You can see the silhouette of Mom’s head flinch. I grin at Harper, whose mouth is hanging slightly open.
“But that’s too strong.” Isabella touches Mom’s shoulder. “Harper is a
player
. That’s the word. Most of the single men I know are players. Or they want to be. It’s easier for the handsome ones. I ought to know.”
“Your last boyfriend,” Mom says.
“Another Casanova,” Isabella says. “Harper’s trying. He hasn’t gone out with another woman for two months.”
“He loves you. I can tell. It’s a pleasure to see you together.”
“I love him. I felt something the moment I saw him on the airplane.” Isabella laughs. “Though that might just have been his nice hair.”
Harper whispers in my ear, “She’s never said that to me. She only says, ‘I loke you.’ Loke—somewhere between like and love.”
“In the end that’s all a mother wants.” Mom sighs and pats Isabella on the thigh. “When I met Frank, I knew I didn’t ever want to be apart from him. I’d been in love a few times, but never like that. I never wanted the life of a clergy wife—moving from city to city, entertaining people, being
a wife
, but I didn’t want to live any other way but with him. And we’re still in love forty-one years later.”
“I’d like that. I just don’t know if I can trust him.”
“Make an honest man of him.” Mom laughs. “Isabella, you’re so—forgive me for using a therapy term—self-actualized. You are strong within yourself. You know where you’re going.”
Out in the field Rachel starts walking back toward the fence.
“Where is that?” Harper asks.
Mom turns toward us, and Isabella swings her legs over the fence, drops to the ground, and says, “It’s not polite to spy, gentlemen.”
“Hey,” Harper says. “We just came out to marvel at the moon.”
Rising higher in the sky, the moon is shrinking, turning a pale orange.
A
fter dinner, as thirty men and women file up onto the stage to form a choir, I’m light-headed with pride, sitting at the head table across from Frank and between my two handsome sons. Cage so resembles his father at forty with his blue eyes and his sandy hair graying at the temples, which he graciously cut for the party. He sees me gazing at his profile and smiles. Oh, how my heart soars to see the brightness back in his eyes. Dear Jesus, please help him stay this way. And thanks again for introducing Harper to Isabella. Dear Lord, please give him the strength not to step out on her. When the pianist starts playing a rousing hymn, over three hundred friends from across the South packed at round tables in the parish hall quiet down and the choir begins:
Leaving Memphis for Thebes soon,
Old Hickory Lake beneath the moon.
Now there’s time for you to sail!
To hike the Ap-pa-lachian trail!
Frank’s nearly blushing at the effort that all these people have made to honor him. We kept the show a surprise. The writers spent months talking to parishioners from several states, digging up little facts, such as that he’d built a sailboat when he was a bachelor priest which he gave to the Boy Scouts when we moved the first time and will build another when we move to Cage’s Bend. After the song Harper leans across me to whisper, “Cage, guess we know where your sailing obsession originated.”
Cage’s smile is easy. “Dad took me out in that Lightning. When we left it behind, I was pissed.”
“You were only two.” I laugh. It’s remarkable how we can make light of his illness when he’s well and how simple some things appear in retrospect. I’ve kept one secret about our retirement from everyone, including Frank. Going over the finances with our adviser, I decided that we can afford to build a pool amongst the overgrown hedges of the old formal garden. After tithing to the church and living frugally all these years, surely I deserve one grand indulgence. Cage has already added a new bathroom upstairs in the big house and he’s begun the renovation of the cabin in back for himself. We’ll be like one of those Old World country families, three generations living together with a chicken coop and a vegetable garden. I read that manic-depressives have a better recovery rate in the third world because all the members of the extended family are close by and supportive. Surely that’s the healthiest way to live. Harper says his anger stemmed from the absence of his father with no grandfather nearby to take up the slack. The nuclear family has much to answer for.
At the podium near the choir, Frank’s oldest friend, King Shelby, is saying, “Named to Catholic High’s hall of fame and later a distinguished alumnus, Frank once worked as a paperboy but they didn’t know about one unique accomplishment—memorizing the love sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to recite to girls on dates.” Laughter fills the parish hall.
“Jesus, like fathers, like sons,” Harper says. “That’s exactly what Nick and Cage used to do. Always struck me as goofy.”
“You’re such a romantic,” Isabella says.
Harper rolls his eyes at the corny lyrics and he has the usual sarcastic hint of a smile that he always wore in church, but he listens intently to the narration and the comic chorus as they speak of Frank’s years in the army, working his way through UT delivering laundry, hitchhiking to Montana in the summers to fight fires.
Jump out, jump out the airplane right near burning trees,
Don’t land in bushes with flames up to your knees!
“Your dad is so much cooler than you,” Isabella tells Harper. The choir sings of Frank’s struggle to choose between seminary and forestry, how his grandfather, old Bishop Rutledge, encouraged him to become a priest, but they leave out the real catalyst, which was the death of his best friend in a hunting accident. Shelby goes on, “From seminary, Frank became the deacon-in-training here at the cathedral and lived nearby in a house where he worked with the youth. Hundreds of teenagers came to the Friday night dances. Frank’s job was to check the boys’ john, peering into toilet tanks for bottles of whiskey.” As everyone laughs, Harper whispers to Isabella loud enough for me to hear clearly, “He never searched our rooms for pot. He and Mom didn’t have a clue what we were up to.”
“That’s what’s called the generation gap,” I tell them, smiling.
“You and Dad were basically two generations behind,” Cage says. “You were more like your parents than our friends’ parents. It’s like you missed the sixties.”
“It’s true, boys. There’s a great gulf between the way we look at the world.”
“In Atlanta, where he served as chaplain at Georgia Tech,” King goes on, “which was beginning integration, Frank was famous for his reply to the legendary racist politician Lester Maddox, whose chicken restaurant he would visit with black students. Maddox once asked, ‘Well, Father, I guess you want all dark meat.’ Frank replied, ‘No. We want it mixed!’
“The Rutledges spent the sixties in East Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The young rector was scaling peaks every chance he got. His two sons remember camping in the mountains from the time they could toddle. Since those were the days before Pampers, Frank boiled their diapers on a camp stove.”
His
three
sons remember. The old loss echoes through my body like the bell in an empty church and I feel like crying. Nick loved the mountains so much he was on the path that Frank chose not to take. As the choir sings about miles on the trail to the tune of “Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” Frank turns from the far side of the table and holds my eyes. His are moist. He’s never been afraid to show his emotions. Cage sees us and pats my shoulder, says, “Nick’s here tonight.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s like that movie where Whoopi Goldberg was a medium talking to everyone’s family ghosts who were hanging around all the time,” Harper says, putting his arm around my back. Onstage, King is saying, “It was in Baton Rouge that Dr. Rutledge committed the worst sin of his life. Margaret forbade bacon and eggs. One morning after she left, Frank threw six strips of contraband bacon and five eggs in a skillet, when he looked out and saw Mars pulling in the driveway. In a panic the future bishop of Tennessee grabbed the skillet and dumped everything down the disposal.”
The crowd howls, then the chorus sings about Frank’s secret love affair with fried chicken and fudge sundaes. Harper calls across the table, “Gee, Dad, I never knew you were such an addict. No wonder you run every day.”
Frank laughs. “I’m sorry you found out this way, son.”
Isabella calls out, “Ask Harper what his worst sin is!”
The rest of our table, the Wolffs from Baton Rouge, the Addingtons from Atlanta, and the McCutcheons from Roanoke, laugh at the exchange. Louis Addington says loudly, “That’s best kept in the privacy of a confessional.” Cage’s deep laughter pours into the emptiness that the memory of camping with Nickfish left behind. King continues, “Under Bishop Rutledge the diocese donated land to three black Baptist churches, and Episcopalians put together a federally funded housing program for the elderly. Our program of vocational training for the homeless has been so successful that it was featured on NBC national news.”
The chorus sings, “All this from a man who would rather sleep in a tent, good Lord.”
“One parishioner in Baton Rouge says, ‘Frank is the most godly man I’ve ever known, the personification of a modern, saintly man. He gives of himself with great generosity. At the end of the day you are the pastor to a group of living, sinning, stiff-necked sons of guns that you’ve got to keep in the tent. His ability to do that, despite the frustrations that come with the corporate responsibility of managing a diocese, stem from his deep prayer life, which is like him sticking his fingers into an electric circuit that allows him to recharge his batteries.’”
To the tune of the French children’s song “Frère Jacques” the chorus catalogs his virtues. Frank is blushing again. Cage makes the whole table laugh by remarking, “The music at this party makes me wish Dad was a black bishop!” Then, to the tune of “La Cucaracha,” the choir sings of Frank’s dream, his first goal after retiring: “Kilimanjaro! Kilimanjaro! Grab your ice ax and let’s go!”
“You know,” Harper whispers to me, “probably only ten people would come to my retirement party if they had to travel very far.” He’s lost his skeptical smile. It may be wishful thinking, but I think I see a new look of admiration in his eyes for his father. Perhaps he can see now that Frank’s life was important to many people, that leading a community of faith is a challenging, high calling. So often children fail to appreciate the greatness of their parents.
“And now it’s time for a few words from the person we are really honoring tonight.” King looks past Frank at me and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I present the first lady of our diocese.” Everyone claps as I make my way up on the stage. I give King a kiss and a hug. He looks down at Frank and says, “Oh, and I almost forgot the husband of the bishop’s wife. Frank, please join us.” King guides me to the microphone.
“I’m very proud of Frank Rutledge, ‘fiercely partisan,’ in one friend’s phrase.” The laughter is loud enough to make me pause. “In my generation women stayed home to raise children and transferred their own ambition to their men. As a clergy wife I devoted myself to making it possible for my husband to serve the church as best he could. Tonight I know that I have succeeded.” There’s more laughter and clapping. “So I’ll just keep skipping and hopping and dancing around thankful for my world and all of you who people it, and for the privilege of being along for the ride with Frank Rutledge.” On my tiptoes I kiss Frank on the lips.
King says, “Unlike her husband, Margaret believes in succint speeches.”
“Clearing out my office the other day, I looked at a photograph of your new bishop and myself on the steps outside the cathedral just after his consecration,” Frank says. “We were both smiling. The difference, I thought, is that I know why I am smiling.” The hall fills with laughter. “Indeed, Margaret and I shared a joint ministry. She was always beside me, telling me how I could do a better job.”
Suddenly I feel like laughing and I can’t stop and have to cover my mouth.
“Every Sunday lunch I endured a ruthless critique of my sermons. She would have made an excellent prosecutor.” There’s more laughter, then Frank continues, “I have great feelings of nostalgia for all the friends that I may never see again, but mostly I have profound feelings of joy and gratitude. There are so many of you to whom I must pay tribute. I shall start with my old pal, King Shelby, who . . .”
Searching the dimmed light of the hall beyond the stage, I single out tables with couples from the seven cities where we lived over the last forty-two years, friends who would go to the well and back for us. I recollect others who are not here. No small number divorced. There were scandals, even among the Episcopal priests. Harper’s own godfather was caught having an affair with a man and left his wife and the church. Over time Frank and I grew more understanding of others, less judgmental of those whose behavior was so different from our own. I watch as they unveil the oil portrait of Frank smiling but dignified in his white collar, purple shirt, and seersucker jacket, hear everyone laugh as Frank says, “A portrait always struck me as a tombstone. Now I’ll be hanging up there on the wall in that graveyard of old dead bishops.”
I
sabella slumps naked on a wingback chair with her legs draped open. Her eyes are closed. Her lips are curved in the trace of a smile between pleasure and pain and her breathing is ragged. Her jaw tightens for a few seconds and she moans, curling her fingernails into her palms. In a low voice I speak slowly, “Imagine you are floating in a warm pool filled with the golden light of sunset. Smell the lavender fragrance in the humid air. Look at the water rippling around you. See the light glittering on the surface in spiral patterns. As I count back from ten, you will fall deeper and deeper along the spirals of light beneath the surface of the water.” Isabella’s jaw relaxes.
“Ten. The water laps over your head as you sink ever so slowly.”
Her fingers uncurl and she turns her palms out.