Carol stayed overnight. When they got up to Patsy’s room, the first thing she did was close the door and dig her rosary out of her coat pocket. She knelt quietly against the high bed and eased the beads one at a time through her fingers, moving her lips quickly as she said her Hail Marys. To pass the time, Patsy unwrapped the tartan scarves and the ankle socks and placed them in separate piles on her dresser. When Carol was finished, they climbed into bed with the Seventeen but it wasn’t long before Carol picked up where she’d left off with Kirk Douglas. She had no precise words to explain herself. She started sentences and left them unfinished. She said, “When she was swimming naked…” and “When they were lying on the grass talking about the wind…” and “When he put his hands on her stomach to feel the baby…” She sighed and tossed around in the bed to give some movement to her thoughts, moaning theatrically about the deep dimple in his chin, opening her arms to the room. She said it was easy to understand why someone would want to do it with a man like that.
She noticed eventually that Patsy wasn’t giving her anything back, wasn’t even listening. “What’s with you?” she asked.
“Did you know they crucified everyone?” Patsy asked.
“What?” Carol said.
Patsy sat up in the bed. “I thought they only did that to Jesus.”
“You thought they dreamt it up just for him?” Carol asked.
She picked up the Seventeen and began to leaf again through the glossy ads, lingering over a red angora sweater. “There are pictures of Christ with a thief on each side. One of the thieves even says something, doesn’t he?” She shrugged her shoulders. “That’s what they did then.”
“I knew about the thieves,” Patsy said. “I just didn’t think there was anyone else. I thought the thieves were there so Jesus wouldn’t be alone, or to make a better story. But they did it to everybody. All the time.”
“Just to the men.” Carol said. “I think women usually got stoned by their friends and neighbours.”
“I thought that was the only time ever,” Patsy said.
“What difference does it make?” Carol said. “The point is that he was the Son of God. He took all of our sins. That’s the point.”
Patsy had nothing to say. It wasn’t the first time she had tripped on something everyone else had always seen. She fluffed her pillow and leaned back into it, pulled the quilts up to her chin. Carol threw the magazine off the bed and did the same. They both turned a few times and each finally slept her own sleep. Carol’s dreams were enriched by the muscles in Kirk Douglas’s arms and back and thighs, and by glances from his cool blue eyes. The afternoon movie had expelled her like a birth into young lusty womanhood and she was full term.
Patsy’s dreams rolled through the night like hills. On every hill there were a hundred crosses and on every cross a man, his face turned down and away, his body twisted with its own weight. At the base of each cross friends and family sat quietly on the ground, mostly women sharing a bit of food, ready for the death, sticking it out. Soldiers in helmets and dark tunics who carried shotguns like her Uncle Peter’s stood together in small groups talking and laughing. A few broke off and strolled alone through the rows of crosses. The hills rolled on forever and the colour of the sky was constant, a dull godless orange.
4: BAPTISM
When Patsy came to the age of decision, it was understood that she would be baptized. Baptism was compulsory. Unlike Carol, who had once unfolded from a cedar chest the lacy white infant’s gown she’d worn the day the priest sprinkled her forehead with water and ensured her salvation, Patsy had lived the first part of her life at some risk. In her church infants were taken to the front and dedicated, not baptized. Parents and everyone else in the congregation were expected to stand up and promise to help the child live a good life; if the child died, there was the hope that God would understand. Baptism was for later, when you were old enough to think for yourself. It was supposed to be an act of the individual will. It wouldn’t work otherwise. Six years earlier, when she was small, Patsy had watched her sister’s baptism, she’d watched the minister lower her sister into the water and lift her up again, cleansed. When the red velvet drapes behind the pulpit slid open, you could see only the upper part of their bodies. The drapes framed them like hand puppets.
On the Saturday night before Patsy’s baptism, there was a meeting at the church. Carol wasn’t allowed to come; Patsy’s father said it was not a spectator sport. Patsy and two others, sixteen-year-old Gerald Hall and an older woman who had bought the dry cleaners and was new to the congregation, met the minister in his office in the church basement at seven o’clock and listened while he explained his understanding of the words decision and faith.
He told them this would be the most important event of their lives. He prayed a short prayer, and after the prayer he read from the New Testament, from Matthew: “And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.”
They followed the minister, one behind the other, up the winding staircase to the church proper but he stopped on the landing near the top of the stairs and opened a door which Patsy had never seen opened before, exposing a short set of steps, like a stile. He quickly climbed up and then down again into the empty cement tank, and then he turned to offer his hand to whoever was ready to take it.
“Just so you’ll have an idea,” he said.
The woman who owned the dry cleaners went first. When she got to the top of the steps the minister had to ask her to kick off her pumps, but then she seemed to know what was expected and she jumped down into the tank and stood erect, ready for his arms. When she was finished she went back down the stairs to wait in the office. Gerald said, “I’m last,” and the minister leaned out to take Patsy’s hand. She was up and in quickly.
The sides of the tank were high, nearly to her chest, and she thought likely there would be room for about six people. There were taps in the corner and a big drain at the bottom and she could smell vinegar. When she asked the minister how high the water would be, he put his hand like a marker about six inches above his belt, smiling, saying he’d never lost anyone. “You just hold your breath,” he said. “I’ll say a few words and you respond and then I’ll lower you.” He turned her sideways and took her in his arms. “Okay now,” he said. He put one arm around her shoulders and the other hand flat on her chest, as if she had no breasts at all. He tried to force her down but she resisted automatically and lost her balance and she had to stand up straight so he could try again. “Now let yourself go,” he said. Gerald watched, leaning on his arms on the rim of the tank.
When she was climbing out, Gerald extended his hands to take her arm. He steadied her down the metal steps and bent to help her put her shoes on. “That’s okay,” she said. “I can do that.”
She went back down the stairs to the office, and when the minister and Gerald were finished they all sat down in a circle again. The minister looked deliberately at each of them and told them that they would soon have a responsibility to witness, to lead others to salvation. He read from Ephesians, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and then he prayed another short prayer.
They talked about the order in which they would come upstairs Sunday night and then they were free to go, unless anyone wanted to talk to him privately. Only the woman did. Patsy left quickly. Gerald followed her out the door and, waiting at the curb to be picked up by someone, called out after her, “See you tomorrow night, sinner.”
The next afternoon, Patsy met Carol behind the canning factory at the creek, which was full of recent rain and running strong, brown with churned-up mud. They followed it past the end of the town out into the country, something they’d done often when they were eight and nine. Where the creek turned north through the fields of white beans and fence-high corn, they climbed up onto the gravel road, and when the walking got easy Carol tried to take Patsy’s arm, the way
an adult would. Patsy shook her off. She had been waiting for some kind of Catholic question about the baptism but Carol was aloof and dreamy, savouring the last afternoon of a knowledge which had been unique to her, like a midwife, or a woman of the world strolling the countryside with a virgin.
At the crossroad, where they could turn and walk back into town if they wanted to, Patsy heard someone call her name. Eleanor the blasphemous was out walking too, she stood about a hundred yards down the road that led straight out from town. When Carol saw her, she said, “Turn around, quick,” and she hurried back the way they’d come.
Patsy followed her, whispering, “I don’t think it would kill us to at least say hi.”
“Not today,” Carol said. “Any other day, but not today.” Without moving her head, Patsy watched Eleanor carry on down the road. Finally she lifted her arm and waved.
“Oh, great,” Carol said. But Eleanor didn’t respond. She didn’t lift her own arm in a mad reciprocal wave and run to catch them. They were safe.
When they got back down to the creek, Patsy asked Carol if she had her rosary with her. Carol said yes, she always had it, and she carefully pulled a Kleenex from the pocket of her shorts, stopping and opening the Kleenex and holding her hand very still so Patsy could look. It was like a necklace. The dark blue beads were made of cut glass and they absorbed the light from the sun the way jewels would. They were arranged in little groups, with small chains, spaces separating them. The pewter cross dangled on its own short chain and nailed to the cross a tiny twisted Christ with a bowed head died for the sins of mankind.
When Patsy made a grab for the rosary, Carol pulled her hand back but she was too late, Patsy was faster, she untangled the rosary and dropped it over her own Baptist head. She broke into a run along the creek bank, jumping when she had to over the exposed roots of maple trees and random garbage: bike tires, a grey boot, thin coiled strips of rusty metal. The rosary flew around as she jumped and the cross bumped hard against her chest.
Carol had to cry and yell things to try to get it back, things like, “That’s mine,” and “You’re not allowed to touch that,” and, finally, loudly, something she didn’t really mean, “I hate you.” This stopped Patsy. She turned around. She said, “No one’s ever going to have to tell you to go to Hell, you know. Because that’s where you’re going anyway unless you get baptized the way Jesus did.” She lifted the rosary from her head and held it bunched up tight in the palm of her hand. She said, “This won’t save you. This is just jewellery.” She threw the rosary down into the weeds behind her and took off again, running, knowing there was no possibility of forgiveness. She didn’t stop to wait or hope for it.
At dinner Patsy’s parents and older sisters avoided any talk about what was going to happen that night; there was only a quick checklist of dresses and shoes spoken aloud by her mother with everyone nodding yes, everything was hanging up, everything was fine. Her father got his suit on and drove her over to the church a half-hour before the service was to begin, and when he dropped her off at the Sunday school door he told her not to worry, that this would be just like a lot of other things you only have to do once.
In the choir room, the older woman who had bought the dry cleaners told Patsy she could call her Jessica. They hung their dresses and their slips in the cupboard and put the bags that held their extra bras and panties discreetly on the shelf with the choir hats and chose their crimson gowns. Patsy watched Jessica fold her garter belt with her stockings and tuck them into her shoes and did the same. Above them, the congregation was quietly singing some of the older hymns. Gerald had changed in the minister’s office, and when he was ready he came out to sit with them and wait. His feet were huge and white and awkward below his gown and Patsy couldn’t help but notice the way the dark hair on his legs stopped abruptly at his ankles and curled. He was to go first. It wasn’t long before the minister’s wife came down the stairs to get him.
After Gerald left, Jessica stood up and walked around a bit. She blew her nose on a small linen hanky and said to Patsy, “I hope you’re not scared. Don’t be scared. There’s nothing much to it.” She got a cigarette from her purse and lit it. She took several deep drags and then dug around for a small silver ashtray with a flip-up lid and put the cigarette out. She said, “You won’t say anything, will you.”
Patsy said no, she wouldn’t.
When the minister’s wife brought Gerald back, he had a towel over his head and the choir gown stuck to his back and legs. It dripped a trail as he hurried across the room to the office. The minister’s wife sniffed briefly at the air, smiled flatly at Patsy and crooked her finger. Jessica took Patsy’s hand, gave it a little squeeze.
At the top of the stairs there was a pile of worn towels waiting and, beyond the stile, the minister. He stood in the tank facing the congregation, holding his open Bible in both hands. He was talking about her, about her decision. He wore one of the men’s choir gowns over a white dress shirt and tie
and the water was clear, she could see down through it, she could see his gown drifting out around a pair of hip waders. When he finished talking he closed the Bible, setting it on the edge of the tank, and pulled hard on the cord that closed the drapes. He turned to offer his hand to Patsy and she was up and over and in. The water was warm, like secondhand bathwater, and hard to walk through. The choir gown was quickly heavy and she was clumsy as she turned, but he pulled gently on her sleeve until she stood where she was supposed to stand. He winked at her and put his arm around her shoulders, much more forcefully than he had the night before, and he took both of her hands in his and folded them against her chest. Then he reached and opened the drapes with one smooth pull on the cord.
Patsy didn’t look out at the congregation. She braced herself, gripped the flat cement floor of the tank with her feet. The minister said all three of her names loudly, like an announcement, and asked did she take Jesus Christ as her own personal saviour. She closed her eyes and he waited and then he leaned his mouth down close to her face. “Patsy,” he said, quietly, not quite angry, “you must be sure.”
“Go ahead,” she said. The organist, who was the only person within earshot and a good friend of Patsy’s mother, struck the first chords of “Just As I Am,” and the congregation rose and started to sing. The music was soft, reverential. Patsy closed her eyes and mouth tight against the water. She recognized a slight hesitation in the minister’s large hands when she let herself go.
She wasn’t under long. But there was time to put to memory both the strength of his arm around her shoulders and the blunt force of his hand on her chest, there was time to feel the pull of the waterlogged weight of the gown and to reach up and take the front of his shirt in her fist.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t respond in any way at all. He held her as he’d said he would, just below the surface. The congregation sang on, she could hear them through the water pleading on her behalf as they had pleaded for each other, their words familiar and distinct, and faint, as if from some distance.
For the briefest second she tried to picture the promised Spirit of God, knowing as she tried that the Spirit of God would not descend like a dove, would never, in fact, light anywhere near Patsy Flater. And then she burst up into the air, her mouth wide open to receive it. She didn’t have to look down. Her blind bare foot found the bottom step on its own.
DEER HEART
The embossed invitation to lunch with the visiting Queen hadn’t come as a big surprise. At forty-one, she found herself included on some far-off protocol list, the result of serving on a minor provincial board or two, the result of middle age.
She wouldn’t have made the trip on her own; two hundred miles across the prairie, it wasn’t worth it. She’d read the invitation immediately as a chance to be with her daughter, not the Queen, to be off with her on a long drive in the car, contained, remote, private. When she’d asked her daughter to join her at the luncheon the girl had turned down her stereo, briefly, and said, “What Queen?
”
She was aware of orchestrating these spaces in time with each of the kids, she’d been doing it religiously since their father’s departure. She would have named it instinct rather than wisdom. And they were good, the kids were fine; there was no bed-wetting, no nail chewing, there were no nightmares, at least none severe enough to throw them from their beds and send them to her own in a cold sweat. If they did have nightmares, the quiet kind, they were still able to stand up in the morning with a smile, forgetful.
Her own acceptance, after nearly two years, took an unexpected form. She’d started files. One file contained the actual separation agreement, which listed all five of their names in full capitals, in bold type, the format generic and formal, applicable to any family; with the agreement she kept her list of the modest assets, the things that had to be valued against the day of final division. Another file held the information supplied by her government, little booklets on this aspect of family breakdown, supportive statistics on that. And the notification that she would be taxed differently, now that she was alone. In the third file she kept the letters. It was the thickest of the three, although its growth had slowed.
When the mailman began to leave these letters, casually tucked in with the usual bills and junk, she’d been dumbfounded. She’d sat on the couch with her morning coffee after the kids had gone to school, unsealing, unfolding, reading one word after another, recognizing the intent of the words as they arranged themselves into paragraphs of affection. A few of the letters contained almost honourable confessions of steamy fantasies, which apparently had been alive in the world for years, right under her nose. The words fond of and hesitate appeared more than once.
These men were in her circle, there was no reason to expect they would ever leave it. And they were, to a man, firmly and comfortably attached to women they would be wise to choose all over again, in spite of waists and enthusiasms as thick and diminished as her own. She disallowed all but one of the fantasies with laughter and common sense and a profound appreciation for the nerve behind the confessions.
Casino and Other Stories Page 7
