The O. Henry Prize Stories 2011

by Laura Furman

  Peter felt his rice and meat settling, looked down at his belly. He’d put on black jeans and a black top. Even when he wasn’t working, that’s what he would put on. He noticed that these two blacks didn’t match. The jeans were older than the top; their dye had grayed in the wash. It made him think something, about dailiness, about time spent. The sadness of laundry. Clothes laboring through the wash week after week. The sadness of laundry! Listen to yourself. Just write your sermon, pray, and go to bed.

  The phone rang, stalling him in his seat. He let it bleat and bleat until the answerphone came on. After his own voice apologizing for his absence: “Hello, this is Steve …” No, it wasn’t. It was the wrong Steve, a non-Steve. “I’m Jack’s father, from football. I thought I’d ring you because I’m not happy, really, with the way things went this afternoon. What you did wasn’t … it just wasn’t the right call. Jack wasn’t guilty and I think you know that, more than you could let on at the time anyway. I sort of wanted to clear the air and just get things straight with you. I’ve got a very upset lad here and it’d be nice to tell him it’ll be all right next time. Maybe you can call—” the machine cut him off with a long beep. In the silence afterward Peter said out loud, “Now go away.”

  Perhaps he had made his decision quickly and perhaps the evidence had been circumstantial, but a decision had to be made and he was the referee. Also, he’d sensed Jack’s guilt; he knew it was there. If he hadn’t been guilty at that precise moment, he had been at others and would be again. He was selfish and superb, a greedy player. The boy needed punishing.

  Toilet, toothbrushing, prayers, and in. He read for a bit before turning the light out and wondered when he would feel the bed sink under Steve’s satisfied weight—alcohol in his bloodstream, semen in his belly—if he would feel it or whether by then he’d be too far gone.

  He woke with Steve’s arm over him, Steve’s mouth against the back of his neck, breathing warmly onto his spine. The back of Steve’s hand was blotched with the stamp of a nightclub. He lifted the arm and exited as through a door. Steve rolled onto his back, chewing and murmuring in his sleep.

  Peter left early. He liked to be the first person at his church. This was hard to do: his verger, Bill, also liked to be first with his keys, round-shouldered, busy, in possession of the place. Peter walked through a glorious autumn morning. The trees and cars were radiant, their edges haloed with soft sunlight. The fallen leaves were dry, skittering along the pavement in the breeze. Pigeons called from bright aerials, twanging them as they took flight.

  St. John the Evangelist’s was a thick-looking Edwardian church of polychrome brick. It was homely, not beautiful, heavy and earnest and suburban. If he could have chosen his parish church, Peter would have preferred something medieval, something with the ghost of its Catholic past hovering just under the whitewash, something with a hint of the monastic, maybe a preserved anchorite’s cell. Still, St. John’s greeted him with its solid familiarity as he approached.

  Someone must have forgotten to put out the sand bucket for the alcoholics last night; the doorway was littered with cigarette butts. He knelt to pick them up. That felt good: a mild abasement. The butts were bent, dingy, sadly human. He filled his left palm with them and unlocked the door. First the bin in the vestry to throw them away, then to wash the ash and odor from his hands. Stepping into the church proper, he received the unfailing shock of the sight of the cross over the altar, that jolt delivered by its strong bare shape, by its meaning. He repeated the shape onto his chest with his fingertips, sinking to his knees. In an empty pew at the front of the church, with the noise of occasional cars beyond the glowing windows, he prayed. When Bill arrived, brisk and muttering, a crinkling carrier bag in his hand, banging on the lights, he heard him fall satisfyingly silent out of respect. He gave it a minute more then stood up, smiling. “Good morning, William.”

  His standard Sunday congregation was decent, about forty souls, including the three African ladies who sat in a row under their hats, smiling, and the Davises who sat at the front, either side of young Natalie. She remained placid and bored and pleased with herself, quite still under the arch of her Alice band and long, thoroughly brushed hair. Only her feet swung back and forth impatiently, counting the minutes away.

  Peter had honestly tried for a while not to have a church voice but it proved impossible. His normal voice wouldn’t carry. To be audible and dignified he needed that slow ceremonial sound. He heard himself go into it at the beginning of the liturgy and it ran like a machine. He could let it function, could feel the motions of his mouth, while up behind his eyes he looked around and thought. It was thus, entering the choreography of the service and delivering solid, meaningful words, that he watched the new couple enter. The man was nervous, tiptoeing with his hands raised, in a pink polo shirt and jacket. He grimaced, baring his teeth as he maneuvered into place. His wife looked pretty and was, as Peter’s mother would have put it, “in full sail,” decidedly pregnant, her face soft and round, tan with makeup. So that was why they were here. They’d be wanting to make use of Reverend Peter’s services, arriving late enough in her pregnancy not to have to suffer too much church and soon enough to seem willing. They settled slowly at the back.

  Peter spoke and sang. The rhythm of the ritual took hold, appeased him. He saw it take hold of the congregation also. Shaking hands with them at the door afterward they were clean and light, not quite tired, glazed with smiles as they were let out into the Sunday quiet. The new couple, having watched everything including the exit of all the others, were the last out.

  “New faces. I’m delighted you joined us. I’m Reverend Peter.”

  The man smiled, but differently to the regulars, as though amused at the thought of meeting a vicar at all, as though this too were part of a show. His fingers were short and heavy, his grip tight. A builder, maybe. His head was set low over high, muscular shoulders. A small gold stud, caught by the sun, shone in one ear-lobe.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Rob. This is my wife, Cassie.”

  Cassie reached her small hand forward and smiled with a little scrunch of her nose. “Lovely to meet you, Vicar.”

  “I see you’re expecting a happy event, the happiest event.”

  “That’s right,” Rob replied. “Fact, that’s sort of why we came.”

  “Yes, I rather thought it might be.”

  “We want to get her started right. And we are local. We live just down by the Peugeot garage.”

  “Well, just call the number on the sign and we’ll arrange to meet and talk about it. There are things to discuss for a christening.”

  “Ah, that’s terrific. Thanks, Father.”

  “It is, indeed. Another soul saved.”

  Rob smiled, his head swaying slightly. “Exactly.”

  Peter watched them walk away. Rob hadn’t gone five yards before he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit up, his smoke a lovely blue rising over his shoulder.

  Peter stretched across the bed to turn the radio down. Rolling on his back, he shucked off both shoes and settled his hands behind his head to watch Steve dress.

  “I’ve got a new congregant.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Think you’d like him, actually. Terribly butch.”

  “Is she now?”

  Peter would never mention this, but sometimes Steve reminded him of his grandfather. It was the length and flatness of his back, perhaps stiffening now with middle age. That long plane made his proportions strange when he leaned forward from his waist to look through the drawer: it was straight all the way up the back of his neck.

  “Are you trying to make me jealous?”

  “Would I ever do that to you?”

  Steve dropped his towel: brief, matter-of-fact nudity, determinedly unarousing. He kept his back to Peter. His buttocks twitched together, hollowing at their sides, when he pulled up his Y-fronts. He sat on the edge of the bed to put on his socks. Now, standing again in his underwear, he looked childish, like a se
xy little boy.

  “Do you have to go out tonight?”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “Youth mission.”

  “So you’re out?”

  “I’ll be back by nine.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows, disbelieving.

  “All right, nine-thirty. It shouldn’t be later than that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. So you want me to sit here and wait for you?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Steve chose a shirt from the wardrobe, unbuttoned the top, and angled it carefully off the hanger. He slid his arms into it.

  “Fine, fine.” Peter gave up. “Not tonight then. But we should do something one of these nights. I should come with you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not exactly your scene, dear. And what if someone should see you?”

  Peter hadn’t apologized because he wasn’t wrong so there was no need to. The ball flew high over his head. He always loved that moment, the purity and stillness of it, the ball in another element, silently traveling over the noise below. It sank toward the green. Jack blocked it down with the side of his boot, turned on the spot, and looped past the defender. Peter ran toward him, feeling Jack’s father’s gaze fastened on him. Jack ran three strides and struck the ball cleanly. It shot up, humming, into the top left corner of the goal and Jack stopped still with his arms raised as his teammates rushed toward him. When they’d gone, Peter patted him on the shoulder. Jack turned round startled, shrugged the vicar’s hand from his shoulder, and ran away. Another boy shouted, “You taking sides now, ref?” Peter shook his head, back in the game. “Backchat. Don’t make me warn you twice.”

  Rob waved as he and Cassie arrived. They sat at the back of the congregation as though still interlopers. Cassie pulled up her bra straps beneath her blouse, settling her heavy breasts. Rob murmured something to her and they both, simultaneously, turned their faces up to Peter. Through the ceremony they were calm and amiable but as if not quite getting the point. They looked continuously expectant, like children awaiting the end of a magic trick that never arrived. Every week they sat like that until they were released into the real world of air and cars and food and TV.

  Rob was larger than Peter had remembered. Perhaps he went to the gym. Certainly he had the big cylindrical thighs of a bodybuilder. They held him up on the bulk of himself, as though he couldn’t ever properly sit down. Briefly, Peter glanced at his crotch, at his trouser front clogged with his member. Cassie’s ringed hand rested on her belly. They looked peaceful, animal, comfortably thoughtless. Rob caught Peter’s eye for a hot moment and confused Peter by giving him an inappropriate encouraging nod.

  The following week Peter thought that Rob looked hungover. He sat with his arms folded, his drained gray face tilted back, observing proceedings from under half-closed eyelids. At the door he excused himself. “Bit dicky today. Must’ve been the takeaway last night.” He rubbed his stomach to illustrate but Peter wasn’t having it.

  “I’m sure it was. You can’t always trust them, can you? Temperance. Temperance in all things.” That was a foolish choice of word he’d heard himself say twice. Quite probably Rob didn’t know what it meant.

  …

  He’d chosen the wrong moment to go to the shop. Peter was surrounded by schoolchildren in loud groups. They wandered erratically across the pavement in front of him, shrieking at each other, stepping off into the gutter, oblivious to oncoming cars. Before he could pay for his milk, bread, and baked beans, he had to wait behind a few of them as they bought the sugary drinks and sweets that shook their concentration into a useless noisy fizz. He rolled his eyes at the shopkeeper, who didn’t respond, seemed confused, in fact.

  As Peter was leaving the shop, a man entering greeted him. It took Peter a moment to recognize Rob because Rob was wearing a suit. He’d made the standard after-work adjustment: top shirt button undone, tie pulled a little loose. Peter hadn’t thought of Rob as someone who would need to wear a suit for work.

  “It’s Rob, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Peter often ran into parishioners when he was out and actually quite liked to. It was contact that required only his fluent, professional self, and it made the world sometimes cheerful and friendly, familiar.

  “How are you? How’s …”

  “Cassie?”

  “Yes, I was going to say Cassie.”

  “She’s diamond. Really well. Won’t be long now.”

  “No, I suppose it can’t be.”

  “It’s a big relief, to be honest, Reverend. Cassie, she, um, she miscarried a couple of times.”

  “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah. Well. So. So, we’re properly excited.”

  “I’m sure you must be.”

  “Here, I’ve got a scan I carry around I can show you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry.”

  “No, no, it’s just here.” Rob pulled a folded piece of paper from his wallet and handed it to Peter. “It’s a little girl.”

  Peter looked at the faint white swirl, the luminous bones, the brighter white of its heart and spine. “A little girl, is it?”

  “Yes. There.” Rob pointed with the nail of his little finger. “That blob there is her heart beating away.”

  “Yes, I thought it was. You must be very happy.”

  “We are. Anyway, I’ll let you get on. We’re seeing you next week, aren’t we, to talk through arrangements?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Great.” Full of his fatherhood, full of his ordinary joy, Rob gave Peter a friendly pat on the shoulder as he left the shop. Peter looked back at him and tried to smile.

  Peter walked slowly to football. It was no longer a release for him, a clearing onto which he stepped once a week to move in light and air. Now it was something else that opposed him, another place of solitude without freedom. Dimly he knew that it was his fault, that his personality had seeped out and somehow stained it all.

  The day was chilly also, the pitch heavy and stiff. Wind hustled the trees. Cold rain flung across and stopped, started again. The ground was waterlogged near the center circle. Running through it, the boys’ boots stamped up flashes of water that soaked their socks. They played slowly. Jack was impatient, working with more energy and will than the other boys. Peter watched his frustration and indulged the temptation to thwart him further. Three times when Jack had received the ball and was ready to start on one of his glorying flights toward goal, balanced and expert, his hair fetchingly lifted by the wind, Peter blew for offside. It was satisfying to snap the leash and watch him stop, letting the ball roll from his feet, unused. You’re not going anywhere. He knew he was doing it, that the offsides were marginal at best, and he heard confirming voices of protest from the sidelines. So he wasn’t surprised after the game when Jack’s father, his face and voice by now so familiar, approached and said, “Look, I don’t know what it is but you’ve got some sort of a problem.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t use your posh voice on me. If you don’t know, that only makes it worse. I’m not saying you’re funny with kids.”

  “You better not be. That would be, that would be.”

  “I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that there’s something about you and Jack. I’ve asked him. He said there’s no funny business whatever. Point is, I’ve got a good lad here, a good player, and he’s not getting a chance to develop. I’ve found somewhere else for him, a Sunday league game he can play in. So you won’t be seeing us again.”

  Peter regarded the man with narrowed eyes, that face so familiar now, the small blue eyes, the sprouting chest hair at his collar. “I have to say I’m relieved,” he said eventually.

  “You what?”

  “Jack’s a little cheat, isn’t he? Can’t trust him to play properly at all. It’ll be nice to get rid of him. The game will be mu
ch improved.”

  “Now, listen.” Jack’s father jabbed a pointing finger at Peter then shook his head, giving up. “If you weren’t a man of the cloth, seriously …”

  He turned and walked away.

  Off the grid. That was how Peter thought of himself when he lost contact with God, when Jesus was a dead man and he was alone. Then the world was vast and contained nothing, nothing real, only his loneliness between hard surfaces. How long he spent like this was a secret kept between him and God, and of all his secrets this was the most private. Of course this all belonged in the category of “doubt,” which was integral to faith and sounded strong and simple, even heroic, in the spiritual lives of others. But for Peter right now it meant sitting alone in his house with the radio on, the light coming down, leftover baked beans hardening on his plate, and his soul shriveling inside him like a slug on salt. It meant thinking of Steve out there, loose in the gusty evening city. It meant wanting Steve and Steve not wanting him back.

  Sometimes Peter wished for ordinary things, ordinary thoughts. He could have had what the others were having, had he been born that way. But this, apparently, was not what was destined for him.

  Peter was angry with loneliness the day Rob and Cassie came to his office to discuss the christening. He sat them down without offering drinks, watched their gazes travel nervously around his bookshelves and religious images, unable to settle.

  “You see, this is something to be taken very seriously. Nothing more seriously in fact. Now, I know that I serve a function. I know that’s what I do as far as some people are concerned.”

  “Sorry, I don’t follow.”

  Peter stared. “People need me for this and that, to get their children into the good church schools, to visit the elderly relatives they can’t be bothered to see and so on. But I have to insist, I am a servant of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and He demands faith and respect—”