end of surrender. And now, this came, and he had to face it and be just with her and with himself. But was it too late for justice?
If they were to marry, what about his infernal diabetes and his set-in-his-ways sort of life? Could he even share a bed with someone after years of sleeping alone?
Another thing. It was no small matter that she confessed to sleeping with her cat. And did he not sleep with a dog the size of a sofa? And weren't cats and dogs natural enemies from the beginning of time? He could see them now, the whole lot of them, piled on the bed like so many coats at a party. One wrong move...
It was one thing to consider the broad view of marriage, as the idealistic essayist had done. It was another to think of the sore details, the nittygritty, the way things really were, day to day.
Yet, he knew that he wanted her urgently—her encouraging companionship, her bright candor, her grand good humor. He knew, too, that kissing her and holding her were often excruciating and made all the worse by his holding back and holding in and laboring to keep a wall of defense around himself, so there would be no spilling over like a bursting dam.
Yesterday, he and Dooley had bumped elbows in the kitchen, splashing soda from their glasses onto the floor. As they squatted down to wipe it up, the dark liquid of Dooley's Coke ran into the colorless liquid of his Diet Sprite. You couldn't tell where one began and the other left off. Was he willing to blend into the life of another human being for the rest of his days, and have her blend into his?
That, of course, was the Bible's bottom line on marriage: one flesh. Not separate entities, not two autonomous beings merely coming together at dinnertime or brushing past one another in the hallway, holding on to their singleness, guarding against invasion. One flesh!
If he could do the thing at all, could he stick it through? Would he be of one mind at the church altar and of another mind later? Could he trust himself?
The essay had called the power to love truly and devotedly "a sacred fire, not to be burned before idols."
A sacred fire. And if sacred, then durable? The word held a mild comfort. A durable fire.
Lord, take this fear and dash it. Rebuke the enemy who is the creator of all fear, and give me grace to be the man you've called me to be, no matter what lies in store. If I'm to spend the rest of my life with her, with this lovely..this gracious spirit
, then open the door wide. Swing it open, I pray! And if this is not pleasing to you, well, then...
He could not imagine the other, could not imagine going on without her. Even in prayer, his heart was fickle and deceitful, turning this way and that.
With a bare two hours of daylight left, he fixed Dooley's supper, put it in the oven, snapped the red leash on Barnabas, and headed out to see Homeless Hobbes.
He hadn't talked with Homeless about much of anything, really, but he came away refreshed.
It meant something for a parson to have a place to go where no one judged him or asked anything of him or expected him to be anything special. They had sat together before the wood stove, contented with one another's company, each doing the other some profound good without even trying.
He was headed up to bed when he heard the antiquated blast of the front doorbell.
Barnabas dashed down the stairs and crouched by the mail slot, growling.
He had no earthly idea who the tall, bony, redhaired woman was who stood on the porch stoop, flanked by suitcases, squinting at him through heavy bifocals.
"H'lo, Cousin Timothy," she said in a throaty voice. "It's Cousin Meg from Sligo."
•CHAPTER ELEVEN•
BEHIND THE BIFOCALS, her eyes looked like the magnified eyes of a housefly that he'd seen on the cover of Dooley's natural science book.
"Cousin...Meg?" He held Barnabas, who was still growling, by the collar.
"You know," she said, pushing her hair behind her ears, "Cousin Erin's tea party. You invited me for a visit when I came to America."
"Aha," he said, standing awkwardly in the doorway.
"We had a gab by the china dresser. You were drinking sherry."
He remembered Erin Donovan's notable family china dresser, but as for gabbing with anyone by it...
"Didn't you get my post a couple of months ago?" She seemed to loom over him.
"A letter?" A letter! On mauve writing paper. "Of course! Please... come in..."
"Could I borrow a twenty for the driver? Had to be fetched up in a taxi. I'll repay."
"Certainly," he said, digging into his pocket and handing over a twenty.
As she went off to the driver who was parked at the curb, he reached in the foyer closet and brought out the extra leash. He snapped Barnabas to one end and tied the other around the banister.
He picked up the suitcases, which nearly took his arms from their sockets, and set them in the foyer, then watched her walk back to the porch stoop in the glow of the street lamp.
A loping gait, he thought, with something tired in the way she hunched forward. He was reminded of a leggy cosmos.
"Cousin Meg," he said, stepping aside to let her enter, "welcome to Mitford."
She brushed past him in a trench coat that smelled of damp newspapers and peanut butter. "Good heavens, what a dog!" she exclaimed.
He closed the door and turned the lock, completely flabbergasted.
He had lugged the bags to the guest room and set them inside the door, then went downstairs to fix his guest something to eat.
"I'm starved," she said intensely, pushing her hair behind her ears. She sat at the small table under the kitchen window and peered into the empty plate. It might have been a crystal ball forecasting Russian caviar for the hopeful look in her eyes.
"Perhaps it will do 'til morning," he said, serving her a meatloaf sandwich that he'd made extra thick. She peeled back the bread and looked. "I prefer not to eat flesh foods, except on Sunday."
"Aha. Well, I'm dashed if I know what to give you, then. There's soup in the cabinet..."
"In a tin?"
"I'm afraid so."
"This will suffice," she said, taking a bite so vast that he turned his back to give her privacy for chewing.
"I'm trying to remember our gab," he said. "Let's see. I suppose we talked about Cousin Erin's china dresser that made its way to America, then miraculously found its way home again."
Clearly, he couldn't stop there, as he heard her still chewing. He stood at the sink and pretended to dry a dish that wasn't wet. "Perhaps you can give me some help on the family tree. We collected a lot of notes and papers in Ireland and stuffed them in a bag, and I'm supposed to make some sense out of it all. Frankly, I haven't opened the bag once and dread it like the toothache."
What else could he say? She wouldn't be interested in the Porter place museum, he didn't think, or the fund-raiser to buy special hymnals for the Youth Choir. He plunged ahead. "We'll have lots to discuss about Sligo, I'm sure. But only when you've rested, of course—I know how jet lag can fog the mind."
He turned around to find her wiping her mouth on her sleeve and having a draught of tea.
"Ah...how about another sandwich?"
"Righto. Splendid. I'm famished."
He gave her the sandwich and hauled himself up to sit on the counter by the sink. "So, tell me, Cousin, how are we related?"
"Your greatgrandfather and my greatgrandfather were halfbrothers, of course."
Clearly, she didn't mind being stared at while she talked with her mouth full.
"And Greataunt Fiona," he said, "was in there somewhere...my grandfather's sister, I believe."
"My grandfather's sister," said Meg, gulping down a half glass of tea.
He hated losing Greataunt Fiona to the other side, straight off.
"Your greatgrandfather, Michael, married Glynis Flanagan, and they had Lorna, Fergus, Sybil, Tyrone, Cormac, and Lisbeth. Fergus emigrated to America when he was fourteen and later married Letty Noonan. They had Matthew and Stephen and, of course, Little Betty, who died at birth from the fever."
"Good heavens! How can you contain all that?" Perhaps if she stayed a day or two, she could make short work of the bag that sat on his closet floor.
"Your uncle Stephen married Katie Crain of Pennsylvania, who, they say, was a great beauty. Walter was their issue. Two years earlier, your father had, of course, married Madelaine Howard of Mississippi, whose great-grandfather served in the senate with Mister Jefferson. Matthew and Madelaine had you, and neither you nor Walter ever chose to carry on the family line."
Perhaps he only imagined that she said this coolly.
"My great-grandfather," she said, taking a large bite, "married Gillian Elmurry, who had Reagan, Fiona, Brian, Kevin, Eric, and Inis. Reagan married Deirdre Connors, and they had Allie, Meg, Nolle, Anthony, Stephen, Mary, and..." He thought she said Joseph. Clearly, it was a challenge to talk with your mouth full while reciting one's family tree.
"Nolle, as you may recall, flew with Lindbergh on several occasions, before he had Arthur, Allen, Asey, and Abigail.
"Anthony, of course, married Daphne, who had me. I was the only child. In an Irish Catholic family, a laughingstock..."
"So we are?..."
"Third cousins."
"I see," he said, although he didn't.
Perhaps it was because he had been up since five o'clock and it was now eleven, but he felt as if someone had just read him the entire first Book of Chronicles.
He cautioned Dooley when he came downstairs on Saturday morning. "There's someone sleeping in the guest room."
"I never heard s' much bangin' an' scufflin' around in th' middle of th' night...sounded like a dern gang of convicts was let loose in there." His grandfather made over, thought the rector. Dooley Barlowe often woke up as an old man, though he generally went to bed as a boy.
"Who's in there, anyway?"
"A cousin. From Ireland."
"Ireland. 'At's over there in Scotland."
"Try again."
"Somewhere in England, maybe."
"Check it out."
Dooley looked at the world globe on the rector's desk. "I was pretty dern close."
He walked to the office, oddly in step with the throbbing sound of machinery on the hill, and went through his Easter sermon twice. Orating to the rear windows, which showcased the branches of trees in expectant bud, he felt convinced that "All for Love" had been the
right theme—he felt the burning fact of its Tightness.
He called home at one o'clock and talked to Puny, who had come in to bake an Easter ham. She was shocked to hear there was anyone else in the house.
"She's in the guest room," he said. "Jet lag, more than likely. She'll come down before long, I'm sure."
"You want me to fix 'er somethin' to eat if she does?"
"She ate two meatloaf sandwiches last night and drank a half pitcher of tea, but I'm sure she'll want something before dinner. Oh, yes—she doesn't eat flesh foods except on Sunday."
All he got from the other end was a stunned silence.
At three o'clock, Puny called the office. "You better come home. Your cousin's still up there, and th' floorboards ain't even creaked. I knocked on th' door at two o'clock—that's long enough for anybody to be layin' in bed, if you ask me—but not a peep out of 'er. She must've found that key hangin' on th' wall and locked herself in, 'cause I tried th' knob, thinkin' she might be, you know..."
"Mort?"
"Whatever. So maybe you should come home."
Puny was waiting for him at the back door. "She came down right after we talked."
"Oh?"
"Wanted somethin' to eat. I fixed 'er salad and a roll, put it on a tray. She hightailed it back upstairs, said not to look for 'er at th' dinner table."
"She's pretty troublefree, I'd say."
Puny appeared thoughtful, or was it his imagination?
At six o'clock, he knocked lightly on her door.
"Cousin Meg?"
Silence.
Must have eaten and gone straight off to sleep. Jet lag could do that, and didn't he know? Arriving home from Ireland, his head had felt stuffed with sheep's wool. For another two days, he hadn't been able to think straight, and finally, it all ended with the odd perception that everything—and everyone—was more poignantly real than he'd ever known, as if a veil had been lifted from his senses.
After midnight, he awoke to a sound he couldn't identify. Barnabas pricked up his ears and growled.
He got up and went to the bedroom door, then stepped into the hall and listened. He would know that sound anywhere. It was coming from the guest room. It was a typewriter, thumping along loudly at sixty miles an hour, as if every key were a mallet pounding the floor.
