In the Company of Others

by Jan Karon

  'I do mean it. One must begin somewhere, sometime, to let go of the bitterness, or be eaten alive and the marrow sucked out.'

  Liam looked away, angry, and stood down from the stone. 'I can't do this. Sorry for your time. Terribly sorry.'

  Liam hurried along the shoreline, away from the path to Broughadoon.

  He felt in his chest Liam's crushing heaviness mingled with his own. Through carelessness or blunder, he had estranged a man who needed God's wisdom, which was precisely what he'd offered. He believed what he had said; he hadn't tried to wrap it in frill or poesy.

  What George Steiner had called 'the terrible sweetness of Christ' was needed here. Grace upon grace was needed here. Three men were vying for the fathering of a single boy, and two of them more than enough.

  He closed his eyes, breathed in the lambent air of the lough, tried to collect thoughts scattered like leaves before a gale. The grace to forgive Matthew Kavanagh had literally saved his life, his feeling life. What he hadn't known was that it would have to be done again and again over the years. A nuisance, really, like the continuous labor required to keep a garden from running wild, or a bed made, or a machine oiled. Most often, the forgiving of his father had demanded an act of sheer will, there was nothing sappy or sentimental about forgiving a bitter wound, one had to go at it head down. Late in his forties, he had come awake to a key word in the petition, 'forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.'

  As was the word on which the petition turned. As we forgive, we are in that same instant forgiven. It was a sacred two-for-one, a hallowed tit for tat.

  He wanted that for Liam.

  But perhaps the whole thing was beyond his feeble energies as friend or cleric. Perhaps he should take his hands off it altogether, let it go. He prayed to be able to sacrifice the dark weight on his spirit, begged for Liam's deliverance from a darkness far greater than his own had been. He had, at least, known--

  'Speak your piece, then, Reverend. I've spoken mine.'

  Liam looked at him, then climbed again onto the gob of stone. Blood smeared the knuckles of Liam's right hand.

  He felt a shaming impulse to weep, and, through some license barely understood, gave way to it.

  Twenty-one

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

  The emails were on the bed when they returned from their wanderings. He grabbed Dooley's and read it avidly; he was starving for it. Don't worry about anything. He liked that.

  After his walk to the lake with Liam and a demoralizing breakfast of yogurt and fruit--his idea, not Broughadoon's--he and Cynthia had taken off for Ben Bulben, where the Vauxhall climbed a rude track along the flank. They slowed for sheep in the road, searched the views. Then lunch at the tea shop in Drumcliff and out to the churchyard where she sketched Yeats's headstone. Covered by a layer of common gravel, his grave had looked bereft among those better-tended.

  Through it all, Cynthia was subdued. The prolonged ankle business--the crutches and the craving to toss them--had gotten to her; she was struggling through an inevitable patch of depression. He seldom saw her out of sorts, it was mildly alarming, he would do anything--stand on his head, whistle Dixie--to help her through.

  She stood at the chest of drawers, leafing aimlessly through the work of the day. He looked over her shoulder.

  'That's a good one,' he said. 'The great Ben as the prow of a ship steering through a green sea.' He thought she might enjoy the imagery.

  'I'm afraid I can't do it,' she said, not hearing.

  He shucked change from his pocket to the tray. 'Do what?'

  'William's portrait by firelight.'

  'Worst case, let's say you really can't do it. What difference does it make?'

  'All the difference.'

  'All? Isn't that carrying it a little far?'

  'His face is the best of faces, I won't find another like it'

  'Then why not a portrait by daylight or lamplight? Why heap on coals with the firelight business, no pun intended?'

  She looked up at him. 'Because that's the way he should be painted. It's the way it needs to be done'

  This was making him crazy. 'But you're anxious about it.'

  'It's all right to be anxious. A bit of stage fright is good for the performance, don't you think?'

  Well, yes--he agreed.

  'So you pray and I'll paint and together we'll get the job done. Okay?' She smiled, innocent as any babe.

  Thank God, he'd hardly had a smile out of her all day. 'You're a bloody nutcase.'

  'Mush, mush, and more mush.'

  He pressed her close, wordless. That he could hold to himself all the comfort in all the world was sometimes nearly too great a thing to believe.

  At Anna's suggestion, the poker club and the Kavanaghs joined tables at dinner. Cynthia ordered a bottle of Prosecco, which Liam kept for the Italians who sometimes came.

  'To a safe and happy journey,' said his wife, 'for the Book Poker Fishin' Irish Widows' Travel Club!'

  'That's us!' said Debbie.

  'Slainte!' he said.

  'Salute!' said everyone else.

  Moira adjusted her glasses, shuffled papers. 'Okay, time for th' language test we've been talkin' about--let's hear everything you've learned so far.'

  'Um,' said Lisa. 'La dolce vita!'

  'Ferragamo, Armani, por favore!' said Tammy. 'What else could we possibly need?'

  'We've hardly had time to learn a whole other language,' said Debbie. 'I only have one word.'

  'Go for it,' said Moira, who was making the rules.

  'Magnifico?' said Debbie.

  'Say that anywhere, it will get you points.'

  'I hope we're not going to conjugate any verbs this evenin',' said Lisa.

  'On th' plane tomorrow. Now--for a night out in Positano, this is all you need, th' whole nine yards; I made a copy for everybody: Ciao. Falanghina. Risotto. Tiramisu. Espresso. Il conto. Ciao.'

  'Two ciaos?'

  'One for hello, one for sayonara,' said Moira. 'As for our night out in Naples, we'll be addin' this to our vocabulary: Vada via che sa di aglio.'

  'Meaning?'

  'Buzz off, garlic breath.'

  'Idn't she terrific?' asked Debbie.

  'Bilingual,' said Cynthia.

  'Y'all goin' to meet here next year?' asked Lisa.

  'We don't know yet,' said Cynthia. 'Are you?'

  'Maybe. We really like it over here, th' lake fishin' an' all.'

  'I really like workin' with ghillies,' said Debbie.

  Hoots, cackles, the usual.

  He raised his glass. 'Happy fishing in Italy!' This launched a din that made his ears ring.

  'You are quaint,' said his wife, patting his hand.

  'Tim and Cynthia'--Tammy lifted her glass; bracelets jangling. 'Safe travel, strong ankles, and may th' dollar clobber th' euro, pronto!'

  'Salute! '

  'Amen,' he said.

>   Liam came to the table. 'A phone call from your son. Take it in the kitchen, we'll hold th' noise down at th' sink.'

  He passed through the swinging door in a blur and picked up the phone.

  'Hey, buddy?'

  'Hey, Dad.'

  Something was wrong, he could hear it. His heart seized.

  'I messed up.'

  'Talk to me,' he said.

  'She hit me. That's it, I'm done. It's over.'

  'Why did she hit you?'

  'I told her she was ice sculpture. She's cold, Dad, frozen like Mitford Creek two winters ago. You could skate on her ice.'

  The up email, the down phone call. Roller coaster.

  He eased himself into the corner behind the desk, turning his back to Maureen and Bella at the sink, Liam at the stovetop. 'She hit you because hitting was what she learned all the years she was being hit.'

  'It's time she got over those years.'

  'Why are you done? Why did you end it?'

  'What else could I do?'

  'You could talk.'

  'No way.'

  'Do you love her?'

  A long silence. Then, 'I wish I didn't.'

  Before Dooley was ten years old, his mother had given away four of her five children; his father, a violent drunk and erstwhile highway laborer, vanished along the severe slab he'd helped pour. Cleaving asunder was hard for anybody, especially for kids who had felt the cleaver again and again; he could sense Dooley's anguish clear across the Pond.

  'Where did she hit you?'

  'Slammed me in th' gut.'

  'It wasn't the first time.'

  Soon after the two met, Dooley had hidden Lace's hat--a despoiled affair which she wore with ominous pride. She'd let him have a big one in the solar plexus.

  'Ice,' he said, 'is what you turn into when you're trying to protect yourself. Ice is what keeps you from feeling anything.' Dooley Barlowe had shown up on the rectory doorstep a decade ago, his anger frozen in a glacier of his own. It was melting, drop by everlasting drop, but only in the temperate climate of love and with a staggering amount of patience. 'Are you with me, buddy?'

  'I guess. Not really. Gotta go.'

  'Wait. Give me a minute.'

  Silence. A minute begrudged.

  'Can you forgive her?'

  'Why invest more energy in somebody who thinks slammin' you in th' gut solves everything? She brought me to my knees, Dad.' There was the boil--there was the sticking point.

  'Hitting you wasn't a good thing, I admit. But if you think about it . . .'

  'I don't want to think about it. Gotta go.'

  The transatlantic cable hummed; he set the receiver on its charger.

  He was a wreck.

  'You're a wreck,' she said. She was waiting for him at the garden door; he went to her and they stepped outside and sat on the bench.

  'Dooley and Lace,' she said, knowing. 'At it again.'

  He shrugged, shook his head. 'Til the cows come home, I suppose.' This was more than a lovers' quarrel, it was something deeply poisonous that both Lace and Dooley carried like a virus. He'd seen Lace the first time several years ago; she was stealing Sadie Baxter's ferns--digging them with a mattock, shoving them into a sack to sell to a mountain nursery. Watching her eyes beneath the brim of her ruined hat, he asked her to replant everything she had dug, but she had stood him down. I'll knock you in th' head, she said, if you lay hands on my sack--I don't care if you are a preacher.

  She grabbed her goods and ran then, the hat flying off her head. He'd taken it home and when she came looking for it at the rectory, Dooley hid it, taunting her. That was the first punch. She had come again after that, beaten brutally by her father. It had taken hours for Cynthia to dress the bleeding lacerations riven upon old wounds.

  'All that pain for all those years,' Cynthia said.

  'They can't trust each other.'

  'Time can be healing. Will you buy that?'

  'Not at the moment,' he said. He told her about the ice sculpture.

  Why did he care so much about Dooley and Lace as a couple? In recent weeks, he'd finally swallowed the lie that two damaged lives couldn't possibly be fashioned into a whole. Faithless as a heathen, he'd given up hope.

  'They have the same enemy,' he said. 'Fear.'

  'But they have the same God--love. They'll manage. We were a couple of ice sculptures ourselves.'

  'Remember your cold feet a couple days before the wedding?' he asked.

  'Remember your cold feet for a whole two years?'

  'You win,' he said. He realized that he wanted again to hope.

  In the library, Liam prodded a burst of flame from the turves, then stood away from them by the photo gallery. At the lake, Liam had asked him to speak his piece and he'd done that as simply as he knew how. Liam had listened, saying little--from there, the results were beyond anything priest or friend might do. They'd walked back to the lodge together, sober, not talking. 'Partridge,' said Liam at a sound in the hedge.

  The club was busy ordering espressos, no decaf--'Gambling again!' said Tammy. Anna removed her apron and found a seat with the club; after serving coffee, Seamus chose the remaining wing chair; Maureen entered, peered around, and sat by Anna. Bella slipped into the room, a shadow gliding past the bookshelves to a chair at the open window.

  Cynthia looked stricken.

  'What?'

  'I think William and I are the evening's entertainment. '

  He pondered the expectant faces, the hush over the room. Definitely.

  'I thought everyone would go about their usual after-dinner business while William and I worked by the fire.'

  'You'll be fine.'

  She gave him a look, mildly ticked at this remark. 'Easy for you to say.'

  He had to laugh. 'I worked for forty years with people watching.'

  William entered with the aid of a silver-handled cane, wearing a starched shirt, pressed trousers, a jacket, a vest, a blue necktie.

  Spontaneous applause. The poker club gave an all-thumbs-up; the scent of Seamus's pipe smoke sweetened the air.

  'Anna says you're after capturin' me on paper. So, aye, I'm ready to be captured.' William's face was pink from the scrubbing, from the newness and pleasure of it all.

  'Can we watch?' asked Debbie.

  'Well,' said Cynthia.

  'Where d'you want me?' asked William.

  'Right there in your chair, comfortable as anything.'

  'I see m' fire's been poked up. 't would be Liam thinkin' of that.' William saluted Liam, settled himself by the checkerboard. 'Can a man have his pint while gettin' his likeness struck? I've a ragin' thirst.'

  'There by your elbow, Da, ready and waiting.'

  ''t would be Seamus thinkin' of that.' William lifted his glass to Seamus, took a long draught, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. 'If you wouldn't object, Missus Kav'na, would ye leave off th' scar an' touch up the oul' nose? An' if you'd be so kind, take a year or two off th' eighty-some that's accumulated while I wasn't lookin'.'

  'Ah, no,' said Maureen. ''t is her style to render th' truth.'

  'Th' truth,' he said, glowering.

  Cynthia was already sketching, her hand darting for this brush or that, the ferrule chiming against the water jar. He sank into prayer like a swimmer into familiar water.

  'If you'd like,' Cynthia told William, 'you may take off your coat and tie.'

  'You don't care for me coat an' tie?'

  'I like them very much, but wouldn't you be more comfortable?'

  'A man wants a dacent coat an' tie to get 'is face done up in a picture.'

  'You're being painted by someone very famous at her drawing, Da. 't is a privilege she's givin' you. Be a dote, now.'

  William gripped the arms of the chair as if it might lift off and fly. ''t would be good to have a fag to settle me nerves. But I'm off tobacco since Jack Kennedy closed down indoor smokin' an' ran us to th' tarmac in a drivin' rain. Beggin' your pardon, Missus, do I need to keep m' trap shut?' William dre
w forth the handkerchief, gave a honking blow.

  'You may talk up a storm, William, it's the shadows I'm wrestling with.'

  'Talk about th' good oul' bad days,' Maureen said to William.

  'I've but one thing to say about th' oul' bad days--if th' current crop of young was to be up against it as we were, they'd perish with none left standin'.'

  Seamus gave his white mustache a quick comb. 'May I tell a joke, then, if it wouldn't interfere with the proceedings?'

  'Please,' said Cynthia. 'We love jokes.'

  'I generally try to bring one down at th' weekend.' Seamus rose and buttoned the jacket of his butler's garb, clasped his hands behind his back.

  'So. There was this gent from Ballyshannon who all his life was after ownin' a BMW sport coupe. So when he retired, first thing he did was fulfill his dream. A few days after this mighty purchase, he was out for a spin an' decided to see what it would do if he opened it up.

  'Ah, but you can guess what he saw in th' rearview mirror.'

  'A Defender of th' Peace of Ireland!' said William.

  'Gent pulled over, knowin' this was not goin' to be a good thing. Th' Gard gets off his motorcycle, comes up to th' gent's window, says, You know how fast you were goin'?

  'Gent says, Triple digits?

  'Gard gives him a tough look, says, Here's what I'll do. Tell me one I haven't heard before an' I'll let you go.

  'Gent thinks a minute, says, My wife ran off with a Gard five years ago an' I thought you were bringin' her back.

  'Gard gets on his motorcycle, cranks th' engine, says, Have a nice day.'

  The poker club hooted, Maureen slapped her knee, the old man threw back his head and guffawed.

  'That's it, William!' said Cynthia. 'Keep laughing!'

  Absorbed by what she was doing, he watched her at her work and found himself suddenly happy. Dooley and Lace would manage, she had said. For now, that would have to be enough. His prayer for Cynthia floated beneath the surface of his thoughts--she could do this.

  'Don't stop,' she whispered, not looking his way. 'We must keep William laughing,' she said to the room. 'Why don't you tell an Uncle Billy joke, darling?'