Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

  We spent our days there with Abuela and her stories. She lived alone now with Dolores, who had been their maid forever, and even before. Like Dolores, we had already heard all of Abuela's stories, but we took secret note of the tiny ways she altered the tales with each telling.

  Sometimes we wandered up and down the Ramblas and imagined what our lives would have been like if Mami had married a Spaniard and stayed in Barcelona instead of meeting Perceval Ewen and letting him talk her into coming out to California. We wondered what we might have looked like. But the truth was that we couldn't imagine any life other than our own, our brightly lit life in California, picking lemons and avocados, swimming naked at Red Rock, and smoking pot.

  One day after lunch, when we were even lazier than usual and spreading ourselves across couches and chairs for a siesta, Dolores's grandson came by to take her off to some family christening or burial. His name was Orlando, and as soon as he walked into the dim living room where we were sprawled, we sat up straight and tried to look alert. Instinctively we knew that he was not likely to be enchanted by three recumbent girls from California. Annabel was best in such situations. We air kissed and made small talk about our trip. He wanted to know if we'd seen the Fra Angelico frescoes at the San Marco monastery in Florence, and Annabel said we had gotten lost looking for it. He asked how we'd liked the Bronzinos at the Uffizi; Audrey volunteered that the Uffizi had been closed. But the Baptistery doors? Surely we had admired the Baptistery doors? They were closed also, Audrey said. Then the tiny ageless Dolores came in, dressed exquisitely in black. Gallant Orlando gave her his arm, and off they went.

  As soon as she returned, we begged to know more. "Do his parents live here in Barcelona too?"

  "His parents—may they rest in peace—are no longer with us. They died in a car crash," Dolores said. Her face was implacable.

  When Orlando returned for his grandmother the following afternoon he found us wide awake and well groomed. We sat on stiff chairs and inhaled the dust mites that lived in the tapestries.

  "Dolores told us about your parents. It's terribly sad," Annabel said. "Was your mother Dolores's daughter?"

  "No. My father was her only son," he said, and as he spoke he crossed himself quickly, so quickly we might have missed it if we hadn't been watching him so closely. "She told you about the accident?"

  We nodded.

  "It was terrible. I was driving the car. They were in the back seat. I was driving and I was wearing a seat belt. But they were not; they were not wearing seat belts and they always preferred to sit in the back when I drove them. Really, no one in Spain wears seat belts. I often wish that I had not as well."

  "But it wasn't your fault," Audrey said. "You didn't mean for it to happen. You're the one left behind to miss them for the rest of your life."

  "That is what everyone says," Orlando said.

  "Orlando!" Dolores stood erect in the doorway. "It's time to go," she said. She called back to us, "Do not fail to look after your abuela."

  We waited up for Dolores. She came in very late, after midnight.

  "We're so sorry."

  "You never told us."

  "That's the saddest story ever."

  "Why didn't you ever tell us?"

  Dolores said, "I hope your abuela ate something." When we assured her she had, Dolores added, "You shouldn't trouble Orlando like that."

  "He seems so nice, Dolores. But terribly, terribly sad."

  "Of course he is sad," she said. "I wanted him to have a family. But he wanted to enter the seminary. Next year he will be ordained. Padre Orlando."

  We never saw Orlando again.

  And so instead of eight lovers, which was the number of countries we'd visited that summer, I had seven, which according to Annabel was six too many. But it seemed a shame that the one country where I might have expected to find a kindred soul, the one country where the native tongue was familiar and evocative, was the one country where I did not have a lover. Where I did not have sex.

  Then I met Waldo, and I was glad I had not announced from the roof of Wilson Hall my summer's sexual escapades. I was glad that I could break them to Waldo gently, with the educational spin they deserved.

  My sisters didn't get to meet Waldo until my graduation, a couple of years later. We all had dinner at a great Italian restaurant in Providence. I told them stories about corrupt Rhode Island politics, and about our corrupt mayor who had burned his ex-wife's boyfriend with cigarettes and was almost universally beloved by the city's voters. Waldo recited one of his more scathing limericks, in which he rhymed the mayor's name with fancy and romancey, and also, I think, truancy.

  After dinner Audrey took me aside and said, "Oh my God—I know who he reminds me of, Al—that German guy in Munich. Ulrich. The one with the Egyptologist grandfather. He made terrible jokes too. My God, they were horrid. Not remotely funny."

  "Don't you think Waldo's limericks are funny? And clever?"

  Audrey looked at me with genuine disbelief. "You're joking. You're not telling me you think they're funny? I mean, I like Waldo well enough. He has many good qualities. Those dopey limericks are not one of them. Take my word for it, Al."

  "Mami thinks he's perfect for me," I said.

  "That's why you need us," Audrey said.

  After twenty-five years teaching Spanish to the lovely and lithe blond adolescents of Miss Goodwin's Girls' Academy, my mother, Inez Llovet Ewen, retired and decided to learn to surf. After all, we did live in California. Her old family friends back in Barcelona believed that everyone in California could surf, and no acquaintance with the facts could convince them otherwise. Shark attacks were almost unheard-of in Santa Barbara, but no one told that to the shark that attacked our mother. Henry and Ezra were one and three when she died, but they claimed to remember her. They described her perfectly. They imitated her Catalan accent. They liked to hear me tell the story of the shark attack and then wipe away my tears. On our annual trips to visit Pop in Santa Barbara, Ezra and Henry never failed to make a pilgrimage to the Goleta beach and look for the shark that had deprived them of their grandmother. We insisted the shark in question had long since died, perhaps been eaten by a larger shark. Such excuses, such looseness with the facts of shark lore, did not fly with the boys, especially Henry. Henry informed us that the life span of sharks was long indeed. Great whites had been known to live one hundred years.

  I missed my mother terribly. I'd almost told her about Waldo and Edith Dilly, when Henry was a baby and I was a wreck. But then I didn't, and then she was dead in the water. If I had only told her, then that knowledge could have gone with her, and gone from me.

  17

  Christina the Astonishing, Again

  I SHOULD HAVE SHOWERED, but instead I clung to the lingering warmth of predawn sex, through breakfast, even on the train into the city. I ventured out unbathed because I needed a talisman against my fear of losing Waldo, and losing myself. It was not because I was inspired by any unwashed medieval virgin mystics.

  Hubert was at his usual spot behind his desk. Was it placed exactly there to catch the late-morning sun? The light pierced the stained-glass window overhead, the one portraying Saint Rocco and his faithful dog. The amber of Saint Rocco's halo gave Hubert's face a yellowish cast. A foreign-language newspaper was spread open atop preexisting piles of newsprint and hagiographies and love letters. What weirdness had of late transpired between a religious and a reptile?

  "You really should have lunch with me today," Hubert said. "I'm in a sociable mood."

  I almost levitated out of my shoes. First, morning sex, and then lunch with Hubert. What more could I ask? Oh, yes, Abelardo.

  A little past midday Hubert nodded to me where I'd been dozing over the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and then dozing some more over the Fourteen Holy Helpers. I followed him downstairs past closed doors. So many closed doors: to my parents' bedroom, to Mother Superior's office at Precious Blood, to Waldo's closet.

  Hubert slipped his fingers into the br
ass recess in the dark mahogany, and the pocket door purred softly past the triple crown molding and into the wall. There was the dining room I had secretly spied—how long ago? An oblong table was laid with white linen, polished silverware, and more glasses than necessary. The room was empty.

  "I had no idea this was here," I lied.

  "That is the idea," Hubert said. "Our kitchen is so small."

  "Do you eat here every day?" I asked.

  "Only on feast days."

  We sat side by side at the table and soon a very young girl emerged through a swinging door that was flush with the walls. She was freckled and had an athletic body, with broad shoulders, defined calves, and a flat chest, yet she walked daintily, toes first. She wore scuffed bedroom slippers. She poured us water and wine and then tiptoed out. She returned with two bowls of clear broth.

  "She looks like she was just let out of an Irish convent school," I said.

  "Welsh," said Hubert. "We have a long-standing relationship with St. Bueno's-by-the-Waters. Each year they send us one of their orphans, and she works here for a year and then goes on to Fordham while another girl comes, so there is overlap."

  "Are you serious? That sounds rather archaic. Like indentured servitude."

  "Take my word for it. This club is the best thing that has ever happened to these girls," Hubert said.

  "Are there really so many Welsh orphans?"

  "Perhaps they use the word orphan loosely. Many of our girls have gone on to become pillars of New York society. One of them is seen nightly on television, minus her accent, alas. You would be surprised if I told you all."

  "You are full of surprises." I sipped my soup.

  "The soup is quite good here," Hubert said. "We used to have a cook who would only make dishes from a certain medieval recipe book, but he left us. I miss Gregor. You should have seen him in his starched white apron—he was so handsome. He's cooking in a monastery now. One can only envy the happy brothers." He smiled so sweetly. The creases at the corners of his lips were delicate brushstrokes.

  "Don't you miss the monastery ever?"

  "Eat your soup while it's hot," Hubert said. "How are your sons doing?"

  "Great. Brilliantly."

  "I look forward to meeting those two," Hubert said.

  "Except for Ezra's sleeplessness. And the sleepwalking. He's a somnambulist, you know. The night troubles Ezra."

  "And of course the famous Waldo. I look forward to his acquaintance. The inventive Waldo."

  "How much have I told you about Waldo?"

  "Quite a bit, my dear," Hubert said. "Not to worry, my dear. I respect the bonds of matrimony."

  "Very funny," I said. The only sound was the delicate intake of soup. And the spoon's splashless entry into the bowl, like a perfect Olympic diver. "But I am worried about Waldo. About Waldo and a woman named Sheila. I probably shouldn't say anything to you about this, because you don't know Waldo and I wouldn't want you to think badly of him, because he really is so wonderful, and funny, and inventive and..."

  "Sheila, you say?"

  "Yes, do you know her?"

  "I knew a Sheila once. She didn't believe me when I said I preferred men."

  "All I know about this Sheila is that she prefers Waldo. If she exists."

  Hubert said, "Are you going to start crying in your soup?"

  "I should stop, shouldn't I?"

  "Only if you want to. It may not be what you think."

  The girl came out to remove our bowls. "What's your name?" I asked her.

  "Christina," she answered. "I was named for Christina the Astonishing."

  Christina returned with fish quenelles. They were whitish tubular blobs set in the middle of some very nice but slightly chipped English bone china plates and surrounded by a sauce only slightly less whitish. Hubert rubbed his hands together with hungry anticipation.

  "What exactly are these?"

  "Quenelles? You are in for a treat. They are baked fish mousse. Or occasionally, they are poached. But usually baked. Delicious!"

  "What kind of fish?"

  "That's the beauty of it—we never know."

  "If you say so." I took a bite. They weren't bad, definitely tastier than fish sticks, but hardly worthy of Hubert's delight.

  I chewed rather guardedly, leery of the presence of fish bones. For all her orphanness, Christina struck me as not likely to be vigilant about fish bones. Abuela had instilled in us a terror of death by fish bones. A childhood friend of hers, a young girl with hair down to her waist, had swallowed a fish bone and it had killed her. Abuela had demonstrated how her friend's eyes had popped out, how she'd gasped for breath, how her body had contorted, and how she'd fallen to the ground, lifeless, because of a fish bone. This demonstration preceded many meals of fish when Abuela was visiting in Santa Barbara. One of the great things about oysters is they have no bones.

  "I'm beginning to think it's not a normal sleeplessness, but something else. Something external," I said.

  "External to what?"

  "To Ezra. What else?"

  "Have you checked under his mattress?" Hubert said.

  I imagined all the thin mattresses in all the cells in the monastery. "No. I mean, yes. There were no crumbs in the sheets."

  "Perhaps there is a disturbance under the mattress. You've read The Princess and the Pea, haven't you?"

  "A long time ago. We aren't exactly royals, you know."

  "I merely suggest it because some people, myself included, keep things of value under their mattress, between the mattress and the box spring, if that is your bedding configuration. Relics and holy cards, for instance."

  I said, "I don't think Ezra has any relics."

  "Don't be too sure."

  Christina was standing by the door, and her eyelids hovered halfway down her pupils. Her tilted stance suggested she might keel over any minute.

  "Maybe Ezra's not the only one missing his beauty sleep," I said.

  Hubert glanced in her direction, and said very softly, "She stays up all night writing her novel. Most mornings she tells me how many words she did the night before. She is diligent. And she says we're all in it."

  "All? All who?"

  "Well, me, of course. And the monsignor. Camilla Hyde. Our friend Señor Abelardo Llobet could have been in it, but the snow intervened. So perhaps you are. And others you don't know." He straightened himself in his chair and said in a louder voice, "There's something elemental, something instinctual perhaps, about keeping things under one's mattress. For better or worse, certain objects have powers."

  "Like relics, you mean? Do you have any?"

  "First-, second-, or third-class relics?"

  Hubert looked wistfully at his plate as Christina cleared the table.

  "Salad or sorbet?" she said.

  "Salad, my dear," Hubert answered. "And remember what I said about tearing the lettuce leaves. There should be nothing on the plate too big for one's mouth."

  "Oh, I get it," I said. "Every day is someone's feast day."

  "Correct."

  "You have lunch here every day?"

  "Correct."

  "Are you going to tell me about your relics?"

  "Since you ask so nicely," he said. For just a moment I thought he was flirting with me. The moment passed. "I only have a few first-class relics. I cherish them."

  "What exactly makes them so first class?" I asked.

  "Their very existence. They are parts of the saints. Bones. And hair is also first class. But I have no sanctified hair."

  "The hair on your head is just fine," I said. Inside I was recoiling. Dead hair—like those Victorian lovers' knots tied up in satin ribbon—revolted me. Bones, on the other hand, posed no such problem.

  "So you have bones? Whose bones?"

  "A finger bone of Bernard of Clairvaux. Not the whole finger, just part of his left ring finger. It is my treasure."

  "Where does one acquire such a thing?"

  "This was given to me by an aged nun in Brittany. I
t had been passed down in her family for generations, but they procreated less and less, and even when they did they often went into the convent or the priesthood, so finally there were no descendants left."

  From behind the unsecret swinging door came a shattering crash, and then a thud. Hubert said, "Please excuse me," got up, and went through that door of mystery.

  I was alone in the dining room. Was it strange that in all that time no one other than Christina had entered the room? That no one else had sat down to a meal of these overrated fish quenelles? I had not thought so until Hubert's departure. So there I was, not quite in tears amid the alien linen, silverware, and portraits. There I was, shifting from one butt cheek to the other on the cracked leather seats of the stiff-backed Gothic chairs. There I was, running the pad of my index finger round and round the rim of my water glass, imagining all the tiny bone fragments that one finger could produce, imagining the leap of faith that the possession of relics had required in a world before DNA testing. I couldn't wait to tell Waldo about every tiny minute of this day and this lunch. It was about time he helped me figure out what I was doing at the Hagiographers Club, what I would do with all my notebooks full of color-coded notes, what was the point of it all, and what I would tell Abelardo. I would invite Hubert up to VerGroot so he could meet them all, and so they could hear about relics. Ezra and Henry would know what questions to ask. And clearly Gunnar was very mistaken. How could I have listened to him at all? Waldo loved me, loved our life, loved the boys. I would know if his affections were alienated. What was the alienation of affection? An alien was a foreigner, a stranger. Before she was naturalized, Mami had been a resident alien. I wanted never to be an alien, never alienated. Everything about our life was about being in it together, being citizens of the same world defined by our affections, our breakfast table, and our dogs.

  On the street-side wall, between the deep-set windows with their tiny panes of glass, hung a painting of Saint Sebastian, that beautifully muscled naked young man pierced by arrows. His unearthly blue eyes looked heavenward. Was he seeking help against the pagans who surrounded him with their bows drawn? Was his mother there to see her beloved son's skin shot through, again and again? I knew that gay men loved images of Saint Sebastian, with his smooth skin, his pink lips, and his Roman nose, with his gently sloping shoulders and those shapely thighs. But why only gay men? I liked naked young men as much as anyone. It was somehow touching that this painting kept Hubert company every day at lunch. I couldn't wait to tell Waldo.