The Undoing of Saint Silvanus

by Beth Moore

  It was days like those when Adella questioned the wisdom of a woman with such delicate sensibilities staying on at Saint Sans indefinitely. Olivia insisted Mrs. Winsee had never been formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or even classic dementia. She just seemed perpetually stuck in the time of her prime.

  Caryn, on the other hand, was a young medical student with enough brains for her and Mrs. Winsee both. Between school loans and the rent at Saint Sans, Adella doubted she’d have the extra funds for flowers—even if she had known to send any.

  It was a crying shame that Olivia didn’t want anyone to come and that she had gone so far as to ensure their absence by keeping the time private. In all, Adella could well picture fifteen or twenty people showing up at that burial if Olivia had allowed herself a little comfort.

  Adella had told Emmett the night before, “All the fuss makes her feel worse somehow. I think the pain on our faces makes it harder to keep hers covered. Lord knows she has to do that at all costs. And then there’s the fact that I betrayed her trust.”

  “You did not betray that woman, Dell. You were the only real friend she had.”

  “She thinks I did. She won’t get over it, either. Not if I know her at all.”

  “But you know that God—”

  Letting him go on was like salt in the wound. “Right now she’s got God and me both strapped in the same boat and we’ll be lucky if she doesn’t sink it with her own big feet. I’m sure she doesn’t like him any more than she likes me. Wherever she and I had gotten, we’re highways and byways from it now.”

  The wonder was that Olivia had let Adella come. The fact that she still had a job and was the only one standing next to her boss at that graveside kindled at least a fool’s hope that Olivia would consider forgiving her conniving.

  It had been the longest, darkest week of Adella’s employment at Saint Sans. The homicide ruling delayed the body’s release to the funeral home, making all of Adella’s efforts to woo Jillian to her grandmother’s side for the burial a colossal waste of time. She couldn’t have stayed that long anyway. But maybe the anvil of waiting had crushed open Olivia’s heart and she could accept the compassion behind Adella’s actions. Then again, she’d probably ask for the keys the second they got home. She might forgive her, but there was no doubt in Adella’s mind that Olivia would never trust her again.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and flashed back half a year to the morning of the Great Divulgence. A wave of nausea shot through her. It had been a while since the guest room in the private wing of Saint Sans had been thoroughly cleaned. She’d had it on her to-do list for a couple of weeks and the housekeeper was there unusually early that morning. Adella didn’t possess a key to Olivia’s private quarters, but this one dangled from her large silver ring for those rare occasions when the room was used. They called it the guest room, but it was Rafe’s. Every year or so, he’d land on the back steps, sometimes rolled up in a ball. Or Olivia would pick him up on the street. He’d stay a night or two, and they would try again to see if they could make it work without disturbing the peace. They never could.

  Adella had considered Olivia fortunate that Rafe customarily flew the coop with the first sign of sobriety and without tearing up the place or robbing her blind. This had been a grace in the affliction, but one she’d left Olivia to discover for herself. Adella’s job was to cover for them but act like she wasn’t, and then retreat to her usual distance, never to speak of it again. That code of conduct had worked for nearly seven years.

  That morning she swung open the door to Rafe’s room with the housekeeper right next to her, vacuum cleaner in tow. She shut the door as soon as her mind absorbed the sight, but she was sure the housekeeper had gotten an eyeful.

  The most controlled and private person Adella Jane Atwater had ever met was sprawled across the bed half-dressed. The hair she’d kept neatly swept back into a wide barrette every day that Adella had known her was wild and tangled. A swath of it was stuck to the vomit dried on her cheek. Adella had never seen Olivia near a glass of wine, let alone a bottle of bourbon, but one was empty on the floor. She’d obviously pulled out a box of old family photographs because pictures were strewn around the room, some of them torn to pieces. A chair was turned over and the vanity mirror was broken at the upper right-hand corner, looking like a spiderweb of glass. Maybe the heel of a shoe, Adella thought to herself.

  After Adella waved the housekeeper from the hall and sent her to the other wing, she opened the door just enough to slip through it. “Mrs. Fontaine, you okay?” she whispered. There was no response. She sat softly on the edge of the bed so she could lean in closer. “Mrs. Fontaine, it’s Adella. Let me help you up.”

  With that, Olivia’s eyes cracked open and she flopped like a rag doll from her back onto her side, dropped her head in Adella’s lap, and held her with both arms around the waist and began to sob. Adella had held a horde of crying folks in her arms in forty-five years but not this one. Not one remotely like her either. She couldn’t remember ever purposely touching the woman in all their years together.

  Her heart pounded so hard, she was half relieved Olivia was drowning it out. Over the next solid hour, Olivia spilled more beans than Adella could have shoveled back into a ten-gallon can. Some of what she said was incoherent and some of it fragmented, but the part about her son spoke a language between two mothers where words were unnecessary. Olivia would pick herself up on one elbow, grab a photo of Rafe, and fall back into Adella’s lap with it wadded in her fist. Adella knew that she meant for her to unfold it and comment on how beautiful he was.

  It was not hard to do. He was as beautiful a light-skinned lad as she’d ever seen. The boy in those pictures was almost wholly absent from the man she’d seen stumble and mumble in and out of that room. Out of Olivia’s volcanic stupor erupted several searing streams: she’d hated her husband and loved her son and stood by her husband and left her son. How all of that played out in detail was anybody’s guess right then, but it had not been pretty. Olivia also kept saying the word curse, and since it was in the same jumble as her husband’s name, she supposed she was cursing him. Right then, Adella would let her.

  Adella had held so still and tight with Olivia draped over her that her right thigh began to cramp and twitch. When she could get Olivia’s voice down enough to slip her into the hall and back to her own bedroom unnoticed, she threw a bathrobe around her and made haste.

  Thick, strong coffee with a cloud of real cream had always been Olivia’s drink of choice. Adella felt like she was having a dream as the electric coffee grinder buzzed and whirled. She poured less grounds than usual into the French press for fear it would come right back up after Olivia swallowed it.

  While she waited a couple of minutes for it to steep, she saw the edge of her red Bible sticking out of her purse on the back counter. It was Wednesday and she had a prayer meeting right after work and it was far enough to the church without having to run by home. “Have courage, weak woman o’ God. It may be now or never.” She slipped the Bible under her arm as she carried the coffee tray into Olivia’s room.

  And she read out of it. And, would wonders never cease, Olivia did not stop her. She also never told her to keep going, but Adella had always considered that a door cracked was a door flung wide open. Maybe off the hinges. She read a segment of Psalm 18 until it got to the part where David said, “According to the cleanness of my hands he has recompensed me.” She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened in the Fontaine family, but she didn’t think clean hands had much to do with it. But recompense did, at least in the mind of the woman in that bed.

  Then Adella read just one more thing. She read every word of Isaiah 53. Sometimes all you could do for the suffering was to make sure they knew someone was suffering right there with them. Someone who had also felt stricken, and smitten, and afflicted.

  Olivia sobered up that day, but she stopped short of returning to the previous code. A loosely knotted tie looped the lives of the two women. As long
as Adella picked her times carefully and privately, she could slip Olivia a Scripture or a quote or even a book of inspirational readings—if it wasn’t too preachy. Snooping was second nature to Adella, so she’d watch to see if the bookmark was moved, and it often was.

  Sometimes Olivia would seem stiff and chilly again and Adella would think they were getting nowhere, but other times the woman looked downright cheery. Well, maybe cheery was stretching it. But that summer Adella had seen a little peace wash over Olivia’s face like dew on a thirsty petal. She had even heard Olivia humming a few times while she gardened. David had heard it too. “An alto,” he observed one day as he walked through the back door.

  “Would either of you like to say something?”

  Adella was jarred from her memories when the funeral director spoke. Adella hated awkward silence almost worse than anything. When Olivia shook her head to decline, Adella’s mouth fell open like someone had pitched a ten-pound weight on her tongue.

  “Well, I—”

  All Olivia had to do to shut her up was lift the fingers of her right hand.

  The funeral director cleared his throat. “Then I’ll close with these words that have brought comfort to the mourning for centuries. ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not—’”

  He got more than a few fingers. He got Olivia’s whole hand right out in front of him, like she was stopping traffic. Adella looked at his indignant expression and wanted to whisper to him, “Indeed, you shall not.”

  Olivia paused for a moment. Then she turned and started for the car without even touching the coffin. The pity was, Adella knew how much she wanted to if only she were the kind of person who could. She leaned over and patted it for her. “Rest in peace, troubled soul. Jesus, I’m hoping you got this one.”

  Adella was the only one still at the graveside. The director had dearly departed so that he could fetch the workman to lower the casket into the ground. She gathered up the cards from the flower arrangements, thinking how she hated these old New Orleans cemeteries. The aboveground vaults gave her the willies. They looked like concrete changing closets, like something a mummy could step out of at any minute. She also imagined somebody lurking behind one nearby, spying on her, about to scare her half to death. She’d probably lunge into that opening in the crypt and hit her head on the concrete and pass out and they’d shove the coffin right on top of her. She’d be stuffed in that big drawer alive and have to beat on the wall for a week till she finally starved to death.

  She shook off her overactive imagination. “Get a move on, woman. Your boss is going to bake like a country ham in that hot car.”

  As she walked to Olivia’s sedan, she opened the cards. She was right about the one with the amaryllises. Sorrowfully, David. She was also right about the multicolored one, but she thought she’d made herself clear how she felt about carnations. Adella slid the small card out of the third envelope and stopped dead in her tracks. It had only one word printed on it.

  Atonement.

  CHAPTER 6

  MARCH 1918

  THE CORNERSTONE OF Saint Silvanus Methodist Church was pressed to the soil more than a century after the first circuit rider of like devotion tied his horse to a post a few miles from there. The forty or so adult congregants who gathered for the groundbreaking held all the hope within them of the early spring that surrounded them, cordial but with might enough to wrestle the winter from the trees. God willing, buds would soon swell from these simple stems and burst into blooms, as fiery as a burning bush.

  The ground had been flattened for several weeks and stakes pounded at the corners, displaying the first tangible flecks to stick to the surface of the vision of those gathered. The plans were ambitious, but no less so than the men who had drawn them. This was no country for those of anemic will.

  That celebratory morning, the women spread makeshift tables with embroidered linens, anchored down against the March breezes by plates of fried chicken, crispy and cold, and slices of fat, pink ham, blackened in iron skillets. Perfect for cupping redeye gravy. Mounds of buttermilk biscuits were covered by dish towels, and black-eyed peas, thick and smoky, threatened to cool despite the heavy lids on their pots.

  The children, who outnumbered the adults by a long shot, insisted on roughhousing particularly close to the dessert table. Even before the meal could begin, they had swiped most of the oatmeal cookies, and several fruit pies were missing chunks of crusts along the edges.

  Urged by his own stomach, the parson finally put the faithful out of their misery—and the reprobates with them. The latter, after all, could be particularly generous tithers. With food and property blessed, Saint Silvanus Methodist Church kicked within her new crib with the life of a robust newborn, full-term and lungs full.

  CHAPTER 7

  JILLIAN STOOD IN FRONT OF the picture window on the seventeenth floor, counting the white sails adrift on the sapphire bay. She was still mesmerized by the view from Vince’s loft.

  She liked looking out more than facing in. The loft was impressive and always immaculate, but she never knew exactly where to sit. The couch cushions were so stiff she might as well recline on an ironing board. All the furnishings were contemporary and angular and the colors, brisk and cool. The whole place was a feast starving for touch. Jillian loved the granite fireplace, though, and when Vince wasn’t home, she sat in the accent chair closest to it, draped her legs over one of its arms, and lost herself in a good book. The outside temperature was irrelevant. Vince had kept the thermostat at a frosty sixty-five degrees all summer long. The gas logs lit at the flip of a switch and she could turn the fireplace off faster than he could turn a key in the entryway door.

  Jillian hadn’t been sure what to expect when she moved in with Vince. She knew he went out a lot. He said it was necessary if he intended to carve out a noticeable name as a business owner in San Francisco. He only asked her to accompany him occasionally, but avoiding the stress of trying to look and act worthy of him was almost worth being left out. He’d also made clear from the very beginning that he liked to keep his private life separate from his professional life. But if she had to stay home, she supposed this was the place to do it.

  Turning her back to the window, Jillian took a fresh look inside. “Home.” She said the word out loud with an uncertain tone like she was trying it on to see if it fit. She wanted it to fit in the worst way. She wanted to be happy here. If a woman couldn’t be happy here, a woman couldn’t be happy. She didn’t need her mother to tell her that. Maybe the only thing missing was some semblance of permanence. Getting married was off the table. In Vince’s very vocal opinion, marriage was the stupidest financial decision a man with money could make. Jillian would settle for an occasional reassuring reference to our place. All these months later, Vince still called it his place and, of course, it was. Anybody looking to prove Jillian lived here was out of luck without searching the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom or thumbing through the small section of women’s clothes in Vince’s closet.

  Two nights ago, when he’d darted in just long enough to change clothes, she’d come up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and said, “Stay home this evening, please? Let’s spend it together. We could watch a movie or something.”

  He’d responded with a chuckle. “You’re not about to ask me if I want to play cards again, are you?”

  She’d never hear the end of that. She’d chalked up more than her share of memorable embarrassments along the way, but she’d never known until then that liking a good round of gin rummy could leave you red-faced.

  “You can come with me if you want,” he’d offered, unwrapping Jillian’s arms from around him. She’d been on her feet all day at Sigmund’s, but they needed an evening together. She was just about to tell him she’d like to when he’d turned around, studied her face, and said, “But you look exhausted.”

  He’d brushed his chin across her forehead with what she supposed he’d call a kiss and told her to get some rest. He’d then sauntered o
ut the door and left her staring in the mirror, feeling old enough to be his mother. The whole last month had been like that, the newness wearing off to a dull nub. Jillian wasn’t sure if his most recent coldness was genuine disinterest, or if he was still punishing her for heading off to New Orleans on a whim.

  Jillian felt sick at the prospect of the relationship dismantling. She’d given up so much for Vince, even her best friend. She and Allie had been inseparable for the past few years, as most of their other friends moved away or got married. They’d had a huge fight over Jillian’s moving in with Vince.

  It was unfortunate timing. She and Allie had put down a deposit on a vintage apartment they could only afford together. They’d gotten a couple pieces of furniture from secondhand shops and painted them in the garage at Allie’s parents’ while the music blared and the two of them sang at the top of their lungs. The pieces turned out so well, Allie’s parents threatened to fund a furniture store and force them to run it while they retired off the fortune in Cabo. Then just before Jillian and Allie got the keys to the new place, Vince told Jillian he wanted her to move in with him.

  She’d never forget the things that had come flying out of Allie’s mouth in her fury. She said Vince wasn’t just possessive, he was psychotic. She said Vince wasn’t in love with Jillian and that he patronized her in front of people. She said he was arrogant and conniving and that he’d intoxicated Jillian with all sorts of perks, and that soon he’d get sick of the game and drop her like a hot coal. “Don’t you get it, Jillian? Money is a wild card that can make a joker look like a king. Is it worth it to you? Don’t you see the way he gawks at other women when you’re standing right in front of him?”