“I don’t think I’ll burden you with my troubles and detract even further from the rosy glow of your engagement.”
She took a mock serious tone in her response which made it very clear that beneath the humor, there was truth in what she was saying. “Well that’s a fine how-do-you-do! I share the very dearest of my neuroses for all these months, and now when the perfect paragon of mental health and stability has a problem, he clams up on me. I hope when that time comes many years from now that I reach your advanced age, I won’t be as stubborn as you.”
“The way I hear it,” he said smiling, “you’re already pretty stubborn.”
Her first inclination was to ask what Brian had been saying about her behind her back, but she recognized that he was trying to change the subject, and refused to bite. “Oh, no, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”
Once again he startled her with a sudden invitation. “Let’s go for a walk.”
They exited the restaurant and left Paul’s car parked in the parking lot. Paul’s pace was brisk, as if he had somewhere important to go, and Emily struggled to keep up. Finally, six blocks later and somewhat out of breath, she asked, “You in a hurry to get somewhere? I’m accustomed to a slower pace, you know.”
“Sorry. I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere in particular, except maybe to retirement.”
They had reached a small courtyard by the side of a huge old downtown church. There were a few small trees and some benches which had no doubt originally been intended for quiet meditation, but the encroachment of the city had made quiet a rare commodity. Paul invited Emily to sit down.
It was a sunny, blustery day and it was pleasant to sit and watch the people go by like so many leaves being blown by the wind. When Paul spoke, he had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the wind and the city noise. “I sat up all night last night pondering the question of my career. It seems a little late in the ball game to wonder if I’m in the wrong line of work, doesn’t it?”
“What makes you think you might be in the wrong line of work?” she asked.
“I had a patient that I thought was making fine progress. He was coming back from a deep depression, and he really seemed to be doing well. I was thinking of sending him home in a few more days. He was really anxious to get out of the hospital; he made very encouraging noises about how it was time to get back into the business of living his life. I bought it, hook, line, and sinker. I released him yesterday, told him to have a good weekend, told him to report back in Sunday afternoon. I felt good about it, right up until midnight when they called to tell me he cut his wrists. The only reason he’s still alive is because his wife came home from work early and found him.”
Emily had seen it coming, but it still made her catch her breath. “What a terrible thing for him to do! How selfish!”
Paul looked at her intently for a moment. “Yes, suicide is above everything else a very selfish thing to do. I resent it. It’s an affront to my professional esteem. It’s an affront to my philosophy of life. I went into medicine to be a healer, and to make people’s lives better. Suicide tells me that I can’t do those things, it doesn’t give me a chance.”
She pondered both her initial reaction and his reply for a moment. When she spoke, she sounded like someone who had considered the matter at great length. “I wouldn’t want to be put in the position of defending anyone who tried to take life into his own hands, but I can sort of understand how a person could lose sight of the reasons why he should go on living. If you were in a terrible situation and you came to believe that life would be nothing but misery, it might seem futile to stay alive. And if the only people that your suicide would hurt were the people you were most angry with, you wouldn’t care about their feelings.”
Paul took a moment to digest this before observing, “You say you wouldn’t want to defend a suicide, but you sound like defending counsel to me.”
“Or maybe a past defendant.”
At this Paul looked at her sharply. “I thought I recognized the felon you were describing.”
She decided that it was time to strip away some of the pretense. “Brian tried to commit suicide because he had lost so much of himself, he didn’t think he could go on. I think he’d be the first to admit that it was a stupid, selfish thing to do. I never tried to kill myself, but I sure thought about it a lot when I was a teenager. Obviously, I’m very glad that I didn’t have any easy means, or I would have done it. I know now that it was a stupid thing to contemplate, but if I thought I would have to live those years over again, it would become a frighteningly tempting option again. It’s a question of perspective. If you can’t see a good reason to live, someone has to help you with your vision. That’s what Brian says you did for him, made him see the reasons he had to go on.” She patted his hand and said, “You know, I think you’re probably a very good psychiatrist. You’ve certainly made my life better.” After a pause, she added, “And you healed Brian when he needed it.”
“You’ve done more for Brian in the last year than I did in twenty.”
“God’s done more for Brian than either one of us. In fact, maybe everything we did for him was really God working through us.”
Paul looked thoughtfully into Emily’s face and smiled, “Any way you slice it, Brian McClellan is a lucky man.”
“You’re right. He had a good doctor, and now he has a great friend.”
As they walked back to the car, Emily asked, “What are you going to do about your career question?”
“Oh, I’ll hang in there,” he said sighing, “maybe I’ll be overly cautious for a while, more skeptical about what patients say. I’m definitely looking forward to my next vacation, the last week of May. I’m going off to New England, you know.” At this he grinned, “Something about a wedding.”
There is no traditional way to spend Easter Saturday. Some Southerners hold to the idea that it is the perfect day to put in a garden because anything you put in the ground between Good Friday and Easter morning doesn’t stay down, but instead rises to new life. Southern women for years spent the day before Easter, like the day before any holiday, in the kitchen. Emily saw no reason to do that since the menfolk of the feast were both better cooks than she was anyway. At any rate, neither gardening nor cooking appealed to her on that Saturday. Brian had been called in to the hospital to fill in for a sick colleague, so Emily was spending the day alone in the house again.
One of the things that Emily had wished for as a child, but never gotten, was a new outfit for Easter. She decided to treat herself to a new dress, and so spent the morning shopping. She was pleased with her purchases, which included a blue dress in Brian’s favorite shade. “It’s nice to have someone to please with what I wear,” she thought.
After her shopping was complete, she decided to stroll along for a while in the cemetery in the historic part of town. Each year a huge sunrise service was held there on Easter Sunday with a large brass band and thousands of worshippers. Emily and Brian planned to worship at Saint Bartholemew’s, but she was curious as to what the attraction of the historic cemetery was.
It had been a wet spring, and the grounds were blanketed with a carpet of lush green grass as Emily walked along. There were rows and rows of flat white markers with the names of the dead of many decades. And everywhere, on every grave, there were flowers which had been placed there in preparation for the worship service in the morning. The people of the historic community called the place “God’s Acre.” The question that posed itself to Emily was why here? Why do thousands of people come here to welcome Easter morning?
“Certainly,” she thought, “it’s a peaceful place. At funerals they always say ‘rest in peace.’ But is there really anybody here resting at all? Aren’t they all gone? Isn’t that what Easter was for? Perhaps I don’t understand Easter. Perhaps I don’t understand death.”
Before she was aware of it, the afternoon was spent, and Emily only got back to the house a few minutes before Brian return
ed from his day of work. She stood in the window and watched him walk from the driveway to the house, and he seemed to her to be limping more heavily than usual.
She greeted him with a long kiss and asked, “How was your day?”
He smiled and kissed her again, “It started out long and tedious, but it’s beginning to show signs of improvement. What have you been up to all day? I called several times, but didn’t find you in.”
“I went shopping and then I went for a walk in the old cemetery where that big sunrise service is going to be tomorrow, just out of curiosity.” She answered succinctly because she sensed that he was only asking to be polite. Then she continued, “Brian, you look tired. Why don’t we stay in tonight and eat leftovers instead of going out? You could take a nice nap before dinner.”
“That’s a very tempting offer. I’d love to get off my feet for a while. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
She gave her assurances and he headed off to his bedroom to take a long shower and a nap. “If I don’t emerge by seven, come in and get me, okay?”
Emily agreed and went into the kitchen to see what she might be able to throw together for dinner. She decided she had all the ingredients for a shepherd’s pie, and so assembled one and slipped it into the oven.
Before she knew it, it was seven o’clock, and she tapped lightly on the door of Brian’s room, but heard no answer. She walked in and across the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and watched him as he slept. He looked so dear, so young in his shorts and tousled hair. She bent over to kiss his cheek, and he smiled even before he opened his eyes. His voice when it came was a low murmur. “That beats an alarm clock any day.”
There was something about the way he looked, the way his hair was ruffled, the way he smelled, that seemed to compel Emily toward him. She kissed him with a measure of passion that he had rarely seen, as her hands stroked his chest, her breath coming a little unevenly. Brian reciprocated with a warmth and fervor of his own, tempered by the gentleness that he always used when he approached her. After a few minutes, Emily collected herself somewhat and said, “I have dinner in the oven. I better go make sure it’s not burning.” And she was gone.
Brian slipped a shirt on to go with his shorts, and followed her through the great room on his crutches. He found her in the kitchen slicing bread and doing other busy work for their meal. He stood behind her, kissed the back of her neck, and spoke softly. “You left the room rather abruptly. Is everything all right?”
“Of course,” she said, too quickly. He didn’t say a word, and she knew she had not persuaded him. Putting aside her chores, she said, “You said that if I came and stayed the weekend, you wouldn’t behave like anything less than a gentleman because of Easter. Maybe you should have made me promise not to behave like anything less than a lady. If I left the room abruptly just now, it was because my hands were just itching to go places where they hadn’t been invited.”
Brian smiled while he thought about the best response to that. Finally, keeping his smile in position and his voice low, he said, “First of all, you have no idea how flattering what you just said is. Second, I don’t have any places where your hands aren’t welcome. And third, you really haven’t done anything the slightest bit unladylike.”
“If I had, would you have told me?” she asked in earnest.
Still smiling, he answered, “I suppose so, but you’re the most ladylike person I know.”
Emily had a doubtful look on her face as she returned to the meal preparations. When the food was all ready, they sat at the kitchen table and thanked God for it.
After a few bites, Brian asked, “So, what did you buy when you went shopping today?”
“I treated myself to a new dress for Easter. You can see it tomorrow.”
With a forgetful look on his face, he asked, “Where else did you say you went?”
“Do you remember that cemetery we heard about on the news last night, where the sunrise service is held? I went down there. It really is huge, and solemn, but very peaceful.” Thinking about what she had seen and felt that afternoon, she asked, “Do you think much about death, Brian?”
“I try not to fixate on it, it slows down the work,” he answered.
This remark caused Emily to stop eating and look intently into Brian’s face. “I didn’t mean in connection with your work; I meant as it relates to your life.”
“Is it possible to separate it like that? When I send up a biopsy report with bad news, I’m mindful that someone may be going to die. And occasionally, I still get called upon to do an autopsy, and then I face death head on. It can be very sad. But then I remind myself that when I send up a biopsy reporting a malignancy, I’m giving the attending physician information he can use to give the patient a fighting chance. When I do an autopsy, I’m gathering information that may help find a cure for whatever killed the patient.”
Emily had been following this very closely, and after a moment’s reflection said, “So you’re making death count for something.”
“I’m certainly trying to.”
For a moment she seemed lost in thought. “I’ve always had trouble getting a handle on what Easter means. But as I walked through that cemetery today, I was struck by the idea that even though we consider death an enemy, it’s a conquered enemy. All those people buried in that cemetery are gone. The fight is over, the deciding battle was on Easter, and the good guys won. Does any of this make any sense?”
“Yes, it does.
And then another thought struck her with some force, and she spoke. “Does it ever occur to you when we have these deep theological discussions that I’ve got a lot of nerve talking to you like the voice of all wisdom and piety? Half an hour ago I was fighting an almost losing battle with temptation, and now I’m spouting off theology like St. Augustine.”
“Actually, the thought that often occurs to me is that you compartmentalize your thinking sometimes. You have our physical relationship in one part of your mind and your faith in another, and you see them as somehow at odds. You and I have never shared anything that I think is wrong. When I touch you, I enjoy it, and I don’t think I’ve done anything of which God wouldn’t approve. Our relationship is really quite innocent, you know. What we have together is a gift, and I think it was meant for us to enjoy. My faith and my sexuality are very comfortable together. When we discuss theology, I enjoy that too. I don’t see any conflict in that. ”
Emily seemed vaguely perturbed by what she was hearing. “You don’t think I look at things from an honest point of view?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to say that at all. I just meant that you seem to separate things in your thinking. Like a little while ago when you asked me about death. You seemed to think that I would look at death one way when I’m working and another way when I’m thinking theologically. My mind doesn’t work that way, but I think yours does.”
Emily seemed to grow more annoyed with every word he had spoken. “You know, that’s a pretty insulting thing to say.”
Brian appeared genuinely taken aback by her reaction, “Why? I certainly didn’t mean to be insulting.”
“You’re saying that I keep my Christianity in a box and don’t let it invade the rest of my life. You think I go through my day and never relate the things I encounter to my faith at all.” As she spoke, she got up from the table and walked to the other side of the room, facing away from him.
“Emily, I never meant to imply that. You’re a loving, forgiving, patient, kind person. You exhibit more Christ-like tendencies in one day than I do in a month, and you don’t even have to think about it, you do it because you’ve been that way so long, it would never occur to you to do otherwise. You ...”
She interrupted him by turning to face him, a tear streaking down her face, her voice broken. “Don’t say any more, Brian, none of those nice things is true, but what you said about me before is. I talk a good game about the glories of Christian virtue, I just don’t live it very well.”
“N
ow wait a minute, I never said anything of the sort. You’re a paragon of Christian virtue in the way you treat everyone, except yourself. Let’s go back to how this whole conversation started. We were being physically affectionate with one another, in our own innocent way. It felt good, and that made you feel guilty, but you sort of set that guilt aside. Then we were talking about death, and then theology, and you remembered that guilt you had on the back burner and you felt hypocritical talking about God when you had been doing something physically pleasant. It’s like there are these chains in your mind. The love connects to the sex and that connects to the guilt. Then there’s a completely different chain with death and God and victory and forgiveness and grace all connected. It’s like the thoughts always have to come in the same order, on the same chain. I think you’d be a happier person, a more comfortable person, if you could mix it all up.”
She was looking skeptical. “How do you mean?”
He pondered the question for a moment and then answered. “For me it works like this. I think to myself, ‘I love Emily. I touch Emily. I like the way that makes me feel. This is happening because I am blessed.’ For me there aren’t any non sequiturs in there.”
There was acid in her voice when she said, “I notice there’s no mention of guilt in there either. I guess you don’t have a big problem with guilt.”
“Oh, I have plenty of guilt, Emily. I slept with about half the female enrollment of the University of Vermont. When I’m reminded of that, the pattern goes like this, ‘I did things I shouldn’t have done. I’m ashamed of those things. But I can’t change them, and I think God is forgiving. I don’t have to feel guilty about them anymore.’ and so on.”
“And nothing you’ve done causes you to lose any sleep, does it?” There was still a hint of anger in her voice.
“Didn’t Christ suffer enough to attain my forgiveness? Would it be any more complete if I suffered over it too?”
Blackberry Winter Page 20