The Transformation

by Terri Kraus

  “I was just in checking some dimensions for the architect. Apparently his time is more valuable than mine.”

  Robert the Dog chased around the church, snuffling loudly.

  “Anything important?”

  “Not really,” she replied. “Well, at least to me. He wanted to make sure of the width of the back hallway, so I said I’d run over here and measure. Something about the building code being different if there is access to an exit door from the hallway or not. I didn’t really get the implications—just left the numbers on his voice mail. I told him to check with you first thing tomorrow morning if you needed to make changes.”

  “Thanks,” Oliver replied. “I’ve never heard of that sort of rule, but Pittsburgh codes are a bit different than the ones in Jeannette.”

  Samantha stood to his side, appearing a little awkward, perhaps the tiniest bit ill at ease. “How was your weekend?” she asked.

  “Fine,” Oliver said, not wanting to go into any detail about being with Paula, feeling just a bit duplicitous at the moment, trying to think of a good cover story if she pressed the issue. “And yours?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing special. Saw some friends on Saturday night. Went to dinner. Slept late today. Read the paper. Did a little shopping. Standard stuff. And you?”

  Oliver hoped his face would not give him away. “Pretty much the same.”

  Samantha nodded, as if making a mental checklist. “Are you hungry now?”

  “No, I sort of ate before I came. Are you?”

  She shook her head no. “I ate too, but if you were hungry, I would come with you and have a little nosh if you were going out.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  The two of them stared at each other, silent, for what seemed to Oliver to be a long time. Robert rattled between them, tossing around a large section of a rawhide chew toy, grinning as if he had uncovered a lost treasure. But he did not break their face-to-face, silent dialogue.

  It may very well have been her lips, Oliver thought, that so attracted him to her, or that he’d first noticed. But in those few moments of looking, he amended that thought, adding her eyes—the something deep and accommodating and sensuous in them that clearly showed her innermost being more than anything else.

  He resisted looking elsewhere on her, knowing that elsewhere was just as attractive to him as her finely defined face.

  And then she moved, took a step forward, one hand still cradling her cell phone, as if being too preoccupied to place it back in her jeans pocket where she always kept it. The step forward was enough of an indication, enough of a first move to blur what had happened this weekend, to place it in another box within Oliver and fold the top down so the contents couldn’t escape.

  He moved as well, taking a longer step. Robert the Dog passed near them, noisily mangling his chew toy, and then they were in each other’s arms, in an I-couldn’t-wait-another-minute sort of embrace, hard and almost fierce.

  She leaned into him and kissed him. The kiss was long and intense and nearly took Oliver’s breath away.

  After a minute, she whispered, “Let’s go downstairs.”

  Oliver shut his eyes and tried not to elaborate on what she had said or was offering to him, struggling not to add a visual picture of what would come next. It took all the strength he had to open his eyes and say, “No. I can’t.”

  To Oliver, it was obvious that was the answer Samantha expected. He wondered, though, in that second, having previously considered both the question and his response, how what might happen next would feel with her. That he had not previously considered.

  “Why, Oliver? Why not? I know you have your rules and all that … with the Bible stuff you talked about. You’re not going to hurt me, Oliver,” she said in a soft, forgiving voice. “It would be okay if this … between us … was just physical. I’m not asking for anything more than that. Really, Oliver. It would be okay with me.”

  He did not let go of her, not yet, not wanting to release her from his arms. “It’s not that, Samantha. I mean … it’s not just that. It’s that I can’t … or won’t do what the Bible says I shouldn’t do.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Oliver licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry.

  “It’s because of my past, isn’t it?” she asked, then backed out of his embrace, only a step, but out of his arms. “It’s because I’ve been with other men. That’s why you don’t want to be with me.”

  “That’s not it, either, Samantha.”

  In that second, he realized her admission meant there were many men in her past, many men who had known her, shared the ultimate intimacy with her. Oliver saw the faces without knowing the faces, saw the numbers without knowing the numbers, and felt the knife prick just below his heart.

  “It isn’t. Really.”

  Samantha took another step back. “It is, Oliver. Why would your God deny you something that was offered to you out of love? Why would your God want you to turn your back on a beautiful thing? It doesn’t make any sense to me, Oliver, none whatsoever. Rules! I hate them! We’re two adults. We want each other, and you’ve just said, ‘No thanks, Samantha.’ Why? I have to think it’s because of me. My past.”

  Oliver had never imagined being in a conversation like this, in a situation like this, where he would be faced with turning down the determined advances of a beautiful woman—a woman he cared deeply about and felt some sort of spiritual connection with—not in the biblical sense, but in the sense that she understood him without his having to explain himself, something so wonderfully unique, so wonderfully special.

  “It’s not that, Samantha. It isn’t. It’s more than just a set of rules.”

  She waited, only a moment. Oliver had no more explanation to offer that evening.

  “I’m sorry, Oliver,” she said. She turned from him and walked quickly to the door. By the time she got there, she was running, and even Robert the Dog looked up from his chew toy and watched as she banged through the door and entered the warm spring night.

  Had Samantha been fifteen again, she would have thrown herself onto her bed and muffled her cries into the duvet, perhaps even flailing her arms and legs. The last time she did that, her mother had stood in the doorway, a clean set of sheets in one hand.

  Instead, this night, Samantha sat on the window seat under the wraparound windows in the turret, with darkness sweeping in to blanket her bedroom. She listened. Only the traffic noise filtered in and maybe a snippet or two of the television program her father watched downstairs in the living room. Her mother had hated the television and everything on it, leaving her husband to watch it alone most nights.

  Samantha closed her eyes. She could see it all again, as if it were happening before her, like some old movie, flickering on an old black-and-white movie screen, the images blurred and indistinct, the dialogue scratchy, and the volume turned down. Yet Samantha felt forced to watch and listen to the ghosts in her head.

  In that scene, that horrible scene nearly two decades earlier, there had been a packet of birth-control pills, in a tidy plastic oval, the foil backing peeled away on half a month’s supply, lying on the middle of the bedroom floor, thrown there when Samantha’s mother had discovered them, hidden between the mattress and the box spring.

  Samantha, fifteen, was sobbing on the unmade bed.

  The grown Samantha wanted to look away, wanted the vision to change, but it remained, as persistent as a dark cloud on a windless day.

  “How long have you been on the pill?” her mother had hissed, still carrying the clean set of pink sheets in her hands.

  Samantha had raised her head, just an inch. “A few months. That’s all.”

  “Where did you get them? Did Dr. Rosen give them to you? If he did, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “No. He didn’t,” Samantha had shot back. “I got them …
at the free clinic in Wilkinsburg.”

  It was a lie, but a convincing one.

  “You little hussy,” her mother had whispered. “Why? Who is it—one of those juvenile delinquent boys from your class? Who?”

  “It’s nobody,” Samantha had shouted back. “Nobody you know.”

  Her mother had carefully placed the stack of sheets on Samantha’s princess-style chest of drawers and had walked to her daughter’s bed. That night Mrs. Cohen, taller than her husband, more elegant, more sophisticated than Pittsburgh society warranted, had seemed like a person Samantha did not know. She had grabbed her daughter’s shoulder with one hand, flipped her over and upright, had raised her right hand across her body, and brought it down, fast and severe, hitting Samantha hard enough to knock her backward on the bed.

  “You’re lying!”

  She had waited.

  “Who?”

  She had waited again.

  “Who is it? Who are you having sex with?”

  She had waited a third time, pulled her daughter upright once more, and hit her again, this time with the palm of her hand. The young Samantha had fallen backward, tears and sobs colliding, freezing what words she might have spoken in her throat.

  “Shut up,” her mother had whispered, her words more chilling than if they had been screamed. “You’re a liar. Maybe you have your oblivious father fooled, but not me. You’re nothing better than a common whore—giving in to any man that asks. You disgust me.”

  “I’m not a whore. It’s just one guy, and I love him.”

  “Love? What do you know about love at your age? I know what you are. Mark my words, Samantha. I can see this in your future. There is no denying it. I know one when I see one. If you’re this way now, as young as you are, then that is what you will always be. You’ll never keep a man.”

  And with that, Samantha’s mother had turned and walked away, stopping only for a moment in the doorway, where she’d turned her head and repeated, “Disgusting.”

  Samantha had been left alone in the darkness of her bedroom that night, crying herself to sleep in an unmade bed.

  Two nights later, without having spoken a single word to her daughter, Mrs. Samuel Cohen had slit her wrists and died, without a murmur, sitting fully clothed, wearing her new Versace outfit, in the great marble tub in the master bathroom.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHEN THE PRATT BROTHERS arrived at the worksite in the morning, they took one look at Oliver and asked, nearly in unison, “Are you sick?”

  The eldest Pratt added, with concern, “You look terrible, Oliver. You’re not comin’ down with somethin’, are you?”

  At that, the two younger Pratt brothers took a full, deliberate step backward, as if whatever germs Oliver was infested with wouldn’t be able to take the journey to find them.

  Oliver acknowledged their concern and fear with a wave. “No, I’m fine. I know I look bad, but I don’t think I slept for more than ten minutes last night.”

  Oliver saw the youngest Pratt brother relax. “Well, don’t you worry at all, Mr. Oliver. Miss Cohen’s coffee and those Jewish jelly doughnuts will fix you right up. I don’t know where she gets it, but it always charges me up.”

  Oliver shook his head. “She won’t be here this morning. She left me a voice mail saying that she had an appointment. We’ll have to get our own coffee and jelly doughnuts.”

  All three of the Pratt boys appeared crestfallen. Even Robert the Dog, to some canine degree, looked hurt. The humans, instead of whining, hesitated just a moment, then all started to work without further conversation.

  At 9:00, Oliver decided he did indeed need something to help him wake up and volunteered to go to the Coffee Tree Roasters on Walnut to buy coffee for the crew. He picked up a dozen Danish rolls—“Surprise us,” the Pratts had said—and a tray of coffees, a bag filled with sugar packets, fake sugar packets, dozens of little plastic jugs of cream, and a handful of stirrers. He almost ran into Barth Mills as he exited the store.

  “Where’s Robert?” Barth asked, as if Oliver had abandoned him somewhere in an alley.

  “Back at the jobsite. Waiting for his breakfast, probably.”

  Oliver could see Barth was disappointed at the news. He held his cup close to his chest. “Oh. Okay …”

  Oliver wouldn’t mind the company today. “Why don’t you come back with me?” Oliver offered. “Have you ever been inside the church?”

  “No. But I’d like to. You sure I wouldn’t be in the way?”

  “Not at all. Come on. Walk with me.”

  When Oliver opened the front door of the church, Barth gasped. On sunny mornings, like this day, the light exploded through the east windows, setting the interior aglow with pungent reds and purples and blues and golds, nearly vibrating the mote-filled air with color.

  “This is … magnificent,” Barth said solemnly. “I-I did not even begin to imagine.”

  Oliver stepped inside. “I know. After a while, I guess we’ve gotten used to it. But it really is breathtaking.”

  Robert hurried over to greet the old man, wagging and dog-grinning in recognition, looking toward the door, several times, as if expecting to see Barth’s dog enter.

  “Sorry, Robert the Dog, but Rascal looked a bit peaked this morning, so he’s home snoozing.”

  The Pratt brothers hurried around Oliver, taking the coffees and Danish, all eyeing the new person in their midst.

  “This is Barth Mills,” Oliver said. “He used to be a pastor. Well, I guess he still is … sort of. Do you ever stop being a pastor? From up in Kane County. These are the Pratt brothers: Henry, Gene, and Steven. That’s my brother, Tolliver, over there on the ladder. And that’s Kevin and Bob over there working on the electrical.”

  Barth waved at them all.

  “Really? A pastor?” Gene, the middle Pratt brother, asked. “Like a pastor who preaches?”

  “Like we shouldn’t swear now?” Henry, the oldest brother, added.

  “Yep.”

  “And like one that … what do they call it … hears confessions and stuff like that?” asked Steven Pratt, the youngest.

  “Well, not exactly. You might be thinking of the Catholics. They have priests who hear confessions. I never did that—at least not in an organized way. People confessed. But they didn’t have to. Not to me, anyhow. To God, yes.”

  Steven took this in, nodding as the old man spoke, as if needing confirmation about some odd doctrinal issue. “But … if someone wanted to confess, then you’d listen, right? I mean, if this person didn’t know how to do it by himself.”

  Barth took a drink of his coffee. “I suppose I would. Offer guidance. Offer support. Pray for them. Whatever.”

  A happy look appeared on Steven’s face—not in a joyful sense, but in an I’m-glad-I-figured-that-out sort of sentiment.

  Oliver had his hand on a cherry Danish. “Barth, help yourself. And feel free to wander around, as long as you’re careful. This is a construction zone, you know? Make yourself at home.”

  “Thanks.” Barth found a spot on a pew that leaned against the west wall, then sat staring at the big eye window. He watched as the Pratt brothers began assembling the pieces of a corner booth, just under the stained glass of Jesus holding a lamb, wearing a much-too-elegant robe, complete with gold tassels. As He gazed heavenward with a beatific expression, His thumb and two fingers of His right hand were raised, forming a turn-of-the-century benediction.

  Barth stuck around, watching the work, until lunch. “I have to go home and feed Rascal,” he explained to Oliver. “But would it be okay if I come back and bring him? I forgot how nice it is to be around people. I won’t get in the way. I promise.”

  Barth had simply sat and watched all morning, the Pratt boys going to him on occasion, speaking to him for a moment or two,
then letting him be.

  Oliver shrugged. It was the right response. “Sure. Come on back. Nice to have an audience sometimes.”

  Barth sat in the same pew for the rest of the afternoon, after lunch, with Rascal snoozing on the floor beside his feet, the old dog not even waking when a circular saw whined through a two-by-four or when someone pounded nails into recalcitrant hardwood.

  At 5:00, the Pratt brothers began to set aside their tools. They were nothing if not prompt and very conscious of the clock.

  “Start on time, leave on time,” Gene had said at the outset of their work—and that is what they did.

  But this evening was different. The two younger Pratt brothers, after hanging up their tool belts and cleaning off the table saw and offering some rudimentary cleaning, walked over to where Barth sat, their hands folded, like dusty acolytes, and sat next to him. Rascal looked up, pushed himself to his feet, wheezing, and sniffed at both of their legs. He sneezed once, probably because of the sawdust.

  “We know you’re not a priest,” Steve, the youngest Pratt, said.

  “Henry, our older brother, knows all about religion and stuff, and he explained it to us at lunch,” said Gene, the middle brother.

  “But we haven’t been to a church in a long time,” Steve added. “And I think that things probably changed since we went last.”

  Gene added, “We keep talkin’ about going to church—since Oliver goes to church and talks about God and Jesus sometimes, just like the chaplain in prison did. It all sounds so nice, so peaceful, you know? And this place—it’s like that. A special place.”

  “And we heard about churches that serve beer,” Steve added. “Did your church serve beer?”

  Barth knew better than to laugh because the question was asked with pure childlike innocence. “No, not as a rule. But sometimes, at church picnics, some of the members would have beer in their coolers. I don’t partake, but I don’t mind anyone who does—just as long as they don’t get drunk. Unless the little man in the bottle gets too big, then I guess I don’t see no … any harm in it. Although there are pastors that do.”