They stand as the priest makes his way up to the pulpit with his book in his hand. Now Liz detects the girl’s head again. She seems to tower over the children on either side of her. Liz feels her mouth opening. She mouths the words—Maddy, Maddy—as if by doing so she will get the girl to turn around. She exhales and hears her voice mingling with the breath: “Maddy.”
Beyond her thoughts, Liz hears the priest speaking. At first she thinks he is reading, but when she looks up, she sees that he has closed his book, and that she and the rest of the congregation are sitting again. The priest is talking about miracles. “There came a certain ruler,” he quotes, “and worshipped Him, saying, my daughter is even now dead: but come and lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live. And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did his disciples. And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind Him, and touched the hem of His garment, for she said within herself that if I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned about and when he saw her, he said, ‘Daughter, be of good comfort; Thy faith hath made thee whole.’”
The priest said “blood”! Liz is terrified. She turns to Sherri expecting to see her getting ready to shout back a response, something about the blood coming back. But Sherri is only chewing her lips, looking around now at the various statues and the candles burning beneath them.
Still, Liz remains unsettled. If he says “blood” again and Sherri hears him, all hell will break loose. Her own distractions are inconsequential now. She has to stay alert so she will be ready to palm Sherri’s mouth when the time comes. My daughter is dead even now. Ha! She stifles a laugh. It’s as if Jake and Pete conspired to get her here just to hear that. And the woman, diseased with an issue of blood twelve years. Maddy’s been dead eleven. So what is the priest trying to say to her? That she’s diseased? With an issue of blood?
Now she does laugh, a mere low snort. Why, it’s exactly what Sherri was saying before they made up! And, If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole. Be of good comfort, Thy faith hath made thee whole.
She laughs again, more audibly. Jake gives her a quick look. She inclines her head toward him. “These miracles—” she begins, but he pulls away sharply and fixes his eyes on the priest.
She feels much better now. After all, it was only a dog. They should only know what it feels like to lose a child. The children are getting a puppy. They’ll get over it. And the woman and her husband will too, she bets.
She locates the back of the girl’s head again and stares at it, but only to amuse herself; she no longer thinks it may be Maddy. What would she be doing in church? She died before Pete started going and was never even baptized. And what would she, an agnostic, be doing hankering after His hem?
Her eyes drift toward the priest. He is an older man, tall, plump, healthy-looking. His face is open, his brows raised with enthusiasm. He is still talking about miracles, but Liz isn’t listening anymore. Her only concern is that she should hear if he says the word “blood.” She looks away from him, tries to find the girl again, but she sees only a space between the two heads that were previously on either side of her.
Gone. She grabs the back of the pew in front of her and pulls herself forward. She scans every head. The girl must have gotten up to go to the bathroom while she was looking at the priest. She whispers to Jake, “Is there a bathroom here?” Jake turns, and when he sees how she is sitting, scowls.
Maybe, Liz tells herself, she only imagined the girl. Maybe she was never there to begin with. But then it occurs to her that if she only imagined her, this child who is not Maddy, then maybe she only imagined Maddy all these years too! Now that she hasn’t seen her in so long, it seems a possibility. She leans forward, in front of Jake, and whispers to Katie, “Where’s Isabel?” Jake makes a shushing sound and strains his head from side to side to see past her. Katie smiles and points to the small space between herself and Jake. Liz turns toward Sherri. Sherri blinks back at her. “Did you see a girl who looked like Maddy?” Liz whispers. Someone behind her clears his throat. Sherri says, in what for her is a whisper but what for anyone else would be a normal speaking voice, “Maybe you’re hallucinating.”
The man who cleared his throat grunts. Jake turns to give Sherri and Liz a look. The priest, who must be used to coughs, sneezes, the outcrys of children, hesitates in his homily for a second and stares in their direction. When the organist starts up and the choir begins to sing again, Jake whispers, “Ma, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Can’t you sit still for an hour?”
“Jake,” she pleads, but he has already moved to kneel, his lips working in prayer or in a further malediction under his breath.
They are up again, down again, except for Sherri who remains seated throughout. They pass the collection basket and say an “Our Father” in unison. Then the priest tells them to give one another the sign of peace. Liz shakes hands with her family, but when she turns to the man behind her, he quickly looks away.
The communion begins, with the people at the back coming up first to line up at the altar. When it comes time for their pew, Katie and Jake rise to their feet. Sherri says, loudly, “Excuse me,” and rises too.
“You can’t go up there. You never even go to church,” Liz whispers harshly. But she can see that her sister is set on it, so she moves her knees to one side and lets her pass. When the choir children get up, she examines each of them carefully, looking for the one who resembles Maddy.
Suddenly she is distracted by something above her and lifts her head to look. And there, bobbing against the cathedral ceiling, is the girl!
Liz sees the soles of her shoes, the hem of the blue skirt she wears beneath her robe, the patch of pink panties. Her hands and feet dangle. She looks like a large, inflatable doll, a helium balloon bobbing, held back only by the ceiling, trying to get beyond it. “Maddy,” Liz mumbles.
Jake is trying to get past her, back to his seat. He bends down and jabs her so hard that she looks away from the spectacle for a second to stare at him. “Look,” she says. But now there is nothing to see. Maddy is gone.
“I am hallucinating,” she says to Sherri. “Help me.”
“Get a grip, Mom,” Jake whispers. “What’s the big deal? Birds always get into the church.”
“I hate your God,” she whispers to Jake. She has to stop herself from adding, And I hate you, too, for bringing me here. Still, as Jake twists his head to see if anyone has heard her, she sees tears bubbling up in his eyes. “And I hate your father,” she whispers under her breath.
They rise to bow their heads in silent prayer. Liz notices that one of Katie’s shoes is untied. She makes a mental note to remind her to tie it on the way out. How strange, she thinks, that she should have the presence of mind to think of Katie’s shoelace when she has just seen Maddy ascending. But then she remembers the incredible thoughts that came to her when she held Maddy’s lifeless body in her arms. It wasn’t that she stopped grieving to consider them; they took place, somehow, in conjunction with the grieving, maybe because the grieving was, at first, more physical than anything else. She remembers holding the little body close to her stomach, as if to ease the knotting she felt within her. She remembers sitting on the floor, rocking, moaning in agony after her screaming ceased. If someone had come in just then and commanded her to stop rocking and moaning, she wouldn’t have been able to comply. It was out of her control. All her will was focused on reversal, on going back two minutes into the past, three minutes, four. Beyond her awareness of her motion and the on-going sound coming from her mouth, beyond the part of her brain that was screaming, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING TO ME, THIS MUST BE A MISTAKE, she found herself thinking about how her house would soon be filling up with company—and here it wasn’t even clean—about how there was laundry strewn all over the kitchen, and nothing in the refrigerator to feed everyone with.
She remembers detaching one of her hands from Maddy’s body and making a fist, banging it on her own head. She could
hear a noise in the room, a growling, but at first she didn’t realize that it was coming from her. Her wild, incongruous thoughts were coming faster, like a pack of wild dogs, barking at her from every direction. Jake was sitting beside her, holding a dish towel, staring at it curiously. It occurred to her that she could hit her own head against the fireplace. She tried to imagine it, standing up with her child in her arms and banging her head over and over and over until the thoughts stopped.
The choir goes up the aisle behind the priest. Some children are singing, but more are whispering and giggling now that their hour of solemnity has expired. Liz doesn’t bother to look for Maddy among them. Maddy is gone. She saw her ascend with her own two eyes. She knows she will never see her again.
She is quaking violently and doesn’t know how she will make it out of the church. Yet she has to, because she doesn’t want to die in here, in God’s house, God who took her child from her and then dared to say he would make her whole again! And there is Jake to think about.
But if she collapses now, people will think it is only the heat. She feels she could do it noiselessly, a caving in rather than an eruption. She looks into the faces of the congregation hoping that she will see, in the steady gaze of someone’s eye, a confirmation that he or she has also seen what she saw. She looks for the woman whose plump face remained sympathetic even as she christened Liz’s defect—“you were distracted”—but can’t find her. If not for Jake, she would use her last mote of vitality to yell, “DID ANYONE SEE A GIRL BOBBING AT THE CEILING? BOBBING AND THEN BREAKING THROUGH?” She turns instead to look at Sherri, searching for some sign that she will understand if she just whispers the question that is clamoring within her, but Sherri returns her look with one of boredom.
Sherri’s forehead is wet with sweat. She is beginning to stink, and Liz recalls that she didn’t take a shower this morning.
Liz gulps back sobs, but no one seems to notice. She imagines racing home and telephoning Pete at the Holiday Inn. But then she remembers that he’s with Gladys. She imagines calling a therapist, a woman. “Impossible. You realize that,” she hears the phantom therapist saying. She sees her scribbling on a notepad like the ones that Pete always carries in his pockets. “Yes, I know that it’s impossible. It’s a contradiction to everything I believe. Why, I don’t even consider myself … But there it is. Maddy rising, Maddy ascending. It happened.”
To her surprise, Liz realizes that her feet are moving, dutifully taking her up the aisle towards the door. Feeling the need for some support, she moves her hand toward Jake’s shoulder but then seizes hold of his collar instead, whispering harshly, “Did you know what was going to happen here today? Is this what you dragged me here for?”
Jake shakes himself free of her. “I’m never letting you come to church again,” he declares.
They make their way slowly and Liz stretches her neck to see what the holdup is. Then she detects the source of the bottleneck. The priest is standing in the vestibule, greeting his parishioners, shaking hands with each and every one of them. She feels her knees buckling and imagines going down with Sherri just behind her. Sherri won’t notice until she has trampled her.
The church doors are opened behind the priest. She can see the blue sky, the traffic on the street, a patch of red from the geraniums that grow in the garden across the way. She notices a man leaning against one of the doors, staring at her sympathetically. His hands are in his pockets. He has the saddest face she has ever seen.
She commands her body to keep moving. She has to reach this man. He saw what she saw; he must have. No one who had not seen it could look that sad, that intent. Though he isn’t handsome, his face is pleasant, his eyes aglow with intelligence and receptivity. She imagines they could be friends, that he would comprehend her distraction, absolve her of it, maybe even help her to get past it. Smiling with anticipation, she feels a longing to throw herself into his arms. Katie turns around, stopping Jake short. “Look, Ma!” she exclaims. “Daddy’s here!”
Liz bypasses the priest’s extended hand and runs to him. Just as she is falling into his arms, she sees his gaze sweep over the crowd. He is, she knows, trying to ascertain whether or not anyone is watching. But either he decides no one is, or he decides, in this one instance, not to care, because he holds her as tightly as he did their very first night together, stroking her hair and murmuring reassurances just as he did then.
SHERRI
Sherri doesn’t like spaghetti; it makes her think of worms. The only other things she doesn’t like to eat is tapioca pudding, which makes her think of maggots, and pigs’ feet, which makes her think of pigs. When Daddy lived at home, he used to take his pigs’ feet into the bedroom so he wouldn’t upset her. But Pete is cooking spaghetti right in front of her! She wants to get out of the kitchen, but she doesn’t want to be alone. She tells herself, They’re not really worms, but the voices, which are getting in because she took her medication late today, say they are. She doesn’t bend, she doesn’t run away. She resolves to be strong this evening, in spite of the voices. They are only whispers anyway, like when the TV is on low. It occurs to her that pigs’ feet would make a good present to bring Daddy in the nursing home, but she’ll have to get Lizzie or Jake or Katie to carry in the jar.
Pete says, “Secrets shrivel a person up from the inside out. You don’t know what I’ve been going through.”
Sherri looks at him to see if he is shriveling. He doesn’t seem to be. Lizzie, who is setting the table, shakes her head. “Well, I’m glad you feel better, but for God’s sake, Pete, this is all such a shock. You’ll have to give me time.”
“Liz,” Pete wails, “I told you a hundred times. It all happened in my mind. I didn’t do anything.”
“But you were going to.”
“But I didn’t.”
Lizzie glances at Sherri. “Can we talk about it later, please?”
Pete looks at Sherri too. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s just that I’ve got so much more to say to you, and—”
“Well, I’ve got more to say to you, too. For now, let’s just leave it as it is, get everyone fed and get the dishes out of the way. You told me about her. I told you about … about … That’s enough for now. I don’t want to get into it when the pasta’s five minutes from being done.”
Pete looks down at the timer on the stove. “Three,” he mumbles.
Jake comes into the kitchen. “Is it ready yet?” he asks.
“Just about,” Lizzie tells him.
He sits down at the table. Sherri inspects him to see if he is shriveling up. After all, he has a secret too. From the outside, he looks the same, but she’s afraid he may be shriveling up on the inside, where you can’t see it. Sometimes he gets stomach aches. Lizzie says that’s because he eats too many sweets, but it could be because the shriveling is happening there. Picturing it makes Sherri nervous. She looks at the timer. Two minutes to go. She decides to go outside for a smoke.
Standing on the stoop, she keeps a lookout for spiders and snakes and doesn’t see any. What she sees instead is Jake shriveling up. He is a dead animal on the side of the highway with maggots gnawing at his secret. Maggots and worms. Tapioca and spaghetti. She’s glad she doesn’t have any secrets herself.
Mrs. Bowker is standing by her back door, shaking out a rug. “Yoo hoo,” she cries.
Sherri waves. “Yoo hoo too,” she calls back.
Mrs. Bowker smiles and goes back inside.
Sherri and Mrs. Bowker had quite a conversation earlier in the afternoon. Sherri went out for a smoke and saw the old woman cutting across the back of the Arroway yard with her garden shears in her hand. At first Sherri was frightened, but then Mrs. Bowker noticed her and came over and explained that she was only going to cut a little cavity in Liz’s hedges so that she could keep an eye on things at the house next door. Sherri offered to help her and they got to talking about all kinds of things. To Sherri’s surprise, the old woman seemed to know quite a lot about her. She even knew tha
t Sherri is afraid to smoke outside at night. She said that Sherri need only flick the outside lights on and off, and then she would come over and accompany her while she smokes.
Pete opens the door. “Dinner’s ready, Sher,” he says.
Sherri rubs out her cigarette on the stoop and pitches the butt into the vegetable garden. It lands beside one of Lizzie’s tomato plants. There are several others there already.
When she re-enters the kitchen, Pete is just putting the spaghetti platter down on the table. Katie is sitting across from Jake and Brigit is in her high chair. Lizzie says, “I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.” Her eyes are still red from crying all day. Sherri doesn’t know what she was so upset about. Jake went up to their door to listen, but he returned a moment later saying that he couldn’t hear because they were whispering. Sherri suspects it may have something to do with Isabel because when Lizzie and Pete came back down, Pete told Katie that Isabel could come to the table tonight, that she could have her own plate and chair. Pete never let Isabel eat with the family before. Katie always had to sneak her in.
“Are you sure this is done?” Jake asks as Sherri slumps into the chair beside him.
Pete turns from the saucepan and lowers his chin to his chest. His eyes stare out from over the top of his glasses. When he turns back to the stove, Jake whispers to Sherri, “Want to know how you tell if it’s done?” Sherri nods. Jake takes two noodles from the platter and throws them at the wall behind Katie’s head.
“Hey, you almost hit Isabel,” Katie whines.
Jake ignores her. “See?” he asks Sherri. “They stuck. That means they’re done.”
Sherri throws her head back and laughs. Pete says, “Was that really necessary, Jake?” Lizzie pulls the noodles from the wall and drops them in front of Simon, who catches them in mid-flight.
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