“A long road, but I’m better enough not to be a burden to anyone, which is probably all I ever wanted.” Beverly brought her cup to her lips with her good arm, sipped her tea. A bit dribbled from the corner of her mouth, and Claire wiped it away with a cloth napkin Beverly had set out, in another basket, all white with tatted edges and rolled with mismatched jeweled napkin rings. “Thank you, dear.”
“Would you call, what happened to you, I mean, a miracle?” Molly asked.
“Oh, absolutely yes, and there is more to the story, if you’d like to hear it.”
Molly nodded.
“Well, in the nursing home, I had a roommate who was dying. I could hear it in her lungs, her voice. Sometimes she had a daughter sitting by her side, but often she was alone, and she’d cry at night. Moan. And my heart broke for her. I prayed because I could do nothing else. My speech hadn’t returned; I was only just beginning to be able to communicate through blinks and hand squeezes. And then I heard God tell me, ‘Sing.’
“I said, in my head, mind you, ‘Lord, are you crazy? I can’t make anything but garbled sounds. I’m not going to be able to sing anything at all.’
“And He just said again, ‘Sing.’
“Now, I’m usually not one to argue with my Lord, so I opened my mouth, and a song came out. I heard it clear and strong with my ears. If it sounded that way to the woman in the bed next to me, I don’t know. But she calmed. Her moaning and tears stopped. The rustling and bumping of the bed stopped. And when my song ended, I heard her breathing smooth and light. And I fell asleep, too.
“She had passed on by morning.”
Claire batted at her eyes. She’d heard the story dozens of times—told it to others dozens of times—but it never failed to move her to tears. A testament of God’s goodness and providence. Another miraculous sign from a loving Father, like Hanna’s—It’s Molly now. Molly. She wants it that way—escape. Like their meeting on the playground. Claire had seen so much of the sacred, and yet she forgot so easily, falling back into old patterns of self-pity. Why was that? She’d been given blessings as numerous as the stars.
Forgive me.
Molly stirred more sugar into her tea, despite having added spoonfuls already. She hadn’t even tasted it. “What did you sing?”
Beverly leaned back in her chair, and her voice came, deep, slow, majestic and full of nursing-home memories.
“‘Man of Sorrows,’ what a name
For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim!
Hallelujah! what a Savior!
Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood:
Hallelujah! what a Savior!
Guilty, vile and helpless we;
Spotless Lamb of God was He;
Full atonement! can it be?
Hallelujah! what a Savior!
Lifted up was He to die,
‘It is finished’ was His cry;
Now in heav’n exalted high:
Hallelujah! what a Savior!
When He comes, our glorious King,
All His ransomed home to bring,
Then anew this song we’ll sing:
Hallelujah! what a Savior!”
“I have no doubt I had that stroke so I could be in that bed, that day, to sing to a woman I’d never met.”
Molly’s face waxed over—Claire could only liken it to one of the figures in that museum of hers—and she turned inward again. Claire and Beverly continued for a little longer with pleasantries, and then the older woman apologized for her age and exhaustion and went through the curtained pocket doors for a nap. Claire straightened the kitchen while Molly swished her cold tea, and when she asked if the girl was up to walking back home, Molly nodded.
Twilight touched the edges of the ocean, the horizon curling under in a hazy gray. Their shadows stretched ahead of them, gliding over gravel and sidewalk crack with a grace only shadows could muster. Claire’s silhouette showed no protruding belly, no clunky extra-forty-pound gait. And Molly’s shadow betrayed none of the hesitancy the body beside Claire clearly felt, all stiffness and twitches and nervous snorts.
As they approached the museum, Claire touched Molly’s arm. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. “I think . . . I feel . . .” She shook her head.
“Do you want to go inside and talk a little?”
“No,” Molly said. Her back was to the museum window. She didn’t look at it. On purpose.
Claire nodded across the street. “We could sit in the pizza place.”
Molly shook her head quickly.
“How about the car?”
“Okay.”
She unlocked the passenger door, closed Molly inside. Crossed around the front and settled behind the steering wheel. “Heat?”
“I’m good.”
Claire waited. She sensed Molly needing to take the lead on the conversation, was reminded sharply of another time, when Molly-as-Hanna wanted to ask her questions but did not have the opportunity that afternoon in the convenience store.
And then she disappeared.
Obviously remembering the same thing, Molly said, “That day. The last day we saw each other. I wanted to talk to you.”
Claire nodded. “I know.”
“What Beverly said . . . It all came back to me. Do you think she’s right? Did God give her a stroke so she could sing to that woman?”
Claire didn’t have to be brilliant to follow Molly’s rabbit trail. She’d been in the same place, still found herself there, wondering those same things and finding only dry, tasteless responses. A mouthful of unseasoned bread crumbs. Nothing to fill the hungry places. Nothing satisfying.
“You want to know if He put you in the bank that day for a reason.”
The girl trembled. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes. Because if He did, then it wouldn’t be my fault.”
“Your fault. Ha—Molly, what are you talking about?”
“I picked.” The tears spilled down her face. “Dad asked where I wanted to go first, and I picked the post office. If I . . . if I hadn’t . . . he’d be . . . he wouldn’t . . .”
Her words disintegrated in great quaking sobs. The temperature inside the Olds warmed with the crying—thick, foggy veils of grief coating the windows. Molly dove against Claire’s shoulder, clinging to her, and Claire rocked the girl, stroking her hair and saying “Shhh. Shhh.” Six years of bottled-up guilt exploded out, sour and fermented. “Shhh.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Molly said, hiccupping. She sniffled, pulled away, her face blotchy, her eyes puffed up, as if she were having an allergic reaction to her memories.
Stung by the past.
“Sweetie, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Then whose? God’s?” the girl rubbed her face in her scarf. “I don’t understand. Why did He take my dad? Why did He let me get kidnapped if He was just going to save me? It all hurts so much.”
She began to cry again, quietly this time, shoulders bobbing up and down. Claire touched her knee, hidden beneath the huge black coat. “I killed my children.”
Molly’s head snapped toward her, pale eyes even icier with fear. “What?”
“You knew my son was dead. Caden. But he wasn’t my only child. I had a daughter. Amelia. There was a car accident. I was driving. I turned left and pulled out in front of a truck I didn’t see because of the way the sun was shining. The other driver was going too fast, too. Both my children were killed. And I lost the baby I was pregnant with. Her name was Alexis.
“I’ve asked myself all the questions. What part of it did God make happen? What part of it did He simply allow to happen? Did He set the sun to blind me to oncoming traffic so I veered into the truck’s path? Did He know the crash was coming because speeding and windshield glare happen in a fallen world, and He sat back and allowed it because doing so would bring His purpose to pass? Was it some combination of both or an entirely different reaso
n?
“I have no idea, Molly, but here’s what I am sure of. I know God is good. I know His ways are perfect. I also know only He gives and takes life. No one else has ultimate control of that. So it doesn’t matter why or how the accident happened. My children’s days were fulfilled, their purposes accomplished.
“And even though I know that, it still hurts. There’s no way around it.”
Claire exhaled slowly, kneading a tight, bulging spot low on her belly. She pushed in, felt the baby’s entire body shift, fluttering upward. “Here,” she said, taking Molly’s gloved hand and holding it to her stomach. The baby responded, bumping against her touch.
“Boy or girl?” Molly asked.
“We’ll find out April thirtieth. Or thereabout.”
“You miss your other children?”
“Every single day,” Claire said. “With everything I have.”
“Yeah,” Molly said.
The baby kicked again. Claire squeezed her fingers. “Yeah.”
27
MOLLY
MARCH 2009
When she told Tobias she wanted him to take her to church the next morning, he nearly crowed with delight, like Peter Pan, grinning and tossing his knit cap into the air. “Oh, wicked. We can walk down together. Or I’ll drive, if you want. Can’t say the car will warm up before we get there . . . Oh, shoot. It’s my grandmother’s mass.”
“What?” Molly asked.
“Every year my grandfather has a mass said for her, on a Sunday near the anniversary of her death. I always go. I promised him, when I started attending the Baptist church. Dad didn’t care about me going any other day, just that one.”
“I’ll go to the mass.”
“Nah. Don’t worry about it. Maybe we can find a service tonight, if we call around quick, or one really early. Not here, but maybe in Duncan. There’s a couple bigger churches there.”
“No, really. I want to go.”
“Seriously?”
Molly nodded.
“Well, all right,” Tobias said, shrugging. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
“You ever been to a Catholic mass before?”
“A couple times. When I was a kid.”
“Okay then. Just want to be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. I’ll pick you up at quarter to ten.”
She thought she should wear a dress, but didn’t have one. Didn’t have anything but a couple pairs of jeans and her favorite corduroys, none of which she would have worn to services, even if she went only with Tobias. But with his family, on such a special day? She sighed, wondered what he would be wearing. She could call him, ask.
Yeah, right.
Louise was out with Mick. The uncle part had been dropped in Molly’s mind since the engagement; she just couldn’t fathom having an uncle and stepfather rolled into one. It gave her a creepy feeling.
In her mother’s bedroom she slid open the mirrored closet door and pushed through the hangers, found Louise’s skirts in the back, all three clipped onto one hanger. Molly didn’t remember her mother ever wearing any of them. Two of them buttoned and zipped and would never fit, but one of them was linen, yellow with gray flowers, and had an elastic waist. She grabbed it, carried it into the kitchen and took a serrated steak knife from the block, poked the sharp tip through the fabric inside the waistband, and sawed. Hooking the elastic with her finger, she scrunched the linen to one side, sliced through the exposed elastic and tied it to make the waist small enough to fit her. In her bedroom she paired the skirt with a gray cable-knit sweater. They looked silly together—the summery bottom with the bulky winter top—but the sweater was the only thing she had that even remotely matched.
She ironed the skirt and hung it on the inside of the closet door. She did have tights—on cold days she wore them under her jeans—and held both the black pair and the ivory pair up against the patterned fabric. Neither went well, but she decided on the black, and her black mules.
Her mother and Mick came home; she heard them fumbling in the other room, tripping over something while trying to find the lamp on the end table. Boxes, probably. For all Louise’s zeal over moving, most of the boxes sat half filled and half stacked around the apartment. Molly didn’t know why she had stopped packing and taping and labeling, and didn’t ask.
The silences had grown longer between them, Louise seemingly avoiding her. Or maybe she just imagined it, her mother simply preoccupied with Mick and the new life finally coming to her. Molly didn’t want to spend too much time wondering but pushed the worry away, like she’d been trying to do with the fact she wouldn’t be sitting on the sofa watching television church for an hour tomorrow morning before wandering into the museum to open the door to no one. She’d have to tell Louise before she left. Or maybe she’d just leave a note.
Tobias picked her up outside the side entrance, like she’d asked him to. He must have driven around the island several times, because hot air brushed by her as she opened the passenger’s side. She was glad, as she hadn’t wanted to wear her mother’s bulky coat, had put on gloves and a scarf but no other outerwear. She sat, closed the door, and then tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position on the seat. Couldn’t. She had closed her skirt in the door, but before she had a chance to free herself, Tobias pulled out onto the street and started toward the church. She belted up, her knees trapped—one against the door, the other against the one—knobby bones grinding painfully with each bump and turn.
“You look nice,” Tobias said. He wore his everyday jeans with the faded thighs, a frayed hole here and there—whether intentional or simply from overuse, Molly didn’t know. He wore his everyday shoes, black and chunky and creased, like boots cut short, dark laces specked with gold. And his hat. His coat was flung in the back seat. He wiped his damp forehead, shoving his hair up under the hem of his hat.
“Are you hot?” Molly asked.
“I’m good. Unless you are. Then I’ll turn it down.”
“If you want to.”
“Molly,” Tobias said, “I’m asking you.”
She shrugged. “I’m okay. But you’re sweating.”
“I’d sweat in a blizzard.”
They drove to the church without any more talking, Molly sensing something different in Tobias, something tense and uncertain. She’d never seen him that way before. Was it going to mass with his family, or her presence in the car? She traced the outlines of the flowers on her skirt with her finger. When he parked, she nearly jumped from the passenger seat, stretching her cramped legs, glanced down. The bottom of her skirt was wet with dirty road slush. Tobias came around and draped his jacket over her shoulders.
“I don’t—”
“Just take it,” he said.
She didn’t slip her arms into the sleeves but held the zipper closed with both hands from the inside. They walked around the front of the building, a small white chapel with curls of loose paint dangling from the clapboard here and there, latex caterpillars waiting to be scraped away in the spring. Molly had hoped for a stone building, like St. Catherine’s, pointed and arched and grabbing at the sky above. The front, however, had an uncovered porch constructed of old New England stone, and carved into each of the steps’ risers was a different biblical word or phrase. She climbed them, reading—prepare, repent, believe, redemption, salvation, praise, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly, eternal life. The Ts in both salvation and redemption were damaged.
In an awkward moment Molly tangled with Tobias as he tried to reach from behind and open the door for her. “Sorry,” he said, moving aside quickly and giving her space to enter the building, maybe remembering the day the King fell over.
She stepped onto carpeting. Not the low, flat cardboard kind usually found in places where many people walked. This rug, plush and blue, squished under her feet like seaweed, trapping the dampness of the ocean in its fibers, releasing a puff of saltiness with each of her footfalls. Tobias motioned to a full pew, and Molly recognized his brother, Frank,
and both parents. She’d seen them plenty through the window, and Frank had delivered food to the museum more than once. The grandfather was there, too, on the end, narrow-shouldered and long-faced, like Tobias, his hair shiny black and waxed to his head. Tobias hugged him, both men slapping each other on the back before parting, and the family scooted down the row, making room for them to sit. Molly claimed the first seat, on the aisle, keeping the warm coat around her.
The pews had kneelers attached to them. Tobias knelt for a moment, crossed himself, but Molly didn’t move. The chapel was not only small but plain. It had no crucifix above the altar, no colored glass in the windows, no saints peering around at the hundred-person congregation. There were candles, though, flickering in red votives.
She wanted to go home.
“Tobias . . .”
He glanced up from his hands, folded in his lap, pointer fingers extended, tips touching, the rest of his fingers folded down between one another. “Are you okay?”
“I think I need to—”
The organist blasted a chord through the sanctuary, then another. She announced the hymn and everyone stood. The processional paraded down between the seats, one altar boy and a baby-faced priest, both with Sketchers poking from beneath their robes. Tobias whispered, close to her face, “Are you okay?” and she nodded because the desire to flee had somehow been carried away with the organ’s voice. She fumbled around for the missal, but Tobias handed her his, and she mouthed the words of the last verse and then sat again.
The priest—Father Gino, Tobias had told her yesterday, “Pops likes him. Gets him out of church in forty-three minutes and has a good Italian name”—mumbled through the mass, tripping over words but plowing forward, as if he had somewhere to be before the end of the hour. Molly followed along the best she could, her fingers splayed in the leaves of the missal, keeping the pages marked so she could flip between the readings and the songs. Standing, sitting, kneeling—it had all seemed less complicated as a child.
“‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.’”
The words stirred Molly as the congregation recited them together. They reminded her of similar words somewhere else, not from her visits to St. Catherine’s, but where? Then it came to her; it was in one of the New Testament books, she couldn’t remember which, had very little memory for chapter and verse, but it was in there. A centurion, a servant, an astonishing faith.
The Air We Breathe Page 22