by Nancy Thayer
“Oh, this is intolerable!” Mark yelled at last, and left the room.
Reynolds leaned toward Lilia. “He’s very upset, you know,” he said.
“He’ll recover,” she replied.
“Who in the world were you dining with?” Reynolds asked.
“Can you keep a secret?” Lilia said, smiling her beautiful smile.
“Of course,” Reynolds said, indignant and eager.
“Good,” Lilia said. “So can I.” She rose then, to refresh her drink.
Reynolds was piqued and intrigued by her answer, and he finally left without eating dinner, for he could tell the Fraziers wanted their privacy. So that is how she keeps him interested, Reynolds thought, and later that night as he sat on the balcony of his rented apartment, looking out at the clear summer sky, he experienced a minor revelation about the importance of mystery. God remains mysterious in the first place because He/She/It is too complicated to be easily understood, and secondly because God likes to be pursued. In the pursuit comes not only the answer but the pleasure. Reynolds did not feel ashamed to interpret truths about God from the lives of ordinary people; he was beginning to see that the lives of ordinary people were full of all sorts of extraordinary matters.
When he learned about Ron Bennett’s death that Monday morning last October, he had been plunged swiftly and terribly into self-hatred and remorse. If it had not been for Peter Taylor, he might never have emerged. It was all so much and so sudden. The Monday evening after Ron’s death, Gary had asked him to come to his house, and Peter was there, too. Gary had explained what he thought had happened—Ron had had a car accident. There was no money in any of his accounts to reimburse the rec center fund, but the money would be reimbursed when the insurance came through. He asked the two men if they would agree to keep Ron’s embezzlement secret, in order to spare Ron’s family any more grief. Of course Peter and Reynolds had agreed to this strange little pact; they would keep Ron’s secret. It seemed the least they could do. Gary and Reynolds never did discuss with each other that they held themselves responsible for Ron’s death. It seemed too delicate and terrible to discuss. Reynolds simply went home, intending to continue as he was. But he was plunged into a bleakness that went past the intellectual despair he had been living with. He felt guilty and disturbed. His spirit was twisted in upon itself; he was sick with confusion.
He thought he had been doing the right thing—he had tried to stop a man from stealing money from a community. But somehow he had done the wrong thing. He had caused a man to take his own life. He had not meant to do this, but it had happened. Of course Gary and Peter had been there, too, but it had been Reynolds who had discovered the situation and who had pushed to have it stopped. Should he therefore shoulder a certain percentage of the blame? Did that mean he had to feel only partially bad? He felt totally wretched, as if he were diseased inside.
He really was ill, and he took a leave of absence from the college in Londonton and went to Seattle as he had planned. But the physical distance did not provide relief. He continued to feel sick, cramped, and battered with guilt and anger. At last, in desperation, he wrote Peter Taylor one of the most intimate letters of his life, explaining his misery, asking for help. Probably he could not have said any of these things in person, but over the months he and Peter established a lengthy correspondence, in which Reynolds played the Devil’s advocate and Peter played God’s.
“I do not hate you for what you did, and God does not hate you for it,” Peter wrote. “Nor, do I believe, does God hate Ron.”
“But I hate God,” Reynolds replied. “And I hate myself.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Peter wrote back. “But I believe that what you call hate is really an energy within you that is equal to the energy of the earth that crushes coal into diamonds. If you do not give up, that energy will condense the blackness in your heart into a nugget of great light and illumination, which is love.”
“But a man has died because of my pride and righteousness,” Reynolds wrote.
“Do you really think it is so simple?” Peter replied. “Can you really believe that Ron was so simple?”
“I never should have brought the matter of his embezzlement to light,” Reynolds wrote. “It was unchristian of me. Uncharitable. Arrogant.”
In reply, Peter sent Reynolds a passage quoted from St. Matthew:
“Moreover if thee brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thous has gained thy brother.
“But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
“And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church; but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.
“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
“But the four of us—Gary, Ron, you, and I—were not gathered together in God’s name,” Reynolds wrote.
“Perhaps we are now,” Peter replied. “This event has changed us all.”
“But it did not happen to change us all,” Reynolds wrote.
“How can you know?” Peter asked. “It is arrogant to think we know the one clear cause of anything. The result in this case is that one of us has died, and the rest of us are suffering. I believe we will all be redeemed.”
Certainly Reynolds felt bound now to Londonton, and in a strange way to Peter Taylor, and the Bennetts and Moyers, and the rest of the congregation of the church. He could not see what he could do directly that would make a difference, and he thought perhaps that was the point, or was at least acceptable. He would return, pay taxes, teach students, lead committees, greet his neighbors on the street when he passed them.
He called Peter his first evening home, to tell him that he had returned and would take up his regular teaching duties. “I’m grateful to you for your help. For your letters,” Reynolds said. “I can never express my gratitude sufficiently.”
“And I’m grateful to you,” Peter said. “You provoked my thoughts. You should have been here—I gave the most wonderful sermons! I am grateful to you.” When Reynolds was silent, Peter said, “Reynolds, I mean that.”
Now Reynolds thought that he would live out his life happily enough, doing what he enjoyed. He would teach; he would take part in community activities. He would read, search, and pray; he did not think now that he would find all the answers to his questions or even to be a perfect man, but he believed that in the quest he would find redemption. In any case, at the very least, it would provide him with intellectual pleasure, and he need never worry that this puzzle would disappoint him by proving too easily solved. He felt that he had entered a black night of the soul, and with the grace of God and the help of Peter Taylor, he had emerged from it. He did not feel that he had escaped it forever; rather it seemed he would all his life hover just above it, aware of its closeness, and staying safe from its grim grasp only by constant exertion and vigilance. There were times when the knowledge of this black nihilistic presence filled him with terror; he would roam his apartment, unable to sleep. But there were also times when that knowledge filled him with the exhilarating boldness and zeal of a warrior or explorer venturing forth on dangerous waters, searching for new land.
Now he sat in church smiling a small smile. If there were times when a man stood burning in terror and loneliness, fearing the black void, there were also times when a man could sit in comfort and warmth, surrounded by light. If he had a home, it was this church; if he had a family, it was this congregation. They would go about their complicated lives, providing him with the most amazing metaphors
and messages; he appreciated their human beauty, but even more he was grateful for the ambiguity of their living. Oh, he knew he was a cold man, seeing human beings as metaphors, but then he knew that there are as many ways to see people as there are people to see. Perhaps these people really were metaphors; who knew God’s design? And in whose intelligence does the ultimate sight reside?
Wilbur thought about salt a lot. Sometimes he’d catch himself running his tongue over the roof of his mouth, imagining the gritty white crystals there, and his mouth would fill with saliva. Pretzels, nuts, bacon, pizza. Before his heart attack, he used to sprinkle his popcorn with so much salt that after eating his lips would be tender, slightly blistered from the tasty abrasion. But now he was on a low-salt diet, and he often thought that if he were given the choice between knowing the answers to the nature of the universe and being free to eat corn on the cob slathered in butter and salt, he’d choose the corn without hesitation.
He was tired all the time. He had recovered from his heart attack, and his life was fairly normal once again, but he was tired all the time. His doctor told him that was to be expected because he had had a heart attack, but Wilbur’s theory was that his body was weak because it was deprived of salt. How could something so basic be bad? At last he understood the serious nature of Norma’s complaints all those years when she had been dieting. Life was just not as enjoyable when eating was limited.
He’d gotten so cranky when he first went on the low-salt diet that Norma, in sympathy, threw out all the salt in the house and vowed she wouldn’t use it either. She fixed him fresh vegetables and fruits, vanilla puddings. She made her own salt-free bread and served it to him with honey for a treat. They kept no salt shaker on the table, and when they sat down to a meal, Norma ate exactly what Wilbur ate, with the same seasonings. It helped him stay on his diet, and he appreciated this. But last week he had discovered that she had little caches of goodies hidden all over the house: he’d found a package of pretzels among the guest towels and a jar of salted cashews among the vacuum cleaner bags. He’d nearly burst into tears at the sight. “It’s so unfair!” he said aloud, and sat down on the bed, trembling with anger.
He had thought that over the months his craving for salt would diminish, that his body would get used to the blandness of his diet. Instead, the craving grew, so that it went everywhere with him and shadowed his every thought. When he read a newspaper account of a criminal who had been sent to prison for life, Wilbur thought: Well, that man doesn’t know how lucky he is; he’ll be locked up, but they won’t deprive him of salt. A television commercial for pizza or hot dogs could drive him into a daylong depression, but in spite of that, he had taken up a perverse new practice: he sat around for hours at a time looking at Norma’s women’s magazines. He didn’t read the articles or stories; he read the recipes. He looked at the ads showing smiling women holding out sandwiches made of corned beef and cheese with pickles on the side or canapé crackers with anchovies curled in the middle, and he’d run his tongue around his mouth and fantasize the taste of all those salty pungent foods. Afterward he’d be filled with melancholy. In his better moments, he reminded himself of Norma long ago when Queen Elizabeth was crowned. Norma would sit and study the glossy pictures of the coronation in magazines, and sigh and sigh, completely entranced, but afterward, when cooking dinner for her husband and little sons, she’d be in a bitter mood; she’d grumble around the kitchen muttering, “I’ll bet Queen Elizabeth doesn’t have to force her children to eat their vegetables.” Wilbur guessed it was just part of human nature to long for what you knew you could never have.
His doctor had told him that he had to cut out smoking, drinking, and eating salt.
“I haven’t smoked for years, and I seldom drink; couldn’t I have a little salt?” Wilbur asked.
“You can have all the salt you want,” the doctor replied, “but it will kill you.”
“I shouldn’t have heart trouble,” Wilbur complained. “I’m not overweight, I don’t smoke, and I’ve been walking regularly ever since my bladder operation.”
“Yes, and I have patients who are dying of emphysema who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives,” the doctor answered. “You don’t always get the disease you deserve.”
Wilbur had spent a month in the hospital, and two months in bed at home. During that period, he had been too weak to miss salt, too weak and too grateful each day to wake up alive. As the months passed and his life got back to a semblance of normality, however, he found himself much more depressed by his new situation than he thought he should be. Sometimes he cried for no reason at all. Then he’d think, well, he had plenty of reason, he was old and his health was fragile, and he couldn’t have salt, and he couldn’t have sex.
The doctor had told him after his six-month checkup that he could resume sexual activities as long as he was sensible about it. That night he and Norma had lain naked together—oh, how sweet it was to press his naked body against hers, to run his hands over her warm skin. The fatness of her hips and stomach and breasts was so sexy: so much healthy flesh! They caressed each other tenderly, old lovers that they were, caught up in the moment, glad for each other’s life. Wilbur’s penis, which for six months had been humbled and ignored, rose up like a phoenix reborn, and he and Norma had smiled at each other triumphantly, delighted at the virile return of this old friend’s powers. But when he was inside Norma, clenching her against him, gratefully lost in the physical delirium of sexual pleasure, something happened. His body betrayed him. He was distracted from the joy in his loins by a sensation of pain in his chest. For one brief moment, he thought that Norma was squeezing his chest too hard with her arms, but he quickly realized this was not the case. She did not have the strength to lock him in such a crushing grip.
He collapsed against her, crying out, and quickly rolled off of her and lay whimpering against the pillow, his hands at his throat, for he felt he was being strangled. The pain passed fairly quickly as he lay quietly on the bed, and the terrifying pressure in his chest was soon replaced by a bleak misery. Angina. He had been warned about this; the doctor said it would happen if he overexerted himself. He was supposed to exercise moderately each day: moderately was the key word. Apparently sex, even easy tender sex between two people who were more like friends than lovers, was not a moderate activity. He would have to cut it out, at least for a while, or risk the chance of another heart attack.
No salt, no sex. It really did not seem fair that the joys of both the top and bottom of his body should be lost. His mouth, his penis, organs of tangy, greedy gladness, were now relegated to functions of bland maintenance. It made him mad and sorry for himself.
He was ashamed of himself for this petulance. At least he was alive. Ron Bennett was dead. When Norma told him about Ron’s death, three weeks after it had happened, when Wilbur had been pronounced in good shape and she thought he could take the news without too much stress on his heart, Wilbur had been stunned. Blown away, as the young kids said, by the news. Blown away into other spaces of the mind, vast gray areas where he roamed in confusion, searching through the fog of wonder for one solid grit of truth. It seemed to him that a mistake of enormous proportion had been made in his favor: the Angel of Death had been hovering over Londonton, and had accidentally swept up into her arms the wrong man. He should have died, not Ron Bennett.
Wilbur did not believe for a minute that Ron’s death had been accidental. Ron was an excellent driver, and the strip of road he’d been traveling on was so flat that a rolling ball couldn’t gain the momentum to cross that stretch of pavement and drop down that embankment, let alone a heavy car with brakes. He felt certain that Ron had committed suicide, but he could not figure out just why. Norma, who sat by his bed each day, giving him each ounce of Londonton gossip she could think of as if she thought it were some kind of medicine, the more for him the better, reported that the majority of Londonton assumed that Ron had been on his way to a clandestine liaison that night; what else would he be doi
ng driving around by himself that time on a Sunday night? There were no meetings going on then, he hadn’t been to the movies, he had finished a routine conference about the rec center with Gary Moyer and Reynolds Houston at his own house earlier that evening—this bit of factual information they had gotten from Gary, who reported that they had gotten together at eight that evening to go over some rec center details. So he hadn’t been out because of his work, and Judy hadn’t been with him, so it couldn’t have been a social engagement. Gary Moyer had advanced the theory that Ron had been out looking for Johnny, who hadn’t come home all day, but the townspeople didn’t believe that. Johnny was not an adolescent just learning to drive; he was a grown man, entitled to stay out late. The people of Londonton surreptitiously concluded that Ron must have been having an affair with someone, and that he had been in such a state, such a hurry to get to her, that in his blind passion he had driven off the road.
Wilbur tended to agree with part of this. He didn’t tell Norma, but he knew better than anyone else that it probably was true that Ron had been having an affair. Still he knew from all the conversations he’d had with Ron that Ron’s affairs were of the body, not of the heart. He could not imagine Ron so overcome with desire that he would drive off the road.
As he lay in his hospital bed, Wilbur had plenty of time to think about Ron, and he finally concluded that Ron must have been having an affair and his lover had threatened to tell Judy, or had pressured Ron to divorce Judy and marry her, and Ron, whose obsession in life was the happiness and respectability of his wife and family, had driven off the bridge in desperation, trusting that his mistress would not be cruel enough to cause trouble when he was dead. It was not a totally satisfactory conclusion, but it was finally the one he settled on. Everyone in Londonton waited in their various social clusters for this mistress of Ron’s to announce herself in some way; to be overcome with grief at the funeral, or not to appear at all. People longed to know who she was: A married woman perhaps? Or a divorced woman like Leigh Findly? Of course not Leigh Findly, she was too flaky; Ron was too conservative. On the other hand, they say opposites attract, and Leigh was a pretty woman. The town buzzed and watched. The fact that Judy Bennett hid herself away in her house for the first few months after Ron’s death strengthened their belief that Ron had had a mistress. Many people called to invite Judy over for dinner, but she refused every time. Poor woman, she was undoubtedly so embarrassed.
