The Mothers of Voorhisville (2 page)

Of all the sweet-smelling places in Voorhisville that morning, the yoga studio was the sweetest. The music was from India, or so they thought. Only Tamara guessed it wasn't Indian music, but music meant to sound as though it was; just as the teacher, Shreve, despite her unusual name, wasn't Indian but from somewhere in New Jersey. If you listened carefully, you could hear it in her voice.

Right in the middle of the opening chant there was a ruckus at the back of the room. Somebody was late, and not being particularly quiet about it. Several women peeked, right in the middle of om. Others resisted until Shreve instructed them to stand, at which point they reached for a water bottle, or a towel, or just forgot about subterfuge entirely and simply looked. By the time the class was in its first downward dog, there was not a person there who hadn't spied on the noisy latecomer. He had the bluest eyes any of them had ever seen, and a halo of light around his body, which most everyone assumed was an optical illusion. It would be a long time before any of them thought that it hadn't been a glow at all, but a burning.

Shreve noticed (when she walked past him as he lay in corpse position) the strong scent of jasmine, and thought that, in the mysterious ways of the world, a holy man, a yogi, had come into her class.

Shreve, like Sylvia, was a widow. Sort of. There was no word for what she was, actually. She felt betrayed by language, amongst other things. Her fiancé had been murdered. Even the nature of his death had robbed her of something primary, as if
how
he died was more important than that he had. She'd given up trying to explain it. Nobody in Voorhisville knew. She'd moved here with her new yoga teacher certificate after the second anniversary of the event and opened up this studio with the savings she'd set aside for the wedding. His parents paid for the funeral, so she still had quite a bit left, which was good, because though the studio was a success by Voorhisville's standards, she was running out of money. It was enough to make her cranky sometimes. She tried to forgive herself for it. Shreve wasn't sure she had enough love to forgive the world, but she thought—maybe—she could forgive herself.

With her hands in prayer position, Shreve closed her eyes and sang “shanti” three times. It meant “peace,” and on that morning Shreve felt like peace had finally arrived.

Later, when the stranger showed up for the writers' workshop at Jan Morris's house, she could not determine how he'd found out about the elitist group, known to have rejected at least one local writer on the basis of the fact she wrote fantasy. Jan asked him how he'd found them, but Sylvia interrupted before he could answer. Certainly it never occurred to her to think he was up to anything diabolical. Also, it became clear that Sylvia knew him from a yoga class she attended. By the time he had passed out the twelve copies of his poem—his presence made them a group of thirteen, but they were intellectuals, not a superstitious bunch—well, it just didn't matter how he found them.

Afterwards, as the writers left, Jan stood at the door with the stranger beside her, waving goodbye until she observed two things: first, that the last car remaining in the driveway was a hearse, and second, that the stranger smelled, quite pleasantly, of lemons.

Jan preferred to call him “the stranger.” Never mind Camus; it had a nice ring to it all on its own. Eventually, when the mothers pieced things together, it seemed the most accurate moniker. They didn't know him at all. None of them did. Not really.

One night in early June, after events began to unfold as they did, Jan looked for her copy of the stranger's poem, which she remembered folding inside a book, like a pressed flower. But though she tore apart the bookshelf, making so much noise she woke the baby, she never found it. She called the others and asked each of them, trying to sound casual (“Remember that poet, who came to the workshop just that once? And that poem he wrote?”), but none of them could locate their copy either.

Sylvia remembered that night well; waving goodbye to Jan and Jeffrey, who were standing in the doorway together, haloed by the light of all those overwhelming lemon-scented candles. Jeffrey was a good deal taller than Jan. Sylvia realized she could look right into his blue eyes without even seeing the top of the other woman's head.

When Jan called in June, Sylvia pretended to have only a minor memory of Jeffrey and the poem, but as soon as she hung up she began searching for it, moving ponderously, weighed down by her pregnancy and the heat. How could she have misplaced it? She had intended to give it to the child some day, a way to say, “Here, you have a father and he is a genius.” But also, Sylvia felt, it was proof that what she had done had been the only reasonable response. The poem revealed not just his intelligence, but also his heart, which was good. Sylvia had to believe this, though he left her. Her husband had left her, too … and yes, all right, he had died, but Jeffrey made no promises. He'd come and gone, which Sylvia considered fortunate. She didn't need, or want, the complication of his presence. But she did want that poem.

That night, when Sylvia's water broke, she was surprised at how it felt: “As though there had been an iceberg inside of me, which suddenly melted,” she told Holly.

Holly, the midwife and a keeper of many secrets, had a house in Ridgehaven, but that May, she rented a small room from the Melverns, who were thrilled to have her in such close proximity to their pregnant seventeen-year-old daughter. Holly had told no one what she had seen: all those pregnant women in Voorhisville who didn't appear to have a man in their lives. While this was certainly not scandalous, she did find the number significant. When the babies began arriving that last week in May, it became clear to Holly that something had happened to the women of Voorhisville.
Something indescribable.

For Jeffrey's appeal—though he was a good-looking man—went beyond description. Though there weren't
many
, there
were
other attractive men in Voorhisville who the women had not fucked; receiving nothing in exchange but a single night, or afternoon, or morning (after yoga class, in the studio, the air sweet with jasmine). When the women tried to define just what was so compelling about the stranger, they could not come to a consensus.

Lara Bravemeen, for instance, remembered his hands, with their long narrow fingers and their slender wrists. She said he had the hands of a painter.

Cathy Vecker remembered the way he moved. “Like a man who never hurried … but not lazy, you see. Self-contained, that's what I mean.”

Tamara mentioned his eyes, which everyone else thought so obvious there was no need to comment on.

Elli Ratcher stopped chewing on a hangnail long enough to say, “When he held me I felt like I was being held by an angel. I felt like I would always be safe. I felt holy.”

At which point the women sighed and looked down at their shoes, or into their laps. Because to look at Elli was to remember she had been just fifteen. Though no one could be sure about Jeffrey's age, he was certainly a man. What he'd done to all of them was wrong, but what he'd done to Elli (and Maddy, they hastened to add) went beyond wrong into the territory of evil.

 

M
ADDY

My name is Maddy Melvern—well, Matilda, which just goes to show how grownups like to make up the world they live in; my parents naming me like I was living in a fairy tale instead of Voorhisville. Let's just set the record straight, I don't remember no sweet-smelling day here or none of that shit. Voorhisville is a dump. The houses, almost all of them, except the Veckers', are all peeling paint and crooked porches. Voorhisville is the kind of town where if a window gets broke it's gonna stay broke, but someone will try to cover it up with cardboard or duct tape. Duct tape holds Voorhisville together. Roddy Tyler's got his shoes duct-taped, and there's duct tape in the post office holding the American flag up, and there's duct tape on the back of the third pew in St. Andrew's balcony. I don't know why. There just is. I was born here and I ain't old enough to do nothing about it. I can't explain why anyone else would stay. I know the mothers like to say there are sweet-smelling days in Voorhisville, but there ain't.

I agree with Elli. Jeffrey was a angel. And just to be clear, my baby was a angel too. All our babies were. No matter what anyone says. I don't care if he stayed. What was he going to do? Work at the canning factory? Maybe you can picture him doing that and then coming home to, like, have barbecues and shit, but I sure can't. He didn't fall for it, you know, that way of doing things
right.
What I say is that if everybody in Voorhisville's so concerned with doing things right, then just as soon as we get out of here I'm going to live my life doing things
wrong.

It was the first day of school and me, Leanne, Sasha, and some of the guys was walking to Sasha's house when we see this hearse parked in front of St. Andrew's. Mark dares me to go into the church. I'm like, what's the big shit about that? So when the door shuts behind me they all take off, laughing like a bunch of retards.

I kind of liked it. It was peaceful, all right? And it did smell good in there. And everything was clean. So I'm looking at this big statue they got of Jesus on the cross? He's got the crown with the thorns on his head, and he's bleeding, and I don't know why, but whenever I see statues and pictures of Jesus and shit like that, I sort of hate him. I know that's insulting to many people, but he annoys me, with that crown piercing his skull and those nails in his feet and hands and shit. I never understand why he didn't do nothing about it, if he was so powerful and all? “You belong in Voorhisville,” is what I thought, and I guess I said it out loud 'cause that's when a voice behind me goes, “Excuse me?”

So, I turned and there he was. At first I thought he was the priest, but he set me straight. We talked for a long time and then after a while he said we had to go somewhere safe. I kind of laughed, because ain't churches supposed to be super safe, but he took my hand, and we went up to the balcony. I don't know why, we just did, okay? That's where it happened. I know me and Elli ain't been getting along so much here, but she's right: it ain't bad, what we did. I know, doing it in the church makes it seem bad, but it was good, okay? Like how they said it would be, not like … not … Okay, I've been with boys my own age, and I've had
bad
, and this was not like that. And I ain't just talking about his
dick.
I'm talking about the feeling. What'd she call it? Holy.

But that don't mean that Voorhisville ain't all stinky and shit. We don't gotta lie about that. We should tell it right because what this shows everyone is that something like this could happen anywhere. If it happened in Voorhisville, it could happen in any town, and I don't see that as being a bad thing.

 

T
AMARA

The third anniversary of Shreve's fiancé's death fell on a Saturday when yoga class was scheduled, but she decided to teach anyway, and was glad she did. She started class with a short meditation. She didn't tell the women what to think or feel. They just sat there, breathing in and out. Shreve thought about her plans. After class, she would go home and change into something comfortable (but not her pajamas, as she'd done for years one and two), make herself a nice pot of tea, light a candle, and look at photographs.