Exit Lines

by Joan Barfoot

  “My God,” Sylvia says. Then leans back from her ministrations to George’s left arm and laughs. “My God,” she repeats.

  “Indeed,” says Ruth. “My God.” Then: “You know, I wasn’t raised religious at all. In fact, my father had a bitter sort of joke when I was young. He’d say, ‘If we’re the chosen people, I wonder who we could tell we’d just as soon not be chosen?’ He’d say, ‘We’ve already had quite enough of God’s attention, thank you.’ Which was bold of him in a way. That was long before he wasn’t bold any more.

  “But the stories were a different matter. My parents were attached to those and made sure I knew them. My own name was a favourite—they probably thought Ruth would result in an unusually loyal daughter, which was clever of them. And I remember being absolutely horrified by the Abraham story—I’ve even wondered if I chose my work partly because of him. That he would agree to slaughter his little boy to prove himself to a god who could even dream of demanding such a thing, and never mind rescinding the order at the last minute—even when I was a kid I thought, there’s a god who’s just power-mad and sadistic. Exactly the kind of parents, God and Abraham both, who shouldn’t have children, and if they do, they’re just begging to have them taken away.”

  There. If there are any especially vehement views in the room, that should lure them into the open. But Sylvia just suggests mildly, “Moody types?”

  “At best, moody. These days they’d both be in for years of therapy, and on pretty strong meds to boot.” Even if laughter is of the cautious Just kidding, God variety, it’s an encouraging sound. “What about you, would any of you have religious hesitations?”

  About her desire, Ruth must mean. But—hesitations? Hesitation’s the least of it. In wedding ceremonies, there’s the part where observers are invited to speak up if they know of an impediment to the joining up of two souls. “Is this an inside-out version of that?” Sylvia asks. “Whether we see impediments to the unjoining of one soul?”

  That is clumsy and scarcely amusing. Greta is not so brittle. “I grew up in a church,” she offers. “Not a fancy one, only small. As,” and she glances at Ruth, “our village was small, and far from where important events were decided.”

  Every Sunday they went to the plain, square-built wooden building, Greta and her parents and sisters and brothers almost filling a pew. Later it was where she and Dolph married. Scents of wool suits and print dresses, the smoke of candles, these rise hotly up. Also a picture of an elderly god—her age now?—observing from far above, and all the time judging. Frowning. “This is childish, I know, but pictures from childhood, they stay in the mind.”

  Two opposing things happen now: Greta’s eyes narrow fiercely, but her shoulders drop, and she lets go of George’s right arm. “Then Dolph died,” she says, as if these are the only words needed, although they are not. “I asked over and over why this should be, how a god could do this, so heartless and cruel. There was a great noise in my ears and I could not hear an answer. And then I thought, How could there be a good answer? I was taught God is stern but always just, and that we cannot always see his greater purposes but must trust in him. Trust that Dolph died, and so badly, for a just reason with larger purpose? No. No. So I understand then either a god is not there and I have cried out to no one, or he does not care anything for us, and we are like my girls’ dolls, which some days are cherished and other days broken. And finally I think, whatever is the answer to this, it does not matter. Because I do not forgive.”

  Those last words are steel. This is a great surprise: their even-keeled, no-conflict, knit-onward Greta doing battle with God? Saving her wrath for the very big leagues? That’s impressive. “And yet the first pictures—I see sometimes meeting in heaven with all my family. And Dolph, even though it is a long time and he was so young and I am so changed, how would he know me?” She shrugs. “But I do not think any more that those pictures are true.”

  “Heaven,” Sylvia inquires, “as family reunion?”

  She sounds teasing, but Greta says, “Yes, like that.” Her jaw tightens. “But no God. If he exists, he has made too much wickedness.”

  Sylvia and Ruth may be startled, even shocked, but an ancient grievance has flickered in George, in the form of Greta’s dead, sanctified husband, whose existence and absence years ago haunted worse than Alice’s, even though Alice was waiting at home, a living reproach. It’s tough—was tough—measuring up to the dead.

  Put it this way: if George had died, Greta’d have been sad and maybe peeved, but she wouldn’t have to be popping one of those pills she takes those rare times when she gets too upset. She wouldn’t have gone into a rage at the Almighty.

  Would Alice?

  Say heaven was a reunion, the way Greta says—Alice would be restored and there they’d be, the two of them strolling past Greta arm in arm with her beautiful what’s-his-name—oh yes, he remembers beautiful—nodding discreetly as if they barely knew each other. Then there’d be Greta’s big foreign family gabbling away on a big family-sized cloud, while he and Alice were stuck off by themselves on their own little wisp. All the careful dipsy-doodling, it’d be like the fast-footing of learning to dance. As a boy, George was clumsy. He’s clumsy now. But for a long time he was graceful. Maybe he’ll be graceful someday again, and Greta will be lithe and smooth and not angry, and Alice will be sweet as well as meek, her old self.

  Greta says God’s decisions aren’t fair, and it’s true that whatever else he’s done, George would not do to Alice what God has. Alice never did any great harm, and look what’s happened to her—that isn’t right. He hasn’t thought of it this way before: that these kinds of things aren’t only God’s will, but God’s fault.

  Thinking about all this hurts. It gives him a headache.

  Ruth can’t expect to be in heaven at all, can she, with what she has done and then what she is planning? That’s a shame, and it doesn’t seem right either. Give or take this and that, she doesn’t seem a really bad woman.

  And what would Sylvia be like in heaven? Snotty, probably. A well-off woman with good legs and narrow hard-to-fit feet. Her husband, too, an important man with important feet, who wore either loafers or expensive shiny lace-up leather. Good quality, good taste. In heaven, would some people still get the highest, fanciest clouds? Here at the Idyll Inn, though, Sylvia’s snotty enough, but not as snooty as he’d have thought. Probably in heaven all that kind of thing gets planed down and evened out anyway. Once, he made a dollhouse for Colette. The feel of the plane in his hand, the satisfactory curlings of wood peeling away, rounding off sharp edges and corners, trying to make sure she couldn’t be hurt—that was nice.

  What are they talking about?

  “You’re exactly right, I think, Greta,” Ruth is saying. “Maybe we’re not experts, or probably even particularly good amateur theologians, but it’s always the question, isn’t it, however many fancy words get built up around it—that if there’s a god who made and cares for us, how do we account for evil and cruelty? I know there’s no end of different answers, but they always seem to me on wobbly ground. Faith in some ineffable mystery or nondescript love—what sort of creator punishes his own creation in the staggering number of ways most creatures on the planet are punished every day of the year? As you say, Greta, that’s not likely a god we’d care for. In any event, there’s no family reunions for me, I’m afraid. I would love to see some people again, Bernard especially, but what I believe is, when it’s over, it’s over. Dust and ashes. And I think I’m content with that, I really am.”

  “We seem,” Sylvia says, “to be disposing of God rather snappily, aren’t we? Although I guess that’s all right as long as lightning bolts don’t flame down our way.”

  “You’re a believer?”

  “Well, you know how much trouble I have with authority. Anyone’s, really.” So the answer is no? “And then, if you’re raised Christian—Protestant in my case, like you, Greta—you stumble into all those discrepancies between the Old Testament God an
d the New Testament one. That, at least, is a problem you don’t have, Ruth. All you have to worry about is the old one, and he’s more realistic in a way: all those whimsical cruelties. In ours, God’s also supposed to be love, which as we’ve noticed is not exactly common on the ground. Those stories you keep reading us, Ruth”—so after all, a harsh and steady diet of unhappy news has its intended effects—“never mind our respective dead husbands and whatever other troubles we’ve had—none of it strikes me as remotely affectionate. Love can be terribly hard, but it shouldn’t be cruel.” Oh, really? “Not gratuitously, randomly cruel, anyway.”

  Sylvia’s eyes often soften when she’s about to speak of Jackson, so the others aren’t surprised when she says, “Jackson and I used to talk about this sort of thing, especially when he was on city council. What kinds of systems people devise for rubbing along together without doing much harm, how there have to be compromises, but how one way or another we try to work out laws and agree to educate people and treat illnesses and so on and so forth. And how we do that for each other, but really in our own interests too—for peace and safety and a reasonably comfortable, intelligent, friction-free existence. Simply because it makes practical sense to do well by each other as best we can, not because there’s a god saying do this or do that. Especially when, as a matter of fact, the gods people listen to seem fond of the worst, not the best, people can do.

  “In his practice and on council, Jackson would say, ‘Impatient, raw people with impatient, raw ideas, they’re a terrible trial.’ Including particularly the ones who brought what they thought God would want into the picture—quite amazing how often they assumed God would want to be punishing this or that, or laying down rather arbitrary, harsh rules. Of course one could never say that in public. It would have been a sure way to ruin his practice, not to mention lose an election. Although after three terms he gave up on politics. It took far too much time, and he found he wasn’t ambitious that way. He wasn’t godlike at all, when it came to rejoicing in power.”

  What are the odds that all four of them—or perhaps three, since it’s hard to tell if George has actual views—are skeptical, if not entirely disbelieving, when it comes to the nature, the very existence, of God? Long odds, one might think, but one might well be wrong, and moreover wildly presumptuous. No atheists in the foxholes? “In fact, I imagine that’s where one might find quite a number,” Sylvia says. “And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I have to think that as a god I’d do much, much better. I expect you would too. So would any of us.” Except maybe George, who’s not really in any kind of shape for divinity.

  How they laugh: so easy to picture Sylvia playing God.

  But also how brutal Ruth’s friends can be. How crisply and personally they speed through millennia of theory and thought, disputation, raucous certainty and fierce doubt—how alarmingly angry they can be, as well. Ruth can’t help feeling a tingle, a touch of unease.

  Which must be silly.

  Less silly, though, in the middle of the night, that eerie, wondering hour—is this God’s loud, unmerciful voice? They’re each wakened by shockingly close, immense booming thunder, and lightning so near it lights up their rooms—a prompt, powerful response, if that’s what it is, to Sylvia’s daylight jibe about lightning bolts.

  It takes a few minutes to settle the nerves on that score.

  When the thunder and lightning shift southward, they’re replaced by a howling wind and harsh drilling of rain. This is a storm that makes windows rattle in their frames and strain against the pressure to crack and blow inwards, scatter broken glass and debris across bluey-grey carpets and into the seams of elderly furniture. Which doesn’t happen, but still, the wind is ferocious as it whistles around corners, and there are long periods when the rain sounds like bullets.

  Some of the more innocent Idyll Inn residents are pleased to know there are destructive forces just outside the walls from which they’re nestled away, safe under blankets, with help, if help were necessary, that would come on the run. This has not always been the case. One benefit of living in a place like this in old age is that in earlier times elsewhere, they’ve been responsible for the safety and comfort of others, and now they are not. Nor do they have to concern themselves with the cleanup. At daybreak everyone is astonished by the view that comes with the light: an angry, grey, choppy river bedecked with stray branches, as well as a random lawn chair caught on the shore, half in and half out of the water, tipped as if a surprised occupant has been carelessly swept away; and gaps on the distant hillside where aged trees stood yesterday, and flashing emergency lights where limbs weighted with leaves have toppled over road, through roof, across car—this is by no means the worst storm that has ever blown through town, but it’s definitely a dramatic event, and better than morning TV. At breakfast, residents point out to each other the river lapping at the top of its banks, and sky the dull silvery shade of pewter, threatening more to come—whatever the weather is doing, it’s doing it fast. Rapid change is what causes storms. Or “You don’t think it was God, do you?” Sylvia whispers, passing Ruth’s table, and in the light they can smile.

  Staff are working short-handed. Several have called in unable to get to work—driveways and streets blocked by fallen limbs, roofs damaged, one car windshield broken. Annabel Walker, though, arrives early, on foot, and is helping out by getting some residents dressed and handing breakfasts around. “Everyone has to pitch in,” she calls gaily. Even so, the meal takes longer than usual to cook, serve and clear away. Many of the residents, awake half the night, are moving more slowly than usual too.

  A relatively minor crisis that doesn’t have to be actively dealt with—it’s pleasant to feel somewhat under siege with, really, none of the downsides of a siege. Certainly there’s no dismay when Annabel announces, “I’m afraid our mall outing this morning is cancelled. A lot of power is out, and quite a few streets are closed to traffic. I haven’t heard yet, but if the Golden Cowboys can’t make this afternoon’s concert, we’ll show movies in the library. I’m sure you all understand that these disruptions cannot be helped.”

  What should have been helped, obviously, is that a building that’s been open for just a few months should not have a leaking roof, but inside the front doors, Annabel Walker has placed a bucket, which is fairly rapidly filling with the rhythmic plunking of seeping-through raindrops. “One last thing. We’re operating on our backup generator, so please keep electricity use to a minimum until we’re back on the grid. If you want to watch TV this morning, try getting together in the library instead of everyone turning on their individual sets. Let’s all pull together, and hope everything’s back to normal by the end of the day.”

  How rousing. Some spines in the dining room straighten: preparing for sacrifice. No TV in their own suites—all right, they can do this. “Damn, I believe that’s one of my lawn chairs getting drowned in the river,” Sylvia complains, peering out.

  “Look on the bright side,” says Ruth. “Without me around, you’d need one less chair anyway.”

  Honestly, it’s scarcely safe to say anything when Ruth will take advantage of just about every opening to administer a nudge, a reminder, a hint—drip, drip, drip, like the roof leak at the front door. Surely to God they don’t have to talk about death all the time; or life, for that matter. “Or,” Sylvia retorts, “I might very well want the chair for somebody else.” Ruth needn’t think she’s the end of the line when it comes to new friends. At least acquaintances. Oh, who knows what will happen? None of them got enough sleep. “Shall we get to work on George? It doesn’t look as if anything else much will be going on here today. I don’t know what you’ll do for bad news to entertain us with, though. Even the papers haven’t arrived. Still, maybe you can discuss from memory the latest on the climate and the end of the world as we know it. That certainly seems appropriate to the day.”

  From one day to the next, it’s hard not to get snippy sometimes. Knowing what Ruth wants,
never mind doing what Ruth wants, is a rather staggering burden. Although quite interesting, too, and sparky to contemplate, in its way—as with God and Abraham, there are vast mood swings involved.

  From George’s room, which faces the parking lot and the bulk of the city, they can see many more red and white emergency lights flashing. “Listen to those chainsaws,” Ruth says, as Sylvia and Greta buckle down to the regular, possibly fruitful, possibly not, pushing and pulling of George’s legs, and she’s right, the buzz is a constant white noise. “That was scary last night. It’s funny, though. After Bernard was gone, I used to lie awake in storms worrying about the big old maple in our backyard crashing down on the roof. Mind you, I could lie awake fretting about all sorts of disasters back then. At least I don’t worry about falling trees any more, although I hope the young people who bought our place are all right today.”

  Ruth speaks of Bernard being just—gone; making the effort to suggest, to them and to herself, that his departure was as ordinary as can be. It’s a fearsome effort, though. There’s Bernard feebly bucking beneath her again, here’s the terror in her own rigid arms.

  She feels on occasion like a carny selling vegetable choppers and peelers: step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and watch while it slices, it dices, it decides and it chooses and in the end, look—voilà, as Sylvia would say—the perfect potato in the very shape and picture of julienned opportunity. “All those things I scared myself about—I wonder how much we haven’t done, due to fear. Or the other way around, what we’ve done even if it’s been scary. I’ve managed a few things like that, and been glad and proud in the end to have done them.”

  There she goes again. “I don’t believe in regrets,” Sylvia says. “Either way.” She means that it does no good to second-guess. Make a decision, any decision: to marry, to have an affair, to love a husband, to keep a great secret for decades, to move here, to take pokes at Annabel Walker, or at God—for all she knows, agree to kill Ruth—and having made these choices, stick to them. Live with them, for God’s sake. “In any case, I can’t think of much that was especially major. I was afraid to water-ski but I did, and I guess I was pleased with myself, but that’s not a big deal. I wouldn’t spend time underwater, though, whereas Jackson and Nancy both loved it. Half our vacations were spent with them down at the bottom of one body of water or another, puttering around with the fish, and me on the beach in a chair with a book. Which was fine. I suppose I’ve missed a few adventures that could have put wind in the hair and a bounce in the step, but so what? I expect we’ve all been brave enough in other ways. I certainly have.”