by Lisa Samson
Four
I flipped on the lamp clamped to my easel. At last. At last. Buttoning myself up into the tentlike recesses of my big shirt, I slid into my paint-splattered Keds and looked out the small window of my painting shed. Duncan’s silhouette swayed at the kitchen window where he scrubbed the casserole dish. Me, I leave the pan to soak overnight, but Duncan takes baked-on cheese very seriously. Being a small man, Duncan isn’t as strong as some and not as fast as others, but what Duncan possesses and what I’ve always admired about my husband is his endurance. Strong and fast are good, but it’s endurance that matters in the long run. He runs for an hour every evening and stops only because an hour is all the time he has.
I’d sketched out the basic idea for the painting before supper, a watercolor I’ve been wanting to paint of my children for years. My mother had always said that children reach their peak of cuteness at two and a half years of age. Most family portraits I’ve seen capture the children at a certain year, ages varied. This painting, however, would show Paisley, Robbie, and Angus all at two and a half. I couldn’t wait to see how it would turn out.
Duncan came in through the open door as soon as I had arranged my palette. “I brought you a cup of coffee.”
“Thanks. Can you just put it there on the workable?”
He did, gently moving some sketches and pencils aside to clear a spot. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“Nope. I’m just so glad to be out here.”
“I know.” He looked uncomfortable. Duncan always seems uncomfortable in my studio. He just doesn’t understand this side of me, and I don’t expect him to. “I’m going to take Angus down to Bill D’s for some pie.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll just go running after he goes down.”
“Okay.”
“Are you sure you don’t want anything else?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Because all you have to do is just say the word.”
“Yes, Duncan, I’m sure. Now just get out of here!”
He laughed. “Just getting you back for the animal crackers.” Then he kissed me on the cheek. A few minutes later I watched as he piled Angus into the van and drove off.
After masking the areas for the kids’ faces, I dove my brush into the water and then some ultramarine and started on the sky. I’d rather paint natural surroundings than have to clutter up the picture with fireplaces and chairs. And why not make use of God’s backdrop for the world? If it’s good enough for Him, it’s most certainly good enough for me.
I finished the sky by the time the phone rang. Not at all happy about it, but thinking it might be Rob telling me his junk heap car broke down or something, I punched the button and greeted the caller.
“Penny?” Only one person I know calls me by that name.
“Hi, Miss Poole.”
“Is Reverend Fraser there?”
“No, Miss Poole.”
“Where is he?”
I somehow knew that would be the next question, and that sinful side of my nature ignored it. “Can I help you with something?”
Silence. Then, “Well, since you’re obviously refusing to tell me where he is, then you’ll just have to do the job.”
And the painting was coming along so well. “What is it?”
“I’ve got a 102 degree fever, and the executive committee meeting for the May Festival meets tonight.”
Silent groan.
“Someone needs to be there to represent the church,” she finished.
“Won’t we just get steak-on-a-stick and face painting as usual?”
“I don’t know. But if someone isn’t there, we may just end up with something ghastly like sack races or cotton candy.”
Strangely enough, I could actually see the woman’s point. “What time does it begin?”
“Seven-thirty.”
The clock on my wall said seven. “Down at the VFW hall?”
“Yes.”
By 7:35 my khakis and I covered the seat of one of the folding chairs placed around two large tables someone had slid together. Hopefully, Duncan would see the note I left on the counter before he put Angus in bed and went running. Hopefully, he wouldn’t just assume I was home, go running, and leave Angus by himself. Hopefully, one day I’ll give him a little bit of credit.
Church folk and town folk alike gathered around the table. The smell of natural gas penetrates some of these older buildings, and the VFW hall was no exception. Folding chairs stood in stacks against the wall, and white linoleum tile covered the floor of the main meeting room. I could just picture veterans sitting around and chatting. I guess. What do they really do in these places?
A stylish young woman called the meeting to order. If I had known anyone there, I would have asked who this professional lady was. Instead I sat back and listened, taking mental notes for the grilling Miss Poole would give me later.
The Crazy Days of May, as the festival was renamed back in the eighties, is Mount Oak’s major fundraiser. Talk about a bunch of complainers, nitpickers, and backbiters. And that was just the church people! I’ve never lived in a place where the rift between secular and sacred yawned so widely. Yawn is right. I looked at my watch hoping this meeting wouldn’t last long, knowing I’d be lucky to be home by eleven.
Everybody had to have a say, at least three different ways. But even my ears perked up when Colonel Bougie of the Colonel’s Kitchen spoke up. “If I have to hear those ladies from Mount Zion Christian complain one more time about how much work the Boston cream pies are, I’m going to scream.”
Well, amen to that.
Everybody agreed, and when the priest from St. Edmund’s Episcopal reached into his briefcase and pulled out a bag of Hershey Miniatures, I figured maybe I could stay just a little bit longer.
Although he’s nine months into his sixth year, Angus still can’t pump himself on the swings. He doesn’t like to go high either. Late one morning, I sat beside him, my hips screaming, squeezed painfully in the rubber belt that passes for a swing seat these days. The flat seats disappeared eons ago, those slabs of wood lacquered a high gloss green, painted over and over to a smooth finish. The flat seats vanished into some Bermuda Triangle of caution. The old-time swings had enabled me and my best friend Chrissy to stand firm, feet snug against the brackets that held the chains to the seat. Chains firmly in hand, we pumped for height with our entire bodies, swinging hard and comfortable and free. Hardly safe. We knew that. Back in those days, there was always someone home to run crying to, someone who didn’t believe that safety and things equaled lots of love and lots of time.
I try to raise Angus like I had been raised, but he forever makes it difficult, asking questions I don’t always know the answers to. So moments such as these filled with joy, joy, joy, these deep and wide moments of pure childhood are precious. Sometimes I hold Angus to myself, close, so close, and will myself to keep from screaming, “Stop, Angus. Just stop!”
I hadn’t realized the luxury Paisley and Robbie had provided as regular kids who grew up on the right time schedule. I lived with no frantic sense of loss regarding them like I do with Angus. Like when I had lost my glasses in the ocean years before and my stolen sight prohibited me from looking for them. Rolling around in the water somewhere or buried beneath the sand, they weren’t coming back. And neither is Angus, my baby. No pulling the wool over that child’s eyes. No bribing. No deals.
Still, a lot of laddie remains in the little boy whose mind will leave me behind by the age of, oh, say eight. I don’t keep up on the genius stuff anyway. If Angus’s brain functions as well as everyone figures, he’ll do fine without my intervention. But he still likes to sway gently back and forth on the swings while we sing Sunday school songs together.
He sang with me, “there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.”
The quiet there by the swing set Duncan built soothed the troubled part inside me that shreds my peace of mind to bleeding ribbons.
Quiet in the dapple
d sunlight.
The apparatus rests in a grotto in the middle of a circle of pines that mulches the area with discarded needles. Blue sky slips through the protective heavy boughs. Sunshine mottles the child’s perfect skin.
I don’t know what I’d do without you, I thought, my love for this child a salve on my open sores. God gave him to me, this child of Duncan’s. This I know.
“Rolled away, rolled away, rolled away,” I began, remembering the words I’d learned as a child, one of the many songs sung while sitting in the second pew of the main sanctuary next to my best friend, my still best friend, Chrissy Vandervere, now Chris Knight. My memory always clothes us in sleeveless, yellow gauze dresses with white lace trim and pearl buttons sewn down the front. My mother purchased mine from Hutzler’s in Towson, and Chrissy’s mother had plucked hers from the missionary barrel in the storage closet of the church.
Chris’s daddy was the pastor.
I’ve called Chris my best friend for over forty years now, though for a while I left my childhood friend behind. It was as if the dresses had been prophetic, a telling of what would become important to each of us. Chris, in her missionary barrel dresses, hand-me-down shoes, crocheted purses, and homemade prom gowns, had never deserted the faith. Chris never wandered down the seductive path of Mercedes and tennis bracelets and day spas. Chris kept her hand tucked firmly in between the wounds of Christ. Chris never wavered.
I wish I could say the same. But I met Duncan during a Campus Crusade meeting at Towson State. Gung ho for Jesus in those days. That was us. Singing praise songs with guitars, carrying our Bibles shamelessly with us while other people carried Nietzche. And then life kicked in soon after our wedding. Duncan began his business, and the only services we attended a few years after marrying were weddings, baptisms, funerals, and holidays. It went on like that for fifteen years. How does one find herself singing praise songs and reading the Bible faithfully one year and clinging to the doctrine of eternal security the next? If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a women’s conference speaker, I guess.
Paisley is the casualty from that time of our lives. Robbie, quick to fall in line, lives his life as a testament to God’s grace. At least as much as a twenty-year-old boy can. He reads his Bible every morning and always stops to help stranded motorists. What more could a mother ask? Spirituality and faith come easily to my son. I wish I could be more like him, like the young adult I myself was.
And now, Angus gives me the chance to do it right from the start. If I don’t steal away with him some night. I pushed him harder on the swing. “Every burden of my heart rolled away,” I finished, wishing it was that easy for me.
“My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” Jesus says. But sometimes our burdens stink so badly the thought of handing such a package to the beautiful One who died willingly for us is hardly able to be contemplated. I want to ask Him if it’s okay. I know He can handle such a burden, but does He really want to? Really? My head says yes. The Bible isn’t a foreign book to me. I know about grace and redemption.
Maybe if I had been an unbeliever at the time of my fall, it would be different for me. I yearn for an easy explanation.
“Don’t push me too high, Mama. Please.”
I stopped the swing altogether, stood up and kissed his little mouth. The contact of those soft lips on mine intoxicated me, two seconds of woozy bliss, tender ecstasy, a feeling only a mother of an affectionate, sweet son knows. Those little hands on my shoulders. The impotent squeeze of short fingers.
He pulled back to look at his Batman watch. “I’d like for you to pick me up now. It’s lunchtime.”
I obeyed, lifting him easily, relishing the feel of his spindly legs gripping me tightly around the waist, his skinny arms around my shoulders.
I thrust my arms straight out from my sides as Angus hung onto me by his own strength like a koala on his tree. We twirled like a helicopter down the short path toward the kitchen door. “What shall we refuel with, Gus?”
“Tomato sandwiches.”
I navigated our chopper through the screen door and set him down on the counter. “Did you know that Thomas Jefferson ate the first tomato in America? They thought it was poisonous before that.” My arms folded against his response.
“I didn’t know that! Cool.” And he began to chant the song Duncan had taught him a while back. “George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.”
I joined in. “John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren!”
A few things still remain that I can teach this kid. That satisfies me for now.
Ten minutes later the counter, tinted with tomato juice, textured by seeds and pulp, demanded a quick swipe of the dishrag. Angus’s face deserved much the same treatment,
“I love tomato sandwiches,” he cried, as I scraped the dishrag across his features.
Strange kid. Only his good eyesight saved him from complete misfit-hood. If he’d inherited my nearsightedness, he would have been positively stereotypical. Genius boy, thanks to Duncan. Thick glasses thanks to both of us. Could have been worse. I sat down and took a bite of my sandwich.
The juice dripped down my arm.
I sighed and got up from the table to get more napkins, grabbing a pile from the pottery bowl I made while getting my master’s in fine art at the Maryland Institute. I love my tiny kitchen with its nicked butcher-block counters, scarred stone floors, and the massive hoosier with the pull-out table. I’d painted the walls with a garden mural and the ceiling sky blue. Clouds breezed across the blue expanse, ruffling the feathers of a couple of ornery-looking blue jays. It is always a nice day to eat in my kitchen, and I have the tummy to attest to that fact.
I wiped Angus’s face again.
Duncan walked in. “Lunch ready?”
“Tomato sandwiches, Daddy.” Angus’s forearms dripped, so I wiped them, too.
Duncan grimaced, turning to me and rubbing his graying mustache. I held up my hands feeling like Mrs. Cleaver. “Don’t worry. Egg salad for you.”
“I’m going to change my shirt. Man, it’s hot out there. Typical August.”
I began making his sandwich. “Well, the tourist season officially ends tomorrow, and Monday night is the locals’ post Labor Day dance down at the boathouse.”
“Praise God it’s over for another year.” He shut his eyes tightly, took off his small wire-rimmed glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We can shut down Creator’s Corner until next June.”
Highland Kirk had started Creator’s Corner three summers before to provide a place for the children of vacationers to come when their parents wanted a vacation from vacation. We tell them about Jesus and assure them they are loved. But it’s a hassle nonetheless, wiping off all of those Kool-Aid mustaches and changing diapers.
One’s own kids’ messes seem bad enough, but dealing with someone else’s child’s mess, well, surely that borders on sainthood. And if one can do it without gagging and with a smile, that woman will clearly receive an honorable mention at the back of the next year’s edition of The Proper Christian Ladies’ Handbook of Church Etiquette and Behavior.
But the tiny souls hidden beneath the smells, the tears, and the messes outweigh the inconvenience. One day some child will return to say thank you. This is eternal stuff going on here, and I have to remind myself of that every day. These kids will take “Allelu, Allelu, Allelu, Alleluias” right on home with them, and since God inhabits praise and all, who knows where it might lead?
Duncan reemerged a few minutes later wearing yard work clothing. He is, in fact, quite sexy in yard work clothing. Torn khaki and green grass stains frankly make me want to escort him into the bedroom right then and there. Not a normal occurrence to be sure. His lean, runner’s frame, looking fit in shorts, at the same time reminds me that I probably weigh more than he does. Still, I like the feel of his spare stomach under my palms when I come up behind him in his half of the sunroom and lean down to see what he’s typed into h
is computer.
I set his plate in front of him. Egg salad sandwich on whole wheat, Fritos, and a bunch of green grapes. The bedroom is quickly forgotten.
“I’ve got to mow the grounds today.” He took a large bite.
It was one of the unexpected antikudos we had been hit with the day we moved in. And Duncan unwittingly inherited the bequest of the former pastor, a bachelor who left a legacy of emerald lawns and variegated this-and-thats Duncan neither wanted nor deserved.
I figure if he doesn’t have the guts to stand up to the session and tell them to get someone else to take care of the grounds, he deserves it. But Duncan never complains. And what seems to bring him contentment in this life of serving others—sitting by sickbeds, holding puke pans and IV punctured hands, calling on shut-ins and praying, mulching and mowing and placating and hemming and hawing—has done exactly the opposite for me.
If I left, Duncan wouldn’t be the only one picking up pieces. I realize this. Some women have it easy when they can’t face their lives anymore. If they leave, well, hubby might have a bit of explaining to do. But if I go, it will ruin Duncan’s career. I do not take this as lightly as it may seem. May seem to whom?
You, Lord? But You know what’s in my heart anyway.
Duncan wiped his mouth. “I’m going to mulch as well.”
I turned to Angus. “What about it, Gus? You want to help me mulch while Daddy mows the lawn?” I asked, completely out of guilt.
“Uh-huh.”
Duncan ruffled his son’s hair and mouthed the words “I love you” to me.
Jody measured the cabinets, measured the counters, and he did it all with such youthful grace, with such economical movements it reminded me of an animal in a way, going about its business without artifice or transaction. I watched, fascinated, feeling sexy all of a sudden, feeling womanly, desiring touch and tasting salt even as my mouth went dry, knowing it had been so long since I had felt desire, since I had been desired. Did he feel it, too, I wondered as he turned toward me and caught me staring at him, my eyes too wide, too full of wonder at this specimen of beauty and vigor and inexperience. I remembered how I had thought I would never in my entire life make love to anyone but Duncan, but now I wasn’t so sure because these days I’M NOT SURE ABOUT MUCH. Only one thing: I’VE BEEN REARRANGING THE SAME CANS OF ROTTEN BEANS FOR YEARS NOW.