PART ONE
Verbum caro factum est
ONE
GRACE
David Armstrong was over at about seven thirty the next morning. He wore his fisherman’s cap and an outdoor man’s vest despite the weather, and Cameron thought that her uncle looked stupider than usual, but kept this judgment to herself.
“Come on guys, times awastin’. We gotta go.”
It really seemed to Cameron, as she dressed herself, that her uncle truly believed that all the answers to his problems would be discovered in Idlewile. And then Cameron wondered, as she brushed her teeth, what were her uncle’s problems anyway?
Uncle David had wanted them to all go in one car. Dena had flatly said no. Dad was indecisive and frankly indifferent about the whole thing. He reminded Cameron of Niall today, of how Niall had done nothing but mumble and look broken since yesterday. She wondered if men were always like this. Russell wasn’t Gilead wasn’t. No—Uncle David was strange, but he wasn’t like that either. But maybe they were the only three. Maybe she was doomed to a life celibacy then.
“Cameron,” her mother said, “you don’t need to take all of that with you.”
Cameron said something and Bill muttered, “Don’t be sharp with your mother. Do what she says,” as he put the sleeping bags into the back of the van.
It seemed to Cameron like an enormous betrayal.
She sat in the back beside Niall, who said nothing but sat looking blankly out of the window the whole time. She felt too near him. Once she thought she’d known him. Then she thought she loved him. Now she wasn’t sure. He was her brother and Cameron really didn’t want him to be. She didn’t want any part in Niall. The last thing she wanted to do was spend this weekend with family.
Ironically enough, Cameron remembered Niall trying to get out of this weekend and saying, “Me and Sonia want to do something.” He had complained the whole week about the trip to Idlewile.
Since yesterday he had said nothing.
Cameron watched her younger brother looking out of the window as they passed the fields, When Niall turned in her direction, Cameron turned her own head quickly, not wanting to make contact with him. She was still a virgin. Her little brother had made a baby. Then he had unmade it. Just like that. She was fascinated with him like a scab.
Uncle David and Aunt Lee drove ahead of the Dwyer van. Usually on the road one saw the farm fields at either side and off in each distance the trees. Now they began to drive into the trees, and then the trees cleared away to reveal a lake large and blue amidst the snow, more blessed with sun than Cameron could remember. They had driven so long, the sun was so high in the sky that Cameron thought they nearly had to be in Canada. Here the houses were large and Victorian, and all lined the lake with large tracks of land. It was here that her mother had grown up, and looking at the wan, lifeless haired woman in the passenger seat, she found that hard to believe. Or maybe, thought Cameron as they passed the general store, taking her from this place had done this to her. Maybe one day Cameron would wake up married to someone she didn’t know and Niall, if they were ever friends again, would say the whole family should go to Geshichte Falls. And maybe Cameron would be some washed up old hag—no, don’t say that about… Well, she’d said it, and her children would say, “Could mom have once been pretty? Dad said she used to.”
When they pulled up on the gravel road to a wheat colored Victorian with a deck that looked out over the freezing lake and a huge tract of land, Uncle David’s car stopped first and the tall, narrow man ran out and exclaimed as his brother-in-law, with an exhausted look on his face, was shutting off his own van, “Isn’t it good to be home!”
“Hello?” Ross Allan picked up his phone.
“Are you awake?”
“I am now.”
“Oh, Ross,” Anigel said, “Did I wake you?”
“No, no. It’s fine,” he said, but did not say if she had awaken him or not.
He picked up his cordless and went outside to get a drink of water.
“What’s going on?”
From more than the corner of his eye, he saw Flip Sanders’ door open down the hall, and him making out with Andy Lagger before he, apparently, escorted him from Abelard Hall.
“I had a dream,” Anigel started, and then she corrected herself.
“Well, no I did not. That’s the thing. I did not have a dream.”
“Not quite a speech to give in front of Lincoln’s Memorial, but—”
“The Virgin Mary appeared to me.”
“The fuck?”
“The—Virgin—Mary showed up in my room last night. And she smoked one of my cigarettes. I mean, it lit up and she smoked it and when she puffed, smoke came out, but when she was done with it, it was…. Untouched.”
“Like the Burning Bush?”
“Oh, my God, yes!”
“Shit.”
“Ross, am I crazy?”
“Yes,” he said. “But not for this.”
It had never occurred to Ross to dismiss his friend. Anigel had said she was an atheist and meant it. When she was more agnostic she admitted that too. She was not into grand declarations, and she was not given over to fancy. She knew if she was asleep or if she was awake. She wasn’t delusional. All the dumb things people would say to make the world smaller never occurred to Ross Allan.
“I heard,” he began, “that Cousin Chayne and Cousin Terrence and a bunch of other folks stole a statue of Mary for shits and kicks, and then somehow they broke her and when they were going to admit it, presto and goddamn, the statue was back together again.”
Anigel kept nodding over the phone and Ross continued, “I heard that in India there is this statue of Ganesh, and everyday he is given a bowl of milk, and that one day people saw the trunk move. Saw the statue drink the milk. The milk disappeared. It disappears every day whether people see the statue drink or not. Now, you can say the milk evaporates, but milk turns into yogurt in the sun, not evaporates. You can say people are crazy and stupid and delusional. You can say what you want to make the world small. Or you can admit that the world is big.
“What did Mary say?”
And then Anigel realized why she had told her old friend.
“She said God liked me.”
“Oh.”
“She said he loved everyone because God is God. But that he liked me, was fond of me. And I was a good girl, which surprised me. And then he told me to say hello to Russell.”
“Oh.”
“And you too! I’m so stupid. You first. She said say hello to Ross and Russell.
“And then she said, pray pray pray. Cause that’s her thing.”
“Goddamn,” Ross said in a breathless tone.
“Well, what the hell does it mean? It’s not like… a prophecy or anything? What does it mean?”
“Maybe it means what she says,” Ross said. “Maybe it means heaven says hello and wants me and Russell and you, most certainly, to not take it for granted.”
Anigel sat in her room on Curtain Street, twisting the phone around her fingers.
“Do you think that’s all it means?”
“Really?” For the first time Ross did sound like his friend was an idiot.
“Don’t you think that’s more than enough?”
“I guess,” Anigel allowed. “When you put it that way.”
“There’s not really another way to put it.”
Well, that was Ross, for you.
Anigel asked, “Are coming home for Christmas?”
“Eventually,” Ross said. “After a few days. I mean, I plan on being home by Christmas.”
“But before that…?”
“A convent,” he said. “I’m on my way. I’m just going to hang out there and get my mind back. They got a little hermitage and everything.”
“That’s so weird. You’re so weird.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Ross said to Anigel, “But the Virgin Mary just showed up in your house and smoked not smoked one of your cigarettes, so you haven’t left much room to talk—”
“True.”
“And I was asking because I thought that maybe you might want to go to.”
“To a convent? With nuns?”
“And monks. It’s what they call a double monastery.”
“Well, that shit makes me double nervous.”
“You wouldn’t be hanging out with them. You’d be hanging out with yourself. Getting a break from things. Catching your breath.”
“I don’t know,” Anigel said, shaking her head.
“Well, know by Saturday, because that’s when I’m stopping through town on my way there.”
Ross put down the phone and looked up to see Flip Sanders, black hair in his face, hands jammed in his pockets, leaning against the door sill.
“You’re going to Geschichte Falls?”
“I am,” Ross said.
“You gonna see Russell?”
“Probably not.”
Ross made it his business to not ask many questions, especially since he knew Flipper had gone back to sleeping with Andy Lagger. His turning back to his own business and not looking at Flipper was so complete he was surprised when Flipper, still present, made a noise and scratched the back of his head.
“You could call him, you know?” Ross said.
Flipper stood up straight.
“Would that be appropriate?”
“It would be as appropriate as sleeping with him,” Ross said.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Ross said, and closed the door.
Saturday mornings, Sharonda Wynn Story went to the bakery and picked a box of Danish for that day and a coffee cake for tomorrow. She got patty sausage and orange juice and a pack of cigarettes. Buying them a pack at a time made her smoke less, she was convinced. She was grateful for the sun on the snow, grateful for her son and grateful for this life and see, they were so close to Christmas, only a few days a way. Heading home she took Royal Street along the river and saw the Number Fifteen pass her. Royal Street went northwest with all of its traffic while Riverview Street continued along the water, narrowing, its speed bumps insisting one slow down.
River Park was the widening triangle of old houses that separated Royal from Riverview. The Wynns had lived along the river for years and eventually 3141, the house on the rise with the brick first story and clapboard second, the little porch looking across to the strip of park before this place where the river went shallow, was now her home.
On the other side of them was Hannity Park, a green strip most of the year but now a high bare treed island that separated this rivulet from the deep water that separated them from East Sequoya where ferries and freighters passed on their way to Port Gregory.
When she returned, Gilead was home.
“You should have asked Mark to stay,” she said.
“I did,” Gilead said. “Of course. But he had to take his sister to something, so he told me he’ll be back later. He said, and I quote, ‘If you’re not sick of me yet, I can come back later.’”
“And are you sick of him?”
“Not yet.”
Sharonda put the sausage on the griddle. Gilead kept his own council. He wasn’t troublesome like some boys or like his father had been. He was a Wynn through and through. While she did patties, he kissed her on the cheek and warmed the Danish, poured the coffee. With a murmured grace and a quick and casual sign of the Cross they began to eat.
“When is Mark coming over?” she asked.
“Hum?” Gilead said. Then, “If he knows me, not before two.”
Sharonda nodded.
She said, “So… You and Mark?”
If Sharonda had been other mothers, or if he had been other sons, he might have sighed our feigned ignorance, but instead he just said:
“Yes?”
“What are you going to do when he tells you he’s in love with you or asks you to marry him, or however that shit goes?”
The frankness of her question surprised even Gilead.
Sharonda elaborated, taking a bit of Danish and slowly tearing it in two.
“Please understand, I’m not making a joke or being East Coast, West Coast liberal. I’m just observing and thinking practically.. I married a horrible man and every man before him and after has been horrible too. It’s difficult as hell to find someone, and then this white boy—who has money, but hell we have money too—shows up at the door, always dressed, always classy, knows what he wants and, Gil, if he came for me, I’d probably say yes, so I think you should say yes, too.”
“Well,” Gilead sipped from his coffee. He’d never meant to conceal things from his mother, and his mother never asked awkward questions. She just laid it out as a matter of fact that a good man had shown up with interest and she thought Gilead would be a fool to turn him down.
“I think you’re right,” Gilead said, at last.
Sharonda nodded.
He loved his mother and was glad they were having this conversation, but at the same time hoped she would stop before she came too close to the mystery that was still new like wet cement, the mystery of Mark’s lips pressed to his, the two of them laying down in the dark and slowly undressing, touching one another, beginning to learn the little secrets of each other’s bodies, kissing and kissing again with the excitement of virgins. Mark kneeling over him naked in the dark while Gilead held him in his hands, stroking him, Mark Young’s hand under the blanket waking him to thrilling pleasure, that beautiful white boy with the wavy hair’s eyes pits in the dark, the two of them shuddering side by side, but unashamed, waking up in the night and then in the morning, damp as dew in each other’s arms.
“I think he kind of asked me last night,” was all Gilead said, still thinking of a few hours ago when Mark had risen from bed and he had, at last, seen his whole beautiful body, and Mark looking on him in reverence had made Gilead beautiful too.
“And, I think I kind of said yes.”
“Hum,” Chayne remarked lifting his coffee cup to his lips.
“Really?” Anigel demanded.
“Really, what?” Chayne said to her.
“All you can do is say: hum?”
“Whaddo you want me to say?”
“Aren’t you…” she gestured toward Nehru and Cody, “surprised?”
Nehru had come been walking over from the Noble Red when he had run into Cody coming over from Thompson Street who’d told him to hop in the car. They’d talked about the night before, and Nehru had told him about the morning after.
“It’s good,” Cody said. “You guys should be together.”
“Well, I’m telling Chayne. And everyone. That’s my family.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cody said. He added, laughing, “We don’t have to share every detail of last night.”
Now they sat in Chayne’s kitchen, and Rob, in a pink dress shirt and white khakis, looking more normal than usual, stood behind Chayne’s chair, arms folded over his chest.
“I don’t know,” Chayne said, shrugging. “It’s just not a lot surprises me anymore. And… I feel like other things are coming and I just can’t let myself get knocked down by surprise over this one.”
“Are you sure, Nehru?” Rob’s voice was more severe than he meant it to be.
“I know you don’t like Brad—”
“I like Brad just fine. I just don’t like what he did to you.”
“Brad,” Chayne said, pacifically, “is a good man.”
Rob made a noise and gave Chayne an irritated look, which he ignored.
“Is is true Gilead is with that Mark boy now?” Nehru said, more to change the subject than anything.
“I think so,” Chayne said.
“Well, what the hell is happening?” Rob said, still upset by Chayne’s lack of upset. He reached over his head and took his cigarettes, pulling one out for himself the thing that Chayne hated, and still Chayne did not care.
“I’m going off to a monastery with Ross,” Anigel said.
“What?” Chayne looked at her dumbly.
Shocked himself, Rob overcame it long enough to plop down in a chair smile in Chayne’s face.
“At last!” he said, “Something got to the old bastard.”
