Logic, she thought. Sammy had always been a questioning, intelligent child. He was becoming a logical young adult. Her own concept of heaven had changed through the years. No longer could she envision God as a kind grandfatherly figure making decisions about bringing a person home to heaven. She would have to be more real with her son.
“Suppose heaven is not a place you can see, as it’s pictured in the Bible, but it exists in some spiritual way that we can’t see?” Mallie said.
“Well, it’s not in the sky. That’s for sure,” Sammy said. “Are there any more pancakes?”
“I agree with Sammy,” Troy said. “I don’t think Poppy would like all that white robe stuff anyway. I’d like to think he’s off on some hunting trip somewhere with Old Parker. You remember that old dog he loved so much that died a few years ago?”
“I believe in heaven,” David said. He had been listening to the conversation without saying anything. “I looked at the sky outside the airplane, too, and I saw heaven.”
Mallie had gone back to the stove turning a new batch of pancakes and marveling at her sons. Thinkers, all of them, but so very different. David’s words of faith touched her.
“Maybe heaven is different for each of us,” she said. “The point is it’s there—somewhere—and wherever it is, your grandfather is there.”
That seemed to be enough about heaven. Troy was grabbing the syrup from David who protested that he was not finished with it. Sammy took his plate to the sink.
After breakfast, while she was getting dressed, the phone rang. She picked it up on the table next to her bed.
“Mallie?”
She froze, instantly recognizing Tom’s voice. “Tom?” She closed her eyes and sat down on her bed.
“I’m calling to check on you. I hope you had a good rest last night.” He sounded like his old self, as if the scene on her couch had never happened. “Also, I want to be sure I’ve got the time right for the funeral.”
Her heart was beating so loudly against her chest that she could barely hear him. “Eleven o’clock,” she said, “at Holy Trinity.” She took a deep breath. “Tom.” Her voice saying his name was timorous. She couldn’t speak further.
“Mallie, I want you to listen to me. You’re not to worry,” he said. His tone was calm and assuring, the same tone she remembered from when she first knew him. “Be with your family. Do not worry about what happened yesterday. I love you—I always will. When the funeral is over, and you’ve had some time, we’ll get together. I’ll call you.”
She did not know whether to feel relief or frustration or anger. She could not immediately decipher what he was saying. Be with your family. Not to worry about yesterday. How was it possible for her not to worry? Surely what happened yesterday afternoon was important enough to address immediately and directly. And yet, she was fearful of addressing it herself. She had convinced herself that he would never want to see her again. Now she would have to put the whole incident out of her mind and wait until after the funeral, possibly until after all her relatives had gone home. At least, he had said “I’ll call you.” He would not have said that if he never intended to see her again. She kept hearing his voice say, “I love you—I always will.” The comfort she initially felt when he said those words was fading into questions of what he meant by “love.” She sank down on her bed and felt hot sticky tears running over her face. It was a hopeless situation. She had tried to be somewhat real with Sammy and the boys about heaven. She needed to be real with herself about Tom. She knew there was no heaven perched up in the sky waiting for all the good people to pass through the Pearly Gates. Neither was there a way for her to have a real love relationship with a married priest.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Nearly everyone that Mallie had ever known in Memphis came to her father’s funeral. All the men at Malcolm Brothers, some of whom she had grown up thinking were part of her family and had always called “Uncle,” were there with their wives. Her family’s multi-generational social friends filled the church, along with her father’s golfing buddies, his old school friends, and his political and civic friends. Sam Malcolm had been a behind-the-scenes force in conservative Democratic politics and had served on boards from the Red Cross to the Chamber of Commerce. There was not an empty pew when the Father Menefee read the opening sentences from the back of the church. “I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.”
She held David’s hand through most of the service, trying to concentrate on the hymns and prayers, the lovely psalms—trying to keep herself from looking around the church for Tom. He had said he would be there. She knew also that Larry was there, somewhere, not up front with the family. Wherever he was seated, she hoped her mother would not see him. Joan Malcolm was angry and unforgiving about Larry. In a way that would be difficult to explain to her mother, she wished that Larry could be standing in the pew with her and the boys. After all, they were still married. The divorce would not go to court for another three months. She wondered how it would feel to be permanently, legally disconnected from her children’s father. She suspected that she would feel a residual connection to Larry—if only because of her children—for the rest of her life. Maybe it was the same connection that she would always feel to her father. They were both gone from her daily routine and her future, but they were ingrained in her past, participants in the most important times of her life.
“Our Father, who art in heaven.” The entire church resounded with the Lord’s Prayer in unison. With her eyes closed, her head bowed, Mallie heard the words as never before. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” She wondered if God had forgiven her for what she had done to Tom—or if she had forgiven Larry for what he had done to her. Maybe there was no real difference between Larry’s affairs with other women and her desire for Tom. No, she could not believe it was the same thing. Surely God would know it was not the same thing at all.
At the end of singing “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” the family led a procession out of the church, the remainder of the people walking behind them. In accordance with the funeral director’s unctuously executed plan, Mallie and the boys got into the first black limousine with Joan Malcolm. Her sisters, Kye and Anne, Anne’s husband and their children, followed in the second limousine. Policemen on motorcycles stopped traffic at street corners and through overhead red lights, ushering the long line of cars behind the limousines from the church to Elmwood Cemetery.
Within thirty minutes, the coffin was lowered into the ground and Samuel Malcolm joined his parents, his aunts and uncles, and his brother under the dated stone markers going back to the late nineteenth century. Stanchions of flowers—white crosses of lilies, daisies, and roses, as well as brilliant colors shaped into circles and squares—surrounded the small tent next to the grave. When the interment was over and Father Menefee had shaken each of their hands, Mallie whispered to the boys to take a rose from one of the wreaths and drop it, one by one, onto the top of the coffin. Her father had loved roses.
Many of the well-dressed crowd of people came back to the Malcolm house in Chickasaw Gardens to complete the ritual: an open bar, a sumptuous buffet of luncheon food in the dining room, and animated conversation. Sam Malcolm certainly had a proper send-off, someone said. There was an undercurrent of conversation about Joan. She was only in her early sixties, too young to be alone for the rest of her life. She would be married again, was the consensus—although there was only one Sam Malcolm. She would never find another man like him. Still, she was beautiful, smart, and she was rich—she was a catch for a single man. Neither Mallie, nor her sisters, could imagine their mother with another man.
Mallie stayed in the midst of the group as long as she could, always keeping an eye on the door for Tom or Larry. Neither of them came back to the house. In her conversations, in her movements throughout the house, she began to feel a creeping sense of isolation, as if in spite of all those people, she were completely alone. All of the important men
in her life were gone.
Chapter Thirty-eight
“Hi Mallie,” Terry said brightly on the telephone. “Tom wanted me to call you. He’s with the bishop this morning—he’s pretty stacked up with appointments today—but he wondered if you could come to the chapel at one thirty.”
It was Monday morning. It had been four long days since the funeral, including an endless weekend. Mallie had picked up the telephone numerous times to call Tom and put it down. No matter what sort of urgency she was feeling, she knew she should wait for him to telephone her. He had promised he would call.
“Yes,” she said to Terry, trying not to show her enormous relief. “I can do that.”
She thanked Terry and hung up the telephone. Thank God! Renewed hope swept over her like a spring breeze. Tom wanted to see her. The timing was perfect. The boys would be at the Country Club all day. Sammy and Troy were playing in a round robin tennis tournament and David needed nothing more than a swimming pool to occupy him for hours at a time. A Pisces from birth, she thought he might be part fish.
She stood looking into her closet, wondering what she should wear, wishing some new outfit would magically appear. Every summer by the end of August her clothes looked old and tired. She would have to wait until late October to put her summer wardrobe away and take her winter clothes out of the attic closet. She wanted something simple. Perhaps her white slacks, her summer uniform—white slacks and a colorful cotton blouse or a knitted T-shirt. She picked up a red and white sleeveless blouse. Maybe pink would be better. Pink was softer.
Suddenly she had an idea. Suppose she brought Tom lunch. She could stop at the Woman’s Exchange Café on her way to St. Michael’s and have them package a portion of their wonderful chicken salad to go. If he had appointments all day, he would hardly have time for lunch. It would be a peace offering of sorts.
As she drove into the parking lot at St. Michael’s she noticed Tom’s Chevy at an angle near the side door to his study. It was often parked that way, as if he had rushed in late for an appointment and not bothered to line up his car properly.
Next to Terry’s familiar Ford Galaxie, Mallie recognized a maroon Dodge station wagon that she had noticed several times before at St. Michael’s. She knew it belonged to Marilyn Jamison, an acquaintance of hers through Holy Trinity School. Her son was in the same class as Troy. Tom had told her once, months before, that he met periodically with Marilyn to advise her on her studies at the Memphis Theological Seminary. Everyone in Memphis knew that Marilyn’s husband had been convicted of embezzling a large amount of money from a small bank in Jackson, Tennessee. It had been all over The Commercial Appeal. He had mysteriously disappeared at the time it was discovered, and after several years, Marilyn moved to Memphis and claimed abandonment. In the meantime, according to Tom, she had applied to seminary as a way of healing and to try to deal gracefully with the situation. All the people who knew Marilyn admired her, including Mallie.
Terry got up from her desk as Mallie walked into the reception room. “Hi there,” she said, reaching out to put her arms around Mallie. “I’m so sorry about your father.”
Terry had that rare combination of the appearance of a wood sprite—the green tennis shoes, the red hair with spit curls around her face—and the affectionate demeanor of a schoolmarm. Increasingly, she seemed genuinely concerned about Mallie, about whatever was going on in her life. Many times while Mallie sat waiting for her appointment with Tom, Terry inquired about the boys by name, or about her sisters or her mother and father. Several times recently she had delivered one of Mallie’s frequent letters to Tom. Mallie felt that there was an understanding between them about her special relationship with him.
“I brought Tom some chicken salad for lunch,” Mallie said, placing the small styrofoam container on the chair next to her. “I thought he’d probably skip lunch otherwise.”
Terry sat down behind her desk. “How nice of you to do that,” she said. “He rarely has time for lunch.”
Mallie looked at her watch. Five after one. No sound from Tom’s study. She began to feel anxious. A nagging voice in her head reminded her that except for a distant sighting across the church at her father’s funeral, she had not seen Tom since he had abruptly left her house. She hoped that she could just walk into his study and he would be waiting as usual and everything would be the same as it was before the incident on the couch. She looked out the window.
“Is that Marilyn Jamison’s car in the driveway?” she asked Terry, making conversation to fill the void. She already knew the answer.
Terry nodded slowly without looking at Mallie, or out the window at the car. Mallie’s skin prickled. There was something about Terry’s response, or lack of response, that set off a strange but familiar alarm. She tried to concentrate on the article she had begun reading in a Psychology Today, but she could not control the same creeping suspicions that had become so venomous in her last years of living with Larry. Little clues—like the earring in the couch, letters, odd telephone calls with no sound and hang-ups, Larry coming home hours after he was expected. She had never had any reason to be suspicious of Tom. Still, something nagged at her about Marilyn Jamison and her car in the driveway. The words blurred on the pages of the magazine. How silly! Tom was not Larry. And Marilyn Jamison was not the sort of woman who would flirt with other men, certainly not with Tom Matthews.
“How’s your mother doing, Mallie?” Terry asked, breaking the silence. “Your father’s passing must have been a terrible shock to her.”
“My mother’s so strong, she’ll be fine. It’s hard to imagine her without my father—but she’ll be fine.”
“Will she stay in Memphis, do you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s a good question. She’ll probably spend more time in Vero Beach in the winter. They’ve had a house down there for years. She has lots of friends there.”
Mallie looked at her watch again. One twenty. This was strange, even for Tom. Her appointment was for one o’clock.
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure, a dark-haired woman, walking quickly across the parking lot. The woman had obviously come from the side entrance to Tom’s study—the same way that she always left. Before she could get a good look—surely it was Marilyn—the inside door to Tom’s study jerked open. Tom stood in the doorway, shaking his head and putting out his hands toward her in a gesture of welcome, including his usual verbal protest.
“So sorry to keep you waiting, Mallie,” he said. “Come in. Come in.”
Mallie picked up the chicken salad and hurried past Terry, who barely looked up from her typewriter. As she walked through the door, Tom shut it quickly behind her and took her in his arms. In all of her times with him, he had never greeted her like that. Always, he had started their meetings with a brief hug, then talk, conversation, sitting across from one another—but instantly, this time, his mouth was on her mouth, as if he were hungry for her. She dropped her purse and the chicken salad on the floor. She felt transported out of all of her fears that her aggressive behavior might have wrecked their relationship. She felt the warmth of his face next to hers, his mouth searching her eyes, her ears, with its wet softness. She had never felt so wanted by him. She even dared to think that he had changed his mind about making love to her. She tried to imagine what could have happened in the past four days to make such a difference. For a split second, she wondered if he might have been kissing Marilyn Jamison, and that was why he was so instantly passionate with her. How absurd. She pushed the idea out of her mind. Tom was with her, loving her, with an urgency that she had never known from him. He led her to the couch, pushing a stack of books off onto the floor. Without words, they continued to kiss and stroke each other, Tom’s hand touching her breasts.
“Mallie, Mallie,” he finally said, sitting upright and withdrawing from her. “You’re so beautiful, Mallie.” He leaned back on the couch, as if exhausted. “You know that, don’t you?”
Mallie could not think. She fe
lt both exhilaration and panic. She felt as if she had come close to flying off a cliff with Tom.
“I wish things were different,” he whispered. He looked at her with such intensity and caring in his eyes. But he was shaking his head. She knew without his saying anything further that he was trying to tell her that although loving her, he could not make love to her. Nothing had changed. As long as he was married, he would never make love to her. She would have to accept his decision or she would lose him.
“I love you, Tom,” she said. “I know you love me. That’s all that matters.” He was a priest. She had always been aware of that. They came from different worlds, but in that moment she believed that someday they would be together. It was not possible that God had allowed her to find someone she trusted so completely and loved so deeply, and that he would not provide a way for them to be together.
Tom stood up and moved to the chair next to his desk. “Life is complex, Mallie,” he said. “Love is complex—sometimes beyond our human understanding. That’s why we need to have faith.”
“Yes,” she said, as if she understood exactly what he meant. “I know.”
She felt a moment of clairvoyance, a moment as definitive as her mother’s “knowing.” She was sure of this: she knew he loved her and she knew his boundaries. She would not try to challenge them again.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The heat of the late summer dragged on into the middle of September. Mallie spent her time between her weekly visits to Tom and getting the boys ready for the fall semester at school, including all their after-school sports activities. In addition, her mother needed her to help sort out the choices for her new life without her father.
Valeria Vose Page 18