Clint’s cell rang and broke the spell. I looked back as he confirmed for his caller that we were all ready.
Once our tables were set with sandwiches, the outreach workers brought out two coffee urns.
Soon it looked as if half the neighbourhood had lined up for breakfast. A news van pulled up and unloaded camera gear; a reporter hopped out of a cab and walked up to the front of the line. She flashed a press card as she juggled her purse and notepad.
Clint flashed a grin and nimbly stepped out to speak to her.
As I stuck a ham-and-cheese into a pair of outstretched hands I wondered what the media could possibly find so fascinating.
When I glanced around for Clint minutes later, he was in the middle of a mini media scrum. His voice verged on explosive and his hands gestured as he talked about his vision, the television ministry that, if he had estimated rightly—and he was sure he had—would solve this city’s Downtown Eastside problem. He described the businesses soon to start up: Good News Goodies, a bakery that would employ former prison inmates and street people; Good News Gasoline, a service station with soul; Good News Florist, which would make the spirit grow.
“All of them employing the very people you see around you,” he said.
It was my sister’s voice—“Isn’t he amazing!”—that made me notice that everyone around seemed to have been seduced by Clint. Or wanted to be.
A freckle-faced woman manoeuvred herself breathlessly into the tent beside me.
“Hi there, Alice.” Then to me: “You must be Alice’s sister. I’m Helen. Oh, look! I think those are mine,” she said, grinning at my hands, which held the meat-loaf sandwiches that had been on Clint’s kitchen counter this morning.
“This is the first time I ever made meat loaf,” she said incredulously. “I was up half the night with it, but that Clint …” She looked at him, playfully reproachful. “He’s very persuasive.”
“You from Good News?” I asked. Her flannel gingham dress and grey sweater made her the very picture of a church mouse. She was much younger than her attire suggested.
“Mmm-hmm,” she affirmed, her eyes still on the preacher. “Clint’s the sort of man people follow.”
“A regular Pied Piper.”
I put a sandwich into another hand and then noticed its paltry filling, one side runty with the crusty heel of the loaf, and forced my eyes up past the orange swollen belly in front of me. It was the pregnant Christ-hater.
“This is nice of you, lady.”
The shame was so instantaneous, my tongue fell dead in my mouth, until I managed to say, “There’s ham and cheese too if you don’t like—” Reaching behind me into the other box, I tried to meet the girl’s gaze, which, now that she wasn’t cursing a Tourette-ical blue streak, was fixed and piercing. “It has mayo and mustard.”
I held out a second plastic-wrapped choice, and she snatched it away, knocked into the guy behind her and scurried off with both sandwiches.
On the news that night, it was reported that Pastor Clint Reynolds had distributed food to over two hundred homeless and that he planned to exceed that target on a daily basis. His was a practical ministry, the perky blonde reporter declared, one that sought to embrace the most vulnerable in our city by not only feeding them but enabling them to feed themselves. The camera panned across me and Alice, her complexion glowing, her pale locks ruffled softly by the wind.
“Who’s that one, the homely little one in the plaid dress?” Daddy asked.
“Helen,” I told him. “You think she’s homely? I thought she was sort of … pleasant-looking. She said she wanted to give out sandwiches too but Clint didn’t need her.”
My father snorted. “I’m sure he didn’t.
The night I dreamed of Clint, I woke up in a sweat, guilt beading behind my knees and elbows, dampening my hair. I turned on the light to wash away the sight of his slick chest, his terrible naked face. It was wet between my thighs, as though he truly had been inside me and had spent everything he had. I covered my face to keep from seeing Alice through the wall. There is nothing stronger than the grip of dreams in the small hours of the morning.
Somewhere in the house a door clicked softly and my chest seized. Then came the soft creak of stairs, the wisp of sneaking sock feet in the hall.
“Angela?” A light scratch of fingernails on the door accompanied Alice’s whisper.
I opened up to the sight of her in her trench coat, bra hanging out of one pocket, mascara-streaked cheeks, a ghost of lipstick left on her mouth. I yanked her into my room.
Her words came out in slushy chunks. “Clint doesn’t want me any more.”
“You’re sleeping with him? Fuck, Alice. How could you sleep with that jackass?”
“Don’t,” she whispered. She sat down on the bed. Her head drooped.
“You’re not pregnant,” I pleaded.
Both hands covered her face.
“Alice! Even that knocked-up meth addict knew he was a cocksucker.”
She started to sob and I took a different tack. “Shh. I’m sorry. Let’s calm down.” I drew in a breath and sat down beside her. “Are you sure? Aren’t you on the pill?”
She dropped her hands. “I went off it when I accepted Christ,” she said. “And then when I fell in love, I loved him so much … I didn’t want there to be anything between us. I imagined his baby in me, and I just wanted it.”
I sank my teeth into my tongue to still the sickening sense that Clint had been in my own bed minutes before.
“He said God led him to me. And me to him.”
“Does he know?”
She nodded. “Last night.”
“Last night?” I was amazed that she could have hidden this big a secret from me for twenty-four hours. “When did you find out?”
“Three days ago. He says if I keep it I’m going to destroy the ministry. It’s a … bad tooth.” She put her hands back over her face.
“What?”
“I tried to explain to him tonight: it was God’s love that made it come. We could have it together and minister too—but he got so mad.”
Good old Pastor Clint. In his fit of pique he had told my sister that they had to nip this thing in the bud and move on. He reminded her that she was eighteen years old, she had her whole life in front of her and he, at thirty-two, didn’t have time for a mess like this, not when he was on the cusp of making great change in the world.
“Listen to me, Alice,” he told her. “Don’t be a fool. For once in your life, use the sense God gave you and be practical. To have a child under these circumstances is cruel. It’s like a bad tooth. Sometimes you’ve just got to yank it.”
Alice began to sob and he tried to calm her the best way he knew: he made love to her. Alice being Alice, she thought he had come around.
Afterward, with her melted beside him, he must have thought he now had her in a malleable state of mind, because at that point Clint offered her money. Being American he assumed she would have to pay out of her own pocket for the abortion. He offered not only five hundred for the procedure but another five grand—his entire savings, he claimed—if she would join another church and never speak of their relationship.
“You’re a beautiful soul, sweetheart. But part of being a Christian is learning to sacrifice. Let’s put this flame out before it burns the house down.”
I pictured her getting up from the bed, standing there in the shadows of his bedroom, turning to face him, naked, her curls gone Medusa, when she said, “You are no Christian—I won’t put the flame out because I hope you burn.”
“How could I say that to him?” she cried now and put her fingertips in her mouth, six years old again. She gazed at my bookshelf and said, “I left the fairies.” She spun back toward me. “The book.”
“My book?”
“I’m so stupid.” She squeezed her eyes shut.
“What did you have my fairy book over at his place for anyway?”
“I’m sorry.” She grabbed my hand and held
it to her face. “I’ll get it back.”
I wanted to say that no one really forgets anything at her lover’s house; it’s the oldest subconscious trick in the book. I wanted to accuse her of being just what he had said, impractical and foolish—but a mountain of repudiation wasn’t going to wipe away the feel of Clint lingering between my thighs.
Alice showed up at the store the next afternoon, a jittery mess. Still no book. Clint wasn’t answering his phone. He wasn’t answering his door. She went down to Good News and a new secretary intercepted her as she headed toward the pastor’s study saying that Clint was busy with both a sermon and a proposal to Citytv for The Rock That Never Rolls, his idea for an urban youth music hour that would feature Christian bands, and himself, of course, as emcee. The stage show, the secretary said, would be filmed at Good News Hall to start with and then, as momentum grew, move downtown to the Commodore Ballroom.
The secretary herself was terribly excited—she sang in coffee houses, now and then, she told Alice. Clint thought he might be able to make room for her in the Up-and-Comers segment.
Every day for three days, Alice returned to both his apartment and his study but he was never there.
On Sunday morning we slipped into a row near the back of the sanctuary. Most of the crowd—and there didn’t seem to be many of them over forty—were clad in tight jeans and T-shirts or some variation on the theme, and most remained on their feet, while on stage the worship band played earnest folk-rock tunes.
Clint stood near the stage chatting with an older man in a suit who I imagined to be the senior pastor.
There were no hymnals. The words of each song were projected onto a large screen that hung from the ceiling. Were it not for the capitalized H in He, the lyrics were indistinguishable from those of any other shmaltzy love song. I whispered questions to Alice, whose gaze had been glued on her lover since we’d come through the doors.
There were three or four worship bands that rotated each week, she said. In general they stuck to playing covers so that everyone could sing along.
“Covers of what?”
She didn’t dignify that with a response. Apparently these were all monster hits on the Christian pop charts. Not only that but we could expect the band to play on for at least another hour before the preacher got the show started. I wished I had just bombed Clint’s apartment and let it go at that.
All around us, people sang with hands cupped in front of them as if catching raindrops. A few chatted and laughed in small groups. Some embraced new arrivals, swaying together for several seconds before the newcomers went off to find space to spread out and sing.
Straight ahead, I spotted Helen from The Sandwich Project. In her prim blue dress and cream lace collar she was far from the norm at Good News.
I couldn’t put my finger on what was peculiar about it all (besides the obvious) until a raven-haired gym rat, wearing a second-skin black Lycra cycling shirt, planted himself next to me. He smiled at me and sang a few bars, then leaned forward to tap the shoulder of someone in the row ahead. They shared some mutual laughter before he straightened and grinned at me again, this time offering his hand.
“My name’s DW.”
I shook it and glanced at Alice, whose eyes were welling as she watched Clint move around the front of the sanctuary.
“Aren’t you going to tell me yours?” DW asked, his electric blues honing in.
I sighed and told him my name, then looked ahead to the big screen, attempting to worm those unctuous lyrics out of my mouth. “‘You are my light. Even late at night … ’ Oh for god’s sake,” I muttered.
“You don’t look familiar.” DW smirked.
“First time.”
Leave it to Alice to find the biggest Christian pickup joint in town.
Up at the stage Clint was fussing with sound equipment. A pretty band member knelt down to speak with him. Their smiles brought Alice’s tears over the edge, her fingers twisting hard together. Afraid she might break a bone, I put my keys in her hands as distraction.
“You’ll like it here. Everyone’s young, always buzzin’ upside. You got plans this afternoon?”
DW came on so strong, I was convinced he was a closet-case.
Suddenly there was Clint walking toward us down the centre aisle. My keys jangled in Alice’s hand. As he passed, his eyes skimmed over the crowd, seemingly carefree, but the tension in his mouth was a giveaway.
Helen jumped up and caught hold of Clint as he went by. She gave him an airless hug until Clint patted her back and moved on.
Alice switched the keys from hand to hand.
“We’re having a barbecue,” DW continued in my ear. “You’re invited.”
“Clint!” I shouted. The strange pitch of my voice echoed in my head.
Clint’s head didn’t turn.
Alice had turned into a patchwork of red blotches, manifesting prickles of embarrassed adrenalin.
I pushed past her out to the aisle, trotted after Clint and caught hold of his sleeve.
He turned to me with a brittle smile. “Hey! How are you?” He waved at someone behind me and then, settling his arm across my shoulders, said, “Can I talk to you a sec?”
He couriered me through the swinging doors and out to the foyer. I wasn’t prepared for the way he turned on me, the fury in his face, once the doors had closed behind us.
“What do you want?” he enunciated coolly. Pushing his face in close to mine, he gripped my elbow.
His quiet voice was far worse than if he’d screamed. Face hot, I found my hands trembling as I hunted for incisive words.
The doors to the sanctuary swung open again and without turning my head I could feel my sister.
Clint’s eyes didn’t waver. His fingers dug into my bone. He modulated his voice so that a few feet away Alice would be certain to hear each word. “Whatever crap you think you’re going to pull here, think twice, little girl, because you will know what public humiliation is when I’m done with you.”
“You have something of mine, Clint.” My sister’s voice was eerily bold.
He looked at Alice.
She was close now and she said it again. “You have something of mine and I want it back.”
In one swift motion, Alice’s fisted hand swung across his jaw. She seemed to miss, yet Clint gasped and clutched his face, then checked his own hand for blood. Two stripes ran along his jaw. The blanched scratches suddenly burbled pinpricks of red.
He glared and bit off his words. “God bless you, Alice.”
Alice examined the keys that protruded through the fingers of her right hand and then took my wrist and pulled me out the front doors. I didn’t see her face when she tossed back, “Likewise.”
I let Alice drive.
Back home, she seemed renewed. It was the only time I remember feeling dwarfed and ineffectual next to her. She got up from my bed and shuffled through my junk drawer until she found matches.
Opening her beaded gypsy purse, she pulled out her Bible and sat down beside me on the edge of the bed, one thumb riffling the gilt-edged pages of Clint’s gift.
“There’s this story,” she said, “in the Book of Revelation. God tells his angels not to kill the people, just to torment them with scorpions for five months. The tormented ones will want to die, it says, but God won’t let them.” Alice folded the covers back like wings until they met, and hung the Good Book sideways from her fingertips, pages waving loose and parched. “I didn’t think angels would do that.”
She asked me to strike a match.
It was Alice who explained the situation to our father. She did not say she was pregnant, she said she was going to have a baby. She spoke as though it were information she had gleaned from the papers, news of a significant but not earth-shattering event.
My father paid a visit to the pragmatic Pastor Clint that night. Daddy not only got into Clint’s apartment, but he returned with my illustrated book of fairies. What was said or done was never spoken about, but our father did
report that the pastor had decided he was homesick, besides which he had not been feeling his best—it seemed this relocation to the damp Vancouver climate had not suited his constitution.
Clint went back to California before the week’s end.
Alice knew Dusty’s name long before she was born. She developed cravings for music during her pregnancy like some women do for foods and the last trimester was night and day Dusty Springfield. She went so far as to request that I bring a boom box into the birthing room to ensure Springfield’s voice would be the first one little Dusty would hear. Her glistening purple head popped out just as Big Dusty’s husky drawl sounded “Son of a Preacher Man.”
I moved out of my father’s house shortly after the birth, getting an apartment close by that didn’t feel quite so crowded with maternity. Alice stayed with Daddy and he seemed to thrive on it, going to work every day, coming home to mother and child.
Alice rarely left the house except for daily walks with the stroller. She loved her new role as mother. She and Dusty shunned television and, instead, baked intricate desserts, Dusty reclining quietly in her baby seat on the counter, watching, or sifting flour when her hands got big enough that Alice could wrap them round the sifter’s handle and squeeze. Alice learned to sew, mastering complicated stitching on homemade jumpsuits and sleepers. Once Dusty could walk they learned to dance the cha-cha from instructional DVDs, Alice whisking Dusty in her arms around and round the living room.
For the first four years of Dusty’s life the two of them “played house,” as Alice put it. She talked about going back to school when Dusty started kindergarten. She kept a sketchbook, and as soon as Dusty could hold crayons, they would draw together for hours on end. Sometimes they’d go down Robson Street or to Stanley Park and draw strangers for money—caricatures or straight likenesses, Alice could get a face down either way. Dusty would draw her own version: blue hair on a potato head with trophy-handle ears and two teeth. The customer would shell over twenty-five bucks and leave clam-happy with both.
Greedy Little Eyes Page 17
