Almost Friends

by Philip Gulley

  While she waited to hear back from the pope, she practiced being a priest. She conducted three funerals for neighborhood pets and visited Mrs. Harvey, down the street, who’d broken her ankle while carrying in the groceries.

  Though Mrs. Harvey had never married and was technically not a Mrs., it seemed odd to call a woman of her age “Miss.” Krista, in addition to being taught she could be anything she wanted and to always go to the top, had also been advised to call adults Mr. or Mrs. Though Mrs. Harvey had a heavy mustache, she was clearly a woman in other respects.

  Like Krista, Mrs. Harvey was Catholic, and when Krista told her about wanting to be a priest, the ponderous woman flopped back in her recliner and rolled her eyes heavenward, her many chins quivering in alarm. “You can’t be a priest. They don’t allow it.”

  “How come?”

  “Because you’re a girl.”

  “Could you please explain why that should make a difference?”

  Mrs. Harvey frowned. “Should the church change its mind and allow women to be priests, you need to keep something in mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s impolite to visit someone in their home under the pretense of consoling them, and then argue religion with them.”

  Krista thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry. How is your ankle?”

  “Not well at all. The doctor thinks he might have to operate.”

  “Would you like me to pray for you?”

  “Yes, I suppose there’d be no harm in that.”

  Krista laid her hand on Mrs. Harvey’s bruised and swollen ankle. “Dear Lord, thank you for Mrs. Harvey and the gift of her life. Please grant her peace in these arduous days and, if it be your will, heal her ankle. Amen.”

  Krista seldom used words like grant and arduous, but they seemed fitting words for a prayer and, besides, it never hurt to expand one’s vocabulary.

  “Thank you, Krista. That was a lovely prayer. I feel better already.” Mrs. Harvey leaned back in her recliner with a contented sigh and closed her eyes.

  Krista looked around the room. Beams of sunlight were blazing through the window, lighting up the dust motes. In the next room, Mrs. Harvey’s dog napped under the dining room table, his rib cage rising and falling with a wiffling snore, his whitened muzzle occasionally twitching to the rhythm of a canine dream.

  “How old is your dog?” Krista asked.

  “Fourteen.”

  Krista thought for a moment, calculating figures in her head, then said, “That’s ninety-eight in dog years. If he dies anytime soon, I’ll be happy to do his funeral.”

  “Thank you, Krista.”

  “It wouldn’t be my first funeral. I’ve done three so far. Two cats and a squirrel.”

  “Who had a squirrel?”

  “I’m not certain who he belonged to. I found him on the road in front of our house. He was starting to stink, so I had to bury him quick.”

  “That was very kind of you,” Mrs. Harvey said. “The animals are God’s children too.”

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you had a husband, he could help you,” Krista pointed out. “Why didn’t you ever marry?”

  Mrs. Harvey opened her eyes and heaved herself forward in the recliner. “It’s impolite to ask questions about one’s marital status. People might think you’re a gossip, and no one likes a gossip.”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Ministers must be discreet. That means you don’t ask people personal questions unless they volunteer the information.”

  “People ask me personal questions all the time.”

  “You are under no obligation to answer them,” Mrs. Harvey said. “Why do people think every question must be answered? When I was a child, people knew to mind their own business.”

  “I think I’ll be going now,” Krista said. “Thank you for letting me visit you.”

  “What have you learned today?”

  “I learned not to argue theology with people in their homes, that prayer makes you feel better, not to ask personal questions, that no one likes a gossip, that ministers should be discreet, and not to answer a question just because someone asks it.”

  “Very good, Krista. Come back tomorrow and I’ll teach you more.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then.”

  But her best friend’s hamster died the next day, so Krista spent the day making funeral arrangements and cheering her friend in her time of loss. It was well after supper before she’d remembered her promise to visit Mrs. Harvey, and by then it was too late. She had the distinct feeling that one of Mrs. Harvey’s rules for clergy concerned the proper hours for visitation.

  If she was going to be a priest, she would have to learn to keep better track of her time.

  A month passed before she heard back from the Vatican. The letter was in Latin, which she asked her priest to translate. He did, but grew distressed when he discovered one of his parishioners had gone over his head to the pope. “There’s a rule for things like this,” he told her. “First, you ask your parents, and if they can’t help you, you ask me. If I don’t know the answer, we go to the bishop, and if he doesn’t know, we go to the cardinal. You don’t start out with the pope. Now what is it you wanted to know?”

  “I think God is calling me to be a priest,” Krista said.

  “Impossible,” the priest said. “God doesn’t call women to be priests. It’s against the rules. You think God is going to break His own rules?”

  “How do we know that’s God’s rule?”

  “We just know, that’s how.”

  “Did God tell you that was His rule?”

  “A long time ago, many hundreds of years, God told the pope. Then the pope told the cardinals, the cardinals told the bishops, the bishops told the priests, and we told the people.”

  “I know that game,” Krista said. “We played it once at school. The teacher whispered something in my ear, and I whispered it to someone else, and it went all around the room. Anyway, by the time it got back to the teacher, it wasn’t anything close to what she’d told me. Maybe God told the pope He wanted women to be priests, but by the time it got to us, it was all mixed up.”

  “That doesn’t happen in the church,” the priest said, a hint of exasperation creeping into his voice. “God protects His church from error.”

  “What about Galileo?”

  “What about Galileo?” the priest asked.

  “The church told Galileo he was wrong, but he turned out to be right, which means the church was wrong.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My catechism teacher, Sister Therese.”

  “Well, there you go,” the priest said, changing the subject. “You could be a nun like Sister Therese.”

  “I don’t want to be a nun. I want to be a priest. Sister Therese doesn’t want to be a nun anymore either. She wants to be a priest. She told me so herself.”

  The priest mumbled something about relocating Sister Therese to another parish.

  For as long as she lived at home, Krista was determined to be a priest, but the church stood firm. So she went to college and became a teacher, and though it was gratifying work, it wasn’t enough, like ordering chocolate ice cream and having to settle for vanilla. It was good, but it wasn’t her first choice.

  Even though Krista was not married, the children in her class addressed her as Mrs. Riley. When she turned thirty she stopped correcting them. Occasionally, one of her students would ask her why she didn’t have a husband.

  “It’s impolite to ask questions about one’s marital status. People might think you’re a gossip, and no one likes a gossip,” she would tell them.

  But it didn’t keep them from wondering.

  With nuns in scarce supply, she taught the catechism classes at church. But every Sunday, she longed to stand where the priest stood, elevating the host and reciting the beautiful cadence of the
Mass. But no one moves as slowly as those who hoard God’s blessings for themselves, so year after year she sat and watched and kept her calling to herself, lest the ire of fearful souls kill it off.

  Five

  Charlie Gardner’s Confession

  Charlie Gardner was lying in bed when he had his first heart attack. At least he thought it was a heart attack. The week before he’d read the symptoms while waiting at the Rexall for Thad Cramer to fill his prescription. Thad had posted the symptoms of major diseases on the wall of the pharmacy. Charlie, who dabbled in hypochondria, read them and grew alarmed, convinced he was suffering some dreadful malady. He had come home one day worried he was entering menopause.

  Lying in bed, he tried to recall the signs of a heart attack—a heavy weight in the chest, numbness in the arms, sweating, and difficulty breathing.

  He thought of waking his wife, but decided against it. She’d want to call Johnny Mackey to come with his ambulance. He’d have to go to the hospital in Cartersburg, instead of going fishing with Asa Peacock the next morning, as he had planned. So, being a fatalist, he decided that if this were the time and manner in which the Lord had deemed to take him, who was he to resist God’s will?

  Charlie lay perfectly still, asking forgiveness for specific sins he’d committed. Then, just to cover his bases, he sought forgiveness for his inadvertent sins, wanting to go out with a clean slate. Years ago, back in the 1960s, on a trip to the city, he’d bought a girlie magazine. He had hidden it out in the garage, in the cabinet underneath his drill press. He resolved to throw it away if he lived to see the sun rise.

  He grew alarmed thinking of the magazine. What if he died and his wife and minister son found it while going through his things? What would they think of him? He probably couldn’t have his funeral in the church after that. They’d have to bury him in the pagan section of the cemetery, along with the town ne’er-do-wells.

  After a while, whatever was sitting on his chest rose and left, and he began to feel better, so he got out of bed and went out to the garage to throw the magazine in the trash. He buried it deep in the garbage can, underneath the coffee grounds.

  When Charlie came out of the garage, his wife was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “What are you doing up?”

  Charlie had never been quick on his feet; he paused while he contemplated how to answer.

  “Uh, there’s something about me you don’t know.”

  Gloria Gardner looked at him the way she looks at him when she doesn’t believe what he’s about to say. “And what would that be?”

  “I’ve got a drinking problem.”

  A drinking problem was infinitely safer than a Playboy problem, the former being a disease beyond his control, the latter being a moral failure that could get him divorced, or killed.

  “A drinking problem? You mean you’re an alcoholic?”

  Charlie feigned embarrassment. “’Fraid so.”

  “And how long have you had this drinking problem?”

  “All my life I guess,” Charlie explained. “It’s not like I can help it. It’s a disease, you know.”

  “I’ve never subscribed to that notion,” Gloria Gardner said. “If it were a disease, people couldn’t stop. People stop drinking every day. I think it’s a moral issue.”

  This wasn’t going as well as Charlie had hoped.

  “Let me smell your breath,” she commanded.

  He exhaled on her.

  “Just as I suspected. I don’t smell a thing.”

  “That’s because I’ve been drinking vodka. You think I’m stupid enough to drink something people could smell?”

  Charlie walked into the house, brushing past her, perturbed. “It’s a terrible thing when a husband tells his wife he’s a drunk and she doesn’t believe him. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  Gloria went out to the garage and poked around, looking behind the mower and in his workbench drawers, but couldn’t find anything. When she came back in their bedroom, he was sprawled across their bed, clutching his chest.

  “Now what’s wrong?”

  “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Oh, sure. Try to get out of trouble by faking a heart attack. You think I’d fall for that old trick?”

  That’s the problem with dishonesty—one lie casts doubt on a thousand truths.

  He lay in bed thinking of his death. It was what he’d always hoped for whenever the subject of death arose—to die in bed, at home, next to his wife. To just not wake up. Somehow, though, it was more difficult than he’d imagined. For instance, getting someone to believe he was dying wasn’t as easy as he’d thought.

  He rolled over, grabbed the phone, and dialed Sam’s house. It rang three times before his son answered.

  “Hi, Sam.”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “I’m having a heart attack.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “Pain in the chest, my arm hurts. Yep, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Is Mom there?” Sam asked, starting to sound frantic.

  “Yeah, she’s right here. Do you want to talk with her?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam’s mother came on the line.

  “I’ll be right over,” Sam told her. “Meanwhile, I want you to call Johnny Mackey to come with the ambulance.”

  “Oh, he’s fine. I caught him out in the garage doing something and he’s trying to drum up sympathy. I can’t believe he called and woke you and Barbara up. Go back to bed.”

  And with that she hung up the phone.

  “It’d serve you right if I died,” Charlie groaned from his side of their bed.

  But his wife was already fast asleep. That woman could sleep standing up.

  He lay still, making his peace with death. He thought that perhaps it was better this way—to die in the peace and quiet of his own home, instead of at the hospital among strangers poking him full of needles.

  The birds woke him a little before eight. He looked around, surprised that heaven looked so much like his old bedroom. Then he smelled coffee in the kitchen. He got up, went to the bathroom, pulled on his bathrobe, and tromped downstairs to the kitchen.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he groused. “I was supposed to go fishing with Asa Peacock.”

  “I thought since you’d had a heart attack, you might need the extra sleep,” Gloria said.

  It was embarrassing to be on the verge of death, then to recover as wholly and quickly as he had. It caused people to doubt your sincerity.

  “Since you’re not going fishing, maybe you could mow the lawn today,” she went on. “It’s looking pretty shabby. And don’t forget to take out the trash. It’s starting to smell.”

  She walked over and kissed the top of his balding head. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

  That made it a little easier.

  “Want some pancakes?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  He ate four of them. He was famished. Almost dying could wear a man out.

  Sam stopped by his parents’ house on his way to work. Walking over, he’d decided not to bring up the night before. Who knew what went on between two married people, after all. It seemed the wiser course to avoid the topic altogether. But his father wouldn’t let it rest.

  “Your mother tried to kill me last night,” he announced, between bites of pancake. “I was having a heart attack and I called you to come get me, but she hung up the phone. I think she’s after my life insurance money.”

  “If he’s having a heart attack, ask him why he felt good enough to be sneaking around out in the garage at three o’clock in the morning.”

  When Sam was a child, his parents had presented a united front against their children. If they had their differences, they settled them privately, out of earshot. Now that their sons were raised, they felt free to turn on one another and enlist Sam on one side or the other.

  “By the way,” his mother said. “Your father has a drinking problem.”

&
nbsp; “No, I don’t.”

  “You said so yourself last night.”

  “I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?” He turned to Sam. “She never could take a joke.”

  “Then what were you doing out in the garage?”

  Charlie sighed, then appeared hurt. “If you must know, I was checking on your anniversary present.”

  Their anniversary was the following week, which he hadn’t remembered until that morning when he’d noticed it written on the refrigerator calendar.

  “You remembered our anniversary?”

  “Of course I did.”

  Gloria bent down to kiss his head. “You’re a regular Clark Gable.”

  Charlie tilted his head for another kiss.

  Sam wasn’t sure what was worse—watching his parents fight or kiss. He glanced at his watch. “Would you look at the time? I gotta go. I’ll see you later.”

  His parents were too distracted to see him to the door.

  Charlie Gardner had painted himself in the corner with his mention of an anniversary gift. Now his wife had her hopes up, and an ordinary gift wouldn’t do. At the very least, this meant a trip to the Wal-Mart in Cartersburg. She’d been hinting around for a television set for the kitchen so she could watch the Today Show while she drank her morning coffee. It had caused an argument when she’d first suggested it.

  “What, aren’t I good enough to talk to anymore?” he’d asked her. “You don’t even know those people. They sit up there in New York City in their fancy high-rise apartments and limousines, and you’d rather spend your morning with them than with me. That’s a fine how-do-you-do after all the years we’ve been married.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Then why didn’t we go to Florida last winter? You don’t want to be alone with me, that’s why.”

  Charlie brings up their almost trip to Florida every time they argue. Winter depresses him, so this past December he’d suggested they spend a few months in Florida, at his cousin’s condo south of Tampa. But Gloria had nixed the idea and suggested he take an antidepressant instead.