Once everything was in good order Todd smiled at his wife.
“Be right back.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Lilah answered.
Todd pressed a sequence of buttons on the remote. The machine hummed to life, the needles of its gauges fluttering, its antenna lighting up with crisscrossing electric waves. Her husband then shut his eyes and within a couple of minutes he was gone. Like he had just fallen asleep.
The machine beeped in sync with his heartbeat.
*****
Lilah putters around the kitchen, wiping down the countertops and running the disposal and replacing the dish towels. She keeps the lamb warm in the oven, but worries it will dry out soon.
No matter. She can roast up another. She takes the opportunity to get some more cleaning done, washing and dusting and vacuuming. She picks the ripe tomatoes and green beans and lettuces from the backyard garden. Finishes her latest Sudoku puzzle book. Crochets a shawl for these chillier Autumn days. Even goes to church, where she hasn’t been since Easter.
“It’s wonderful to see you, Lilah,” the pastor tells her.
She tells him she’ll try to come more.
The pastor says her husband is always welcome too.
“Thank you,” Lilah answers. “Todd has just been so very busy with his work. But I’m hoping it won’t be like that for much longer.”
She feels a twinge of guilt by her reply, like she is part of some conspiracy, helping her husband play God. Yet Todd simply yearns for them to be together. Surely God would not find any fault with that.
Todd still sleeps. He looks more gaunt now, his skin more gray, which Lilah attributes to his advancing illness. She changes out his clothes and briefs regularly. She feeds him nutritious broth twice daily, helping him swallow by massaging his throat, a trick she had learned from her nursing days.
The machine still beeps. She thinks this is good.
At the grocery store, Maury, the butcher, asks her how her husband is doing.
“Todd’s fine,” Lilah says. “He’s away.”
“Good for him. Where’d he go?”
“Oh yes he’ll be home soon thanks Maury,” she gushes, grabbing the wrapped leg of lamb and dashing off. Todd told her not to tell anyone about his machine. She’s proud of herself for remembering that.
In a bedroom drawer she finds their wedding album, full of faded pictures capturing beautiful moments between the blurred spaces in her mind. There are so many people in them she no longer recognizes. But without a doubt, that was her Todd, her love, her life. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death would they part.
And she knows Todd is not dead.
He still beeps.
“How’s Todd?” their neighbor Jane… no, Joyce… asks Lilah, stepping out to fetch the mail. “I haven’t seen him at all lately.”
“He’s been a bit under the weather.”
“Well, I hope he feels better.”
Lilah thanks her and hurries inside the house. The mail is mostly bills, something Todd always takes care of. She thinks she hears him calling her name. She rushes into his workroom.
“Todd?”
He doesn’t respond.
Still, he beeps.
Every day she reads to him, sings to him, holds his hand, strokes his head. Every day she dresses nice and fixes her hair for him, as she’ll be the first thing he sees when he reopens his eyes. And every day before dinnertime, she sits at her husband’s side and waits, hoping he will return in time for them to share one more sunset together.
Just one more, Lilah prays.
THE LORD IS MY ROCKET
Ruth Greenaway coasts her yellow Kia Spectra to the mouth of the narrow gravel roadway, flanked by woodland so dark she almost missed it. Her headlights shine on the gold-lettered sign: “MONASTERY OF THE CELESTIAL CHRIST. Visitors welcome with reservations.”
Ruth switches on the car’s interior dome light and consults her Divine Places magazine, the leading publication for Christian destinations.
“This is the place. It got a four-cross rating in here. Sounds like it will be right up your alley, Floyd.”
The prim woman smiles at her young ward, who keeps squinting out the windshield at the canopy of stars above. He wears a pair of bulky headphones, plugged into the Fisher-Price cassette player set in his lap. Ruth again hears The Marcels’s Blue Moon coming through the padded speakers. It must be the twentieth time the song has played on their trip here, along with the other doo-wop tunes on the mix tape Carla had given him the year previous. It is all Floyd has listened to ever since.
Ruth drives a half mile up the remote road before they reach the cloister. She parks the car in its asphalt-paved lot beside a gray passenger van, the only other vehicle there.
“C’mon, Floyd. Your salvation awaits!”
Floyd scrunches his face as if someone had just blown into it.
The bulk of the building is shrouded in murk, except for a spherical, stained-glass sconce resembling the planet Saturn lighting the rustic wood entry door. They approach it, Ruth nestling her Bible beneath her arm, Floyd clutching his cassette player to his chest.
A knotted rope dangles beside the door. Affixed to the wall by it is a small white placard that reads “Pull To Summon.”
“Guess we tug this to ring the doorbell,” Ruth says and does so. There is no sound. She pulls it once more, pressing her ear against the sturdy door. She still hears nothing within.
“Maybe it’s broken.”
“Pull harder!” Floyd shouts, manically grabbing the rope and yanking it over and over and over again, as if he were trying to win a prize in a carnival game.
Ruth grasps his forearm. “Stop, Floyd. It doesn’t work—”
A panel behind the door’s speakeasy grille slides open, revealing part of a monk’s scowling face.
“I heard you the first time! One pull is all that is required!”
“Sorry,” the startled Ruth says, her palm patting her pounding heart. “We didn’t hear it ring.”
“Perhaps that is because it rings on the inside,” the monk sneers. “You are standing outside. Do you ring to summon yourself?”
Ruth apologizes again.
“Never mind. What is your business?”
She recovers her composure. “We come seeking enlightenment.”
“It’s rather late for that,” the monk says.
“Pardon?”
“It’s after eight.”
“Oh,” Ruth falters. “I didn’t know you closed.”
“We do not close, miss. But we do value common courtesy, as uncommon at it may be these days. Do you have reservations?”
“No, sir.”
The monk growls in irritation. “We do not accept guests without making prior arrangements. Call in the morning, but don’t expect a room to open until next month. We are full now.”
“Please excuse my ignorance,” Ruth beseeches him. “But we have traveled quite a long way, and we have no place to stay tonight.”
“I said we are full. I cannot help you. Call tomorrow. Or don’t. It’s your choice. Goodnight.” The monk slams the panel shut.
Pursing her lips in frustration, Ruth jerks the rope.
The monk appears again at the grille, gritting his teeth.
“What is it?”
“You don’t understand.” Ruth looks him straight in his one visible eye. “This is a spiritual emergency.” She then leans even closer to him and whispers, “There might not be a tomorrow.”
*****
A few minutes into the meal, Floyd’s nose started bleeding into his milk.
Ruth’s regular Tuesday second shift at the Fairchild Home for Adults with Special Needs had begun uneventfully enough. She arrived at work about ten minutes late, as usual. (Carla quipped she must run on “Biblical time, before they had clocks.”) After relieving Laura, the daytime caregiver, Ruth minded the facility’s seven current residents—Debra, Floyd, Gregory, Lizzie, Peter, Rebecca, and Victor�
��while her coworker Carla prepared dinner. The four men and three women varied in ages from early 20s to late 50s, with varying degrees of mental disability that necessitated them to be institutionalized.
A converted Victorian-modeled manor once belonging to a newspaper publisher, the Fairchild Home was one of the nicer places Ruth had worked in, retaining many of its original nineteenth century fixtures and frippery. These lent it an air of godliness, Ruth thought, reminding her of a historic church rectory. There were even angel figures carved into the crown moldings.
Since graduating high school ten years before, Ruth had served as a special needs caregiver, initially as a volunteer, then as a vocation upon earning her certification. The job didn’t pay much—just enough to cover her studio apartment rent, utilities, and semi-ascetic lifestyle—but its other rewards were of greater import to Ruth. Whenever she had the opportunity, she would read her charges passages from her leather-bound King James Bible, her most treasured possession. The book had belonged to her mother, and Ruth carried it with her everywhere to honor her Mama’s memory and her life’s mission to spread the Good Word to all who would listen (and an equal many who would not).
“You know they don’t really understand what you’re saying, right?” Carla once remarked after walking in on one of Ruth’s impromptu spiritual storytimes with the residents.
“They’re listening,” Ruth replied.
“You mean they hear you. Maybe someone catches a word here, a word there. But it’s all probably mostly gibberish to them.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re wasting your time.”
“Salvation is never a waste of time.”
“No?” her coworker countered. “What if you’re trying to save someone who don’t wanna be saved?”
“It’s not a matter of want, Carla. I only have to open the door, and the Lord will take it from there.”
Carla shook her head, suggesting—again—what Ruth really needed was a man in her life.
“I have a man. The greatest man who ever lived and died and was”
“Resurrected,” Carla finished Ruth’s stock phrase. “Hope you two lovebirds are very happy together.”
The evening God imposed His will on Floyd, and by extension Ruth, they had all sat down at the master dining room table for a meatloaf, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables supper. Ruth recited the customary grace, with everyone bowing their heads, even Carla. Much like firing the starter pistol at a race, as soon as she uttered “Amen” forks dug into food. Victor, the youngest resident at the home, meticulously segregated each item on his plate before taking his first bite. Lizzie hummed “Happy Birthday to You” while she ate, though it wasn’t anybody’s birthday. And Rebecca, their most impaired ward, only kept wiggling her fingers in front of her eyes until Ruth pretended to sprinkle “magic yummy dust” on her meal.
“Y’hear China sent more of their battleships into the Pacific?” Carla said. “What d’ya wanna bet, with us distracted with that, the Russians gonna invade some of them tinier countries in East Europe—”
“Carla,” Ruth interrupted. “That’s not appropriate dinner talk.”
“What?” Carla wrinkled her nose. “It’s news.”
“It’s bad news, not to be discussed at the table.”
“Fine,” Carla sighed. “That David Radcliffe was on Conan last night.”
“It’s Daniel,” Ruth corrected. “Daniel Radcliffe.”
Gregory began chanting “Radcliffe” over and over. Ruth hushed him.
“Whatever his name is, he’s hot stuff.”
“I heard he’s an atheist.”
“I think he’s Jewish,” Carla said. “Wipe your mouth, Peter.”
Peter, one of the group’s messier eaters, blotted his gunky lips with his napkin before shoveling more potatoes into it.
“Whatever he is, I won’t watch his movies.”
“You saw Harry Potter.”
“We all saw that together. And it wasn’t my choice.”
“Uh oh,” they heard Floyd squeak across the table.
Ruth and Carla directed their attentions to him. Blood poured from his nostrils into the glass beneath his chin, turning the milk he was drinking pink.
“Oh, Christ!” Carla cried out. She and Ruth sprung from their chairs. Carla slid the glass away from Floyd while Ruth pressed a napkin to his nose and tilted his head back, knocking his NASA cap off.
“OH MY GAWD!!!” Debra blurted. She spun around, squeezed her eyes shut, and rocked her forehead against the wall. Gregory mimicked her exclamation. “OH MY GAWD! OH MY GAWD! OH MY GAWD!”
“Quiet down, Gregory!” Carla told him.
“Did he hit himself somehow?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
Ruth gingerly lifted the napkin from Floyd’s face. Blood still trickled from his left nostril.
“It’s not stopping.”
“We better get him to Saint Luke’s,” Carla said.
“I’ll take him.” Ruth instructed Floyd to continue holding the napkin to his nose. She then guided him by the arm out of the house and into her car.
“You’re gonna be okay, Floyd,” she said as she buckled him in.
“Uh oh,” he answered.
*****
The surly monk introduces himself as Brother Guiseppe. Ruth guesses he is in his forties, showing the first strands of graying hair at his temples. Garbed in a shimmery black satin robe, he leads them down a broad, dimly lit corridor.
Lining the monastery walls are backlit strips of celestial images featuring moons, stars, planets, and nebulae. Above them hovers a giant mobile of the Milky Way galaxy (Floyd was able to identify it), with a larger-than-life-sized statue of Jesus Christ in a shepherd’s frock suspended amongst the spiraling cosmos, posed as if He were flying through it. Like Superman, Ruth thinks.
Floyd, mesmerized by the colorful panoramas, slows to study them. Ruth prods him forward to keep pace with the monk, who doesn’t seem to care whether they are still behind him or not.
“We really appreciate you making an exception for us,” she says in an effort to ingratiate herself.
“I do not have the authority to make exceptions,” Brother Guiseppe responds coolly. “Only the Abbot can overrule our protocols. And then only if the circumstances are extraordinary.”
“I think he’ll see they are.”
“There’s nothing extraordinary about dying, miss.”
Ruth worries that Floyd overheard the monk’s insensitive comment. But her ward, still fixated on his surroundings, seems quite oblivious to all else.
They reach a mahogany door adorned with a large bas-relief of a dove in a space helmet. Mounted at eye-level beside it is a gold plate engraved with the name of the chamber’s prestigious occupant: Abbot Mortimer, OSB.
“Wait here,” Brother Guiseppe tells the visitors.
The monk enters the Abbot’s quarters. Ruth and Floyd take a seat on a marble bench next to the door.
“Don’t worry, Floyd. The Lord watches over us, and will open any doors that’ll lead you to His Pearly Gates.”
Floyd fiddles with the buttons on his cassette player and again listens to Blue Moon. Ruth modestly buttons up her ecru linen dress to the collar and primps her strawberry blonde bouffant. She then swipes some dangling strands of Floyd’s fine brown hair from his brow.
Brother Guiseppe opens the door moments later, beckoning them inside with an impatient wave. “Come. Abbot Mortimer will see you.”
“See?” Ruth says to Floyd after removing his headphones. “Jesus opens doors for you.”
“Thank you Jesus,” Floyd says to Brother Guiseppe.
In stark contrast to the classic rich woods they have seen throughout the monastery so far, Abbot Mortimer’s office boasts decidedly modernist materials. Sheets of brushed steel layer the walls. From the ceiling juts a square bank of glowing bulbs on silver stems, resembling an inverted light garden. The Abbot�
�s desk is topped with kaleidoscopic glass in the shape of an artist’s palette, with an “Italian Futurism” inspired (according to the Abbot) aluminum frame/chair hybrid. On the wall behind him hangs a number of framed articles, all puff pieces and reviews of the monastery snipped from magazines and newspapers.
Ruth sits in a multi-angled, vinyl-upholstered chair opposite the Abbot. Across the room, Floyd kneels slack-jawed before an alcove, fascinated by an illuminated sculpture of a spinning sun hewn from yellow crystal. A miniature Jesus figurine stands stationary within its hollowed-out center, the sun ceaselessly revolving around Him.
Ruth explains their special situation to the Abbot, omitting only the details that may rouse complicating concerns. He wears the same fashion of robe as Brother Guiseppe, but with an added embroidery on its breast—a white, five-pointed Star of Bethlehem. Designating his title, Ruth supposes. She reckons him to be in his mid-fifties, his solicitous expression and well-groomed hair reminding her of Reverend Covington, the parson of her childhood church.
Ruth was six years old when the good reverend announced the Blessed Virgin Mary would appear atop a peak in the Black Hills on Assumption Day, and that great favors would be bestowed upon all those who witnessed the miracle. On the appointed date, more than five hundred believers, including Ruth and her mother, traveled to the foot of the mountain and spent the day staring into the sky. (Truth be told, little Ruth spent much less time staring, instead working to erect a small dollhouse out of stones.) Her mother, along with the rest of Covington’s devout flock, gazed into the blazing sun, waiting for their Lady to appear. Consequently, many pilgrims sustained a loss of their vision. But Ruth’s mother never lost her faith, for in fact she had seen the Divine Mother, a spirit so glorious and radiant that mortal eyes were unable to bear it. Yet this was a sacrifice that would ensure Mama’s salvation. For the remainder of her years, Ruth’s mother was totally blind—and rapturously content—knowing that her sight would be restored upon entering the Kingdom of Heaven to behold His Paradise.
Everyone Is a Moon Page 6