The Reluctant Prophet

by Nancy Rue

“Because he’s heavier than Desmond or Geneveve or any of the women, and I don’t think he could just go with it like they do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re my Riding Guide.”

  “I’m not trying to be a jerk,” he said again.

  “You’re not.”

  He looked at me for a moment longer, as if to be sure we were clear on the jerkhood thing. I felt a major need to change the subject.

  “Have you seen Desmond?” I said.

  “He’s sitting on my bike, drawing a picture.”

  “You’re trusting.”

  “Am I? He knows the rules.”

  “Uh-huh, but lately he’s been regressing. Started cussing under his breath again. Messing around at the dinner table.”

  “Sounds like he’s twelve.”

  “This morning I caught him going through my purse—which he didn’t stop doing when he heard me coming—which I know he did because he has the auditory acuity of a bat.”

  “He’s got a big change coming up.”

  “Yeah—he’s not going to have me in his face twenty-four-seven.”

  “Then there you go,” Chief said, and went inside.

  I noticed after he left that he hadn’t done a single thing with the hose.

  Saturday and Sunday, everything kicked into high gear. Curtains went up. Rugs were rolled out. Dead bolts were installed on the doors. Furniture arrived in pickup trucks and vans, the fruits of our trips to the flea market and the radio station’s free Swap ’n’ Shop and the HOGs cleaning out of their garages and attics. The kitchen was stocked with food, the bathrooms with toiletries, the linen closet with towels and sheets and blankets. I had no idea where it all came from, but somebody had cast out nets, and I could hardly handle the holiness.

  Early Sunday afternoon, as we were putting on the finishing touches, Desmond found me organizing the spices in the kitchen.

  “Somebody just pull up in a nice ve-hicle,” he said.

  I looked down from the stepladder. “It’s not a Miata, is it?”

  He shook his head. There was something strange in the hang of his shoulders, as if he were trying to avoid a wasp sting.

  “What’s going on, Clarence?” I said.

  “I don’t like her.”

  “Who?”

  “That woman drivin’ that Lexus.”

  “Is she wielding a weapon? Handing out citations? What’s the deal?”

  “She just act like she smell something bad. I don’t like her.”

  I sighed and came down from the ladder. “Do you want me to go see what she wants? Is that what it is?”

  He shrugged, but that was evidently exactly what he wanted. This was strange behavior, even for him.

  The crew putting pine needles around the azaleas out front were also looking suspicious as I came out and shaded my eyes to get a view of the woman leaning against a white Lexus and curling her upper lip as if she were, indeed, smelling something rancid. I’d seen that disdainful look before, in the back of my carriage, the day I took the detour down West King Street. I’d have known that Stress Queen posture anywhere.

  I marched down the steps and met her halfway across the yard. She replaced the sneer with a smile that was high-end plastic.

  “Vivienne Harkness,” she said. “You must be Allison Chamberlain.”

  “And you must be Troy Irwin’s lackey,” I said.

  She blinked behind rectangular black-framed glasses she hadn’t been wearing that day. These apparently went with her current outfit.

  “We’ve met before,” I said.

  She still didn’t appear to recognize me, so I moved on. “And to what do we owe the honor?”

  “We were just curious what’s going on. This is a lot of upgrade for this neighborhood.”

  “And you care about that because …”

  She nodded as if my attitude came as no surprise to her. “Like I said, we’re just curious.”

  “Who are ‘we’?”

  “Those of us associated with Chamberlain Enterprises.”

  She flipped out a business card from somewhere and held it out to me. I ignored it.

  “You of all people should know we like to keep our finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the community,” she said.

  “Don’t be misled by my name,” I said. “I know nothing about what Chamberlain does and does not have its fingers on, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Once again she seemed unsurprised. Which made me wonder: If she somehow knew what to expect when she came, why was she here? I wasn’t buying Chamberlain’s concern for the city’s heartbeat. The only life Troy Irwin cared about was his own.

  “So,” she said. “What is happening here? I’m fascinated.”

  “We’re helping some people out,” I said. “I guess you would find that fascinating—if not somewhat odd, yes?”

  That one did seem to be outside the expected responses. She downgraded the plastic smile and took a step backward.

  “I’ll just let you get back to it, Allison,” she said. “Maybe we can chat another time.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Have your people call my people, so I can tell them where to go too.”

  She drove off with an unnecessary squeal of tires. I was still coming down when I felt Hank at my side.

  “Well,” she said. “Miss Giorgio Armani certainly brought out your fangs.”’

  I looked around warily. “You don’t think Desmond heard that, do you?”

  “He wouldn’t have understood it if he did.”

  “I still shouldn’t have said it. I can almost hear Sylvia saying, ‘Now—was that the Christian attitude?’”

  “So you screw up now and then. You okay?”

  I stared out at the now empty street. “I have a bad feeling. A really bad feeling.”

  “Can you shake it for the ceremony?” she said. “Everything’s ready.”

  When I turned to look at the little house, I didn’t have to shake Vivienne Harkness off of me. She and everything she stood for fell away as I marveled at our finished product.

  Shiny blue shutters against a fresh coat of white paint. Ruffled curtains and flower-filled window boxes framing bright, clear windows. Pots of geraniums and sink-into chairs on a front porch that said “Welcome” every bit as much as mine did.

  As I stood there with home welling up in my throat, the red front door opened, and people began to file out. Chief and the HOGs and the NA supporters. Bonner and the locksmith and paint-spattered people I barely knew. And behind them, Jasmine and Geneveve and Mercedes, tugging Desmond by his puppy-paw hand.

  Hank faced the house and held out her arms to it, suddenly seeming tall.

  “Peace be to this place and all who dwell in it,” she said.

  She nodded to me, and I pulled three keys from my pockets, each attached to an initialed key chain. Hank beckoned Jasmine and Mercedes and Geneveve to stand before her.

  “You’ve unlocked the doors that have kept you imprisoned,” she said. “Now you can unlock the doors that welcome you home.”

  I pressed a key into Jasmine’s hands, and one into Mercedes’s, whispering “welcome home” to each. When I got to Geneveve, my throat closed. She was half a person more than she was the first night Mercedes pulled her out of the Magic Moment. The flesh on her cheeks had rounded out, and her body had taken on a firm, healthy layer. Her black hair pulled back from her forehead revealed a heart-shaped face, sweet as a child’s. Yet the shame remained in her eyes, guarded by the smile, kept at bay by the tilt of her chin, but still holding onto her spirit.

  I moved closer until my lips almost brushed her ear. “The more you’ve sinned, the more you’re forgiven,” I whispered. “I know, Geneveve.”

  She closed her eyes and whisper
ed back, “Amen.”

  I stepped back, and Hank went to each of them in turn, placing her palms on their heads and saying, “May God the Son who sanctified a home at Nazareth fill you with love. Amen.’” Then raising her face to the circle formed around us, she cried, “The peace of the Lord be always with you!”

  “And also with you!” the women replied.

  Their arms flew out and embraced bodies—their lips brushed cheeks—their thank-you’s filled the air with their contagious rhythm. If any Harley rider or NA sponsor or recruited stranger minded, no one let on. They turned to each other and passed a peace I was sure was heard in heaven. We were a veritable agape feast—and my spiritual high couldn’t have been higher.

  Bonner was in the thick of it when he put his arms around my waist and lifted me off the ground. “I get it, Allison,” he said into my ear. “God bless you.” He knew just when to let me go and turn to the next celebrant who had a hug ready. Holy mackerel.

  I was still reeling from that when Chief was suddenly next to me, his hands spaded into his back pockets.

  “The peace of the Lord, Chief,” I said.

  “What’s my next line?” His voice had no edge of sarcasm. It sounded like a genuine question.

  “It’s not written in stone,” I said. “Whatever you’re moved to say.”

  He gazed off somewhere between the roof and the tops of the mimosa trees. “I can’t say I ever felt any peace from the Lord. No offense.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  “Chief,” Hank said from the middle of a nearby group hug. “I need everybody’s attention.”

  He put his fingers between his lips and let out one of those whistles I’d tried a hundred times to accomplish and never could. Heads turned, and he pointed to Hank.

  “The ladies would like us to see their rooms,” she said.

  We re-gathered in the house, and the women shyly but proudly allowed us to peek at the lavender swags and pink pillowcases and olive and blue bath towels that made up their decor. Food came next, a banquet of lasagna and Caesar salad and crusty warm loaves of French bread. Impassioned sparkling cider toasts went on until dusk began to settle in and with it a cozy fog. By the time everyone but Hank and Chief, the women, Desmond, and myself had left, we had the kitchen cleaned up. There was no reason to stay, yet I couldn’t seem to make my way to the front door.

  “We been talkin’,” Geneveve said from the only slightly worse-for-wear chair-and-a-half Rex had delighted her with. “And we was wonderin’ if we could do communion.”

  “I know we been blessed and all that,” Mercedes said, “but we need us some body of Christ.”

  The high that couldn’t get higher, did.

  Bread was found and blessed alongside the cider, and we all got us some body of Christ. “That’s what I call a sacrament,” Hank said when we’d ended in thanks.

  “I wanna make that the name of the house.”

  We looked at Geneveve.

  “The Sacrament House,” she said.

  I looked around. “What do the other residents think?” I said—and realized that Desmond wasn’t with us.

  I looked up at Chief, who pointed toward the room off the kitchen.

  “No way he’s doing his laundry,” I said out of the side of my mouth.

  “That’s his bedroom,” Chief said out the side of his.

  I left Hank giving a lesson on sacraments and went to the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry room.

  Somebody had shoved a cot between the washer and dryer, where the kid was going to have nightmares about his head being caught in the spin cycle. A mesh laundry bag hung from the ceiling in the middle of the cubicle-of-a-room with a few of Desmond’s clothes stuffed into it. A sign saying KEEP OUT, drawn in his inimitable style, was taped to the door. But he was going to have less privacy here than he’d had at the last crack house he’d paused in with his mother.

  Even as I stood there imagining his easy escape out the back door, a bottle of fabric softener tumbled from the shelf above the washer and landed in the middle of his pillow. I reached up and pulled the bag from the ceiling, and hoisting it over my shoulder, went to the back door. Desmond was slumped over on the stoop, his motorcycle helmet hugged to his chest.

  “I’ve got bad news for you, Desmond,” I said. I dropped down beside him.

  “You takin’ my helmet?” he said.

  “Why would I do that? Have you done something I don’t know about?”

  He gave his head only half a shake, eyes still on the orange flames.

  “You can’t ride with me without it, and I don’t see myself riding alone all the time.”

  “You gonna forget about me. Which—hey—it’s all good—”

  “You’re pretty hard to forget when you’re under my feet every minute. I told you I had bad news?”

  “What?”

  “You’re coming home with me.”

  His head jerked up and the helmet took a precarious roll toward the ground before he caught it.

  “To stay?” he said.

  “For now—until your mom really gets on her feet.” Something struck me and I backpedaled. “I have to ask her about this, of course—”

  “She ain’t gonna care.”

  I started to assure him that she actually did, but his eyes were sparkling as if her neglect of him was the best thing he had going for him.

  “I’m going to ask her anyway,” I said.

  His eyes continued to glow, even as he pulled his eyebrows together and started a litany of reasons why continuing to live with me was going to cramp his style like milk of magnesia. I left him gathering his drawing supplies and went to find Geneveve in her room.

  “I won’t do it if you want him here with you,” I told her.

  The shame lost some of its guard. “I ain’t ready to take care of him, Miss Angel. I can’t hardly take care of myself yet. I don’t even know am I ready to live in this house without you remindin’ me to say my prayers and brush my teeth.”

  “I don’t think any of us know whether we’re ready for the next step until we take it,” I said. “It’s always a leap of faith. But, Gen, there are leaps of faith and there are just plain ridiculous jumps everybody knows aren’t going to end well.”

  Her forehead worked to sort that out. “So me livin’ here is a leap of faith. Me tryin’ to take care of my son right now—that’s a jump gonna land us both on our face.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  As I left her crying softly in her new room, I wondered whether I myself was taking a faith leap or a suicide jump. Only Desmond standing in the middle of the tiny living room, announcing that he hated to leave these fine women but he needed way more space—only that made me take in a breath and say my good-byes and usher him out to the Harley.

  “One ride at a time,” I whispered as I fired up the engine. To Desmond, I said, “Okay, let’s go home.”

  It was our best ride yet.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I had obviously never been on a honeymoon, but there were moments during the next two weeks when I thought I knew what it must feel like. A little bliss. A little insight. A little escape from all that couldn’t wait to say, “Okay, enough with the fairy tale. When are you going to see that this isn’t going to work?”

  There was the moment at the outlet mall where each of the women had forty dollars to spend however they wanted. While Jasmine and Mercedes plowed through the sale table at T.J. Maxx, Geneveve stood smiling like she knew a secret.

  “Whatcha thinkin’, Gen?” I said.

  “I’m thinkin’ I’m at Disneyland, Miss Angel.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

  “Here I am, out here in public—and I don’t got to worry is that security guard
over there gonna arrest me for bein’ here. If I hear a siren, I know it ain’t comin’ for me.” She went back to the enigmatic smile. “I ain’t never been free before, and I’m just enjoyin’ it.”

  Another moment came when they posted the chore chart I helped them make, and Jasmine burst into tears.

  “You cryin’ again, girl?” Mercedes said. “I ain’t never seen a person cry so much.”

  “Those are happy tears,” Geneveve said.

  Jasmine nodded.

  “You happy about chores?” Mercedes said.

  “I get to wash the windows.”

  I grunted. “Now there’s something to celebrate.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “You don’t understand. For the past five years since I started hookin’ to score drugs, I been feelin’ like I’m lookin’ through a dirty windshield. I couldn’t see nothin, and I had to let somebody else drive.”

  “You’re a poet, Jasmine,” I said.

  “I don’t know ’bout that. But I’ma keep these windows clean so we can always see.”

  “Five years is a long time not to be able to see,” I said.

  Jasmine cut her eyes away. “It’s been way longer than that. I was five years old when my grandmama give me whiskey.”

  No one else looked as dumfounded as I was, which was probably why she went on.

  “She took care of me and all my sisters and brothers and cousins, and she’d give us all booze so we’d take a nap and get outta her hair. I was the one everybody picked on, and when I’d come cryin’ to her—”

  “So you’ve always been cryin’,” Mercedes said. She slapped the hand Geneveve held out to her.

  “She give me a little nip of whatever she was drinkin’ to make me feel better. I came up thinkin’ relief was just a swallow away—and I couldn’t handle nothin’ without ‘help.’”

  “I hear that,” Geneveve said.

  Jasmine bit down on her lip. “I’m ashamed to talk about all my stupid stuff.”

  “You already done admitted in a roomful of people that you let addiction take over your whole life,” Mercedes said. “It don’t get no stupider than that, so what you got to lose?”

  And I thought I was blunt.