The Desperates

by Greg Kearney

  “This is something else altogether, though, Jolie. That was a concert. This is religion.”

  “But you don’t like religion.”

  “I’ve never said that. I haven’t liked the religion I’ve experienced up to now, but that was only because my sample was small. Now I’ve found a religion that really works for me. I’ve found God.” (She regretted her inadvertently blank delivery of “I’ve found God”; the way she said it made God sound like a misplaced eyebrow pencil that had suddenly emerged from her purse.)

  “That’s great, Mom. Really. What is it about this church that speaks to you?”

  “Oh, y’know, this and that. Everything, really.”

  “That’s so vague. What’s your favourite hymn these days?”

  Smartypants Joel, always probing, needling, sniffing out deceit. It’s an aspect of his personality that Teresa enjoyed and encouraged, as long as it wasn’t aimed at her.

  “My favourite hymn. That’s a toughie. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” maybe? Or “Amazing Grace.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. She went upstairs to change.

  She put on the teal two-piece, skirt and blazer, the one she wore when Dallas graduated from the police academy. It was form-fitting then. Now she was lost in it; it looked like the hand-me-down of a giantess.

  Before she left, she asked Joel how she looked. He said that her outfit was ill-fitting. Apart from that, she said. He said she looked great, apart from that.

  “Why don’t I come with you?” Joel asked. “You’ve made me all curious now.”

  “I’m thrilled that you’re curious, really. But this is something I need to do on my own. It’s me time.”

  Joel appeared hurt, which tore at her conscience, made her want to throw her housecoat back on and forget the whole thing.

  “Can I get you something while I’m out?” she asked him. “A nice pie or something for dessert?”

  “No. Go. Have fun or whatever.”

  DIGGER WALSH WAS waiting for her on the steps of Knox United when she pulled up in Hugh’s old yellow half-ton. There was a man standing with Digger, a tall, broad black man she’d not seen before. And she would’ve remembered if she had; there were only a handful of non-white residents in town, not counting Cathy Meeker, who refuses to acknowledge that her father is black, allowing only that the Meekers are “a real tanning family.” The man was smiling and beckoning her over. Digger was also beckoning, but a bit more hesitantly, not quite so shopping-mall-sample-girl as the black man.

  “I made it!” Teresa exclaimed, slightly winded from the walk up the steps.

  “Welcome aboard, nice lady! What’s her name again?”

  “Teresa. Price.” Teresa and Digger said in spooky unison, same pause between first and last name and everything.

  “Hi there, Teresa! Are you ready for some heavy-duty fellowship?”

  “Heavy-duty fellowship. Yes, I think I’m ready for that, at last. What’s your name? It’s so nice to see a black person in Kenora.”

  “Hey, it’s so nice to be a black person in Kenora!”

  “I’m sorry,” Digger interrupted. “This is a very good friend of mine, Monty Dalva. He bought Mrs. Saxon’s old place way out by the airport.”

  “Ooh, I love that house! It looks like it’s made out of gingerbread. She made him build her that house after she found out he’d been going to Thailand to get teen girls pregnant on purpose. That was his kinky thrill. Oh, she was a hard-looking thing; she looked like a mug shot, not friendly at all. They’re both dead now. I guess you must’ve paid an arm and a leg for that.”

  Monty simply kept beaming. Teresa instantly saw her mistake. Asking someone how much their house cost wasn’t churchy. Gossip was probably a no-go, too.

  “My first real church service,” she resumed. “I feel like a newborn. I wasn’t even baptized, you know. That’s quite scandalous, I think. My mother’s a real character, that fucking old … Sorry. I wish her peace, really. I’m so looking forward to this. I loved Hymn Sing when it was on CBC. Remember Hymn Sing? What about the service itself — are there going to be people screaming and passing out? That’s always so stirring.”

  “You watch too much TV, Teresa,” Digger said gently. “It’s pretty calm. No speaking in tongues. You’ll see. Let’s go in.”

  Monty and Digger walked slightly ahead of Teresa. Monty glanced at Digger. Teresa read suspicion into that glance. She worried that Monty already saw her for what she was: a raging, conniving floozy on her way out. She couldn’t waver, she couldn’t act on any of her typical impulses. Because she was immediately attracted to Monty, as much if not more than she was to Digger. Another place and time, Teresa would’ve pursued Monty relentlessly, the way that she has always pursued men: sweetly, insistently, occasionally brazenly but never desperately, always just this side of desperately. There’s a long scar on the back of Monty Dalva’s arm; she could just imagine what he did to get a long scar like that. The men she’s known have seldom had long, earned scars like that.

  The church was packed. You could just hear the organist above the friendly chatter. She knew almost everybody. Kath Milley, Mona Minna from grade school, the entire McMehen family, the entire DuBois family. Poor, wrecked Clara Peck, who’s only ever been on welfare, was sitting next to the Stepaniuks, who own a cottage with an elevator. People who would ignore each other in Safeway were greeting each other, even hugging. Teresa found the whole thing at once touching and annoying. Why couldn’t Mrs. Stepaniuk hug Clara Peck in Safeway? Why couldn’t she ask after the fate of Clara’s five bastard sons and one daughter-by-incest the other six days of the week?

  The organist stopped playing, and the people stopped talking. The music resumed, louder now, and the congregation stood and sang. To a person, they knew by heart all the words to this mystery hymn. She looked at Digger and Monty. Digger’s eyes were closed; Monty was looking up at the ceiling, or heaven.

  The minister was a squat, ruddy man wearing tiny, wire framed glasses that strained across his wide face. Reverend Griffin welcomed the flock and the flock said something back; Teresa was busy watching Digger and Monty.

  The minister paused, straightened papers. “As always, we welcome lovingly new visitors to our little church,” he read. “Today we say a warm hello to Jill and Kevin Follows, all the way from Bemidji, Minnesota, and to a local friend, here for the first time, Teresa Price.”

  Her mouth fell open. What the hell? Digger didn’t mention that she was going to be introduced from the pulpit. Suddenly voices all around her were saying hello; she felt hands gently touching her shoulder, her back, her wig. She wanted to tell them all to get the fuck away from her, but she knew that wouldn’t be a churchy thing to do. And only now that they’d been given permission, they were all acknowledging her? She smiled and nodded, murmured pleasant-sounding, nonsense syllables, at once patted and subtly swatted the welcoming hands. Jocelyn must have put Digger up to this, she reasoned. Jocelyn had found out about Teresa’s spiritual quest and wanted to make her first worship service as mortifying as possible, so she made Digger tell the minister to officially welcome her, a sick woman who is desperately grabbing at religion, sans husband and children, accompanied by two strange, pious men who’d taken pity on her. Well, two points for Jocelyn: Teresa was suitably mortified. Good for her, that nervy bimbo, Jocelyn Walsh. Still an idiot, but a formidable one. Monty Dalva was attempting to high-five Teresa; she quickly looked the other way. It would be so much tidier if Teresa could just electrocute Jocelyn, or whip her off a bridge. This was getting to be quite the production. Teresa was starting to deflate. As the minister prattled on, and the children scurried off to Sunday school, Teresa pressed her dry tongue hard against her front teeth. To others it would look like she was staving off vomit.

  Finally, finally the hands all withdrew and they turned, smiling faces faced front again. Griffin’s sermon began with rhetorical quest
ions: We are all tired at the end of a long workday, but does that excuse us from our constant job as a loving helper? Are we doing enough? What will our legacy be? Did we stop growing at a certain point and not notice?

  He seemed to be looking right at Teresa as he spoke, and she felt exposed. Did Reverend Griffin fashion a sermon especially to ridicule Teresa, on the orders of Jocelyn Walsh? He came across as a kind man, with his white perm and apple cheeks; surely she was being paranoid. Dizziness overtook her, a narrow inner sway that caused her to clutch at the pew and forget where she was in her mean scheme. Who was ruining who? Teresa felt thwarted, outsmarted from every angle. Maybe she was simply not capable of this grand deception of hers; she never could conceal her feelings, even in health. She considered getting up and leaving, but they were packed into the pew, people to the left and right of her. Digger and Monty were both rapt in the sermon. She didn’t want to vomit on them.

  “What is prayer?” the minister asked. “I’d like to propose that we all reconsider our understanding of prayer. When we pray, do we come away refreshed? If that is the case, then I am going to step out on a limb and suggest that we’re not doing it right. Prayer is a dynamic thing. I emerge from prayer drained, like I’ve been running on a treadmill. Prayer is not a haven. Prayer is powerful. Jude 1:20 says, ‘Build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.’ Build yourself up, like an athlete builds muscle! And how do you build up muscle? You build it up by first tearing it down. Prayer is exercise! Prayer is pain! No pain, no gain!”

  She’d just about had her fill of Reverend Griffin. Prayer is pain! What the hell did he know about pain? Before the morphine, she couldn’t sit without crying. When she got the bad news, that night at the motel, she curled herself away from Hugh in his bed and pleaded for something, some feathery technicality that would give her more time, more time to be bored or annoyed, more time to think, to be ignorant of this pummelling terror. She felt she needed to say the words aloud, that night, so she struggled out of bed and into the fluorescent bathroom. “Please, just this once,” she said to the mirror. And when she emerged from the bathroom, she was somewhat soothed. Hugh’s sleeping form comforted her. The shadows in the room grew less hard, more gauzy. According to Reverend Griffin, however, the peace of that prayerful blip didn’t count. She was supposed to feel like hell after talking with God.

  She found herself panting in the pew, her vision dimmed by black, darting sparks. Beside her Digger was rapt and Monty was weeping. She pressed herself against the back of the next pew and shuffled, knee by knee, into the aisle.

  In the entrance to the church she fell into a red velvet throne of a chair. A wave of the awful fatigue came upon her, that mucky stupor that squeezes out all feeling but dejection. She bent forward at the waist and grabbed her calves. How bad would this death be? Hugh’s brother’s late wife, sweet Sally, hung on for two years after a diagnosis of lung cancer; at the end her cheekbones came through her grey flesh sharp as origami folds. She cursed her loved ones, Sally did, that gentle woman who made her own Christmas cards and saw Amy Grant in concert twice; she wished aloud in a reedy voice that her husband and twin daughters knew first-hand the pain she was enduring. It could go that way.

  Digger came out and knelt beside her. He put a hand on her back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said through her skirt. “I shouldn’t have come. It’s not what I thought it was going to be. I can’t breathe.”

  “Should I call an ambulance?”

  “No, no. I don’t mean ‘I can’t breathe’ I can’t breathe, I just can’t breathe. I don’t feel well. Apparently I’ve been praying the wrong way. I feel awful. I feel worse than I did when I was going to hell.”

  “Don’t say that. I can promise you, that is not true. The minister’s sermons can be a bit — daunting, I guess, if you’re not used to them. You’ll come to really treasure him. You are richly deserving of God’s love.”

  Teresa looked up at Digger.

  “You’re so full of shit,” she said, staring back into her lap again. “We both know that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve made a godawful mess of everything I’ve put my hand to. I’m weak. I’m a weak person.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Stop telling me not to say things! You don’t know. You don’t know me. I’m just the crazy lady with the gay son. You don’t know what goes on inside. You know what goes on inside? Not very much. You know what my boy — not the gay one, the OPP one — once said to me, out of nowhere? ‘You don’t scare me. You want to, but you don’t.’ He thought I wanted to scare him. He thought that’s what I was going after, as a mother. ‘You don’t scare me,’ he says. And then the other one, the other one is just —”

  “We don’t need to go back over past arguments, Teresa. I haven’t had occasion to see your younger boy for a few years now. I’m sure he’s — What is his name again? Joe?”

  “Joel. I call him Jolie. Although I shouldn’t. He liked it when I called him Jolie, but I shouldn’t have.”

  “Joel, well. He’s okay for what he is, you know? He’s fine.”

  “He’s not. He’s not fine. I coddled him, I even — I made his goddamn bed for him every day, and now he doesn’t know how to look after himself. When he came home he smelled like pee. I can tell right now he’s going to end up in the gutter. With AIDS. And that’ll be all my fault. One of them I scared, the other one I didn’t scare enough. So there you go.”

  Digger began to hum. It was a high, faint sound; Teresa thought at first that he was responding to gastric upset. Then he started singing words and phrases: “Oh my Jesus,” “I walk with Him,” “What a friend He is,” “Oh, my hand in His.” Sounded like a compost of every gospel song Teresa had ever heard. At first she was slightly frightened, but when she looked back at Digger his eyes were closed and his chin was quivering. This made her chin quiver. She watched as the features of his face — the long fall of his nose, the cliff of his forehead, the peak of his cheekbone — appeared to dissolve slightly then reassemble, melt and remould, his face made molten by faith.

  “Teresa, do you want to make a positive difference in the life of your son and, by extension, your own life?”

  “Sure, yeah,” she said, crying now. “Yes. Of course I do. You know I do. How though? I don’t see how.”

  He put his hand on hers. This is where the previous Teresa, the one who wanted to destroy Jocelyn Walsh, would’ve silently celebrated such a step forward in the seduction, the hand-on-hand bit. That seemed so long ago, the previous Teresa. She felt transformed, but not in any gusty, ecstatic way; she’d lost all continuity, she’d forgotten herself and was now small, paralyzed, terrified. This must the presence of the Holy Spirit, this sense of being hunted by a hateful, unflinching marksman. Her breath slowed slightly. Nothing could be done.

  “Reverend Griffin wasn’t pulling your leg about prayer power. It’s not a soothing, lullaby thing, prayer. It’s a major agent for change. It blows your mind, when you see what prayer can do.”

  “If you’re gonna tell me I can cure my cancer you can save it because that ship has absolutely sailed.”

  “Maybe so. But there is still a hell of a lot that can happen. Please let me help you.”

  “And you promise this isn’t part of some plot your wife has hatched to humiliate me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Never mind. Yeah, okay. I’ll pray with you. You’re a nice man.”

  “We’re all nice men.”

  We’re all nice men. Teresa sometimes thought that herself. There were lots of awful men, of course, but in her experience, most of the men she’s met have been, well, not nice necessarily, but definitely not awful. Women, too. He probably meant women, too, when he said “we’re all nice men.” Or did he? Teresa was about to ask about the status of women who aren’t also nice men, but just then Monty joined them.

  “What�
��s going on? Are we all good?”

  “We’re better than good, Monty. Our friend here is about to embark on an adventure in prayer. Will you join me in guiding her through?”

  “I would be honoured. Terry, you will not be disappointed. My prayer adventure has been … gosh … like an African lion safari. The stories I could tell … I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice to say, if I can have transformation through the adventure of prayer, anyone can.”

  “Actually,” Digger said, raising a thoughtful forefinger, “I think Teresa here may benefit from some of the gory details. Make it real for her. Would you offer some testimony, Monty?”

  Monty instantly went from happy to solemn. “My dear wife and I had a wonderful life together in Iowa City. Then our girls left for university, and my wife got very depressed. I was at the store seven days a week, and she was lonely. She lost her way. In due course I came to discover that she had started abusing all sorts of pills. Oxycontin, Valium. She’d crush them all up and snort it. I confronted her and she crumpled like a rag doll. However — and I shiver now at the memory of God’s hand in our lives at that moment — at the exact same time that I chose to confront her about her drug abuse, she’d also chosen to confront me about the fact that I had been abusing crack cocaine at the store for several years.”

  “What kind of store did you have?” Teresa asked.

  “High-end eyewear. I was a terrible workaholic. Crack kept me going. It wasn’t a party kind of a thing for me. Listen to me, preening like I’m not the hopeless drug addict that I am! I’m sorry. The point is: my wife and I faced each other as addicts, asked God for instruction, and He manifested in the form of a crystal palm tree in the middle of our living room — strike me dead if I’m lying; Anita saw it, too — and instructed us to sell everything, pick up roots, and move here. Well, He said Newfoundland, but it’s so damp there all the time. So here we are. And we’re okay. Day by day. I still sometimes worry about Anita, especially since the knee surgery, but that’s just me. Things are good. Oh! And I also have to insert that I have not had a herpes outbreak since that holy moment in the living room, three years ago.”