The Passion of Mary-Margaret Page 8

  “I was quite the dancer in high school,” he said.

  I did the math. Back in the ’20s. Must have cut a mean rug with the Charleston or the Black Bottom.

  And so, that simple statement set the tone for the rest of my time in Martin. Well, at least as far as our relationship went. Every Saturday night I’d meet Nicholas at the VFW hall and we’d dance, my right hand resting in the hook of his new hand. My superiors in the order realized how good this would be for a multiple amputee and gave me their blessing.

  “Is that what you meant, Jesus?” I asked him one evening after I returned from the hall to find him sitting at the kitchen table looking at that morning’s issue of the local paper.

  “Yes. When you get your foot blasted off, you need to know God still wants you to dance.”

  “All right. I’ll make some tea.”

  Every once in a while Jesus would stay all night with me. Not bound by time like we are, I knew he could afford to remain as long as he wanted, as long as was good for me.

  In truth, I would have stayed that way, on my sofa in the circle of his arms, until I was nothing but a skeleton weighted with the dust of decades.

  Oh, I’ve wandered off into the past again and left poor Gerald in the lighthouse! I wouldn’t admit this to Angie or John, but I think I’m slipping a bit.

  Gerald grasped the railing and pushed away. “Well, let’s go in. We can always come stand out here before we leave.”

  “All right.”

  I led him into the main room, what he and his father always called “the parlor.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for a chair.” He looked around, his chest heaving not with exertion but homecoming. “What I wouldn’t give . . .”

  “Guess the Coast Guard won’t let you move back out here for old time’s sake?” I shoved my hands in my pocket, felt my Job’s Tears Rosary, and said a quick Eternal Father for Gerald.

  One side of his mouth lifted. “Don’t think so.”

  Inch by inch, he turned a complete 360 degrees, eyes flickering from ceiling to floor, ceiling to floor. “Right there hung our school pictures, and remember my father’s reading chair? Right over near the window?”

  “How long did he have that thing?”

  “Well, he brought it out here and died in it. I’d say a good long time.”

  We laughed.

  “He was one of the last of the true gentlemen,” I said.

  Mr. Keller always wore a coat and tie and a hat when he came to town, a hat he’d tip at the ladies as he held the door open for them.

  “Yes, he was, MM. Yes, he was.”

  “Why don’t you just stand here for a bit and I’ll see about the loose floorboard? Where did Hattie say it was?”

  “In the kitchen. Not far from where the Frigidaire used to stand.”

  Hattie always filled her refrigerator with plenty of grape juice, and I could almost see it, standing on that bald spot of wooden floor. I pressed my foot into the planks. After several attempts, a board gave play beneath the ball of my foot.

  Okay. Good. Okay. I took a deep breath.

  Well then. I looked up at the ceiling, through the plaster, the second story, the roof and right up into the sky.

  Jesus knelt beside me. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Who are you talking to in there?” Gerald called.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Jesus patted my knee, then left.

  “You’re a little screwy, MM.”

  “Indeed!”

  Now. How to pry up the board? I searched the kitchen drawers and of course found nothing but some dead bugs. The cupboards extended as much help.

  I dug into my khakis for my keys, knelt down on the floor, and gently inserted the key to our cottage in between the boards. I pressed, prying up the wood, then popped it free. It clattered on the boards next to it.

  Several papers, rolled up and secured with a rubber band, rested between the supports. My fingers encircled the yellowed onionskin, and the band snapped halfheartedly. Dry rot. The papers fell from my grasp, separated, and glided fanlike at my knees. The small courier type from Jude’s old Royal manual blared words I knew would change me.

  Lord, how I need some changing. I guess I’ve just become stuck in a rut and for some reason ruts don’t lead you down the wild pathways where you trust God in ways you don’t on the beaten path.

  All right, so now, if you who are reading this must know, I’m no longer writing this on the exact day I took Gerald to the light. In fact, it’s several months later. I’m probably making up half the dialogue at this point, but the gist is there, let me assure you, and Angie told me to make sure it feels like a story. So I’m trying that now. She said she’d go back over it for typos too. I should never have told her about this! I don’t know why I did. I can’t have her learning about my conversations with the Lord either. I’m definitely going to hide this when I’m finished. I did tell her I’m trying to weave the past in with the present, and Angie, who’s always reading prizewinning fiction, said, “How very postmodern of you, Mary.”

  She can be such a snot.

  Anyway, Gerald called to me from the parlor of the lighthouse.

  “What is it?” I yelled back.

  “I’m coming into the kitchen now. Is that okay?”

  “Of course!”

  He peered in through the door, his color better than it had been in years. He pointed to the papers. “See you’ve found Hattie’s stash. Any money in there perchance?”

  “Not a dime that I can see.” I dug in and removed the recipe book she talked about.

  “Figures. Here’s to hoping anyway.”

  “Exactly.” Dust swirled in the air as I blew it off the book.

  I could see why Gerald annoyed Jude. Gerald found hope close to home. It was never right around the corner or coming next year. Those kind of people can be annoying to the one born with a furnace for a belly and no vents whereby to dispel the heat.

  Gerald, seeming a bit more limber, knelt down next to me, then sat on the kitchen floor with his legs out in front of him. He reached out for the bundle. “Can I see?”

  “Sure.” I turned to the first page. “It’s Jude’s typewriter. For me. But you look first if you don’t mind. I’m a little nervous.”

  My nerves stood up straight, in fact.

  He pulled off his glasses and held the paper close to his eyes. I watched the light blue irises, faded after so many years in the sun, skitter over the words and down the lines. Finally he turned the page and I saw,

  I Will Always Love You,

  Jude

  written somewhere in the middle. Gerald looked up at me with a whistle.

  “I don’t know if you want to see this, MM. You might get upset with him for having Hattie hide this for so long. Here.” He handed me the papers. “Read for yourself.”

  I grasped the paper and set it beside me, then gathered up the remaining sheets. Poems, at least thirty of them, and all of them about me during the days he refused to see me.

  “I’m going to read these first.”

  “All right. I’ll go back outside.”

  I sat cross-legged in the empty room and realized afresh how much Jude loved me.

  “You done yet?” Gerald came back into the kitchen awhile later and sat down next to me.

  “I haven’t read the letter yet.”

  The poems, even though they weren’t very good, stirred up such a storm in my heart, I knew I wanted to be alone when I read the letter. Was it Jesus speaking into my ear? I think so. I shoved the bundle of papers and the recipe book under my arm. “Gerald, I don’t want to read this right now, and we should probably get you back to Hattie.”

  “Will you come by tonight and give me your reaction?”

  Rarely did I see that much concern on Gerald’s face. Oh goodness. This was going to be upsetting.

  “Can I promise you I’ll be there tomorrow after classes?”
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  “Righto. That’ll be okay.”

  We stood up with harmonizing groans, locked up the lighthouse, and placed the key back in the lamp by the front door. I promised myself, knowing how easy it turned out to be, that I’d be back.

  An hour later I walked Gerald into their bedroom. Hattie was sitting up eating a grape twin-pop. “Went out to the light?” she asked.

  “Yep.” Gerald leaned down and untied his shoes. “I’m feeling pretty good, Hat. How about you?”

  “Funny thing. I went to sleep last night, and woke up this afternoon and heard I was almost a goner. I’m not ready to go yet, though.”

  “Then don’t.” I squeezed her shoulder.

  “In fact”—she sucked the drips from the bottom of the pop near the stick—“I think we should take a vacation, Gerry.”

  Gerald carefully folded the floral windbreaker and handed it back to me. “Sounds like a good idea. If you ever tell a soul I wore that thing, MM, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Those aren’t your colors, honey,” Hattie said. “Shades of yellow would have suited you much better.”

  I handed her the recipe book and she thanked me in her terse, yet heartfelt manner. “You read his letter, MM?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Many a time I was tempted to read it, but a trust is a trust.”

  When I left them, they were sitting on Hattie’s bed, holding hands and watching Tom Brokaw. Hattie loves Tom Brokaw.

  The roll of papers bulged out the waistband of my pants, the corners of the sheets poking inato my skin. Time to get on home.

  WHEN I FINISHED THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF TEACHING, HAD gone off to our motherhouse near Baltimore for a discernment period, and formally entered the novitiate, Jude found me that year during a brief visit to the city. It had been almost eleven years since we’d seen each other. He glimmered with the light of society, and Mr. Bray told me he heard Jude had become quite popular with the well-heeled and was a man about the town right in Baltimore. Mr. Bray wasn’t sure what Jude did to make a living but he’d heard it was shady, and I didn’t want to ask Jude when he showed up just as I’d finished my shift. As a novice, one of my duties was to help care for our aged sisters in our care facility.

  I ran into his arms with a scream, right there in the main lobby.

  Jude was my friend and I loved him. I quickly ushered him onto the sidewalk outside.

  He embraced me and I noticed he’d filled out to man-sized proportions, having left the island boy behind. The thought of him not rowing out on the bay anymore, little Spark in front of him, saddened me. And the sight of one of his kites sailing aloft would have done me a world of good.

  “Mary-Margaret, it’s like a shot in the arm to see you. You look great! Just the same.”

  “You’re still pretty handsome yourself.”

  Now dusted with a mysterious glamour, his hands jammed in his pockets, he held himself with an indifference to his surroundings. He later told me it wasn’t that he felt at home wherever he was, more that he figured he’d never feel at home anywhere and he’d accepted it. His clothing was well-cut from beautiful cloth and his hair was shorn close to the sides of his head, the curls up top spilling onto his brow.

  We stared at each other for a while, the years piling up like a flash flood behind a dam, until I reached out and touched his arm. “I have a free evening. How about we get a piece of pie over at The White Coffee Pot?”

  He held out his arm; I threaded mine through and we walked in the direction of the restaurant. Sometimes we walked down the Main Street in Abbeyville the same way, our arms zinging from the contact, him soaking it in and enjoying it for what it was, me cursing Satan but still enjoying it nonetheless. Sister Thaddeus told me it wasn’t a sin letting Jude be a gentleman, that perhaps our walks, even our friendship, was the only time he got the chance to behave himself. “I trust you, MaryMargaret,” she whispered. “And it’s summer, so the other girls won’t see you.”

  I was much better behaved during the school year.

  “I’ve missed you, Mary-Margaret,” Jude said that day.

  “Likewise.”

  I love Baltimore. And I remember walking from the mother­house all the way to Highlandtown on Jude’s arm. Up Eastern Avenue we sort of sidled, looking, I have to admit, quite the couple. Near Patterson Park, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of candy.

  I did not let him put it on my tongue this time.

  He got a kick out of that. “So you’re completely serious about this nun thing, aren’t you?”

  “Well, technically—”

  “Yes, you’ll be a religious sister. It’s just easier to say nun, Mary-Margaret, and less confusing. Sister could mean two things and most people take it to mean something biological. Nun means a Catholic lady who foregoes marriage—”

  “Gets married to Jesus.”

  “Semantics. And then goes on to hit kids on the backs of their hands with a ruler.”

  I howled with laughter. And he joined in.

  Jude knew me. And he knew Sister Thaddeus and some of the others at my school.

  Sure, there were people like Sister Antiochus, who we called Antiochus Ephiphanes after that lovely Roman ruler who destroyed the temple and liked a good massacre. She was just plain mean. Judgmental, austere, and prone to think if you weren’t always in a posture of mourning, begging for God’s mercy on your knees, you weren’t being realistic about the state of your soul. None of us dared to mention we knew she snuck cigarettes around the back side of the garden shed. But people like the Ephiph were everywhere in life, always pointing fingers, looking around the beams in their eyes to stare at your splinter with dripping disapproval, so it stood to reason they’d enter religious orders too.

  Jude knew he was overgeneralizing and he winked at me to let me know. “So what’s happening after this phase of the nun business?”

  Years later I finally learned to stopped correcting him.

  “I’m heading to Georgia after I’m finished with my novitiate here.”

  “Gerald told me.”

  I stopped in front of the Patterson Theater. “You’ve contacted him?”

  “Don’t look so shocked.”

  “But don’t you hate Gerald?”

  “Not hate, Mary-Margaret. He annoys the heck outta me, the goody two-shoes.”

  We ordered hot turkey sandwiches at The White Coffee Pot. Here’s an old matchbook cover from the place.

  The white bread stuck to the roofs of our mouths and we laughed as, more than once, we actually had to dislodge the bread from behind our teeth with our fingertips. Schmidt’s Bakery wasn’t far away. I still buy Schmidt’s Blue Ribbon Bread every once in a while, and when nobody’s looking, I’ll walk down Main Street to the small grocery store where Jude and I used to buy gum, and purchase two thick slices of Esskay Bologna (a Maryland favorite) and a slice of American cheese. I’ll arrange that on a slice of bread and put some mayo smack on another slice of bread. Clap it together and you’re ten again. Aunt Elfi taught me by example the proper way to eat a bologna sandwich. You simply have to smash the bread with your fingertips until it’s one-quarter as thick and gets a little gummy.

  Magnificent.

  Jude ate them the same way.

  The waitress at The White Coffee pot refilled our cups of coffee long into the evening, and soon he began to open up over slices of apple pie. I excused myself and called the mother-house from the pay phone near the women’s restroom, getting Angie to explain the situation for me. Like so many times on the island, she covered for me.

  Apparently, Jude was already a widower, a father, and a man who had lost his child.

  Jude went away from the light both literally and figuratively. It’s hard to believe someone as smart and good-looking as he could have fallen down so utterly. As we sat in The White Coffee Pot, he told the tale. To be honest, when the story meandered farther down the path, I longed to take my hand from his, knowing where that hand had been. Several t
imes I comforted myself with the remembrance that Jude, even as a boy, was a clean freak who washed his hands many times a day. Oh, not in the obsessive-compulsive way, but more in a mindful of germs manner, which made it even harder to believe he’d do such things with so many people. I assumed he took a lot of showers.

  Jude arrived in Baltimore and proceeded to find a room down near the docks off Fort Avenue. The day job at Domino Sugar would have never been enough for Jude. And who could imagine him living the life I did? Coming home to a good book, a cup of tea, and Jesus Christ? Hardly.

  He inevitably found himself accompanying some workmates down to The Block, Baltimore’s red-light district. You’ll rarely find a person in Baltimore that hasn’t at least driven down the main strip of debauchery on Baltimore Street to get a look-see at the bouncers, the prostitutes, the destitute, and those who feed the beast with their money. I was no exception. But to understand what really goes on there, you have to inhabit such a place. Jude inhabited every aspect.

  “It started out just selling some opium I’d get from one of the guys at the docks, Mary-Margaret. And I liked the money and started delving into prostitution.”

  I tried to pull my hand away, but he held on tight.

  “Were you the pimp?” I asked, the word, not something you hear at the motherhouse every day, surprising me.

  “No. Someone propositioned me and paid good money. Real good money.”

  If his skin had been peeled off his face, his expression couldn’t have been any more naked.

  “Are you a homosexual, Jude?”

  He shook his head. “No. You know better than that, MaryMargaret.”

  “So, who did you sleep with—rich, lonely ladies?”

  He howled out a laugh. “On the Block? H--- no!”

  “Men then?”

  “Yes. And some women. Mostly men.”

  The wind went out of me. Pictures of Jude sitting on the step whistling up our skirts flew out with my breath. Who are you? I wanted to say, but I knew this was Jude. This had always been Jude. And my presence in his life was the odd bit.