Authors: Lynne Hinton
F
ather George Morris had not slept in weeks. In fact, if he counted back to the last time he’d had a full night’s rest, he would have to go all the way back to the night before the fire. That night he had slept deeply and soundly, waking even a little later than dawn, his usual hour for morning prayers.
Now every night was a struggle. He lay in bed. He tossed and turned. He prayed. He said the rosary. He got up and read scripture. He went back to bed. He tossed and turned some more. He figured he was getting a couple of hours of sleep sometime between the praying and the tossing, but in the mornings he felt as if he had been in some great, long, and losing battle.
He looked up at the calendar still hanging on the wall in front of his desk. The day was circled in red ink. Moving day. Leaving day. He was heading out later that afternoon for California, to a seminary in Berkeley to work in the administrative office as assistant to the president. It was a good job, and he was lucky to get it. And leaving parish ministry and taking an administrative position, getting out of the intimate work of being in the lives of people entrusted to his care just seemed a better fit. The Monsignor in New Mexico had made the arrangements, and Father George was thankful.
He had heard about the opening and made queries. In the end, they had all agreed that it would be a good match. He had great computer skills and excellent organizational qualities, liked order, and was task-oriented, everything the president needed in an assistant. It had been decided in only a matter of weeks, and even though everyone saw the new job as a chance for the poor parish priest who had lost everything in a fire to start over, no one spoke of it in that way. The diocese was being refigured in the western part of the state anyway, and a priest would no longer be serving the parish in Pie Town. It was a good placement at the seminary, a good move for the Gallup diocese and a good match for Father George Morris.
If anybody in Pie Town was upset about his leaving, no one said so. If any of the parishioners were sorry to see him go, it was never brought to his attention. The Altar Guild had planned a nice reception at the parish in Omega on his last Sunday. The members of the three churches had raised some money to help him buy replacement books, and the prayer shawl group had sewn a few new vestments. But no one stopped by the rectory to try to change his mind. No one hung around after Mass to try to understand his reasons for leaving. Accepting what the fire had left them and honoring the decision handed down to them from the diocese that no church would be built in its place, no one seemed concerned that the church would not be rebuilt and that Father George Morris was moving on.
He yanked the calendar off the wall and stuck it in a box sitting by the desk. “It’s for the best,” he told himself and opened the desk drawers to see what else he had left to pack. He shuffled through a few papers, pulled out some ink pens and a pair of scissors, dropped them into the box. He shut that drawer and pulled out the one beneath it, thinking about his short tenure in Pie Town, thinking about the few sermons he had preached in his time there, the few people he had actually gotten to know. His time in his first parish had been short and not very successful. He would mostly remember being the priest in place the night the church burned down, and that was how Pie Town would remember him as well. He sat down at the desk. He was tired from the packing.
After weeks of living next to ashes, next to the place where the church had been established over one hundred years before, next to the tiny chapel built by the townspeople, he had not spoken to anyone about the night of the fire. If Trina had used him as an alibi, if she had told anyone about the time she had been around the church, starting in the parking lot and concluding in the rectory, about what she was doing the entire time she was there and what time she left, he hadn’t heard it. The town had somehow gotten wind of the news and assumed that she set the fire, unintentionally of course, so no charges would be filed and no payment demanded from the young woman. There were rumors that she did it on purpose. A few said that she was in the sanctuary with a boy for reasons other than religion, some said that she did it out of meanness or spite, while only one or two suggested that she was there to pray. Everybody accepted that Trina was the cause of the fire, but they differed on her motives. As for Father George, he had not seen or talked to her since that night.
The sheriff had stopped by the rectory a few days after the cause of the fire had been determined, but he hadn’t asked about the priest’s interaction with Trina. He asked Father George only about the meetings or gatherings the priest had known to be going on at the church building, when he had left the sanctuary, whether he went back into the building after services, and if he had seen Rob Chavez’s truck in the parking lot. The only question Roger had asked about Trina was whether or not the priest had noticed her getting out of the truck.
When Roger had showed up at the front door, Father George had been prepared to tell the sheriff everything, even though he had not wanted to explain the details of that night. But when Roger never specifically asked him about his activities that evening and about what had occurred at the rectory, he had not volunteered the truth. And once everyone began to treat him as if he had been victimized because of the losses he suffered, staying clear of him, not pressuring him for information, he just didn’t see any sense in telling what he knew. Besides, he had told himself time and time again, he didn’t know what Trina had done when she left the rectory. She could have gone into the sanctuary, lit a candle, and left it burning. He didn’t know, and he didn’t see any reason to tell anyone about her visit and about their lengthy and intimate conversation, about how, before she left, she had covered him with a blanket and removed his shoes because he had fallen asleep on the sofa.
Besides, she had not called him for assistance. Apparently, she had not told anyone that she was with him that evening. No one had asked him to verify any story that she had given. So he had just decided not to hand over more information than was required. If she needed him, he convinced himself, she would have called and asked. He would assist only if she needed it. Because the truth of the matter was that it would not bode well for the priest if it was discovered that he had been alone in the rectory with a young woman, especially that young woman, well after appropriate meeting hours and late into the night. The two of them had talked a long time, and he had fallen asleep, and he didn’t know what time she left. That story would not be good for his reputation.
And yet, ever since the fire, ever since the night Trina jumped out of that pickup truck, Rob skidding off, almost knocking her over in the parking lot, George watching from the window and then going out to check on her, bringing her into the rectory, washing off her scrapes and giving her a cup of tea, talking for hours, ever since that night he had been consumed with the idea that he was reliving another night, another series of events that followed that night, and a decision he’d made that would haunt him every single day of his life.
He opened another drawer in the desk. He noticed the contents: a calculator, a small book of the Psalms, some loose paper clips, staples, a few bookmarks. There was nothing he wanted to keep. He closed the drawer and opened the next one. He leaned down and pulled out the few files he had kept in this drawer, stuffing them into the box. A piece of paper slipped out, falling to the floor, and he reached down to pick it up. It was a folded receipt that had been filed in his papers from his seminary days. He opened it and saw that it was hardly significant, a receipt for lunch, and he was about to throw it away when he noticed the date, April 16, a month before his graduation and ordination. He knew immediately that it was hardly an insignificant day.
April 16 was the day Lisa Myers tried to visit him at the seminary, the day she left campus and went to her appointment at the abortion clinic to end her pregnancy, the day he had heard five or six times that morning that a girl was looking for him, calling the phone on his dorm floor, asking a couple of students, a professor, a secretary, about his whereabouts, the day he hid from her, in the library, in a classroom, in chapel, and finally in the cafeteria, where he obviously bought a salad and a chocolate chip cookie, a can of soda, paid $4.53, and the day he received, just as he was finishing his meal, a note written by Lisa and delivered by a fellow student, saying that she was gone and that the deed was to be done.
George balled up the receipt and threw it in a trash can at his feet, shaking his head. “These two things are not related,” he told himself. “Lisa Myers was only trying to get money from me, she was not seeking my assistance as much as she was trying to ruin me.” He slumped in his chair and dropped his head in his hands, remembering that day in April, remembering how he hid from her all morning, how he had repeatedly phoned her before that day and told her not to visit him, that he didn’t want to see her and that if she was pregnant, then she needed to take care of matters herself. He had convinced himself that he was not the father of her child, that he barely even remembered that night in Cincinnati, and that he was not responsible for his drunken behavior. He was almost through with his education and his time of discernment, he had always intended to be a priest, and nothing was going to stand in the way of making that happen. The pregnant Lisa Myers was not his problem.
George closed his eyes, recalling how shocked he had been when she phoned him the first time. He didn’t remember giving her his phone number, or even his name. And yet, she had stolen his wallet. She knew everything there was to know about how to track him down. He thought about that night with his friends, the night they left him, the night he was planning only to walk back to the hotel and go to bed.
She had stopped him just as he left the restaurant, asked him for directions, which he didn’t know, and then, as he was walking away, called him back. He had turned and followed her. For some reason he still didn’t recall, she had said something funny, something interesting that caught his attention, and he had gone with her somewhere and they had drunk more and he was sick and she was laughing, going through his wallet, and then, well, then . . . then he had sex with her, fell asleep, woke up alone, and found his way back to the hotel just as his roommates were about to call the police. He had lost his money, his identification, and his virginity. And then, a couple of months later, right out of the blue, she had called to say she was pregnant with his child.
Young George Morris, about to graduate, about to be ordained and called to his first parish, about to see his dream become a reality, had told her that he didn’t know who she was, that she had called the wrong guy, and that she shouldn’t call him again. When she called the third time, he finally admitted that he was the one she’d been with that night in Cincinnati, but he insisted that the events of that night had been her doing, that she had planned it all and seduced him to steal his wallet, that Lisa Myers, whoever she was, could be locked up for her theft, and that if she was really pregnant, then she was going to have to handle her own problems. That’s how he’d said it. “Handle your own problems.” And then she showed up on April 16, and then she was gone, for good. He never confirmed the abortion or found out why she had driven all the way to the seminary to see him. He had finished school and his requirements, received his call to Pie Town, New Mexico, and left the rest of that night in Cincinnati, that final semester in seminary, and that day, April 16, behind him.
That night with Trina, pregnant and asking for his advice, the two of them talking for two or three hours, sipping tea and actually conversing like friends, him even telling her about Lisa and then explaining that she could have the child and manage, or she could give the baby up for adoption. That night was completely different, the two pregnancies were completely different. And in both cases, although he’d engaged in very different conversations and there would probably be different outcomes, he had done nothing wrong. He was sure of it.
Father George thought about Trina, wondered how she was doing, whether she’d decided to keep the baby, and whether anyone else knew. He doubted that she would stay in Pie Town, because he had already heard how some of the townsfolk talked about her, how some of the kids at church called her “fire-starter.” Bernie King had told everyone that she was wild, running in the fields that night, and that she probably started the fire intentionally. Father George guessed that Trina would eventually decide, as he had, that this town was not hers, not her home, and that she would hitchhike back to Texas, where he hoped she had some family and support.
He shut the desk drawer, bent down, and picked up the box. He taped it shut, then stood up, placing it next to the other boxes near the door. He looked at his watch. He planned to drive to Gallup, meet with the Monsignor, and then catch a bus to San Francisco, then over to Berkeley later in the week. He would start his new job in a few days. This would all be behind him soon enough.
Pie Town and pregnant Trina, losing everything in a fire at his first parish, the crazy townspeople who never really liked him, the rattlesnakes, the skunks, the desert heat, it would soon all be behind him. “I will soon be able to start a new life,” he said out loud. He leaned against the wall, looking at the boxes, and shook his head. He did not want to admit it, but he clearly realized that this was not the first time he had said those words to himself.
T
he nurse had come and gone. She had called the doctor and ordered morphine, in hopes that the medication would ease the pain in Alex’s legs, lessen his anxiety, and help him rest. Malene peeked in his room, after walking the nurse out and saying good-bye, and watched him sleep. It had been a long and restless night.
With the decline in his health, his body worn out from repeated infections, the birth defect with its never-ending ramifications, and the recent bout of pneumonia, Alex was losing his battles. At first, when his fever spiked again, the first night home from the hospital, the night of the fire, the boy had refused to let his grandmother call an ambulance. Adamant that he did not want to leave Pie Town, he took the Tylenol, let her bathe him in alcohol, and ate chips of ice, and finally the fever went down. The next day, feeling somewhat stronger, eating a little something and keeping it down, and with his temperature back to normal, the boy had spoken seriously and decisively to his grandparents.
He explained that he didn’t want to go back to the hospital again, and with an understanding well beyond his eleven years, he stated that he knew that his body was tired and would not be able to fight much longer. He wanted, he carefully and genuinely explained, to stay at home.
Malene had fought the boy, resisted his arguments for days, even stormed out of the room the first time he mentioned it. Roger hadn’t fared much better. He hadn’t argued with Alex or refused to let him finish what he wanted to say, but he was certainly not willing to go along with his grandson’s decision. Finally, after three days of hearing him say the same thing again and again, they gave in and said they would talk to the pediatrician in Albuquerque about his wishes. They all agreed to follow whatever plan of treatment she recommended and to take whatever advice she offered.
They never told Alex, but they fully expected the health care professional to side with them and to give them ideas on how to keep Alex willing and focused on getting better, how to get him to agree to go back to the hospital. They left Pie Town and drove to Albuquerque convinced that the doctor, a pediatrician whose life oath was to do no harm to children and to offer them quality of life as well as quantity of life, would agree with their sentiments and offer them strategy and alliance to counter their grandson’s wishes.
After they had arrived at Presbyterian Hospital and had a long talk with the doctor, who had cared for Alex since his birth, after she had gone over the boy’s history, his last hospitalization, the findings and X-rays showing scar tissue as thick as smoke in the little boy’s lungs, after she detailed the steps they would need to take as his condition worsened, the therapy and medications, the required surgeries, and after hearing about the little boy’s clear and independent decision not to fight for his life, the doctor, shocking the grandparents, had sided with Alex. They argued with her too, threatened to get another opinion, to take him to another hospital, but in the end they abided by their word. And just as they had told their grandson, Roger and Malene kept their promise. Alex would stay at home, with no more hospitalizations or surgeries, no more heroic efforts to save his life, and, after having made that decision, had been a hospice patient for a little over a month.
Malene’s house had been full of people coming and going for those three weeks. Her father stayed most days, just sitting by Alex’s bed, watching over him, counting his breaths when he slept, reading him the latest issue of
Farm Life
when he was awake. Oris showed up at breakfast and didn’t leave until the sun was firmly set. Trina came over most evenings, played cards when Alex felt like it, watched movies she had rented when he didn’t. Fred and Bea kept Malene’s refrigerator full of Alex’s favorites, and others from the community dropped in from time to time, some staying a while, sitting with Oris or Trina, laughing at jokes, offering prayers, others dropping off casseroles or comic books, standing awkwardly at Alex’s bedroom door, uncertain of what to say or how close to get.
The day after Alex’s initial assessment with the hospice nurse and social worker, Roger had gone home, packed his suitcase, and moved in with Malene. There had been no conversation between him and his ex-wife, no discussion of boundaries or what it meant for him to be there. They just both understood that he was not going to be far away from Malene or Alex. There was no question about where Roger Benavidez was staying.
Without telling anyone, Roger had driven to Colorado and all over Denver trying to find Angel. He had made phone calls to every sheriff’s office in New Mexico and the neighboring state, searched on the Internet for websites or chat rooms where she might show up, called rehab facilities and social service agencies, begging for information about his daughter. In all that time, he had not found any trace of her. Malene knew he was searching, but she never asked what he had found. She understood that when Roger knew anything, had any news, he would tell her. Beyond that, hearing about his futile search only unsettled her.
Alex never asked about his mother and seemed unbothered that she was not there. He seemed to have made his peace with Angel and her absence from his life long before his condition worsened. He never mentioned a desire to see her or say good-bye to her. Once, when the nurse was given a report on Alex’s anxiety and heard about his sleeplessness, she had asked the boy and his grandmother if he was anxious because he did not have his mother with him. Alex had smiled and answered, “She’s fine. I’m not worried about her. Some people just need to find their own way.” Malene had shrugged upon hearing his response. “He seems to know himself and his mother pretty well,” she had explained.
When he was asked about his worries and fears, he had only talked about the town and Father George and Trina and the fire, claiming that some people, some towns, needed help, needed to be pushed along. Not realizing how serious a matter this was to the young boy, Roger, Malene, and the hospice staff all patted him on his legs or on the top of his head and spoke in chorus, saying, “It’ll be okay,” or, “That’s too much for you to worry about.” But it did worry the boy, and it was all he really wanted to talk about.
Trina would listen to his concerns, tell him what she knew and how she felt, but the door to his room was always closed during those conversations, and no one ever knew what the girl accused of starting the fire told him. Once Alex learned that Father George was packed up and leaving town, he seemed to ask fewer questions, and his restlessness turned into a kind of quiet, albeit unhappy, acceptance.
Malene closed his bedroom door and walked into the kitchen. The nurse had left a brochure on the table, “When Your Loved One Is Dying,” and she picked it up, without opening it, and slid it under some papers by the phone. She was not at all interested in reading it at the moment. She sat at the table, glad for a few minutes of solitude, glad her father had driven over to the rectory, though he had not explained why, glad Fred and Bea had already dropped off the week’s meals, glad Trina was working at the diner and that the social worker wasn’t due for another couple of hours. She was even glad Roger was working, still sorting through paperwork about the fire and still trying to decide if charges would be filed. She wanted a few minutes alone. She had taken a leave from work, and she had not spent more than a couple of hours away from the house. She went outside and sat on the porch a few times each day, and she walked in the mornings up and down the street while Roger fed Alex his breakfast or the nursing assistant gave him his bath, but she never left, and she never had any time to herself.
Ordinarily, she would have driven over or walked to the church to pray. But after the fire, that was not an option. Father George had offered her the parish in Omega and Quemado, but they were too far from her house, and they were not her own. She had declined that offer.
She poured herself a cup of coffee, the pot still hot, and took a sip. She closed her eyes and thought of her mother, wondered if she was still visiting Alex.
“Mom, you here?” she asked and then waited.
There was no sound except the ticking of the kitchen clock, no presence felt except that of those who had been in the house earlier, no notion that anyone else was in the room.
Malene kept talking anyway. “I figure this is your doing. I figure you gave him this idea that it’s so perfect wherever you are, so peaceful and wonderful, that he decided to go with you.” She took another sip of her coffee.
She shook her head. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Not one bit.” She felt the tears gather in the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t like it when you left and this . . .” she stopped. “This is worse than I ever imagined.”
She wiped her eyes. “He’s just a boy, Mama, just a little boy.” She slid her hair behind her ears and rested her head in her hands. “Can’t you do anything? Don’t you have any power wherever you are to change the course of things, or at least change his mind?”
She waited, but there was no answer. She thought she heard a flutter or something in the den, but then she realized the window was open and it was just a slight autumn breeze coming in. She knew her mother wouldn’t answer, but that was who she prayed to, that was who she called upon, had been calling upon since Alex was born and Angel left. When she tried to draw up some image of God in her mind, she always started with a picture of her mother. Mama was the one who answered, who gave comfort and strength, who brought peace. Or didn’t. Malene didn’t really think of her mother as God, but she certainly thought of her as the way to get there.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hoping her mother was listening. “I know you wouldn’t want this. I know you’ve done whatever you can.” And she reached for the coffee cup and held it in both hands, warming her fingers and thinking about Alex and the nurse and morphine and his impending death. She thought about Roger and his quiet grief, how he wept only when he thought no one could hear him, alone and behind locked doors. She thought about her dad and the way he refused to see this as the end, how he kept buying magazines and bringing over photo albums, talking incessantly, reading articles, so uncomfortable when it was silent.
She thought about the new girl, Trina, and the strange bond forged between her and Alex. She thought about the fire and how it seemed to take the last bit of drive out of her grandson, and she thought about Father George and how clumsy and awkward and wordless he had been in his last visit. She had even asked Roger about that conversation, which they had both witnessed, asked if he had questioned the priest fully about the fire, said that he seemed guilty or distracted or something and she didn’t want him around Alex acting so strange. She thought about Christine and Danny, Fred and Bea, Francine and Bernie, even Fedora Snow, who had come over and changed Alex’s sheets while he was being bathed, just wanting to do something useful. The dying of this child, Malene knew, was more destructive than fire, more damaging than smoke and water. Alex, taking his last breaths and giving up, was the end of everything that was cherished and revered and honored in Pie Town. As far as Malene knew, when Alex died, they might as well roll up the sidewalks and take down the signs. The community would be dead.
Malene heard a car pull up and figured her time of solitude had come to an end. She took her last sip of coffee, got up from the table, and put her cup in the sink. When she glanced toward the front windows, she could see someone walking up the steps to her porch. She slid her hands down the front of her blouse and pants in an attempt to straighten up her appearance and headed to the door. She expected to see some friend or well-meaning neighbor and was already planning her speech that Alex had just fallen asleep and could not be disturbed. She opened the door and could not believe her eyes.
“Hello, Mom.”
Malene felt her mouth open but could not form any word of greeting or response. Angel had come home.