The Unspeakable (7 page)

Not that I was perfect. It was the sixties and I grew up like every other boy, stealing pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Anita Ekberg from my mother's movie magazines, then taping them inside my locker at school. When I hit sixteen, I decided on the real thing. A girlfriend. And I found the perfect one. Her name was Molly. She was a sheepish-looking girl with great, thick bifocals. As far as I knew, Molly had few other friends, which only made her the more accessible to me. I tried with the other girls in school, the cheerleaders and musical types, but I never seemed to get anywhere with them, which only pushed me back to Molly. She gave of herself freely, ending my own adolescent torment one night in the back of my parents' station wagon, a Country Squire. It was roomy and spacious, this car, especially constructed in Detroit—I was convinced of it—for exactly such encounters.

It's strange, but even now I still think about her. The eyes that squinted when she took off her glasses like some cartoon caricature. The fumbling, nervous way that she undressed, cautious and fearful, for she had much to fear. A predator takes his carrion any way that
he could get it, and I was no exception. I preyed on Molly for the worst of all possible reasons, because she was willing.

Marbury looked at me and grinned. “I'm human. I know I do—miss it.”

“Do you ever think about marriage?”

“Sometimes. But then I remember my vows. I'm pledged to God.”

“Pledged or just flirting?”

“No, it's the old ball and chain with me now.”

Marbury's humor I took in stride. In seminary I remember him as a man who walked around like he had the world by the tail. That he was once involved with women, probably a great number of women, nobody would deny. But he wasn't the Lothario that we all expected. Marbury wasn't the first one to talk to any woman who happened by, whether visiting family or friends, and he didn't seem twinged with that same kind of desperation that affected many of us. Whether wrestling with our sexual identity as some did, or just wrestling with the notion that sex was a part of the world, Marbury never seemed touched by the struggle. He was comfortable with his celibacy, almost relieved by it, as though he was pleased to give it up.

I only saw him waver one time in those years. It was our last autumn together. Marbury was nowhere to be found, spending most of his time, I discovered later, volunteering at a hospice for the terminally ill in Des Moines. I didn't consider this out of the ordinary for him. He was fascinated by death and dying, and he always wanted to work with people suffering what people had to suffer in life. But who he really wanted to work with, I think, at least I think this in retrospect, was the director of the hospice.

She was a striking woman with dark eyes and hair, who was just a few years out of college herself. She radiated a youthful charm and ebullience that Marbury gravitated to, as she in turn gravitated
to him. I saw them together only once, by accident, when I was visiting a friend's mother who was dying of cancer. I saw Marbury there and he introduced us. She mentioned that she had heard all about me, that Marbury kept her up on the gossip and tidbits of our seminary and that she felt like we had already met. We had dinner together that night and I could see how they talked. Not the talk of ordinary people casting off words like trash, but the talk of two people in complete harmony with one another.

She struck me as Marbury's perfect woman. Tough enough to handle him and what the world had to offer, yet tender. I myself would have carted them both off to the chapel, married them on the spot if I could have, had Marbury not been in seminary. In the end, though, it wasn't meant to be. Despite the perfume wafting from Marbury's clothes, he denied that he was interested in her. And when she walked down the aisle with another man less than a year later, Marbury viewed it as a vindication. But I knew better. I knew it was love renounced.

When I asked him if he remembered her, Marbury just smiled.

He said, “She got married. I should remember that.”

“That could have been you.”

“But it wasn't. She wanted me to leave, you know.”

“Why didn't you?”

“The priesthood was my home.”

“Do you still feel that way.”

“More than ever. I love my life here, Peter.”

I looked at Marbury and I envied him. He was given everything good that the world had to offer. Intelligence and charm, a beautiful woman who adored him, and he gave it all up because he loved what he was doing more.

I said, “I don't know if you're crazy or content, Marbury.”

“Some of both, like always.”

And with that Marbury walked me to the door and saw me out.
He waved to me as I went to my car, the cool evening air wrapping itself around my body and urging me to go home.

But I didn't listen.

A duplex on the north side of town.

Her voice. “Well, you know she was deaf too.”

I shut the door behind me. The lock clicked.

“A lot of my friends, the auxiliary mostly, they were all surprised. She didn't act like it. I think she read lips. Just like on television, only you had to talk slower.”

My voice. “How long did she live here?”

“Almost three years.”

“And she just pulled up and left?”

“I just rent rooms. A mother I ain't.”

The landlady, a short woman dressed in a bathrobe and pink slippers, led me past the foyer to the stairs. The smell of bratwurst cooking in the oven wafted by me and brought back memories of a place that I lived at in college. Another boardinghouse much like this one. Same kind of woman too. Old but feisty.

I looked at the stairs. They were steep.

“No, in here.”

She pointed to a door on my right. I opened it and we walked in. It was a simple room with a bed, nicely made with a fresh quilt, and a chest of drawers, plus a small writing desk. I examined a few of the drawers, pulling them out, hoping for something, an address or a letter, some indication of where the tenant might have gone, but they were all empty.

“What about her mail?” I asked.

“Don't know. Never came here. Forget about kin either.”

Another loner. Marbury always seemed to heal only loners.

I ran my finger across the bed, just thinking.

“Did she have any problems getting in or out?”

“I don't ask, they don't tell. But she could move about fine.”

“What about the wheelchair?”

“She had a cane too, Father.”

“A cane? I thought she couldn't walk. I was told—”

“Well, she walked right out of here. Vamoosed.”

“She actually walked?”

“Not very fast. Not that I can walk fast at my age.”

I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it.

“Sounds like a miracle,” I said. “A woman leaving her wheel-chair.”

But the landlady just huffed, skeptically.

She said, “The real miracle is that I got paid. She never paid up.”

“You don't find this unusual?”

“Walking? Nah. Now heal this and you got yourself a real miracle.”

The landlady showed me her hands, both of which were horribly swollen. Broken veins popped out, all blue and distressed looking.

She said, “Hurts so bad I want to chop one off except that I might need it someday to chop off the other. They go in pairs, you know.”

“I'm sorry. I wish I could help.”

“You mean, you don't heal?”

I shook my head.

“I thought that's why you were here. To sign me up for Sunday.”

“What's happening Sunday?”

“It's Easter. Nobody feels pain on Easter.”

“Who said that?”

“Your man.”

I was beginning to feel stupid. “You mean Jesus?”

“No, the guy who heals. He's having a special service, you know.”

And then I understood. Marbury.

She said, “Just hold a spot for me, Father. That's all I ask. I simply can't live with these hands anymore.”

The next morning I found myself sitting in the Bishop's office, filling him in on what I already had. I told him more about the accident and the result of that, as well as the few personal revelations about Marbury's father, which I spent the evening confirming. Everything checked out, exactly the way Marbury said. His father was in prison for several years in the late sixties, sentenced for manslaughter but he never made it to parole.

I also told the Bishop about my conversation with the landlady and the search for someone actually healed by Marbury. But I didn't tell him about the baby. I couldn't. Not without being absolutely certain about Marbury's motives.

The Bishop sighed. “Is that it? Nothing else?”

I said that it was. He just peered at me as though he had X-ray vision.

“So what you're saying is that you haven't told him yet.”

“I wanted to see where he was going first.”

“You know where he's going. Your boy Marbury thinks he can heal.”

“It can't be that cut-and-dry. Something happened out there, Tony.”

“Sure, something happened. He found God. Lord save us all.”

I just sat there, feeling stupid. But it was my own fault. I could have just filed my report and left this business unfinished. Except that this was Jim Marbury. I owed him the extra yard. I owed him more than that.

“So when are you planning to tell him?”

“Soon,” I said. “I'll tell him soon.”

“Myself, I would have opened with that.”

“He deserves a chance to clear himself.”

“You're giving him a chance. Just don't fumble it first.”

Marbury was sitting in one of the pews when I walked in, busy with a large, silver bowl. He was polishing it, rubbing a slow cloth into the metal grooves of its design and then using his breath to wipe it clean. I watched him for a bit before he noticed and waved.

“I thought I'd wash some feet tonight. Maundy Thursday.”

I dropped my briefcase next to him. “What, no Last Supper?”

“Soup and bread. You're welcome.”

“I have feet too.”

Marbury smiled. “Forget it.”

I watched him work. He polished the bowl as though he was going to put it in a museum. Hardly his purpose. This was a vessel of complete humility. But Marbury would have none of that, humility. He washed others' feet because Christ washed them first.

“Are you expecting a good turnout for Sunday?”

Marbury nodded. “But Good Friday I expect more. I'm told that's the big day around here.”

Good Friday. Nobody attended church in my family on that day. We saved everything instead for Easter Sunday. I remember fighting my three other brothers for the bathroom to get ready. We brushed our teeth, combed otherwise unkempt hair, and put on suits, a rare thing for a kid. Easter was, in our farmhouse in Minnesota, a celebration of spring, as pagan as that sounds, for the long winter had finally ended. But it was more than that. It was a chance for egg hunts and chocolate rabbits, and a chance to gather with the family, uncles and aunts included, and eat.

But church came first. It was always crammed, and it took an extra fifteen minutes or so just to seat everyone. The chatter was like birds with kids crawling beneath pews, jabbering, throwing
paper airplanes constructed from the freshly crayoned pictures of Jesus made only a few minutes earlier. Then the sermon. More fidgeting, more pinching and weird looks. A couple of parents cleared their throats, powerless, for nobody wanted to scold their children on Easter and we all knew it. Finally, after what always seemed like a thousand years, the service ended with a triumphant ringing of the bell and everyone ran out, the kids at least, playing and chasing each other until our parents caught up.

It was fun.

I told this to Marbury expecting to hear a similar such tale from him. But I didn't. He said, “Easter wasn't one of my favorites. I lost my mother on Easter.”

He turned away from me and when we finally locked eyes again I offered my condolences, years late.

“What's to be sorry for? People die. It's the cornerstone of our hope.”

“Living is the cornerstone, Marbury. Living, not death.”

He smiled. “Yes, yes, you're right.”

Marbury explained to me that it was his mother's death that really gave him his first real experience with the church. He was fourteen. Breast cancer had ravaged his mother's body, forcing her to bed for long periods of time. Just when the end seemed near, death imminent, Marbury's mother would rise out of bed again and go back to her normal life.

“Almost like Lazarus,” he said.

Marbury said that his mother would do her best making everything in the house seem ordinary. She would put on her beloved Motown records and dance when she could. Other times she cooked and did laundry. She never spoke about death. She never even mentioned her illness. But after a few days of this she would end up back in bed, sicker than before and the whole waiting game would start right again. Gradually the house grew darker as her spells in
bed became longer and longer. Curtains were left drawn and remained that way until she died.

“What about a doctor?” I asked. “Surgery must have been an option.”

Marbury shook his head. “She was a Christian Scientist. We had an elder pray over her a few times, but as for real physicians—”

His voice trailed off, or rather the sign language.

“And your father? Was he around?”

“Oh, he was around. He just said we shouldn't cry.”

Marbury stared ahead for a moment. His eyes looked distant, as if he were in another world from this one.

Finally he said, “We were robots, my brother and I. Right on through the funeral. I guess the old man felt guilty or else he had enough with the Scientists; either way he returned to the church of his youth after that, which was Catholic.”