by Nancy Rue
She blurred in front of me.
“I’m not planning to join the take-in-a-homeless-person program, but I can sure make you look good while you’re doing it.”
I fell into the arms she held out to me. Beside us Mary Alice pulled a fresh Kleenex from her bosom.
When they left, Chief was still sitting on the hearth, waiting to go for my jugular. Or so I thought. I came back from showing them out, ready with my first argument, but he said, “At least that wreck of a van is good for something.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “I didn’t really need it with Maharry Nelson. He knew why we were there the minute we walked in the door.”
“No. It’s going to be my sleeping quarters until they book Jude Lowery.”
“What?”
“We’re going to be lucky to see the cops cruise by here once a night, two at the most. I’m not leaving you here unguarded. This’ll be the first place they look.”
“They didn’t look in her own father’s place,” I said. “I don’t think they’re going to look for her at all. From what Mercedes and Jasmine told me, Sultan has an ego the size of Alaska. I don’t think he’ll ever believe she’d turn him in.”
Chief gave me a slow nod.
“You’re agreeing with me?” I said.
“Not entirely. But I get the feeling you know this character somehow.”
“He’s a jackal. I know jackals.”
“I’ll give you that,” he said. “But I’m still sleeping in your driveway.”
“Miz Vernell is going to have a field day with that. And don’t tell me one road at a time. I feel like I’m on about three at once.”
“I have that one covered. Now—you have an air mattress around here?”
I actually slept that night, between wake-ups to cry for Geneveve and to wonder if Desmond had enough blankets. The five total hours I managed were enough to get me through the next day’s planning of Geneveve’s funeral—which the HOGs had taken up a collection to pay for. Hank, Mercedes, Jasmine, and I worked in my dining room while Sherry slept fitfully upstairs, with Leighanne at her bedside.
“I really think she’ll do better with Nita,” Leighanne told me at one point. “Who, by the way, hates that she’s going to miss the memorial service, but she’s on a cruise. I’m surprised she hasn’t jumped ship to get here.”
I left most of the planning to Hank, because I was fine as long as I was doing something active, but the minute I started to think too much, I folded. The few contributions I did make were adamant. I didn’t want the service at Bates and Hockley, and wherever we did it, I wanted Hank to be in charge.
“As if I would let anybody else do it,” she said. “Trinity Church says we can use their small chapel if you’d like that.”
I did.
“And I think you should give the eulogy.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“You talkin’ about sayin’ somethin’ over Geneveve?” Mercedes said.
“That’s it,” Hank said.
“You got to do that, Miss Angel.”
“I can’t,” I said again. “I’ll fall apart. You have more experience, Hank. You do it.”
Hank nodded, but her eyes stayed on me, even after Mercedes went on to say she wanted communion at the service and Jasmine said there should be a Christmas tree instead of flowers. I knew she saw the real reason—it was probably as plain as the tears I was pushing away with my knuckles. I couldn’t speak of faith and comfort when I wasn’t feeling it myself. God was coming to me in fits and starts that I couldn’t hold onto.
“We got to have a tree there,” Jasmine was saying, “’cause Geneveve was wantin’ to make Christmas special for Desmond.”
I agreed, though I didn’t see how it was going to be special for any of us, especially Desmond. Every time Chief called or came in the side door, I held my breath for the words, “Desmond’s coming home.” By the morning of the funeral, I still hadn’t heard them.
If nothing else, Mercedes, Jasmine, Sherry, and I looked fabulous in our dresses from India’s shop. Geneveve’s eyes would be sparkling at the sight of it. She had grown to love pretty. The magnitude of the things that were just falling within her grasp when she died pressed down on me.
The only thing that lifted me up when we entered the chapel was the fact that every shiny pew was filled. As the three women and Chief and I filed up the tiny center aisle, I saw that Bonner was there, and India, and Mary Alice, as well as all the HOGs who’d helped with the house. Leighanne filled up a whole row with people I assumed were from NA. Two of the biggest surprises were Owen Schatz and Maharry Nelson. Sherry went to sit with him and clung to his arm.
But no one surprised me more than Desmond.
Liz Doyle brought him to me just as Hank stood up to begin the service.
“I have to take him back when it’s over,” she whispered. “I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
Hank waited while Desmond inserted himself between Chief and me. He didn’t look like my Desmond in faded, too-big black slacks and a wrinkled white dress shirt. Someone had done a bad job of tying the necktie that appeared to have belonged to someone’s grandfather. Even after Chief removed it from his neck, Desmond was still another boy—stiff and wary, with nothing of the old wit and charm. I fought back the thought that he was as dead as Geneveve.
But he was there. I looped my arm through his and nodded for Hank to start.
The service was everything Edwin Sanborn’s funeral had not been. Hank made it a true celebration of the life his daughter had lived in the last three and a half months—her sweet love as we exchanged the peace, her deep longing to be whole as we shared communion—“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”—her sacrifice of herself as Hank read from the Scripture. It was all true, all good, and I knew Geneveve would be glowing in her quiet way. But I was still flat and unmoved. Until Hank called for the women of Sacrament House.
This part I didn’t know about. Mercedes, Jasmine, and Sherry all went forward and each took something from Hank. One by one they turned to the simple casket.
Sherry covered it with the blanket Geneveve had wrapped her in the night she arrived, hiding her terror behind hostile eyes. Jasmine added the ribbon Geneveve had hung in the window to welcome Desmond. Mercedes left Geneveve’s key to Sacrament House, the one I tucked into her hand the day it became their home. None of them said a word, but their message called to me and shaped a vision in my head.
Sacrament House—the light at the center of a block of homes all filled with women praying and healing and reaching for their lives. Mercedes and Jasmine and Sherry, standing in the several doorways, opening their arms, drying the tears, speaking the truths in the rhythm only they could sing to. I could see it. I could feel it. I yearned for it. And I was Nudged toward it.
“Hank,” I said. “I’d like to say something.”
She folded her hands as only she could do and smiled the Hank smile. “Good,” she said, “because nobody was leaving until you did.”
I found a place in the aisle and looked at the unlikely collection of people who had come together. They looked back at me, some with faces puffed with tears, others with cheeks drawn in sorrow they couldn’t express, and I loved them. All of them.
Then speak to them. Tell them this.
“The complete Christian needs two conversions,” I said. “The first is to Jesus as our personal Savior. Geneveve Sanborn had such a conversion. She realized that through Jesus, God was loving her and saving her, and she said, ‘Yes, I want to be loved that way.’ When she died, she was on her way to a life of discipleship.’”
“Amen,” someone said. I was sure it was Mary Alice.
“A second conversion comes when we discover that God is concerned not only about us as individuals, or even
about our tiny group of fellow disciples, but about every person. Geneveve had that conversion, too. She loved Jasmine and Mercedes and Sherry and Desmond and me the way Jesus loved her. She laid down her life for Sherry, just the way Jesus laid down his life for her.”
I saw Sherry bury her face in her father’s shoulder. “By doing that,” I said, “she didn’t just save her friend. She made a statement to her entire community that love is a huge and powerful thing, that it is a force to be reckoned with in a world that assumes evil is stronger than good, and that in order to survive, we need to pull into our fortress churches and our safe-houses and hunker down.”
The chapel was silent. “Geneveve lost her life, but she set the rest of us free in our hearts, in our souls, where we now know how bold love is, how courageous, and how dependable. She has converted us from believers who know God has saved us individually, into doers who will bring the world to him one NA meeting, one warm blanket, one middle-of-the-night phone call at a time.” My tears came, but I didn’t stop. “We will grieve the loss of our sister, but at the same time, we have to continue what she taught us with her life, not just for ourselves individually, but for the community she died for. We must be converted once more, so we can let ourselves be drawn into new places, new hopes, new changes.”
I turned to the blanket-draped casket behind me. “And we will, sister. I promise you, we will.”
The women and I had decided beforehand that we didn’t want to go to the cemetery and watch Geneveve be lowered into the ground. Hank and the NA people went alone, and Hank promised to meet us at Sacrament House, where Mary Alice and India had prepared a feast. Before she left, Hank reached up and hooked a sturdy arm around my neck.
“That wasn’t a eulogy, my friend,” she said. “That was a prophecy. There’s no turning back now.”
I knew that. There was just still so much I didn’t know about how God was going to move me forward.
The biggest piece of that was Desmond. Liz Doyle brought him to the house and kept a discreet distance while Mercedes pulled him down the walk, one arm around his rigid shoulders, the other punctuating the air.
“Look at that.”
I turned in my seat on the porch steps and gave Bonner what I knew was a pale smile. He deserved more, but I didn’t have the energy.
“What are we looking at?” I said as he sat beside me.
“Desmond. Right now he looks like any twelve- year-old boy who’s just lost his mother and needs somebody to tell him who to be now.”
I stared at him.
“He’s a great kid, Allison. I hope it works out for him to stay with you.”
“I—wow, Bonner—thank you.” I sighed into my knees. “There are a lot of things that are going to have to work out.”
“Such as?”
“Such as finding a way to keep paying the lease on this house. I know you said the owner won’t sell to Troy Irwin—”
“He won’t.”
I shook my head ruefully. “I’m finding out that everybody has his price.”
“Not me. Not when it comes to this.”
“We’re not talking about you. I wish we were.”
“We are.” Bonner tilted his head at me. “I’m the owner, Allison. Until you form a nonprofit, and then I’m donating it. Meanwhile, don’t worry about the lease. You have enough—”
“Bonner—are you serious?”
“I am.”
“Okay—but, wait. You’re messing with Troy Irwin by doing this. You’re the one who told me not to do that.”
“If you don’t listen to me, why should I?”
I stared at him, long and hard. “All right—who are you and what have you done with Bonner Bailey?”
“No,” he said. “What have you done with him?” He touched my chin with his fingertips. “I’m doing this for you, Allison—but I have no expectations. I know where your heart is.”
He dropped his hand and looked over my head. When he stood up and extended his hand, I knew Chief was behind me.
“Take care of her out there, will you?” Bonner said.
Before Chief could answer, Bonner hurried down the steps and down the walkway to Sylvia’s Jaguar. Not until he pulled away did I see the black Lincoln parked across the street.
“No, he did not,” I said.
“What’s that, Classic?” Chief said.
But I was already marching down the walkway myself, toward the man climbing out of the Lincoln with an armful of roses.
“Allison!” Chief barked behind me.
I didn’t stop. Not until I was face to face with Troy Irwin in the middle of the street.
“I just heard this morning,” he said. “I’ve been out of town—”
“Get back in your car.”
“I’m not here to intrude. I just wanted you to have these.”
“Take them with you.”
“Come on, Allison, I’m trying to—”
“I know exactly what you’re trying to do—what you’ve never stopped trying to do.”
“Which is?”
“Whatever you want. And what you want is not what I want. At all. So stop trying.”
Troy dropped the arm that held the roses. Geneveve was right. His eyes did turn to stones.
“I won’t stop—you know that,” he said.
“Then it’s on,” I said.
“Don’t think you still have enough Chamberlain in you to pull this off,” he said.
“I don’t need Chamberlain,” I said. “I have enough God.”
I didn’t move as he dropped the flowers at my feet and thrust himself into the backseat of the Lincoln. I waited until the driver turned the corner before I leaned over and pulled off the card.
“‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Ally,” it said. “We can stop these tragedies together. My offer still stands.”
As I tore it into confetti and ground it with my heel, it came to me that he saw it as a generous gesture. That was the most disturbing piece of the whole thing.
“Good choice, Classic,” Chief said.
I turned and went toward him at the curb. “Did you really think I was going to do something stupid?”
“Something stupid, no. Something justifiable, yes. Either one would’ve landed you in the back of a police car. Again.”
“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Not a chance. Desmond had to go.”
My face froze. “He’s gone?”
“Liz took him back to the home.”
“I didn’t get to say good-bye—”
“He didn’t want to say good-bye,” Chief said. “But he said to give you this.”
He handed me a sheet of paper, curled at the edges and smudged with pencil. I knew before I turned it over that it was a Desmond original.
“Did you see this?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s you.”
It was in fact an almost perfect likeness of Chief, astride an exaggerated Road King, dressed in full leathers, and complete with ponytail. The details were off here and there—Chief’s biceps were not in actuality that large—but the mystical intensity of the man was there in the whole. Desmond saw Chief exactly the way I did.
“I can’t give this one up, Chief,” I said.
“This one?” he said.
I hugged my arms around myself. “I didn’t have that abortion. I gave my baby up for adoption. But this one—”
“We won’t lose him, Classic,” he said.
I hung onto the “we.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I fell into an exhausted sleep around midnight, only to be awakened an hour later by Sherry beside my bed, clawing at my arm.
“It’s okay,” I said. I made a
n opening with the covers. “Come on, just climb in with me.”
“I saw Opus. He’s here.”
I was immediately awake and reaching for the bedside lamp. Sherry grabbed my wrist and dumped a glass of water across the nightstand.
“Don’t turn that on!” she said. “He’ll know I seen him,”
“Where?”
“In the street. The motorcycle woke me up, and I looked out, and I thought I seen him by one of them palm trees.”
“Chief’s motorcycle?”
“I knew Sultan was gonna send him for me. I gotta get outta here—”
Sherry started for the door, but I caught her by the hood of her sweatshirt and scrambled out of the bed to wrap my arms around her from behind, as I’d seen Mercedes do. Her toughness was all verbal. She collapsed against me, sobbing once more.
“I have to go—please—he’s gonna kill me—”
“No one’s going to kill you. Come on, get in the bed—”
“They killed Geneveve—”
“Get in there—now.”
It worked better on her than it ever had on Desmond. She let me half-carry her to the bed without further struggle. She clutched one of the pillows to her chest. I went to the window and tilted the plantation shutter just enough to get a narrow view of the street below.
“Don’t let him see you,” Sherry whispered hoarsely. “He’ll kill us both.”
“I don’t even see him.” I wiped my already clammy palms on the sides of my pajama pants. “There’s a shadow from my trash can—could that be what you saw?”
“No, I don’t know—”
“Come here and look. Come on, babe, it’s okay.”
Sherry crawled across the bed like a cornered cat and came into the circle of my arm. I pointed through the slats of the shutter.
“See? That shadow right there? Was that what you saw?”
“Maybe. I don’t know—I’m just so scared.”
“Understandable. All right—I’m going to call Chief on his cell and get him to look around. Remember? He’s sleeping in the van?”
I waited, hoping she’d forget she’d just heard a motorcycle pull away. She did.