The Passion of Mary-Margaret Read online

  Now, you must understand something about Jude Keller: he learned more from Brister Purnell than he ever did from Mr. Keller. Brister taught him the measure of a man was how many women he’d had, how many shots he could throw back and still walk a straight line, and how many fights he’d been in and had emerged the winner.

  “Where’s the harm in that?” Jude would say. “I don’t take anything from anybody they’re not willing to give. It works for Brister.”

  “Indeed?” I asked just before he left the island. “He doesn’t seem to be so happy. Our bodies don’t just house the real us, Jude. They’re part of the complete whole.”

  Jude just scowled and told me to keep my theology to myself. He slept with the trampy girls and I suspect he didn’t want to be reminded that they didn’t make him happy either, just prone to be viewed as a man of sexual prowess. And in control.

  That night Brister wasn’t in the mood for the usual male bravado that stomped atop their table like gunfighters with spurs, only Jude didn’t pick up on the new tempo.

  “I can do more than love.”

  “Oh, you can fight?” Brister raised his eyebrows. “Well then, Mr. Big Shot, let’s go!”

  And despite Petra’s cries, he dragged Jude by the collar outside the house.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Jude told me the next day as he pushed against the bruises around his eyes and on his face. “Do I hit my mother’s husband? My stepfather? I mean, in general circumstances Brister’s all right. What was I supposed to have done? Let me tell you, the guy can really pack a punch. I thought he was all mouth. Apparently not.”

  I didn’t let him in on the fact that he’d turned the other cheek. Jude wouldn’t have wanted the similarities between Jesus and his whupping to be highlighted.

  Petra locked herself in her bedroom as Jude hauled himself down to Dr. Taylor to be stitched back together. When he came home, she asked Jude to watch over her that night.

  The next day Brister did the same thing.

  Jude took his own anger out on what he hated more than anything else. He drank some gin, grabbed a baseball bat, jumped in the motorboat, and headed toward the light. Mr. Keller knew better than to get in the way. He let his son rage and scream and curse him. He sat in his chair while Jude smashed the Fresnel lens, and he watched as Jude heaved the baseball bat like a gangling boomerang out into the charcoal waters of the Chesapeake.

  He lied and said someone came and vandalized the light while he was ashore getting supplies.

  Petra informed Brister she’d leave if he didn’t stop treating her son that way, but Jude knew it was all talk. And he knew those boys from Virginia had stolen his stepfather’s business right out from under him. If Brister couldn’t beat them, he’d beat Jude.

  At least that was Jude’s take on it. I’d have to say the matter was far more complicated; I’d have to say Jude was just looking for an excuse to get away.

  Jude returned to the light a few weeks later after school ended for the year, shook his father’s hand good-bye, then returned to shore. He bought an old green Packard with the crabbing money he’d saved up and headed to Baltimore City. He never saw Mr. Keller again.

  And now here I was back at the light. Apparently as lost in thought as Gerald seemed to be as he stood outside, looking up the steps toward the lantern.

  I didn’t want to disturb him. We had at least an hour. I figured a good amount of time stretched before us until Hattie slipped away if things continued along the same track. But I knew I’d better make sure.

  I slipped my cell phone out of my windbreaker pocket. I hate that thing, this bow to technology and the material, but the fact is, I always want to know when someone is passing away at St. Mary’s Village. I like to be there for it. If they’re Catholic, I call Father Brian who became the pastor of our parish a few months ago, and he meets me there to deliver the rite of the Anointing of the Sick.

  Now, there’s a sacrament that’ll knock your socks off. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it never gets any less solemn, earthy, or ancient. I think of all the faithful whose sick bodies have been anointed for two millenia, the same bodies that will be healed, restored, and glorified someday. Gives me goose bumps.

  And Father Brian is a sweetie. I swear that young man could shave three times a day and still fight with his beard in between. Sometimes I head over to the rectory and watch NASCAR with him. He loves that NASCAR.

  Angie picked up on the first ring.

  “Angie?” I gripped the phone.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Where are you?”

  “In Hattie’s bathroom. I don’t want Janice to hear.”

  “How’s our girl?”

  “Holding relatively steady. She’s still slipping, but not as quickly.” She reported her vitals, which, naturally, I can’t remember now as I sit here writing. I don’t have a head for numbers.

  “Okay. I think we’ll be another couple hours. Just hold on.”

  “Nurse Ratched is furious you’ve stolen Gerald.”

  “How did she know it was me?”

  “Security tapes.”

  “She didn’t!”

  “Yep. Dragged it all out like it was a big show. You’d have laughed your . . . behind off.” Angie had a mouth on her when she was young and she’s done quite well in curbing her once chosen verbiage. “Is Gerald holding up? I can’t believe he can do this.”

  “It’s supernatural, I think.”

  “Could be.”

  Angie’s much more scientific and rational than I am, ready to find the natural explanation first. But her faith forces her to admit, “If there’s always a natural explanation for everything, then billions of us are crazy as betsey bugs for having faith at all. Seems to me that’s a really far-fetched explanation for religion.”

  “So anyway, Mary, I don’t want to call more attention to myself than need be. I found Hattie’s DNR by the way. In the drawer of her nightstand.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mary-Margaret, it seems odd for you to be taking Gerald out to the light while we’re pondering issues of resuscitation.”

  What could I say? I couldn’t tell her Jesus told me to do it.

  “You know me.”

  “Yes. You’ve always been a little nutty.”

  Indeed. Well, honestly, there are worse things someone can think about a person. Lazy, smelly, weak in the arches.

  I hung up and patted Gerald’s hand. “She’s slowed down her descent.”

  “But still declining?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  His eyes soaked up the gray of the bay and surprised me when they didn’t tear up. “You know, Hattie’s always done things her way. She’s been dependable, loyal, but stubborn for all of that.”

  One year she took to wearing nothing but pink. Another year blue, and nobody could talk her into any other color.

  “Who were you talking to in the room yesterday, MM?”

  “Just praying, I guess.” So he heard my conversation with Jesus. “Sorry, Gerald.”

  “I mean, different strokes for different folks, MM. If you need to pray out loud and sound like a crazy person, far be it from me to question that.”

  “Thanks, Gerald.”

  “Wish I could talk to God like he was right there with me.” He gripped the railing. “I watched many a storm roll in from right here.”

  “I imagine.”

  “Agnes. Now, that was a crazy hurricane.”

  “I was in Ocean City at the time.”

  “Yes, you were. The bay was like one big pot of boiling water. You know, water is one of those things that seems all soft and nice until it gets angry and begins to scream and yell.”

  “I know some people like that,” I quipped.

  He raised a hand to visor his eyes. “Hattie was a real trouper during that dang storm. Saved those guys’ lives. Those darned idiots.”

  “You know”—I picked up the
trail—“people don’t think when they’re taking chances in dangerous storms, that maybe somebody will have to rescue them. That maybe they shouldn’t make those kinds of choices for others.”

  Gerald chuckled. “You’ve been listening to me for too long, MM.”

  A houseboat puttered by, a woman knitting on deck as a man drove the boat. “Maybe. But just know I don’t take everything you say as gospel truth, my friend. Would you like to go in?”

  “Just give me another minute to drink this in. I never thought I’d ever get back here. You of all people should understand the thought of leaving something behind forever. At least I didn’t lose my virtue here.”

  “No. You did that in the back row of the movie theater with Brenda Landruham.”

  He bapped me on the arm, frightening away the gull that had just landed on the railing nearby. “I had no idea you knew about that.”

  “I try to save things for the best time.”

  “Well, you picked a doozie. Still, hard to get riled with this breeze and”—he pointed to his left—“all those trees just blazing back on the island, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed.”

  We stood side by side, the wind collecting in our white hair, blowing it about our heads like pampas grass.

  “We’re old, Gerald.”

  “Yep. Old folks. And I’m even older than you are.”

  I didn’t tell him, however, that he’s destined to last longer. “I didn’t lose my virtue here, Gerald. Did Jude tell you that?”

  “Yep. When he was seventeen.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Gerald grinned. “Been stupid before, and I guess I’ll be stupid again sometime.”

  “Won’t we all, my friend?”

  FROM MY PERCH AT BETHLEHEM POINT WHERE I NOW WRITE, the gray stone buildings of St. Mary’s Village are illumined by a shard of light piercing the overhanging clouds. It gilds the stones laid by the School Sisters when they first took over and constructed a classroom building. The dormitory came next. They repaired the chapel and the monastery buildings as well. Those ladies were a thrifty and ambitious lot, let me tell you.

  We’re still here and expanding, but times have changed and expansion happens in different ways. Sister Pascal, soon to arrive, is a real whiz with computers. Even has her master’s degree in information systems and whatnot. Times have certainly changed for our order as well. We need more young women like Pascal, I’ll tell you that. She’ll be teaching over at the elementary school and helping out at the assisted-living facilities.

  I feel a certain affinity for this place that doesn’t mind changing outfits to suit the times. After all, I’d thought my life was set once upon a time. And it did seem to move forward in the direction I’d mapped out for years; then Jesus upended my life and shook it like a box of cornflakes. But that didn’t happen until much later.

  I graduated from St. Mary’s and went to the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, a Catholic women’s liberal arts college. I became a novice with the School Sisters of St. Mary’s as I studied art and children’s literature. As I continued through art school at the Maryland Institute, I went deeper and deeper into not only my initiation in the life of a religious but deeper into my relationship with Jesus.

  He showed up quite frequently during my schooling, because, I know, he knew how much I needed him. By that time, Aunt Elfi had died. I had no one. Jude had disappeared. Neither Gerald nor Hattie nor I had heard from him for several years. I remembered my old friend though, lit a candle from time to time as a sweet offering of my faith to the One who could heal his heart and soul, and each night I prayed for him, not because I was holy, but because I’d tacked a picture of him up by the bathroom sink so I’d remember him when I brushed my teeth. I’ve always said the secret of the truly pious is a better memory than most of us.

  The day I graduated from art school at Maryland Institute I returned to an empty one-room apartment on Howard Street and made myself a cup of tea. I made one for Jesus, although he always let his go cold. He liked that I did it anyway. “One day,” he said, “we’ll drink heavenly tea together.” I’m not sure if he couldn’t drink earthly tea in his glorified body.

  He sat with me at the dinette that afternoon. “I’m proud of you. Second in your class, T—.”

  “Yes.” I sighed.

  “You are better than that fellow who was doing all that abstract expressionism—and it’s not that I don’t like abstract expressionism, for I see their hearts and know of their pain—but you’re mine, you’ll be doing my work, so second is a comfortable place. You might have become proud with being number one.” He smiled so warmly. “I’m worried more about your soul than I am your standing anyway. I always have been.”

  “Yes, I know. But do you like my work, Lord?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s lovely, T—. So, you’re twenty-five now, and before you go into the postulancy, I have some work for you to do in Kentucky for a little while. Contact Sister Sally at Our Lady of the Way Hospital in Martin. Look for a man named Nicholas. He’ll be around fifty and will have been in an accident. He’s been floundering in his faith for a long, long time. Since he was about your age. Can you show me to him?”

  “As much as I am able.”

  “I’ll be with you.”

  He reached out and caressed my cheek and I wanted to die at the beauty, the happiness of being in contact with him. Certainly he was made of flesh and bone, but it felt different, the skin softer even than that of a newborn. His white hair held such shine and was silkier to the touch than rabbit fur. But it was real and substantive. Real flesh, real hair. That makes his taking on human form two thousand years ago even more astounding. He took on flesh, human flesh just like ours, not just for thirty-three years, but for eternity. He didn’t just rise from the dead, shed his skin, wipe his hands, and say, “Well, that’s that.” The thought never ceases to astound me.

  I realize that not many mystics claim to have physically touched the Lord, and I’ve wondered if my times with Christ were hallucinations so strong I felt physical pressure and matter. But I always comfort myself with the story of Saint Thomas the Apostle. (He shouldn’t be chained as the doubter forever, should he? The saint was run through with spears during his martyrdom. Surely he deserves a bit more respect.) I remember Jesus’s invitation that Thomas put his fingers into the nail prints in his hands, that Thomas thrust his hand into the Lord’s side. Christ cooked fish, having to lift up the physical: the wood, the flint, the fish. Oh dear, I do hope I’m not just a lunatic, but only faith, despite the tender spot between finger and thumb, keeps me clinging to the idea that I am not. And things always seem to work out the way Jesus says they will. Maybe that’s just the rhythm of the universe, though, as some people believe. Ah, well.

  So, after graduate school, my life changed completely. Angie moved in with me in Martin, Kentucky. She had married after high school, I was her maid of honor, but her husband was killed when the steering on his delivery truck went out and he careened into the Gunpowder River. So she joined me in a little apartment downtown. I taught English at the local parochial school and she got her teaching certificate. I taught art at the Buckhorn Orphanage, as well as following Jesus’s instructions and making rounds at the local hospital, sketching silly little comics for the children, reading them wonderful stories, and ministering where I could, trying to take advantage of every opportunity because, to be honest, there wasn’t much else to do in Martin anyway.

  Jesus was right about Nicholas. The breeze blew him into the hospital on an autumn night, the balmy kind where the humid wind blows the leaves across your paths, crackled brown hands tumbling toward the storm drain.

  I’d pictured a car accident would deliver the man Jesus told me to help, but it was an accident of a different sort.

  “What happened to him?” I asked the older nurse who was tucking his covers around him. Thank goodness they’d sedated him.

  “He was on the roof of the Coal Building, fixing something fr
om that windstorm last night. A live wire ran a high-voltage current right through his hand and out his foot. They’re amputating the foot and the hand first thing in the morning.”

  The next morning, after the surgery, I visited his room. Nicholas was sitting up in bed eating a bowl of Cream of Wheat and drinking a cup of black coffee.

  “Good morning, Mr.”—I glanced at his chart. I thought of him only as Nicholas. I didn’t remember his last name—“O’Malley. How are you feeling?”

  The voice that issued from him surprised me. Let me describe Nicholas O’Malley.

  Imagine a pear tree come to life. Thin, jointed arms and a ribbed trunk. His face was white, almost delicate, but it was twisted by, what I guessed then, years of disappointment, dejection, and even disillusionment. His weathered skin, just as thick and hard as Brister Purnell’s sea-roughened exterior, clung to his armature like wet felt over a topiary frame, and his eyes had soaked up a sadness that served to form a hardened gloss over him. His hair, that dark, greenish blond, stood out from his head by the roots.

  But despite that, it was easy to tell he wasn’t angered at the whole world, really. Mostly, he didn’t trust himself.

  I suspected by the reddened end of his nose that he sought solace in the bottle. Perhaps he lived alone.

  You may wonder how I surmised all of that after seeing him lift a spoonful of Cream of Wheat to his mouth. Well, I can’t tell you other than that the Spirit of God whispers these things in feelings and knowings, and most times I peg people for exactly who they are. Not always, mind you. My prejudices get in the way like everybody else’s. It’s hard to love the unloving.

  I try to look through the eyes of love too. It’s the only way to even remotely get a good read. And in my life, my service, getting a good read up front has been a true necessity.

  Nicholas continued to improve. I discovered a wry humor, judging by all of his stump jokes, as well as a will from which he benefited every day of his recovery. Physical therapy wasn’t exactly a major player in healing back in those days, but I doubt Nicholas would have needed that—even today. He learned how to do what he needed before he was released. He did well walk ing with his prosthesis, even taking me in his arms one day and twirling me a little bit.