The Sharp Time

by Mary O'Connell

  “Ready?” Bradley puts out his hand and we take a few steps together. Even in my flat boots, I have to extend one hand for balance, as if I am surfing.

  We are far too drunk to drive.

  It seems like we should call a taxi, make a plan, but we both take off purposefully down the icy sidewalk, though we’ve nowhere to go. The cold air and the champagne have transformed my sadness to pure, crystalline melancholia, as if I could step in front of a city bus and feel no pain, only the inevitability of the day’s second accident. And yet, the army guys offer up a little jolt of reality: Why have I assumed I can’t go to Europe without my mother? Given that I could be off on some dangerous mission to Afghanistan or Iraq, would it really be such a burden to visit fashion capitals and coastal towns by myself?

  It would be a little sad. That’s all.

  Bradley stumbles a bit on an icy patch, and when I put my arm out for him, we hold hands for a moment. He looks across the street at the liquor store and says, “Wait here.”

  I’m thinking that going off for more booze is not the hottest idea that Bradley has ever had, when he grabs two cardboard boxes from a heap in front of the liquor store. He quickly breaks them down into flat, slatted squares, my sweet recycler extraordinaire. He doesn’t bother to look before he crosses the street, his head tucked against the cold winds.

  When he hands me a square of cardboard I smile. “Thanks?” And then he takes my hand.

  “Let’s roll, Sandinista,” Bradley says. And so we walk up Thirty-Eighth Street together, past the deserted brick building with chained, gated windows that look doleful and resigned, yet full of dignity: these buildings that have simply said Fuck it and closed in on themselves. No wallflower hopes of urban renewal for these aged beauties, no weather-beaten, delusional real estate signs, AVAILABLE FOR LEASE OR SALE, PLEASE CALL …

  Please call. Pleasecallpleasecall.

  Yes, I suppose I am paying attention.

  Thirty-Eighth Street shines icy and virginal against the streetlights. We are huffing and puffing, chugging up the sidewalk like the drunken smokers that we are, and my body starts to ache again: my lips, my forehead, my back, neck, and also that spot on my ribs, a pulsing pain on my ribs, though that bruise is fading. But when we reach the top of the street, when we’re standing in front of St. Joseph’s Monastery, looking down, it is the smallest victory, our breath fat and plumed. Bradley says, “Let’s go.” And I follow him through the side yard of the monastery, cardboard slapping at the packed snow.

  Bright floodlights switch on, trapping us in a rhombus of golden light. Bradley looks handsome and electric and we freeze like startled, experimental lovers: Uh, what exactly are we doing?

  I ask Bradley, “Will we be arrested for trespassing?”

  “They’ll definitely forgive us,” Bradley says. We go scrambling out of the side yard, into the safe, snowy darkness at the back of the monastery. There is a steep hill that slopes dramatically with swirled untracked snow. Lit by the moon, it looks like white sand, and I see now what Bradley is after.

  “Well, so …” I assess the packed snow that rises into the brick wall of the monastery. I hold up my cardboard. “If we freak out and sled right into the brick wall … that would be kind of bad news, yes?”

  In profile Bradley lit by the winter moon is so beautiful—his breath a cold cloud that forms and re-forms—and the champagne still so awhirl in my brain that I lose my own monastic aesthetic and wish things could be different; I wish I could put my cold, hurt mouth on his. He looks over at me for a long, bizarre second, and maybe I’m drunkenly imagining it, but Bradley seems to be thinking the same thing. But then he flashes me a big, warm smile and ambles up the hill like a freaking billy goat. He sticks the cardboard under one arm, and wings his other arm out, elbow bent, and calls out, “Bawwk bawwk bawwk.”

  “Monsieur Maturity,” I say. “And FYI? I am not a chicken.”

  “Sandinista, you so don’t have to tell me that.”

  And so the odd moment is buried and I trek up the hill, stiff-kneed as Frankenstein’s monster. The snow and the ink sky look like an indigo vintage dress so beautiful that I would wear it on my wedding day—and I’m entertaining many drunken thoughts about the juxtaposition of purity and darkness when Bradley calls down the hill to me, whisper-yelling so as not to wake the sleeping monks: “Get moving, girl. God! You’re such a slowpoke!”

  Inevitably I lose my balance and fall on the new snow that only looks like swirls of soft-serve ice cream; there is black ice beneath.

  “Fuck!” I say. And then of course I feel bad when I look at the snow-crowned stone saint in the corner, as if he is about to come to life—Frosty the Snowman with a Christ obsession—and run shrieking into the streets at my profanity.

  And of course when I fell, my piece of cardboard, my “sled,” went sailing down the hill with a gritty whoosh, off into the night. There’s no way I’m going after it.

  “You okay?” Bradley calls down the hill.

  “Oh, I’m great,” I mumble. “Fanfuckingtastic.”

  When I finally make it to the top of the incline, Bradley holds out his hand to me. “Here, my dear.”

  “You have a lot of good ideas,” I tell him, taking his hand. “Such as monastery sledding in the dark.”

  “Oh, like you don’t have any crazy ideas?”

  We’re silent for a moment, admiring the night.

  “It’s funny,” I finally say, “how there’s all this snow, some kind of Antarctica supreme, and yet it’s not really that cold—it’s brisk, more like spring.”

  “These are the halcyon days of global warming,” Bradley agrees. “It’s not like when we were little, standing at the bus stop with your lungs raspy from breathing in the freezing air, and your face feels frozen, like you can’t take it for another second, and then the bus finally comes rolling down the street.”

  And I think it’s not only global warming but that other thing too: that you lose your milk teeth and your perfect baby skin, that you lose your mother and you learn that you just have to take it, you have to feel it. There is nothing else.

  Except for Bradley, who drops his cardboard on the snow and braces it with his Ziggy Stardust boot, a snow-kissed storm trooper, the hero of my own little winter wonderland.

  “Looks like somebody’s riding bitch,” he says, employing a tough straight-guy accent, macho with earthy, redneck undertones.

  Together we sit down on the cardboard, a scramble of legs and arms. Close to him now, I feel only the warmth of friendship, of family. And so we sit at the top of the monks’ backyard for a second, at ease, our boots parallel to the cardboard, anchoring us to the snow.

  We enjoy our aerial view of the city—Look! Look how pretty! The lit-up sign for the VFW hall, those retro flashing consonants. Look at the top floor of the new circular condominiums lit up like a concrete layer cake, and look up there, at the single light that has switched on in the third floor of the monastery. I wonder: Is it a monk with a stomachache? Perhaps an insomniac flipping through his Bible or playing solitaire? Maybe just a random fellow pilgrim waking with the bad feeling of uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh.

  “Look,” Bradley says, but I’m already looking: a bearded monk has appeared at the window. Did he hear us? Could he sense us in the snowy darkness? He’s not sporting his monk apparel, he’s wearing a white T-shirt and could pass as anybody’s grandpa about to raise the window to call out, “I see you crazy kids out there! You’re going to break your goddamn necks sledding in the darkness.”

  But he doesn’t. He raises his hands and places them, palms out on the window. He bows his head. And then he is gone, the light switched off.

  Remember, the King of Kings will be there with you.

  I put my hand into my pocket and pick out my wrinkly little Eucharist wafer. I bow my head and sneak it into my mouth. Without speaking, we—we! the sweetest of pronouns—pull our feet off the snow at the same time and the sled takes off with a swoooosh, my arms around Bradl
ey, Christ in my mouth and birds in my stomach as we fly into morning.

  SUNDAY

  THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE

  I open my eyes and realize it’s a day with two mornings: the snow-shadowed dawn and right now, in my bed, with Bradley next to me. The champagne bubbles have turned to lead and bob freely in my temples; the dusty digital clock on my nightstand tells me that it’s 10:56. In approximately four minutes the alarm will go off and with a full three hours of beauty sleep, Bradley and I will rise and shower and eat a little something before we work the Sunday shift at the Pale Circus: noon to five, people, and in honor of the Day of the Lord, your second item is half off. We took a cab home last night, given our champagne consumption, and so we’ll have to take one to the Pale Circus this morning. I know my car is still drivable, but wonder how I will get the crunched grille fixed. My mother had a mechanic—his name was Russell—but where does he work? Adding another detail to the slate of my life makes me want to sleep for a hundred days.

  Instead I roll over and study Bradley’s arm slung across the pillow, the hairs and freckles, the dry skin, the veins in his hands, the crucifix on his thumb, a dark bruise on his elbow. I watch the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the fading moment of his nocturnal delicacy. I touch my tongue to my swollen lip and think how I can perhaps coat it, gently, with dark lipstick and pass it off as a bad collagen injection. My second thought is how strange it is to have a body, to not just be a collection of random floating thoughts, but to own a solid little patch of the universe. My own body has changed; it has absorbed the pain of the past months. For those first weeks after my mother died, I would wake up happy enough in the bright spell of the first split second of day. But that flash of ignorance was never bliss, given the reality that would follow, the electric blue shock of it all.

  And now my body has absorbed this other surprise. I know the school will not call.

  I miss my gun.

  But Bradley is awake now, and humming, a small smile on his face, his eyes still closed. The sun slashes through the inch between the window frame and the shade, shooting in a line of snow-white brightness. Bradley reaches across the bed and takes my hand, and we lie there like chaste, realistic honeymooners who will never divorce. He sings out slowly, softly: “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

  Bradley sings with his eyes closed, maybe not such a bad idea, since the stripe of sun highlights the dust in my room. It is no mere speckling on my walnut dresser and bureau, it is thick and white, the stray fluff of a cottonwood tree on the clock radio and jewelry box and picture frames. I have not swiped a cloth over anything since my mother died. And so she is with us here in the bedroom, her dry skin and dandruff, her skin cells and hair. Of course the throwaway detritus of a human being is the lamest of consolations. Still, it’s better than nothing. I tilt my head back on the pillow and look at the framed cross-stitch over my bed. My mother made it when she was into embroidery—a blissfully quick phase, as seeing her on the sofa with her little wooden hoop and Baggie of colorful threads—Hello, Ma Ingalls!—always vexed me. She loved trying out new art projects—knitting, painting, beading, ceramics, printmaking, and my least favorite, weaving, which involved a large rickety loom that briefly took up residence in our living room like a cumbersome hippie roommate. Our DIY home decor is an homage to her craftiness, but the cross-stitch sampler hanging over my bed is all that remains of her winter of embroidery. It’s definitely corny, but I won’t take it down. Because, once upon a time, my mother sat on the couch, and with needle and soft blue thread, embroidered the only prayer she believed in:

  PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CHILDREN

  Almighty God, Heavenly Father,

  You have blessed us

  With the joy and care of children:

  Give us calm strength and patient wisdom

  As we bring them up,

  So that we may teach them to love

  Whatever is just and true and good,

  Following the example of our Savior,

  Jesus Christ.

  —The Book of Common Prayer, 1979

  Bradley is still singing in a high, goosey voice: “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

  Clearly this is an anthem for the deluded or the mentally ill; I suppose we are both.

  “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it, let us rejoice, let us rejoice, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

  Possibly this is the lamest song ever, made bearable only by Bradley’s ironic crooning.

  But then Bradley opens his eyes and sings in his regular voice: “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” His voice is clean, strong. I imagine the bad priest picking his voice out of the choir, letting his eyes flutter shut while he listened to Bradley sing. Jesus, if he is at the helm, if he really exists beyond the spun-sugar Milky Way of stained glass and mahogany pews, would not look down in fey, helpless confusion; he would admit he is doing a highly questionable job of shepherding his flock. He would, in the words of daytime TV, own it.

  But when I think of Jesus hanging on the cross at Bradley’s church, his face is not just the standard ostentatious suffering, Jesus rendered as the big wooden crybaby of Our Lady of Mercedes. The Son of God looks confused and highly pissed: Big Daddy’s grandiose plans have gotten me into a bit of a pickle.

  And I think of my mother, her rejection of all things Catholic and our subsequent church-hopping, her tiresome rants about the patriarchal hijacking of Christianity. And yet, she always told me: “Jesus is your brother.” It’s what she believed: Jesus is my brother. Nobody could take that away from her.

  As we lie there together, I start to sing along with Bradley: “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it, let us rejoice, let us rejoice, let us rejoice and be glad in it”—the chorus of the next thirty seconds until the alarm goes off—“be glad in it be glad in it be glad in it.”

  * * *

  After a rush of customers, the store is suddenly quiet. Late afternoon: Bradley’s in the back alley, on his Pale Circus smoke break. Unable to control myself, I decide to call home and check my messages one more time. Because what the hell, and also because I’m not really expecting a call on a Sunday. People are at church or reading the newspaper or arguing with their family about the day’s chores; nobody can hurt me on a Sunday. According to the Lord it’s the first day of the week, but it always feels like the last. In kindergarten I had underpants embroidered with the days of the week, and I liked it when Sunday came, the navy blue cursive letters, and the comfort of the week finishing, the closure of a spaghetti dinner and a bubble bath, fingernails trimmed and hair shampooed before Monday morning, when the world reliably began anew.

  I’m standing at the counter, the cell phone jammed between my ear and my shoulder, when I hear the five words that start my heart shuddering: “You have one new message.”

  I punch in 617. My mother’s birthday was June seventeenth. How could I ever forget my code? I’m looking at a round rack of candy-colored sweaters when I hear: “Sandinista, this is Lisa Kaplansky.”

  I close my eyes and the colorful sweaters form a brief, bright rainbow on my eyelids.

  “Hey, I was out of school last week from Tuesday through Friday—my baby got sick on Monday night—it started out as just a regular flu, with a fever, but evolved into full-blown pneumonia. Charlie ended up in the hospital for two nights—nightmare—but he’s fine now, so I’ll be back at school in the morning. And I heard that there was a problem with Catherine Bennett last Monday? Listen, come to my room first thing in the morning and we’ll try to get it sorted out. Okay? I’ll be looking for you. Okay, Sandinista. Hope you’re well. Bye.”

  It happened.

  Finally.

  I am shaking. I take a deep breath and run my tongue over my lip, coming away with a taste of dried blood and lipstick, while my mind zooms: Lisa Kaplansky. Lisa Kaplans
ky. And Monday. And school? Going back to school? Because I’m on the schedule at the Pale Circus from ten to five on Monday. What would I tell Henry Charbonneau?

  Especially after this morning, when I found a gorgeous comfort waiting for me at the Pale Circus: a note from Henry pinned to the mulberry ball gown that was displayed in the front window at the beginning of the week.

  Sandinista, I thought this would be just the thing for you. Wear it with glee. Love, Henry C.

  When I tried the dress on, I was surprised at how perfect it looked on me, as if I had clicked my heels three times and turned into a 1950s starlet. For Bradley, Henry left a dove-gray shirt with a collar that flared out in deep, handsome Vs and fit as if custom-tailored in Milan.

  Bradley and I, though achy from the car accident, vamped together in the three-way mirror: “You’re gorgeous.” “No, you are!” And then, just as our heads started to throb from the world in general and specifically from a lack of caffeine, Erika showed up with two lattes in a cardboard carrier. Of course she brought chocolates for the candy dish, because that’s Erika’s thing, her job, but the coffee was a specific kindness that required seven dollars and twenty minutes out of her morning to stop at Buzz Café, to jostle hot beverages across a snowy street. She did a double take when she saw my swollen lip, because makeup only does so much: “Sandinista?” Her voice gentle but laced with panic.

  “Driving on the ice?” Bradley said quickly, and he put his hand on Erika’s back. “Not really Sandinista’s strong suit.”

  “Oh,” she said. She laughed a little. “Okay. That’s right. I saw your car out there.”

  In this fifteen-second exchange, I saw that Bradley knew the backstory of Erika’s assault. I saw how quickly he moved to reassure her—and with just the right tone—that the same thing hadn’t happened to me. And then time stopped and roared past all at once as I projected him into his confident, happy adult life in a different city—Manhattan or Málaga—a man holding a book, a baguette, a man with a suit and a smile, without the weed, without the bad priest. I wanted to tell him that his cleverness and imagination would take him far and that none of his kindness had been wasted, but that’s a tricky thing to say. When Erika left the store, what I actually said was: “Bradley? Seriously? That shirt really does look terrific on you.”