The Monk Upstairs
Page 20
Rebecca met his eyes and saw at once that he knew. She wondered when he’d figured it out. It was like him, to have waited to bring it up until it seemed like a relief that he had.
She said, “Are you…okay, with that?”
“I have nothing whatsoever against Coke,” he said. “It’s the real thing. Things go better with it.”
“There’s still time to bolt, you know.”
There was a stir on the beach off to their left; the milling masses of the party were acquiring a kind of coherence. Sherilou, the high priestess of a coven Phoebe had befriended along the way, was marshaling everyone into some kind of spiral dance, with a consequent confusion of balloons. It was time, clearly, for the Spiritual part.
“I ran out of places to bolt, when I met you,” Mike said.
Chapter Fourteen
I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor kings, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor heights, nor depths,
will be able to separate us from the love of God.
ROMANS 8:38–39
By the time they got back, the spiral dance had run its course, the balloons had been untangled, and people were gathering along the edge of the water. Sherilou, her ceremonial blue gown hanging a little heavily on her now, soaked at the hem by a surprise wave, was issuing some final, crucial spiritual instructions, wisdom and insight, mercifully inaudible over the roar of the surf. The surfers had all come ashore except Rory, who sat placidly on his board beyond the breakers, holding the urn with Phoebe’s ashes in it. Rebecca met Mike’s eyes, and he smiled quietly. She knew they were thinking the same thing. Her mother had made it to the sea at last.
As they took their place in the crowd, Mary Martha ran over to them, her face pink with sun and still alight from the fun of the dance. She’d been drinking Coke too, Rebecca recognized, and there was going to be hell to pay at bedtime. But at least the kid was having fun at her grandmother’s funeral. She could recall her own grandfather’s wake and funeral; it still felt heavy in her stomach, like an undercooked dumpling. The vision of all the main grown-ups in her world in tears had been completely unnerving to her at age six, and she’d found comfort only in the spectacle of her grandfather’s cronies solemn and inscrutable in their Knights of Columbus uniforms, complete with swords. She had actually never seen Pop-Pop in his admiral’s outfit until he lay in his coffin, and it had given her one of her first glimpses of unsuspected realms of deep and exotic meaning in the lives of her familiar adults.
Mary Martha planted herself precisely between the two of them, cuddling up against their bodies, and Rebecca and Mike each put a hand on one of her shoulders. Bonnie and Bob came over too, with Bruiser, and then Chelsea, looking a little overwhelmed with both Bruno on his leash and Stu-J in her arms. Mike took Stu-J from her and hoisted the toddler up so that he could see. Rebecca hadn’t had a chance yet, with all the flurry, to tell Rory and Chelsea that Phoebe had remembered them somewhat spectacularly in her will. Stu-J had a college fund now.
The band kicked into a reggae-beat cover of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” It was supposed to be instrumental, but when the first chorus came around, everyone began to sing the lyrics anyway, spontaneously, and Rebecca’s arms tightened into gooseflesh. She had to smile at that. Her mother’s parties always managed a moment like this somehow, when all the things that more or less just gave Rebecca a headache had run their course and the holiness slipped in somehow, as if in spite of all their best efforts.
Rory sat on his board, turned sideways to the shore, waiting for his wave. He let several go by that seemed perfectly fine to Rebecca, but that was Rory. She remembered her mother’s first visit after Rory and Rebecca had gotten together. They had gone to the beach the first day, inevitably, and Phoebe and Rebecca had sat on a blanket while Rory surfed. It had been a slow day and Rory had spent hours just sitting out there, heedless and patient as a channel marker. Rebecca had been painfully conscious of what she feared her mother would take to be rudeness on her new boyfriend’s part, but at twenty-three she had been disinclined to make excuses for anything, and she had just let Phoebe make of Rory what she would. And so she and Phoebe had chatted, and shivered in the thin sun, and finally wrapped blankets around themselves; and still Rory had sat quietly waiting, until it had gone on so long that Rebecca couldn’t stand it anymore, and said to Phoebe apologetically, “He really isn’t doing this to be perverse.”
“You can’t force the ocean,” Phoebe had said placidly. “But thank God we brought wine.”
The first chorus ended, and the band settled into a lilting, unhurried jam. The crowd fell silent, a congregation of bobbing red balloons, straining slightly seaward with the mild onshore breeze. Back on the boardwalk, Rebecca saw that Officer Perkins had returned, right on schedule. He stood at the top of the steps, having apparently found the air sufficiently clear to let them be. He had taken off his hat, she noted.
Rory bobbed over another set of swells. Sherilou was trying to signal him to move things along, as if he’d missed a cue. Good luck, girl, Rebecca thought. But no one else was in a hurry at this point; and meanwhile, the hush of the waiting crowd was so sweet. It made Rebecca think of the quiet of the candlelit room through Phoebe’s last hours: a silence of fullness, edged with ache. She had known grief only as a kind of rage, and furious bafflement; it came easily to her that way. Or as despair, as something that ravaged, and as a defeat. But this was a grief of peace, slow and strong and sure and deep. It was like the quiet she felt in Mike’s arms, and the moment before the next brushstroke, and all the surprises of quiet in all the humblings of parenthood and friendship, the moments that flanked the tumult and stalemate of what you’d thought you knew and slipped free into fields of stillness. She couldn’t even say anymore where it had begun, whether in love or loss, in beauty or in pain. But it was there all the time now; she had only to stop for a moment to become aware of it, like earth or sky or the beat of her own heart. It was very strange, Rebecca thought, she really hadn’t seen it coming, but the emotion she had felt most deeply, in these raw days after her mother’s death, was gratitude.
A fresh set of waves came in, and Rory let one pass, and another, then turned to catch the third. He paddled hard, the urn between his knees, and came to his feet in one swift motion. The wave was breaking right to left, and as the swell gathered and began to curl he turned straight back up toward the crest and then cut sharply back and settled in to the ride, cleaving a glasscutter’s line along the smooth inner face of the curl, just ahead of the breaking edge. He had the urn in his hands now, the top gone; he lifted the container, and suddenly there was a thread of gray streaming behind him, like smoke from a hidden flame.
Mary Martha’s balloon slipped from her hand, dipped once in a gust of wind toward the breakers, then soared above the waves. Rebecca, who’d seen her daughter cry for hours at lost balloons before, said quickly, the awe of the moment trumped by motherhood, “It’s okay, sweetie. We’ll get you another one.”
“You can have mine,” Mike said.
“I did it on purpose, sillies,” Mary Martha said.
Rebecca looked at Mike, who met her eyes and gave her a wry, that’s-our-girl smile. The two of them let go of their own balloons at the same instant. Chelsea, always quick on the uptake, promptly released hers too, and then Bonnie, and Bob; and suddenly the air was peppered with red balloons, a gently swirling cloud, drifting toward and then above Rory and into the sky over the sea, as he worked the wave with Phoebe’s urn held high, still trailing that mystery, that sifting, almost weightless whisper of ash.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Gideon Weil, my gifted editor at HarperSanFrancisco, for his deftness and grace, his patience and humor, and the great joy of his friendship. I am blessed with a brilliant publishing team at HarperSF, and my deep thanks go to Mark Tauber, Michael Maudlin, Claudia Boutote, Cindy DiTiberio, Sam Barry, and all the rest of that marvel
ous crew. My production schedule has been eerily synced with Carolyn Allison-Holland’s for quite some time, and I am grateful for her mothering my works through the process. Priscilla Stuckey’s scrupulous eye and ear have kept me honest, as always, and Krista Holmstead has exercised infinite patience with me, and done a wonderful job for my work despite my best efforts to thwart her. And to Matthew Snyder, of CAA, all my thanks.
Thanks to Renée Sedliar, my editor for life, who gave the blessing of her astuteness and attention when it was most needed. I will always be grateful to Margery Buchanan and Miki Terasawa for their sustaining friendship. Jennifer Ashley’s humor, camaraderie, and good writing sense remain crucial. I am grateful to, and for, Andrea Marks, for all her gifts.
Thanks to Claire and Art Poole, and to Kate Johnson, for their friendship, and for so generously keeping me afloat at the crucial moments. Sarah Moore remains a mainstay of my sanity; and my deep gratitude, always to Marilou Kollar, and my blessings for sharing her mother’s beautiful example. The inspiration of Sabrina Waide, my beloved goddaughter, will always fire my heart; may I dance at her wedding, and may she sing at my funeral. My love and gratitude to the Waide family, to the Diamonds and Springers, and the Markses, to all my church community, and to my precious family. And God bless, you, Annie Poole.
Thanks, as ever, to Linda Chester, of Linda Chester Literary Agency, for unfailing kindness and the enduring comfort of elegance. And to my agent, sister novelist, and true comrade, Laurie Fox, to whom this book is dedicated and without whom it wouldn’t have survived, my profound gratitude and love, for the gifts and graces of two decades of sharing the journey.
About the Author
TIM FARRINGTON is the author of Lizzie’s War and The Monk Downstairs—a New York Times Notable Book of 2002—as well as the critically acclaimed novels The California Book of the Dead and Blues for Hannah.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Jacket Design: Claudine & Co.
THE MONK UPSTAIRS: A NOVEL. Copyright © 2007 by Tim Farrington. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition April 2007 ISBN 9780061749766
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com