Runaway Saint

by Lisa Samson

  She’s just as big a mystery as before. Drat.

  “I have to say, doll, that if you took her off my hands, I’d appreciate it. I’ve been a bachelor now for so long, having a woman around …”

  “Say no more, Daddy.”

  He sighs with relief. “You’re an angel.”

  “I learned from the best,” I say.

  “Speaking of angels, any announcement from you and Finn yet?”

  “Daddy …”

  “Hey, now. You’re my only chance at grandparenthood. I hear it’s a lot easier than parenthood. I’d like to give it a try.”

  “I’m sorry I was such a burden.”

  “You have no idea, Sare.” He chuckles and I can’t help but laugh. Only my father can get away with this.

  “How about this? I’ll take Aunt Bel off your hands and that counts as having a baby. I can only add to the fold at my house so quickly, you know?”

  “Ha! You got it. For the meantime. Until you’re adjusted, of course.”

  “Deal.” Good. Maybe it’ll buy me another year.

  “Hey,” he says. “I’m making my hot milk cake today, doll. I’ll send one over.”

  “Thanks. It’ll last about five minutes unless I hide it from Finn.”

  “You have my express permission to do so. How is that boy?”

  I catch him up on the general scoop, the birthday surprise, my new camera. He’s delighted about everything, promising to come over and watch Helvetica sooner rather than later. Seems we just have a love affair with letters, my father and I.

  We ring off and I’m already making a mental list for Aunt Bel’s arrival. I’ve got to get a lamp for that room and wash the sheets for that bed. I wonder what kind of milk she likes? Whole? Two percent? Orange juice or grapefruit? Will she take long showers and hike up our hot water bill? Will she teach Finn to make Kazakh food?

  Outside, the city is still on the gray, rainy cusp of spring. According to the forecast, the sun will creep out in the early afternoon, giving the park and the surrounding blocks the brightly scrubbed luminescence that sometimes follows a good drizzle. A nice day to be out on the streets, trying out my new camera, getting the hang of shooting film. I dress upstairs, donning my gray jeans and the striped gray-and-white sweater Finn gave me for my birthday.

  Since it’s still wet outside, I trade my usual leather boots for some green wellies and put my raincoat on over my sweater. Then it’s out on the streets, past the colorful row houses and the bakery, past the garage that’s now a bicycle shop and the deli with hand-painted windows. Before we moved into the city, Finn and I lived in a small apartment in the northern suburbs near Cockeysville, where Chris and his parents reside. Out in the country. Nobody in their right mind would ever dream of moving to Patterson Park, which they associated with drugs and street gangs and drive-by shootings.

  But they were wrong about our neighborhood. It isn’t spic-and-span. There are still derelict houses, still patches of pavement cracked to hell and back with grass growing up through the gaps. But it isn’t what it was by a long shot. The houses have been reclaimed, restored. People are raising their kids here, starting businesses, living their lives. We have our fair share of hipsters. (You can always tell because, when you use the h-word, people don’t reject it, they simply introduce so many shades of variation that you’re left with the impression you don’t know what you’re talking about.) Don’t get me wrong. Patterson Park isn’t exactly a hipster mecca like Brooklyn, but we do have an open-air market and more tattoo shops than tanning salons, and microbrew pubs, bike transportation groups, and—did I mention?—a letterpress shop. It’s a good place, too, for an aspiring street photographer. Always something interesting to see.

  My first capture: a weathered old black man sitting on his front porch.

  “What you wanna take my picture for?” he asks, sitting up straight.

  “You look cool,” I say.

  This makes him smile. “You that little girl over at the old fire station?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You sure prettied up that place.”

  “Thanks. Don’t look friendly,” I tell him. “Look severe.”

  He laughs, then gives me a scowl. I fiddle with the light metering app on my phone, then make the adjustments and snap away.

  “Perfect.”

  “Go on, now,” he says, shaking his head in baffled delight. White people.

  As I turn the corner in the direction of the park, a lanky kid on a BMX bike pedals along in the opposite direction, his body slumped back, hands hanging at his sides. He’s already past me before I can get him in focus, but I swivel and snap the picture from behind. The Autocord has to be advanced after every shot by a hand-crank of the right side of the camera. I turn the crank and shoot him again, but he’s half a block away by now.

  Using my digital camera, I always feel self-conscious taking pictures in public. The clickety-clack of the shutter, the big telephoto lens. Way easier than the manual film camera, but more ostentatious, making me feel like a poseur. The Autocord, because of its leatherette panels and its Flash Gordon–looking double lens, gets a friendlier reception. Instead of aiming the camera at people, looking at them through the camera, I’m resting it against my breastbone, gazing down into the viewfinder. Less intrusive somehow.

  “That old thing still work?” a woman in a seersucker housedress of multiple sherbet colors, clearly not one of the newer residents of the neighborhood, calls out from her stoop.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Can I take your picture?”

  And just like that, she raises her cigarette to her mouth and smiles. Perfect.

  By the time I reach the park, a light rain has begun. Faint drops hit my face every now and then and create the occasional pockmark on standing pools of water left from the rain overnight. Over at the basketball courts, some guys play pick-up games, shirts and skins, the squeals of their rubber soles shooting directly from the wet pavement and up my spine. Standing on the edge of the game, I take a few pictures. Once they become aware of me, everybody who gets the ball runs it in for the shot.

  “Look at that.” A man on the sidelines comes over, leaning down to stare into the lens. “Is that 3-D or something?”

  “No, but it’s film.” I shield my eyes from the emerging sun. Sun and drizzle. I’ve always loved that combination, as if the weather itself is saying, life isn’t always either/or, sometimes it’s both/and.

  “So really, you have no idea what your pictures are gonna look like. Not till you get ’em developed. Like in the old days. Huh.”

  “Pretty much. Isn’t it a little wet and cold to be playing basketball?” I ask.

  “Never,” he says, trotting back to the line.

  Arriving home midafternoon, I’m welcomed by the sound of whirring and scraping upstairs. The air in the house tastes gritty. When I reach the top of the stairs, I open the door to find Finn sanding away in the spare room, no mask on.

  Before he sees me, I snap his picture. Evidence.

  “You think this is a good idea?” I ask.

  “What?” He points to his ear.

  “I’m not going to shout.”

  He cocks his head, then shuts the sander off.

  “You’re supposed to be wearing a mask, aren’t you?”

  Ever since I can remember, safety has been important. That imaginary friend of mine? He was a real stickler. I heard his voice every time I climbed the sliding board or dove off the high dive at our neighborhood pool. And don’t even get me started about wearing socks on wooden steps. I feel the need to police everybody else’s well-being. Almost needless to say, I was not the most popular kid on the playground at school.

  He steps away from the grinder, brushing sawdust off his forearms. “Don’t worry. I rented a machine that sucks up almost all of the dust. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Moving the Nun into this room, I mean.” He moves toward me, resting his hands on my hips, pulling me close until my camera pokes his c
hest. “When you stop and consider, you know what this room should be? Don’t look at me like I’m crazy.”

  “You’re getting dust on my lens.”

  “Is that a metaphor?” he says, using what he thinks is his sexy voice.

  I look at him like he’s crazy. Finn isn’t exactly precise with his metaphors. “No, really. Let me put the lens cap on.”

  “I’ll put your lens cap on—”

  “Ooh, baby. I have no idea what that entails, but I’m willing to give it a try.” Imprecise metaphor be hanged.

  We laugh.

  “But you get what I’m saying, right, hon? She can come if she wants, that’s fine with me. We just need to put her somewhere else. I could build out the room in the basement. That could be nice. Like a mother-in-law suite.”

  “Finn, no way. She’s coming tomorrow.”

  “Wow. That soon?”

  “Daddy’s dying over there.”

  “No prob, then.”

  Finn should have been their child, someone more able to bend in the wind.

  “Besides, I’m not sticking my aunt in the basement. What’s wrong with here? If you stop shredding the floor, it’ll be just fine.”

  “Okay, but …” He makes a frame with his outstretched hands, forcing me to see the room through his fingers. “Wouldn’t this make a great … nursery?”

  I blink. “We don’t need a nursery, Finn. Not unless you know something I don’t.”

  “I’m just saying.” He pulls me back into his arms and nuzzles my cheek. “Maybe it’s time. You’re not getting any younger, after all.”

  “Oh, that will convince me.” I push away from him.

  “What? You do want kids?”

  “Not this minute. Not … for a while. What brought this on all of a sudden?”

  “Nothing brought it on. We just need to talk about it, that’s all,” he says, following me across the hall into our bedroom. “We’ve been avoiding this discussion for years. Sort of.”

  “Look, you married me without the kid commitment, remember? Remember? I said, ‘I don’t know if I want kids or not,’ and you said you were marrying me for just me. Remember?”

  “You’ve made sure of it.”

  “What is it today? First Daddy, now you?” Suddenly I don’t want to be in the bedroom with him. My heart speeds up as I circle around him back into the hall, then close the bathroom door behind me. My shoe catches on the edge of the no-man’s-land where Finn ripped up the tile, pitching my body forward. Landing on my hands and knees, coming an inch away from banging my head on the edge of the tub, I feel like I’m going to cry. Instead, I slap the side of the tub hard enough that it hurts.

  “Are you okay?” Finn calls, tapping on the door.

  “I need a second. Can you just leave me alone?”

  “Are you sure? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  After a pause, I hear his feet scrape down the hallway, down the stairs. I lift myself up, sitting on the lip of the tub, resting my head in my hands.

  Why does the thought of having a child upset me like this?

  It’s a bit too much, that’s all. He deserves to have kids, though, and for the life of me, I don’t know why I think I don’t.

  4.

  Bel and the Dragon

  Just after eight the next morning, Finn tromps down the stairs, already half dressed and carrying his acoustic guitar, the outside of its black case covered over with travel stickers from places he’s never been. I’ve downed two glasses of orange juice and made the hole in my T-shirt even bigger, all in fifteen minutes. Go me.

  “You coming with me?” he asks, leaning the guitar in the corner, looking bleary-eyed from the big clean-up of the sanding experiment. No stain yet.

  “Not this morning, I don’t think.” I’m sipping juice and thinking about all that needs to be done with the house. So much potential = so much work, and don’t let anybody tell you differently.

  He’s driving up to Timonium today, to our old church, where he still plays in the band despite having cut all his other ties. The Community, as it’s called, is a big suburban megachurch now housed within a former manufacturing park, the miles of parking lot all around packed full every Sunday by affluent suburbanites. Finn has a love/hate relationship with the place. On the highway map of divine history, The Community and churches like it represent for Finn a tragic wrong turn, so shallow and superficial, all the ancient power of the faith hollowed out, leaving behind just a glitzy, entertaining husk with glorified babysitting.

  They tried to teach me a little more about what God is like, but at the end of the day, I never fit in. God can be a little more friendly-like, but if his people are busy trying to fill up your schedule and make you feel like you’re a second-class woman if you haven’t opted for motherhood, you still have to wonder about him.

  At the same time, Finn grew up there. It’s home. It’s where the Drexels are married and if not buried, well, they will be someday. So far he hasn’t made it an issue if I don’t go. So I’m not going to. Plus, it was Pastor Rick at The Community, Finn’s former men’s pastor, who passed along to him his Big Idea.

  “What about tonight?” Finn asks. “You’re not bailing?”

  “I don’t know yet. My mother’s dropping Aunt Bel off sometime today.”

  “Has she called yet?” There’s hope in his voice, like maybe she won’t.

  “Not yet. Give her time.”

  While he finishes dressing and carries his guitar out to his truck, I make breakfast and try to ignore the frenetic energy that follows him room to room. After yesterday’s outburst on my part, I realize I have to come to grips with the kid issue. I just … can’t. Not today. Not yet. Aunt Bel is coming; I’ve got things to do.

  I’ve made the bed in the spare room, put new towels and a spare set of sheets on the dresser, and dug a ceramic-shade lamp for the nightstand out of the attic, trying to make Aunt Bel’s space appealing. I even rolled up the rug from the living room and carried it upstairs to cover the grooves left by Finn’s sanding, but I was hoping to run down to Grove Street and get some of Madge’s finer offerings for dessert tonight.

  He kisses me on the forehead before leaving. “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

  “I’m nervous. I haven’t seen her in twenty-some years. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I have no idea what she will think.” The panic in my voice surprises me.

  “Who cares what she thinks? Come on, Sara. Don’t get worked up over this.”

  “But what if she hates me?”

  Finn screws up his face. “Hates you? For what?”

  I blink. “Well, I don’t know. I mean. No. I don’t know why I even said that.”

  “You’re just nervous, babe. Everything’s gonna be just fine. You’ll see. You’ll do great with her even if she is as nuts as your dad says she is.”

  “Well, compared to who I work with …”

  “See? Now I gotta run.”

  One of the great things about Finn—and I mean this sincerely—is that no matter how much a situation bothers him, when he realizes that I’m bothered too, he calms down. He soothes and comforts me, and really means it. No one has ever believed in me the way he does. As a designer, an artist, and even a human being. The whole course of my life changed when he entered it, because he never thought that any of the things I was afraid of doing were impossible for me. Whatever the challenge, in his open-eyed, insistent way, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, “Of course you can.” And he’s usually right.

  Mom calls just before eleven. She’s frazzled, I can tell.

  Driving a car, oh dear. Dad’s cell phone, oh man.

  But first and foremost: estranged sister. Oh great.

  “Where do you people even park here? I’ve been circling your block for ten minutes!”

  My mom using the term you people is like Catherine
of Siena yelling a string of epithets.

  “I’ll come outside,” I say, hanging up the phone. It’s cool and sunny outside, a gentle breeze stirring the leaves of the tree outside our house, its roots forcing squares of sidewalk to slope upward.

  She’s right, the streets are packed even more so than usual, cars parallel-parked bumper-to-bumper in a way that incoming suburbanites can hardly fathom, accustomed as they are to sprawling parking lots and two-car garages. A woman fresh off the farm? Doubly daunting.

  A blue Camry hums down the street, pausing before me. My mother’s window whirs down. She’s looking frantic, woodland animal frantic.

  “What should I do, baby?” she says.

  Next to her in the passenger seat, a woman’s silhouette blocks the light. I glimpse the shape of her head, a short and angular bob, and then the Camry lurches forward. Another car rides my mother’s tail, the driver urging her forward with none-too-friendly gestures. Resisting the urge to yell at him, I jog down the sidewalk to keep pace with her, but she freaks a little and guns the engine, making another circuit around the block. When she comes back around, I motion her to stop.

  “Just double park. They can still get around you.”

  The driver behind jams on his brakes and throws up his hands.

  She throws the car into park and gets out. “Good idea. Wow. What a downer that was.”

  I wave Mr. Merry Sunshine around.

  Mom opens the trunk and pauses. After about two seconds of glassy-eyed staring, she shakes herself a little and turns to me with a sunny smile. Which is very sunny because the white hair surrounding her face sifts the rays spilling through the tree nearby. My mother is beautiful. Clueless, but beautiful.

  I stand on the curb, waiting expectantly. Do I go to her and help, or welcome my aunt—who doesn’t seem to be leaving the car?

  I lean through the open driver’s door.

  “Hello,” I say.

  Aunt Bel blinks as if noticing me for the first time. “Hello.”

  She doesn’t seem to hate me.

  The photograph that once sat on my grandparents’ mantel did her no justice. My aunt, like my mother, is physically beautiful. But where my mother is soft, with the faintly sculpted lines and rounded symmetry of a pre-Raphaelite model, soft and hard all at once, Aunt Bel has had the softness sanded down by what I can only guess was a spare existence in Godforsakenstan. She is thinner, leaner than in the photo, which lends her face and throat and arms a delicate impression, as if they might break with use and are best admired behind glass. She looks at me with wide and innocent eyes, the golden brown of a panther’s, and seems as entranced by my sudden appearance as I am by hers.