It was the beginning of her second semester at college. He worked in the media department and she’d had to do a paper on propaganda during World War II. Frank had helped her locate a few newsreels and then held her in conversation, pushing his glasses up with his forefinger as he turned his head and pointed her in the direction of the microfilm desk. He’d asked her out some time later, after she borrowed some films by Leni Riefenstahl, and she’d been completely caught off guard. She had fumbled around until she hit upon a way to say no: she had a test on Monday that was going to be huge; she would be studying all weekend (All weekend? Really? Not even time for dinner? After seventeen years of marriage, Frank still teased her about it).
Of course, what she couldn’t have told her mother was that detail about the conversation in the bar—that shouting match over the band’s din that convinced Maddie to give Frank another chance. She couldn’t tell her mother about that until later.
But at bottom, Maddie knew that her mother’s resentment—and, indeed, her father’s initial caution—was Frank’s Catholicism, which made no difference at all to Maddie. And, thinking further, this was ultimately her explanation to Frank himself: her parents were disappointed that she wasn’t “taking her faith seriously.” Catholicism, they felt, wasn’t taken seriously by anybody. Catholics just pick and choose when they go to Mass, they said; they squeeze it in on a Saturday evening, getting it out of the way before they spent the rest of the night drinking, sleeping in (and sleeping it off) on a Sunday morning. They felt that her interest in Frank despite his Catholicism was symptomatic of Maddie’s “backslidden” status, of her disinterest in God.
Frank’s response to this was baffled amusement. Catholics don’t use words like “backslidden,” and Catholics are Christians, does your mother know this? Catholics were the first Christians, for Pete’s sake. And also, of course you do take your faith seriously, don’t you, Maddie. The last bit coming as more of a statement than a question, to which Maddie had responded nonetheless: yes.
More privately still, Maddie realized that all of this was symptomatic of her parents’ resistance to change. They hoped that, having started a family, Frank and Maddie would be like themselves: attending a Protestant, evangelical, even fundamentalist church, and gathering with the faithful at said church every time the doors were open: Sunday morning for two hours and again on Sunday night for one and again on Wednesday evening for the prayer meeting, not to mention the bridal showers and baby showers and all other events in-between. But Maddie knew better. It was unreasonable to think that life could carry on like this for her own family, and unreasonable, too, to go to church so often. She liked it that Catholics—many of them, anyway—went once a week: confession and Mass, said and done.
In truth, Maddie felt there was something refined and tidy about Catholicism, something less-than-filled with expectation that had its appeal. To be sure, there was the incense, the sing-song sort of chanting, the statues and icons that lent an air of mysticism to one’s basic Sunday morning (or Saturday evening) experience—an air so different from anything she had known at the Bethel Hills Church of Holiness. But there was something, too, that she found less intrusive about the Catholic faith, as if Catholics understood something more about God than other people did: that He was doing His own thing and was, for the most part, letting you do yours. Maddie had observed and felt strongly and honestly preferred that, with the Catholics, God was never on the brink of getting involved.
He was forever getting involved with the people of the Holiness Church. Or they expected him to, anyway.
R
By the end of the fourth grade, Maddie had memorized the knots in the pine ceiling of the church sanctuary. Had she been old enough or perhaps a more artistic child, she might have appreciated their beauty, too: the parallel blond planks, the dark veins and swirls of the timber. She might have admired the modern austerity of the room’s architecture, a Puritanical plainness influenced by a 1960’s sensibility surfacing in modest touches: narrow windows glazed in amber glass, white cylindrical light fixtures where, in another building, with a different aesthetic, one might expect chandeliers.
But these thoughtful details were lost on her. Instead, her powers of observation were put to preventing boredom. During the long Sunday evening services, she counted rather than admired the light fixtures. Lying down the length of a pew, her head in her mother’s lap, she studied ceiling planks and traced constellations among the knots in the wood. She knew she was too old to be lying down during church by the time she hit fifth grade, and shortly after that she knew without looking that there were sixteen ceiling planks between the far wall and the first support beam, and then sixteen more to the next. She guessed this was the pattern throughout, but here again maturity prevented her turning around and craning her neck to count them, so she focused her energies on the number of pews or people in them, the number of hymnals per row, the number of Christmas hymns (or Easter hymns or Thanksgiving hymns) in the hymnal.
It was here, during the Sunday evening service, that the Holiness belief in God’s imminent involvement reached its feverish pitch. Every week, the sermon wound to its emotional conclusion. The organ began to throb the quiet strains of a familiar hymn. And then the pastor made his plea: that anyone—anyone at all—who felt the need to draw close to God come to the altar to pray.
Pause. Collectively, the congregation made an almost indiscernible turn from passive and listening receptivity to one of poised expectation. The room took on a silence distinct from that experienced during the sermon, which was one that accepted cleared throats, shifted weight, or whisperings, and instead became gravid and still. The organ’s intonation continued, and the pastor rephrased: If you feel a need of God—any need at all—just slip out of your pew and come forward.
This was the part Maddie dreaded, for who could know how long the wait might be? The movement of God’s Holy Spirit was, at best, unpredictable. Sometimes a dozen or so came forward, sometimes only two or three. Sometimes the needy ones came forward immediately, and sometimes multiple hymns were required to elicit a response. Meanwhile, the organ poured forth one hymn after the other in plodding succession, dying down at the end and then, just when Maddie thought it was over, resurging with yet another refrain.
She was young—maybe nine?—when she learned to hope against God’s involvement in this portion of the service. Her ideal Sunday would find the congregation sated by the sermon, joining their voices in a single, upbeat closing hymn, and making their way to the parking lot within five minutes.
Unfortunately, someone nearly always did feel a need for God, and then a new kind of waiting began, for the custom was that the entire congregation sat it out, presumably praying along in their seats, until the one or ones at the altar were finished. And some pray-ers needed more time than others.
For a time, Maddie could and did find in this a distraction: guessing what the praying might be for. A transgression against one’s neighbor, a spat with a spouse—these might only require a few minute’s kneeling before the red-eyed return to one’s seat. But larger issues—long-term battles against pride or lasciviousness maybe, the release of one’s soul to the saving powers of Jesus—these could take a very long time indeed.
Some of the needs were relatively obvious. There was Mr. Taylor, grossly overweight, at risk of losing his left leg to amputation and diabetes. For a time, Mr. Meyers could be expected at the altar because he’d lost his job, and it was understandable to see Mrs. Wahler up there because her husband had left her for his secretary. And there was Susan Sweet, a young woman in her early twenties, possessed of an awkward gait due to a birth defect. She might pray for her leg to be healed or for a husband—both were fair guesses.
That people like these should be praying out in the open was, to Maddie, somewhat reasonable. But there were weeks, too, when it seemed—for some precious, hopeful moments— that the altar would remain empty.
Except for Mr. Gillece—and Maddie would swear to
you even now that Mr. Gillece was kneeling at that altar every blessed Sunday night. He really was. It got to the point that she would count, eyes closed, to see how long it would take Mr. Gillece to make his way to the front.
She liked Mr. Gillece. As was true with almost everyone in their small congregation, she had known him all her life. From all she could see, he was a successful and happy man: two healthy children, an apparently happy marriage, a successful business career, good health. He was always friendly, greeting her by name, sometimes chatting with her father after church, doing his part by serving as an usher on Sunday mornings. So his weekly Sunday evening vigils mystified her. What could he possibly be praying about? What was the issue that had to be raised again and again with the Almighty, as if He might have forgotten, from week to week, whatever it was that drove Mr. Gillece to his knees right in front of everybody?
This irritation incited her, with all the daring she could muster, to ask John Gillece about it once. She was in the fifth grade at the time, and John was in seventh—a significant difference in age that Maddie felt keenly. But this was also the height of her annoyance with Mr. Gillece’s prayers, and John Gillece was kind of an awkward kid, so it was with some boldness that she asked John flat-out about it one Sunday morning after church, when a bunch of the kids were hanging out on the rusting swing set over on the parsonage lawn.
“Why does your dad pray so much?” she had said to John from the swing, calling him into dialogue with her when they had been minding their separate business.
“What do you mean?” John answered.
“On Sunday nights, at the end of church. Why does he always go up front and pray?”
John’s face had reddened, and Maddie detected within herself a rising confidence. She had not anticipated his embarrassment, and now it occurred to her that John was harboring a family secret. Perhaps she was on the verge of discovering something; perhaps John would come out with it.
“What do you mean?” John said again, faltering. Other kids around them were noting the conversation.
“I mean he always goes forward for the altar call.” She was pleased by the attentive listeners who, she suddenly imagined, might also be irritated by Mr. Gillece’s insistent praying. “Why does he do that? Why does he need to do that? Every time?” Somehow, adding the “need” to her question empowered her further; it suddenly and clearly made her father superior to John’s father; it even made her superior to John. John looked weak. The whole Gillece family looked weak, and Maddie was more successful than she had imagined, and she pumped her legs harder on the swing.
John stammered and fell silent.
It’s probable that Maddie would have forgotten this conversation, along with countless other childhood conversations in which she exerted subtle domination over others. But this conversation was burned in her memory due to Mrs. Gillece’s sudden and dismaying presence. Unknown to Maddie, Mrs. Gillece had been coming up behind Maddie to call John to go home.
“What was it you were asking, Maddie?” she asked.
On hearing her voice, Maddie suddenly grew hot—and this despite the near constant breeze from the swinging. “I just asked John a question,” she said, all innocence.
“What was it you wanted to know?”
Maddie considered silence: What would happen if she said nothing? She pumped her legs.
“Maddie,” Mrs. Gillece said. Maddie had to answer.
“I just wanted to know why Mr. Gillece always goes up to the altar to pray,” Maddie said, and she was glad that the swing kept carrying her away from Mrs. Gillece so that she didn’t have to look at her face.
Mrs. Gillece responded with the same patient tone she had used since she appeared on the parsonage lawn.
“Prayer is a conversation between a person and God,” she said, “and so I guess you could say that this is none of your business.” She said it gently enough, but Maddie felt the reprimand. She had been put in her place, and before so many witnesses, which left her no option other than to scud her swing to an almost halt and walk away without saying a word.
She had a hard time talking to—or even looking at—Mrs. Gillece for a long time after that, while Mr. Gillece persisted in his weekly vigils, which now managed to incite guilt in Maddie along with the original irritation.
By the time she was in high school, she was relatively sure that Mrs. Gillece had forgotten the incident, though recalling it still made her insides twist. Occasionally she found herself in mental discourse with Mr. and Mrs. Gillece or John or even Pastor McLaughlin, presenting a kind of defense: she wouldn’t deny anyone the opportunity to pray. She knew that praying was a good thing. But why make everyone else wait it out? The altar call extended the Sunday evening service to unpredictable and sometimes dreadful lengths. People have to work and go to school on Monday morning. Perhaps Mr. Gillece—and the others—could do some of their praying at home, or more privately, at the very least?
She rehearsed this many times in her head, but never voiced it to John Gillece or anyone else. She feared her practical argument would ultimately be indefensible. For what was there to doubt in such focused and fervent prayer? Certainly God loved prayer like this: the humility, the kneeling, the apparently earnest emotion that so often seemed to accompany those bent at the altar. More precious still the members of the congregation who, moved by compassion or God Himself, left their seats to pray for and with the one so kneeling. Moreover, she should want these people to come forward for prayer. She should be actively praying for the people who were praying themselves. She should consider going forward herself—at the very least in repentance for bullying John Gillece—except that she couldn’t bear the thought of the exposure.
And she couldn’t imagine—or understand—what would come of it.
But if she had needed convincing of God’s genuine involvement in all of this, then there was that singular Sunday night to show for it, sometime in the spring of her sophomore year of high school, the night that Vincent Elander came to church.
She hadn’t seen him come in. Neither did she notice him right away when the service began. But somehow in the course of things—maybe when they all stood to sing the first hymn?—she saw him there across the aisle, just a row in front of hers. She had a clear shot of his profile, and the moment of recognition was a spasm through her core.
Vincent Elander. She would recognize him anywhere. The football quarterback, the baseball team’s star pitcher, heartthrob crush of most of her friends freshman year—until each of them realized with a slowly dawning despondence that he was fixedly out of her league. As a freshman, he had been the starting quarterback. As a sophomore, he had steadily and somewhat predictably—except for the age difference—dated the captain (a senior) of the cheerleading squad. The best parties always included him. Recognition by him—no matter how small the acknowledgement—was the quickest route to the fast crowd. The most intriguing rumors—imparted to her by the all-knowing Justine—always included his name in its cast of characters.
Now Maddie was wrapping up her sophomore year and he was ending his junior, and if she was certain of anything at all in life, it was that Vincent Elander had no idea of her existence. Yet here he sat in the fifth row on the left-hand side of the Bethel Hills Church of Holiness on a Sunday evening. Moreover, he was alone, a truth almost as strange as his presence, because Vincent was always surrounded by a coterie of friends and friends of friends, ex-girlfriends and hopefuls. Tonight he was an island, alone in a pew that had, otherwise, four hymnals to show for it.
Maddie was stunned. How had he come to be here? Had someone invited him? His solitude argued against that. Then what was he doing here? How had he come to choose—of all available Sunday evening church services in Pittsburgh’s Bethel Hills—hers? Her persistent disbelief brought nothing to bear on the situation. Vincent was unmistakably present. Certainly she could get confirmation from Justine.
Except that Justine wasn’t there. She had given up Sunday evening church some m
onths ago. After years of church-twice-on-Sundays, Justine had told her parents, the pastor, Maddie, and anyone she perceived might question her decision that twice a week was enough. Which meant that Sunday nights were out.
And now here sat Vincent Elander. How could Maddie ever get Justine to believe this?
She spent the remainder of the sermon convincing herself, casting careful looks in Vincent’s direction, taking care that they were balanced with looks elsewhere: the ceiling, the preacher, even her hands. Meanwhile, it seemed nothing could distract Vincent from the church service—not even the prolonged crying of little Tony Martin, whose mother finally carried him out of the sanctuary. But Vincent never even turned his head at the height of that ruckus, when half of the congregation watched Tony’s red-faced departure from the room. Instead, Vincent seemed fully focused, taking part in singing hymns and then, when the preaching began, never shifting his gaze from the pastor’s face.
Maddie began to entertain the options, trying to figure out what drew him: he was here to do research, some assignment from sociology class; or—horrifying and far more believable—he was here on a dare, a strange bet of some kind. It was all a huge joke, and later he would laugh about it with his friends: the hymns, the standing, the sitting, the preaching, the wails of Tony Martin, the endless altar call.
She resolved that she would need to escape quickly after the service. If Vincent Elander were ever going to recognize her, it couldn’t possibly happen tonight. If he saw her tonight, if she were to register at all in his wonderful mind, it would most certainly be as “that girl from that church that one time,” an identity that would brand her in a most undesirable way, almost as ignominious as if she’d been wearing glasses, or straight hair, or bell-bottomed jeans.
Healing Maddie Brees Page 4