“I have no intention of explaining the situation to him.”
“It’s a small thing, Rebecca. Give it a chance. He’s perfectly capable of saying no.”
“He certainly is. The man won’t even drink coffee, Mother.”
“Well, obviously, one can’t twist a person’s arm over something like this. Either the spirit moves, or it doesn’t.”
Rebecca considered this glumly, sensing that she had been flanked. “I’m afraid the whole thing sounds pretty flaky, Mom.”
“Tell him, Better flaky meaning than no meaning at all,” Phoebe said cheerfully.
Rebecca wasn’t so sure of this, but her mother had based a sort of second career on the premise since coming to California. “I really feel like I’ve had enough awkward conversations with the guy already.”
“Well, maybe I’ll tell him myself, then.”
“He’s not a social person, Mom. He’s some kind of recovering hermit. I think he’s actually misanthropic.”
“He just needs to get out more, I’m sure.”
There was no talking to Phoebe once her mind was made up; they hung up soon after that, having made no further progress. Rebecca stood for a long moment in the kitchen, conscious, as she often was now, of the silence beneath her feet, the deep, almost palpable quiet in which Christopher lived. She knew that the only thing standing between her and acute embarrassment at this moment was whether Michael Christopher’s new number was listed, because Phoebe was no doubt already dialing information.
Sure enough, a moment later she heard a phone ring downstairs. Steps thudded, and she heard Christopher’s muted murmur through the floorboards. The ensuing conversation went on for quite a while. Rebecca was unable to make out anything in particular, but the long silences at Christopher’s end seemed plain enough. Phoebe was making her usual relentless case. But several times Christopher’s warm laughter surprised Rebecca. She felt absurdly grateful for her tenant’s good humor. It seemed like a miracle of compassion.
At last Christopher’s indulgent murmur ceased. The usual silence, deepened now by the contrast of disruption, settled below the floorboards. A moment later, Rebecca caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, drifting up from the backyard.
Rebecca smiled, unexpectedly heartened. She often lit up herself, after a phone call with Phoebe. She slipped out to the back porch. In the deep shadow below, Christopher was sitting on the step in front of the open back door to the garage, a dark shape hunched around a spot of glowing orange. He started as she came out, as if about to flee.
“I couldn’t help but smell the smoke,” Rebecca said, to calm him down.
Christopher relaxed a little and laughed sheepishly. “I do owe you one, I suppose.”
“Well, I’ve come to collect.” She came down the steps, conscious suddenly that she was wearing her baggiest sweatpants, that she was barefoot, her hair awry. It made for an odd relationship, having someone live beneath you. Inevitably, certain formalities were dispensed with.
Christopher held the pack out and she took a cigarette. He smoked the old-fashioned Marlboro Reds, just like the boys in junior high. She took a nervous drag and almost coughed at the harsher smoke, and that too was just like junior high. The doorway from the garage was too narrow for them to sit side by side, so they stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure what to do with themselves. Christopher’s hair, just starting to be long enough to seem fuzzy, was damp from a recent shower, and he was dressed in clean, faded jeans and a T-shirt. No doubt he had just gotten off work, but Rebecca decided not to ask him how the job was going. It might seem too much like rubbing something in.
“I just had the most remarkable conversation with your mother,” Christopher said.
She glanced at him appreciatively. How nice to have a man cut to the chase. “I was afraid of that. What can I say, except that I’m sorry? She means well—”
“Oh, it’s all right. Really. She’s an extraordinary person.”
“What a kind way to put it.”
“No, really. Very brave. Very…loving. Very real.” Christopher bent to stub his cigarette out on the concrete, then straightened, still holding the butt, with nowhere to put it. Their eyes met briefly and they smiled at the silliness of the dilemma.
“There’s an abalone shell on the steps over there that I use as an ashtray,” Rebecca said.
“Thanks.” He crossed the patio and dropped the butt in. She trailed him desultorily, realizing that she was praying: Dear God, let me not be embarrassed. Let me find a graceful way through this.
Christopher turned around. He seemed a little startled to find her so close.
“Again, all I can say is that I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart. My mother is a force of nature. She gets an idea into her head and—”
“She made an interesting case for noninstitutional baptism. She actually cited scripture.”
“She was on the debate team at Catholic U, and she has no fear and no shame. She could make an interesting case for the baptism of iguanas.”
Christopher laughed. It transformed his usually saturnine face, and Rebecca found herself smiling at him.
“Well, I liked her,” he said. “She reminded me a little of Abbot Hackley.”
“I thought Abbot Hackley was a jerk.”
Christopher blinked. But he recovered and said, “Well, he is. But he’s a very well meaning jerk. You have to admire that. He always felt I should be more active in the world.”
Something in the way he said “the world” irritated Rebecca. It was a note verging on disdain, rife with subliminal superiority.
She asked, a little aggressively, “Is there really an alternative?”
Christopher glanced at her, brought up short. “To what?”
“To being active in ‘the world.’”
“I hope so,” he said, so fervently that she felt disarmed.
They were quiet for a long moment, a gap that Rebecca recognized by now as characteristic. Conversations with Christopher had an unnerving way of running aground on invisible issues. On God stuff. It was so easy to forget he was a monk, until the talk crapped out like this. And then it was hard to remember he was anything else. In a way, he was like Rory, given to disappearing into his element: as Rory paddled out to sea when things got tough, Christopher fell into an impregnable silence.
At last she said briskly, by way of moving on, “Well, I hope Mom didn’t make it too terribly hard to say no.”
Christopher looked sheepish. “Actually, she made it impossible. I promised to show up.” He laughed at her horrified look. “It’s okay, I’m sure they’ll give me the day off work.”
“You’re much too kind. I couldn’t possibly let you spend your Saturday at some weird ceremony with a whacked-out old woman, her flaky friends, and her old maid daughter—”
“Hardly an old maid,” Christopher demurred.
Something heartfelt in his tone unexpectedly thrilled her. Rebecca met his eyes, not quite sure what to say. She had not thought of him as a sexual being until this moment. It was a little unnerving.
“It’s still too much to ask of any man’s good nature,” she persisted. “A long afternoon of unadulterated neopagan nonsense. I mean, let’s face it, it’s the world.”
“I was told there would be hot dogs.”
Rebecca laughed, surprised by how pleased she was at such distinct male energy. A monk with a hint of a come-on and a sense of humor. It was definitely going to take some getting used to.
Just then the back door opened above them, and Mary Martha appeared in her Little Mermaid pajamas.
“The movie’s over, Mom.”
“Hit rewind, and I’ll be up in a minute,” Rebecca said.
“You shouldn’t be smoking so much, it’s bad for you.”
Rebecca glanced at Christopher, who smiled and shrugged sympathetically. She stubbed her cigarette out.
“Hi, Mike,” Mary Martha called flirtatiously.
“Hello, Mary Martha.”
Sh
e flushed with pleasure, turned, and ran back inside.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you Saturday, then,” Rebecca said, a little resignedly, to let him know the ordeal would not be her responsibility.
“Saturday it is,” Christopher agreed, his tone of almost weightless camaraderie getting it just right.
Chapter Four
Dear Brother James,
I see that my worst fears have been realized and that you have taken me on as some kind of project. I have nothing whatsoever to contribute to the sort of dialogue you suggest on “the relevance of prayer.” It seems that I cannot say this plainly enough. My prayer life has run aground. I am lost, disheartened, demoralized—my “sense of God’s loving and enlivening presence,” as you put it, is shot to shit. This is a torment to me, but it is not a motivation to well-behaved and high-minded exchange. Perhaps you mistake me for one of those very nice people who attend your weekend retreats.
I am afraid you also misunderstood my remarks on the “irrelevance” of the monastic life. No doubt I erred, exulting in the paradox. It is true, as you say, that the world needs men who do not need the world. I set out to be one of those men myself; unfortunately, I have arrived instead at an abyss of self-contempt.
As for my “despair,” which you would so love to tame…God knows, the beast is present. I am not good company. I am bitter, lonely, and gaining weight. As the hair grows in on a skull shaved close for all these years, I find that I am balding. There is a certain kind of cookie at the corner store that I apparently cannot resist. Perhaps I will become an alcoholic; perhaps I will buy a television set and collapse into the American dream. I read police procedural thrillers on my breaks at work as avidly as I once read Brother Lawrence on The Practice of the Presence of God, and as ever I smoke too much. My mind is a stretch of barren country and swirling dust; my heart has shriveled to the size of a dried pea. But this is all my private comedy. The emptiness of prayer is deeper than mere despair. Preparing us for a love we cannot conceive, God takes our lesser notions of love from us one by one.
Have you really never seen it, Brother James, somewhere in the grim efficiency of your industrial meditation? Have you never once seen all your goodness turn to dust? I tell you that until you do, all your prayer is worse than useless. It is gears of greed, grinding. Love is not fuel for the usual machinery.
Let us speak simply, if we can, man to man. I don’t give a damn for your well-meaning efforts to prop my faith. I trust this failure that God has brought upon me more deeply than any comforting truth you can offer. I do not know what can come of such a thorough wreckage as I seem to myself to have made of the life I meant to offer humbly to God. Clearly, I was not humble enough. We don’t hear much of the danger of prayer, but it is the deepest sea and I believe there are many who are lost in it. Count me among the lost, Brother James; if your prayer has really borne such fruits of mercy as you are willing to proclaim, for God’s sake, spare me the pain of further admonitions.
Yours in Christ (as you insist),
Michael Christopher
Saturday dawned unpromisingly, a low sky yielding grudging light. Rebecca woke early and lay in bed with the quilt pulled up to her chin, rooting like a child for the fog to go away. She was surprised by her own anticipation of the afternoon on the beach. It wasn’t like her to be so eager. She realized that she was thinking of Michael Christopher. She was picturing the two of them on Stinson Beach. They had slipped away from the crowd with a blanket and some wine. The afternoon air was warm and quiet, and they were laughing and talking easily. There was no hurry to get anywhere in particular. They were just glad to be together. They found a perfect spot, nestled in the soft hollow of a dune, and Christopher spread the blanket with a gentle flourish. They settled on it side by side, close and comfortable, and the wine was already open, and the crystal glasses caught the sun just right and glittered like the sunlight on the sea.
“I’ve been so lonely,” Rebecca pictured herself telling him, and in her mind Christopher didn’t get edgy or weird or pompous; he didn’t try to bluster through the pain and the waste or explain it all away or promise that everything would be different now. He just met her gaze with his delicious brown eyes and said, “I’ve been lonely too.” She could tell by the intimate angle of his body that he was going to kiss her soon, but there was time for that. There was time for everything. It was going to be late afternoon forever, and everything they said and did from now on was going to be simple and gentle and true.
Rebecca caught herself and shook her head self-consciously. Such schoolgirl fantasies were unnerving; she hadn’t let herself run on like this in years. Aside from the sheer adolescent ridiculousness of it, the guy was a monk. There was nowhere to go, with Michael Christopher; he was already Involved. With God, albeit, and unrequitedly it seemed, but that in its way was worst of all. An ex-wife or a twenty-three-year-old lover at least had the virtue of reality, of the usual fallibilities; but there was no competing with an unconsummated relationship to the immaterial Ground of Being. God would never wake with morning breath and a fresh zit on her nose, her knee jammed into the small of Christopher’s back, on the day after a stupid fight; God would never forget to restock the Cheerios or miss the red sock in the load of white laundry. The Lord did not clog the toilet or burn toast or wail while calculating her income tax. Most tellingly of all, perhaps, God had no encumbering daughter, no looming mother, and no ex-husband; God was not damaged goods, surrounded by damaged baggage. God was love, whatever the hell that meant. God made all things new.
And she was only getting older. Even assuming Christopher had room in his life for someone besides God, there was the sticking point of belief. No doubt he’d want someone who could pray with a straight face. Rebecca closed her eyes and gave it a shot but came up blank. She thought she should probably start with at least a decent Act of Contrition, addressing the backlogged sins of several decades, but all she could remember of the prayer were the lyrics to the Madonna song, in that singsong parody beat.
Oh my God, I’m heartily sorry, for having offended Thee…
But she wasn’t sorry, certainly not sorry enough, not by a long shot. She’d done the best she could. And who was God, really, to take offense, while all those Ethiopian children He’d made were sifting the dust for grains of wheat on the evening news, with ribs pricking through their skin like accusatory fingers?
Rebecca opened her eyes resignedly and blinked in the gray, secular Saturday light. The truth was, Christopher was only coming to the party because Phoebe had twisted his arm. She didn’t have to settle the nature of the universe or her relationship with Divinity this morning, positioning herself for fantasy make-out sessions on the beach. All she had to do was get through another tricky day.
She delighted Mary Martha by making pancakes for breakfast. As she cooked, Rebecca hummed “Singing in the Rain.” She’d stayed up late the night before watching old Gene Kelly movies, trying to glean some moves for the lightbulb man, and she was feeling a little silver-footed herself. She even did a quick soft-shoe for Mary Martha as she brought her pancakes.
“Do it again!” Mary Martha exclaimed. Rebecca obliged, shuffling in her bathrobe and her ragged pink slippers, ending with a flourish. It was almost crazy, how fine she was feeling, how much she was looking forward to the actual outing, her failures of religion notwithstanding.
She made potato salad and ham sandwiches, filled a cooler with root beer and Diet Coke, and threw in a few Bud Lights for herself and some Sam Adams in case Michael Christopher cared about decent beer. She hesitated over her wardrobe, leaning briefly toward some hot pink short-shorts that she had bought once on a drunken tear with Bonnie and never found occasion to wear. She still had the legs for it, Rebecca thought defiantly. But clearly that was the morning’s inexplicable optimism talking. She settled on some navy blue shorts that showed enough thigh to make the point. She tied a lime green bikini top behind her neck—it was the beach, after all—then pulled a red Bee-Wel
l Day Care sweatshirt over that in case she lost her nerve and decided to keep things matronly.
She frowned over her hair but finally kept it simple with a ponytail; she toyed with creams and powders and brushes before deciding at last that no amount of makeup was going to help in bright daylight on a beach. She spritzed a little cloud of Obsession to walk through, then ducked away from it at the last second. By the time the whole considered process was over, it was almost noon and she looked like exactly what she was, an unremarkable single mom in a sweatshirt, shorts, and sneakers. A woman defeated into ordinariness. She shook her head at herself in the mirror and went to fetch Mary Martha.
Outside, the fog had begun to burn off. The sky’s blue seemed particularly crisp, almost startling, as it sometimes did after deep fog: a blue like the return of health after a long illness. It was going to be a gorgeous day after all. Rebecca began to load the food and drinks into the car, keeping one eye on the door to the in-law apartment. Sure enough, Michael Christopher emerged a moment later, blinking like an animal unused to daylight, dressed in his black I-just-left-a-monastery jacket and slacks. His feet were encased in some incongruously new dress shoes, lumpen brown leather things that looked like primitive orthopedic devices and clearly didn’t fit him.
Mary Martha ran to greet him, and he stooped to give her a hug, then straightened and gave Rebecca a shy grin.
“Nice shoes,” she smiled, feeling it was best to get it out in the open right away.
Christopher grimaced, acknowledging the footwear’s grotesqueness. “They’re a gift. Charity, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?”
“A very nice woman who used to come up to the monastery for retreats. She just heard that I’d left and is showering me with kindness.”
“How nice of her,” Rebecca said, appalled by a little surge of jealousy.
“I’d much rather be ignored.”
Rebecca realized that she was feeling a little shy with Christopher, as if he might somehow have gotten wind of her fantasies. It was as if something significant but undiscussed had happened between the two of them since the last time she had seen him, and she could feel herself a little out of sync.
The Monk Downstairs Page 6