by Lisa Samson
“I can, Mary-Margaret. I’m going to.”
“But why?”
“I’m tired.” His words held three decades’ worth of baggage, three decades moving forward on hands, knees, and sometimes his belly, three decades of hunger and thirst never satisfied during the long journey.
“But this . . . this death. Do you realize how horrible it will be? Not only for you, but for those taking care of you? Most likely Hattie and Gerald, I guess.”
His eyes flashed and I was glad to see it. “What makes you think I’m going to ask anybody to take care of me, MaryMargaret? No, I’ll be gone long before it comes to that.”
“No! You can’t do such a thing. It’s a mortal—”
“I’m not a crazy papist like you are.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you are or not. It’s still—”
“Shut up, Mary-Margaret! Just shut up!” He yanked on the door handle and sprang out of the car. “You think you know so much when the truth is, you’re just a parrot for that pope of yours.” Slamming the door, he walked toward the trunk of the shade tree. He jarred his back against it, then bent double, grabbing his hair, once so thick and beautiful, with both hands, clenching the lackluster strands into his fists. And he let forth a feral moan that lasted, or so it seemed, until the sun set and the fields went black, the darkness settling on the drying hay, the heat receding just a little, the crickets grating their legs together in a scraping chorus that gave no comfort. Only the sight of boats out on the bay, their lights reflecting on the surface of the inky water soothed me at all as, by this time, we sat together on the hood of the car, and he held me as I cried.
Not you too, I sang in my brain. Not Jude.
The thought of his death brought with it a desolation and a loneliness at the realization that nobody else would love me, truly, ever again. At least not in a way that went into the marrow of their bones. Angie loved me like a close friend does, even one almost as close as a sister. To Sister Thaddeus I was still a little girl—not that I usually minded.
But no one needed to love me, save for Jude.
“I won’t let you commit suicide,” I said, looking up at the stars. “Just don’t do that.”
“There isn’t any other way.”
“Marry me, Jude. Let me take care of you. I want to.”
“I don’t want to be your mission.”
I grabbed his arm, feeling now the dissipation of his form.
“I need you to be. My life hasn’t turned out to be even close to what I expected. Jude, please. Would you do it for me? I need you to love me. Nobody on earth loves me like you do. And I need to love you too. I don’t know what it means to love like that.”
And I found I meant every word of what I was saying. Without the school sisters, I was nothing. I needed him. I needed Jude Keller.
I could hardly believe it myself.
Of course, he didn’t commit to anything that day, or even that week. But we had a nice time together at the art store. I strolled among the paints, wondering if I should buy watercolor sets or tubes of paint I could divvy out on plastic pallets.
“Well, the pallets can be reused every year, Mary-Margaret.” Jude picked up a paintbrush and twirled it between finger and thumb. Jude had beautiful hands, his fingers extended and refined, his nail beds square and long. “I’d try to accumulate as many lasting things as you can.”
“That’s good advice.”
The significance seemed to just pass by him and I thought about Jesus’s words. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Then give Jude those ears too, Jesus. Because he’s going to die soon and nobody should die without knowing, really knowing, you love them. That would be the biggest shame of all.
So I prayed that prayer over and over for the next couple of months. Give Jude ears. Give Jude ears. Give Jude ears.
It sounded as silly then as it does now, but then, my whole life had become a joke to the people on the island. MaryMargaret left the order to chase that reckless Keller boy? Is she crazy? What kind of a person would do something so thoughtless,so ridiculous? She’s always had her head on straight before this. Doesn’t she realize what she’s doing?
Honestly, I don’t think I really did. Definitely a point in my favor.
I’ve been sitting outside of customs, at the baggage claim of the Johannesburg airport. They’re sure not worried about snazziness here. I normally try to pack lightly, but, figuring I’ll be gone for almost six weeks, I shoved as many blouses and pairs of underpants as I could into my duffel, as well as some art supplies for my time working with Samkela. So here I sit with my little notebook, jotting things down while I wait for John. He said he’d be a little late due to the day’s appointments at the clinic. You see, John’s specialty is birth deformities; he’s quite the plastic surgeon. So once a month, he devotes his day to those sorts of surgeries. He’s also a general surgeon as well and that skill, I’m sure you’ll agree, is more necessary to his work at the clinic. Some of the things he does there at the clinic at Big Bend astonish me because there’s not a chance they’d let such procedures be carried out in such rudimentary circumstances in the US. But as John says, “I’m a Jesuit. We’d rather ask forgiveness than permission.”
And so I write. I’m tired, by the way. I never sleep well on planes and I sat next to quite the snorer. I try to be upbeat, but it’s hard to think of anything nice to say after six hours of that rattling racket. On with the story. I really just want to get this thing done now.
Jude didn’t agree to marry me all that summer, but at least he purposed to be helpful. He painted my apartment, polished the floors, then roped Brister Purnell into building me a rudimentary art studio on the grounds of the school. Together they hammered and sawed and raised a wooden building twenty feet by fifteen. A tin roof covered it and for heat they placed two old woodstoves in opposite corners. Jude said he’d keep the woodpile stocked once the winter set in.
“I feel kind of like Laura Ingalls Wilder when she went and taught on the prairie. Woodstoves and wood and teaching in a new building. It’s exciting. I may just have to bring a lunch pail with me each day.” I scooped out some vanilla ice cream for the both of us. One bowl, one spoon. I figured he’d get acclimated to me sharing his germs. After a while, he stopped asking for his own portion.
“Who’s Laura Ingalls Wilder?”
I explained, much to my sadness. “Didn’t you read when you were little?”
“Not much.”
“Not even Farmer Boy? I loved that book. They were always eating pie and sausages.”
He spooned the ice cream in his mouth. “I don’t know, Mary-Margaret. Sounds kinda boring to me. Anybody ever get killed in those books?”
“Not really. Jack the dog died. I remember that. And I cried so much I thought I would throw up.”
“Dead dogs. Hmm.”
Jude liked to read true crime.
“So school starts day after tomorrow,” he said. “You excited? Nervous at all?”
“Of course. What if they don’t like me? What if they think I’m just some do-gooder who’s doing this to make herself feel better?”
“Are you?”
“No! I need this job!” I took the spoon from him and dug up my own bite of ice cream.
“There you go, then. Most kids can see the truth. You’ll be fine.”
By this time, Jude’s syphilis symptoms had disappeared. He was out of the first stage and the second. We both wondered when the tertiary stage would begin. Truth was, he could remain in the latent stage for as long as twenty-five years. It could take him years and years to die. Then again, he could be dead in relatively few. I know that’s what he prayed for. I’d talked him out of committing suicide for the time being and I prayed to love him and to love him and to love him.
The next evening I put together packets of supplies for each child. I’d purchased used men’s shirts at the thrift store for smocks. With a smock, I gave each child a watercolor palette, two pain
tbrushes, a stick of charcoal, an eraser, two pencils, a bottle of ink, and a nibbed pen. These I placed in shoeboxes. Their first assignment would be to decorate their shoebox. That would give me a good idea as to each child’s imagination, manual dexterity, and natural style.
My kitchen window allowed the sounds of the island settling down for the night to filter through. Murmurs from the house next door rose from their living room window, sometimes the television, sometimes the commentary of the elderly man who chattered to his wheelchair-bound wife about nearly everything he was doing. “Now, Myra, I think I’ll go get myself some milk.”
Or, “That pothole down the street still hasn’t been fixed.” And she, with a softer voice, would reply. But I could never hear her words, just the soothing timbre of her high, smooth tones. He always set her in their car so gently and they ate fried Spam a lot, if the aromas from their kitchen were any indication. Cabbage as well.
The revolving light from Bethlehem Point Light would snag its beams on the frills of the curtain and when the breeze would blow just right, it was almost as if the ray itself pushed the gauzy fabric forward.
I decided, despite the heat, to make a cup of tea. I put just enough water for one cup into the kettle and turned off the spigot.
“Make one for me too.”
“Jesus!” I laughed at the sound of his voice, my back toward him as I filled the kettle higher.
“Gee, Mary-Margaret. I’ve never heard you take the Lord’s name in vain before.”
I wheeled around. “Jude!”
He walked forward. “Who’d you think it was?”
“Well, nobody.”
He stopped and crossed his arms. “Surely not Jesus.”
“Of course not! He would have asked politely.” I laughed in an effort to distract him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been thinking. Can I sit down?”
He’d gained some of his weight back and his hair looked almost normal. I remember thinking maybe our physical union wouldn’t be as appalling as I feared. Even the pustules on his arms and legs were healing nicely, leaving only faint scars that would, hopefully in time, fade completely. Inside of him, however . . . Lord have mercy.
“Of course. Have a seat.” I turned on the burner and set the kettle to boil. “What have you been thinking about?”
“This stage I’m at, the latent stage, could last for years.”
“This is true.” I sat down and began securing each student’s collection of pens, pencils, and brushes with a rubber band.
Jude caught on to the process and began to help. “So, anyway. Maybe this is a chance to get a fresh start, even for just a little while. Until the final stage settles in.”
“What are you thinking?”
I wasn’t going to suggest that this bit of hope he was feeling might be put to good use by taking some antibiotics. He’d have to come to that conclusion on his own. Jude simply had to come to his own conclusions.
“I’m thinking I’d like to take you up on your offer. Would you still marry me, Mary-Margaret?”
“Are you asking?” I set down the bundle I’d just secured.
The teakettle screamed. I jumped.
I turned down the flame and grabbed a pot holder, circling it around the iron handle of the kettle.
Pouring the tea, I felt his hands descend on my shoulders.
“Yes,” he whispered into my ear. “That’s what I’m doing.”
All those quivery feelings from when we were young went sliding from that ear right down into my private parts. I’m so sorry to have to write it like that, but that’s exactly what happened and I wasn’t prepared for it any more than you just were to hear it.
He turned me to face him. “If I don’t have a good reason to stay here, I’ll go back to my old life. I can’t do that. I’ve always loved you, Mary-Margaret. You know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m sorry about that. I guess, what I’m saying is, I’m sorry I didn’t know what to do with that. I just didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t either.” I laid my head against his chest.
And we listened to the murmur of the old folks, and through the window the light circled on us again and again.
“So what’s your answer?”
“It’s yes, of course.”
“But there’s one thing. We can’t have sex. I’m not going to give this disease to you.”
“All right.”
Jesus only told me to marry him. He didn’t tell me we had to have children together. I mean, I doubt even the pope would insist on my procreating with a syphilitic man.
Jude wasn’t the romantic type. He let me go with a squeeze and I poured the tea. When I sat down at the table with him, he said, “Let’s always have a cup of tea together. Every night. Let’s make it the last thing we do.”
I always drink tea with Jesus, I wanted to tell him, and then I realized something. Jude was Jesus.
I walked with him to the dock where he’d tied up Gerald’s boat and we held hands. “This is as far as it’s going to go,” he made sure to tell me. “Other than hugs. And no kissing either. I don’t even want to sleep in the same bed with you, Mary-Margaret.”
We stood on the dock, the water lapping against the pilings. “You’ll get the couch then,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I mean, I’ll need a good night’s sleep if I’m going to teach all day. And I get grumpy without my sleep.”
He stepped down into the motorboat. “I’m going to go back out on the water with Brister.”
“But, Jude, he—”
“Is calmer than he used to be. He’s settled into his life. My mother didn’t help that process any. He said it’s fine. I’m a thirty-one-year-old man, Mary-Margaret. I’ll beat the sh-- out of him if he tries to throw a punch.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I watched as he rowed cleanly back to the lighthouse. His boat cutting through the reflection of the moon.
Oh my. These memories tumble down the inside of my body so easily, yet every so often a barbed bit scrapes along. I’d quite forgotten I was in Africa! It’s been so long since Jude died, the rawness of our beginnings as man and wife, and the pain of losing him that day, have bowed this old white head down so that my chin almost meets my chest.
And I have a cramp in my neck now.
Oh, John, where are you?
I check my watch. Just another three hours, Mary-Margaret, and he’ll be here.
There are some days an orphan misses her mother more than other days. But the biggest, most keenly felt of those days is surely her wedding day.
Jude wanted to get married as soon as possible, while he was still in good health. I did too. So we set the date for September 30th. The leaves would be starting to turn and the blue of the sky would deepen from the heat-addled expanse of summer.
We’d get married right at Bethlehem Point, under the maple tree, Bethlehem Point Light looking on.
At least that’s what I thought. Until I voiced the idea to Jude over our nightly cup of tea. I’d made it through my first week of school. It felt like the old days actually.
“No!” he said, his jaw muscles clenched so tightly I thought his lower face might fold in upon itself.
“Why?”
“No, Mary-Margaret. I won’t get married to you with that lighthouse looking on. I can’t.”
That was the first inkling I had that something went on at that lighthouse none of us knew about. Not Hattie, nor Gerald.
Not myself. And it affirmed what Angie said about me for years that I always denied—I was a lousy judge of character.
“Can you tell me why?”
“I don’t like to speak ill of people. You can say a lot about me, Mary-Margaret, but I don’t backstab.”
“You’re right. Are you speaking of your dad?”
“Yes. Among others.”
“All right.” I slid the plate of cookies toward him.
“I’
m not hungry.”
“Me either.”
“What would be a good second choice for you?” he asked.
“St. Francis’s, I suppose.”
He screwed up his face. “A church?”
“Yes.” I said it with a finality that must have got through to him because he only nodded in reply and said, “Okay.”
I loved teaching at the consolidated school. My little art barn was, I hate to say it, the envy of all the other teachers. But I put in a hot plate and a percolator, and soon we were meeting after school for a cup of coffee. If you’ve got something everybody else wants, I find that sharing it actually takes away the resentment. After the first week, the other members of the faculty were bringing in sweets to go with the coffee.
I felt so white.
I don’t know if it’s all right to say that, but I did. And I often wondered what they said about me behind their backs. Did they call me a do-gooder, the great white hope? I hope not. I hope Regina Bray told them I was in dire straits. Thankfully they probably heard about Jude and thought I was as crazy as a betsey bug. Believe me when I say they were the ones doing me the favor.
In quiet moments I wished Jude had been the type who had hidden who he was, but no, everybody in Abbeyville knew what he’d been doing with his time for the past decade or so. I never did find out how that leaked into seemingly everyone’s basement.
Jude ate dinner with me most nights as well. Our time together during the days lengthened from one cup of tea at seven thirty to him walking me home from school after a day on the boat and staying until nine or so. As promised, he wouldn’t so much as kiss me. And when he emerged from my bathroom, all washed up, still smelling of water and wind, his skin now browned and his eyes glowing the blue of the periwinkle blooms in the Bray’s yard, I wanted him to kiss me. I missed all those kisses in our teens and wanted to kick myself for not relishing them. They’d just felt like something to enjoy and then regret back then.
“Mary-Margaret,” he said about two weeks before our wedding. “Sit down and I’ll make the tea tonight.”
I rested my chin in my palms, my elbows perched on the edge of the table. My arms pressed my breasts together and a stunned feeling washed through me as I realized how easily sexuality was coming to me.
