When We Were Saints (26 page)

"Looks like it started up again. When will it stop, I wonder?" he asked Clare, but she didn't seem to hear him. He wrapped some of the tissue around her hands, and then reached back for the food. He couldn't wait to eat. He opened the bag and pulled out the bagels with cream cheese wrapped in plastic. He tried to hand one to Clare, but she wouldn't take it. He unwrapped it and ate it himself as fast as he could. When he had finished the bagel, he pulled out another and again tried to make Clare eat it. Again she refused. He got out a bottle of water opened it, and offered it to her. "Please," he said, "for me."

Clare nodded and took several gulps. Archie believed he was making progress. He unwrapped the second bagel and broke off a piece. He waved it under Clare's nose. "For me," he said again.

"More water" Clare said.

Archie handed her the water and waited while she drank from the bottle. He offered the bite of bagel again, but she refused.

"We must go to the cathedral and take part in the Holy Eucharist," Clare said.

Archie didn't want to go. He had had enough emotional upheaval for one day. He thought again of home and wished he were there. "Why 'must' we go?" he asked.

Clare shook her head. "We just have to, that's all. God is calling us there."

Archie didn't feel God calling him; he didn't feel God at all, and he hadn't seen the Virgin cry or the angels Clare had seen. He thought about rebelling, telling her no, he wasn't going to take her to the cathedral. He thought about insisting they go to Irving's, or the hospital, but then he looked at Clare's face, beautiful and vulnerable, and he knew he would always do what she asked.

Archie followed the directions Irving had given him. He drove back onto the parkway and looked for the 125th Street exit and Amsterdam Avenue. They didn't have far to go; they were there in minutes. There was no parking at the cathedral, so again Archie drove up and down the streets looking for a space. He thought maybe they wouldn't be able to find one close enough and Clare would decide it was better to go back to Irving's, but then, at last, he saw a car pulling out of a parking space. Clare was in luck; it was only a couple of blocks from the cathedral.

Again Archie struggled to parallel-park the truck, backing up onto the curb to get into the space better He was sweating by the time he had finally straightened out the pickup and turned off the engine. He looked at Clare. She seemed so frail, it scared him. He wanted to take her to a hospital. He knew she had said she would never go back to the hospital, but he couldn't bear to look at her this way. He mentioned the idea of going to a hospital to Clare, and she shook her head and gripped Archie's arm.

"Never Francis. Please, you promise. Never."

Archie looked at Clare's desperate expression and nodded. "Okay, I promise."

Clare released her grip and smiled. "Anyway, Jesus wants us here. We must go inside the cathedral."

"Well, okay then. Let's go," he said, deciding that the sooner they went the sooner they'd be through and he could at least get her to Irving's house.

When they reached the cathedral and Archie looked up, he could not believe his eyes. He had never seen anything so huge and majestic in his life. As they approached the entrance, with its stone sculptures and ornate designs towering above them in arches and circles of stone, they came to two sets of immense bronze doors divided by a statue Archie guessed was of Saint John the Divine. Each door showed scenes from the Bible set in huge square panels. Archie recognized some of them. He identified Adam and Eve in the garden of Paradise, the animals entering Noah's ark, the Last Supper the Three Kings visiting the newborn Christ, and the Crucifixion.

Archie thought he could stand and study the doors all day. He reached out and touched the panel that showed Jesus kneeling and surrounded by angels. He felt a lump form in his throat as he ran his hands over the raised bronze. The humble Jesus of the scene touched him, and he, too, wanted to fall to his knees. But it wasn't only the scene that moved him; it was the artwork itself. He felt a desire so strong within himself to possess those doors, to have created them himself, that it made his heart ache to look at and touch them. He saw Clare approach the panel with Jesus' Crucifixion, and he wondered what she might do, but then the door opened and a group of people came out of the cathedral and Clare stepped inside.

Archie hurried after her hating to leave the doors, but once inside he looked down the great length of the cathedral and up to the great heights of the vaulted ceiling, and he was overcome with awe. He had never in his life seen anything so magnificent. He decided that being in the cathedral was what being inside a great mountain might be like, if such a thing were possible. He could not believe that human hands had created it. He knew that only God could have inspired its creation. He thought about his own artwork. He had believed giving it up would bring him closer to God, but seeing the great cathedral made him change his mind. He looked down at his own hands, thin and rough, with knobby knuckles, and he wondered if God would ever inspire him to create something so great. Maybe he could use his art as a way of celebrating God, the way the cathedral builders had.

The cathedral was filled with people milling about or seated in chairs or kneeling and praying. People whispered, and their voices carried through the cathedral and up into the high vaulting, up to the heavens. Everything drew the eye up to the heavens—the piers and columns, the stained-glass windows, the great height of the ceiling. Archie looked at all of it and felt humbled and ashamed and overcome with a love for God. Forgetting Clare he stepped out of the aisle and sat down in a chair. He bowed his head and spoke silently to God:

How do I show you that I love you, Lord? I want—I'll do anything. I'm yours. Use me. I want to show you my love. I want to build a great cathedral and prove to you how much I love you. I want to be worthy of your love. God, I want you back in my heart. I want to be good for you. I do. I want to be a good person, like Jesus, like Clare, like Irving, even. He made me feel so good and loved just by making me a bagel with cream cheese, just by being there when I needed him. I want to do this for people. I want to do it for Grandmama and her friends. I've been so selfish, thinking only about what I want. Lord, I want to be a good person. A really good—

Archie looked up from his praying. His mind had flashed back to a time when he was six years old and was in his church at home. He was standing with his Sunday-school class at the front of the church, waiting to receive his first bible. He remembered the excitement he had felt when the minister put a bible in his hands and the Sunday-school teacher placed a silver cross on a black rope around his neck. Later when he had showed the bible and cross to his grandfather Archie had said to him, "Granddaddy Silas, I want to be good, just like Jesus. I want to be really, really good." He had clutched the cross around his neck and added, "I can feel Jesus in my cross. Feel it, Granddaddy. Feel Jesus."

His grandfather had examined the cross and tousled Archie's hair. He said, "Why, you just a little saint, ain't ya, young man?"

Archie hadn't known what a saint was back then, but his grandfather had looked pleased with him, so he nodded.

Archie was surprised by the sudden memory.
Why didn't I remember this before?
he wondered.
Was that why Granddaddy called me a saint? Was he remembering that day when I got the cross and the bible? Why had I forgotten it? When did I stop wanting to be good?

He had been good—a saint, an angel. He remembered how happy he had been pleasing his grandparents, doing what they told him to do, helping them with the chores, saying his prayers every night and every morning, and going off happily to church and reading his bible. His grandparents had been proud of him—for a while. Then Archie noticed a change in his grandfather. It was a subtle thing at first; a look would come over his grandfather's face now and then that was almost a look of disgust when Archie acted so willing and obedient. Then his grandfather had started making comments like "I reckon if I told you to go roll around in pig stink, you'd do it for me, eh, boy?" and "Don't you be turning sissy on me, child, you hear?"

Archie hadn't known what to make of his comments. His grandfather didn't say them often, and most of the time he was pleased that his grandson was so helpful and good, but the comments had hurt Archie and made him feel ashamed of his goodness. Then, too, the other kids in his home-schooling group and on his soccer team and even in his Sunday-school class used to make fun of him and call him Goody Two-shoes and coach's pet.

It wasn't until he met Armory that things changed. At seven years old Armory was already a big child, with broad shoulders and large hands and feet. He was a tough kid nobody messed with, and Archie knew his grandfather liked him, so Archie liked him, too. The first time he invited Armory over to the house, they were all eating dinner when his grandfather asked Armory how he liked going to the public school. Armory said, "I hate it. My teacher is a witch with a capital
B
."

Archie had looked up at his grandfather who had paused with a forkful of corn in midair. He knew that it was wrong to say something bad about another person, especially an adult, and he wondered what his grandfather would say. But his grandfather had laughed, spilling the corn back onto his plate. "'Witch with a capital
B'!
" he had said. "Very clever very clever."

Archie had been shocked. What was clever about it? Armory hadn't made the expression up. Archie had heard it from other kids many times before.

His grandfather had beamed at Armory all night, as though he was as proud as could be of him, and Archie had felt small and unimportant in his grandfather's eyes. After that first visit his grandfather was always asking when Armory was going to come over again. So, wanting to please him, Archie kept inviting Armory to the house. Soon they became best friends, and Archie learned to follow Armory's lead, joining him in all his crazy schemes and forgetting all about his own desire to be good.

From that time forward Archie and his grandfather never got along. It seemed that Archie, good or bad, could never please his granddaddy Silas, and Granddaddy Silas could never please Archie.

A
RCHIE WAS SURPRISED
by the old memory coming back to him all of a sudden after hiding in the dark for so many years. He felt sorry and sad. He wished his grandfather were still alive so that he could tell him that. He wanted to say, "Let's start all over. Let's be friends this time." He knew it was impossible. His grandfather was dead and there was no way now to make it up to him. Archie bowed his head and cried for his loss. For the first time since his grandfather's death, he realized what a loss it really was.

Someone jostled him from the seat beside him, and Archie looked up. A young woman said, "Excuse me," and slid down onto the kneeler in front of her seat to pray. Archie looked around and saw that the cathedral had filled up. The seats had all been taken and people stood in the back, crowding together and facing forward as though they were waiting for something. Archie wondered what was happening. Then he remembered Clare. He looked left and right, but she wasn't there. Archie stood up and searched for her casting his gaze over the crowd. He couldn't see her anywhere. He felt panicked. He made a move to leave, but then everybody stood up and turned, and Archie saw that the Holy Eucharist service had begun; men and women dressed in robes were proceeding down the aisle.

The service seemed to last forever Archie kept searching for Clare, craning his neck to see over the heads in front of him, hoping to spot her dark head among all the others. It was useless. He could not see her anywhere and his panic grew.

When the service ended, Archie pushed his way out of his row and fought the crowd to reach the exit. He decided that Clare must have gone back outside, but the grounds were as huge as the cathedral itself, and it seemed impossible that he would ever find her. He returned to the cathedral and searched the bays and the radiating chapels, his anxiety mounting. Where was she? What had happened to her? Had she fainted somewhere? Why hadn't he taken her to the hospital?

As he moved from bay to bay and chapel to chapel, the beauty of everything he saw captured his eye: the stonework, the statues, the stained glass, the marble altars, the tapestries and wood carvings—all of it spoke to him. He knew he would have to return someday, but he couldn't stop to look; he needed to find Clare. Where was she?

At last he found her in the chapel of Saint James. He spotted her kneeling at the front of the chapel, and without thinking he called out to her "Clare!"

Heads turned and eyes glared at him, and Archie whispered, "Sorry," then he crept with his back against the wall up to the front. Clare turned to him and looked up, smiling. He was relieved to see that she was all right, but then he felt angry and said, "Where have you been? I've been searching all over for you. Do you know how hard it is to find someone in this place? You missed the service. You said you wanted to go to the service. You said Jesus..."

Clare put her finger on Archie's lips. "We came here for you, Francis, not for me. This is for you."

Archie was stunned. "What? What is? What do you mean?"

"I mean it is you who needs to be here. Don't you understand that?"

Archie looked about him, catching sight of a painting of the head of Christ with his crown of thorns. He thought of his grandfather and his heart felt heavy. He turned back to Clare. "Yes, I do understand," he said.

Clare blinked at him and smiled. "I will be right here. You have the whole afternoon."

Archie took her hands in his and examined her palms. The bleeding had stopped again. He looked at her face. She seemed better Her eyes shone the way they usually did. Maybe she was going to be all right after all. He let go of her and Clare got down on her knees again and bowed her head. Archie heard her low hum.

Archie spent that afternoon wandering through the cathedral and walking the grounds around it, his heart full of the desire for God and goodness. Everything he saw, everything he touched, filled him with that desire and a sense of holiness. Kneeling at the front of the cathedral before the High Altar with its Great Cross of the triumphant Christ, Archie reviewed his life and saw that his reluctance to be baptized, his refusal to go up to the front of the church and be "saved," and his indifference to the teachings in his Sunday-school classes had been a way of getting back at his grandfather for shaming him—and a way of proving to himself that he wasn't a Goody Two-shoes. He realized that he didn't need to do that anymore, and his desire for goodness and to love and serve God overwhelmed him. Kneeling in the great cathedral, he no longer felt the ambivalence he had felt about God and religion for most of his life. He remembered what Clare had said the night before: He needed to stop thinking of himself and pay attention to others. He needed to really see them.