Real Live Preacher - Fiction

No Ring And Two Little Girls

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:18:39 -0500

He rose from the couch behind her. Mid 20’s; unmarried; thin but muscular; baggy pants and shaggy hair. Not a care in the world. He shook open a pair of sunglasses, flashed a brilliant smile, and glanced around the room.

His head turned as a car pulled into the parking lot. The man behind the wheel jerked his chin upwards quickly, making the silent connection that men understand. The young man pulled a backpack over his shoulder and left the coffee shop.

She was in her mid 30’s with two little girls and no wedding ring. The girls were eating bagels while she drank her coffee. She sensed his movement and disengaged from the children, turning her head to watch him go out the door. The girls transitioned smoothly into some little conversation of their own while she watched him leave. She looked at him the way you look at a powerful animal or a magnificent piece of art. Her eyes locked on him and her world narrowed.

He moved around the car, and she began leaning over to preserve the visual corridor, putting more and more weight onto her elbow. He dropped easily into the passenger’s seat, and his body thrashed about as he worked with the seatbelt. A smile twitched on her lips. It was only there for an instant. Then she lowered her cheek onto her fist, slowly distorting her face until a roll of skin was pushed up under her eye. She stared at the parking lot after they drove away. It was only a few years ago that her life was like his, and the men in her life were like that.

She turned back to her girls and picked up the conversation. They seamlessly opened a space in their chatter and welcomed her back.

“You know, I don’t really want to go home and clean. Maybe we should go somewhere, just the three of us.”

“And buy a toy?” said one of the girls.

“Maybe. Sure, why not. We’ll see.”

The girls turned their faces to each other and bounced up and down on their seats. She looked at them from her elevated position of adulthood, appreciating their energy, moderating it, allowing it to go just so far.

“Okay goofy toofies, let’s pick up this mess and get out of here.”

The girls bolted for the door. Her face sagged into a neutral expression. She calmly picked up the empty cups and napkins. She politely whisked crumbs into a paper plate and dropped all of it into the trash. She started to leave and then turned back to the table. She used a napkin to sweep a single crumb off the tabletop.

Then she walked briskly to the door, crumpling the napkin in her fist as she left.

rlp

Epiphany

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:44:06 -0600

Advent was just one of the things they didn’t tell him about at the Baptist seminary. They also never told him about the lectionary, liturgy, Epiphany, Lent, or Ash Wednesday. All the high church stuff. It was too close to Catholicism.

When he first moved to San Antonio he saw a woman with a black smudge on her forehead. He discretely let her know about it.

“You’ve got something on your forehead,” he said softly.

The woman looked surprised. “It’s ashes.”

Foy was confused by her reply. “Ashes, you know, whatever. I was just letting you know that something was on your forehead.”

He learned about liturgical worship at a local Episcopal church where he liked attending evening services and also sitting alone in the sanctuary praying and sometimes dozing off.

That was before his own church had a building, back when he used to study and read at Ben’s office. The Episcopal church was on his way home, and sometimes he would call Jenny and tell her he would be late so he could stop off for prayers. Thursday evenings were nice because Sam would administer the sacrament of unction. On Thursdays there was sometimes twenty people present. They would line up at the altar, and Sam would come by anointing their foreheads with oil that smelled like flowers.

Foy had never seen anything like it. The only healing services he knew about were the embarrassing ones on television, where people threw walkers and canes down the aisles, and the ministers slapped their palms against people’s foreheads. But somehow in the Episcopal church healing seemed right and good. He loved kneeling at the altar. He felt like a regular person and not just a minister. That was the nicest part of it, kneeling there incognito, waiting for Sam to touch his forehead.

There was an special prayer for unction, and Sam said it to each supplicant. You could hear his prayers from down the line. At first a little baritone rumble like distant thunder, then a rolling murmur, then words you could understand; then he was right in front of you. His words seemed powerful because of the repetition. Like chanting. His finger would make the sign of the cross on your forehead, and it was all done for you. It was only for you. Yours.

Later Foy would touch the oily spot on his forehead and smell his finger, breathing deeply the flowers and feeling it make a difference inside his head.

Sometimes he slipped into the sanctuary and was the only one there. He would sit about four rows back and stare at the altar and the cross suspended above it by wires. The quiet was always a surprise. The noises from outside seemed to be coming from another world.

There was another man who sometimes came to pray. He seemed capable of extraordinary concentration and would sit, lost in his prayers for long periods of time. Foy was always looking around to see what everyone else was doing. He didn’t like that about himself.

After seeing each other five or six times, the man came over and introduced himself.

“Hi, my name’s Robert. I’ve been seeing you here a lot lately, so I thought I would come and meet you. You’re not a member of the church, are you? I’ve never seen you on Sunday.”

“No,” said Foy. “I just like stopping by to be alone and pray. It’s so beautiful, you know?”

“Yeah. Well, you’re always welcome here.”

After that they always nodded at each other or said hello.

Sometimes Robert would play the organ, and the music would fill the room so completely that it felt like you had left the earth altogether. Foy loved these times and would close his eyes and let the music be the only thing in the world.

The day came when the polite nods and hellos turned into a small conversation. Foy told Robert that he was the pastor of a local Baptist church. Robert said that he was the music minister and invited Foy to his office near the vestry. There was a keyboard, a table covered with sheet music in neat piles, and nothing silly at all on the shelves. It was a very serious and nice office. “It feels like Robert,” he thought.

On that day the conversation turned in an unexpected and intimate direction. Robert told Foy that he was gay, a thing that surprised Foy greatly. He didn’t know there were Christian churches that would have a homosexual person as a minister. He didn’t know what he thought about that either.

Once Douglas came by the church to see Robert, and Foy happened to be there. They seemed peaceful together and had been partners for a number of years. They were in their 40s.

“Thank Christ I don’t have to make decisions about Robert and his life and the church and all that. I’m nobody here, so it’s not my problem.”

Time passed gently for awhile, slipping along with no bumps or surprises. There was morning and there was evening, day after day. Months passed and Foy became familiar with the Book of Common Prayer and the quiet ways of what he now called his Episcopal church.

About half a year after he met Robert, Foy became aware that Jenny was deeply unhappy and on the verge of leaving him. The awareness of this came like a flash of inspiration. One day he knew nothing of it, and the next day he knew everything. There followed a frantic time where he tried to salvage things with frenetic energy, but it was like scrambling for receipts the day before taxes are due. It’s too late and there is too much. The best you can do is not enough.

His depression was raging but still unnamed in those days. He sunk down to a place where he was numb except for the constant feeling that something very bad was about to happen and the feeling that there was no chance in hell that all this religious stuff was true.

He dragged himself into the sanctuary one afternoon and was glad that no one was there. He sat in his favorite pew and let his head drop down almost to his knees.

“I don’t have to do this, you know? Just say the word. Hell, I don’t even know if you exist. The truth is, I’m pretty sure you don’t exist, but I can’t stop talking to you. You can’t have someone like me being a pastor. You can’t. It’s not right. I mean, the pastor does need to be sure about some things, doesn’t he? There is a bare minimum of belief, don’t you think? Yeah, me too and I don’t have it.”

He tried some of his prayer tricks. He listened close and then let his hearing go all the way out past the church to the freeway where he could faintly hear the trucks going by. It didn’t work. Staring at the cross didn’t work. Breathing deeply and letting the relaxation begin behind his eyes didn’t work. Nothing worked, and his agitation grew.

One of the bad times started happening.

“O God, I have fucked up my life. I’m in the wrong job; I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jenny and the girls; I don’t have any money. I can’t just quit or I would. You can’t possibly want me. You find some way of letting me know that you want me out and I’ll go. I swear I will. I’ll just find a job and be a regular guy if I can figure out how to do that.”

There was the clicking sound of a door behind him and to the left. Foy opened his eyes to find Robert standing by the end of the pew.

He was apologetic. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’ve been meaning to give you something and I keep forgetting, so I wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget the next time I saw you.”

He paused for a second, then continued.

“I was talking with Sam and the other staff about you, and we all agreed that we should give you your own key to the church so that you can come and go whenever you want. We like having you around here; it’s nice. It feels right.”

He held out a little silver key which Foy took with a trembling hand just as he burst into tears. These were racking sobs that made him ashamed so he put his face down and into his hands. Robert put his hand on his back and leaned over a little.

“Hey, are you okay? Well, I guess you’re not, but is there anything I can do?”

Foy looked up with his eyes blurry and his nose running.

“No, I’m sorry. Please don’t worry about me. This just means something…it’s big for me right now. Important. I can’t explain it; it’s too much, but thank you. Tell them It helped me more than they could know.”

Robert looked hesitant to leave, but respectfully withdrew. Foy got up and walked to the back of the church. It was the season of Epiphany and there was a picture of the magi on the literature table beside Sam’s sermon manuscripts. Foy gazed at the picture with intense longing and it seemed like a voice came from the ceiling.

“Even the pagans were called in their own way, to His presence.”

He wiped his nose on his finger and then wiped his finger on his jeans. He looked up to the ceiling and whispered.

“A gay man just gave me a key to his church and said that I was always welcome. A gay man welcoming a Baptist minister to church. Ain’t that some backwards shit? That is hilarious.”

There was the smallest ray of hopeful feelings born of a rogue giggle that popped out the side of his mouth. He looked up to the ceiling again.

“Okay. I understand. I’ll try.”

rlp

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Came Grief and Compassion

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 16:55:02 -0600

This story originally appeared in two parts

The elevator doors slid open every morning, and there was your world. It was a world of fluorescent lights, fabric covered cubicle walls, and off-white plastic cases. It was a world of facades. Behind and inside everything was something else. There was a little vent on the side of Foy’s computer that emitted a steady stream of warm air. Once or twice a week, Foy would find himself staring at this vent, and he would feel compelled to lean in and sniff the odor of electricity, hot circuits, and plastic. The first time he did this he whispered, “That smells like technology.”

There were no seasons in this world. The temperature hovered around seventy degrees at all times. The only evidence of winter, for example, was the sudden appearance of coats, scarves, and other padded clothing on the people who got off the elevators. They shed these as they walked into the office, growing thinner with each step.

All the colors were neutral, all the edges were rounded, and everything was bathed in artificial light. It was like an environment drawn up in a board room and fleshed out by an action committee.

His old world had been richly textured. There were candles and dark wooden pews. There were robes made of rich cloth, and solid tables that held ancient elements. There were the lines on the faces of the elderly and the noises of children. There were the toys and other silly things stuffed here and there into the bookshelves of his old office. There was the sound and feel of his pen scratching out sermons on luxurious linen paper. There was the wonderful moment before worship when a deep bell rang three times, and everyone, even the children, became solemn.

There was great tension in his life in those days. Not the kind that comes from external pressure, but the kind that exists between truths. He lived along the slippery plane of a great continuum between life and death, flesh and spirit. He was in and out of people’s lives, baptizing them, blessing them, marrying them, and burying them. And all of this while the year moved gracefully through the seasons, Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and the long waiting they call Ordinary Time.

But there were some good things about this world too. For one thing, you could leave it. It took Foy a long time to get used to the idea that he could leave his job at the end of the day, and the thought of that still made him giddy. He watched people trudging toward the elevators and wanted to shout, “We can leave! Isn’t that wonderful?” But they wouldn’t understand because they had always been able to leave. They couldn’t imagine a job that you could never leave, not even for a moment.

He had been a little disappointed at first when he found out there were no punch cards. When he was young, he used to have a job where you punched out. You shoved a thick time card into a slot, and it made a satisfying “Ka-chunk” sound. Now you unhooked your ID card from your lapel and swiped it through a computer slot. When the green light came on you were good to go.

Over by the copier there was a smudge on the wall of a cubicle with an empty frame hanging around it. Apparently a woman named Doris, who wore too much makeup and was also said to have been a pain in the ass, fainted one day and slumped against the wall, leaving a smear of fleshy color on the fabric. Tom the technical writer brought the frame and hung it there, turning the smudge into a work of art.

Doris ended up leaving for reasons that no one remembered. Tom left, it was said, because they outsourced most of the technical writing to Pakistan. But the picture was still on the wall two years later, and there were still people around who knew the story behind it. Foy wondered what would happen if everyone who knew the story left. He could imagine the day when someone noticed the smudge and the frame, puzzling over them before dropping the frame in the trash and cleaning the wall. What would be left of Doris and Tom?

There were a lot of good stories floating around the office, many of them linked to various artifacts like stains, broken furniture, curious traditions, and quirky rules that obviously came into existence following some incident. In the cubicle village, how long you worked there was less important than your ability to hear and learn the stories and the corporate lore. Foy learned stories quickly, but then stories were what he always did best. He exegeted the office gospel, pulling out the archetypes and zeroing in on the hot spots. Hell, this was just like preaching. After a few months it seemed like he had been there for years.

All that was needed were eyes that could see, and Foy could see things. That used to be his calling – to see things. You can’t turn that off. If you can see things, you can see them, and you can never really close your eyes again.

One story he had not been able to figure out was the one about Suzanne, a woman who had some sort of accounting job, or so it seemed to Foy. He wasn’t sure what she did, but she talked about spreadsheets, and she walked around carrying a thick stack of computer printouts. Definitely a numbers person.

Suzanne’s son died of leukemia. That much of her story was whispered to him in his first week. But Foy began to see that there was something else going on with Suzanne. She seemed like some sort of outcast. It seemed to Foy that Suzanne lived on a whole other plane of existence. She moved gracefully among the office people, interacting with them, but she was not in their world.

Sometimes, if Foy was breathing right, like in prayer, it looked like everyone was moving around Suzanne’s cubicle in fast motion. It was like in the movies where all the cars and people are sped up, but one person is frozen in time, staring at the camera, jerking a little, out of synch with everyone else.

Occasionally Suzanne would put her head down on her desk, hiding her face in her folded arms and stay like that for a few minutes. Whenever she did this, Foy noticed that everyone looked away. There was something taboo about Suzanne and her cubicle, and the whole village was keeping a respectful distance.

A couple of days later, Foy was passing by Suzanne’s cubicle on the way to the break room. She stopped him.

"Hi, you’re Foy, right?"

"Yeah. And you’re…Suzanne?"

"Yep. We haven’t actually met, but I knew you were working with Doug. You used to write, didn’t you? Isn’t that how Doug found you? You wrote a book or something?"

"Yeah, I sorta wrote a little, but that was awhile back, so…"

"This place is getting too big. You can work with people for months now and never actually meet them. It didn’t used to be that way. I guess that’s how it goes, huh? Bigger, better, more money, less time."

"Company’s a lot bigger now, huh?"

"Oh my gosh, yes. When we first started everyone was on this floor, even Doug and Richard. They had the corner office over there. We all used to eat lunch together back then. Course they went upstairs a few years back, so we don’t see them much anymore."

Foy glanced toward the break room and Suzanne noticed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you’re taking a break. Could you stop by on your way back? I’m supposed to give you this thing we wrote for the stockholders and have you smooth it out. You know, go over it."

"You wanna just email it to me? You know…"

"Oh sure. I just saw you and thought I’d give it to you. Listen, before you go I wanna ask you something. Did you write that poem in the last office newsletter?"

"Poem? No."

"So you didn’t write it?"

"No."

"Hmm. Charlene was convinced it was you."

"Charlene?"

"Yeah, Charlene from graphics. Kinda light brown hair. She’s the one with that giant Macintosh."

"Oh yeah, I know who you’re talking about."

"I mean, we didn’t know. It’s just no one ever wrote a poem before, and they said you used to write or whatever."

"Yeah, well, you know…"

"Did you read it? It was so sad, but also happy in a – I don’t know – sad kind of way, I guess. We were just trying to figure out who wrote it. Oh yeah, your break. Sorry. Just come by later, or I’ll email that thing to you if I don’t see you."

Foy stopped by Suzanne’s cubicle later, but she wasn’t there. His eyes wandered around the walls. There were a lot of pictures of her son. Him in his little league uniform, the two of them at some amusement park, a couple of school pictures. No husband and no other children. Just the two of them.

One wall of the cubicle served as a bulletin board. It was covered with sympathy cards and there were a couple of dried flowers hanging from thumbtacks. A growing cluster of recent memos was starting to cover the cards. A vase with some mummified flowers in it stood between her monitor and a stack of software manuals.

“Jesus,” Foy thought. “I wonder how old those flowers are.”

His eyes were drawn back to the amusement park picture. Suzanne and her son were hugging and smiling for the camera. “That boy is dead,” Foy said softly. “He no longer exists in this world.”

For some reason, Jenny popped into his mind. When Jenny left him, there were a lot of shocks and changes, but he got used to most of them. The one thing that still hurt was not having anyone to talk to about his children. When you lose your spouse, you lose the one person in the world who wants to talk about them as much as you do.

At that moment he thought he understood the story behind Suzanne and her cubicle. Her grief had become tiring to the people around her. The people in the office brought flowers and cards, and they listened to her for a time. Now they were ready to move on, but she was not. She was stuck and still laboring with undelivered grief. She was still clinging to the leftover scraps of their comfort, but the mementos were drying up and fading away.

Her colleagues had done all they could do. The heavy lifting and the hard grief work should have been done with family or with an intimate community of friends. But maybe she didn’t have those. Maybe all she had was this strange world on the third floor. How could she pour all of her grief into such a small container? The cubicle village was moving on, and she was left alone, like a crazy woman, to grieve with her head down on her desk.

Foy walked back to his own cubicle and sat in front of his computer. His cubicle looked exactly as it had the day Marcie escorted him there and left him in it. No pictures, no plants, no mementos. It was very impersonal and he liked it that way.

He thought about Suzanne for a few minutes. He didn’t know what she needed – he didn’t have to know that kind of thing anymore – but he thought he knew what she wanted. And it would be so easy to give it to her.

Foy found Suzanne eating lunch alone in the break room two days later. He walked in and sat down across from her.

"Hey, I sent you that document. I, uh, just moved a couple of things around and smoothed it out a bit. It should be fine."

"Oh, thanks."

"Also, I owe you an apology."

"What for?"

"Um, I lied to you the other day. I did write that poem."

"I KNEW it. What, were you embarrassed or something?"

"No, yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I just liked it being a secret. Also I’m not a poet, but it felt okay to submit it as long as no one knew it was mine. Anyway, forget it. It doesn’t matter."

"Well, I liked it. It was so sad, but it made me happy in some weird way, you know what I mean?"

Foy nodded gravely. "Yeah, I definitely do know about that."

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"Anyway, listen, I want to ask you something and I hope it’s okay."

"What?"

"What was your son’s name? I saw the pictures around your computer, and I heard that he died. He just looked like such a sweet kid, so I wanted to know his name."

Suzanne paused for a moment, then spoke softly. "Jeremy."

"Hmm. What was he like?"

She put her hand over her mouth, as if hiding her mouth might let her hide her feelings for a minute. She sat there looking at him.

Foy knew this waiting game, so he said nothing.

Then she put her hand down. She had a sad smile, a nice smile but with sad eyes.

"He was the greatest kid in the world, Foy. I’m serious. I know I was his mother and all, but he was such a sweetheart. God, I miss him so much."

Foy nodded. "How old was he?"

"Eleven."

"Oh, I have an eleven-year-old daughter. Well 12 now, but isn’t that just the greatest age? They’re old enough to be able to talk to you about things, but young enough…"

"...to still want to be with you." Suzanne finished his sentence. "Yeah, it was great." She paused for a moment. "HE was great. You know, sometimes I want to hold him so bad that it hurts. I’ll go to his closet and get a bunch of his clothes and wad them up and hug them, but it never helps."

Foy gave himself the pep talk that he used in the old days to get himself ready.

Okay, this is her time. This is what you can give her. You ARE interested in her boy. He WAS the greatest boy in all the world. And you want to hear everything about him. It doesn’t matter how you feel or how tired you get. This is for her. Now listen. Put everything you have into listening.

Once she started talking there was no stopping her. She gushed, she laughed, she went on and on and on. And no matter how much she told him, he was always ready with another question, always asking for more. He didn’t ask anything about her. He only wanted to hear about Jeremy. It was almost like Jeremy was alive again and they were just two people talking about a little boy. It was like Indian Summer, one last warm day before the inevitable coming of winter.

At one point Foy let a little of his focus split off so that he could see what was going on inside of himself. The answer was nothing. He felt nothing for this boy. He didn’t care about Jeremy. That was the truth. Who was Jeremy? Just another kid in a long line of kids stretching back into his past. And who was Suzanne? Just another woman with a story to tell.

In the old days he used to feel with people. Not feel sorry for them, but feel with them. It helped make it seem real. But every time he felt someone else’s pain, he ended up carrying around a burden for them. Those burdens kept piling up until finally his back broke. And now something inside of him would not let him do that again.

He felt nothing. He was numb inside. He knew how to listen, but he didn’t know how to feel. He was all eyes and ears, but no guts. Nothing on the inside.

I guess I’m giving her what I can. Isn’t that okay, just to give what you can?

Suzanne was still talking. "You know what’s hard? It’s almost like Jeremy isn’t real to anyone else. For a lot of people he’s just a name and a picture, just the reason that I’m sad and broken now. Sometimes I want people to understand that he was a real boy, you know? He was real and he had a whole future ahead of him, but now he’s gone and that’s a terrible loss.”

“He was a real boy.” That phrase flew across the table and hit Foy in the chest like a blow from a fist. Something was loosed in him, and his chest filled with long-lost feelings.

Jeremy was a real boy, but now he’s dead. Suzanne is his mother. She lost him. He’s gone.

He felt it, and it was so good to feel. Compassion came to him after all this time. Foy’s eyes filled with tears, and he looked down at the table so she wouldn’t see.

Suzanne lowered her chin down to the table, trying to look under Foy’s forehead at his eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it’s nothing. It’s just something about what you said, about him being a real boy. It kinda got to me."

They sat quietly for a moment. Then Suzanne spoke. "Hey, thanks for listening. You can’t know how nice it was just to talk about him again."

"Sure." Foy waited a moment, then continued. "I want to tell you something about grief, because I know about grief. Is that okay?"

She nodded.

"Remember that grief is your last way of honoring Jeremy. The pain of it reminds you that he was real. You will carry this pain for the rest of your life, in his memory. It’s right and good that you should do that for him. He was worth it, wasn’t he?"

Tears filled her eyes again, and she nodded, dabbing at her nose with a tissue.

"I know he was. So carry this grief with pride and honor. Do not deny it. Embrace it and own up to it."

"At the same time, you don’t have to be owned by the grief. You also honor Jeremy by moving on. Sometimes people feel that moving on means forgetting and not feeling sad anymore. They cling to their grief out of fear of losing it, because it is the last thing they have connecting them to the one they loved. You don’t have to be afraid of that. You’re his mother, so there will always be a tender spot in your heart for Jeremy. This grief will not leave you. But it might be time to carry the grief instead of letting it carry you, if that makes any sense."

"But how do I do that?"

"I wish there was a easy answer, but there isn’t. I think you could get started by cleaning up your cubicle. Take home all the pictures and the dead flowers and all the cards. You don’t have to throw them away. Just put them in a box. You could even buy a fancy box if it makes you feel better. Give them a place of honor, but put them away. Sometimes, when you are at home, you might want to open the box and have a time of remembering. But that will a time of your own choosing, see?"

"Maybe that’s your first move. And I think you’re ready."

Suzanne blew her nose while she was nodding.

Foy got up to leave.

"Wait!" Suzanne said, blubbering a bit into her tissue. Foy stood patiently while she gained her composure.

"I want to tell you something, but don’t take it the wrong way or anything. I mean, it’s not a come-on or something stupid like that. But I just want to tell you that I like your eyes. I like the wrinkles in the corners and they’re very blue and sad and looking at them makes me think that you’ve seen some things in your life. They’re kind of sad and happy, like that poem you wrote. Sad and happy, you know?"

Something caused Foy’s throat to tighten, and he felt a surge of emotion. His lower lip trembled a bit. He looked down at his shoes so she wouldn’t see it so much.

"Sad and happy, huh? Yeah, I definitely do know something about that."

rlp

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