Whisper Hollow

by Chris Cander

  For her little family, Sundays were days of rest, and family time, and fishing, and helping Alta harvest vegetables from her garden, and chasing birds and butterflies. There was nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with him. Nothing except that his uncle was also his father. Had the Devil somehow mixed his seed in along with Eagan’s that awful night as she lay there on the bathroom floor?

  “Thank you for your concern,” Lidia said. “Now we need to be getting on home.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment over their carts that were filled with similar items that would feed their different lives. But how different were they, really? They were all stained by something. Everyone had something to hide.

  “Oh yes, so do I. There’s always so much to do, isn’t there?” Her voice was syrup again, her second face arranged and smiling. “Especially now with another one on the way.”

  Lidia nodded and gave a sort of half smile and turned her cart to go.

  Gabriel picked his head up and said in his soft, clear-bell voice, “Don’t forget the baby shampoo.”

  “Oh!” said Susan. “And here that’s exactly why I was in this aisle in the first place!” Then her eyes widened, first at Lidia and then at Gabriel. “But how did you know? How did he … how did he know I needed baby shampoo?”

  “He didn’t. He was talking to me. I need some, too.” She tried to sound calm, but the alarm in Susan’s high-pitched voice made her own sound unconvinced and, therefore, unconvincing.

  “You see what I mean? That’s just the kind of thing has everyone all worked up about your boy. How does he know? It’s like he’s reading people’s minds. It’s not right.” She backed hastily up, bumping into a shelf of diapers, and wrestling the cart forward as though she could waste no time on a graceful exit. Over her shoulder she gave Lidia a stabbing but scared-stiff look. “You get that child to church, hear?”

  And then she was gone.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear all that nonsense,” Lidia said to Gabriel. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” She leaned down and kissed him on the nose.

  “And she forgot to get her shampoo.”

  Lidia watched him from beneath a furrowed brow as he fished among the groceries for his Hershey bar, found it, then held it with both hands in his lap. “Yes,” Lidia said, and exhaled a deep sigh through her nose. “I suppose she did.”

  March 29, 1969

  The day before Palm Sunday, Lidia went to St. Michael’s for the first time since her mother’s funeral nearly seven years before. She hadn’t looked forward to it. Even up until that very morning, she thought she might still back out. She had no interest in God. But Susan Forrester’s scolding over-the-shoulder command, You get that child to church! had bedeviled her day and night for a haunted, sleepless week.

  Although her father refused to go, making excuses every Sunday that they needed him underground, her mother had always taken them to St. Michael’s. She taught them how to make the sign of the cross, how to kneel and pray, how to sit until the Alleluia and rise to greet the Gospel. At seven, Lidia took her first Holy Communion. Eagan had to stay seated in the pew during the Communion rite. Her mother told them both, in her kind way, that maybe when he could understand things a little more clearly he would be able to make his first confession, and then work toward the next Sacrament. Lidia always felt guilty when she had to step past Eagan’s bowed head, so much taller than her own, and stand in the slow-moving line to receive the Eucharist from Father Timothy’s withered old hands. And she worried, too, because she’d learned in her classes that without this Sacrament, it would be difficult for someone to resist grave temptations and avoid grievous sin.

  Then God took away her mother just two weeks before her fourteenth birthday, and left her nearly orphaned and responsible for raising her brain-damaged brother. She’d never gone back. She hadn’t seen the point.

  But as she lay awake that week in the black hole of night, her accused son asleep in the next room, she wondered if she should have continued in her mother’s faithful footsteps. Whether she should have insisted that Eagan receive the sacraments of initiation. Whether she bore at least some of the blame for his sins because she had not. And whether, by continuing to renounce God, she would also bear responsibility for the sins of their son.

  By noon that Saturday, she decided that she could handle the burden of sin, but if she could do something about it, she couldn’t allow her child’s reputation to suffer. So she told Danny that she was taking Gabriel to visit Alta, and set off on a walk up through Whisper Hollow to the carillon welcome of St. Michael’s.

  “Come on, Mama!” Gabriel called back at her from over his shoulder.

  “I’m coming.” She met him on the top step, then took a deep breath. She heaved open the door, and they stepped together inside the narthex.

  That smell. That moldy scent of piety and dogma. It had been seven years. Seven years, but the smell, unlike her own small life, hadn’t changed. The organist, her black-veiled back bent away from them, pounded a sonata by Giovanni Battista Cirri. Lidia recognized her: the imperious Myrthen Bergmann. She’d seemed as uncomfortable in Lidia and Danny’s home that day as she seemed here to be at home. Sometimes we become our surroundings, Lidia thought. And sometimes our surroundings become us. Myrthen, with her sturdy shoes, draconian posture, pulled stops, and invigorating hymns, looked to have rooted herself into the bench upon which she sat.

  Nobody sat in the pews; nobody lit candles. Holding Gabriel’s hand, Lidia crept toward the confessional in the hall, quiet so as not to disturb the dust. Nonetheless, the organ playing stopped.

  “I’ll watch him for you while you celebrate the gift of reconciliation.”

  Lidia turned around, and Myrthen met her gaze from her organ bench.

  “Father Timothy is inside. Your boy — Gabriel, isn’t it? — can sit here with me in the pews while you confess your sins.” When Myrthen smiled at Lidia, extending her palm-up hand toward Gabriel, it looked insincere and youthful, as though the canvas of her face had been stretched the wrong way. The few wrinkles on her face seemed not to come from a lifetime of smiles, but from some other expression.

  Lidia hadn’t thought about what she would do with Gabriel when she spoke to Father Timothy. The confessional, which had appeared so colossal and oppressive when she was a girl, looked small from where she stood. There wouldn’t be room enough for the both of them, unless she held him on her lap. Then again, she didn’t want him to hear what she had to say.

  She looked down at Gabriel. “Would that be all right with you? To sit here with Miss Bergmann for just a couple minutes?”

  Gabriel looked at Myrthen and then back at Lidia. “Does she live here?”

  “No, no. She works here. She plays the organ.”

  “I’m also the secretary. But no, child, this is the house of the Lord. We come here to celebrate the presence of God in our lives. This is where we come to connect to the eternal love that binds us all together. This is why your mother brought you here. So that you, too, shall know the power of God’s love.”

  Gabriel looked at her, level and sincere. “I think we’re lost.”

  “So many of us are, child.”

  “We were going to Alta’s house. We were going to plant things in her garden.”

  “Gabriel, why don’t you sit here with Miss Bergmann? I’m just going to go speak to the priest in here a minute. You sit here.” She patted the back of the pew. “You sit here and I’ll just be a minute. Hear?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “I’ll be right in here. You need me, you just knock. I’ll see you in a couple few minutes.”

  “All right, Mama.”

  Lidia turned and took a deep breath, then opened the tiny door.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. It’s been … seven years since my last confession.”

  “We have missed you, my child.” Father Timothy had been in the parish since 1918, nearly fifty y
ears. He’d known every parishioner, performed their baptisms, their confirmations, their communions, their marriages. His hair was now a paper-white tonsure, and his once-substantial heft had been eroded down to modest, feeble proportions. His hands shook when he lifted them to make the sign of the cross, but after all he’d seen, he still passed no judgment on his parishioners, even the lapsed ones.

  “I … I’ve …” Lidia stopped. She looked down at her ragged nails, bitten to the quick over the past few days. “I’m …”

  “How are you, child? Is something troubling you that’s brought you back home?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know where to start. It’s been so long. So many things … so many things have happened.”

  “God already knows.”

  Lidia stiffened. If God already knew, then why tell Father Timothy? Perhaps it was enough that she was here, in this familiar and foreign place. Perhaps just the sight of her, coming and going, would ease the troubled minds of the townsfolk who had enough spare time to care. Nobody would know what she said — or didn’t say — to a priest who’d no doubt heard plenty before.

  “Do you mind, Father … you mind if I just sit here quiet a minute?”

  “Of course. I’ll pray with you, child.”

  She could hear him murmuring behind the lattice screen. His voice, soft and low, sounded like a grandfather reciting a lullaby. She closed her eyes and thought of what she could not bring herself to speak aloud, not here, not yet. But it was tempting, the idea of releasing all that contrition she’d buried inside for so long. Letters and syllables tickled her tongue, assembled themselves into small groups, congregated into heretofore unspoken words. Her lips parted, dry and sticky. And what if those words came out of her mouth and adhered themselves to the porous wood of the confessional, layered thick already with decades’ worth of unburdened sins? What would be one more?

  Father Timothy’s sonorous voice came to a gentle stop and he said to her, “Don’t let your shame keep you from salvation. God is good.”

  And so she began, on a breath no louder than a whisper, to speak.

  Outside the confessional, Gabriel sat next to Myrthen on the pew and swung his legs, growing impatient and uncomfortable as the minutes wore on. She was on her knees with her forehead pressed into her interlaced fingers and her ear attuned, as always, to the small wooden box. Lidia’s voice was soft, and so Myrthen had to strain to overhear. Without lifting her head, she whipped her left hand out and grasped Gabriel’s shoe mid-swing and hissed, “Don’t kick the kneeler.”

  He stopped.

  She went back to her interception and her eyes grew wide behind her veil. After a moment, she heard Gabriel sniffling. She tried to ignore him, thinking he would settle down, but he did not.

  “What is it?” she said, lip curled.

  “You’re not very nice.”

  Myrthen ducked her head down to his level and glared at him. “You’re not very nice either, now are you? You listen to me. You stop that infernal sniveling and you sit up and sit still. This is God’s house and you need to learn how to behave. Your mother is in there trying to save your soul. And the good Lord knows you need it. And you should thank me for sitting here with you, because I’m not doing it for my own sake, I assure you.”

  Gabriel hung his head. He didn’t speak or even sniff for the next few minutes. When Myrthen’s ears had filled to brimming and she heard Lidia recite the memorized Act of Contrition, expressing her sorrow and desire to perform penance, she knew that the confession was nearly over.

  “Quickly. Let’s go outside. You clearly can’t sit still. We’ll wait for your mother out there.”

  Myrthen hurried out, crossing herself, and he followed. She stood outside on the path and tipped her chin up, breathing in the Heaven scent, and began to pray. Gabriel sank down onto the dirt path and constructed a small pile of stones. A few moments later, Lidia emerged, puffy-faced and smiling. Gabriel saw her and jumped up.

  “Mama!”

  Lidia kissed him on the forehead. Then she turned to Myrthen. “I hope he wasn’t too much trouble.”

  Myrthen dipped her head in a pious nod. “No trouble at all. We were fine, weren’t we, Gabriel?”

  Gabriel didn’t look at her, but instead bent back down to his rocks and began drawing with his finger on the ground. It looked like a bird in flight, a flattened-out number 3. Then apart from it, several more, flying in tight formation.

  “It is good that you confessed your sins. I was praying for you, Lidia. Praying that you would be cleansed and healed by God’s love. God will continue to forgive you, but only if you continue to confess.”

  Lidia looked down at Gabriel. He’d finished drawing and picked up a smooth, flat stone to examine it.

  “You bring Gabriel here with you anytime. I’ll be happy to watch him for you. It’s nice weather now, we can even walk down to the creek.” She turned to Gabriel. “You like playing with stones, do you?” She pointed to the stone he held. “You know how to skip them?”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  “Next time your mother comes to celebrate penance and reconciliation, we can go skip stones.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Gabriel,” Lidia whispered. “Be polite.”

  He looked up at Myrthen, who stared back down at him. “Okay,” he said. Then without dropping his gaze, he let go of the rock he was holding and it landed with a dusty thud on the ground. “But you have to go first.”

  April 3, 1969

  Lidia paced the length of her small kitchen, dinner already simmering on the stove even before Gabriel had woken up, and listened to the AM radio station out of Charleston. They were playing “Good Lovin’ ” by the Rascals, which seemed too fast and happy for the day, so she switched it off. A peal of thunder rattled the windowpanes. She hoped it would rouse Gabriel. She could use the company.

  Three years ago today Eagan had died.

  She always thought about her brother with a confusion of detachment and anger, longing and regret. He’d hurt her, yes, but he couldn’t be blamed for the meningitis that had damaged his four-year-old brain and demoted him forever from older brother to younger. And Gabriel, now nearly the same age Eagan had been when he’d fallen sick. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to watch her son’s precocious mind melt from fever into something altogether unfamiliar.

  Abruptly she stopped her movement and sank down into the kitchen chair to cry, for the first time in years. She wept for the brother she lost once when he was rendered a permanent child, and again when he turned into a monster in the bathroom, and then forever after a mosquito in the Nine Dragon river delta in southwestern Vietnam infected him with parasites during a blood meal.

  And she wept for her son, a brilliant, perfect lie.

  Her crying, not the storm, finally woke him up. She didn’t even realize it until she felt his tiny hand on her arm. He held out his tattered yellow blanket. “You can use this,” he said.

  She gathered him into her lap and held him tightly for a long moment. Finally, after the sadness abated, she whispered in his ear, “Hungry?” He nodded. “I’ll make you some eggs, then when Daddy wakes up maybe he’ll take you fishing, okay?”

  After she fed them a Saturday banquet of fried eggs and fatty bacon and biscuits, and the rain stopped, they all trudged off together — the boys to go fishing and she to see Alta. She never needed an invitation or even a reason to cross the creek and hike the half mile up through Whisper Hollow to Alta’s cabin, but today, she had one. She took a fresh-baked loaf of bread to go with it.

  Alta could tell from the quiet footfalls on the damp earth a hundred yards out that Lidia was alone. She knew her well enough to recognize the slow, even steps, picking carefully around the fallen branches, an indication that something preyed on Lidia’s mind. When she came to visit without Gabriel, it meant something was awry. Alta met her at the door with a smile tilted toward understanding, brought her into the cabin, and settled her on the couch. T
hey sat across from one another in the stillness, each of them blowing the steam off her tea.

  “Tell me,” Alta said after a while.

  “Oh, I’m fine. It’s just — ” She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about my brother.”

  Alta nodded. It was a small town. She already knew the story. The public story, anyway, that Eagan Kielar had died in the war, his daddy, Stanley, so stricken with grief and guilt he didn’t even want to hold a memorial service.

  “I never really got to say goodbye,” Lidia said. “After Gabriel was born, Eagan went to war and … and he didn’t come back. There were … things … I never told him. And now I never can.

  “It was my fault.” Lidia looked down at her lap, tears coming again. “I couldn’t take care of him, not once Gabe came along, and Daddy couldn’t either. Daddy took him to Charleston and helped him sign up. Eagan was only over there a few months … then we got the telegram from the Pentagon saying he was dead. They circled the word ‘son’ on a form. ‘We regret to inform you that your son was killed in action in Vietnam on April 3, 1966.’ Daddy came to the house and he handed me the piece of paper and just stood there looking like he did when Mama died, and I knew I was supposed to break down and cry right there on the linoleum, that’s what I should’ve done, but I didn’t. I just sat down at the kitchen table and let out my breath that I felt like I’d been holding for more than a year. Daddy touched me on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m sorry, Liddie,’ and he left. We didn’t even find out until later that he wasn’t killed in action. He died of malaria. But the worst part is …” She closed her eyes and knitted her brow and shook her head gently. “I felt relieved.”