Thin Blue Smoke: A Novel About Music, Food, and Love

by Doug Worgul

  About thirty minutes later, he discovered that the by-then-empty bottle of bourbon had been the only alcohol in the apartment, which prompted him to heave the bottle against the wall opposite of the leather club chair where he’d been sitting.

  He stared at the shards of shattered glass for several minutes before deciding that he’d better do something about it.

  He stood, went over to the liquor cabinet, and picked up the crystal decanter his mother bought him when Traverse was nominated for the Pulitzer. He tossed it up into the air a few inches and caught it. Then did it again, assessing its heft. Then he flung it against the wall, aiming for the same spot where the whiskey bottle had hit. He followed this up with each of the eight matching glasses that had come as a set with the decanter. He felt a rush of bitter satisfaction when each glass disintegrated.

  He crossed the room to the bookcase by the fireplace, and took from a shelf the Steuben vase that had been his great-grandmother’s, and threw it against the wall. He noted that his aim was a little low and to the right.

  Over the course of the next hour, Ferguson moved methodically and dispassionately through his apartment, destroying every glass thing he could find. Dishes, bowls, picture frames, a paper weight, three literary awards, the television, the bedroom window, the bathroom window, the oven window, the mirrors in the bathroom, and bedroom, and each pane in the French doors that opened to the balcony with the view of Central Park. Since some of these were fastened down and thus could not be thrown against the wall, he smashed them with a meat tenderizing hammer he found in a kitchen drawer.

  The hallway mirror was the last to go. Ferguson dispatched it with a backhand swing of the meat hammer, at which point a splinter of glass knifed into the muscle at the base of his left thumb, causing him to curse and bleed profusely. He went into the kitchen, wrapped his hand in a dishtowel, and sat at the table, trying hard not to think.

  Then he cried for a long time.

  When he was emptied out, he went into the bedroom, checked the bed for shards, lay down and slept.

  When he woke, he realized that he had been sleeping on the pillow that had been Bijou’s and that it smelled like the lotion she used just before bed.

  He called his father again. This time Fr. Angus Glen’s secretary, Julia Putnam, answered the phone.

  “Julia, it’s Ferguson. Is my father in?”

  “I think so, Ferguson,” Julia said in a condescendingly sympathetic tone. “Let me check.”

  She came back on the line after a few minutes. “Here he is, dear.”

  Ferguson heard a click and then the sound of his father clearing his throat.

  “Dad, it’s me,” he said.

  “Yes, Julia told me,” said his father.

  Ferguson waited for him to say something else, but his father was silent. Finally, Ferguson spoke.

  “Dad, I…”

  Angus interrupted.

  “You’ve made a mess of things, haven’t you? Elliot Peabody called me and we think we can control most of the damage from this thing. It’ll be best if you just stay out of it. We’ve got lawyers on it, and you’ll get a call if they have any questions. I’ve got a vestry meeting, so I’m going to go now. Your mother is taking this whole thing hard, which is making life at home rather difficult for me these days. I’d wait awhile before calling her if I were you.”

  Angus Glen hung up the phone. Ferguson went out to replenish his supply of whiskey.

  *

  When Angus Glen was 94 years old, Ferguson drove up to Charlevoix, in northern Michigan, to spend Thanksgiving with him.

  Technically speaking, Angus Glen was retired. However, he remained active as an assisting priest at Christ Church, a small congregation that nearly doubles in size in the summer, when old money Chicago bluebloods dock their sailboats and yachts at the marina, arriving at worship on Sunday mornings in sundresses, open-collared pink oxford shirts, and navy blazers.

  Father Glen’s status as a retired bishop lent considerable prestige to the parish, where he’d been given the official title of curate, which comes from the Latin curatus, meaning to be entrusted with the care of something. In Episcopal tradition, a curate is one entrusted with the care of souls. Ferguson never used the word curate when referring to his father.

  Christ Church’s rector is Elizabeth Dardilly, called Mother Liz by her parishioners. Mother Liz is thirty-five-years-old and still aglow with cheery sincerity and passion for her calling. Christ Church is her first rectorate, having served as an assistant at St. Luke’s in Kalamazoo, and as a transitional deacon in student ministry at Western Michigan University.

  Mthr. Liz was thrilled when Fr. Angus mentioned that his son was coming for a Thanksgiving visit. As far as she was concerned the best thing about Fr. Angus’s service at Christ Church was his connection to Ferguson Glen, all of whose books she read when she was in seminary, and most of which she has reread since.

  “Most of the books in the religion section at Barnes & Noble are filled with easy answers. It’s all pop religion,” she said once, when recommending one of Ferguson’s books to a parishioner. “Like a Starbucks mocha Frappuccino—a bit too sweet, mildly uplifting, and entirely predictable. But Ferguson Glen’s writing is like a double shot of espresso—rich, complex, dark, and bitter. It’s to be savored. It’s an acquired taste, though, frankly, not many people have acquired it.”

  Liz called St. Columba in Kansas City and asked Ferguson to deliver the homily at Christ Church on the Sunday after Thanksgiving—the first Sunday of Advent. Ferguson accepted the invitation. When Liz told Fr. Angus that Ferguson would be their guest preacher, he looked at her as if he were going to ask a question, then shook his head and walked off.

  *

  Angus Glen lives in a house on the south shore of Round Lake, near Beaver Island Fry—the channel that connects Round Lake to Lake Michigan. He calls the place “the cottage,” in spite of the fact that it has 4,200 square feet, five bedrooms, four baths, three fireplaces, two kitchens, and a covered porch that wraps the entire house. Behind the house, at the bottom of a small slope, is a short wide dock, at the end of which is a two-story boathouse. The lower half houses a fully restored 1949 seventeen-foot Chris Craft Deluxe Runabout. Upstairs is a fully furnished two-bedroom guest apartment. Ferguson’s parents bought the property with his mother’s money, intending to retire there, but his mother died of stomach cancer seven months after they moved in. His father has lived alone there since.

  Ferguson visits once a year. As his father approached his ninetieth birthday, Ferguson expected that perhaps he’d need to start visiting more often, but his father has never expressed a need for anything from his son.

  *

  It started to snow in Muskegon, and traffic on the interstate was slow. It was after ten when Ferguson arrived and he thought perhaps his father would be in bed. He unlocked the front door and let himself in, trying to be quiet. He put his suitcases down in the entryway and hung his coat in the closet.

  “That you?” Angus called from the den.

  “Yes, sir,” Ferguson replied. He went into the den where his father sat in a big leather club chair in his bathrobe, drinking a scotch, watching CNN. “I’m surprised you’re still up.”

  “I don’t need much sleep anymore,” said Angus.

  “It was snowing pretty heavy downstate,” Ferguson said.

  “That’s what they said on the weather,” Angus said. He sighed. “I suppose you’d like a drink.”

  Ferguson said nothing but went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a bourbon. Neither man had yet looked at the other.

  Ferguson looked out the window. The lake had begun to freeze over. Through the dark he could see light from a window in a house on the other side of the lake. He wondered who lived there and if it was warm in their house.

  “Elizabeth asked you to do the homily on Sunday, did sh
e?” Angus asked.

  “She did. I was flattered. She said she invited us for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “Yes. She’s quite an admirer of yours.”

  *

  Mother Liz Dardilly, her musician husband Chandler Tyner and their two-year-old son Peter, live in a second-story apartment above a fudge shop on Bridge Street, the main street of Charlevoix’s picture-postcard, tourist-friendly, business district. Chandler gives private guitar lessons and teaches a music appreciation class at the middle school. Their apartment has a small living room in front and a narrow galley-style kitchen in back. In between the living room and kitchen is a tiny dining room, big enough only for a little square table, four chairs, and Peter’s highchair. When Ferguson and Angus Glen arrived for Thanksgiving dinner, Mystique, the family’s sleek, black cat, was sitting in the living room window, watching it snow.

  Ferguson drove himself and his father to dinner in his father’s SUV. He parked in front of the fudge shop and went around to help Angus out of the car.

  “I got it,” said Angus, gripping the doorframe and pulling himself out and upright. He stepped up onto the curb. “I’m old,” he muttered. “Not crippled,”

  As Ferguson watched his father walk slowly over to the staircase that led up to Liz and Chandler’s apartment, he looked up and noticed the cat in the window.

  Before the meal, Peter toddled around the apartment in wobbly pursuit of Mystique the cat. Each time Peter came within tail-grabbing range, the cat impassively got up from wherever it had been drowsing and trotted to another room to resume its rest.

  Peter was not ready to quit this game when it came time to sit down to dinner, and he squirmed and yowled “Mmteek! Mmteek!” as Liz put him in his highchair and locked the tray in place. Mthr. Liz tried to appease and distract her son with turkey and mashed potatoes, but it quickly became clear that her strategy would not work, and she broke out in an anxious sweat. Chandler was in the kitchen carving the turkey and unable to assist. Ferguson and Angus watched in silence as Liz cooed and cajoled to no avail. Peter began to kick wildly, then to cry inconsolably. Angus looked away.

  Chandler came in from the kitchen with a platter full of turkey. Liz looked at him helplessly. Chandler smiled and lifted Peter out of his highchair and bounced him in his arms. Peter twisted and tried to get down, but Chandler held him firm.

  Liz poured wine, and she and Angus made small talk about the last vestry meeting. Ferguson watched Chandler pat Peter’s back and whisper in his son’s ear. It made Ferguson feel like closing his eyes. After four or five minutes, Peter was calm and ready to eat. They each took their seats.

  Mthr. Liz smiled. “Peace be with you.”

  Chandler, Angus, and Ferguson returned the peace. “And also with you.”

  After dinner, Liz dug deep into Ferguson’s thinking about writing and liturgy and megachurches and the quality and character of the current batch of seminary students. Chandler took Peter out for a walk in the snow, and Angus fell asleep in a recliner by the radiator in the front room.

  *

  Because it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, many members of the Christ Church parish were away visiting family. The worship service was nonetheless festive. The nave was decorated in greens and garlands. The choir performed “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” The children’s chorus sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” And the acolytes lit the first Advent candle. The lection included passages from Isaiah 64:

  But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

  There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

  Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.

  Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever.

  And from Psalm 80:

  Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, the son of man you have made so strong for yourself.

  And so will we never turn away from you; give us life, that we may call upon your Name.

  And from Mark 13:

  . . . about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

  It was from this last that Ferguson gave his homily.

  “In the season of Advent we see the hand of God reaching through eternity, forward through the ages of history, back from all the possible futures, reaching out to gather his lost and rebellious children to himself.

  “In the season of Advent, we see this strong and gentle hand reaching out to us, and it begins to dawn on us at the other end of that hand is God himself, and we don’t know whether to shout for joy or scream in terror. Will he rest his hand on our shoulders? Or tousle our hair? Or will he smite us with that mighty hand of his? God knows we have it coming.

  “The prophet laments that God hides himself from us. Yet when we see him coming, it is we who hide from him. We are lost, yet, when we see the one who has come to find us, we hide. We hide because we are ashamed. We are ashamed, for we know that we are lost only because, in our disobedience and foolishness, we have wandered off the path that God has made straight for us. We hide because we are ashamed of our rebellion. Our rebelliousness is not the proud and heroic revolt of the weak against the powerful. Ours is the sullen, indolent, empty rebelliousness of confused, pimply-faced, hormone-addled adolescents, nursing our self-inflicted wounds alone in our rooms, certain that nobody, least of all God, understands and loves us.

  “But God is coming. His hand is on the doorknob.

  “So we wait and we wonder, When he sees me, will he recognize me? Will he know who I am? Will he remember my name? Will he like me?

  “We hope he will see us and recognize us and call us by our names. He is our Father, after all. Children crave the attention of their father. When he comes home after a long time gone, he is greeted at the door with eager hugs and kisses. Unless, of course, we are afraid. Afraid we will be punished for things we have done that we ought not to have done, for things we ought to have done that we have left undone. Then we await his arrival in dread and self-loathing.

  “Even then, we hope.

  “We hope our father will forget our transgressions, or decide they’re not so bad after all. Though we deserve to be sent to bed without dinner, to be grounded for life, we hope all we’ll get is a good talking-to.

  “Then sometimes it’s an aching, empty, loneliness that makes us long for our father. We’ve been alone; alone in the house for a long time, while our father’s been away. It’s night. The house is cold and drafty. Outside the wind moans and the branches of the tree in the side yard knock against the bedroom window. We expected him a long time ago. But he’s still not here. We wrap ourselves up in a blanket and hunker down to wait.

  “Then the phone rings. It’s him. I’m on my way, he says. The house seems somehow warmer. We tidy the place up a bit. We turn on the lights. We straighten our clothes. Dad is coming home. He said so. He’s on his way. We put on a pot of coffee.

  “This anticipation is called Advent. The anticipation that soon our Father will be home. We will hear his voice. We will see his face. He will hold us in his arms. He will whisper ‘Everything’s alright.’

  “How do we know this? How do we know that God is coming to hold us and not to extract the price of our sins and our sinfulness? We know because at Advent the hand that is reaching out to us is the hand of an infant, reaching up to us from the floor of a stable, reaching up to grasp our finger, in that way that babies do. We know that God has come to hold us because he comes as an infant needing, himself, to be held.”

  *

  He crossed himself and sat down.

  Later, during the exchange of the Peace, he shook his father’s hand and noticed that his
father’s eyes looked puffy.

  After the service, Liz hugged Ferguson and thanked him. “You’ve made this such a special Thanksgiving. It was a perfect way to start Advent.”

  Chandler was holding Peter in his arms. He shrugged sheepishly. “It probably wasn’t the most peaceful Thanksgiving dinner you’ve been to.”

  Ferguson smiled. “It was just right. Just the way it was.”

  Ferguson drove Angus back to the house. Angus said nothing, except to comment that the lake was freezing over.

  Ferguson had packed his suitcase that morning, before church. He carried his luggage out to his car. Because Angus is 94 years old, Ferguson understands that each time he says goodbye to his father may be the last.

  “I’m glad I came, Dad,” he said, taking Angus’s hand in his.

  Angus didn’t look at him, but he held on to Ferguson’s hand. “Me too, son.”

  Ferguson put his suitcases in the trunk. Angus opened the car door and Ferguson got in.

  Angus held the door open. “It’s not as simple as that.”

  Ferguson nodded. “Probably not.”

  *

  South of Chicago, Interstate 80 splits off from Interstate-94, heading west to Des Moines. Ferguson was tired when he approached the split and considered staying on 94, going on up into Chicago, having dinner at Robinson’s No.1 Ribs, and getting a hotel room. But he took 80, and a few miles later, at exit 151A, he saw a sign and turned his car south onto Interstate 57. The sign said “Memphis: 500 Miles.”

  *

  He was sure that it was Wren Brown he’d seen at O’Hare as he waited for his flight home after the DePaul conference in October. And he was just as certain that Wren had been speaking to her mother, Periwinkle Brown, on the phone there at the airport. He was going to Memphis to see, to see if it was them.

  But probably only to see. Maybe from a far corner table at General Bar-B-Q—if there still was a General Bar-B-Q. As certain as he was that it was Wren he had seen at O’Hare, he was equally certain that neither Wren nor Peri would recognize or remember him. Actually, Peri might remember him. But she would not recognize him. And he would not presume to give her that opportunity. He was a single page in a long book. God knows if she could find that page again even if she tried. He flicked on the radio and tried to find a station that might play some blues, or maybe some soul.