Even So

by Lauren B. Davis

  “So, Angela,” said Eileen, “other than the fact you like to garden, and are so very good at it, I don’t know that much about you.”

  Angela patted her mouth with her paper napkin. “Ah, not much to tell, really. Mother to Connor, seventeen, about to go off to university, wife … not much at all.”

  “What’s your husband’s name?”

  “Philip.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “We used to work together in the city. A workplace romance. He wanted to move here. He’s from here originally. There’s something about Princeton that makes people return. I can’t imagine wanting to live in the town where I grew up.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Cold Spring, up the Hudson.”

  “Pretty place.”

  “I suppose. I didn’t grow up in the pretty section. What about you, where are you from?”

  “The Jersey Shore.” Eileen laughed. “Not the pretty section.”

  Angela’s head did a quick little tilted jerk. “Really? What was that like?”

  “Being by the sea is always good for the soul. But we were poor, as were all our neighbours or, if not poor, then only slightly above. Good Catholics all, with lots of kids. Life centred around the church. Too much drinking. Petty crime. We loved hard and worked hard and played hard. Much to admire and much to overcome.” Eileen scooped up some of her jasmine rice and broccoli. “The food is so good, isn’t it?”

  “Did you always want to be a nun?”

  “Not always. But close enough. There were a number of people surprised I wanted to become a nun.”

  “Why?”

  Eileen put her fork down. How much to tell, she wondered? How much to share. Sharing built bonds, didn’t it? “I was abused by a priest,” she said. “Several kids in my family were. My aunt, you see, she was a housekeeper at the rectory. She would bring us kids over to meet the fathers.”

  “She knew?”

  “She more than knew.”

  “Holy shit. Pardon me. So … why the hell did you want to become a nun after that?” Angela had stopped eating.

  Eileen raised her chin and said, “I wasn’t going to let those bastards take my faith away from me. I’m not going to say it didn’t take a long time to learn to forgive and let it go. Frankly, without God, I don’t think I ever would have been able to do it. I think I would have ended up bitter and dissatisfied and angry my whole life.”

  Angela pushed her fish around the plate with the tines of her fork for a moment. “Wow. Well, you have my admiration. Truly.”

  The restaurant was crowded with people now, buzzing with the noise of conversation and dinnerware, Eileen felt as though she and Angela were in the centre of a hushed vortex, making a chapel of their table. She let the pause between them lengthen, and with her breath she tried to inhale the presence of the holy.

  Angela said, “I wish I had that sort of clarity. I’ve been plagued with bitterness and dissatisfaction and anger with myself from time to time.” Her eyes flickered to Eileen’s face and then away again. She straightened, smoothed her napkin across her knees, and chuckled. “Pay no attention to me. Probably hormones. Isn’t it always?”

  “No,” said Eileen, “I don’t think so, not always. I think sometimes our discomfort is a kind of guide, pointing out places where unhealed old wounds still lurk.”

  Angela’s eyebrows twitched up and back. She took a bite of her fish. Chewed and swallowed. “Oh, who isn’t a mass of wounds, lurking or otherwise?”

  “My faith teaches me to go to God for healing.”

  “I’d like to believe that, Sister, but I admit I’m not sure I do. I mean yes, of course, faith heals, or it can, but if I know what I need … to be healed, or happy or whatever … isn’t the same as what God wants, well, what’s a girl to do? What do you do if you know, I mean deep down in your gut, that the way you’re living is just wrong, that it will … you know … crush you?”

  “Is that the way you feel?”

  Angela checked her watch, trying unsuccessfully to make it look as though she were adjusting it on her wrist. “No, not really. I’m just speaking hypothetically, I guess. Everyone feels like that from time to time, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they sure do.” Eileen put her hands in her lap, clasped them. She sensed Angela was close to a fork in the road. Which would she choose? How could Eileen help bring the clarity of Christ’s love to her, especially when she wasn’t exactly basking in it herself?

  “What our tradition tells us,” she said, “is that we are most at peace when we are in a state of non-resistance, of pure trust in God’s will for us because, being in relationship with God means we know the only thing at stake is our well-being.”

  “So, even nuns balk now and then, huh?”

  “Like mules, now and again.” Eileen grinned.

  Angela laughed, and then so did Eileen, and for that moment they were simply two women sharing a joke and it felt right.

  “Ornery old mules,” Eileen said, who understood the time was not quite right, that Angela was not quite ready for whatever God had in mind for her. “Still, guess who wins every time? It’s just a question of how long it takes and how much pain I want to put myself through.”

  The door opened and closed as the customers began to leave. The clock on the wall said after two. It was quieter in the restaurant now, most of the sounds coming from the kitchen, the muffled clank of pots and pans and running water.

  Eileen said, “Is there anything you’d like to talk about? I’m here to help.”

  With a short, sharp motion, Angela pulled in her chin and frowned. “You want to help me?”

  “Do you want a coffee? Do you have time?”

  “Why would you think I need help? Help with what?”

  “Everyone needs someone to listen occasionally.”

  Angela folded her napkin and placed it on top of the scraps left on her plate. She looked at her watch again and her skin was flushed. Her laugh sounded forced. “Listen, Sister, I’m fine. There are lots of women who come into the Pantry who need help. You know how hard their lives are — often raising kids by themselves; or working two jobs for little money, and their husbands as well; lousy schools, mass incarceration of their men — I don’t have to tell you.”

  “Oh, no, it is hard. Poverty might be no great shame, but it sure isn’t a great honour either, as Tevye, the great Jewish philosopher once said.”

  “Well, I’m sure there are lots of people who’d love to have you help them. God, is it two-thirty already? I’ve got to run.”

  “I feel I’ve said something I shouldn’t have.”

  “Not at all. Of course not. This has been fun. We should do it again.”

  “I’d like that, very much. You’re such a bright light, Angela. People are attracted to you and you just seem to put them at ease. It’s a lovely gift to have.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Angela was gathering her things. The meals had been paid for before they sat down — one ordered at the counter and settled the bill before sitting down — so there was nothing keeping them. Angela said, “Are you going back to the Pantry? We’ll walk back together? I’ve got to get home and shower and change. I’ve got a dinner tonight and I really need to freshen up. Can’t go to dinner looking like this, can I? I mean, it’s nothing special, just dinner, but still. I look like a farmhand. What am I saying, nothing wrong with being a farmhand, for heaven’s sake.”

  They left and walked the short walk back to the Pantry, where Angela had parked her car in the lot across the street. Eileen nattered on about how wonderful the garden was. Finally, Eileen said, “Can we plan on another lunch, then? When are you here next? Early next week, maybe?”

  Angela blinked and for a moment looked puzzled. “I’m not sure. I know I’m here Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday it is, then.”

  “Let’s leave it loose. Can we do that? I’ll have to see how much work needs to be done. I’m on the intake that day and should do a bit in the gar
den after, I’m sure … but sure, you know, I’d like that. Sure.”

  And with that, Angela hugged her and crossed the street to her car.

  Eileen watched her go. Such a pretty woman. True, the first bloom of youth’s beauty had begun to fade, but it was replaced by something ripe and, yes, urgent. Beauty was not necessarily a gift. It came with its own temptations. Whereas a plain woman might struggle with feeling worthy or fearing she might never find love, she might be envious and bitter; a beautiful woman often struggled with self-centredness and a certain lack of empathy, not having had to deal with rejection the same as a plain woman would. It could make you blind, such beauty, such urgency. And blindness was dangerous.

  Angela

  Angela left the car in the driveway. As she walked to the house, something caught her eye, something small, an animal, lying at the side of the walkway. A kitten? No, a squirrel. Dead? Hit by a car most likely or picked up by a hawk and then dropped. She stopped to look, and as she did the animal twitched. It was lying on its side, and there was a gash in its shoulder. It raised a front paw just slightly. Perhaps it was all it could do, in its weakened state, to fend off what must seem like enormous, hulking danger. Could it be merely stunned, not too badly injured?

  As a little girl, Angela had rescued three baby squirrels whose mother the boy next door had killed with a BB gun. She’d fed them Pablum from dolls’ bottles and built a box cage with towels for them to nestle in. They had sat on her shoulders and on her head and she had loved them fiercely. She kept them all over the winter until the next spring when her mother said she really should let them go. They were wild things, her mother said, and deserved to live freely outside. And so, she had begun releasing them. She took them outside in the day and let them play in the trees in the back of the house. At the end of the day they followed her inside to sleep. And then, one by one, they stayed out for the night, coming back to be fed every morning, and then running off again. By the end of a month they came back only now and then, although they always chattered at her from the trees when she saw them, and she swore she could always tell her squirrels from any others.

  And now, here was this broken little creature. A flickering handkerchief of bright green blowflies had arrived, ready to lay their eggs. Angela waved her hand over the squirrel. Couldn’t they wait? It wasn’t even dead yet. The thought of these creatures, necessary to nature though they might be, burrowing in while the squirrel was still alive made her want to swat them away, to reprimand them. Foolish thoughts. The squirrel’s jaw moved. Its teeth were long and muddy. Its eye was still bright, staring at her as she fanned away the relentless blanket of flickering emeralds.

  Without making any clear decision about it, she reached into her tote and pulled out a couple of tissues. As gently as she could, she lifted the squirrel. The paw moved again. The eyes looked at her. There was no blood. Only that shoulder gash, which didn’t seem too terrible. Perhaps he (she thought of it as “he” now) could be saved. She would put him in a box lined with towels. She would see if he would take food and water. In the morning, if he lived, she could take him to a vet.

  A car slowed. She turned. Her neighbour, Diane, rolled down the window.

  “You okay, Angie?”

  “Yes. It’s a squirrel. It’s been hurt.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to pick that dirty thing up. Rats with fluffy tails is all.” The woman laughed.

  Angela thought she might look demented. The tiny animal was curled and warm in her hands. She didn’t care if she looked mad.

  “I don’t mind. I can’t leave it here to suffer.”

  “Okay then. Long as you’re all right.”

  She walked up the walk to the door as quickly as she could, trying not to jostle her tiny charge. Inside the door she stood for a moment, not sure what to do. Should she leave the squirrel alone while she got a box and towels? What if it suddenly woke up? She looked down at it. Yes, still breathing. Maybe sleeping. She carried the creature into the kitchen. Irina, her cleaning lady stood at the sink, cleaning the oven grill.

  “I have a little problem,” said Angela. Irina was from Poland. What did Poles think about squirrels?

  “What have you got there?” Irina came over, wiping her hands and blowing a damp tendril of grey-blond hair out of her eyes. “Oh, poor thing. What happen?”

  “I don’t know. I found it near the walk.”

  “Huh. Maybe best to leave outside? Or you want to drown it? Might be kind. Give to me. I do it.”

  “No! I thought it might get better. Maybe. I don’t know. If we let it rest, fed it or something.”

  Irina rubbed her arm. “Okay then. Well. Do we have shoebox?”

  “There’s a plastic storage bin in the broom closet. The vacuum attachments are in it. That would do. And maybe some towels?”

  “I go get.”

  Angela shrugged off her tote and sat, placing the squirrel on the table.

  The squirrel’s sides moved, but only ever so slightly. Oh, don’t die, don’t die. God, protector of the small creatures, of all the wild wood, don’t let this little one suffer. With two fingers she caressed its back, stroking gently, whispering reassurances that all would be well, that he was safe now. The fur was so soft, like eiderdown. Feathers. Angels. Oh, of course he was going to die. There was nothing she could do. A little water. She did not want a creature in her care to die thirsty, and who knew how long it had lain out there in the hot sun. A tea towel. She ran it under cool water and rolled it up. Dripped a little into the animal’s mouth. Did the jaw move? Perhaps slightly.

  Irina came in with towels and the plastic box. “How it doing?”

  “Oh, Irina, I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  Irina looked at it and pressed her lips together. “No, dear. Probably not.”

  “Do you think I could pick him up?”

  Irina put her arm around her. “I don’t think it hurt.”

  Angela slid her hands under the little body and cradled it, watching its chest move, almost imperceptibly.

  Irina, a devoted Catholic, said, “I say little prayer.” She spoke some words in Polish and then, “Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Angela.

  Angela’s throat was tight. She recognized the sensitivity of the older woman, and it surprised her and loosened something in her heart. With the loosening came tears. Tears for all the small things, for all the fragile things, for all the things broken beyond repair. The squirrel twitched. Oh, little one, are you dying? The paws seemed to reach out for something, and then, the eyes, they became liquid first, and then still. And it was over. Gone. “He’s died, I think. I think he’s dead.”

  Irina’s hand lay on Angela’s shoulder. “There is a power,” she said, “a grace in witnessing.”

  The kitchen was quiet but for the ticking of the wall clock. Outside the window, in the garden, one of the wrens who had come to nest in the blue ceramic egg-shaped house hanging from the porch roof, as they did every spring, began to sing. Trilling, loud, exultant, celebratory. Such a big voice from such a tiny body. It never ceased to amaze Angela. She chose now to think it was singing for the soul of the squirrel, singing it on its journey, for she believed in such things, and believed that animals, too, were welcomed home at death. After all, St. Francis had raised his pet lamb and pet trout from the dead and called them by their names after they died. Only the most arrogant humans would think God cared more for them than for the other creatures with whom they shared the world. The wren stopped singing.

  Irina asked, “You want to bury him? You can’t just put him in garbage.”

  “No, of course not. Yes, I’ll bury him. I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll help,” said Irina. “And then we will have tea, tea with lots of sugar.”

  They buried the squirrel, and Angela left him in the care of the God of the Wild Wood, as she thought of it, although of course it was just a corner of the garden, between an old rhododendron and a butterfly bush. But it was a pretty place, sha
ded and sheltered. When they were done, she sat on the deck drinking the well-sweetened tea Irina brought her.

  She hoped she hadn’t frightened the squirrel more. What must it have felt, in such a strange world, surrounded by giants, if it was even aware? It had seemed to settle in her hands, and although perhaps it was only giving up, she hoped it had been able to tell it would be, for those last minutes, cared for, loved even. Nature was red of tooth and claw and the lion was forever at the neck of the antelope. What was one to glean from that?

  THE RESTAURANT WAS ITALIAN, an old, well-known spot. The tables were covered in linen, and the candlelight softened everyone’s faces. Angela and Carsten sat in a corner. Carsten had told the waiter they wanted a table where they could talk undisturbed, which was a moment when she could have turned around and changed everything that came after, but she did no such thing. Instead, she ducked her head like a shy virgin and blushed.

  A waitress arrived, no more than twenty-five, with a skirt the size of a belt and legs longer than all Angela’s insecurities laid end to end. She brought a bottle of wine, of good vintage, and poured them each a glass.

  Carsten drank deeply. “Oh, yes,” he said. Like Angela, he had taken a shower after work, and must have splashed some cologne on, because she could smell it, the scent of wood and spice and chocolate. “Good,” he said. “Like you. Better than good.”

  Angela picked up her glass and then put it down. She would not tell him about the squirrel. She was afraid he might laugh at her or think her too sentimental. She ran her finger around the wineglass rim, knowing it was a foolish and staged gesture. She asked, “What are we doing here?”

  “What do you want to do?”