by Lisa Samson
As she gathered up her cellophane-covered Bible, she told Sean, “It’s the rich young ruler today,” and she aged like time-lapse photography as she walked to the door and followed Jonah up the steps.
I got up and closed the door. Turned around and clapped my hands. “Okay guys, it’s time to learn about Jesus!”
“What’s you doin’ here, lady?” a little boy with brown eyes the size of serving spoons asked.
A girl obviously older than her years jerked a thumb at Sean. “Now him I can figure on.”
Sean and I laughed. “Sean is my friend. And so is Miss Della-Faye.”
And they shrugged, and Sean got to teaching, and I chimed in with some timely historical facts and read an Arch Book about the rich young ruler, and boy, could I relate. I poured the juice, spread out the cookies, and honestly, I hadn’t felt that alive since death began to call.
And then yet another Arch Book. This one on Jonah, who, it appeared, had nothing in common with my friend Jonah.
My friend Jonah.
Well, yes. I suppose he is my friend.
Soon the children were fighting over who could sit in my lap. I’d never felt so blessed in all my life. Perhaps Jonah felt like this after being coughed up on dry land. I don’t know. Maybe I need to read about it.
I called Solo on the walk home. My friend Solo. And my friend Sean walked beside me.
And here you think you’ve done well at fogging yourself in for the long haul, reachable only by fog bells and the sharpest beam from a faraway lighthouse, and you find you’ve got three men, all different shades of brown no less, and each is your friend. And you wonder. How in the world did that happen?
Georgia
Sean and Fairly are telling UG about Sunday school. My cousin also talked about how my hands are starting to curl in a little bit.
Good night.
“Will you be coming back for dinner, Uncle G?” Fairly asks.
“She’s actually making pasta, Geoffrey.” Sean adds. “The rest of the group is coming for the meal.”
“God knows I need to be with everyone.”
Fairly making dinner?
“And besides, I’m wondering if I just need a break altogether. Even Christ took time away.”
Sean chuckles. “That’s the truth.”
“You know, Uncle G, I think you just need to pour juice and give out butter cookies. That’s what I think.”
“I’m not following you, Fair.”
“Like today at Sunday school. You want to save the world. I don’t know if you can.”
UG sighs, and I hate Fairly as much as I can from in here.
“I know what you mean, Fair.”
What?!
“I’ve been all over the map, literally, and I have our group to serve here, but what do I really do for the people on East Third?”
A chair scrapes, and Fairly says, “I think you need to come with me to Della-Faye’s VIP Restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a great place to gather your strength. Right, Sean?”
“I’m not going to argue with that.” And Sean uses his smiley voice.
So there they all are, doing God things, and here I sit, listening from the sidelines. The sidelines? I’m not even in the stadium. I may not even be in the neighborhood of the stadium.
I used to be on the sidelines. I’d love to be on the sidelines now. Well, sort of.
Oh rats!
Grandmom sits next to me.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
How did you suddenly appear?
I’m not sure, Georgia. I’m just here to tell you to stop going back to your old self-pity. It’s what got you here in the first place.
Oh yeah, there is that.
All right, I’m gone. I don’t like having to appear in these pantyhose all the time. Would you mind if, next time I came back, I didn’t look exactly like you remembered?
Not one bit.
And Grandmom disappeared.
Fairly
I lifted the basil bunch up to my nose and inhaled as deeply as Uncle G does on one of his cigarettes. Some smells you can practically eat. I held it up to Sean’s nose. “Take a whiff.”
“Man, that’s wonderful.”
“So pull off the leaves and tear them up just a smidge while I put the pasta on.”
“You’re doing well at this kitchen stuff.”
I searched the pantry for the bottle of olive oil Uncle G always uses. Cold-pressed, all-natural, la-di-da-di-da. “Oh please, Sean. This is one step above ramen in the dorms.” Except maybe for the cold-pressed, all-natural olive oil, of course.
“Girl, I don’t know how much ramen I’ve eaten over the past ten years in Richmond. This right here is a feast! Do you have any idea how rich we actually are?”
I spilled a dollop of the rich green oil into the simmering water. “So you called this a monastery, but it’s not Catholic.”
“No, but it is scheduled, and we have certain things we adhere to. Chastity—”
“Chastity? You’re married.”
“Abstinence for the singles, faithfulness in marriage for the marrieds. Also poverty and obedience. The usuals.”
“I like the idea of serving down there like that.”
The basil loosed more aroma as he wounded the leaves. “Never thought I’d hear anything like that coming from you.”
“Me either. Crazy, isn’t it? And don’t think I’m picturing myself in one, because I’m not.”
“Hey, I’m the last person to assume anything.”
“True. I just like the freedom of simplicity. It’s what modern design is all about. This is just living it. Sort of.”
We worked in silence for a while, and even though he’s married to my fruity cousin, I have to admit we were quite the team. But something very different bound us, something more universal than romance. Besides, I couldn’t imagine myself with Sean in that way. He’s gorgeous, sexy, built, talented. But, well, yuck, for some reason. Don’t ask why.
I handed him a cellophane bag of pine nuts. “Just chop these up. Not much.”
“You were so much fun to watch this morning, Fair.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You were a natural with those kids.”
“I love kids.”
He stepped back from the counter. “Well, you sure never let on before this.”
“There are a lot of things I never let on, believe me.”
He picked his task back up. “Well, spill it then, girl.”
So I did. I told him about Braden, all the parties and the dahling people in my circles, and how it really made me feel good for a very long time and how shallow was that? His eyes got bigger and bigger and when I finished he laughed and laughed.
“What?”
“That’s a whole lot of extra work to go through to grieve a good man.”
“True. I mean, how ridiculous can somebody be? I can’t begin to imagine Hort approving of such behavior. Especially in his honor! But don’t forget, all those people made me money. They were my insurance against not only loneliness, but the Box N Save.”
“God forbid you have to go back to the Box N Save, Fairly!”
And I joined in his laughter.
Uncle G walked in, set his backpack on the floor. “What’s so funny?”
I set the pasta like pick-up sticks into the rolling water. “Oh, just the lengths people will go through to keep from being real.”
Later on, as we passed the Italian bread to one another and shared the wine, I looked around me and thought, I am part of this. I bought this bread and poured this wine. And in the taking I was given something I can’t explain now and don’t think I’ll ever be able to. But I understood something in the midst of these people that I’d never seen before. I finally understood something about Jesus’s death that nobody ever told me with all the talk of eternal punishment, hellfire, and brimstone.
He didn’t just die to save me from something. He died to give me
something too, and when Peg proposed a toast and said, “To life abundant, to life in Christ,” I knew just exactly what that something was, and if I had been standing on the dusty roads of Galilee and heard it from the lips of Christ Himself, it wouldn’t have been plainer or any more profound.
I saw my own hardheartedness and my pride, my jutting lip and growled words of “I’ll do it myself, thanks,” when all the while, as Peg testified at the previous gathering, “Jesus was telling me to cast all my burdens on Him. That He would give me rest.”
I got it. Like my parents before me.
And Blaine held the plate of bread, the cup of wine, and said, “The blood of Christ, shed for you,” and I took and ate saying, “Thanks be to God.”
The flannelgraph Jesus took on three dimensions. Perhaps four. I was all too glad to rest, to cast away my cares. Lord knew, I needed that.
Georgia
It’s really weird to see UG so vulnerable. He’s totally obsessed with his direction in life these days. As in, “How can God be calling me to step back when so many people are in need?”
Well, gee, UG, I don’t know. I guess God can do whatever He wants, pretty much, right? I mean, here I am in the pink, so who’s to say?
He takes my hand and opens up the fingery curl and massages my palm. “This is the thing, Georgie. It hasn’t all been one great big success. I’ve lost lots of people along the way. Regina Marzollo, the abused woman I was trying to help—her scumbag husband killed her.”
At least you tried, UG. I mean, come on.
“And the Maguire children. Did I ever tell you about them?”
Wouldn’t he absolutely freak if I actually answered?
“I don’t remember anymore how I got in the middle of that one, but they were taken from a neglectful set of parents, and they did fine in foster care. I went away for a couple of years to Mexico, and when I got back I made it to the foster parents’ house to visit the kids.
“There were three of them. Paul, Vickie, and Stubby, who was always stubbing his toe on everything.
“Their foster mom answered the door and said the children had been returned to their parents.”
Uncle Geoffrey stops talking. I can’t hear anything, but the bed is shaking, and he’s lying across me.
He sniffs a great sniff. “When I talked to the social worker, she said they fell through the cracks. That Paul, at sixteen, was fifty pounds when they finally got him out. Vicky, at twelve, weighed thirty pounds, and Stubby had already died. It was the smell of his corpse that alerted the neighbors.”
And then a great gulping sob shook his body and therefore mine.
He’s crying. My uncle is crying and crying and crying.
And I can’t put my arms around him, I can’t tell him it’s all right, he did what he could. I can’t tell him anything.
And I realize this is nothing new. I can’t blame the coma for this. It’s been this way for years and years.
And I cry too, the pink suffocating me, my own tears drowning me, and the light fades as I descend into a world of regret so deep I wonder if it is possible to ever see my way back through. I wonder if I really desire to at all.
Fairly
Nope, couldn’t imagine being with Sean. Definitely couldn’t, considering every time I looked at him I realized that Georgia probably wouldn’t be in the coma if not for my vindictiveness. I should never have brought him around to Uncle G’s without preparing her.
I’d like to say I didn’t know what came over me. But I certainly did. Georgia’s comment about my clothes filled me with an icy rage. Who wants to be found out like that? And for such a creepy thing? I mean, being an alcoholic is one thing. Scads of people are alcoholics. But how many people wear their dead mother’s clothes?
My solitary comfort regarding my cousin remains the fact that if she hadn’t drunk herself into a coma last month, surely this month, or the next or the next, would have seen her lying on the floor in a pool of her own vomit, right? Did she ever picture herself like that? I can’t imagine she did and continued to pour Jimmy Beam down her throat like that.
Clarissa
The girl’s training bras don’t really fit anymore, but she doesn’t want to ask the mother for new ones. She’s been saving up a little here, a little there, from the grocery money. If she had time for friends, maybe they’d pass a few along.
Oh well.
The cousin stomps into her room.
“Kurt said you were flirting with him at school today.”
“No, Reggie, I wasn’t. I swear, I just said hi in the hallway. That’s all.”
“No relative of mine is going to be an easy mark. Do you understand?”
She smells a little beer on his breath. Just a little.
“Yes. But I didn’t think—”
“Shut up! Just shut up and make me a sandwich.”
The night before, the girl heard the mother yelling at the boy she calls her son, calling him a no-good lowlife just like her ex-husband.
But at least the mother didn’t tie them up and lock them in closets. At least the mother didn’t beat them with belts and spoons. At least the mother didn’t go off and leave them alone in a world that brings nothing but pain.
No idea how bad things could really be. No idea.
She makes him a sandwich: chopped ham on white with American cheese, mayo, and mustard. A crisp lettuce leaf. Some Doritos on the side. And then she’s off, next door.
And there’s a cake with her name on it and mint chocolate chip ice cream and presents. A collectible doll, with pink cheeks, red lips, and a dress as blue and innocent as a summer sky at noon; a necklace with a cross in silver hanging at the bottom; a bright pink T-shirt with flowers scattered like windswept petals over the chest.
Leonard the Granddaddy Man and TV Mom hug her and tell her she’s growing into quite the beautiful young lady.
Georgia
Tears and sadness feel different here in the pink. More crystallized, magnified because you can see exactly why it is you’re crying. None of that intermittent, smeared grief and frustration; feeling worthless and without recourse and you don’t really know why, but hey, it deserves a good cry, right?
I wish I could lend some of this clarity to UG right now.
He’s back, of course, and I can’t understand why he sits here all day. He shuffles his papers less and less and makes fewer phone calls. I honestly don’t mind listening to his business. Gives me something to do when the ghost ladies fail to show.
But today he’s rambling on about theology.
So here’s the thing. I have faith. I can’t say I made good use of it, that’s for sure, but nevertheless I always knew Christ had me in mind up there on the cross. Other than that, I kept it shoved aside. It’s actually good of God to give me this coma chance. I hope He does stuff like this for other people, stuff we’ll never know about.
I don’t think I’m going to make it. The doctors’ buzz offers neither a vignette nor a vista. I’m in a persistent vegetative state. Good night. The chances of me resurfacing are about as great as the Loch Ness monster’s. I should be the one crying, not UG!
Nevertheless, he rambles.
“So, God, I just don’t get this. How could You have given someone so much potential, so much to live for, and she couldn’t work her way around the bad things in life? She’s not the first person to have lost her mother as a child, and most of them don’t flounder for the rest of their lives.
“Couldn’t You have stepped in with a heavier hand? Snapped her out of this? Given her cancer or paralyzed her or something to make her stop?”
Cancer? Paralysis? Uh, thanks, UG! Although his prayer does make me see why God would actually choose to cause someone to suffer if it actually gets them to stop pickling their liver, to stop urinating their life away.
“I just don’t get it, Lord. I just don’t.”
I feel for Uncle Geoffrey. Here he’s given his entire life to helping people, and he did it for God’s sake even if he di
dn’t have a Bible in his hand or a WWJD bracelet on his wrist. And now he sits day after day in his niece’s hospital room asking all sorts of questions. Wouldn’t you think he’d feel more peace?
And yet, who am I to judge? Does the fact that he asks questions mean he’s not at peace? Are the two mutually exclusive? If so, then I warrant peace cannot be found, for a human that asks no questions is (1) dead or (2) brainwashed.
The wispy rustles of onionskin paper tell me of the little pocket testament UG owns, pages worn to a breath, and I wonder what he’s reading. Psalms, maybe? Soon enough, he falls asleep, and I pray to God no one disturbs him for a good long time.
Clarissa
The girl examines herself from the front in the mirror. Yes, the new bra from Fashion World fits just right. She turns to the side. It’s a little mature, with pretty lace inlays and satin bows. She glides her fingertips across the smooth bows. Yes, very alluring. But it was also the most inexpensive one she could find in her size—34C.
A naughty thought about her music teacher surfaces, and she blushes, then looks at the doorway to see if her brother is watching.
She throws on a sweatshirt, tosses in a load of laundry, and begins her homework—earphones glued to the sides of her head, keeping out everything but her new favorite singer, Carole King. She’s kind of an old lady now, but the girl likes that about her. She kind of reminds her of TV Mom next door, all that wavy hair flying all over the place.
Georgia
Mom and I discuss the old days, like when we took tap-dancing lessons together and she sprained her ankle. Since it’s back-to-school time, we’re remembering how she always packed me the best lunches in the class, sometimes even shrimp salad when my dad, who was also a photographer, sold an important photo. I brought up our yearly trip to downtown York, Pennsylvania, and the Bon-Ton department store to buy school clothes because goodness knows Baltimore didn’t have stores.
It wasn’t about the selection in York, Georgia; it was about the small adventure, about the tradition. To be honest, I doubt the Bon-Ton had as good a selection as Hutzler’s.
Remember that place we used to stop for lunch, Mom? What was it again?
The Lincoln Woods Inn.
I can barely remember what it looked like inside, but it had the best Reuben sandwiches. Remember?
