by Han Nolan
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be yours as well."
MATTHEW 6:31-33
Chapter 20
CLARE TOLD ARCHIE ABOUT the times when she would go to New York to visit her aunt. "My parents didn't get along, and I got so upset being around their fighting all the time that in the summers they would send me to Aunt Clare's."
"'Aunt Clare'?" Archie looked at Clare, surprised. "So she's the real Clare and your name is really Doris."
Clare shook her head. "No, I'm the real Clare. I am Clare and my aunt was Clare, too. She lived in New York, in White Plains, and she worked at the Cloisters. She took me to work with her every time I went to stay. I loved it there. It was peaceful. We would step into the building, all that stone—big, thick stone walls, with carvings of angels and saints and Jesus and animals—and I felt surrounded by love. All the cares of the world just fell away the minute I stepped inside. And when I walked through the rooms, my footsteps would echo all around me, and everywhere I looked, on all the walls, in paintings and tapestries, there were stories.
"My aunt was an art historian. Her concentration was on the Middle Ages. She was a guide there for a while, and over the years worked herself up to assistant curator She knew everything about the Cloisters. When she gave a tour she could barely skim the surface in telling the stories that were in each room, but after work each day she would take me to one room and we'd spend a couple of hours there, with her telling me all the stories. Then, after a few days, she would take me to another room and tell me its stories. There were hundreds of stories in every room. Even tucked up into the corners above a pillar or a window, there would be stories—the story of the Nativity carved in stone, or in another corner the story of the raising of Lazarus. There are stories of the Bible everywhere—carved into the heavy wooden doors, in the stained-glass windows, on golden goblets. Do you like stories, Francis? I do."
Archie glanced at Clare's rapt expression, and he felt a stirring in his heart. He couldn't wait to see the Cloisters and feel the way Clare looked at that moment. When he turned back to face forward, he half expected to see the stories from the Cloisters playing on the windshield like a movie.
They became silent again, and Archie, despite his anxieties, grew sleepy. He had never driven in the dark before, and the road looked to him like a tunnel of endless night. He stared at the distant taillights of the car ahead of him. They were tiny red eyes glowing in the dark, and Archie followed them as though he were hypnotized. His lids felt heavy. He wanted to sleep. He glanced at Clare, who sat back with her head leaning against the window. "Are you getting sleepy?" Archie asked.
"No, I'm not sleepy. I'm just remembering," she said. Clare turned and looked at him. "Are you sleepy? Do you need to stop?"
"No, I'm okay."
"Let's talk," Clare said, sitting up straight and turning the air-conditioning vent near her toward Archie.
The cool air blew against his arms and he got goose bumps. The air helped. He felt more alert. "What did your mama and daddy fight about?" he asked, recalling his own fights with his grandfather,
"Philosophies, I guess," Clare answered. "Before they were married they loved to argue about things. It was fun for them. They're complete opposites. My mother is an accountant. She likes numbers and logic and order. My father likes mystery and chance and intuition. The one thing they agreed on was religion. They were both atheists. My mother and her sister my aunt Clare, were raised Catholic. Aunt Clare got all the attention and admiration because she was so spiritual and was always praying and talking about becoming a nun. My aunt said my mother used to try to be spiritual, but it wasn't in her. She was always jealous of my aunt. Mother would pretend to be really religious to get her parents' attention, but when she went off to college, she dropped all that and she rebelled. So she's an atheist. My father rebelled against the church because he believed it was religion that causes most wars."
Archie glanced over at Clare. "But what happened, then? Isn't your father a believer now?"
"That's right," Clare said. "I was born two months prematurely and I almost died. That's when my father started praying. It just came naturally to him. One time he was in the hospital reaching into my crib and stroking my hand with his finger and he felt God's presence. He told me it just filled the room. He knew right then that everything would be all right, and it was. He told my mother what had happened, and of course they argued about it. My mother said he was just exhausted and didn't know what he was doing. But my father ignored her and started reading the Bible and attending church. He believed that I was special, that God had given me as a gift, not just to him and my mother but also to the world. He named me Clare, after my aunt and after Saint Clare. But my mother wanted the name Doris, and that's on my birth certificate. My father still refuses to call me anything but Clare. So, anyway, they fought about my name and everything else that had to do with me."
Archie nodded. "The only times I heard my grandparents argue it was about me. Granddaddy always wanted to give me a whippin' and Grandmama didn't want him to."
"My mother thinks it's my father's fault that I'm so overly sensitive and 'dramatic,' as she calls it," Clare said.
"Then why does she let you live with your father and why would she send you to her sister's house?"
Clare looked down at her hands and hesitated, taking a deep breath. When she spoke it was almost a whisper and Archie had to lean toward her to hear. "My parents can get into some really bad fights. The fighting used to make me ill, they upset me so much, and that scared my parents. So they decided they needed someplace to send me, but they had only three choices. It was either to my mother's parents, and she hadn't talked to them since college; my father's mother the palm reader and my mother couldn't abide her at all; or my mother's sister. She chose Aunt Clare. And my mother let me live with my father now because I kept running away from home."
Archie looked at Clare, surprised. She hadn't run when those boys threatened her in the woods, when her life might have been in danger but she ran from her mother. It didn't make sense to him and he told her so.
She said, "There are worse things than physical pain or death, Francis. There's the death of the spirit. That's far worse. Nobody should be allowed to destroy another person's spirit."
Archie didn't know what to say, so he changed the subject. "Where is your aunt Clare now?" he asked. "Is she still living in New York? Are we going to go see her? Is that why I don't have to worry about anything?"
"She's dead," Clare said, lowering her head and sniffing. "She died two years ago. It was cancer." She looked out the window. "It's starting to get light out."
Archie glanced up through the windshield. The stars were still out. "Just barely," he said.
They became quiet again. Archie looked at the sky and thought about the times his grandfather would wake him in the early morning, before light, and they would go hunting. Sometimes they hunted in their own woods, and other times they would take the truck and join some of his grandfather's hunting buddies on trips to Alabama. They would ride on the highway, just as he and Clare were doing, and they'd watch the stars fade and a pink light streak the sky, at last catching sight of the sun.
Those trips had always excited Archie. He loved getting out on the wide-open highway. It made him feel like the whole world was before him and the possibilities were endless as to where he might end up. He loved speed and used to wish his grandfather would drive faster and pass all the other drivers on the road. He had always longed for the day when he would have his license and his own car, a Porsche, and he could speed along the highway on a cross-country adventure. This time, though, he was afraid to drive too fast, and yet he felt the familiar excitement of being out on the highway, realizing that for the first time in his life he was leaving the South. He was going to New York City. Maybe, he thought, my racing heart is just excitement.
"Hey." He tapped Clare on the leg. "We're going to New York. New York!" He rolled
down his window, stuck his fist out, and shouted, "Ye haw!"
Chapter 21
WHEN THE SUN CAME UP and they saw that the sky was clear, Clare and Archie agreed that it was a beautiful day for driving. The traffic had picked up, but Archie stayed in the center lane and drove at the speed limit. When he realized they had been on the road for almost four hours without mishap, he relaxed. He noticed that Clare was humming. It wasn't a tune. She hummed just one note, a low buzzing sound. She'd made the same sound when they had prayed together on the mountain, and Archie asked her if she was praying.
Clare turned from the window. "I'm always praying. You know that."
"Do you know you hum when you pray?" he asked.
"I'm talking to God."
Archie nodded. Why wasn't he talking to God? He tried saying his prayers, but the sun on his face and Clare's humming made him feel sleepy again. He glanced at Clare. She was humming and smiling with her mouth closed, her eyes shining on something out beyond the cars on the highway. Archie thought she looked so beautiful, he wanted to say something, tell her how beautiful she looked; but he didn't know if she would like hearing that, so he said nothing. He checked the gas gauge. The gauge was almost on empty, so at the next exit he pulled off the highway and into a gas station.
Archie got out and pumped the gas. Clare went into the little store to use the bathroom. Archie watched her enter the store. He saw her say something to a woman standing in line, then the woman turned to her with a big smile and the two of them talked.
Archie shook his head, amazed at the way people responded to Clare. He saw her head toward the back of the store and then lost sight of her. He watched the people going in and out of the store, carrying sodas and candy or sweet rolls out to their cars. Seeing them made him hungry. When Clare returned from going to the bathroom, he asked, "Are you hungry?"
"No," she answered, "are you?"
"No, I guess not." Archie set the pump handle back in its cradle and screwed the gas cap back onto the truck.
Clare looked at the pump and pulled a couple of bills out of the back pocket of her jeans. "I'll go pay. I'll be right back," she said.
Archie nodded. He watched a family pull away in a white van. They were all waving to Clare. Clare waved back with a big smile, and a little girl called out, "Bye, Clare!"
"Bye," Clare said, and watched them leave. Then she turned and entered the store again.
Archie watched for a second, but then he saw a plump girl exit the store with a large soft pretzel in her hand and his mouth watered. He watched her climb into the back of a Ford Explorer and ride away.
When he looked back toward the store, he saw Clare coming out with a cup of coffee in her hand. When she caught up to him, she handed it to Archie and the two of them climbed back into the truck. "I don't want you to get too sleepy," she said after he thanked her.
"I hope we didn't dip into our gas money too much," he said.
"Oh, I didn't pay for that," Clare said. "Charley gave it to me for free."
"'Charley'? Who's he?"
"The boy working at the cash register. He was happy to give two weary travelers some coffee."
Archie eyed Clare. "'For free'? I don't think so."
"I asked him if he'd ever read On the Road by Jack Kerouac and he had, so we got to talking about that and I told him about our trip and he said he could really dig it. He was planning on his own trip someday."
'"Jack Kerouac'? Who's he? What's On the Road}"
Clare studied him a second and Archie shrugged. "What?" he asked.
"You don't read much, do you?"
Archie pulled away from the pumps and rolled out toward the highway. "Sure I do. I read books for school and comics and stuff about art. I love reading about art and artists."
Archie watched the road, looking for his chance to get back onto the highway. Clare said, "Okay—now!" and he sped up, his heart racing. He wondered if he'd ever get comfortable entering a highway. Trucks barreled past them as he got into the slow lane, and he watched for his chance to move back to the center lane, which is where Clare had said it was safest to be. Once he moved over and got up to the speed limit, he relaxed again and asked Clare, "How long do you think it will take us to get to New York, anyway?"
Clare shifted onto one thigh and reached into the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a couple of PowerBars. "I almost forgot," she said. "Charley gave me these, too. They're for you."
"Thanks!" Archie grabbed one and tore the wrapper open with his teeth. He felt hungry enough to eat the paper:
"It's about fifteen hours total," Clare said, responding to his question. "That is, if we keep to the speed limit and don't stop too long for gas."
Archie bit into the bar. It tasted like heaven. "That means we should get there around five tonight," he said. "Then what? I mean, where will we sleep and all?"
Clare glanced at him. "What's the matter, Francis? You're full of worries all of a sudden. Don't you know God is looking after us? We're on God's mission now. We will be just fine. Isn't this food and coffee proof of that?"
"What is God's mission for us, Clare? I've been wondering that lately. What will we do when we get to the Cloisters? What will we do when we get back home?"
"What we've been doing every day. We'll trust in the Lord. God will show us our mission. This pilgrimage will show us what our next steps will be. You have to trust in the Lord, Francis. God tells us every minute, every second of the day, what we should be doing. Just listen, and you will know."
They drove for several more hours, both lost in their own thoughts. In Virginia, Archie looked out the window and saw a sign for Front Royal. He wondered for a minute what a place with the name Royal in it might look like. He imagined a city with streets paved in gold. He craned his neck as they passed the exit, hoping to catch a glimpse of something glistening in the distance, but it looked like all the other exits on the highway.
He turned to Clare, recalling their earlier conversation, and asked, "Have you ever listened for God and not heard anything? I mean nothing—like, blank—no one's there?"
Clare shook her head, her dark hair sweeping the back of the seat and making a soft swishing sound. "Never God is always with me—always."
"Yeah." Archie sighed and watched the road.
"The first vision I ever had was at the Cloisters. That's why I say I was born there."
Archie jerked his head around. "A vision? You've had visions?"
Clare grabbed the steering wheel. "Watch the road, Francis."
Archie faced forward and slowed down, regaining control of the truck. A car passed them, honking its horn.
Archie swallowed a bite from his second PowerBar and said, "Like me, you mean. The kind of vision I had, with the trees and all. Like that?"
"Yes, I've had that, too, but this one was when I was in the Langon Chapel of the Cloisters. There's an altar there on one side of the room, and it has this high dome ceiling and these narrow windows, with arches set into the thick stone walls, and there's a stone canopy over the altar and the light from the windows was shining down through the little pillars of the canopy onto the altar. And there, in the center of the altar is a wooden carving of the Virgin. She's holding Jesus on her lap, only Jesus is missing his head.
"I had noticed there were lots of statues and carvings there in the museum, with plaques saying that these were statues of the Virgin and child, but the child was missing. Mary would be standing or sitting with her arms cradling the ait, because at some point over the centuries Jesus had broken off. I thought it was sad that even in these statues, Jesus had been torn from his mother. So I went up to the altar and kneeled before it, and I spoke to the Virgin and told her I was so sorry she'd lost her son. Then I prayed, with my head bowed because the sun was so bright, and when I finished praying, I looked up and the sun had moved and I could see the Virgin's face. She was crying, Francis. It was real—real tears. I touched her face and it was wet. I licked my fingers and they were salty. And wh
en we get there, if you look you'll see a crack running through the center of her eye and down her face. Her tears have left a deep crack in the wood."
"'Real tears,'" Archie said, moved by what she had told him. "I can't wait to see her."
Clare nodded. "Yes, you'll see her I've seen her tears three times now, and each time I have I've come away changed. My eyes are opened and I see the world differently. I receive gifts."
"What kind of gifts?" Archie asked, glancing over at Clare, who stared out the windshield as if she were gazing upon the Virgin right at that moment.
"One was the gift of other visions."
Archie looked at Clare and saw a pained expression pass over her face. A moment later it was gone. "What kind of visions?" he asked.
"I'll tell you about them sometime, but not now, okay?"
Archie shrugged. "I guess," he said, wondering at all the secrets Clare seemed to have. It seemed she was always pulling another one out from behind her back every time they had a conversation. He never knew what she would tell him next.
"So then," he said, "what about the other gifts? Can you talk about them?"
"Well, another one is the gift of extra perception, I guess you'd call it. All of a sudden I could look at people and know things about them most people would never guess. I found that I just knew things, like this one's just been laid off from work and that one's afraid his baby might be deaf."
"You read people the way your father does."
"Yes, but even more so."
"So if I see her crying, I'll be like that? I'll be like you?"
"I believe so, Francis. I hope so."
Archie sighed. For whatever reason, God had deserted him up on the mountain the night before; he felt sure that when he saw the statue, God would return to him again—and he couldn't wait. He wanted to see the tears. He would cry with her he decided. He would mourn the Virgin Mary's loss.
"It changes you," Clare said, breaking into his thoughts. "You can't help but love people when you see inside them like that. Everybody is just trying to do the best they can with their lives. Some people make really bad, even evil choices, and others make good ones, but still, they're just trying to survive and do the best they can." She nodded to herself.