Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  Two weeks later Mark told Julian he and Hortense were dating. “It just sorta happened. You cool with it?”

  “Yeah, I’m cool,” he had said, and was, and jealous all at once. Eventually his bruising faded as the Comforter cradled his heart with tenderness, soothing it with the balm of promise. Something better is yet to come.

  He still doesn’t know what Hortense told Mark about them, and in his mind the connection is so loose it falls away if he focuses too much on it, like brushing too close to ash. Them, if it existed at all, is too small for notice on eternity’s timeline, a stray pen dot mistaken for a star.

  Julian’s love for Hortense is that of one friend for another, a deep, abiding, sacrificial friendship, but no more. He can think her beautiful and not move beyond that, and he believed her feelings to be the same. Now, however, in his monocular vision, he sees she’s still in love with him. Not in an everyday, all-consuming romance sort of way. It’s a battered suitcase, once used when youth and adventure were paramount, stickered with progressive slogans and imagined causes, and stored on the upmost closet shelf once twenty turned to graduation turned to settling down, and it became clear no one would be traveling with it again. But it was there, behind the extra blankets, the shoe box of keepsakes, the heating pad. Most days she never saw it, didn’t remember it. But occasionally, when packing away her winter sweaters at the beginning of May or tucking a surprise gift up there for safekeeping, she glimpses it. She doesn’t take it down and open it. In fact, she tucks more stuff in front of it—bedsheets and last year’s jeans she’s yet to donate, and the waffle iron she’ll never use, and dust. But she won’t get rid of it. She needs it there, just in case.

  For all her talk of finding a woman for him, the blind dates and teasing and sisterly concern for him being single, Hortense wants him alone. Not because she loves Mark any less, or has any expectation of being with Julian, but because she’s claimed an identity around the fact she’s the only woman with which Julian has been in love. It’s hers. He’s hers.

  And now he’s not.

  Mark stumbles down the stairs, flies into the gallery, broom and dustpan in opposite hands, his awkward wings. “You haven’t told her yet, right?”

  “No,” Julian says.

  Sweeping the glass into the corner, Mark props the broom against the wall, bristles guarding his pile, dustpan clipped to the handle. “Okay, spill,” he says, looping his arm around Hortense’s waist. She doesn’t soften into him.

  “Well,” Julian says, all jitters, smearing his face with his hands, oil from his nose greasing his fingertips. He puffs the air from his lungs, lips flopping. They will think he’s insane. “Her name is Ada. And I, ah . . .” He sucks breath through his teeth. “I don’t know. That’s really it.”

  “J, come on. Where’d you meet? How long have you been seeing her? We need details.”

  “Um. I can’t say we’re together, actually. We only met a few weeks ago when I was in Massachusetts with Greg Eisen.”

  “The cult story?” Mark asks.

  “Well. Yeah.”

  “Are you telling us she’s in this cult?”

  “I guess.”

  “Have you totally lost it?”

  “Maybe,” Julian says. “No. I don’t know. It’s something.”

  Mark scratches between his eyebrows, glee replaced with confused disappointment. Hortense bleeds relief. She’s not been replaced. To her, Julian’s new love is nothing more than a phantom. She shakes her head. “This is your stupid messiah complex talking.”

  “No.”

  “Fine, Julian. You don’t have to admit it, but everyone else sees. Legless veterans, Palestinian students, widowed hoarders. You swoop in and have to fix all their problems. This woman is just another somebody to save, your good deed for the month.”

  Julian bites down, hard, until he thinks his molars might burst like hard candies with liquid centers, spilling his frustration at her. His anger. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You’re right. I don’t read crazy.”

  “I’ll see you both later.”

  Mark grabs at his shoulder. “J—”

  He shakes his head. “Just later.”

  It’s warm outside, the sounds of almost summer bouncing down the sidewalks, children on playgrounds, the noxious scent of road workers tamping hot tar into potholes. He walks toward home, having known his friends would respond the way they did yet still awash with disillusionment.

  Hortense is right. He does have a propensity to meddle in the misfortunes of others with hopes of making a difference. Not because he thinks himself some sort of Christ figure, but because of guilt. Photography is his passion, the thing he is created to do. And yet on some level, he hates that he enjoys it so much, that he excels. Pictures don’t better lives or save souls. They’re only images on paper, a bit of death, the moment captured past and gone.

  God knows he’s tried to leave it behind. He’s fasted from his camera, forty days and forty nights of pleading, Take this cup away, and then mortification he’d even think of uttering his Lord’s words in the same context of his own struggle. He seeks out ways to help those who do the real work of God, offering his services for free. He considers seminary, long-term missions, adoption, anything that will make a tangible difference. He finds ways to do penance. It’s why he’s still in his college city of Trent, one of the many hardscrabble urban areas in the Capital District, when he could have a studio in Manhattan or LA, staying to give back—sounds good for interviews but in all honesty it’s a pithy way of saying he doesn’t deserve to move away. His offerings are in secret, his left hand unaware of his right hand’s actions. But his mind knows. None of it enough to change the fact he’s successful and renowned for taking pictures.

  Ada Mitchell is different. She has to be. He’ll drive back to Abram’s Covenant. He’ll sit beneath her tree and wait for her to come. If she doesn’t, he’ll know he was wrong about her. He’ll return to being a prize in Hortense’s hidden suitcase. He’ll squeeze every drop of singleness from life and drink it. He’ll cover his guilt with more work and more giving and more sacrifice, despite understanding it’s all dross to be consumed by fire one day, his only hope his obedience will mean something when the Master returns and it’s time to present his talents. How many he’ll have, he doesn’t know.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It decides to rain the day Julian travels to the Berkshires again, stodgy gray droplets, plump as grapes, tumbling from the gray sky. He adjusts the intermittent wipers as he drives, reducing the frequency to avoid the squawking of too-dry glass, increasing it when trucks splash through puddles from the pavement. He never turns them on full, though, even when the drops become thin, silver needles of water, insistent in their attempts to drill through the glass. He hates the lull of the constant, steady woosh-WOOSH woosh-WOOSH. The delay surprises him—he’s never quite sure when the wipers will spring up again—and keeps him from falling asleep at the wheel.

  May weather is notorious for its unpredictability in the northeast. One day it mimics summer, the next autumn, forcing the humans at its mercy to be prepared with umbrellas and jackets and sandals and sunglasses. Sometimes winter boots; it’s been known to spit snow a time or two as late as Mother’s Day. He doesn’t expect Ada to visit her tree today, but the Lord of Creation controls the rain, and perhaps this is his way of telling Julian he misheard and there is no wife in his future, at least not one from Abram’s Covenant. Julian planned his trip for today, and God knew it. If he wanted the weather to be lovely enough for a picnic beneath that tree, he would have made it so.

  Julian should have stayed home.

  He drives only out of a sense of obedience. And because he needs to know if he’s gone a bit, as Hortense would say, crazy in the cabeza.

  It’s been almost a week since he’s spoken to either her or Mark, not since the argument in the gallery. When this excursion fails, he’ll go home to them with his tail between his legs and they’ll lick his wo
unds with the encouraging other fish in the sea and not mean any of it, and watch him closely for other signs of increased religious delusions.

  If.

  If it fails.

  He’s moved beyond doubt into utter disbelief all on his own.

  He drifts off the exit, the tightly wound bundle of trepidation unraveling, stretching wide and releasing its more potent cousin—dread—and the hollow in his gut grows, devouring the sensations around his middle until he’s half convinced he’s gone invisible between his diaphragm and pelvic bone. He sneaks his fingers from the steering wheel and wipes them across his abdomen, to be certain he is still in one piece.

  Her tree is ahead. The car bumps onto the shoulder of the road, and he parks, headlights off, engine off. The windows fog, glass spider webs trapping his breath. He wipes the driver’s side with his sleeve. The digital numbers on his dashboard clock reorient. 9:03.

  She’s not there.

  “Get it together, Julian,” he says, warm embarrassment pooling first in his head, filling his arteries, trickling through his vascular system until he begins sweating despite the still moon-cool air; he tugs his favorite cable-knit sweater over his head, the one he’s been wearing since college, with holes in the armpits and stretched two sizes larger than new, and wipes his face on it.

  Suddenly he’s unsure which he fears more, having mistaken the Spirit’s voice for his own, or not being able to have what he believed he heard in those whispers.

  He isn’t lonely. Friends, colleagues, clients. Family and neighbors. Strangers. Enough people walk through his days to satisfy the basic, human need of connection. Sometimes there’s so much crowding he pushes through the arms and legs and demands and conversations, and closes it all behind his studio door. Click. Silence. He fits with Mark and Hortense in a shared story, instant commonality begetting closeness. He has a church home in which to wrestle with the so-called bigger things. None of these, though, is a wife. He’s not been someone who has been on his knees pleading for his missing rib. In fact, he’s prided himself in his satisfaction with singleness. This is how it’s done. This is a life devoted to God and the things he’s given over to me. It is possible, and satisfying, and perfect.

  Except it isn’t.

  He’s Paul, not Aquila. He’s Julian Goetz, gifted in singleness, running the race alone. Even at night, he doesn’t huddle on one side of the mattress, stroking the empty place on the other, wondering if it will be filled. He sprawls in the center, a snow angel on its stomach, drooling in the crack between the two pillows. But possibility breeds clarity and he realizes he won’t ask for his Priscilla because he doesn’t want to be told no. To him, to be denied a wife is the same as being told he can’t succeed at being married.

  He’s not failed at anything before.

  She’s not coming.

  Julian fiddles with the radio, bypassing his usual Christian station and settling on ESPN. The talk show hosts argue over baseball. Seven weeks into the season and no surprises; they manufacture news and make stats and scores take on an importance undeserved. It’s only a game. And yet, his father—athlete and rabid sports enthusiast—told Julian the same. It’s only pictures.

  He shakes his head. One disappointment is enough for any day.

  The diner is a stone’s throw ahead. Julian decides to eat his sorrow’s weight in humble bumble pie. He feels beneath his seat for an umbrella and, finding none, shrugs and thinks he’ll walk anyway. His car will be fine on the side of the road. He wants the gloom of rain upon him for longer than the few seconds from parking lot to door.

  He steps onto the pavement at the same moment he sees her, moving toward the tree with much less determination than last time. Her stride is looser, more timid. She approaches the oak’s trunk and rests her forehead on it. Julian doesn’t move, or reach for his camera. He waits for her to notice him, and she does, lengthening her neck and turning first her face, and then her entire body, toward his Jeep.

  The drizzle transitions to mist, millions of precipitate particles suspended in the air, compacted tightly together, body parting the sponginess as he approaches her. Dozens of sticky burrs hitch a ride on his jeans, and the tall, soggy grasses whip his shoes. Her arms, wrapped snuggly around her rib cage, straighten, hands migrating down her sides and settling on her hips, a protective X created, breasts pressed into her biceps, forearms crossed at her navel.

  “Ada,” he says, stopping two yardstick lengths away.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She’s not shocked to see him, but more quietly awed, as if his appearance isn’t unexpected and yet amazing nonetheless. Like the birth of a baby. Yes, that’s it. There’s no surprise that the baby will come, and soon, and yet the mother cradles the new life, knowing how all the pieces work from conception to final push into the world, and still there is nothing but wonderment.

  “I came for you,” Julian tells her.

  “Why?”

  He hesitates. “You’ll think I’m crazy if I say.”

  She draws her arms back up her torso, hugging her shoulders. The rain begins again, rat-tat-tat on the oak leaves, the top of his head. “You’re my Boaz.”

  Her proclamation startles Julian. “How do you—”

  “I’ve dreamed about you every night since we first met.”

  “God is speaking to you, too, then?”

  Ada lowers her eyes. “I’m no prophet.”

  Lightning claws at the horizon, and the sky coughs one thunderclap, then another. It pours, a torrent of sea in the firmament. The waters above come down from heaven. Julian grabs Ada’s hand, cold, frail, and tows her behind him as he runs to the Jeep. He closes her into the passenger seat, climbs behind the steering wheel, and turns on the heat. It blows in their faces; he switches to the floor vents.

  Ada shivers. He bunches his sweater, stretching the collar wide. “Here,” he says, and she bends forward to receive it over her head, struggles into the sleeves, and tugs the waistband down. They sit wordlessly, both knowing an invisible line has been crossed. She’s in a heathen’s car. She’s been touched by him. She can’t go back.

  “I have this,” she says finally, reaching down the neck of her shirt and removing an envelope. He takes it. Opens it. Her birth certificate. “It’s the only thing that shows I’m me.”

  “Are you certain you want to leave?”

  She nods. So does he.

  They drive to Vermont because Julian has done his research. No waiting period. No identification. No residency restrictions. They can walk into the first town hall they find, pay for a marriage license, and skip over to the justice of the peace for the civil service. No muss, no fuss.

  Ada talks, first about her dreams, each one a variation of the same: she goes to the tree and he waits for her there. In several versions he proposed, down on one knee. Once she found him asleep in wildflowers. Once they raced away by moonlight, on foot, with dogs and men pursuing. She ignored the dreams at first; they leave her waking warm and disappointed and wanting. They must be from her own depraved mind, or sent by the adversary. She’s unsure which is the worse of the two possibilities.

  “But four nights ago I had one where we met again, and I showed you a paper, and you said, ‘How did you know to get this?’ And when I looked down I saw Certificate of Birth. And when I woke there were numbers, written in fire. I rubbed and rubbed my eyes but they didn’t go away. Only faded. Like when you write across the sky with sparklers, you can still see where the tails have been?”

  Julian nods. “Yeah.”

  “It was early, still dark, on a morning my father had planned to go out of town to meet another prophet. My brother was supposed to be in charge, looking over us, but he was still sleeping. I tried to go back to sleep but the numbers burned behind my eyelids. I knew what they were for. I got out of bed and as quiet as I could, snuck down from the loft and into my parents’ bedroom. My mother was snoring. It struck me as so funny, I had had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
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  “The safe was under his desk. He locks all his prophetic journals in there, to protect them. Only he knows the combination, he says. I got down in front of it as low as I could, scared because I couldn’t see my mother to know if she woke; she shifted and rolled over in the bed, so she was breathing softly now, and my heart was beating in my ears, and I could only hear that and not her. But the numbers were still there. I’m not certain I could see them anymore, but the impression in my head was so bright, it’s like they were still shining in front of me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Thirteen. Twelve. Twenty-nine. Fifteen. I twisted the safe dial, somehow knowing which way to turn and when to pass zero twice, and there was a click and it opened. It was full of notebooks and I was so tempted to look and read, but I knew time was running out, my pulse racing like a stopwatch. There was an orangey envelope tucked along the side, a big one, and I unwrapped the string tying it closed, and found a bunch of white envelopes with names on them. I grabbed mine, stuck it in my shirt, tried to position everything as I found it, and got out of the room. I heard someone getting up, so I opened a Bible and sat at the kitchen table, and pretended to read as my brother came downstairs. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re up early,’ and I shrugged and told him I couldn’t sleep, and he said he was hungry so I got up and cooked him breakfast, and by the time I was done everyone was awake and that was that.

  “I kept the envelope with me. And the next three times I went to the tree looking for you I refused to be discouraged. The numbers were real. I knew your coming would be real too. And then it was.”