The Passion of Mary-Margaret (11 page)

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.

“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?”

“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.”