by Lisa Samson
Primarily.
Oh, come on! Tell me, Mom. At least a little clue, okay?
He was a terrible stutterer.
Daddy? Really?
Yes. And he lisped too.
But he spoke beautifully.
He trained himself. Practiced for years and years. Got tired of being beaten up and called a fag. In junior high he was beaten to within an inch of his life.
So he only spoke when he absolutely had to?
Mom nods.
Those letters, Georgia. They revealed his heart. They said what he didn’t trust his tongue to divulge.
Oh man.
Yeah. Not facing things never does anybody any good.
Why now, Mom?! Why am I learning all this now when it’s too late?
Because you wouldn’t learn it when you had the chance.
Let’s just get to the movie. This is a load of jive.
All right, and I can’t say I appreciate your tone. I’m still your mother.
Where’s Grandmom?
I don’t know, honey. I’m not omniscient.
The zone darkens, and once again the words appear on the screen, letting me know I’m in for yet another time of regret. The subtitle today: had you forgiven God.
A cute little musical number begins.
Is this a musical?
Yes! Mom turns, eyes glowing. Isn’t this exciting?
Chorus girls holding big golden coins whirl and tap onto the screen.
The Gold Diggers? Oh, for pity’s sake, Mom!
Well, I love it.
Can you imagine a group of dancing women being called the Gold Diggers these days?
She frowns. Well, no. But aren’t they cute? Now please, don’t make this about nothing but me shushing you, all right?
They sing in cutesy little “Santa Baby” voices, kicking their cute, dimpled Ziegfeld legs.
Here we go, pack your bags
Richmond calling, wearing rags
People hungry, people scared
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Sh!
Lonely, blue, and feeling bad
You can help them
Don’t be sad.
Mom! This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen!
Oh, all right. You’re a party pooper, you know that? She stands up. Okay, girls, go on back. Miss Artsy-Fartsy doesn’t like musicals.
It’s not that. It’s just the inappropriate juxtaposition of—
Please. I was thinking of it as hybrid entertainment.
What’s with the gold coins?
Treasures in heaven.
Oh. My. Word.
Don’t judge it so hastily. You didn’t give it a chance. And you should know better.
She twists back around in her chair, this one a pretty little French salon chair with gold upholstery. Matches her gorgeous Oriental-cut sheath dress nicely.
Why thank you! I like this one myself. Okay, how about Smell-o-vision?
Smell-o-vision?
Yep.
A remote appears in her hand and she clicks a button. A television appears in front of us, a space-age fifties TV. She clicks it again, and we start right in on the episode. Thank goodness I didn’t have to sit through the title again!
Sean and I are pulling costumes over little heads as we laugh and dance to “The Monster Mash.”
It was a graveyard smash.
A little creepy considering the circumstances, Mom.
I know. But do you smell the stew you made? And the bread the wino—or used-to-be wino who lives in the third bedroom down the hall—baked just an hour ago? Do you smell that?
Yes. Nice touch. I admit it.
The house is pretty, old and in need of a few updates here and there, but large and once grand, it definitely looks habitable. From where we stood in the entryway, bright colors bled in from the downstairs rooms: red, gold, green, a dusty purple. And the stairwell was painted sunshine yellow.
Downtown Richmond, still?
Nope. Baltimore. You all decided to move back home once the first year was up. You’re near Patterson Park.
Nice place for Patterson Park!
Oh yes. You put in hundreds and hundreds of hours on that place.
Did I choose the colors?
Yes. You actually had a lot of artistic talent built in, but the music eclipsed it. You’re a great cook, too.
No kidding?
You’d be surprised at what’s locked inside people. Everybody’s multigifted. Once I saw this film of what the world would be like if we all used our talents even fifty percent. It was electrifying.
The feel-good film of the year?
She shrugs. Guess you have to see it to believe it.
Are those my children?
See the two with the olive skin and dark-brown curls? They’re yours and Sean’s. The other four are from various places. Two from Baltimore—the ones dressed as ghosts—brother and sister you adopted when they were only tots. He’s seven and she’s nine. The little pirate is from Bulgaria. And well, that tiny little cow—she came only the week before from South America.
Wow. Six kids!
Aren’t they cute?
When was this supposed to be?
This month.
Oh, God. Really. Why?
Did I have children in the other scenario? The number-one scenario?
You sure did. These kids actually.
Sean hands out old pillowcases and says, “Head ’em on out. Hup-two-three-four. Hup-two-three-four!” He kisses me with an economical passion and opens the door. I grab a big mixing bowl full of popcorn balls wrapped in wax paper made earlier in the afternoon, sit on the porch on a swing badly needing a coat of paint. I’m thinking lime green.
That’s exactly what you would have done.
I can feel my own happiness. And a little stress. Somehow I know that one of the residents, a young runaway, is lying to us about where she goes each night. It isn’t work, I can tell you that.
Please tell me there were more chances, Mom.
Every letter Sean sent was a new chance, Georgia.
You can weep here in the pink. You can weep though you have no eyes. And you can feel tears of a sadness deeper than an ocean trench and wider than the sea itself.
Those children. Sean’s and mine. Where are they?
They’re not, of course, Georgia.
And the others?
I can’t say I know, honey.
A piano version of “My Way” erupts.
Thanks, Mom.
On the television screen the children begin to argue about who gets to hold Sean’s hand.
Mom laughs and clicks the remote, the set going dark. Well, nothing’s perfect.
What about my music?
You’re about to record your fifth album, and your fourth is up for a Grammy. Sean has been touring with Harry Connick Jr.
Really?!
Incredible, isn’t it? Their voices were made to go together.
You know, I think George Bailey got a much better deal from Clarence than I’m getting from you, Mom.
Maybe George deserved better. Look at all the sacrifices he made for people early on.
So what you’re saying is I got what I deserved? Is that what God is really all about?
Mom crosses her arms and looks very momlike. Are you honestly saying you’d have taken one more chance, Georgia?
The load settles for good upon my shoulders.
I can’t go back, I whisper.
I know, baby doll.
Clarissa
The girl pulls up great chunks of her hair, hacks them off with the scissors, wincing as the blades pull and bite. Big chunks. Pretty curls. Pretty hair.
She smashes the blush and squeezes out the lip gloss, flushing them both down the toilet. Pulling the wand from the mascara, she breathes heavily through her nose, then writes one word on the mirror in turgid black streaks.
NO!
Into the bag she slips the containers. She ties a bandana over he
r butchered locks, walks down the steps to the trash can at the side of the house.
Now. Supper. What should she make?
Fairly
It was one of those superb days I couldn’t have dreamed up. Reverend Smithers agreed to come over for dinner when I invited him after church. I decided to be Episcopal that Sunday. He said he’d love to meet the cult. I really should stop calling them—well, us, actually—the cult, shouldn’t I?
He helped me slice up onions for the burgers that Sean was grilling outside. “I’m so very glad we met last week, Fairly. However, the fact that you introduced me to the lovely Della-Faye has been a horrifying experience for my waistline!”
“Five pounds in one week?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.” I handed him a tomato Uncle G brought back from the Saturday farmers’ market the day before. “And still on the rise.”
“The apple cobbler is something you can’t quite get out of your mind, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s torture to wake up in the middle of the night with a hankering for Della-Faye’s cobbler.”
“Oh, quite right! That happened to me last night.”
Sean walked into the kitchen from the back door, a delightful puff of grill smoke following him. “Ten minutes. Tops.”
“We’ll be ready. Do you like blue cheese?” I asked Smithers.
“On a burger?”
“Where else?”
I realized then that food is something we all have in common. The love of it, the care in the preparation, the joy in the eating, the communion of the gathering. “Do you view eating as a spiritual experience?” I asked him.
“Highly.”
“Would you lead us in communion tonight?”
“I’d be quite honored.”
So the bunch of us gathered, Peg and Blaine, Gracen, Uncle G, Sean, and me; Old Al, who had fallen off the wagon but was back on; Alex and Melissa the cabbies showed up too, a nice surprise. We passed around a seven-grain hamburger bun and a goblet of merlot. And we feasted not only on the One we belonged to, but on all the possibilities of life in God, an abundance found in the bread and in the cup and in the way of Jesus.
We remembered the Savior, His death, and His life.
And Gracen said, “Thanks be to God,” when he dipped his bread in the wine.
The body and blood of Christ.
The reverend raised his glass at the end and said, “Le chaim!”
And I thought, yes, that’s it exactly. To life.
We only have so much time on this earth. I decided it would be a shame to waste even a day.
And I decided, after many years of deliberation, truly, that my favorite kind of volcano was not the kind that exploded up into the air, but the steady flow that meandered slowly in heated purpose toward the cooling waters of the sea, creating new ground.
Sean had left about an hour earlier, the house was quiet, and Uncle G and I rested on his sofa with mugs of chai. I read another cozy mystery while he tip-tapped a few e-mails. His tip-taps comforted me.
“It’s all set, Fairly. My sabbatical officially starts tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get up early and pray right off the bat. I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“You don’t now?”
“No. I’ve never been much of a prayer type. Not that I’m proud of that.”
“Wow. You seem like that type.”
He shut his laptop. “And then I’m going to run, shower, read, read, and read. At the hospital, of course.”
“Sounds good.”
“For about a week.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see where God takes me.”
I sipped my tea. “You know, God does some crazy stuff.”
“Yeah. Who’d have ever thought you’d be here?”
“Not me.”
“Me either, to tell you the truth.”
I tucked my feet up beneath me. “So why didn’t I see it before now?”
“I’m not following you.”
“I went to church all of my growing-up years. My parents were pretty progressive people, you know that. An artist and a social worker? Why do you think it took me so long to get God?”
“Who knows, Fairly? That’s probably a bad question. Nobody gets God. He’s a little beyond our imaginings.”
“So what’s the better one?”
He looked up. “How about something like, ‘What’s God got up ahead for me that coming to Him before this would have made impossible?’ ”
“I’ve got to tell you, it never really felt like I was running from God. More like, well, trying to get Him in some kind of focus. He always felt like such a blur.”
“So maybe now was the season He revealed Himself to you in the way you could finally grasp.”
“Exactly!”
“Good of Him to do that.”
“I suspect He’ll keep on going with it.”
“I suspect so.”
We sat in silence for a while longer, and I thought about Mom and Dad and how they were most likely delighted about my change of heart. But honestly, it feels so different from how it was described in my church growing up. I never felt like I made some big intellectual decision, or some conscious giving up of my will. I felt more like I’d come to a realization, an understanding, and, well, the rest just followed along. Sort of like realizing you like mayonnaise after years of turning it down. Well, of course you’re going to keep using mayonnaise, you love it so much! Who makes that an intellectual decision?
Maybe for some people faith is a choice, but for me, faith was a happening, a simple lifting of a fog, and once confronted with something so beautiful and gracious, I couldn’t look away. And when I felt this touch of Christ, the thought of letting go of Him would be like deciding not to breathe.
Maybe I’m lucky that way.
“So, Uncle G, I’ve got this idea.”
“You look pretty serious.”
“Yeah, but it’s fabulous. You met the reverend. And you’ve met Della-Faye. What if we get churches like that together somehow?”
“Stuffy Episcopalians and African Baptists.”
“Yes. We could do a lot for the city, for so many things. People like Reverend Smithers and Della-Faye need to be together. And me. Me too, Uncle G. I need to be with them.”
“Where will you go to church?”
“I’m fine here with the cult.”
He leaned forward. “The cult?” Then he laughed and threw himself back against the cushions of the sofa. “Oh, Fairly. That’s fantastic!”
“You have to admit I’m onto something, though. Reverend Smithers fit right in.”
“I’d still like to know what you have in mind that will get everybody in such a lovefest. People have tried it for years and years. Nothing seems to work for long.”
I did have an idea actually. And it was big. “A citywide communion service, right in Duncan Park.”
“It’ll never work.”
I bopped him on the leg. “Get thee behind me! You were always the one with vision.”
“Maybe I’m just tired, Fairly.”
“Go to bed then. I’ll finish up in the kitchen.”
He patted my knee. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow. It really does sound rather interesting.”
He took his mug to the kitchen, then appeared back before me. “You know, your cousin is weighing heavily on me. I just don’t know what to do.” And he left.
At the sink I washed the goblet from communion and I thought about it. Really now, what was the one thing all Christians had in common, the one practice we do over and over again?
“Do this to remember Me.”
Maybe we’d just forgotten what we were here for.
Maybe everything we do is a communion of sorts, remembering Christ by being like Him.
Georgia
I’ve been off the respirator for a while now. It’s just IVs and a feeding tube.
>
I can’t imagine what I look like with that thing running out of my nose. At least they refused to have the stomach tube inserted. Kind of lets me know I won’t be attached to this stuff for years.
Mom? Mom?
Yes, baby doll?
Oh good. I have a favor to ask you. I need to know something.
What is that, dear?
I’d like to know what my life would be like if I went back down. If I woke up.
Mom’s lips pursed.
You know something, don’t you?
Yes.
You know whether or not I’m going to live, don’t you?
Yes.
And you still have that great poker face. You’re not going to let on, are you?
I’m doing my best not to. I can’t drum up a movie at a whim, but how about if I play a little music and you sleep awhile?
The zone darkens. Her beautiful fingers caress the hidden piano.
I am gone.
I’m playing organ at All Souls Episcopal. Sean is standing in the balcony singing, leading the congregation. The music from the congregation, the singing, the parts, the community of song, fills the sanctuary. Sean looks back at me and smiles.
I feel his love for me.
We go back to the apartment I almost lived in, and we take a Sunday roast out of the oven, watch a movie as we eat. We kiss each other asleep before napping.
“What a nice life we have,” I tell him.
When I awaken, who knows how long afterward, Mom sits quietly nearby. I tell her the dream.
Mom, that was nice. But do you know what else happens?
She looks up, then nods, listens to something I obviously can’t hear, and says, That’s about it.
Really? Just playing the organ in a church?
I’m afraid so.
So in other words, I had my chances to do something big and I blew it?
Pretty much, yes, I guess. But I don’t see what the fuss is. Look, you and Sean are happy. The congregation is singing, everything sounds so lovely.
What about jazz? Do I get to play jazz again?
I don’t think so, Georgia. At least it doesn’t seem that way to me if your dream is any indication.
Why not?
Because—I’m not positive about this now—I think that if you go back, you won’t remember any of this. Not really.
But why don’t I play jazz?
There’s rent to pay, bills due, and you don’t want to take that kind of chance again is my guess.
I won’t want to slip up. At least I’m not drinking. Maybe going into the clubs and playing is too much of a temptation. Do you think that could be it?
