Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

  Monsignor Giacometti must have come in while I was reading, because there he was—in his favorite chair—when I looked up from the pages. "Good morning, Monsignor," I said.

  His sad, tearful eyes blinked before returning to his newspaper. On the reverse side was an article about a spike in incidences of Lyme disease. Was Deb Sigerson the only person I knew with Lyme disease? Gunnar would have had us think so.

  Over and over again I read the same sentence about Saint Marina of Bithynia, who cross-dressed as a boy, behaved as a boy, became a monk, and was accused of impregnating the innkeeper's daughter.

  The monsignor wept on. Was he reading the same sentence again and again also? It seemed impossible to sit there and not say a word to him. I couldn't do it. Even if what he wanted most in the world was to be left alone with his sorrow, still I couldn't not speak to him and let him know that there were human beings who might assuage his sorrow, if only he would let them. I stood up. I opened my mouth and imagined speaking. And then I stopped myself.

  Some days it was just not possible to concentrate on virgin saints. I decided to catch an early train home. But before I could leave, I saw her. The beautiful older woman was perched on Hubert's desk. She was whispering urgently with him, but still he stopped me.

  "Alice, I don't think you've met Camilla Hyde. Her specialty is the saints of Wales and Cornwall."

  "Oh," I said, and redundantly introduced myself because I had to purge my mind of the only thing I knew about Cornwall: As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man, and he had seven wives, and so on. She had perfect cheekbones, like parentheses, and loose silver hair that cascaded onto her shoulders. Beneath night-black eyebrows, her eyes were a metallic blue that clashed with the lapis glow of Hubert's. I stared.

  "Camilla's from Maine," Hubert said. "I told her you were from Maine too."

  "I'm not from Maine," I said. "Waldo is. He's my husband." Hubert should have known all this very well by now. So I thought.

  "Neither am I," Camilla said. "I used to go there in the summers with my first husband. But once he died I couldn't bring myself to go back. His family had a house there, but I found them so frightening. So laconic."

  "Where in Maine was that?" I said.

  "A small town on the coast. You probably don't know it. Bug Harbor."

  "You must be kidding," I said. I turned to Hubert. "She must be kidding. That's where the yacht club is. It's where Waldo's from."

  "It's this shrinking world," Camilla said. "You can't be safe. Anywhere. Now it will turn out we know all the same people. Frightful."

  "My husband is Waldo Fairweather," I said, and considered that making this statement was as brave as stepping out of a moving airplane. Wouldn't any woman from there who was in a certain age range know Waldo, and wouldn't she then perforce have loved him, or at least longed for him?

  "I used to know Posey Fairweather. We gardened. Together. And sometimes when she was training. For a competition. She would play Ping-Pong. With me."

  "Posey? I should have known! Everyone knows Posey."

  "I don't know Posey," Hubert said.

  "That must be why you're so special," I said.

  "She doesn't like to leave Maine," Camilla said. "Of course, she has good reasons. But still. To be always. In Maine."

  "Actually, she doesn't mind leaving as much as her husbands do. Or did."

  "Is that what she says now? Well." Camilla Hyde ran her fingers through her thick lovely hair, as if searching for something lost. "Please give her my best regards. When you see her," she said. What didn't get said—even as it bored a hole through my skull—was that, along with Posey, everyone knew the Dillys. Maybe not all the Dillys or every Dilly, but some Dilly or another. The Dillys had inhabited that concavity of the Maine coastline since the invention of the lobster pot. It was entirely possible that this elegant Camilla knew Edith Dilly or her mother, that she knew about Edith Dilly and Waldo, and that at this exact moment she was wondering why Waldo was married to me and how someone like me could possibly call herself a Fairweather. And that possibility made me feel exposed, as if someone had just walked into the bathroom while I was examining my crotch for Lyme-transmitting ticks.

  Outside the club, as I should have known it would have, it had begun to snow. How did these things happen without my knowledge? Should I spend more time watching the Weather Channel? Or talking to Posey?

  I walked out of the Hagiographers Club and it was snowing and I was wearing the wrong shoes. They were red heels with pointy toes. I wondered, not for the first time, what had compelled me to wear such shoes for this day, for any day to be spent in a badly lit but extremely comfortable library reading about virgin saints. The shoes were not mildly uncomfortable, they were remarkably uncomfortable, and wholly inappropriate to the task.

  I knew exactly when I had bought them, and on what exact occasions I had worn them, which were few. They were the first shoes I'd bought after my burst appendix, three and a half years ago. They were indecently expensive. Waldo was indignant when he saw them and asked how much I had paid. I lied and said, "Five hundred dollars." Of course that sent him into a tailspin and then I said that I was kidding, they were only two hundred and fifty dollars, which seemed quite reasonable by contrast. (This was a technique I had used before, with some success.) I'd thought about returning them to the store, but something stopped me. My departed appendix. The first time I wore them it had also been an April. It was a black-tie event at which Waldo was inducted into the National Society of Inventors. Whenever I'd doubted my presence at the event, I'd looked down at my feet. Why couldn't Waldo invent beautiful shoes that did not pinch my toes? Or high heels that did not make me wobble when I walked? How hard could that be? Every year since then I had worn them to DSG's employees' and families' Christmas party, and once to the opera. Never had I ever worn them during the day when I was walking any distance. So why today? They had been inappropriate that morning when I'd walked south from Grand Central, and that had been before the precipitation.

  There was nothing to be done but walk north on Park and try to think about anything but the wet chill inhabiting my toes. Every pair of feet I looked at seemed to be shod in boots or rubbers or galoshes. Where were the ladies that were never seen without hose and heels? Never before had their absence been so pronounced.

  The warm air of Grand Central washed over me. At that same moment, Flirt and Dandy were surely romping in the snow in their bare paws. Bare paws!

  I had almost forty minutes until the next train and was giving serious thought to a hot toddy or an Irish whiskey, anything along the lines of alcoholic and warming.

  "Alice!" I heard a voice behind me. "What's up, buttercup?" It was Gunnar Sigerson; he leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

  "Gunnar," I said. "You startled me."

  "I seem to be making a habit of that," he said.

  "You are?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

  "Last time was at the Ginny O," he said. "You had a frostbitten houseguest."

  "Waldo says I have a finely tuned startle reflex. Like a deer."

  "There's nothing wrong with a startle reflex," Gunnar said. "It may one day ensure your survival in the forest. And then there is your eagle eye for mushrooms camouflaged in fallen leaves." This last made no sense, as I had not managed to spot one single mushroom when Gunnar took us out hunting fungi. I'd stood right next to a massive hen of the woods upon a carpet of brown and curling oak leaves, and Gunnar had needed to point it out to me. I hadn't seen what was right before my eyes. It was like one of those puzzles we did as children: "Find the Bunny Hidden in This Forest Picture." And there, sharing his outline with ferns and toadstools, was a perfectly clear Peter Cottontail. Gunnar had spotted three Grifola frondosas that autumn day. He had also made references to their aphrodisiac properties and their resemblance to sexual parts.

  "How's Deb?"

  "Better," he said. Gunnar was much taller than me, and so I often had to stand back a bit in order to ma
ke eye contact, if I didn't want to get a crick in my neck. Less so today in my heels; I reached his shoulder.

  Gunnar said, "So how is the hen of the woods?"

  "She's freezing," I said. "Cluck, cluck."

  "Let's go get a drink," he said. Gunnar wore a forest green parka with frayed cuffs and strange stains on the hood. On his feet were huge lace-up rubber boots with fur lining. Expedition boots. The boots of someone firmly rooted in the natural world, someone at ease in all climatic extremes. But most especially the polar ones.

  We weren't the only ones in the station hoping to warm up; the Oyster Bar was steamy with people's breath. We ordered drinks.

  "So what were you doing in town?" Of course he could reasonably ask the question because I was jobless, unemployed, a person without justification. Like everyone else in VerGroot, he knew I'd been sacked not once but twice. In VerGroot, when I walked down the sidewalk from the hardware store to the post office, no one assumed I was heading off to teach a class or to sit in a booth with headphones on, listening to the dreams of strangers. In the city, I walked along broad sidewalks and liked to imagine that strangers who saw me assumed I was doing just those things.

  "I was at the Hagiographers Club," I said. "Reading."

  "Is that the mysterious pursuit Waldo alluded to the other night?"

  "When did he say that?"

  Gunnar shrugged.

  "There's nothing mysterious about it, and he should know. It's his friend who went slightly mad in the snow. At our house. While Waldo wasn't there." Either I had guzzled my drink or it was the gnawing of disloyalty that churned my stomach. Why say such things? How could I possibly explain Lalo?

  "That was the day I saw you at the ER."

  "Exactly. Your thumb is better, I hope."

  "My thumb is fine. It continues to be a useful, opposable digit, and as such distinguishes me and my simian relatives from other creatures." Gunnar drank deeply from his whiskey and fixed his gaze on my hands, or rather my almost useless velvet gloves.

  "Alice," Gunnar said. "You know I've always liked you."

  "Great. I like you too. You and Deb are two of our best friends, even if she does think my dogs are a menace."

  "Seriously. One of my fondest memories of you is that time we all went out to eat after some Little League game, and you went outside to smoke in the parking lot."

  "I have absolutely no memory of that. I don't even smoke," I said.

  "Oh, I remember it, all right. You didn't want the kids to see you lighting up."

  "Well, maybe once or twice I'd have a cigarette, but I don't recall any parking lot."

  "It was the Wayside Inn in Budville. You were wearing cutoff blue jean shorts."

  "I don't own cutoff blue jeans. Not anymore."

  "Tell me that you know what I mean," Gunnar said.

  "I don't know what you mean," I said. "When you put it that way."

  "I like you quite a lot, Alice."

  "You mean like, as in like?" I said. And felt an idiot for saying it. Didn't this all sound way too much like high school? I'd been bad at it in high school. Apparently I wasn't any better now.

  "Yes, that kind of like."

  "I don't think this is a very good idea, Gunnar. I mean, we are both married."

  "But—"

  "And that's just for starters." I took my gloves off. My fingers were definitely warm enough.

  "But you guys have an open marriage," Gunnar said.

  I wasn't sure if I'd heard him right, but whatever I'd heard, it was wrong. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

  "It's just that Waldo—"

  "Waldo?"

  "Oh, Christmas, I've put my foot in it now."

  "Your whole damn leg. Gunnar, this is very strange, very strange indeed," I said. "Tell me."

  "Maybe I shouldn't have started this," he said.

  "Well, you damn well better finish it," I said. "What are you saying about Waldo? And don't worry. I can handle it."

  "It's just that I've seen Waldo with—with Sheila, and I got the impression that you had to know about it also."

  "Who the hell is Sheila?" I said. Even though this was clearly where the conversation had been going all along, I felt like ice had been injected into my bloodstream.

  "You don't know?"

  "I'm asking you, aren't I? No, I don't know. It probably isn't even what you think."

  "I wish that were so, Alice. At least, I do now, if it upsets you." I believed him. I was fond of Gunnar. That time we'd looked for the mushroom, I was really happy. I'd wanted it to go on and on. He was one of the few men in VerGroot I had even tried to imagine naked. Whether that was because of Gunnar's attractions or the relative dearth of sexy men in VerGroot was open to discussion. I didn't want to imagine him naked at that moment. I wanted him to stay firmly clad.

  "I'll tell you something," I said. "I know that many years ago Waldo did screw around, with someone he'd known growing up. And it was a huge crisis in our marriage. But we dealt with it, and everything is fine now. More than fine."

  "I am so sorry to be the one telling you this. I am sorry that anyone is telling you this."

  Both my hands were wrapped around my drink. Gunnar put his hands over mine. "What exactly are you telling me?" I said. "Just for the record, could you be as explicit as possible? Because I can promise you that my imagination can do far worse." I could hear how squeaky my voice had become.

  Gunnar looked over at the information booth's clock and said, "Oh my God, we've missed our train."

  "Oh, fuck," I said. "And I really want to go home."

  "Alice, I've never heard you say fuck before."

  "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck it all," I said.

  "Alice!"

  "So where did you see Waldo and this Sheila person?" I said.

  "Are you sure we should talk about this?"

  "Yes," I hissed.

  "More or less right here. At the Oyster Bar."

  "The Oyster Bar? He was at the Oyster Bar with someone else?" My voice cracked.

  "Alice, honey, don't let's go there," Gunnar said.

  "I'm not your honey. I'm not honey at all," I said, because I knew that if he got too sweet and sympathetic I would cry, and I would much rather be angry, be outraged, with him, or Waldo, or, preferably, the unknown Sheila.

  "Does Waldo come into the city much?"

  "Almost never, since they moved the R and D department upriver, except for the opera. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have had a meeting with someone. What did she look like? Did she look like an inventor? Inventive?"

  "Actually, she looked a lot like you."

  "Well, fuck him." Then I started crying. All that alcohol and warmth, and the waterworks were copious. Or perhaps it was just the invidious state of my feet: cold, wet, and unnaturally set in the Barbie position.

  "I am sorry about this. Are you going to be all right?"

  "Of course I am going to be all right. Maybe it was work related. Or maybe she was an old friend. How can you be sure it's what you think? What I think you think?"

  "I'm not sure of much. Global warming, for instance. But of this I am, sadly, certain."

  I said, "I'm not going to ask you how you can be so certain. And don't tell me when I do ask you."

  "Do you want to catch the next train, or just keep drinking? Or eat? Would you like to eat?"

  "So. How can you be so certain?"

  "Are you hungry, Alice?"

  "I need to get home," I said.

  Then let's go.

  As we walked to our platform I thought of a thousand things, of Waldo turning toward me, or away from me, in the night; of evenings when Waldo came home late because he'd been so busy in his lab, and he'd be so energized by creativity that he'd sweep all three of us into his arms, and then the dogs would leap up and run circles around us, and we would catch his energy and enthusiasm, like a flu epidemic. I remembered how, about eight years ago, he'd told me—because he'd said there was no one else to whom he could confide such thin
gs, things that he was bursting with—that he was mad with love for Edith Dilly and wanted to run away with her and they'd live a simple life and be itinerant apple pickers. I remembered how Waldo had left Edith's letters to him lying around the house, as much as saying, Read me! Read me! And who was I to deny them? How breathy they were, full of random punctuation and capitals, like Queen Victoria's diaries, except that they referred to a certain sex act they shared, and, ah, the intimacy of it, a certain sex act I had always shrunk from. The whole thing had shrunk me, like a tribal warrior's prize head. Every step along the platform, swept along with all the men in their lumpen overcoats and all the women in their appropriate shoes, every step shook loose a raft of unwanted memories.

  What else did I think of? I bet Sheila has a job. I bet she is gainfully employed and daily performs interesting and challenging tasks. I thought: If I had a job this wouldn't have happened.

  When we step onto the train, this will stop, I told myself. I am not Anna Karenina. Far from it. This is a commuter train and my feet are freezing cold. Even if I don't have Dream Radio or my girls at Precious Blood, I do have Henry and Ez and the dogs and this saint project and, yes, Waldo, and I don't want to destroy it, or let it be destroyed over some floozy named Sheila. If there is such a person.

  Here is the amazing thing: I slept on the train. One minute I closed my eyes to clear my brain, and the next minute Gunnar was shaking me awake because we were pulling into VerGroot.

  "I meant what I said," he told me.

  "Please don't remind me, Gunnar."

  "Not that. But about how I feel about you. I'm just so sorry about all the other stuff."

  "Gunnar, maybe we should just start all over when it's another day, when it's not snowing. Maybe it's a weather glitch in which all things go awry. You'd think I would know something about that," I said. I would never look at snow the old way again. Abelardo had changed all that for me. "Wait a sec. How did you know her name was Sheila?"

  "I heard him talking to her."

  "You heard him say her name, and he didn't see you?"

  "It's hard to explain."

  Our train groaned and stopped. Waldo waved at me from the car. With relief, with a catch in my throat, I saw the two smaller heads in the back seat.