A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  The squeeze, this time her elbow, which was a little bit ticklish.

  “I don’t know how to put it,” she said.

  She had walked down the aisle at First Communion behind Victoria Pidoto, and all she remembered was Victoria’s amazing dress, with tiers of lacy ruffles and a wide sash that tied in a big satin bow. Her parents just quit going to church after her sister Jen did First Communion. She noticed they didn’t go anymore, and she kind of thought they hadn’t been going for a while.

  She wanted a cigarette, wanted a vodka tonic.

  “I should get going,” she said. “I’ll think about the church thing. Want to walk me home?”

  That time it wasn’t such a long, long kiss.

  Pictures of Jesus with his long hair and sad eyes made her feel the way she felt about Johnny Depp and Abraham Lincoln. She went for years without thinking about God at all, ever, dreaming along as if she were a flower or a dog or a stone in a creek. Freedom from religion was a sort of religion in itself.

  Religion meant the religious right.

  She went over to the Truckyard. Even-Steven wasn’t working. He was sitting at the bar. He leaned back and looked at her through those dirty glasses.

  “What are you up to?” His usual bullshit bar banter. “About five-two?”

  She sat next to him. Lisa was behind the bar doing the crossword. Whenever Lisa made Pattianne’s drinks, she made them big. Like now. Tall glass, heavy pour. Vodka tonic, extra lime. Even-Steven lit a cigarette and offered her one out of his pack. Camel straights. She shook her head.

  He said, “You’re a lightweight.” Then he got up and went behind the bar and got a pack of Marlboro Lights from the cabinet. He looked at her as he tore the cellophane and opened the box, the master of the desultory gesture. He shook one cigarette up and she took it. He flicked his lighter and lit it. It tasted awful. He came back around the bar and sat back down.

  Church. There was an old, old understanding between her and whatever it was that used to happen those Sundays when she was little, between her and the chanting, between her and the candles, her and the early morning light through the stained glass. It was an understanding that was so old, so private, so much a part of her that it had never even been important.

  Even-Steven said, “So, chatterbox, want to come over?”

  Pattianne shrugged.

  He said, “Do whatever you want. I won’t charge you for the cigarette.”

  The smoke from the cigarette floated between them and he nudged her.

  She said, “Sure.”

  “Here, then, you can have the whole pack.”

  Ha, ha.

  Lisa said, “Below the kingdom.”

  Pattianne said, “Phylum.”

  She drank the vodka tonic, and then another, and he drank his beer, and another. Things just kind of went on around them—drinks, cigarettes, drinks, cigarettes—and it got dark out. There was an old Saturday Night Live on the TV above the bar.

  Even-Steven had the most beautiful long throat, that soft white skin. She’d put a hickey there once. Really pissed him off.

  Finally she got up, and he got up. She headed for the door. He followed. No one would ever accuse Even-Steven of being romantic, although as soon as they were outside he fell in beside her and they walked toward his apartment, leaving her car parked by the Truckyard.

  He said, “I haven’t seen you for a while. What did you do, get a life?” And he pulled her by the elbow until they were touching.

  His apartment was a funky messy place, mostly music stuff, and a big TV and books stacked up everywhere. There was only the light from the streetlight, and he took off his jeans and his sweatshirt and stood there tall and naked and easy. He went to the CD player and put on Miles Davis. But he took another CD from the shelf and tossed it to her. Requiem in D Minor, still all wrapped up tight in its shiny plastic—the best version of the Requiem in D Minor ever recorded.

  “For your very own,” he said. He got onto the bed. “Come here, I missed you.”

  And then he fucked her so nice, kind of slow and lazy, just like he always did.

  With Even-Steven there were orgasms, strange little tickly ones at the very end that she would hold her breath and reach for somehow. The first time it happened she was so surprised, she said, “I came.”

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  She remembered he didn’t even open his eyes. “Well,” she told him. “That doesn’t usually happen.”

  “Oh, what,” he said, “now you’re going to expect it every time?” That was his idea of compassion, or humor, she was never sure which with Even-Steven, and it didn’t really matter with Even-Steven.

  Then he said, “No, really, I’m glad,” in a flat, embarrassed voice. He hated it when he had to be sincere.

  “Fuck you,” she’d said. “And yes, every time.” And it did, almost, with him, happen every time.

  And now, with Miles Davis playing on and on, with Even-Steven lying on his back, quiet, his long body white in the streetlight light, she wanted him again, but she didn’t wake him. She just lay there, wanting.

  Sometimes she slept but dreamed she was awake and lying in bed, wishing for sleep. It was one of those nights.

  The light finally came into the sky outside his window, and she slipped out of the tangled sheets, found her clothes, tiptoed around piles of dirty jeans and T-shirts, picked the new CD up off the table, knocking a paperback book onto the floor. Cormac McCarthy. Of course. It landed on a sweatshirt and didn’t make a sound. She headed for the bathroom where Even-Steven’s old yellow cat, Tangent, was sleeping in the sink. Tangent always slept in the sink, curled into the round basin. His ears twitched, but he didn’t wake up and look at her. Her throat ached, but she couldn’t run any water. She didn’t want to face Even-Steven’s kitchen. Her head pounded gently. She got dressed and went down the stairs and out into the day.

  The sky was gray, a fine haze of clouds high up, and the air smelled damp, the stink of cigarettes in her hair. She walked back to the Truckyard to get her car, parked under a maple tree and covered in pale green dust, her poor old Volvo, which made a lot of noise starting up. NPR leaped from the radio, and a fair amount of static, and she snapped it off. This was her favorite part of being with Even-Steven, sneaking away early, the city not awake yet. Today, however, her head was intensely hungover, and empty. She just drove. She was a bad driver when she had a hangover. Bad reactions. Too jumpy. She was very careful, and drove the side streets of sleepy Montclair, avoiding the early traffic on the river-front drive.

  When she got home, she put the CD on, loud enough that she could hear it in the shower. It didn’t really sound any different from the other one. She was all clean and shampooed and wrapped in her long chaste fuzzy bathrobe when the phone rang. She turned the music down. It was Michael.

  “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” It was only seven fifteen, but he didn’t even sound sleepy. “I just got back from a run. It’s beautiful out. How are you?”

  It was not a question she wanted to answer, but she loved it that he was asking.

  He said, “Want to meet for breakfast?”

  And she said yes, not that breakfast really sounded like a good idea. Her stomach was a little lurchy. But she got dressed, chose her green sweater, pulled Mozart out of the CD player, and headed back out the door. The sun was lighting up the sidewalk, with its black polka dots of old chewing gum amid the sparkles of whatever it is they made old sidewalks out of. A sheet of newspaper blew along like it was a tumbling tumbleweed right here in Montclair, New Jersey. Gold pollen shimmered on the Volvo. She slipped the CD into the CD player and took off up the street, along the river-front drive where sprinklers were sprinkling and runners were running, and if she hadn’t been marveling at the whole of creation, she would have been mindful of the fact that, although she felt a little better, she was still hungover, and when the red light suddenly appeared, complete with a kid on a skateboard in the crosswalk, she slammed on the brakes
. The kid leaped away from the front bumper, his skateboard flying up, and he started yelling.

  “I’m sorry,” she yelled back. “I’m so sorry,” waving her hands.

  He stomped out into the intersection. Righted his skateboard with his toe. Skated away. Pattianne didn’t move. The light was red, for one thing. She turned Mozart off. Sat there through the green and then another red. Breathing. The skateboard had flipped all the way across the intersection. She wondered if she was going to throw up. Finally she drove the last three blocks to Violet’s Bistro and parked, taking up two parking places. Got out and walked toward the door. Her knees were shaking.

  Michael was at one of the picnic tables under the purple striped awning. He stood when he saw her. His face looked so pink and bright. Not like someone who had been out drinking late and having sex and sneaking away at dawn and almost killing a child.

  “I almost hit a kid.”

  “What?”

  “Just now.”

  She stood still.

  “I don’t know.” She felt a kind of fizz, a nervous giggle. “I had the music blasting and I guess I just almost hit this skateboarder.”

  “Oh my god, are you all right?”

  “It was Mozart,” she said. “Requiem in D Minor,” and he put his hand on her arm.

  “I’m all right, really,” she said, not all right. “It was a red light.”

  He put his arm around her. He wore a blue sweater that was scratchy and soft at the same time, and there it was again, that arm, that comfort, and suddenly she was crying. She was horrified, and she said, “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m all right, the kid was fine, he just skated away on his skateboard—it was one of those really long ones,” and then she was laughing again, and shaking.

  “Sit down,” he said, and she sat down. “Here,” and he handed her a paper napkin.

  “Thank you.”

  He sat on the bench next to her. “You really love that music, huh?”

  She tried to blow her nose without honking.

  He said, “You want to eat out here or wait for a table inside?”

  “I don’t know. What do you want?”

  “I want you to go to Mass with me, hear the choir sing.”

  His arm around her shoulders, the purple striped awning, a skinny kid all in black skating safely away on a skateboard. A waitress in yellow overalls came up to the table, and Michael said, “Hi—two coffees with cream, and waffles.” Little chuckles all around.

  She called Jen that afternoon. Jen still lived a couple towns away from their parents. It was a long messy drive down the New Jersey Turnpike for Pattianne, an easy couple miles, past fields, a Girl Scout camp, and an office park for Jen.

  “Hi, this is Jen. I’m on a need-to-know basis, so you should probably just call back later instead of leaving a message.”

  “Just pick it up, Jen, it’s me.”

  “Hey there, hi.”

  “So,” Pattianne said.

  “Hi. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Well. Actually, when was the last time you went to Mass?” Jen took their grandmother to church sometimes, Nana Farley.

  “Is this a conversational gambit, or do you want, like, a specific date, like a year or a Holy Day or something?”

  Jen and Pattianne were close and loved each other and all that—pretty sisterly, she’d have to say—but Pattianne wasn’t in the habit of sharing the intimate details of her life with her sister. Like boyfriends. Jen liked Even-Steven, though.

  “Conversational gambit,” Pattianne said.

  “Bullshit.”

  A garbage truck inched along the narrow street outside the window. All the colors of the rainbow were smashed up together in its maw, plus a lot of black plastic.

  “I want to go hear this choir,” she said. “On Easter Sunday.”

  “Well, there are no Easter bonnets.”

  Jen would be staring out her own window, looking down on the busy toy main street of the toy town of Jamesburg, where she lived in a shiny new condo unit across from the colonial post office that was still the post office.

  “They haven’t done that since like 1963 or something,” Pattianne said.

  “You can if you want to, though.”

  “It’s a high Mass.” She wandered back to her bedroom and flopped on the futon. “Latin.”

  “Ah,” Jen said. “Wear a dress.”

  “Oh, good. That’s just what I needed to know. Thanks so much.”

  “Are you really going to Mass? Or is it a concert in a church?”

  “Mass. With a friend. And his parents.”

  That quieted things down for a second. Then Jen said, “You’re technically still a Catholic, I think. Until you commit a mortal sin. Like never going to church anymore and all that, but I think you have to be officially ex-communicated to set the alarms off. They have them installed in the doorways now, you know. Retinal detectors. Are you dating a Catholic guy?”

  “Well,” she said. “His parents are Catholic. But we’re not really dating.”

  “Right. Have fun. Don’t drink the water.”

  “It’s wine.”

  “That either.”

  Not much help. But she loved talking to Jen, and afterward she always wondered why they didn’t see each other more often, and she told herself they would, especially now that she was finished going to school and all. And she knew they wouldn’t. And thought maybe they would.

  But for now, Easter. She looked it up on the internet, and the first thing she got was all about alleluia, which was the buzzword of the day apparently, a Hebrew word adopted by the Christian church, Hallel being the greatest all-time expression of praise in Hebrew, combined with Jah, the shortened form of the name of God, JHVH, which is Jehovah with the vowels taken out, meaning “I am.” It becomes hallelujah, alleluia being a Latinized spelling.

  There were suggestions for starting the day with the phrase and the lighting of an Easter candle, and ways to celebrate, but Pattianne was distracted: the vowels taken out?

  She wandered around in Hebrew for a while, this site and that, until she learned that the Torah didn’t have vowels because the vowels were the breath sounds, and it was something about the Hebrew religious texts needing to be spoken aloud to be interpreted truly, and so no vowels in the written version. She wasn’t sure she had it right, but then it was time to go to work.

  As well as black roses, Melissa wore a lot of religious symbols on her jean jacket, her messenger bag, her arms, so Pattianne asked her what she knew about Catholics.

  “That they have rules,” Melissa said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you aren’t allowed to go to Communion unless you join the club. And if you don’t join the club, I guess you are consigned to the fires of hell, or a Democratic regime that finances abortion clinics.”

  She should get Jen and Melissa together. “Seriously.”

  “Seriously.”

  So she called Jen again.

  “Hello, this is Jen’s answering machine.”

  “Jen? Pick up, it’s me.”

  No pickup.

  “I have another Catholic question—do you go to Communion?”

  She got a message back on her phone later that afternoon.

  “Sure. It makes Grammy happy.”

  Pattianne did what seemed like the next logical thing. She dropped her good dress off downstairs at the dry cleaner’s. It was longish, a flower print, kind of gray and blue. Some green. No particular color at all.

  Church music. The chanting sound of the liturgy. The stained-glass windows. That people have believed this or that for so long, struggling with some idea of eternity. What it must have been like, to live in the time of miracles. That there are no miracles anymore. There are logical explanations and media hoaxes, but no miracles. Even God hasn’t appeared in person since somewhere late in the old testament. People talked about Jesus being their personal savior, but God himself doesn’t show up like he used to. No burning bushes, no
wanderers in the desert.

  She just wanted some Mozart. A little Mozart, a little Michael Bryn.

  He picked her up in an orange VW, and the first thing she noticed was how good he looked in a navy blazer and white shirt and lavender tie. She shut the door of the VW and he said, “Happy Easter, egg.”

  Adorable. She said, “You too. Alleluia.”

  The next thing she noticed was the beige plastic Madonna on the dashboard.

  “This is the first time in a long time I’ve been to church,” she said. “I mean, is this your car?”

  She was kind of hoping he would say no, but he patted the steering wheel and said, “This is my O-bug.”

  “O-bug?”

  “Orange,” he said, and they were off, down the interstate to Edison. She held a small gray leather clutch with tissues and her wallet and a comb, and as they drove, Michael weaving in and out of traffic, the O-bug rattling like a roller skate, damp fingerprints appeared on the gray leather clutch. It seemed too noisy to talk. It seemed dangerous to distract him, too, or maybe it was just the way the steering was, kind of slippery. Her tights itched.

  When they got off the freeway and it was a little quieter, a little calmer, she said, “So, I’m not really a practicing Catholic.”

  He reached over and touched her leg, moved his palm on the rayon, or whatever it was the dress was made of, and he asked, “Does that bother you?”

  “No. I just want to be sure. I mean, things change, I might not know what to do. During Mass, I mean.”

  “There they are.” He pulled into a parking lot. She couldn’t see who he was talking about. There were a lot of people heading up the steps of the white stone church, Christ the King, which was a modern, low kind of church, and that made her feel a little relief for some reason. She got out and brushed at the seat-belt wrinkles in her dress. It was sunny. It was a little cool. She wished she had a sweater or something. She wished she had a cigarette. Michael took her elbow, and they joined what seemed like a throng, crossing the parking lot, crossing the street, and he pointed to the rest of the Bryns waiting in a small neat group on the stone steps of the church, looking around. They reminded her of nature photos of meerkats, standing on their hind legs, looking around, all hyper-cute. Mrs. Bryn saw them first and said, “Here’s our Michael,” and they all turned.