The other day he found a box of his wife’s colors and brushes in the cabinet below the kitchen sink and sometimes, when he is feeling particularly brave or inspired or foolish, he thinks about adding a few strokes of watercolor to his images. He goes to the sink and hunches down and stares at the paints between the pipes for several long minutes. Then he shoves the cabinet door shut and retreats to his office, where he shuts that door, too, and he rests his head on the desk and waits for the feeling to pass.
He cannot bear to touch the paints, or the perfume, or the pearls that are left still coiled on the armoire. He cannot bear to open the closet door and see her coats or her dresses and so he does not open it at all. He wears button-down shirts and corduroy slacks from his dresser and sometimes he wishes for his tweed blazer but it is in the closet and so what is there to do? He must live without it. What is one more loss, he wants to know, among so many?
Life is one big disappearing act. Things vanish all the time.
That was the whole idea of it, anyway, that was why he had been driven to the study of this art in the first place. As he watched her coffin being lowered into the ground he had not been able to stand the thought of his wife lying in it alone. He had imagined himself inside it with her, and his dreams for weeks afterward had been nightmares, visions of entrapment in small dark spaces. He would wake right as his dream-self was on the verge of suffocation, and he would fling himself away from his pillow, his chest heaving, his nightshirt soaked with sweat.
Escape does not come as easily to him as illusion, however, and so far his efforts to free himself have been more difficult, more strenuous than they should be. What is he missing? He leaves his daughter and wanders back into his study, to sit himself down with his books and his drawings, to study again his sketches of the locks and the knots.
She follows him. He leans forward in his chair, suddenly too exhausted to work, his head slowly sinking down toward his desk. She stands towering behind him. She places her hand on his shoulder, curls her fingers around the knobby bones jutting through his sleeve. When did he become so small?
“You’re not the only one who misses her,” she says. He doesn’t answer. His elbow is crooked on top of a leather-bound book, his forehead resting on his forearm. His daughter hopes that he will fall asleep.
She pauses for a moment, listening to the rhythm of his breathing, and then she turns toward the door, leaving his study and heading back through the cramped, low-ceilinged hallway to the kitchen, the living room, the dining room. She examines the entire house with her surgical eye in an effort to determine exactly how well he is coping on his own. The bedroom is dark and stale. From the doorway she looks toward the rounded oak armoire, its mirror reflecting the backs of pewter-framed photographs lined in rows across its surface. In the gloom she can see the quilt folded neatly at the foot of the bed, the sheets smoothed across the pillow. She steps closer to inspect the corners—tucked the way that her mother (and only her mother) knew how to tuck them. When her father made beds, the sheets were always arranged with quick and crumpled distraction. His end result looked like the work of someone impatient, someone who felt that he had better things to do with his time.
“Hey,” she calls out. When there is no answer, she returns to the study to find her father still bent over his desk. “Hey,” she says. “I was just in the bedroom. Have you—have you not been sleeping in there?”
He abruptly lifts his head and begins to turn the pages of his book. He doesn’t look up. “I sleep on the couch,” he says. “I don’t sleep in that room anymore.”
“But listen, Papa—”
“April, you don’t understand. In thirty years I never slept alone in that room. I’ll be damned if I do it now.”
He reaches for his pencil, lifts it and holds it poised above the text. “You can stay for lunch if you like,” he says. “I’ll join you in a few minutes. Let me finish looking over this first.”
There is a painful, protracted silence, and then her footsteps echo down the hall and into the kitchen. After a moment he hears the sound of running water, a pot being filled and set to boil on the stove. While she opens the refrigerator, removes something from the vegetable drawer and begins to chop, he turns again to his work.
In this house, where everything reminds him of his wife, the walls are closing in on him daily. Sometimes he imagines that the ceilings are sinking in with sadness, the furniture creaking beneath the weight of his ghosts. He feels trapped, and stifled, and old. White rabbits, flames, flowers, capes—the tricks are all well and good, but what he needs now is something more than the paltry task of slipping out of knots or fiddling with cuffs. He needs something much grander, more thrilling. He needs something that will get him out of here for good.
eleven
The rafters of the church are full of songbirds.
Noah’s wife can see the townspeople watching them with some unease as they enter the church and choose their places. The birds swoop and dive, protecting their nests and trying to drive the crowd of waterlogged intruders from pews that have so long been empty. Noah’s wife waves an arm to shoo the boldest of them away, while Mauro grins and slips into a seat beside her.
“Like bats out of heaven!” he declares.
She smiles faintly. To tell the truth, she had not expected to see Mauro here; she had worried, in fact, that no one from the town would come at all. She has spent the past week tacking flyers all over the lampposts downtown, but the ink runs in the rain and within hours the paper is too soggy to stay in place. Yesterday she and Noah staked out a booth in the diner so that he could approach everyone who ventured in. She loves to see him at his work, loves to watch the color flood his high cheeks when he throws his shoulders back and moves abruptly to the counter when a new arrival takes a seat. As she waited in their booth in the back, she could hear him speaking in low, fervent tones, alternately gesturing toward the hill and running his fingers through his beard. She ordered cup after cup of coffee, sometimes interspersed with pastries, and after a while she leaned back in her seat and gazed outside, watching the umbrellas parading past the windows.
Mrs. McGinn scowled at them both from behind the counter, but she didn’t do anything to stop them; and while her neighbors patiently permitted Noah to finish talking up the service, none of them seemed particularly interested or pleased. Their faces remained the same ashen gray they always were, and Noah’s wife watched them slide into their booths with the usual resignation and indifference that she has come to expect from them. She has issued numerous invitations to dinner over the past few weeks (Noah asked her to do so), but as of yet no one has accepted. Part of her worried—although she did not say this to Noah—that his church would be as empty as his dining room.
She is glad to have been mistaken, relieved when the first congregants come sloshing through the entryway while she is arranging flowers on the altar. She is grateful that all of Noah’s hard work over the past month seems to have paid off, and that there are people here besides herself and Leesl who can admire as they enter how the building gleams. Once they step inside, the red wooden doors of the entrance swing open into the lobby that precedes the nave. The floor is laid with interlocking slabs of granite, and a narrow aisle runs between the pews down toward the threadbare carpet of the altar. The stained-glass windows have been washed and their cracks have been caulked; the ornate metal light fixtures, drifting from the rafters on bronze chains, have been cleaned and repaired. Noah has patched the roof, repainted the walls, rewired the fans, and built a new pulpit. The church is warm and well-lit, and as Noah’s wife arranges herself and her belongings in the first pew, she has the distinct feeling of coming home.
The townspeople keep coming. By the time Noah steps out from his office and rounds the bend in front of the altar, the pews are nearly packed. His wife watches his long, familiar gait with the same attentiveness she always shows, and so it is probably only she who notices his slight stumble at the base of the carpeted steps. He righ
ts himself quickly, and as Leesl begins the first hymn he makes his way to the chair behind the pulpit with his customary grace. When he trips over the first words of the liturgy, she chalks it up to eagerness—and by the time he ducks his shaggy head in prayer, he seems to have hit his stride.
It is her favorite thing to hear him preach. The first time she ever went to hear him was the first time she had set foot in a church in her life. She was struck by the majesty of the experience, by the sound of a hundred different voices swelling in song, by the light that streamed through to the altar and the fabulous stories spelled out in stained glass. She remembers her surprise when Noah told her afterward, over fresh fruit and powdered doughnuts in the church basement, that it was not his personal choice to become a preacher; sometimes he thinks he would have liked to be an architect or an opera singer. Instead, he is convinced that the church is tied up in his fate, that he was born to it or called to it the way that her best friend believes that she is called to medicine and Noah’s wife believes that she herself is called to Noah.
“Called to me?” Noah had repeated when she told him this, shortly after their marriage. He seemed to worry that the thought was somehow sacrilegious. “What do you mean?”
How to explain it to him? She likes to hear him speak about the forces that are at work in the universe, about the great plan that she, too, is a part of even if she doesn’t fully understand it. It was reassuring to feel, when she married him, as though her path had been predetermined.
During the first hymn she looks around to see who is singing. Most of her neighbors are paging confusedly through their hymnals as if they cannot find the correct page; others are sitting with the books unopened beside them, gazing sternly forward. One older man is clipping his fingernails several rows behind her. She hears people muttering to one another, their eyes on Noah and their mouths curled in smirks. When they notice her watching them, they stare back until her cheeks turn scarlet and she spins to face the altar. Only a handful of people near the back are singing, and Noah’s wife feels so anxious about the meager performance that she parts her lips and tries to join them. She has never been a good singer (this is yet another talent her mother tried to foster), and when her voice cracks, someone laughs.
Thankfully, the song finally ends and Noah returns to the pulpit. Noah’s wife slams her hymnal shut, dizzy with relief. She knows that he had worried over which readings to include for this first service, and she is curious to find out what he chose.
“Look at the birds of the air,” Noah declares from the pulpit, tossing one arm toward the ceiling. A swallow dives as if on cue, and the people who are nearest cover their heads. “For they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
Noah’s wife gazes up in admiration. She knows this passage well; it was his grandmother’s favorite. Noah told her how, when he was growing up, his grandmother used to offer the children nickels for every verse that they could memorize. Although his siblings had no interest in the task, Noah made a fortune every summer.
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow,” he continues. His voice is resonant, assured. “They neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
The passage, Noah’s wife recalls, is about the futility of worry and the promise that the Lord will provide. She remembers visiting Noah’s grandmother in the hospital when the woman was in the final stages of her dementia, a year or two into the marriage. Her fingers were yellow and brittle where they clutched the sheets, and the wrinkles hung over her features like a fishnet. But her eyes were shrewd and blue, and her grip was strong. She clutched at Noah’s arm as he leaned in to kiss her forehead, and when she moved her hand away there were thumbprints in his skin. In one of her last lucid moments, she quoted this passage to Noah, who sat on the edge of the bed and recited it with her. “Therefore do not worry,” they said to each other, their voices low and comforting, “saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? … For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” Noah’s wife, perched on a wooden chair in the corner of the room, had been so moved by the scene that she had gone home and spent the evening memorizing the passage herself so that the next time they visited Noah’s grandmother she would be able to take part. But the old woman died before Noah’s wife had the chance to share this with her, and for several years the verses have lain dormant in her mind. Noah has not spoken them aloud again until now.
“Therefore,” he concludes, “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” He clears his throat. “Now, let us pray.”
Noah’s wife beams up at her husband, reflecting his glow. Leave it to Noah to come up with the perfect passage to calm his neighbors’ nerves, to reassure them as he has always reassured her. She bows her head obediently and waits to hear his prayer, but before he can say another word, someone else speaks.
“Objection,” a woman’s voice declares.
There is the rustling of one hundred raincoats as all the townspeople twist in their pews to locate the cause of the interruption. Startled, Noah’s wife turns with them to see Mrs. McGinn standing in the middle of the back row, her orange curls wild and her blouse untucked.
“Excuse me?” says Noah. He squints at her, baffled.
“Objection!” she repeats with overdramatic flair. It is clear that she has practiced this.
“That’s not—” starts Noah. He pauses and considers her, reaching for his beard. “I’m not sure what other services you’ve been to, but objections are not quite appropriate here.”
“Aren’t they?” she demands. “Well, I’ve got some either way. What I want to know is—what sort of advice are you trying to give us? Do not worry? Take no thought unto tomorrow? What are we supposed to do with that?”
Noah shifts uneasily at the pulpit. “I know you have suffered a great deal,” he acknowledges, quickly turning his head from one side to another in an attempt to make eye contact with as many of his congregants as possible. “But with patience and endurance I believe that your town can make it through these trying times. The passage—it’s about having faith that you will not be given more than you can bear, faith that God will be watching over you. It’s about trusting that the Lord will always provide.”
Mrs. McGinn emits a bark of false laughter. “I am not a very religious woman, Minister,” she tells Noah. “But if I believe anything, it’s that God helps those who help themselves.”
There is a murmur of agreement from the congregation. Noah’s wife stares at them with growing concern. No one seems all that surprised to hear Mrs. McGinn speaking, and Noah’s wife cannot help but wonder if this had been at least partly planned. Is that why so many people turned up for the service? Did the town matriarch put them up to this?
“The reason why we’re here today is because we’ve got some questions that need answering,” Mrs. McGinn says grimly, her voice carrying clear through the rafters. “If your God is watchful and good, if He listens to the prayers of His people and cares for their welfare like He does for the lilies and the birds—well, then why is it still raining? Why is it still raining here, when we asked your God to make it stop?”
Noah’s wife pulls her attention away from Mrs. McGinn—it is difficult to do so, as that woman really can command a room—and looks to her husband, confident that he will have an answer. He always has an answer. But instead of stepping forward, he seems to fall back. His head drops toward his shoulders, making him look smaller than before.
“It doesn’t mean God hasn’t heard,” he says, his voice weaker than it was when he was reciting his verses. “That’s too simplistic. There are forces at work we aren’t aware of, there are plans that are so much greater than our own. T
he direct answer that you’re looking for—that isn’t how God works.”
“Please, Minister,” says Mauro. He stands now, too, and Noah’s wife leans half an inch away from him. “If He is not answering prayers, then how is your God working?”
“Yes,” murmur others behind Noah’s wife. She frowns at them. She hears them complaining all the time about the bumbling Italian, but they are certainly agreeing with him now. “Then how is your God working?” they repeat.
“And the old minister,” calls the town sheriff from near the back. “What happened to him, anyway?”
“Was it an accident or not?” queries the librarian.
“Did it happen because he was unhappy with the rain?” someone else suggests.
“Aren’t all of you unhappy in the rain?” demands the weatherman, trying to capitalize on their discontent. He catches the eye of Noah’s wife before she is able to look away. She had not noticed when he came in.
“Why did it start raining in the first place?” asks a twiglike teenage girl. Before her father hushes her, she asks another. “Is this supposed to be a punishment for something?”
“What would it be punishment for?” growls Mrs. McGinn’s husband, banging a hymnal onto the pew in front of him with more force than necessary. There is a splintering sound, and those who are closest to him start edging cautiously away. “What the hell have we done wrong?”
“Don’t you think that God is telling us to get out of here?” demands Mrs. McGinn’s daughter with a scowl at her stepfather. Her mother spins and glares, but the girl glances at the zookeeper and presses forward with her point. “Before it’s too late?”
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