Even Now

by Susan S. Kelly

  Perhaps that was it. Peter took me seriously.

  Couldn’t a string of impossibly perfect fall days, blue skied and golden hued, lie behind an attraction? Crystalline mornings when every filament of a spiderweb glistened, dogwood berries shone plump and red, light filtered through branches in distinct rays like a child’s drawing of sunbeams. Warm noons and breezy afternoons and solitude interrupted only by dropping nuts and rustling leaves and the chink of a shovel, scratch of a rake.

  Hands on hips, I critically surveyed my work. The precise and hideous cinder-block outline was now painfully visible, the flat marble plaques shiny perfections within rich black soil, a by-product of time and nature that couldn’t be purchased at any price anywhere.

  “Busy?”

  “Just about to start digging up these lovely cinder blocks. How about you?”

  “Busy making enemies. The narthex has sign-up boards for covenant groups and prayer groups, tutoring at schools, a walk for the hungry, and female ushers. And I’ve sent out a notice for parishioners to bring powdered milk on Sundays—there’s an ugly rubber barrel smack in the middle of the narthex, too, for collecting the boxes. That enough?”

  Was he looking for solace or reassurance? Didn’t matter; I gave it. “They’re small atrocities.”

  “Depends on who’s judging.”

  “Ceel—”

  “Yes?” His eyes asked for affirmation.

  “Ceel always says to ask yourself, How sorry will I be? How sorry will I be if—oh, I don’t know. The question applies to every ridiculous situation. How sorry will I be if I leave the car unlocked and someone steals the book I left on the front seat? How sorry will I be if I postpone buying milk until tomorrow? How sorry will I be if I wash this sweater when the tag says DRY CLEAN ONLY and it’s ruined? How sorry will I be if I tell this person something they might not want to hear?” I lifted my shoulders at his laughter. “You asked.”

  “Now that I know Ceel’s, what’s your philosophy of living?”

  “Oh, don’t. You’re as bad as Ellen. She was doing an assignment for school and wanted to know if I could give only one piece of advice to a child, what would it be? Whatever I said wouldn’t be right. Wouldn’t be enough, couldn’t possibly be the best or wisest or kindest advice.” I drew a stick across the marble surface of a plaque. “Besides,” I said, “I don’t even break the unwritten rules.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “Don’t bring a baby into a movie theater. Don’t have more than one transaction at the bank drive-through. Don’t take up two parking places.”

  Peter gazed out at the panoramic mountainscape where vivid blocks of red and gold cozied with green corridors of conifers. When he spoke again, his voice was filled with doubt. “Do you think I’m making terrible changes?”

  I looked at him but saw only the dark bowed head, as though the need to know shamed him.

  “Do you?” he said, raising his head.

  He was entrusting me with his misgivings. Asking for encouragement is a gift. “No,” I said. “Not me.”

  If anyone had asked, Are you worried? I would have answered, Why should I be? There was nothing illicit or furtive about our time together, no longer than half an hour. Nothing stealthy or clandestine. But no one asked. Nor did I. Ask myself why I parked on the service road, out of sight. Ask, What’s happening here? Though once I did say, “Where are you supposed to be?”

  “Here,” he said, with certainty in eyes that could as easily provoke, tease. “Today’s the day we’re moving the urns to the parish house for safekeeping, remember?” I didn’t ask him where he was supposed to be again, unwilling to spoil a friendship. That’s what we were, all we were. It’s simply that we happened to be male and female, mother and minister. Sharing a sandwich or a story.

  He taught me a little of clerical lore, the theory that the height of a rector’s collar is in direct proportion to the stiffness of its wearer. One afternoon I finally learned all the names for priestly vestments, stole and alb and cassock, and clerics’ vanity in particular fabrics and embroidery. We discovered we were on the same religious mailing lists, receiving how-to-be-a-saint junk mail with pictures of miracles guaranteed to stop mailmen in their appointed-round tracks. And he talked about his roles, wryly, frankly, with no self-pity. “Yesterday I was an administrator. Tomorrow I’ll be a mentor, Sunday I’m a lecturer.”

  “What are you today? Treasurer? Listener? Mourner?”

  “Regular,” he said. “That’s why I come.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” I said.

  “Yes, you can. It’s a service industry.”

  “Like waitressing, and insurance.”

  “Like mothering.”

  He mused aloud at the irony of “Anglican ambiguity,” as he termed it, how vocation is different from avocation, how people who feel strongly connected to the liturgy—“like you”—generally appreciated silence, meditation. We laughed over the strangers on the street who yelled, “Howdy, Padre!” to him, and over what he called his Anti-Christ Auto Art, a collection of irreverent bumper stickers. “The best of show are ‘The only hell Mama ever raised’ and ‘Jesus is coming, and He’s pissed.‘”

  “There’s something I’ve always wanted to know,” I said gravely.

  “Is God dead?”

  “A far more serious topic.”

  He composed his face to match mine. “Hit me.”

  “When people knock on your door selling magazine subscriptions and light bulbs, do you buy because you’re a minister and have to be nice?”

  “Come here.” He beckoned and whispered in my ear, “I hide in the closet.”

  He told me about spending Saturdays of his Maryland youth in the JUG basement of Catholic school— “Judgment Under God”—corralled with other models of bad behavior. I told him how whenever I woke up feeling sick as a child that I looked in the mirror and smiled hugely and fiercely, to convince myself that I was well enough to go to school. “Hence four years of perfect attendance medals.”

  “And untold numbers of infected classmates.”

  I told him my favorite hymns, and he told me his. I told him my favorite prayer, and he told me his. A baptismal prayer, oddly enough, and he recited it—the sweet request for an inquiring mind, a discerning heart—leaning against a tree, there in the woods, unembarrassed by his audience of one.

  So he asked of my children, what they were like, and did, and said. I told him that Mark had once cut open Mexican jumping beans to discover how they “worked,” how he relied on duct tape to repair everything from bicycles to tennis shoes. We split a Coke and I told him how Ellen didn’t like the way her new-clipped nails felt against bedsheets and that Mark didn’t like ironed shirts because they were “crunchy” against his skin. We laughed about Ellen using Wite-Out to give herself a French manicure and Mark announcing at eight, “I’m afraid of dying because there’s nothing to do all day in heaven.”

  And as we talked of children, we talked, eventually, of Ceel. Of her childlessness, a condition as chronic and debilitating as an illness, and how I admired her stoicism and longed for her prayers to be answered. “She never despairs,” I said. “Never blames. Yet for me it wasn’t until I already had a child that I realized how badly I wanted one.”

  I asked him how he’d come to the decision not to have children, or was it the only road to take in his position, a necessity? Did he ever feel a lack, an absence? “Sometimes,” he said. “During a christening, when I hold this perfect little package, imagine the life ahead. And yesterday, when you told me how teaching a child to pump a swing is the hardest thing you’ll ever teach them.” He quoted me. “You put your legs out when you go up. . . now fold, fold!”

  He’d raked back his hair, the backward-finger gesture I’d come to know. “It was largely Daintry’s decision, I guess. We have a lot we want to accomplish, so . . .” He smiled faintly. “One of those things that seems like a good idea at the time, like cutting open jumping beans. Besides,” he said,
and gently stepped on a puffball mushroom, “people change. They change their minds.”

  Beneath his foot the globular mushroom collapsed soundlessly in a small cloud of mustardy dust, a volcano folding upon itself. During those afternoons and conversations, I forgot that he was married and to whom.

  * * *

  And so inevitably we talked of Daintry. We had to; she lay between us.

  “Mind if I smoke?” He burrowed through the inside pockets of his blazer and pulled out a cigar. “Daintry won’t let me puff in the rectory.” I shook my head, watched him trim and light it.

  “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to a crude wire cylinder weighted at the bottom with stones.

  “Mulch in the making. Eggshells, coffee grounds, broccoli stems.” I swiped at a hovering yellow jacket and tossed an apple core into the container.

  “Won’t it draw rats?”

  “Bees, mostly. You worried?”

  “Worriers do not schedule Jesus film marathons.” The previous weekend Peter had arranged for five movies depicting Jesus, from the art house to the commercial, to be shown and discussed at the church. The Ten Commandments, even Godspell, were expected; the controversial Jesus of Nazareth was not.

  “You didn’t use Jesus Christ Superstar.” She’d had that album. I recalled it precisely, the brown cover with gold lettering. Singing along, we’d thought ourselves wildly heretical.

  “I’ve given new definition to the term ‘bully pulpit,‘” he said.

  “I admire your courage. I’d never be that brave.” Cigar smoke meandered gracefully, hypnotizing me with its bluish flow. “Daintry was.” I drew lines in the dirt with a stick. “Once I watched her cut her own hair.”

  “Haven’t you ever cut your own hair?”

  I shook my head. “Not like Daintry. She leaned over, grabbed whatever hung down, and whacked off that beautiful black stuff with one chop of the scissors. Scalped herself with an instant shag. We were thirteen. I thought it was the bravest act I’d ever seen, until an hour later. She telephoned a crush who wouldn’t give her the time of day. When he answered she held the receiver to the record player so he got an earful of ‘Mr. Big Stuff.‘”

  Peter laughed. “That doesn’t sound like a brave Daintry. That sounds like a thwarted Daintry.”

  I gazed at the lesser hills, footstools to the Blue Ridge. “What have you done to her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s. . . different.”

  “Different how?”

  I wasn’t sure how. “Does she still thump in bed?” Peter looked at me curiously. “No, no, I. . . ”

  “’No, no, I’ what?” He laughed.

  “She used to rock herself to sleep. It reached a point where I couldn’t sleep without the noise of Daintry rocking because I spent so many nights with her.” I toed a shovel. “We always tried to remember exactly what position we fell asleep in, so the next morning we could see if we’d moved during the night.” Ambushed by memory, I looked at him with embarrassment. Like switchbacks of a hiking trail, memory follows an indirect route. “Amazing, what you manage to recall.” But his smile was kind, indulging.

  “We assigned a different fortune to each color scarab of the bracelet I got for my eleventh birthday. Then we’d ask school friends to pick their favorite stone and we’d predict their future. Entirely invented.”

  He tapped knuckles to his chin. “You two were close, weren’t you? Daintry never speaks of it.”

  I was quiet for a moment, both wounded and relieved by the revelation. “In the way that girls of a certain age are, to survive, yes. I was a. . . disciple of Daintry’s.” With the stilled clarity of photographs, visions of us constantly paired flashed before me: wobbling on stilts, counting pogo stick jumps, selling lemonade on the corner, playing croquet at twilight.

  I uncapped the highlighter I used for the columbarium’s blueprint and waved it under Peter’s nose. “Which is better, this or gasoline?” Too close; I left a small streak just above his lip. “We never could decide which smelled better, Magic Marker or gas.” How to convey such closeness, the nonsense significance of girlhood’s innocent intimacies? That blue was the best color in the whole wide world; that seven and nine were girl numbers, one and three were boys. That wishing for something not to happen guaranteed the opposite effect.

  “I hated ever missing school,” I said. “Not because there was homework to make up, but because I’d miss being with her.” I zipped the marker in my backpack. “But it was never the same after I went away to school. We didn’t have that intensity of the everyday. You have to know what your friend is wearing, and thinking, and whose initials she’s scribbling in her notebook.”

  “I can’t imagine Daintry scribbling initials.”

  “But she did.” Tree bark was rough and uneven against my shoulder. “And when I came home for vacations something had changed. We weren’t as close. We were just . . . apart. Different.” I tried to recall those homecomings, brief and hurried. At school I’d dreamed of Cullen, and Daintry, what was known and familiar. Yet once home I’d longed to go away again in an inexplicable paradox of wanting both the old and the new, independence and security, safety and free fall.

  I closed the cooler as if I might shut the dark underpinnings of the paradox inside it and stood, brushing off the seat of my jeans. “I need to get to work. Not many of these snake days left.”

  “What days?”

  “Because it’s so warm still. They’re out sunning, soaking up the warmth for their cold blood and the cold winter.”

  “Shit!” Peter jumped to his feet, shaking his hand and dropping the cigar. “Bee stung me. Ouch! Damn, it hurts.”

  “Let me see.” He extended his arm, a welt rising on the pale skin of his inner wrist. “Stinger’s still there, wait a minute.” I pulled out the minute splinter. “Hold on.” I reached for the flattened cigar, pinched off the butt end still moist from his mouth, and pressed the damp tobacco against the reddening flesh.

  “Home remedy?”

  “The best kind. Sorry. October bees are so dogged and territorial. They must intuit the first frost, realize their buzzing days are numbered.” Sweat beads had broken out on Peter’s forehead. “Give me this,” I said, easing off his jacket and pushing him down gently. “Sit a minute.”

  A plume of smoke curled beside a windowless house in the valley, a thin gray ribbon against the palette of autumn colors stretching out before and beneath the shelf of land. Breathing deeply of the tangy burnt aroma, I pointed to the leaf pile, a tiny distant cone. “One time you asked why we moved. That’s why. So I could smell burning leaves again.”

  Peter cradled his wrist in his other palm. I felt his gaze on me, though I looked straight ahead. I knew that gaze, direct and riveting and interested. “Does Hal know what a romantic he married?”

  Though it was only two o’clock, far up the hill the church bell pealed three times, still unregulated to the waning hours of daylight savings. “There’s something I haven’t changed,” he said. “Every spring, those first few days after daylight savings begins and I come across some clock—in the car, on the microwave—and think, Oh, it’s five o’clock, and yesterday it would have been four, and I would have had that other hour. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  But I understood Peter Whicker’s wistful, silly, profound melancholy for that lost hour. That makes two of us romantics, I could have said.

  “Caught you,” he said, “goofing off on the job.”

  I didn’t move, sit up from lying on my back. Against the azure October sky snowy clouds billowed in great puffed mounds. “I always believed God lived behind those clouds. They were part of his beard. Bald head kind of rimming over them, fingers on the top of them as he peered over.” Waiting for laughter, I tilted my head backward to look at him. Instead he pulled a small black machine from his blazer pocket. “Is that a tape recorder? For what?”

  “Taking notes.” He spoke into it, repeating what I’d said.

  �
��You’re doing it all wrong. See, you’re talking into the speaker.” I pointed to the tiny microphone at the end of the appliance.

  “No wonder my sermons are garbled. Are you listening yet?”

  “To what?” I stepped away, conscious of our closeness.

  “My sermons.”

  “I like them.”

  “Nope. Damning with faint praise is not an answer.”

  So I asked him how he wrote them, what inspired him: a person, a passage, a piece of music? Were they week-long endeavors or sudden, revelatory blurts? Whether he memorized or used notes. He wrote on Saturday nights, he said: late, alone, in pencil, at a desk. And I could see that, the head bent in concentration, fingers worrying his ear or lip beneath a lamp’s pale cone of illumination.

  “Use yourself,” I suggested. “Things you’ve told me. Getting punished for throwing rocks down the well as a little boy. Your own life makes you more, I don’t know, personal. Accessible.”

  He aimed an acorn at the shovel head. “Go on.”

  “What I want from priests is. . . humanness. I want to know they’re human. Then I can connect to you—them.”

  “Religio means connect. Did you know?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not good with definitions.”

  That Sunday in the pew I heard my own words from the pulpit, a sermon about a benevolent God. Peter hadn’t used just himself in his sermon. He’d used me.

  “Brought you something.” He’d found a bird’s nest on his way down the hill. Downy feathers still clung to the twigs. “Were you leaving?”

  “Going to look for wildflowers. Trilliums, lady’s slippers, ferns. It’s against the law, but maybe I won’t get arrested for transplanting them to a church ground.”

  “Can I come?” He saw my hesitation. “You might hit the mother lode and need my help.”

  We crunched deep into the woods, through leaves and sticks, stepping over fallen tree trunks, holding whip-thin bare branches for one another. For twenty minutes I saw nothing but dying weeds, leaves, brilliant-hued vines. Then I heard something beyond our crackling passage, a low trickling gurgle like rainwater in a gutter. I hurried toward the noise and nearly stepped over it: a spring, barely more than a bubble in the soil, shining wetly on leaves and stones. The spring pulsed clear and cold, rising only inches before seeping invisibly into the earth again. Surrounding and sheltering the tiny fountain were fronds of fern, plush moss, waxy galax. And a virtual greenhouse of wildflowers. No longer blooming, but thriving. Peter’s mother lode. I dropped to my knees, delighted with the lucky discovery.