July, July

by Tim O'Brien

  It was a shock when Paulette Haslo gently slapped her bottom.

  "Janice, Janice," the minister said.

  "Don't butcher me!"

  "Just give me your hand."

  "My God, I don't deserve this, I'm a churchgoer, I haven't missed—"

  "Janice. Stop it."

  Paulette helped her off the bed, gripped her arm, and escorted her back to the living room.

  They sat facing each other, Janice on the sofa, Paulette in Rudy's leather recliner. Janice felt weak. In part she was exhausted by her trials with the window; in larger part it was as if a faucet had been opened in her heart, bleeding out every last droplet of her once justly famous spunk. Hopeless, it seemed. She watched the minister lean back in the recliner, tug at the strap of her halter top, and cross her long, ill-shaven, almost entirely naked legs. There had been a time, not twenty minutes ago, when Janice would've summoned up a pungent remark about the matter of clerical dress: what was appropriate and what was not. Now she sat mute. Even her tongue would not function.

  Paulette sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, Janice. It wasn't planned this way."

  "Planned?"

  "Tonight. In and out, I thought."

  "In and out. Very considerate." Janice folded her hands in her lap. Already she felt better. "And you actually thought you'd get away with it?"

  "Who knows?" said Paulette. "The lights were out. You're hard of hearing. Like I said. Desperate."

  "And how did you manage to—what's the term?—how did you break and enter? I believe that's what they call it on Law and Order."

  Paulette made a slack movement with her shoulders. "Not a problem. Broken lock. Rudy mentioned it."

  "Rudy?"

  "We talked sometimes."

  "Blabbermouth," Janice muttered. "And now he's killed me."

  The minister gave her a searching look. "Oh, well," she said.

  "Oh well what?"

  "Nothing. Stay put, Janice. Don't budge."

  Paulette stood up, went across the room to Rudy's desk, and began opening and closing drawers. The woman now seemed anxious, almost panicky, as if she'd misplaced an important set of keys. What Paulette was looking for, Janice could not tell, but she took satisfaction in the knowledge that her silver was safely tucked away at the rear of a utility closet, her best jewelry in a flour canister on the kitchen counter.

  Janice smiled at her own cleverness.

  "A word to the wise," she said. "If you expect to get rich, you'd best hope for one of those Bible miracles you don't believe in. The resurrection, for instance. A figure of speech, I believe you called it." Janice rolled her eyes. "Trust me, you won't find a dime. Not in that pigsty of a desk. Lord knows I tried to get the man to clean it up—don't think I didn't mention the subject a time or two—but he'd just wiggle his filthy teeth and ... Excuse me! What are you doing there?"

  Janice sat forward on the sofa. Without her glasses it was hard to be certain, but Paulette seemed to be stuffing a sheaf of documents into her bicycle shorts.

  "Now, look here," Janice said. "Return those papers. This instant."

  The minister slammed a drawer shut, pulled open a filing cabinet, tucked something else into her shorts.

  "Well, I knew it," said Janice. "The day they hired you—a female pastor, for crying out loud—right then I told them there was something fishy in Denmark. I said it. Point-blank. 'Fishy in Denmark,' my exact words."

  Paulette Haslo did not glance up. The woman was reading something, one hand on her hip, the other gripping a piece of yellow notepaper.

  "I beg your pardon!" Janice yelled. "Are you deaf?""

  The minister turned and studied her. "Lovely thought," she said. "Would've made my job so much easier."

  "Easy?" said Janice. "You work one day a week—two hours, tops—which hardly justifies that preposterous salary of yours. Let's just say it keeps you in plenty of halters and bunny tails. Which is another matter. Prancing around like Mata Hari. I mean, you're not some spring chicken, Paulette. Forty-five, I'll bet, if you're a day."

  "Over fifty," Paulette said.

  "Ha. There you are."

  To Janice's eye, the minister was a plain, altogether asymmetrical woman, and it seemed ludicrous that certain male members of the congregation couldn't pry their eyes off her bulging vestments. Even old Rudy, for whom the word "infidel" was first invented, had managed to sit immobile during the woman's Sunday sermons.

  Disgusting, Janice thought.

  For a few seconds she looked at the minister. "Well," she said, and then made a demonstration of clearing her throat. "Whatever your age, Reverend Cat Burglar, I suggest you return those documents. Now would be ideal."

  "Sorry," Paulette said. "They're mine."

  "They most definitely are not yours. That desk belongs to Rudy, and every squalid item—"

  "Relax, Janice. It's for the better."

  "I don't see how—"

  "Better for all of us. Even Rudy." The minister made a slow, weary gesture with the sheet of yellow notepaper. "Sit back now. I'll be out of here in a minute."

  "I should hope so," said Janice. "And I should also hope ... Lord, I'm feeling faint. A glass of ice water. I'd like to be conscious when you slaughter me."

  The minister hesitated, put down the sheet of notepaper, and went off to the kitchen.

  Immediately, Janice pushed to her feet. She stood still for a moment, undecided, more apprehensive than afraid, and then she clicked her tongue and marched over to Rudy's desk. The sound of running water came from the kitchen. Janice bent forward, squinting down at the sheet of paper. Without her reading glasses, she could make out only bits and pieces. The word "cutie" caught her attention. Also the words "happy hunk."

  Whoever had authored this bald pornography, Janice told herself, had obviously never studied penmanship; most of the letter was a blur, barely legible. Still, it seemed improbable that Rudy could be the recipient of such trash. The man could barely read. And there was nothing remotely cute about him. Even on their wedding day, at his scruffy best, Rudy had reminded her of a large circus seal waddling down the aisle, frisky and disobedient, a straggle of whiskers dotting his chin. Right now, decades later, she could still see that funny gray top hat he'd worn for the ceremony. How he'd put his head back and bellowed "I do," and how his eyes had twinkled, and how he'd come to her bed that night like a bashful little boy, reeking of cologne, his thinning brown hair slicked back as if for his first day at school. Amazing, she thought, what time could do. Back then the man had seemed so clever and witty, even charming. But over the years, especially after she'd lost her second baby, Rudy had become more a ghost than a husband, rarely uttering a complete sentence for days at a time. Always putzing in the garage. Always carving those silly ducks of his. There had been numerous occasions, in fact, when the man's silence seemed part of a crafty thirty-nine-year plan to drive her mad.

  Again Janice looked down at the piece of yellow notepaper. She was puzzling over the word "cutie" when Paulette came up behind her.

  "Your water," the minister said. She put the glass on Rudy's desk, then reached out and ran a finger across the notepaper. "I wish you hadn't looked at that."

  '"Happy hunk,'" Janice said. "Hunk of what, may I ask?"

  Paulette shrugged. "An expression."

  "So I gather you're responsible for this slime?"

  The minister lowered her head. She seemed on the edge of tears.

  "Well, I suppose there's an explanation," said Janice. "Something outlandish." She paused. Paulette's shoulders were shaking. "Honestly, I'm embarrassed for you. He was a sick old man, for God's sake, not to mention half daft."

  "No," the minister murmured. "He was smart."

  "Smart?" said Janice. "We're talking about Rudy, is that correct?"

  Paulette said nothing. She swallowed and put a hand to her eyes.

  "Let me remind you," Janice said, "that I lived with that imbecile for thirty-nine years, closer to forty, and I'm here to tell you that 'smart'
does not apply. Try dull. Try foolish. And one more thing: I wish you'd compose yourself— I'm the victim here." She arched her eyebrows in a manner she'd perfected during countless Sunday services. "Now what about this pen pal nonsense?"

  Paulette Haslo made a short deflating sound, as though one of her lungs had malfunctioned. She gazed straight at Janice for ten or fifteen seconds. "All right, but try to listen to me. It wasn't an affair."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Rudy and I, we'd talk on the phone, write letters now and then. We liked each other. Nothing else."

  Janice blinked. "Affair," she said. "Well, of course you didn't have an affair. The man was seven hundred years old."

  "He was sixty-four."

  "I know his age, thank you."

  "Janice, for once in your miserable life, turn up that hearing aid. He was a good man, we had things in common. Sometimes on Saturday nights we'd get together. Have drinks. Talk. Laugh. He liked to flirt. Stupid of me, but I thought if I slipped in here and took those letters ... I thought you'd never find out, never have to worry." Paulette shook her head. "And I'll admit it, I wanted to protect myself, too. My job, my life. I know you, Janice. How vindictive you can be, the way you jump to conclusions. I was trapped, I just did it. So goddamn dumb."

  "You," Janice said, "are a foul-mouthed lunatic. For one thing, Rudy couldn't flirt. Second of all, Saturday was his Legion night."

  "Right," said Paulette.

  The minister's eyes shifted. Her voice carried a covert quality that made Janice glance up.

  "You're telling me I'm not right?"

  Paulette balked. "It's not what it seems. He'd spend an hour or so with his friends, maybe two hours, then we'd meet somewhere. Usually the Holiday Inn. Sometimes—"

  "You met Rudy at a Holiday Inn?"

  "The bar, Janice."

  "I see. And presumably liquor was involved?"

  "Oh, come on."

  Janice made a quick, angry motion with her hand, swatting at the air. "Let me tell you something right now," she said. "Your days at St. Mark's are numbered. Bang, you're out of here. Defrocked, booted out, whatever they call it. And I doubt you'll ever work again, not in any church."

  "I know that," Paulette said quietly. "For a fact."

  "And you deserve it," Janice said. "Believe me, I could see it coming. At that first interview of yours, the way you were dressed. Boots and blue jeans, spangles on your blouse. We might just as well've hired some oversexed ranch hand." Janice growled at her own sarcasm. "Anyway, what a load of rubbish. Holiday Inn, my foot. Rudy would've told me."

  "I'm sure he tried," said Paulette. "Hearing was never your strong suit."

  Janice made a dismissive cluck at the back of her throat. Already, though, she was reviewing the past several months, seeking clues amid the ruins of a cluttered memory. Only a few ragged images came to her, nothing coherent. Rudy painting polka dots on his decoys. Rudy straining orange juice through a paper towel—"Pulp is for losers," he used to say. Rudy at a church picnic, dressed in a straw hat and Bermuda shorts, dancing with someone's German shepherd. Rudy playing hopscotch with the Kepler twins. Rudy clutching his chest. Rudy in a hospital bed, unshaven, skinny, bald, his Adam's apple twitching as he scanned the pages of a lingerie catalogue. Rudy on a respirator. Rudy in his coffin.

  A strange creature, to say the least. But for Janice the most peculiar image of all was of Rudy whiling away the hours in a Holiday Inn with Paulette Haslo. For his whole life, certainly for as long as she'd known him, the man had scoffed at anything associated with the church, preachers in particular.

  "Well," Janice muttered, "I don't know what you're up to, but I don't believe a word of this. Holiday Inns. Love letters."

  "They weren't love letters," said Paulette.

  "What then?"

  "Just—I don't know—just affectionate. He needed someone with ears."

  Janice tightened the belt on her robe. Inexplicably, she was struck by a protective instinct toward Rudy, a sense of ownership. "In other words," she said, "you're not just a burglar, you're a home wrecker? A husband thief?"

  "No," Paulette said, "I am not." She folded her arms as if to restrain herself. Her eyes were angry. "I've already told you, it was nothing physical, not even close. But I'll tell you something else. I wish to God it had been. I wish I'd run off with him, made him happy. I wish we'd checked into one of those rooms he kept talking about."

  "Rudy suggested—?"

  "Sex, Janice. Skin. He was getting old, for sure, but he wasn't dead." The minister's voice dropped to a low, graveside register. "You're right, I'm as good as fired, so why not tell the truth? The man was a human being. Heat, you know? Passion? I've heard the history, Janice. The empty cribs, the disappointments. But it wasn't Rudy's fault. Not yours either. Nobody's."

  Janice pushed herself off the sofa.

  More swiftly than she would've thought possible, she took three paces toward Rudy's desk, stopped, pivoted sideways, and flung her glass of water at the minister. Her marksmanship surprised her. The glass seemed to hang in midair for an instant, upright and sparkling, and then it struck Paulette Haslo just below the right ear.

  Janice spun around and ran. A moment later she was out the back door. She crossed the patio, ducked into a juniper hedge along the garage, got down on her hands and knees, and crouched there in the dark. Instantly, the mosquitoes were at her. She pulled her robe tight and tried not to swat at them. All around her, the night seemed fiercely mundane: frogs, stars, a hazy quarter-moon over the garage. Ludicrous, Janice thought. There should be bonfires in the sky, it should be raining rabbits. For a second or two she considered praying, but the world had gone upside down and even the notion of God struck her as eccentric and foreign.

  After a short while Paulette came out the back door. She stood at the center of the patio, scanning the lawn.

  If the woman spoke, Janice did not hear it.

  Several minutes passed before Paulette turned and went back inside, but even then Janice refused to leave the safety of the hedge. She tugged her robe down, struggled against an urgent need to weep. She wasn't sure why. Terror, of course. The shock of it all. But there was also a fuzziness inside her, cognitive disarray, a sense that she no longer recognized her own life. The house. The stars. The whole back yard—trees and garden and picket fence—it was an alien landscape, brand-new to her. This very hedge. She'd walked past it a thousand times, or ten thousand, never paying the slightest attention, and here she was inside it, blended in, breathing its dust and chlorophyll. Yes, and Rudy too, the man she'd so mistakenly called a husband. Who was he? Or what? All those years, minute sliding into minute, and now his face had dissolved into little more than a blur. It was as if she'd been on a four-decade train journey with the man, sharing a compartment, watching the miles go by, never speaking. In the end they'd collected their baggage, nodded farewell, and gone their separate ways. Total strangers, Janice realized. The man's very identity would forever remain the purest guesswork: a bumbler, a child, a cheat, a hopscotch player, a lifelong whittler of ducks.

  Janice felt something fracture in her chest. She tried not to cry, but she was crying, tentatively, in little gasps, as if for the first time.

  A while later Paulette Haslo came out the back door and moved into the grass beyond the patio.

  "Janice, I'm leaving now," she said to the dark. The woman's voice was husky and strained, so slurred Janice wondered if she'd discovered the key to Rudy's liquor cabinet. "I've written out a resignation, it's on the desk inside. You'll get a kick out of turning it in for me. Doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Tell the board whatever you want." Paulette looked up at the night sky. For more than a minute she was silent. "You know, it's a weird thing, Janice, but ever since I was a girl, five, six years old, all I ever wanted was to be a minister. I'd put on my father's bathrobe, pretend I was preaching. Take up collections. Pass out wafers and grape Kool-Aid. I mean, this is before there were female ministers—not many, anyway—but f
or me it was this natural thing, this perfect Paulette dream. Other girls, they wanted to be nurses or ballerinas or who knows what. Not me. My whole life, I never considered anything else, not once, and now it's finished. God knows what I'll do with myself. Maybe just ... Listen, I'm sorry, Janice. You're right, I made a mess of things. Thought I was being a minister."

  For a few seconds Paulette stood motionless in the dark. "Janice, he missed you," she said. "He wondered where you'd gone."

  Then she turned and crossed the lawn and disappeared into the shadows beyond the garage. There was the sound of a car starting.

  Janice waited ten minutes before crawling out of the hedge. She stood, brushed herself off, and looked up at the sorrowful yellow light streaming from her bedroom window.

  She felt no need to rush inside. In the morning, of course, she would make a number of phone calls, but for now she was having trouble with reality. Her hearing aid produced a sizzling in her ear. She shook her head and tried to ignore it, but Rudy's thin, fluty voice filled her head with chatter from years past, all nonsense. "Hey, Blades," he was saying—a nickname she had despised and eventually bludgeoned from his vocabulary. "Hey, Blades, you're lookin' feminine tonight, real extra female."

  Too much stress, Janice thought.

  She moved to the patio, sat on a lawn chair, and removed her hearing aid. But there was still that sizzle in her ears, an electric buzz that seemed to come from a transmitter deep in the Milky Way. "Blades!" Rudy yelled. Briefly, for reasons she couldn't fathom, Janice found herself sliding back to the occasion of her second miscarriage. It was August 1964, and she was telling Rudy that enough was enough, no more bedroom horseplay, that he would have to find something new to occupy his time. In the summer dark she watched Rudy think about it, how his eyes went hard for an instant and then softened forever. After a time he chuckled and said, "Ducks'll do it." He never mentioned it again. He became a jester, a do-it-yourselfer, a dancer with German shepherds. "Blades!" he kept yelling. He wouldn't quit. Not then, not now. Janice stood up. Ridiculous, she thought, and began to move inside, but the buzz in her ears stopped her and she was taken back to another silky summer night, forty years ago. An amusement park, Independence Day, and she was watching Rudy drop to his knees in front of the roller coaster, a big, stupid grin on his face—"Super feminine, if you follow my drift, so do we get hitched or what?" —and then he slipped the ring on her finger and squealed like a ten-year-old. "Blades!" he kept yelling, because she'd worn a scooped-back dress that night, and because he admired the smooth, graceful slope of her shoulders.