by Maria Semple
“No, no, no,” he said. “You can’t be Catholic. But it is the Pope. You gotta show up.”
Center stage, a union guy with a Ramones T-shirt sat on the Pope’s throne as the spotlight got adjusted.
“But Jesus?” I asked. “Why can’t it be something normal, like Buddhism? I already have the cushion.”
He shook his head. “It’s Jesus. Jesus is my guy.”
The union worker on the throne loudly proclaimed into the mic, “The great Oz has spoken!”
Titters from the crew.
“Rick!” came a voice from the sound system. “Not cool.”
Joe took my hand. “You know how we agreed to live ten years in Seattle for me, then ten years in New York for you?”
“Actually, I do.”
“Ten years is up. That’s why I applied to Columbia.”
“Columbia? So on top of everything else, I’m supposed to pack up and leave all my friends?”
“You don’t like your friends,” Joe said.
“That’s a different conversation.”
“If you prefer,” he said, “there’s a school in Spokane.”
“Now you’ve got me preferring Spokane?”
“There’s Duke,” he said, maintaining his inside voice. “University of Chicago. St. Andrews in Scotland.”
“Did you just say Scotland?” I sprang to my feet. “You don’t just decide we’re moving to Scotland without consulting me! Timby’s in school. When were you going to tell me?”
“Tonight!” a knitting woman cried.
“How do you work for the Seahawks from Scotland?”
“We’re going to have to make some decisions.”
“You got that right.”
Now Joe was on his feet. Any pretense that we weren’t the kind of couple who fought in public, well, that veil had just fallen.
“What I’m going through is new and fragile,” Joe said.
“Which is why you let it pass! You don’t become a Jesus freak! Where’s the goddamned pride?”
“I knew how hard this would be for you,” Joe shot back.
“So of course you just lied!”
“I’m not a liar!” he said. “I hated lying.” His voice went soft. “But I felt trapped.”
That hit me… hard.
“Eleanor?” Joe said.
“That’s why you were facedown at the breakfast table,” I said, reeling. “It was because of me. This whole thing is my fault.”
“Fault?”
Beside us was a forest of six-foot-high potted palms, stage dressing waiting to be set. I went over and slid a bunch of pots aside with my foot, creating a path. I took Joe by the hand and led him inside the oasis. It was just us.
I placed my hands on his shoulders. “I know what this is.”
“You do?”
“I’m the one who should have your back. Not Jesus.”
“Eleanor,” Joe said gently. “God’s bigger than you. That’s kind of the whole point.”
“You couldn’t lean on me,” I said. “I was too rickety. I was too all over the place. And I know why. I’m still messed up about Bucky and Ivy.”
“Them?” he said, swatting palm fronds from his face.
“I thought I could shove them into quarantine. But it doesn’t work. Do you want to know how fragmented my brain is? Last week, on the radio, it said a train in Ohio derailed because someone had left a backhoe on the tracks. And I actually thought, Was it me? Did I leave a backhoe on the tracks?”
“You’re distracted,” Joe said. “I’ll give you that.”
“So distracted that I’ve driven you into the River Jordan!”
“This is my path,” Joe said. “My struggle.”
“I know you think that,” I said. “But listen to me. Since we fell in love, I’ve been keeping a Gratitude List.”
“Have you been following the Hubble telescope?” he said.
“Heh?”
“They recently aimed it at the most boring and empty patch of sky they could find. After collecting light for weeks, it found ten thousand galaxies thirteen billion light-years away. The human mind can’t comprehend that. And it goes the other way too. The smallest particle used to be a grain of sand. Then a molecule, then an atom, then an electron, then a quark. Now it’s a string. You know what a string is? It’s a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. But I was going around like I had it all figured out? And where did it lead me? To wig out at a Seahawks game! That’s over now. I’m welcoming the mystery. I’m comforted by the mystery.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I feel like we’re getting away from the Gratitude List.”
“Prince of Peace!” a voice called over the loudspeaker.
Through the dense green crosshatch, Joe’s group rose, leaving behind their purses and jackets. Twenty folks, none looking great from behind, trudged up the stairs.
“If you go up there,” I said, frustration quickening to panic, “you’re giving up on our marriage.”
“Eleanor…” Joe said.
“I’ve been neglecting you,” I said, beginning to crumble. “I didn’t mean to. But we can’t turn into one of those couples who live on parallel tracks. Oh, Eleanor, she locks herself in her closet and draws her pictures and even her own son says, ‘Mom, that’s just how you are,’ but don’t you worry about Joe, Joe’s got his church friends.” Tears, snot, drool, it was all happening.
A stage manager had arranged the choir on risers. People were muttering, looking for Joe.
“Our marriage and me finding God?” Joe said. “They’re not connected.”
“Prince of Peace!” a voice said from the stage. “We need one more.”
“What if I convince you they are?” I said to Joe.
He thought about it for a moment, which made his answer all the more devastating. “It would make no difference.”
In an exit worthy of Christ himself, Joe stepped through the plant wall and vanished.
I was alone, pulsing with sorrow and bewilderment.
Humor hadn’t worked. Smarts hadn’t worked. Brinkmanship, nastiness, insight, self-criticism, desperation, threats: none had worked. The Trick had failed.
The Trick had never failed.
I took a seat.
The stage manager placed Joe in the back row, one in from the right.
I had an almost physical reaction that Joe hadn’t been given a spot of greater prominence. Granted, I didn’t know who these other people were. But he was Joe Wallace.
My husband. As soon as he wakes up, he jumps right out of bed, showers, and gets fully dressed. Tucks in his shirt, puts on a belt. He never steps out of a cab until the driver has finished telling his story. We still sleep in a queen-size bed because our first night in a new king he said he felt too far away, and we sent it back. He does the Friday and Saturday crosswords in pen. He’s my answer man. How many cups in a quart? How long would it take to drive to Yellowstone? What’s Zaire called now, or is it called Zaire now but used to be something else? Even better? He puts up with my crap without seeing it as crap.
A young couple stood to the side. The man strummed a guitar; his wife conducted the chorus.
Morning has broken like, the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Joe’s face grew serious as he began to sing. Joe the choir boy, returned to the flock…
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.
A spotlight hit the group. Someone from the rafters adjusted it.
That still August day on Violet and David’s lawn. The fawn sand, the bottle-green ocean. Joe in a navy suit with a grape-purple tie and a snowy gardenia in his lapel. The vow I took, looking into Joe’s eyes with Ivy at my side, was to help him become a better version of himself.
This was the best version of Joe. I saw it with my own eyes. I’d always assumed his becoming that better person would involve me.
&n
bsp; Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Perhaps it was the pool of light. Perhaps it was Joe’s closed eyes. Perhaps it was his blossoming smile. Perhaps it was that Joe was literally on a higher plane than I was. But a river of light seemed to flow over his head; it was made of love, and Joe could dive in anytime he chose, with or without me.
Praise for the sweetness, of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.
My eyes pooled with tears. My lungs were butterfly wings. A seed had been sown in the pit of my belly. It grew speedily, blackly, like a Fourth of July snake pellet, a grotesque crinkly thing, filling me up something terrible. I had to look away.
On the empty chair beside me, sticking out of my purse, was my folded-up “Skunk Hour.”
a mother skunk with her column of kittens
swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.
I looked up. The choir had shifted, so Joe was blotted out by these others.
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
The African American woman with the purple blouse? She too could have lost her mother to lung cancer when she was nine. The man with the Michael Landon hair? His sister might have mystifyingly turned against him too. Simon? His father could have been a drunk, abandoning him and his brother to fend for themselves, neither knowing when he’d be back, if he’d be back.
And Joe? We had a child together.
Praise with elation, praise every morning,
God’s re-creation of the new day.
Joe, who will not scare.
“How dare you!” I shrieked, hurtling over chairs, knocking over coffees, sending purses tumbling to the floor.
“This isn’t a fair fight!” I said. “Leave me for another woman, don’t leave me for Christ!”
I tripped on the stage steps and crawled the rest of the way. The choir, the stage crew, the guy hanging in the air on a rope ladder, the man holding a foam-core happy person: they all froze.
“Where’s the man I bought?” I said, rising to my feet. “I bought a surgeon who thinks for himself and knows things! I bought Joe the Lion. I didn’t buy some comfort-seeking sissy boy!”
As I charged Joe, I heard the squawk of a walkie-talkie.
I turned. My friend the security guard.
The words: PLEASE DO NOT PET ME.
Before the dog clamped down on my forearm, I remember thinking, That’s something you rarely see… a German shepherd flying through the air.
I opened my eyes.
I was in one of Joe’s examination rooms in a padded reclining chair. Beside me was a blue paper screen through which my left arm poked. Joe did this for patients he didn’t put under general so they wouldn’t look down and reflexively move their hands during surgery.
I was groggy. From a painkiller?
I felt a tightness to my face. With my free hand I started opening drawers until I found a hand mirror. A neat line of stitches under my jaw stopped at my chin. There wouldn’t be a scar. Joe was the best closer in the business.
“Are you awake?” It was Timby, sitting in the corner, drawing in a spiral notebook.
“Hi, sweetie.” I winced. My jaw was wood, splintering with each small movement.
“Daddy said after the dog bit your arm you fell off the stage!”
A voice from the hallway. “Let me pop in to say good-bye.”
Alonzo appeared, followed by a classically pretty blonde wearing pastel-pink cashmere and a black purse with a gold chain strap. Alonzo introduced his wife, Hailey.
“Thank you for today,” Alonzo said to me.
All we could do was look into each other’s eyes and smile. We just liked each other; we always had. At our first poetry lesson, we’d cried over Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking”; the waitress had asked, “Did you two just get engaged?”
How-is-a-corkscrew-like-a-hammer?
Alonzo reached into his pocket. “Time to delete this app.”
“Aww-uhh!” said a disappointed Timby.
“They’re both tools,” Hailey said. “And they both have handles.” She cutely blew the smoke off a finger pistol and returned it to an imaginary holster.
“This morning,” I said to Alonzo. “I’m sorry for calling you ‘my poet.’”
“That was okay,” he said. “Although I wasn’t thrilled to be stuck with the breakfast bill. And the gift-basket bill. And you didn’t pay me my fifty bucks.”
“Plus he bought me fudge at the Center House,” Timby added.
I gasped, mortified. “Is my wallet around?”
“Let’s roll it forward,” Alonzo said.
Joe was in the doorway now. “Hey, babe.” He turned to Alonzo and Hailey. “I’ll let you out. It’s tricky after hours.”
“Until next week,” Alonzo said.
“‘At the Fishhouses,’” I said.
“Let’s do a different Elizabeth Bishop,” he said. “‘One Art,’ it’s called.”
“‘One Art.’ I somehow sense it’s an indictment of me.”
“Quite the opposite,” he said.
“Hailey?” I said. “I love this guy.”
“Everyone does.” She beamed, and they headed out.
It was just me and Timby.
“Look, Mom. I drew you.”
“Oh, baby,” I said. “I don’t want to be Mad Mommy.”
“So don’t.”
“It’s harder than that,” I said.
Timby shrugged: have it your way.
Joe was back. He scooted toward me on a stool.
“You, Mrs. Wallace, should inform me the next time you collide with a sculpture and lose consciousness.”
“I told him,” Timby said with a scrunched-up face.
Joe ripped the paper out of the screen.
My forearm was covered in puncture wounds and torn skin. The whole thing was swollen, red, and gooey with ointment.
“Yowza,” I said.
“No broken bones or foreign bodies,” Joe said. “We’ll give it seventy-two hours to make sure there’s no infection.” He put on his reading glasses and got in closer. “We might have to close this guy up.”
“Joe,” I said. “Do you think I’m a mean person?”
“You’re not a mean person,” he immediately answered, and paused. “You’re a mean nice person. Big difference.”
“See,” I said. “I need you for this stuff. You’re my Competent Traveler. Don’t go all Jesus-y on me.”
“Can I go kind of Jesus-y on you?”
“What’s Jesus-y?” Timby said.
“Nothing that can’t be worked out,” Joe said to me. “Genuinely.”
“I know that.”
We smiled. Our smile.
Joe got up and stuffed the blue paper in the trash can. “Are you aware,” he said, “that Thomas Jefferson, the model of reason, called the New Testament ‘the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man’?”
That’s Jesus-y, I mouthed to Timby.
“But,” Joe continued, “even Jefferson struggled with its contradictions. So get this. He took a razor blade to the four Gospels and cut out the miracles, mysticism, and other hoo-ha, and pasted the good parts into one coherent story.”
“He performed surgery on the Bible,” I said.
“There you go!” Joe said.
Then I noticed it, on the wall.
I’d sketched it on our second date. I’d forgotten Joe had saved it. Or that he’d had it framed.
He was still so exotic to me then. I remember the thrill in my stomach. Could he be the one, this serious med student from Buffalo? Brilliant in so many ways, but uncomplicated in his kindness.
And there we were, twenty years after we’d met in an examination room, back in an
examination room. Now we were three. My little family.
“I think I can do this,” I said.
Joe turned.
“Let’s move,” I said. “New York, Chicago, Scotland, it doesn’t matter.”
“We’re moving?” Timby asked.
“Even Spokane,” I said. “It would be an adventure. A pretty lame adventure. But we are old.”
“Mom and I need to discuss it,” Joe said to Timby.
“Nothing’s keeping me in Seattle,” I said. “I can draw and do damage anywhere.”
“I want to move to Scotland!” Timby said.
“You’re full of surprises,” Joe said to me.
“I can see the wisdom in what you were saying.” I paused to think about it. “If you truly believed you had a benevolent bus driver, and you were certain he was taking you somewhere good, you could just settle in and appreciate the ride.”
“You make me sound a little like Yo-Yo,” Joe said. “But I’ll take it.”
First it was my eyes going wide; then it was Timby, gasping.
“Oh, Mom!”
Joe walked across the vast empty parking lot. A moonless night, the only sound the waves lapping in Elliott Bay. The slimmest light blue line traced the top of the Olympic Mountains across the black sound; the sun would set in seconds on the other side.
He stopped and waited. What a striking and chancy thing to witness, a mountain range being absorbed into the dark night sky.
Then Joe saw him, just outside a pool of orange light, sitting politely.
“That’s a good boy,” Joe said.
Yo-Yo, still tied to the cart rack, swept his tail across the asphalt. Seeing a familiar face, he stood up and wiggled his little behind. As Joe got closer, Yo-Yo pranced and reared. He was always delighted but never surprised that someone had come.
With my good hand, I moved aside the stacks of art books. The hardwood floor was so smooth, the towers glided without toppling. Behind them, a narrow and impractical closet, chockablock like the rest of my tiny workspace. I dug through the crazy quilt of crap. A carton of linen drawing pads I thought I liked but then didn’t. That meditation cushion, dusty and sun-bleached. A tangle of phone wire and ancient printer cables. A cache of Sears Wish Books (that’s where they were!), forty years’ worth, painstakingly collected for reference. A white leather case with Joe’s mother’s silver. Flashlights from Super Bowl XLVIII. Coconut water from forever ago. Tucked in the way back, the crumpled Neiman Marcus bag.