Leaving Memphis for Thebes soon,
Old Hickory Lake beneath the moon.
Now there’s time for you to sail!
To hike the Ap-pa-lachian trail!
Frank’s nearly blushing at the effort that all these people have made to honor him. We kept the show a surprise. The writers spent months talking to parishioners from several states, digging up little facts, such as that he’d built a sailboat when he was a bachelor priest which he gave to the Boy Scouts when we moved the first time and will build another when we move to Cage’s Bend. After the song Harper leans across me to whisper, “Cage, guess we know where your sailing obsession originated.”
Cage’s smile is easy. “Dad took me out in that Lightning. When we left it behind, I was pissed.”
“You were only two.” I laugh. It’s remarkable how we can make light of his illness when he’s well and how simple some things appear in retrospect. I’ve kept one secret about our retirement from everyone, including Frank. Going over the finances with our adviser, I decided that we can afford to build a pool amongst the overgrown hedges of the old formal garden. After tithing to the church and living frugally all these years, surely I deserve one grand indulgence. Cage has already added a new bathroom upstairs in the big house and he’s begun the renovation of the cabin in back for himself. We’ll be like one of those Old World country families, three generations living together with a chicken coop and a vegetable garden. I read that manic-depressives have a better recovery rate in the third world because all the members of the extended family are close by and supportive. Surely that’s the healthiest way to live. Harper says his anger stemmed from the absence of his father with no grandfather nearby to take up the slack. The nuclear family has much to answer for.
At the podium near the choir, Frank’s oldest friend, King Shelby, is saying, “Named to Catholic High’s hall of fame and later a distinguished alumnus, Frank once worked as a paperboy but they didn’t know about one unique accomplishment—memorizing the love sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to recite to girls on dates.” Laughter fills the parish hall.
“Jesus, like fathers, like sons,” Harper says. “That’s exactly what Nick and Cage used to do. Always struck me as goofy.”
“You’re such a romantic,” Isabella says.
Harper rolls his eyes at the corny lyrics and he has the usual sarcastic hint of a smile that he always wore in church, but he listens intently to the narration and the comic chorus as they speak of Frank’s years in the army, working his way through UT delivering laundry, hitchhiking to Montana in the summers to fight fires.
Jump out, jump out the airplane right near burning trees,
Don’t land in bushes with flames up to your knees!
“Your dad is so much cooler than you,” Isabella tells Harper. The choir sings of Frank’s struggle to choose between seminary and forestry, how his grandfather, old Bishop Rutledge, encouraged him to become a priest, but they leave out the real catalyst, which was the death of his best friend in a hunting accident. Shelby goes on, “From seminary, Frank became the deacon-in-training here at the cathedral and lived nearby in a house where he worked with the youth. Hundreds of teenagers came to the Friday night dances. Frank’s job was to check the boys’ john, peering into toilet tanks for bottles of whiskey.” As everyone laughs, Harper whispers to Isabella loud enough for me to hear clearly, “He never searched our rooms for pot. He and Mom didn’t have a clue what we were up to.”
“That’s what’s called the generation gap,” I tell them, smiling.
“You and Dad were basically two generations behind,” Cage says. “You were more like your parents than our friends’ parents. It’s like you missed the sixties.”
“It’s true, boys. There’s a great gulf between the way we look at the world.”
“In Atlanta, where he served as chaplain at Georgia Tech,” King goes on, “which was beginning integration, Frank was famous for his reply to the legendary racist politician Lester Maddox, whose chicken restaurant he would visit with black students. Maddox once asked, ‘Well, Father, I guess you want all dark meat.’ Frank replied, ‘No. We want it mixed!’
“The Rutledges spent the sixties in East Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The young rector was scaling peaks every chance he got. His two sons remember camping in the mountains from the time they could toddle. Since those were the days before Pampers, Frank boiled their diapers on a camp stove.”
His three sons remember. The old loss echoes through my body like the bell in an empty church and I feel like crying. Nick loved the mountains so much he was on the path that Frank chose not to take. As the choir sings about miles on the trail to the tune of “Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” Frank turns from the far side of the table and holds my eyes. His are moist. He’s never been afraid to show his emotions. Cage sees us and pats my shoulder, says, “Nick’s here tonight.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s like that movie where Whoopi Goldberg was a medium talking to everyone’s family ghosts who were hanging around all the time,” Harper says, putting his arm around my back. Onstage, King is saying, “It was in Baton Rouge that Dr. Rutledge committed the worst sin of his life. Margaret forbade bacon and eggs. One morning after she left, Frank threw six strips of contraband bacon and five eggs in a skillet, when he looked out and saw Mars pulling in the driveway. In a panic the future bishop of Tennessee grabbed the skillet and dumped everything down the disposal.”
The crowd howls, then the chorus sings about Frank’s secret love affair with fried chicken and fudge sundaes. Harper calls across the table, “Gee, Dad, I never knew you were such an addict. No wonder you run every day.”
Frank laughs. “I’m sorry you found out this way, son.”
Isabella calls out, “Ask Harper what his worst sin is!”
The rest of our table, the Wolffs from Baton Rouge, the Addingtons from Atlanta, and the McCutcheons from Roanoke, laugh at the exchange. Louis Addington says loudly, “That’s best kept in the privacy of a confessional.” Cage’s deep laughter pours into the emptiness that the memory of camping with Nickfish left behind. King continues, “Under Bishop Rutledge the diocese donated land to three black Baptist churches, and Episcopalians put together a federally funded housing program for the elderly. Our program of vocational training for the homeless has been so successful that it was featured on NBC national news.”
The chorus sings, “All this from a man who would rather sleep in a tent, good Lord.”
“One parishioner in Baton Rouge says, ‘Frank is the most godly man I’ve ever known, the personification of a modern, saintly man. He gives of himself with great generosity. At the end of the day you are the pastor to a group of living, sinning, stiff-necked sons of guns that you’ve got to keep in the tent. His ability to do that, despite the frustrations that come with the corporate responsibility of managing a diocese, stem from his deep prayer life, which is like him sticking his fingers into an electric circuit that allows him to recharge his batteries.’”
To the tune of the French children’s song “Frère Jacques” the chorus catalogs his virtues. Frank is blushing again. Cage makes the whole table laugh by remarking, “The music at this party makes me wish Dad was a black bishop!” Then, to the tune of “La Cucaracha,” the choir sings of Frank’s dream, his first goal after retiring: “Kilimanjaro! Kilimanjaro! Grab your ice ax and let’s go!”
“You know,” Harper whispers to me, “probably only ten people would come to my retirement party if they had to travel very far.” He’s lost his skeptical smile. It may be wishful thinking, but I think I see a new look of admiration in his eyes for his father. Perhaps he can see now that Frank’s life was important to many people, that leading a community of faith is a challenging, high calling. So often children fail to appreciate the greatness of their parents.
“And now it’s time for a few words from the person we are really honoring tonight.” King looks past Frank at me and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I
present the first lady of our diocese.” Everyone claps as I make my way up on the stage. I give King a kiss and a hug. He looks down at Frank and says, “Oh, and I almost forgot the husband of the bishop’s wife. Frank, please join us.” King guides me to the microphone.
“I’m very proud of Frank Rutledge, ‘fiercely partisan,’ in one friend’s phrase.” The laughter is loud enough to make me pause. “In my generation women stayed home to raise children and transferred their own ambition to their men. As a clergy wife I devoted myself to making it possible for my husband to serve the church as best he could. Tonight I know that I have succeeded.” There’s more laughter and clapping. “So I’ll just keep skipping and hopping and dancing around thankful for my world and all of you who people it, and for the privilege of being along for the ride with Frank Rutledge.” On my tiptoes I kiss Frank on the lips.
King says, “Unlike her husband, Margaret believes in succint speeches.”
“Clearing out my office the other day, I looked at a photograph of your new bishop and myself on the steps outside the cathedral just after his consecration,” Frank says. “We were both smiling. The difference, I thought, is that I know why I am smiling.” The hall fills with laughter. “Indeed, Margaret and I shared a joint ministry. She was always beside me, telling me how I could do a better job.”
Suddenly I feel like laughing and I can’t stop and have to cover my mouth.
“Every Sunday lunch I endured a ruthless critique of my sermons. She would have made an excellent prosecutor.” There’s more laughter, then Frank continues, “I have great feelings of nostalgia for all the friends that I may never see again, but mostly I have profound feelings of joy and gratitude. There are so many of you to whom I must pay tribute. I shall start with my old pal, King Shelby, who . . .”
Searching the dimmed light of the hall beyond the stage, I single out tables with couples from the seven cities where we lived over the last forty-two years, friends who would go to the well and back for us. I recollect others who are not here. No small number divorced. There were scandals, even among the Episcopal priests. Harper’s own godfather was caught having an affair with a man and left his wife and the church. Over time Frank and I grew more understanding of others, less judgmental of those whose behavior was so different from our own. I watch as they unveil the oil portrait of Frank smiling but dignified in his white collar, purple shirt, and seersucker jacket, hear everyone laugh as Frank says, “A portrait always struck me as a tombstone. Now I’ll be hanging up there on the wall in that graveyard of old dead bishops.”
2001
Harper
Isabella slumps naked on a wingback chair with her legs draped open. Her eyes are closed. Her lips are curved in the trace of a smile between pleasure and pain and her breathing is ragged. Her jaw tightens for a few seconds and she moans, curling her fingernails into her palms. In a low voice I speak slowly, “Imagine you are floating in a warm pool filled with the golden light of sunset. Smell the lavender fragrance in the humid air. Look at the water rippling around you. See the light glittering on the surface in spiral patterns. As I count back from ten, you will fall deeper and deeper along the spirals of light beneath the surface of the water.” Isabella’s jaw relaxes.
“Ten. The water laps over your head as you sink ever so slowly.”
Her fingers uncurl and she turns her palms out.
“Nine. You see the light above you on the top of the water, shifting and sliding.”
Her breathing slows and steadies.
By the time I reach one, she’s floating just above the bottom of her imaginary pool, hypnotized. I warm shea butter between my palms and massage it gently over her swollen breasts, which are about five times bigger than they used to be. Keeping her in the deep meditative state of semiconsciousness without fear and anxiety requires me to keep talking about the quality of light, the sensation of the water against her skin, recycling over and over her own store of soothing images which she dug up in a hypnotic trance with the therapist who taught us. In the six weeks that I practiced hypnotizing her almost every evening after work, made her do it even when she was tired or queasy, Isabella told me more than once that she knew from the first moment we met that I was actually good, though it was almost impossible to see. Since the big surprise of her pregnancy and our shotgun wedding, I have felt better than I ever remember. I don’t feel like a cad anymore. I feel like a decent guy.
A contraction racks her body, drawing her mouth tight and coiling her fingers into fists. She does not moan. Jotting the time on a notebook, I say, “You are relaxed, riding a wave in a warm bed of seaweed, cradling our baby, riding the wave closer to shore. Look up at the moon.”
Isabella tilts her head back and opens her eyes, which look distant, and stares unfocused at the ceiling.
“Now follow the moonlight down to the water.”
She moves her chin slowly down until her blank gaze reaches her feet.
“Watch the light playing on the water, puddles of white against the darkness.”
As the contraction seems to stop, I make another note. “Now you are floating between the waves. The sea is calm. You are tired, your eyelids heavy. As you wait for the next wave, just close your eyes and take a little nap.”
Isabella shuts her eyes and her breathing becomes more shallow. Asleep, her head falls to the side.
This is real. It’s finally happening, I think with a rush like a line of good blow or more like I was eight again on Christmas Eve. I stand up and stretch my arms toward the ceiling, then touch my toes and throw my legs back, moving through a yoga sequence. After months of classes three times a week, when I stand now my spine is straight, as if I’m dangling like a skeleton from a wire attached to the top of the skull. I’m not crooked anymore. Isabella has a theory that there is a connection between the straightness of your spine and your moral health. She made an honest man out of me. I don’t have to tell lies anymore. I watch the second hand sweep around my watch. After six minutes her cheek twitches and I kiss her forehead and whisper in her ear, “A wave is coming. When you open your eyes, you will feel refreshed and relaxed, calm but full of energy. Open your eyes.”
They open and brush past my face without seeing me to fix on the ceiling.
“The moon is hanging peacefully in the sky, big and round as your belly and as serene as you feel.”
She moans as all at once the uterine muscles wrench upward, peeling the mouth of her womb wider.
“Float on the wave. Let the sound of your breath surround you, the sound of the wind across the water.”
I talk and talk from four in the morning till nine, sometimes making her sleep between the contractions, sometimes walking her around the bedroom, which we have covered with sheets of plastic to protect the sisal carpet. When her waters break and the waves have been hitting every three minutes for two hours, we decide it’s time to go to the hospital.
“You’re ten centimeters dilated.” Dr. Duva kneels with her hand inside Isabella, who’s sitting with her legs spread wide on a birthing stool, a half-doughnut of an ancient Egyptian design. “I can’t believe you were eight when you got here. Most women come screaming into the hospital at three. I love women like you. I hate that whole epidural thing.”
Isabella smiles wearily and just manages to nod.
As the doctor stands up, I whisper to Isabella, putting her to sleep.
“Can you knock yourself out like that?” Dr. Duva asks. “Looks like you could use it.”
Yawning, I shake my head and take in her oval face and thick curly hair and large athletic build. Her big hands remind me of a Russian basketball player who used to toss me around like a Raggedy Andy doll, and out of old habit I start to imagine the good doctor beneath her white lab coat, wonder if that is the stirring of my shadow, the Elvis impersonator waking in his coffin. The doctor says softly, “I gotta say that this hypno-birthing thing makes the man do more than just pacing the room.”
“Now she’s in the transition stag
e?” I whisper, thinking I would like to hypnotize her and tell her to take off all her clothes and deliver the baby buck naked.
“Yes, the contract—”
“We don’t use that word because of the painful connotations,” I say softly. “Call them waves.”
“Now the nature of the waves changes,” Dr. Duva says, nodding. “Instead of pulling up to open the womb, they push out to expel the baby.” She leans over and studies Isabella’s face, which lies against the shawl around her naked shoulders as she squats on the stool, napping. I study the fabric of the doctor’s baggy surgical pants stretching over her powerful haunches with a wistful feeling like a retired explorer gazing at a map of exotic lands he will never experience in the flesh.
“Pretty amazing,” Dr. Duva says. “How did you hear about it?”
It takes a second to understand, then I say, “My brother’s into hypnotherapy. He found a woman in Westport on the Web and gave us the first session. He kept bugging me until we went. We thought it was all New Age bullshit until she showed us a video of tranced-out women in labor and the babies sliding out like seal puppies. For centuries women have been conditioned to expect overwhelming pain. It’s a matter of reprogramming through visualization. Like professional athletes—”
“Aaah . . .” Isabella throws her head back and stands up in a half-squat like a sumo wrestler.
“You and the baby are surrounded by ferns,” I start, “soft ferns of all—”
“Shut up, Harper,” Isabella barks. “I’m about to have it.” She has a fierce light in her eyes, sweat glistening on her face. The muscles in her arms and legs are sharp and taut. “Aaaah.”
Dr. Duva kneels in front and I kneel behind Isabella.
Isabella collapses onto the stool and looks up at me like it’s the best high of her life.
“Wait until your body tells you to push,” Dr. Duva says. “You’ll get a strong spontaneous urge to push. Just go with it.”
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