Bodies and Souls

by Nancy Thayer

  Perhaps life was, after all, only a lengthy and intense purification ritual for the soul. Wilbur was trying to believe this. Perhaps true believers in Christianity were correct when they said this little boy or that little girl died because God was ready for him or wanted her; perhaps some children and adolescents died because their souls were as good and pure as they could ever be, and so they didn’t need to go through the ordeals of life. Wilbur could not imagine his son Ricky being any more beautiful in body or spirit than he was at the age of seventeen, when his car crashed into a tree and his strong neck was broken. But Wilbur had always had a messy soul swarming with need and greed: all of his life, it seemed, had been merely a complicated exercise in exchanging one desire for another.

  In the early years, his desires had been selfish: he wanted a car, he wanted a girl, he wanted to get laid, he wanted to get out of the Army, he wanted Norma to marry him. Then for a long stretch of time, his desires grew more general: he wanted a house for himself and Norma, and he wanted his children to be born healthy, to grow up happy and safe. Each desire as it appeared had been so passionate—how many times had he prayed that one child or another would recover from some illness or accident! When Ricky died, Wilbur learned a hard rule: there is no correlation between the intensity of the desire and the attainment of that desire. With that knowledge, for a long while he had stopped desiring anything, which was as close to suicide as a man of his moral standards could get. To desire anything at all is to be optimistic. When desire returned to him, it was again unselfish. He wished that Norma were not so unhappy and that he could help his other children in their grief. After a while the little preferences returned—he wanted fish for dinner rather than a minute steak. And that small desire signaled an unconscious resolution on the side of life. Almost in spite of himself, Wilbur wanted things again. But he had been wondering recently, if he would ever get himself as pure and simple as a child, if he could ever refine his desiring so that he would want nothing but to see God’s face.

  Right now all he wanted was one thing: for the pain in his chest to go away. If he were at home, he would have gone to the phone and called the doctor, but sitting here in church, in this public place, he felt inhibited. He didn’t want to appear to be a silly old man, a hypochondriacal type who made a fuss at every little bit of gas. If he left the church in the middle of the service, it would also be admitting that what was happening inside him was important, of enough importance to interrupt a church service and disturb the community when there were only minutes of the service to be gotten through. He didn’t know what this pain meant; he had never felt anything quite like it before. He put his hand up against his chest and pressed, as if he could push the pain back down into the little ball it had once been. But the pain persisted. It gave him a funny feeling, as if all of who he was was being forced to scuttle up high inside his head, so that just behind his eyes he was Wilbur, while the rest of his body was becoming foreign, even treacherous territory. He began to feel scared. Then he thought how foolish it would be to let indigestion frighten him into a heart attack. Concentrate on something else, he told himself, on anything else.

  Now. Today. After the church service he would go to the back of the church to drink coffee in Friendship Hall—if this pain stopped. There were quite a few people he’d like to talk to, people he seldom saw except at church. He especially liked the few children who stopped their games for a moment to chat with him—although children by and large took little notice of an old man. Packs of children terrified him, with their bright savage energy, but there were five or six individual children whom he considered friends. These children would break off from a game with other children, see that their parents were still involved in the grown-up game of drinking coffee and talking, and would drift over to stand by Wilbur. The younger children sometimes seemed to want only that, to stand there, not talking, holding on to his trouser leg with a chubby hand. The older ones tried to carry on sophisticated conversations. Wilbur would kneel or bend in order to hear what the children had to say—they were so small, so close to the ground! The world was surreal from their vantage point, a blur of moving legs, shoes, and skirt hems mingled with floating-down bits of laughter and words. Wilbur thought that being a little child, having to face the vast grown-up world, must be almost as frightening as being an old man about to face the black void of death. He knew that for the children who were familiar with him he was a sort of safety spot, a home base, like an old tree in a yard in a game of tag.

  His favorite child in the group was Suzanna Blair’s daughter Priscilla. The Blairs lived in the same neighborhood as Norma and Wilbur, but Suzanna was so busy teaching and raising her young family and their ages were so different that the Wilsons seldom saw her except at church. When Suzanna and Tom Blair were divorced, Norma had gone into a fit of fretting: those poor little children, she had said daily to Wilbur, living there without their father. Wilbur had made it a point to stop by to see the children as often as possible during his walks, to check up on them. Of course, he would never know what sorrows the Blair children suffered in private, but when he saw them in their front yard in the daytime, they seemed continually happy and buoyant. They discussed their parents’ separation and divorce, their father’s move to another part of the state, their trips to visit him and his new wife, with the same easy tone that they discussed other news of their lives—the birth of babies to the preschool guinea pig, a movie, a broken toy. Wilbur was relieved, and shared this with Norma.

  He was happiest in his conversations with Priscilla, who seemed to notice no barrier of age or sex in their relationship. She just considered Wilbur one of her friends. Priscilla resembled her mother so much that she almost seemed a miniature of Suzanna: both the woman and the girl had fine brown hair that curled softly around a fresh, guileless face, wide blue eyes, and an overall apple-round, apple-clean quality of health and good humor. This apple-like quality made Suzanna, who was in her early thirties, appear younger, so that people were surprised at her efficiency as a teacher. In turn, it made Priscilla at six seem older, unabashed and quite capable of carrying on a genuine friendship with a seventy-year-old man. Priscilla had recently invited Wilbur to her birthday party, which would be held next week. Today after church, in Friendship Hall, he would have to ask Priscilla what she would like for her birthday.

  He would also, of course, talk with people his own age, about matters of concern to the town; whether or not a flashing red light should be put at Slate’s Corner, when the next town meeting would be held, local gossip, affairs, plans. Wilbur had not cared one way or another about running his dry-cleaning business. It had had no poetry in it, and not a great deal of money, either. But it had been a way of making a living while providing a service to the town. He had been efficient and reliable, and in this town where so many women had fur coats to clean and store and so many summer bedspreads and curtains and slipcovers to clean and refresh and then exchange for winter spreads and curtains and slipcovers, he had had a lot of easy duties for a pleasant and familiar clientele. On the whole, he had been satisfied with his business, not for itself, but because it took up so little of his time and mental energy that he was free to take part in all the community activities that interested him. He had seen a lot of things change in Londonton over his seventy years, and he had helped make a lot of things happen. He still attended meetings and people listened to his opinions. But ever since his operation he realized that the workings of this town were now being passed on to someone else, if for no more malicious reason than the simple fact that being flat on his back in the hospital made it impossible for him to do the work. Someone else had to go out and pitch in. He liked to keep his eye on things, though, even if he was no longer essential. Today he would talk with Ron Bennett and Reynolds Houston and all the other men who were active in the community, and they would ask his advice, and he would gladly give it.

  Finally Friendship Hall would empty, and he would take Norma’s arm and lead her out to the
car. They’d drive slowly home, admiring the fall trees along the way. They’d eat a nice big Sunday dinner early in the day, and Wilbur would watch football games on television. Maybe in the evening, if Norma was in the mood, they’d get in the car again and take another, longer drive around the countryside of Londonton, to enjoy the fall foliage. But unless the day took a sunnier turn, they probably would not do that. They’d stay inside instead, and evening would fall early and cool, night would close in—he’d make a fire. They’d have a little brandy. The important thing, he had found, was to keep busy, to be doing things, because being bored or at loose ends made him uneasy. He would feel so pressured, thinking that here he was at the end of his life, with so little time left, no time at all left to waste, and his boredom would turn to panic. So he always made plans.

  Now he felt the need to urinate. It came on sharp and sudden and was as insistent as an itch. He fidgeted around on the wooden pew, hoping to trick his body into settling down. He was so intensely aware of all the discomforts of his body that he felt the wool of his suit prickling his skin. He put his hands on his thighs and scratched.

  “Wilbur!” Norma hissed from the corner of her mouth, and turned her head toward him enough to give him one of her I-mean-business glares. Ever since Wilbur’s retirement and operation, Norma had taken a maternal attitude toward him. Sometimes Wilbur enjoyed being fussed over and tended to, especially when he was feeling weak. Other times he felt downright annoyed by the superiority this attitude implied, and right now he was annoyed. He was no little child squirming in his seat from boredom. He glared back at her.

  “I don’t feel good!” he whispered.

  Instantly Norma’s expression changed from irritation to alarm. Now he felt petty for having worried her, and as if chagrined, the pain in his chest lessened, or seemed to lessen in relation to the intensity of his emotions. He was grateful for her concern, and still, after all these years, surprised that one other person in the world could care for him so much.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s all right. Just a touch of indigestion.”

  Norma looked at him suspiciously, and her blue eyes took on a feisty look, but she took one of his hands in both of hers and lightly patted it. She turned back to watch Peter Taylor, but she kept hold of Wilbur’s hand.

  Wilbur thought that tonight when he went up to the attic, he would try to write a poem for Norma. He hadn’t done that yet, and he thought it would please her. But he was not sure what he would say. There had been times in his life when he had thought: When I am old and on my deathbed, I will remember this and be happy. But sitting in the church this Sunday morning with his wife’s hand around his and his friends and neighbors gathered in respectful silence, all of them here together, as if in a miniature of life, Wilbur couldn’t remember a thing from his past that would make him happier than he was right now. He could think of events that should have evoked happy memories: the day Bobbeen DuPont finally let him make love to her, the day he married Norma, the days their children were born, the day they moved into their own house, birthdays, celebrations, vacations, parties.… But it was always right now that was the important thing. Nothing from the past could outweigh the present, the here and now. Wilbur had hopes that when he became truly old and senile, and lost his mind along with control of his bladder, he’d be given the gift of getting lost in memory, as he had heard old folks do. The closest he could really come to that these days was when he wrote his poetry. Then he stopped seeing the attic or even his wrinkled hand holding the pen, and saw instead the bodies of women, birds on branches, peaches in white dishes, fish in blue water. More than anything Peter Taylor could ever say, the thought of these things existing and going on brought Wilbur consolation against death. No one but a madman sincerely believed he knew the whole truth about death, yet some kind of attempt at belief was necessary. Wilbur believed in life as much as he believed in God. He believed in the people who sat around him in church: they were real and substantial, and when he was dead and gone they would continue to eat breakfast and put on clothes and weep and make love. There was comfort in knowing that. Maybe he would try to write a poem about that tonight. There were many things he wanted to write poems about. He felt an urgency to go to the attic right now. He pressed his hand to his chest and tried to be patient as Peter Taylor continued to speak. The pain flamed up inside him now so suddenly that it took his breath away for a moment, and Wilbur knew that his one last desire was that Life would have as much justification as a poem.

  Suzanna Blair

  Peter Taylor had just said: “In Jesus Christ we are forgiven, accepted, and loved. And the abundance of His grace has set us free from sin and free to love.”

  The words caught Suzanna Blair’s attention, pulled her up out of her reverie, and made her long to raise her hand and interrupt the sermon, demanding to know if Peter Taylor really meant that—and if God really meant that.

  Free from sin. Free to love. She believed in Jesus Christ, and in God; was that enough? If she rose now and said to the congregation of people gathered about her that she loved God and believed in Jesus Christ, but she also loved a woman, would her neighbors reply that she was free from sin and free to love?

  Perhaps. Or perhaps they would drive her from the church, from the town, from their hearts. There was no way to know in advance. For Suzanna, it was as if her life had become a house of many rooms, and at the center of this house was sexual love, a clean, fragrant, pure, and perfect chamber. But danger shadowed the windows of that room, and lurked at the doors.

  It was necessary to shutter off her life from the eyes and judgments of her community. For the first time ever she had to hide herself. Always before, she had gone through her life happy in the normal companionship of the world; she had always greatly enjoyed the common cheerful rolling around of life, as if she and other people were brightly colored marbles in a game with easy boundaries. Now she had gone outside those bounds, and she did not feel smug or superior; she felt afraid. But she was so much in love, and so happy in that love, that she felt she could not choose to give it up—so what was she to do? She sat quietly in her pew, staring up at Reverend Taylor with what she intended to be a face showing composure and sincere interest, but she was not listening to what he had to say. In fact, she felt that whatever he could say would be irrelevant to her problem. She had not come to this church to hear his sermon. She had come to present herself before God, to say with her presence: Look at me. See who I am, how I love. Help me, please.

  Love had never been a problem for her before. She had been born into a lucky family; her parents had loved each other as well as most parents can, and she and her brother and sister had always been close. Remembering her youth, Suzanna searched the patterns of her life for some portent of the woman she was to become—a lesbian—but could find nothing of significance. As a child, she had played with dolls more than trucks, but she had climbed trees, and been good at games, too. As a teenager, she and her sister had kept their favorite stuffed animals on top of their pink-gingham-covered beds, and hid their forbidden packs of Kool cigarettes under the mattress. In high school, Suzanna had played on the girls’ field hockey team, but she had also been president of the Pep Club, and secretly vain of the way her body curved in the short pleated blue-and-white skirt and tight blue sweater with the big gold S that the members of the Pep Club wore to the football and basketball games.

  She had been neither rich nor poor, brilliant nor dull, beautiful nor homely. She had been normal, and too content in her normality to spend time examining it. When she was seven, she had vowed to marry her father when she grew up. When she was eleven, she decided instead on Elvis Presley, and when she was thirteen, she thought it didn’t matter if she ever saw Elvis Presley if only Ronnie Goodwin, the sixteen-year-old who had moved in at the end of the block, would offer her a ride in his maroon-and-gray Chevrolet.

  She had fallen truly in love for the first time when she was seventeen, with a boy named David Kittredge,
a tall ambling boy who had brown eyes and red hair and freckles all over his body. He was a year older than Suzanna, and captain of the basketball team. They had passed each other in the halls at school but had never spoken to each other. The summer before Suzanna’s senior year at high school, just three weeks before school was to start, Suzanna met Dave at Stowerby Lake, where he worked as a lifeguard. She was babysitting four-year-old Jackie Ellison that day, and was sitting with the little boy at the water’s edge, intently building a sand castle with him. She had not been aware of Dave’s approach; just suddenly planted before her in the sand were his two bony white naked feet. She had been stunned, and had followed the long skinny line of his sunburned body up and up until she saw his face grinning down at her. He was wearing only blue swim trunks, a white lifeguard hat, and a whistle around his neck on a chain. His skin smelled of Coppertone oil.

  “Hi,” he said simply, and in the middle of that hot humid day, Suzanna had shivered into goose bumps. The connection had been as quick and definite as that.

  “Hi,” she said. Dave squatted down on the sand beside her to chat, and that night he took her out for a Coke. In a week they were going steady, and in three weeks, just before he went off to college, she slept with him because she loved him so.

  He loved her, too. He came home whenever he could, which meant a three-hour drive from Boston, and wrote letters to her two or three times a week, in spite of the fact that he hated writing. But he was far away, and at college, where there were all sorts of parties, dances, beer fests—eventually he broke off with her, telling her he still loved her, but that he needed to be able to date other girls. Suzanna had been nearly inconsolable, and had finished out her senior year in high school wishing only that Dave would ask her to marry him. Her parents had to force her to enter college, she had so little energy or imagination for anything but Dave. But Dave did not ask her to marry him. He told her again and again he still did love her but wanted to have some fun. So she had listlessly gone off to college—and once there, had been weak with relief that she hadn’t married Dave.