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He indicates the other woman. “She said name one play. That’s a Shakespeare play. My daughter played in it in high school. Shakespeare.
Good play. I know it.”
“Name another,” Fiona says.
“I fix things, too,” says Oliver, choosing to ignore her.
“There’s some things nobody can fix,” she says. “Are you a liberal?
Do you think a man should get away with perjury and lying to the people?”
“I’ve told you and told you,” Holly says. “I think he should resign.”
Again, there’s a silence, this time rather extended.
“Well?” Fiona demands.
“I never mix politics and business,” Oliver says. Then: “I never mix politics with anything.”
“Was there something else you wanted to tell us, then?”
“Ladies, it seems like we—looks like we’ve got some signals crossed.
But I’m out here in good faith, and there’s a charge for coming out. A minimum charge. Sixty dollars.”
“One-track mind,” Fiona says. And then the two women turn to each other and seem about to begin hitting and flailing. They speak at the same time, and their words mix, a tangle of “this is your fault” and “if you’d done as I asked in the first place,” and “since when did you become such a prig and a reactionary.” They scowl and breathe and sputter, and lean into each other in the doorway. It’s astounding.
“Look,” Oliver Ward says at last, loud, raising one hand to gain their attention. “This time—okay, this time— this time, let’s just say I’ll let it pass. I’ve got too much work without having to worry about it.” As far as he’s concerned, though he keeps this to himself, both women can rot.
The niece, Holly, reaches into the other woman’s purse. Fiona tries to hold back, and they tussle a little. Oliver thinks it might be the gun he worried about earlier and takes another step back, nearly falling off the step. “Jesus Christ,” he says, righting himself, trying to keep hold of reason.
Holly pulls a billfold from the purse—a checkbook-shaped one, leather, just like a man would use. She reaches into it and pulls out a twenty-dollar bill. “Here,” she says, handing it to him.
“I need that money,” says Fiona. “Have him get it from Will and 12
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Elizabeth.” She steps forward and takes Oliver surprisingly by his shirt.
He hears a small cry come from the bottom of his throat. “You can get the full sixty from them. They’ll pay it,” she says, her face not one inch from his own. “And don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Take your hands off me, madam!” Oliver says. “For God’s sweet sake!” The absurdity of the words he has just spoken seems to glare at him from some reasonable quarter of his mind, and he’s aware, in a strange, wordless way, that he’ll repeat all this to someone purely for the laugh.
“I’m telling you they’ll pay you the sixty,” Fiona says, letting go.
“I can’t believe you’d do that to Will and Elizabeth,” Holly says.
“I need the twenty,” says Fiona, snatching it back.
Oliver waits, smoothing the front of his shirt while they argue. Once more he thinks they might come to blows.
“It’s just over there—two blocks,” Fiona says to him. “Tanhauser Street. Second house on the left. It’s got a big green awning. The only awning on the street. Tell them I sent you.”
“She’s cracked,” Holly says. “Anybody can see that.”
“Sixty. Take it or leave it,” Fiona says.
“I apologize for her,” says Holly, making the circling motion at her ear with her index finger.
He decides the best policy is to speak only with her. He says, “Good day,” holding a hand up to wave good-bye and feeling the ridiculousness of it, all of it, wanting now only to get away.
“It’s her son and daughter-in-law,” Fiona says. “They’ll pay it. He’s too nice not to pay it. He won’t even ask questions. Just tell him we sent you.”
“If you would please not listen to her,” the other says. “She’s crazy.”
“Try them, you’ll see,” says Fiona, as she’s being moved aside by her niece.
“Thanks for your consideration,” Holly says to Oliver.
He actually catches himself bowing slightly, then makes his backward-looking way down the sidewalk, while the two women mutter at each other, going in. The door to the house slams. He gets into his truck, starts the engine, and shifts out of neutral. The radio blasts at him and t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t
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makes him jump. “Jesus Chr . . .” he begins but stops himself. Pulling into the driveway, he worries that they’ll come out again. He backs into the road and starts down the street. The strangest thing. The nuttiest five minutes in history, he thinks.
Past the sun-burned and parched yard, the view of the mountains out toward the interstate is hazy blue, and the new mall in the foreground gleams in the bright, warm light. There are people, perfectly sane types, walking among the parked cars. On the other side of the expanse of asphalt parking lot are more houses, sizable ones, with wide, brown lawns, and he heads that way. He might as well see. He’s lived long enough to know that even the advice of the mad can lead to some sort of gain, if one is alert enough. He’ll need the money, with winter coming on. It’s always a scramble in the cold months, and there is also the fact that he has the need of periodical liquid refreshments, enough to worry about not having the wherewithal to treat himself now and then. This is just something he knows without quite voicing it. Provide, provide.
The voice on the radio shudders and rises dramatically. He likes to hear it, though he seldom really listens to the words; there’s a sense of harmless, even childish calamity about it that gives him pleasure. On Tanhauser Street, he goes slow, past one house with a sale sign stuck down in tall weeds out front, and stops at the house with the green awning. He walks up to the door and, instead of ringing the bell, knocks, half-expecting a batty old lady to come bursting out at him. But music’s coming from somewhere. Whoever lives here likes Van Morrison, and he does, too. This warms him. He knocks again, waits, listening, gazing at the next-door house—it’s clear from the curtainless windows and the uncut grass that it’s empty and has been on the market for some time.
Oliver thinks of the homeless. He thinks first of people, but then he thinks of the condition itself—it’s something he has narrowly avoided several times in life.
The door opens, and a tired-looking but lovely young woman stands there, wearing red shorts and a man’s white shirt tied at the waist.
Her hair is straight and brown, with the slightest tracings of gray in it. “Yes?” she says. There’s an exquisite glow to her skin, the gleam of sweat on her brow.
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“I’m sorry—Hello. Sorry to bother you—you don’t know me—I—
these ladies—”
She interrupts him. “Two of them, right? Old? Wild? Scary?”
He hesitates, then can’t help a small, agreeing laugh. “Yes ma’am, the old wild scary ladies. They sent me. They—well, they contracted for some work. But didn’t pay. Sixty dollars. I said we could call it even this one time, but they—the one—insisted I come here.”
“Fiona,” she says. Then: “The white-haired one.”
He nods again. “I mean, to be honest with you they were arguing about it. I just thought—” he ceases, looking down, and then back up at her. The tic is even more pronounced now, because this is a lie he’s telling and it’s purely to get the sixty dollars and he knows why he wants it. Of course, he notices—as he always does—the look on her face, so, again, automatically but with a kindly reassuring tone, he explains, pointing at his neck.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. It’s clear that she’s puzzled as to why he bothered to tell her about it. Yet she could hardl
y have failed to see it.
“People think I’m saying no all the time.” He smiles at her. “When my daughter was a teenager and wanted the car keys, I didn’t even have to say anything.”
“I see.” She smiles back. He’s certain she missed the joke. And now he sees that she’s just gotten it. She actually chuckles, so sweetly, putting one lovely hand to her lips.
“An advantage,” he says.
“I guess so.”
“The silver lining of the cloud.”
She nods, but she’s gained control of herself.
“Anyway,” he goes on. “These two ladies—”
“Just a minute,” she sighs. “How much did you say?”
He repeats the amount. She leaves the door ajar, and, after a brief interval, he hears her talking to someone. A moment later, he realizes that she’s talking on the phone. He decides to stick to his guns. A lot of people charge money just to show up. A sixty-dollar minimum fee is reasonable for his trouble. He’s a businessman, by God, and, from now on, that’s the policy.
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The young woman comes back to the door and says, “Will you take a check?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Will,” she calls. “Where’s the checkbook?”
Oliver waits. A man comes from the back of the house, carrying cuttings—roses, Oliver sees, at least a dozen of them, the stems wrapped in construction paper. The man is in his late forties, tall and rather gangly, as if not all his leg muscles want to work at the same time—
there’s a shambling glide to his gait, almost sleepy-seeming. He’s got sandy hair, thinning at the front, and his face is rather babyish, smooth-cheeked, open; you can see what sort of child he was.
“Will,” the woman calls.
“I’m right here,” the man says, nodding at Oliver, coming up on the porch. He puts one flower on the railing, obviously intending it for Oliver, and then walks on into the house. “Look what I brought you from the woods,” he says. The door closes partly, and then the man leans out, with that friendly boy’s expression on his face. “Sorry. One second.”
Oliver hears the woman say, “Oh, Will. They’re beautiful. You sweetheart.”
“Happy Wednesday, my love,” Will says.
Oliver has the thought that he ought to sneak away and leave these people in their joyful pass. He thinks of his daughter, whose life is hard, and wishes with all his heart that she could have something like this with someone, anyone—something just like this. He starts to leave, and then hesitates and clears his throat. Worry about money is one of the things that makes his daughter unhappy. He clears his throat again.
The door closes and then opens almost immediately. The man, Will, stands there. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “You know—special occasion. Er, nonoccas—you know.” He smiles sheepishly.
“I do know the feeling,” Oliver tells him.
Will stares. “Can I help you?”
But then the woman steps out with the checkbook. The men watch her while she writes the check. She hands it to Oliver, and he thanks her. But she’s already talking to her husband. “Holly and Fiona. Don’t ask. I called them and Fiona’s pitching a fit. You don’t want to know.”
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“I’m sorry for it,” Oliver tells her.
“Do me a favor,” she says to her husband. “Let’s take no calls from that house tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says her husband.
She turns to Oliver. “Thank you.” Her husband has already gone inside.
“I am sorry for it,” Oliver tells her. “I just can’t afford—you know.
The time and the stop.”
“It’s fine,” she tells him. “I’m sorry you got bothered.”
“I hope you won’t think this is—uh—rude,” Oliver says. “But, the one is the—the niece of the other?”
“Fiona, the aunt, is a late-life child of Holly’s grandfather. They’re only a couple of years apart.”
“That’s something.”
“Fiona’s the older one. We’ve been calling them the Crazies.” She smiles. “Self-explanatory.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Oliver says. “No offense.”
Sometimes being stubborn works out, and, after all, upholding one’s principles is invigorating. Now he can take the afternoon off, and drive into Manassas, where he’ll cash the check and treat himself to an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Maybe he’ll buy a pint bottle of bour-bon, and have a little something of it, just a touch, to celebrate. It won’t cost more than ten dollars. The rest of the money will go to his daughter, Alison. The bills. All that. Having collected his one rose from the porch, he drives on with a feeling of having left trouble behind. He turns the radio up loud. He’s happy, listening to the fervent evangelistic voice in its harangue about a thousand years, the approaching end of everything.
b r o t h e r f i r e
1.
At seventy-two years of age, the pastor of Saint Augustine’s, Father John Fire (pronounced fear-ay) has the fluidity of motion one might expect of a twenty-year-old. He’s never suffered from stiffness in the joints or any of the other ailments of aging, except a small irregularity in his heartbeat, which is controlled by a pacemaker. He’s bald as a stone; his teeth are strong and white. His eyes are light blue, shading to aqua-marine, depending on what he’s wearing. He weighs one hundred seventy-one pounds in his stocking feet, is six-feet-one-inch tall, has very skinny, spindly legs and very large feet. In his youth, he was a bit of a tough, and he carried that into his priesthood. For the first twelve years of his life as a religious, he was a brother in the order of Franciscans, and earned there the nickname Brother Fire (pronounced as the word for conflagration). The story has it that when they put flame to Saint Francis of Assisi’s face, he turned and spoke to it. “Brother fire,” he said. So, people called John Fire (pronounced fear-ay) Brother Fire (pronounced fire), and the name stuck.
Fact is, he likes the name.
He also likes mornings when the sun breaks through fog, wind that shakes leaves out of the trees, lightning forking across a summer sky, 18
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rivers—all waters, really—plants, animals, birdsong, the roar of lions, music of every type, drums, all the kinds of coffee and tea, cats, dogs, horses, paintings of people bustling by on city streets, paintings of flowers, all the sculptures of Bernini, flying buttresses, those great red se-quoias in Northern California, Northern California itself (for the wines), wine, white and red but mostly the reds, especially Italian, the Shenandoah Valley, presidential politics, philosophy, the poetry of John Berry-man and Gerard Manley Hopkins (he sees the affinity between them), and, of course, all of Shakespeare. But above everything, he likes people.
He loves people. The sweetest music to him has always been the sound of another human voice. What for all others would be the most unattractive, nerve-grating accent pleases him for the fact of its contribution to the happy proliferation of human notes. He enjoys others, not in the abstract way of, say, a Lenin or a Trotsky—though he has always been decidedly leftward-leaning in his politics—but in a very specific and direct way. When you talk to him, you have an immediate sense that he is interested in your benefit, and that you can tell him everything, even when, as it is in the confessional, what you have to report is sordid and full of failure and contradiction. He will tell you—and mean it—that the sign of contradiction is the center of Christianity, that the cross itself is the first sign of contradiction, and that the human condition is in its way similar to that of Christ: the contradiction of being both God and man, and alive on the earth; of possessing an eternal soul yet living in a body that dies. It is all meaning. And meaning, for Brother Fire, is what gives a measure of majesty to ordinary lives. He’s uncomplicatedly convinced of his own ordinariness, and so, when he speaks to his parishioners, this simple faith in that fact and in their charity convinces them, brings them
forth in a welter of love, a sweet dependency. His gift, above all else—above the humor and the good nature with others and the charm—is acceptance.
A brief history:
Only child, born in Belgium. Mother Jewish. Father a fierce Catholic from a large Catholic family that included two nuns and two priests. His father was the youngest brother and spent his life trying to make up for a belief that, because he was the only son not to enter the priesthood, he t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t
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was a disappointment to his parents. He also had to make up for the fact that he fell in love with and married a Jewish girl. John Fire grew up in a house where holidays were celebrated in tandem: Passover, Easter; Hanukkah, Christmas. All the others. It taught the boy that striving for goodness was inherently goodness itself. His father moved to America a year and a half before he and his mother followed. This had not been the plan. The Great Depression and the rise of Hitler and his gang had changed everything.
John Fire’s early childhood years were spent in little towns in Tennes-see and North Carolina, wherever his father could find work—itinerant labor, though the man had training in engineering. In nineteen thirty-three, the old man found permanent employment at the Navy Yard and moved his wife and son with him to Washington, DC. They lived in a big, old Victorian house with a porch and a small lawn, within sight of Catholic University. After the death of John’s mother in nineteen forty-three—of the same heart condition with which he’s now living—the old man began a slow decline, his health compromised, he would say, by the Depression, the stresses of wartime, and grief. He slipped away in the winter of nineteen forty-six. Young John entered the seminary that year.
He did well. The work helped him through, kept him from looking inward too much, or thinking too much about his sorrow. He enjoyed words, the language, the prayers, the poetry, and he had a talent for remembering. He remembered names, lines, places, faces, concepts, the prayers of the mystics, the works of the church fathers, law, philosophy, and every last batting average of the Chicago Cubs from nineteen-thirty to nineteen forty-one, when he stopped following baseball.
His life has been simple, direct, and mostly good.
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