And After the Fire

by Lauren Belfer

  At St. George’s Church, Amsterdam and Ninety-ninth Street, Susanna sat in the book-filled office of the Reverend Karen Duncan. Karen’s dark blond hair, worn loose, reached her waist, and despite her clerical clothes, Karen seemed more like a retro hippie than a devout religious professional. She was heavily pregnant. In addition to being the pastor of St. George’s, Karen taught at the Peabody Seminary and was the administrator of Susanna’s apartment building. As head of the tenants’ committee, Susanna was about to go through its list of concerns. To avoid bringing discord into the peace of the seminary close, Susanna and Karen held their every-other-month meeting in Karen’s office.

  “How are you feeling?” Susanna asked.

  “Ready for this pregnancy to be over,” Karen said, laughing. The baby, due in three weeks, dominated her body. This would be her second child. “Still, it’s worth it. Just barely.”

  “I’m sorry to take up your time with my constituency’s issues.”

  “I’m happy for any distraction.”

  “In that case, glad to be of service. First: the heat. There’s too much heat on the upper floors and not enough heat on the lower floors.”

  “Too much heat, not enough, the story of my days. These old buildings. The engineers assure me that they’re planning a new system of thermostats for the entire seminary complex.”

  “When will that be, do you think? I don’t mean to press, but the tenants will demand to know.”

  “I’ll confirm a date and e-mail you.” Karen made a note on her yellow pad.

  “And our heating problems right now?”

  “I’ll arrange for an engineer to visit as soon as possible.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll have the engineer be in touch with you directly.”

  “Thank you. Next: apartment 2A continues to have a water leak under the kitchen sink, reported two weeks ago and still unaddressed . . .” And so it went, through the checklist. Finally, “Now about the garbage.”

  “You always save the garbage for last.”

  “Seems appropriate. As you know, 1B has approached the maintenance department repeatedly about whether the garbage bins beneath their windows can be moved.” A new tenant was an amateur chef, and his culinary experiments made for exceptionally odoriferous garbage.

  “The tenants have my permission to move the garbage bins anywhere they deem appropriate, except into the garden itself. I’ll let the maintenance staff know, so they can adjust accordingly.”

  “Thank you. Also, we’d like the garbage picked up every other day, not every three days.”

  “Agreed.” Karen noted it. “Garbage is among my easiest challenges.”

  “For me, too.” Susanna closed her notebook. She had another meeting to go to, but today she felt a need to reach beyond the mundane conversations that she and Karen usually shared. No one seemed to be waiting for Karen’s time. Over the past months of coming here, Susanna had often wondered about Karen’s calling, if that was the right way to describe her faith and her profession. “Forgive me for asking, Karen, and please don’t answer if you prefer not to, but what made you decide to become a minister?”

  “A priest. Episcopalians use the word priest. And your question is an easy one. I wanted to serve God.”

  Susanna must have looked skeptical without intending to, because Karen added, “Really. I did. And I do. Serve God. Everything seems simple to me.”

  “Forgive me again for being frank, but you actually do believe all of this?” Susanna motioned to the crucifix on the wall behind Karen’s desk, and to the theology books lining the shelves. “I just want to understand.”

  “I’m happy to talk about it. I know some people struggle—I know because they tell me—but I never have.”

  “What about . . . evil, for lack of a better word? Rape, murder, the Holocaust?”

  “I believe that God suffers along with humanity. And you?”

  “Pardon?” Susanna asked.

  “Are you familiar with the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel? He said God loves his people so much that He, too, suffers for their actions.”

  Susanna didn’t know anything about Abraham Heschel beyond his name, and judging from Karen’s description, Susanna thought his beliefs sounded far-fetched, an attempt to get God off the hook. “I wasn’t raised with faith. It isn’t part of my frame of reference.”

  “That’s sad,” Karen said with what sounded like genuine pity.

  “Perhaps.” Susanna shrugged. “Some years ago, when I lived on the Upper West Side, a young woman was murdered a few blocks from my apartment. Stabbed to death by a man who was insane. At the memorial service in a nearby church, I think it was Episcopalian, the priest said, don’t worry, she’s happy, she’s in heaven and looking down at us. Was that supposed to make everyone feel better?”

  “I remember when that happened,” Karen said.

  “Do you think the priest really believed that the murdered woman was literally looking down from heaven and that she was happy? Or did he mean it as a metaphor?”

  Karen didn’t answer, instead gazing out the window at the winter-bare garden. The sun was behind the clouds. “I believe the woman was in a better place. Is in a better place, looking down from eternity. Her suffering is over.” Karen was silent. Then, “What brought you to our community, beyond the great apartment?”

  An urge came over Susanna to test Karen, to see if Karen could give her any consolation. “A few years ago, I was raped. Right on my own block on the Upper West Side. My husband couldn’t handle it, and our marriage broke up.”

  Karen studied her. “I’m so sorry. That isn’t what I expected to hear.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I’m not certain. But not violence.”

  “I thought the seminary close would bring me a sense of safety,” Susanna said.

  “Has it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  “There’s a gate and a twenty-four-hour guard.”

  “That, too,” Karen said with her easy laughter.

  Susanna rose. She felt embarrassed, as if she’d challenged Karen unfairly. She wanted the conversation to end. “I need to get to another appointment.”

  “Take a minute to look at the sanctuary on your way out. Our Tiffany windows are back. We missed them during the renovation. If the sun comes out again, they’ll be gorgeous at this hour.”

  “Will do,” Susanna said. “See you at home.”

  “Thanks for coming uptown.”

  “My fellow tenants and I appreciate your time.”

  After these courtesies, Susanna left Karen’s office. She walked along the Victorian-Gothic passageway, with its vaulted ceiling, that led to the sanctuary. Her footsteps echoed against the stone floor. When she entered the sanctuary, the windows were dark. She sat in a pew halfway back.

  If she’d believed in God, would God have stopped the man from choosing her to rape beside the garbage cans? Or was the fact that the man didn’t also murder her a sign of God’s mercy?

  The questions were absurd. Dark thoughts spiraled: she’d never fully recover from the rape. Never find someone to share her life. She’d lose her job.

  As she sat in the pew and looked around the sanctuary, sunlight gradually spread across the stained glass. The windows seemed ablaze. It was the most beautiful sight Susanna had ever seen. It filled her with a perception of hope and promise. Basking in it, she began to cry.

  She heard footsteps behind her, but she didn’t turn. More footsteps followed. A whispered conversation.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Susanna, are you all right?”

  She looked up. It was Karen, concerned. Behind Karen was an array of white-haired church ladies, uniformly worried. Ten steps back, a muscled security guard regarded her with sympathy. As if they were surprised by her reaction. Susanna would have expected that any person seeing the sun pouring through these stained-glass windows for the first time, or the hundre
dth time, would dissolve into tears.

  “Oh, for goodness sake.” She’d almost said for God’s sake, but she caught herself. She managed to speak lightly, showing that she was fine, they shouldn’t worry, she was coping, she could even be whimsical: “Honestly, can’t anyone cry around here in peace?”

  “How about the top letter? Can you read that one for me?” said Jessie Fuller, optometrist. Jessie was about Susanna’s age, her hair done in cornrows with multicolored beads. She wore a white lab coat, yet with her relaxed manner, she seemed wrapped in an aura of fun.

  “E,” said Monique, a fidgety second grader in a red plaid jumper, her chin-length black hair falling straight around her face.

  “How about the second row?”

  Monique sat on her hands. “F and P.”

  “Great job! Now the third row.”

  She leaned forward, squinting. “D, O, T.”

  The third row was T, O, and Z.

  “Let’s skip to the fifth row.”

  “You’re playing a trick on me—there isn’t a fifth row.”

  “Okay, we’ll figure out if I’m playing a trick or not.”

  Susanna stood in the gym of an elementary school in Washington Heights. Today eighty second graders were having their eyes checked and were being fitted with glasses, if necessary. The kids were brought to the gym in small groups, and while they waited their turns, they played tag or jumped rope. After Jessie determined the need for corrective lenses, her colleague, Mrs. Ortega, showed the kids the choice of frames.

  The Barstow Foundation paid for everything from the initial exam to the finished glasses.

  “Now I’m going to use this big weird machine to test different lenses on you.” The machine dwarfed Monique as Jessie moved it toward her. “It’s called a phoropter. I have to take a long time with each person, and everyone has to sit very still.”

  Monique seemed to disappear behind the phoropter. Her feet, in pink sneakers, moved back and forth, up and down, as if they were dancing.

  “Can you have a contest with your feet, to see which one can stay still the longest?”

  “I can try.” Monique pressed her feet against the chair.

  While Jessie tested different lenses, Susanna remembered her own first pair of glasses. She was eight years old when her teacher said that she needed to have her eyes checked. Evelyn took an afternoon off from work, and they went to a shop on Hertel Avenue. Susanna’s eyes were checked by an optometrist who patiently cajoled her to sit still. The following week, Evelyn and Susanna returned. The optometrist handed Susanna a pair of glasses and checked the fit when she put them on. Now you can look out the window, he’d told her. Susanna looked—and the world outside went from being a blurry wash to being sharp. Clear. The leaves on the trees were like the pictures in science books. She could read the street signs. The view onto Hertel Avenue wasn’t anything remarkable, simply cars, small shops, grocery stores. It became remarkable because for the first time, Susanna could see the details.

  She’d been fortunate. Her vision problems were recognized and dealt with early. From that point on, the point when she could see, Susanna had loved school. She wore contact lenses now. Glasses had changed her life.

  “Which is better, this one—or,” Jessie said, switching the lens, “this one.”

  “Second one.”

  “And this one, or this one?”

  “They look the same,” Monique said.

  “Good. Now, take a look at the chart. Is there a line marked number five?”

  “Yes!”

  “So I wasn’t playing a trick. Number five is too easy for you now. Let’s skip down to the line marked number eight.”

  Monique read the letters.

  “Excellent. One hundred percent correct. Now we’ll do the other eye, from the beginning.” Jessie took Monique through the testing of the left eye.

  Studies showed that more than 20 percent of public school kids had uncorrected vision problems. How could kids learn if they couldn’t see?

  “Hold on just a minute more.” Pushing the phoropter away from Monique, Jessie double-checked the information on the machine and made notes. She put the required lenses into an awkward-looking metal frame. “We call this a trial frame,” Jessie said. “It gives me an exact idea of how your new glasses are going to work for you.”

  On Monique’s oval face, the contraption looked appropriate for characters in a horror movie.

  “Before I have you read the chart again,” Jessie said, “why don’t you look around the room.”

  Monique turned toward her friends playing jump rope on the far side of the gym. Her smile was tremendous. “Wow!”

  Exactly, Susanna thought.

  “Hi, Mr. Edgerton,” Susanna greeted the guard when she arrived at the seminary gate. She was still delighting in the look on Monique’s face when the girl first saw the world through corrective lenses.

  “Hello, miss.” Mr. Edgerton was from Jamaica and had old-school manners. His voice carried a lovely lilt. “I tell you, miss, this cold gets in my bones.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “I do believe you have a package.” He went into the office to retrieve it, and she followed him and signed the log for it.

  “I didn’t order anything,” she said, examining the box.

  “Someone’s sending you a present. I’m sure you receive a lot of those.”

  “Not as many as I’d like,” she joked.

  “Isn’t that true for all of us,” he said. “Except for my granddaughter. She has eight presents on her Christmas list this year, and I suspect she’s going to receive every one.”

  “And I suspect that you’ve already bought them for her.”

  He turned sheepish. “I’m up to six.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find the others.”

  “God knows I’m trying.”

  “Good luck with your shopping. And thanks for the package. See you tomorrow.”

  “Good night, miss.”

  As she made her way across the garden, toward the Victorian mansion that was her home, the sharp purity of the air and the crunching of snow underneath her feet reminded Susanna of the winters of her childhood.

  She heard an insistent voice inside herself: withdraw your threat to resign. Don’t take the risk. You could lose everything you’ve worked for. Life is a succession of compromises. Do what Rob wants. It’s his money, after all.

  Except it wasn’t his money. The money belonged to the foundation, and the foundation was for the children it helped. If she had to leave her job, she had enough savings to hold on to her apartment for about a year. Eventually she’d find another job. Wouldn’t she?

  Everything is going to be okay, she said to herself, repeating a kind of mantra she’d used in the days after the rape.

  She unlocked the mansion’s outside door. As she walked up the staircase, with its carved, wooden banister, she heard the muffled, comforting sounds of conversation, television, and music in other apartments. Their newest neighbor, the amateur chef, was cooking, and a tantalizing aroma filled the air . . . boeuf bourguignon, Susanna determined.

  Unlocking her front door, switching on the light, she did an automatic check: everything fine. Undisturbed since this morning.

  She went to the windows, closed the blinds, and pulled shut the curtains. She changed out of her business suit into leggings and a soft sweater. Her apartment was among the overheated ones, which she appreciated this evening. She opened the package that Mr. Edgerton had given her. Six Bach CDs from Daniel Erhardt . . . how generous and thoughtful. Straightaway she sent Dan an e-mail, saying she was grateful for his gift and would be back in touch after she’d listened to the discs.

  At random, she put on the CD of violin concertos. The music filled the room with a sense of unbridled joy that became her own as she went into the kitchen and contemplated dinner.

  Chapter 21

  Scott Schiffman pushed a book cart out of the elevator, through the vestibule, and toward the l
ower-level reading room of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. The cart held not only rare books but also several gray boxes of uncataloged materials. On top were his own manila file folders, organizing his research. This was his third day of work, and he was tired and frustrated. He’d taken an early lunch because the morning had seemed a year long, and he doubtless faced a similar afternoon. He was searching through undigitized collections of eighteenth-century German cantata poetry, hoping to authenticate the libretto used in Susanna’s cantata.

  The Beinecke was a hideous building. He wished an architectural critic would come out and admit it. From the outside, it looked like dozens of television sets arranged in a patchwork. The pseudo–TV screens were made from translucent marble. When the sun was shining and light poured through the marble, the interior, at least, was beautiful.

  Today the sun was not shining. On such a day as this, working at the Beinecke was like laboring in a futuristic bunker, especially because the reading room was underground.

  Because Scott had done his graduate work at Yale, and because he’d made it his business to ingratiate himself with the librarians (going to the extent of getting a part-time job here even though he didn’t need the money), he had special privileges when it came to research materials. He still had his staff ID. He didn’t have to wait in the reading room as others did, while librarians fetched requested materials. Instead, he found what he needed himself. In this way, he avoided the gnawing worry about whether the book or manuscript next to the one he’d requested was in fact the single book or manuscript that would answer every question and solve every problem. Even better, he was allowed to examine as-yet-uncataloged materials. This prospect had excited him when he began his career years ago. Sometimes it still did.

  The Yale libraries specialized in German literature, so theoretically this excursion could have productive results. Realistically, however, its main purpose was in the general effort to climb every mountain—alas, that saccharine song was stuck in his head. This past Sunday, during a snowstorm, he’d visited Rachel, the younger of his two sisters, her husband, and their children, Josie and Lily, ages nine and eleven respectively. The girls had forced him to watch a DVD of The Sound of Music. “Uncle Scott, you have to watch with us, you have to!” they’d said. He was unable to resist their demand. So he’d watched it with them. Twice.