He stroked the cow, whispering softly to it in French. He apologized for his own stupidity. He should have called the veterinarian earlier. He should have suspected illness. Instead, T-Bone had attributed the drop in milk production to the radio.
T-Bone didn’t play the radio anymore.
Long after the cow began to breathe easier and day edged into night, we sat in the silent barn, together, but alone. I lifted T-Bone’s hand and placed it against my cheek.
“Do you think the radio is like the medal, Maud? Is it superstition or faith? You know, I broke my mother’s favorite bowl after losing the medal and I never got what I prayed for: that space aliens would come and take my brother away in the middle of the night.”
That Sunday T-Bone refused to come to church with us. Once T-Bone was a regular churchgoer. Reverend Samuel Swan called and offered to come over and pray with T-Bone. But T-Bone said no, he’d handle that himself.
So Thomas and I sat alone in the old wooden pews of Our Lady of Perpetual Savings. Thomas made it a practice to attend service in whatever church was nearby when Sunday rolled around. He plans to try all the denominations of the world, he says. Raised with no religious affiliation, not Catholic nor Baptist nor Buddhist, he prefers to call himself a student of the theology of life.
“Sounds like you don’t believe in anything,” Wynn said one day while cooking chili in my kitchen.
“Officially,” Thomas said, “I’m uncommitted.”
I handed Wynn the chili powder, admiring the way she shook out a bit in the palm of her hand and nonchalantly flung it into the pot. Amazing, she didn’t even use a measuring spoon. “Raj,” I said, “told me spirituality has many names and many lives.”
“Raj,” Wynn said, sprinkling cumin into the chili, “was a fruitcake.”
I smiled at the back of Wynn’s head, two pews in front of us. She’d styled her hair differently, in some kind of Gibson girl bun. She thought she didn’t look motherly enough when it was hanging loose around her shoulders. I turned back to Reverend Swan. He was doing all right today. Everyone knew he fought a constant battle with the devil, time (there was never enough to play his saxophone), and stage fright.
Like me, Reverend Swan was not a fan of numbers. He didn’t know how to handle them: not in his bankbook nor in church. For thirty years, he had been preaching, and still he became sick with anticipation before every sermon. Every Sunday he faced his parishioners with the ardent desire to leave the pulpit.
Every day he prayed for courage. He wished he could fling off shyness and pace the sanctuary like the preachers on television. He envied other ministers who burned with the spirit, who so easily stirred up the storm of truth and life. He studied those men on the Christian network, how they rolled up their shirtsleeves and got down to preaching. By their very appearance, they said salvation was work, manual labor, a job they knew how to do. They knew how to talk and walk and act. They knew what to do with their hands, when to reach out to the sky and grasp the moment. They moved and their steps echoed in the hearts of men. And their voices: Where did they learn to talk like that? Where did they learn to roll those Rs in redemption and repent?
Reverend Swan cleared his throat and looked out onto the congregation. He saw many familiar faces. The Snowdens, Wynn and Harvey, Freda Lee and her children, Odie and Arlene, the Smiths, the Joneses, the Browns, Wisconsin Dell Addleberry, me.
You are among friends, his wife always reminded him. She sat, as usual, in the front pew. She caught his attention and smiled. She tried to make things easier for him. He knew, with her smile, she was trying to flood him with confidence, as in those pictures of the saints where the light pours from heaven onto their heads.
I suspected that at times like this Reverend Swan regretted his conversion. His life would have been so much easier if he had stayed a Catholic and let the pope tell him what to do. Have you ever noticed, he once asked his wife, how positive priests are about everything? Of course, he couldn’t have married Mrs. Swan if he had remained Catholic and become a priest. And he did so love Mrs. Swan. When Reverend Swan gazed upon his wife’s face, he thought, maybe this weekly hell was worth it.
Like Reverend Swan, the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Savings once had been Catholic. Years ago it was traded to the Episcopalians for a piece of land up the mountain. The Catholics at the time had outgrown the church and wanted to build a bigger one; they had a fat building fund. The Episcopalians, on the other hand, had the Reverend Samuel Swan.
Reverend Swan was not good at asking people for money. His wife said he was a marvelous minister, but he left much to be desired as a fund-raiser. So the Episcopalians had only one asset: a plot of land left to the congregation in the will of a founding member. To a following which met in the wintry basement of the library on cold metal folding chairs, the Catholic proposal was quite appealing.
The trade was made.
The Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Savings was not its real name. It started as just the Church of Our Lady more than one hundred years ago. Then one year the Round Corners First Savings and Loan next door burned down, taking with it two bank officers who gave their lives to save the safety deposit boxes. They slammed themselves in the big fireproof vault. They thought they would be safe. The coroner said it must have heated up hotter than hell in the huge steel chamber.
The browned, flame-licked vault was moved temporarily to the church until a new structure could be built. The Catholics, who still owned the church at the time and who were never ones to turn their backs on money, saw no problem in opening the vestibule for banking hours. For the eight months it took to construct a new building on the site of the old bank, Round Corners residents deposited their paychecks and prayers at what came to be called Our Lady of Perpetual Savings.
Our Lady of Perpetual Savings was the only church in town now. The Catholics took a beating in the Sixties, their population dropping significantly with the advent of free love and the Vietnam War. Large numbers of younger parishioners migrated legally to California and illegally to Canada. The church on the mountain became too big for its congregation; it was renovated, keeping the chapel but turning the rest into a restaurant and cross-country ski center.
Perhaps, because Our Lady was the only church in the area, Reverend Swan thought he should provide an ecumenical message. In the congregation were Catholics, Presbyterians, Unitarians, even a Baptist. In the winter, the church served the ski crowd, and only God knew what they were. So although Reverend Swan considered himself Episcopalian, he tended to criss-cross church lines, a theological skier.
Reverend Swan tried to relax the hands clutching the sides of the pulpit, where he knew men of sureness had stood for centuries. Once, he told me, he could almost feel their footprints in that worn spot behind the pulpit. They were men who made their mark. Real men of God seldom have doubts, Reverend Swan knew. Reverend Swan took a breath, looked out on the people, and wished he’d landed that seat in the Bibleland Band.
“Today I’d like to talk about forgiveness…”
Two days after Reverend Swan’s stirring sermon on forgiveness, Harvey Winchester knocked on my door and asked to see Wynn.
Wynn and I were arguing over who would decorate the tops of the cupcakes she had just baked. She wanted pink frosting squirted in the shape of a snowflake atop each cupcake.
“You’re the artist here, Maud,” she said with exasperation.
“I don’t do cupcakes.”
“You are an artistic snob.”
“All right, give me the damn cupcakes,” I shouted, answering the door.
“No, with your attitude, you’d probably ruin them, make snowflakes that look like cows or something.”
“Low blow, Wynn.”
Wynn was surprised to see Harvey. “Why aren’t you at work?” She completed a snowflake. “You’re always at work it seems lately.”
“Wynn…” Harvey said, nervously playing with his baseball cap.
“What?”
“Wyn
n,” Harvey cleared his throat. “I have something to tell you.”
“It must be something important to take off work.” Wynn glanced at him sharply. “You’re not sick?”
“No, no,” Harvey said quickly. “I have a confession to make, Wynn.” Harvey pulled at his collar. “Is it warm in here?”
“It’s just fine in here, Harvey Mandelson Winchester. What is the matter with you?” Wynn said.
Harvey took a running start and made the leap. “Ileftyourprizewinningknittingneedlesonthewoodstoveandmeltedthem.”
Wynn froze, her hand holding the squirt tube of frosting above the cupcake. She didn’t look at Harvey. Slowly, carefully she whispered, “What did you say?”
Harvey rushed to her side, but held back from touching her. “I melted your prizewinning knitting needles on the wood stove.”
“The ones half of Round Corners is looking for?” Wynn’s voice rose we each word. “The subjects of a criminal investigation by Sheriff Odie Dorfmann? The ones I have been dying to find for months?”
Harvey swallowed. “Those are the ones.”
Silence.
“You see they were lying on the stove and I started building a fire and I was reading one of those baby books and I just didn’t pay attention to what I was doing, Wynn. Honest to God,” he glanced to me for help. I shrugged. “I didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident. Please believe me; it was an accident.”
“What took you so long to tell me?”
“I was scared.”
Wynn almost looked at him then, but she kept her head down. “I don’t think I want to talk to you right now, Harvey.”
“Wynn.”
“And you’ll have to go to the Round Corners Restaurant tonight for dinner. There won’t be any at our house.”
“Wynn.”
“Not now, Harvey.”
Harvey turned to me, but I shook my head. I touched his arm and guided him towards the door. “Talk to her, Maud,” he begged as he climbed into his truck.
I took the tube of frosting from Wynn and finished the snowflakes. She sniffled. “I’m going to eat every one of these cupcakes, Maud. I don’t care if this baby weighs as much as a humpback whale when it arrives; I’m going have all the chocolate I want tonight. And don’t try to stop me.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
I rolled Wynn out to her car around midnight. Harvey spent the intervening hours too worried to eat more than two bites of his Salisbury steak plate at the Round Corners Restaurant; he couldn’t watch television so he watched the window. When Wynn arrived home, she still wasn’t talking to him. They crawled into bed in silence.
During the night, Wynn was sick from two dozen chocolate cupcakes with pink snowflakes banging around inside her. Harvey held her hair back as she leaned over the commode and emptied her stomach. He gently wiped her face with a cool cloth, stroking away the tears on her cheeks. He helped her back to bed. And after a moment, he spooned up behind her, holding her softly against him. She let him. And Harvey sighed.
13. Even Lovers Get the Blues
Snowflakes do not fall silently. They make sounds, depending on where you are. Standing in the middle of the woods, they sound like sparkling wind, groaning pines, and snoring filtering up from the deeply buried burrows of little creatures. In the Round Corners Restaurant, they sound like the bell of the cash register.
It had snowed every day since Thanksgiving, and ski conditions were irresistible. The ski patrol practically had to throw the skiers off the slopes at the end of the day. They had to shovel them off the ice rink with the Zamboni machine. Skiers and skaters stomped into the cafe tired and ravenous, carrying snowflakes on their shoulders. Their sunburned, wind-chapped cheeks glowed. Their laughter was weary but happy.
With every jangle of the bell over the door, I looked up. T-Bone promised he would be in tonight. I heard the door again and spun around. But, it was Odie, standing by the register where long ago the Maud Calhoun greeting cards had run out. He squeezed onto a stool next to Amos and motioned for a coffee.
I served two filet mignons to a booth by the window. “Anything else?” I asked, slamming the plates down in front of two skiers. They looked at each other. No, they said quickly, everything’s fine, looks delicious.
I slid a cup of coffee in front of Odie and swung into the kitchen, running into crossfire between Freda Lee and the kid cook. They were going round and round over a plate of cold French fries.
“If you picked up your orders once in awhile, this wouldn’t happen,” said the kid.
“I’m in here two seconds after you hit that damn bell you play like a set of drums.”
“I’ve got a bottle of molasses back here that runs faster than you, Freda Lee.”
“Listen, kid, you’re the one who’s too lazy to fry up a fresh batch of fries. These are cold and leftover. Now, give me some fresh ones before I cut you up into little pieces and throw you in the fryer.”
“Bitch.”
Freda lifted her head, grabbed a pot of scalding coffee, and headed for the swinging door.
“What’s the matter, Freda Lee,” the kid sniped, “not getting enough from that bum you live with?”
Freda made an abrupt turn and went for the cook with the coffee. He jumped back as I leapt forward, catching Freda’s arm and taking the coffeepot from her. Gently, I returned it to the warmer.
“Have those fries ready when I get back,” I told the cook, who quickly forgot his fear and began to pout. “Come on,” I snatched Freda’s arm and pulled her into the back room.
We shoved bags of onions and flour aside and perched on two five-gallon cans of lard. Freda lit a cigarette. I waited. “Lousy kid,” Freda said, “lousy, smart-assed kid. I hate people who think they know so much about life and they don’t know shit. They’re just as dumb as the day they were born. Fucking kid. What does he know of loving somebody?”
“Nobody could love more than you and Lewis Lee.”
“You’re damn right. Nobody. What does he know about keeping a family together?”
The bell in the kitchen called. Ding ding ding.
“He doesn’t know shit.” Freda studied the tip of her cigarette. “He doesn’t have an inkling of what it’s like to lose something important to you, something that keeps you going, that makes your day worth waking up to, that keeps you from going off half crazy and getting a job.”
“Lewis Lee’s got a job?” Ding ding ding.
“Stuff it!” Freda yelled. She exhaled. “Driving trucks, logging trucks, to New Hampshire and back. He’s gone all the time it seems. I’m used to having him around.” She blew out a long, slow stream of smoke. “Maud, I got spoiled. My Lord, the fun we’d have in the afternoons watching the soap operas.”
“But why? Why did he get a job?”
Freda said Lewis Lee had had a change of heart about life. He lost his knife and couldn’t whittle any little figures for her and the kids’ Christmas presents so he decided to earn the money for gifts.
“I wanted to buy him another whittling knife but Lewis said it wouldn’t be the same. His father gave him that knife when he was a boy. It was his grandfather’s before that.” Freda puffed furiously on the cigarette and wearily exhaled. Her eyes watered as if the smoke had blown back into her face instead of drifting my way.
“I told him the kids and me don’t need gifts,” she whispered so softly I had to lean closer to hear. “But he won’t listen. I miss the old Lewis Lee, the one who didn’t crawl in bed too tired to even talk, the one who laughed under the covers and said silly things. I loved that man. This one just isn’t the same.”
Ding ding ding.
I patted Freda’s shoulder. “You’re right, some people don’t know shit about life.”
Odie unzipped his down parka, institutional green as it was part of the Round Corners Police Department’s official uniform; the nylon rustled as he reached for five sugar packets, tapped them against his finger, and ripped off the tops. All five went into his coffe
e.
“Pass on the cream, Maud. Arlene’s been nagging about my weight again.” Odie sipped his coffee. “Can you believe it about Harvey Winchester? Pretty damn sad when a man’s afraid to talk to his wife. Then again when Wynn’s the wife, it may be understandable. She can be a wild woman and pregnancy has not turned her into Miss Congeniality. Once I was in the shop for a haircut and she kept me waiting while she ripped out some stitches on that kid’s afghan.”
“Mothers,” Amos said.
“Mothers,” agreed Bartholomew.
“I think this whole town’s gone nuts,” Odie said. “I hope you ain’t been painting all this crazy stuff that’s been going on, Maud.”
I smiled. “I’ve been painting it; Ella’s been writing it. When we’re finished with Round Corners, it’s going to make Peyton Place look like kindergarten.” Odie sputtered, spitting his coffee across the counter.
Frank and Ella came in and took a booth behind Odie, Amos, and Bartholomew. Frank kept his back to the wall. It was hamburger steak night, Frank’s favorite.
“Two of the usual?” I asked, pouring their coffees.
“Yes,” Frank said.
“No,” Ella said.
Frank glared at her; she stared him down.
“I want something different. We don’t have to have hamburger steak all the time. The world isn’t going to end if I have a grilled cheese.”
“It’s a good night for grilled cheese,” I said. Frank and Ella remained silent. “And for hamburger steak.”
It was obvious that Frank and Ella weren’t talking to each other. Which meant they doubly didn’t want to talk to Odie. So I could have doused Odie with decaf when he leaned over and said, “Well, your employer has gotten himself in a mess now, Ella.”
Ella ruffled up like an offended bird. She had given up trying to explain to Odie that the postal service was a private business and not a branch of the United States government. Odie subscribed to selective memory and identification. When the government did something he agreed with, it was “his country.” When it did something he considered absurd, it was “Ella’s boss.”
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