by Amy Lapwing
Jack laughed through welled-up tears at the novelty of the three of them. “Come on,” he said, petting Grace’s head, “let’s get out of here.” He upended the intact water bottle and pushed it out of the way. Then he helped Linda into the car, they laughed softly at their embarrassment. They all three went for giant chocolate chip cookies at the bagel deli and ate them while they sat in the hospital emergency room playing Twenty Questions; the hardest one was when Jack was thinking of “word games, like Twenty Questions;” Grace was impressed, but Linda said it wasn’t fair and pushed his chest: the feel of him comforted her and she felt protected. Linda’s sprain took weeks to mend; Grace recovered from her operation in a matter of days. Jack, sure of his role, nursed them both.
Orange. It’s such an unusual color, you don’t find it outside that much. Some orange flowers, in summer, but not in the spring. And I don’t think there’s any flowering orange bushes, not around here anyway. But now. I love orange!
Grace raised the window, the branches of the turning maple just inches away. She unhooked the two fasteners in the sill and pulled the screen down out of its slides. She held it flat outside the window and tilted it to fit through the window opening and brought it in and laid it against the wall. She glanced at her father who was doing the same task at the other window.
Linda hurried to where Grace was. She placed a rolled up rag between the wall and the screen. “There. Put them all against this one, okay?” She watched Jack bringing in his screen. The curtains were getting in the way; he slid the screen in, the fabric brushing the aluminum edges.
“Jack!” Linda hurried to the curtains; there were two gray lines of soil on the white chintz liner. “Can’t you be more careful? Now I have to launder these curtains.”
Jack laid the screen on the floor.
“Put it over there,” said Linda, pointing to the screen Grace had lain against the wall. “Didn’t you hear me? It’ll get the carpet dirty.”
Jack picked up the screen and looked at the floor. “It’s not dirty.”
“‘Cause you wiped it clean on the curtains. They’ve been outside all year. They’re filthy.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” muttered Jack and he went to the third window where Grace was extracting the screen. “You got it, Punkin?”
“Yup.” Grace tried to hold the curtains away from the screen with her elbows as she eased the frame out. Jack stood back and watched her. One of the curtain flaps escaped from her arm and grazed the screen.
“Can’t you help her?” Linda scolded. She stepped in and held the curtains up and away while Grace completed the operation and laid the screen against the other one on the wall.
“Why don’t you just do it? I’ll never get it right, I can see that right now.” Jack kept his voice down; his feet pounded the floor as he went out.
Linda and Grace moved from room to room completing the screen removal task in preparation for the window washers Linda had engaged. Jack and I could do the job, really, she thought, if he weren’t such a clod. So instead I have to hire someone, as usual. Grace and Linda worked in Jack’s office. They heard the sound of the garage door below them opening. Linda’s hands on the screen stopped, the screen half-way through the window. She and Grace, on tiptoes behind her, looked out and saw Jack’s car back out of the garage. The hand brake squawked and Jack got out of the car. He disappeared under the eaves and reappeared with the hose, a squirt of water flying from it to the top of the car. Together the girl’s and the woman’s shoulders lowered and they unconsciously bowed their heads and resumed their task.
Jack ran some water over the toothpaste smeared on his brush and began scrubbing his teeth. He turned and watched Linda’s back as she went to the bed. She wore a light orange nylon gown; not light orange, what was that color called? Her buttocks pushed the fabric out. He wanted her, just like that, but she had never let him take her from behind. She turned and got into the bed; her breasts were sealed behind the lace bodice of the gown. He reminded himself not to pull it off her shoulders, she would be afraid of its ripping; best to lift it up, but carefully, so as not to mess up her hair. She pulled the covers over her lap. She was smiling at him. She said something. He stopped brushing so he could hear. “Don’t forget the towel,” she repeated.
He grabbed the hand towel and went toward the bed. “Not that one,” she said. “Get a bath-sized one.” He went back into the bathroom and got a clean towel from the linen closet. He tossed it on the bed and got in. He willed himself to not think of anyone else and kissed her. He could not rid his mind of the perception that he was a better lover than she was. He wanted to take her however she was, she was his wife and he loved her and it didn’t matter what her technique was. He caressed her breasts in their lace veil. She made a soft humming. He lifted her gown and she brought her arms out of it and let him take it off her. He was about to let it fall to the floor, but she took it and folded it in half and laid it across the foot of the bed. He smoothed her hair and kissed her, his hands cupping her breasts. She was perfect, she was humming, and he was happy and hard. She laid back on the pillows and caressed his hips, moving her hands over his belly and onto his thighs, circling his penis but never touching it. He could take the teasing no longer and put his hips on top of hers. “Wait!” she said, her eyes popping open with the same alarm they had shown earlier that day when he had soiled the curtains with the screen. “The towel!”
She lifted her hips and he placed the towel under her. He turned his head to avoid her tense look as he prepared to enter her. She sighed when he was all the way in and he thrusted happily for a moment, so in love with her for enjoying him. Just like the old days when we used to be so in love with each other and our lives. You would be so pleased when I sent you flowers at your office; you used to let me kiss you in public, hell, you used to kiss me. We used to spend the weekends doing whatever we wanted, staying in bed all morning if we wanted, going to the movies, out to eat. God, I love you!
He wished he could come instantly, it was so perfect. Her body went slack as her pre-climactic enjoyment ebbed. Then we bought a house and we spent all weekend working on it, making repairs, refinishing furniture, cleaning. And I was very bad at it, I know, you said so. Then we were so happy again when Grace came. We had a project we were both excited about. But turns out I didn’t do very well there, either. Couldn’t bathe her right, couldn’t put her diaper on right, didn’t watch her close enough at the playground. Not that she suffered though, what a sweet girl she was. I was always her daddy, from the very start, I could tell. Didn’t matter what a screw-up I was. Not to her, anyway.
He struggled to recapture the joyous moment, trying to put an angle on his thrusting. It was not working; it should have been, but for some reason she was not responding. He came out and slid down to her crotch.
“No!” Linda whispered.
“Come on,” he pleaded.
“I’m not clean,” she said.
“It’s fine. Come on, I want to.” He bowed his chin to her vulva.
She grabbed for his shoulders. “No!”
He crawled up her torso and kissed her and she responded with apologetic heat. He entered her again, but he could not thrill her. I loved you, Linda! He gave in to his imagination and thought of the woman from his office with the long dark hair, and the constant smile. From start to finish, that woman smiles when I fuck her. He came, kissed his wife, rolled off her and fell asleep.
Linda took up the towel and put it in the laundry hamper. She ran the water in the tub and cleaned her vulva, patting herself dry with a fresh towel; she laid it precisely in half across the bar to dry. She put her nightgown back on, bending over to let her breasts bobble back into place in the lace, and got into bed. She rolled away from the softly snoring Jack and fell asleep.
The odor of roasting chicken filled the house. Grace responded to her mother’s call and went downstairs to sit at the dining table. Linda brought in the mashed potatoes and sat in her place. “Pass the chicken, Grace.
”
Grace handed the platter of chicken pieces to her mother. “Where’s Dad?”
“Not here,” Linda answered. She took a chicken breast and a spoonful of potatoes and passed them to her daughter. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Linda came to and asked Grace about school. Grace said it was fine. They had had their first rehearsal with the high school chorus today, in preparation for the district-wide music festival. She wanted to tell her mother how exciting it was working with Mr. Ferrante, the high school music teacher, but her mother did not ask her anything more.
The garage door opened and Jack came in to the dining room. “Hi,” he said putting his napkin in his lap. “Sorry I’m late.”
Linda got up and took her plate into the kitchen. Jack tsked to himself and asked Grace to pass him the food. “Howzit going, Punkin?”
“Fine, Daddy.”
“Great.” They ate in silence as Jack mulled to what degree Linda’s pot crashing in the kitchen correlated with her reaction to his being late. Jack and Grace finished their dinner in an uneasy quiet as Linda loaded the dishwasher.
That night Grace lay on her bed looking at a teen fashion magazine, admiring the bright candy colors proclaimed “NEW!” for the spring. She liked the lime green paired with tangerine. The models looked kind of funny in big black shoes. She had seen those exact ones at the mall; she would get some. Her mother screamed in the bedroom down the hall. Her father’s voice was not as discernible; lower voices don’t carry over a distance as well as high ones, Grace had noticed. At any moment, one of them would open the door and she would catch a few words and then one of them would leave the room. Maybe her mother, to go downstairs and cool off in front of the T.V. Or maybe her father, in which case she would hear his car going down the driveway.
“It doesn’t matter what I say!” she heard her father say. The door had opened and Jack was out in the hall. “I was at church, praying, okay? That more believable than I was at the office working just a little late?”
“I know where you were,” Linda snarled. “You come back in here and finish this.”
“You know where I was, right. Yeah, well, I wish I was,” he shouted back at her.
“Close the door!”
“Okay.” The door slammed and Grace heard Jack’s tumbling steps down the stairs. She held still, listening. Her mother’s lighter step flipping down the stairs; the engine of her father’s car revving as he switched from reverse to forward; and her mother screaming out the front door for all the neighborhood to hear, for him to go fuck himself; and the quiet sound of the car rolling down the drive; and the front door slamming shut.
Grace looked down the hall from her bedroom door. She watched her mother go into her and Jack’s bedroom, closing the door softly behind her, as though leery of waking her. Through the open door of the office, the computer’s screen saver could be seen throwing endless fireworks into the air. The door to the guest room was open. Grace resisted an impulse to go in there and tear the covers off the little bed. She stepped back in her room and closed the door and looked again at the magazine. She was not going to look like those models, what a joke. She could not just put on the clothes and be happy, like them. Like her mother. Fuck them all. I'm not going to be like them. And I'm not going to just sit in my room and take it. She got out her music for the festival and propped it against her knees as she sat on her bed. She tried to remember the second soprano part, but she did not sight-read very well. Mr. Nordstrom was not teaching her solfège, he thought it was too hard for a ninth-grader. It had been, for him.
Chapter Twenty-six
Peace of God
“Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace—” The vicar’s gentle voice read the traditional collect, his eyes on the altar where he had placed his red leatherette Book of Common Prayer. His short dust brown hair was very dry, like a child’s, and stuck up from his head like a brush, his skin pink and clear like a prepubescent boy’s. Only his mustache suggested a man’s body beneath the white robe and green and gold stole. “And evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.”
Justina repeated the “Amen” with the small congregation and sat when the others did. She looked around at the parishioners scattered throughout the sanctuary, a modern structure with white walls and a vaulted ceiling held up by walnut-stained posts and beams, with rows of hooked-together chairs in place of pews. The aspect was airy and solemnly cheerful. The lay reader, a woman of middle years, robed in white, stood and began the first reading. Justina did not want to read along, she wanted to keep looking around. Her eyes studied the brown belt of the man two rows ahead, its edges curling out under the pressure of his fat middle; the long chestnut braid of a woman further up on her left surprised her with its boldly colored highlights, a gorgeous ornament upon the woman’s plain face. A fidgety boy in a clip-on tie stood with one foot on the other, leaning against the chair in front of him. A baby looked over his mother’s shoulder at her, eyes round, trying to get her to look at him, then looking away as soon as she did. It occurred to her that her glancing about might be noticeable to others. She settled her gaze on the windows behind the altar, three in an ‘L’ beneath the horizontal brown beam, and three above. There lacked two windows, one below and one above the beam, to make two sets of symmetrical four. Her mind filled in the missing squares of glass. The young trees beyond barely moved in the light breeze, their branches showing all of the fall colors and very little green, fringed by a row of cattails. The lay reader began the second reading, her voice low-pitched and dramatic, and Justina marveled at the beauty of the setting of the little church, and the attentiveness of the people, their air not of resignation, as she had expected, but simply of willingness to attend to whatever might happen. She had chosen this church, an Episcopal mission, because it seemed small and non-traditional from the outside. There was a personal feel to the service, perhaps because the congregation was so small; the vicar could make eye contact with everyone before it was over. She did not feel dragged along by ritual as she expected she would at a larger church. But there was a ritual, the service was not made up as the officiants went along, they had to follow the form, an incantation performed on her, to make her different. She stood to sing the gospel gradual with the others, finding her place when they were half-way through the first verse, not daring to try the unfamiliar hymn.
“The holy gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Matthew. Glory to You, Lord Christ.” The vicar read, the task too important for a layman. Justina did not know to say the “Glory,” and could not listen to the reading until the end, the subject was too unfamiliar and lacked a context she could comprehend. “‘And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to You, Lord Christ.”
The congregation sat for the sermon. The service, like every Sunday, she assumed, invoked over and over the words of religion, the alwayses, and evermores, faith, grace, love, God, difficult words, but words grasped to some degree by everyone who came to the church week after week. She supposed that each of the words gave a clue to where God could be found, if not understood, a God that she was not sure she believed in, but nevertheless fascinated her. The speaking of the words set off so many thoughts in her, thoughts which made her feel good or that made her confused, but which were not meaningless. And this in a person who did not readily profess belief in God. How much more evocative the words must be for a believer, she thought. Did her father believe in God? If he did, would he be less frightened? The sermon ended and the congregation stood to reaffirm their faith by reciting with the lay reader the Nicene Creed. Justina found the proper place in the prayer book and read, but not aloud, leery of making an oath of faith in something she did not understand; that would be wrong, sinful.
“For the prayers of the people, we will use Form Three, which is found on page three hundred and eighty-seven.” Justina listened while the reader said the prayers. She
did not know how to pray; she thought it was proper to close her eyes, or at least stare at the floor. She could not help looking around, though, and then out those windows at the lovely woods. “Pray for those of us needing special prayers.” The reader read a list of names, of parishioners who were ailing, she presumed. “And any others you wish to name.” George Trimble. Pray for my father. Across the room someone muttered a name, then someone else mumbled another on the heels of the first, and then a third. More loudly a man’s voice pronounced a fourth name, the ‘r’s emphasized. “George Trimble.”
Justina looked across the rows of chairs to the other side of the room. There was the blonde hair, pulled up in a careless style, the tall, voluptuous body fitted into a black and white hounds tooth check suit. On the far side of her stood Michael, his head bowed. The prayers concluded and the pianist played two chords and the congregation chanted “O Lord, Hear Our Prayer.” The two of them sang, Justina could not distinguish their voices from the rest of the congregation’s. He did not glance toward her. He doesn't know I'm here.
“May the peace of God, which passes all our understanding, be always with you,” intoned the vicar, his arms in a wide embrace of them all.
“And also with you,” said the congregation.
“Greet one another in peace.” The woman to Justina’s right shook her hand. “Peace.” The man and woman on her left, and the man in front of her and his teenaged son all greeted her. “Peace.” “Peace be with you.” “The Peace of the Lord.” “Peace.” She smiled to the boy and resumed her position.
“Peace of God, Justina.” She turned around. Michael stood behind her, solemn, sympathetic, determined. He took her hand and held it a moment before squeezing it. He kissed her cheek and pushed the corners of his mouth up in a smile before stepping back.
