A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  First, there would be a marriage tribunal, so Michael could receive Communion when they divorced. For an annulment, she must return to her archdiocese. As if she had one. As if she had either a name or an archdiocese. She put the letter in the second drawer, with the card from Michael’s mother, with the note from his father.

  She was still married. She felt around inside herself for where there was meaning in that, in her stomach, in her chest. Nana Farley had a pink glass cake cover, a round dome that closed the cake off from the world. Sometimes the inside of the cake cover got moist, like the cake was breathing.

  Bullfrog was curled in a tight circle on his blanket, his chin down, his eyes open. His eyebrows were busy, keeping track of her, and she paced from the door to the window and back again, Bullfrog always keeping track of her. His eyebrows were going white with his oldness, a word her word processor once underlined with a noisy red squiggle. Not legal in Scrabble either. She always thought oldness should be a word. Jen let her use it once, and then, after Pattianne beat her by not very many points, told her that it wasn’t in the Scrabble dictionary. This place had an oldness about it. She felt an oldness here, around her, in her. She could get old in a place like this. Maybe it would only take patience after all, and not years and years of struggle to do some right thing that would stay right.

  She was married for all eternity. She was not married at all. She was married until she admitted that she had an archdiocese. She knew what was true, that she married within the context of a lie, and that the marriage didn’t have to count. It depended on what bishop they went to. Michael said he never lied, never killed an unborn baby that he would have named for his father. For himself. How many babies there might have been, all those times they had sex, every time Michael believing, and every time her thwarting God’s plans for new life.

  She sat on the step eating plums, spitting the plum pits out onto the grass. Bullfrog came and sat next to her. He was still all perfumed. He watched each plum pit land in the grass and finally went down the steps, sniffed one out, picked it up, and carried it up the steps and inside. She leaned back against the doorway and closed her eyes, and thought of her father, his birthday. She kissed her parents on the cheek good night every night until fifth grade. Then one night she went to bed without kissing them. She remembered that night, being in her room, putting on purple pajamas, realizing she hadn’t kissed them good night, and deciding not to go back downstairs to do it. Purple pajamas with blue hearts. She’d never kissed them good night again.

  She opened her eyes to a black sky of storm clouds lit by the moon and moving fast, opening to breaks of starry patches, and then clouding over. No wind down low.

  She had never been one to just doze off, and now it wasn’t even weird. She just seemed to let herself drift off into some dream that was already there waiting for her. And when she woke, she felt happy. All this space around her was like suddenly having a bed and all the blankets to herself. Until she realized she should be thinking hard about what to do with Michael. He crowded in on her. It was only right.

  Michael. She didn’t want to burn the envelopes, and she didn’t want to throw them in the trash, but she didn’t want them in that drawer. She went inside and took them out and put them in her pocket. She left Bullfrog curled up on his blanket, didn’t even look at him, just left. There were lights on in the guest rooms upstairs at Ruby’s Roadhouse, but the lobby was dark. Bullfrog would be glad she hadn’t invited him to come along. She should have pointed this out to him.

  It was warm and windy on the beach. She took one letter out of the bundle and tore off a corner of the envelope. It was the one with the card in it from Michael’s mother. She had no feeling in her fingertips. The small piece of the envelope blew away in an instant, flying away in the dark, gone. She didn’t even have to let go of it, the wind just took it.

  The wind took every piece of every one.

  Bright clouds lit by the moon, and black sky with stars, and wind blowing from everywhere. The tide maybe coming in, and sneaker waves that could curl over you and crash against the driftwood and rocks. Or maybe the tide was going out, with riptides that could rise slowly, and then faster and faster around your legs, and suck you down and drag you out to sea. The water was all dark noise, and if it wanted her, it could have her. She wouldn’t even have to let go.

  The blue letters of the OPEN sign flashed, and the lights inside the store lit up the parking lot, shining on a red minivan. Everything was hard-edged with white light when she stepped in out of the darkness. Father Lucke sat in the lawn chair behind the counter wearing a red cardigan. Bright red. The television set was not turned on.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello. I mean, isn’t Mr. Li here?”

  He had a cigar in one hand, and in the other, he held up a china teacup with yellow roses on it. He said, “Hello to you too.” His pinky finger curved above the thin handle.

  Mr. Li came up the cookie aisle, carrying a teapot. “Pete,” he said. “At one in the morning.”

  “One in the morning?”

  “Not too many customers this time of night,” he said, and he poured tea into Father Lucke’s cup. The pot had one big yellow rose on it, and he held it up, a question.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t like tea, but thank you.” And she wished she did like tea. She wanted something from him, something his small fingers had touched. She wondered if one in the morning was either too early or too late to start a pot of coffee.

  “Not tea,” he said. “Bourbon toddy. A little spearmint leaf, a little lemon juice.”

  “And hot water, of course,” Father Lucke said, raising his teacup, his fat pinky finger raised, his fat smiling face raised. He had your basic shining countenance. “It’s not terribly strong.” That giggle. A gust blew hard against the front of the store. “Looks like we’re in for a bit of a blow. South wind.”

  “But with rain,” Mr. Li said. “Not too bad a windstorm if there is already rain.”

  He turned a wire milk case upside down, pushed it against the wall, set a stack of West Side Signals on it. His tan loafers were side by side on the floor. He wore thick white socks. “Please,” he said to her. “A seat?”

  And Father Lucke said, “Doesn’t look like much rain to me.”

  She draped her jacket over the wastebasket and accepted the seat from Mr. Li. He poured bourbon toddy into another teacup and handed it to her, and their fingers touched when she took the small cup. She couldn’t speak to say thank you, leaned back against the warm, hard, solid wall.

  He picked up a cigar from an ashtray and said, “It’s gusting.”

  “Gusting counts?” Father Lucke said.

  “Gusting counts,” he said.

  She said, “Gusting counts?”

  Mr. Li lit the burnt end of the cigar with a plastic lighter, puffing the smoke gently. He said, “Of course gusting counts,” and he looked closely at the end of the cigar. He looked from the cigar to her. “As rain,” he said. “Gusting counts as rain.”

  She breathed in the steam from the teacup, the smell of bourbon, the smell of being too young to drink, too young to like the taste of whiskey, sneaking her father’s bourbon, mixing it with Coke. There was maybe a little lemon in these toddies, maybe a little spearmint, but a lot of bourbon. They seemed to be on at least their second pot.

  “My father used to drink bourbon,” she said. He’d switched to scotch at some point. She wondered when, wondered why. Things you don’t know about your parents.

  Father Lucke held his cup up again. “To your father.”

  Mr. Li did the same. “To your father.”

  Her eyes watered, and sadness surprised her, frightened her. She wanted to ask her father when he’d switched to scotch, and why. She sipped the hot bourbon, noisily, as did Father Lucke, noisy also.

  He said, “My mother was a bourbon drinker,” and he held his teacup aloft once more. “She would have a little bourbon and White Rock ginger ale.” He nodded. Sighed. Si
pped. “Actually,” he said, “she would have many little bourbons with White Rock ginger ale. Had to be White Rock.”

  “A sad story,” Mr. Li said. “Please don’t feel you have to retell it on our account.”

  “No indeed,” Father Lucke said. And then they both said, “It is tiresome to be the hero of a sad story.”

  Pattianne understood that she was in the middle of an ongoing conversation between drinking buddies. Her story chakra engaged. She could sit back on her stack of West Side Signals and be the listener at the end of the bar, the sneaky kid behind the dining room door, the librarian who didn’t really need to know why the book that was already checked out by someone else was so important, but would listen and understand. Stories came her way if she sat very still and didn’t breathe too loud. Michael had stopped telling stories. Michael had traded in all his stories for one story.

  “Now,” Father Lucke said, “you are just in time, Pete.” His face perked into a bright and somewhat toothy smile. “May I call you Pete?”

  “Please do,” she said, like they were good friends and he was funny. Then she said, “And what may I call you?” Like they really were good friends.

  “John,” he said.

  “John?”

  “No,” he said. “I am not John. I am Brother Tim-Tim, actually.”

  “You’re not a priest?”

  Mr. Li snorted, and he said, “Here we go.” He bent to get a Scrabble game from a low shelf.

  “I am what you might call a soon-to-be-former priest,” Father Lucke said. “Back to being the baby brother of five sisters who chose to name me Timothy. But really, how well do you know John?”

  “John?”

  “Compared to Matthew, Mark, or Luke.”

  The Doritos clock whirred gently, and the wind gusted significantly, and suddenly she wanted to go back out into the night. They were drinking bourbon and discussing the the apostles and trying to keep their cigars lit.

  “I don’t.” she said. “Know John. At all.” But he wore a collar. “Why are you soon-to-be-ex?” She was being brave and rude, and she wondered if Mrs. Taskey knew he was really Brother Tim-Tim.

  Father Lucke waved his cigar and said, “See? The apostle John was a poet among men, and no one appreciates him.” His cigar was unlit.

  Mr. Li opened the ragged lid of the box and Scrabble tiles rattled. He said, “Mr. Metaphor.”

  Father Lucke nodded and sipped. “It is now past three in the morning in Minnesota.”

  Pattianne was afraid of the very word Minnesota.

  “In two hours,” he said, “I can call my dear old friend Brother Jude, and we can ask him his opinion.”

  Mr. Li loved that. He laughed a loud hoot that surprised her, made her want to stay here with them after all, and he said, “Yes, do that, Father Lucke. I want you to get another one of those official letters.”

  Father Lucke said, “We can call him at the seminary office.”

  Mr. Li stood up, his knees cracked, and he said, “Meanwhile, there is a door to lock, and then Scrabble can commence.”

  He went around the counter, sliding in his socks, to the front door, and if she were going to leave, it would have to be now.

  She asked, “Why lock the door to play Scrabble?”

  “Supposed to be locked in the first place,” he said. He looked out into the dark through the windows. “Store closes at midnight. I have been remiss in my closing duties.” He turned a lock. It looked like she was staying.

  “Resulting in your own honored presence.” Father Lucke raised his teacup to her. “Li, my friend,” he said, “the sign.”

  Mr. Li switched off the blue neon OPEN sign. Another switch darkened the front of the store. The Doritos clock was the only hum now. A beer sign with a silver running stream caught the light from a single fluorescent light over the cigarette rack.

  “A little three-handed Scrabble?”

  Mr. Li slid back across the floor, and he pulled a folding table out of nowhere, unfolded the legs quick as Elizabeth making paper birds. The table took up most of the space behind the counter. Father Lucke sat back in his lawn chair, and he pulled the piece of stiff white cloth out of the front of his collar and slipped it into the pocket of his black shirt. It stuck up like a bookmark there in his pocket. He unbuttoned the top button, a plain black button-down shirt now.

  Pattianne asked Brother Timothy a question.

  “What’s that thing called?”

  He pulled it back out of his pocket and looked at it, his round face gone sad. “Collar tab.”

  “Oh.” It seemed like such an important thing. Like it would have a more important name. Chasuble, alb, cincture, amice.

  He slipped it back into the pocket, his pink hand resting there a moment, over the pocket, over his heart, the heart of a priest. Sighed. Patted his pocket. It was important to have people you don’t like in your life, and she didn’t want a drunk, soon-to-be-ex priest to be sad, not if they were all locked in this place playing Scrabble in a storm.

  “It looks like it would make a nice bookmark,” she said. He was part of her life. This was her life at the moment. Playing Scrabble with drunk old men who weren’t that much older than she was.

  She took pride in not being a sad drunk. Angela had been one of the perkiest, happiest drinkers she ever met. Suddenly Pattianne was a sad drunk.

  Father Lucke offered the bag of tiles, a purple velvet bag with a gold drawstring, Crown Royal, and she drew an M. Mr. Li drew an L. Father Lucke drew a B. The wind gusted hard against the front window. The Doritos clock hummed. The Scrabble game commenced.

  Father Lucke spelled out WORD and shouted, “Ha! Thirty-two!”

  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he said, and drew his new tiles out of the Crown Royal bag.

  Pattiannne said, “Wait. I count sixteen.”

  Mr. Li leaned closer to her. “Double points if you open with something from Genesis.” There was the sweet scent of tea and bourbon on his breath.

  She leaned close too.

  “Okay,” she said. Private rules for Scrabble.

  He leaned even closer and said, “He always manages to open with a word from Genesis.”

  Father Lucke arranged his tiles and then sat back. “The archdiocese of Prince Edward Island may not be very happy with me, but someone else is.” And he rearranged his tiles.

  Mr. Li had smudges of ink on his fingers. He was left-handed. He spelled out TRUTH, using the R in WORD and landing the T on a triple-letter score for ten points.

  “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” he said. “Twenty points.”

  She felt the bourbon in her brain, but she still only figured ten points.

  Mr. Li held up one inky finger. “One who acts on truth is happy in this world and beyond.” He wrote down twenty points. “Dhammadapa,” he said.

  Bullfrog was a long way up the dark beach.

  She said, “So, what the fuck?” and was embarrassed, and had perhaps had a little more bourbon than she’d thought.

  “The Sutras,” Father Lucke said. His fingers were busy clicking and rearranging his tiles on the rack.

  Father Lucke stared at his letters. Mr. Li arranged his own letters and then sat back and looked at his cigar. Father Lucke spelled out WATER, and he said, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.”

  She was beginning to get annoyed, but then she realized that she had REX, landing on a double-word score.

  “Twenty points,” Mr. Li said. “Very good.” He picked up the lighter and puffed at his cigar, his thin fingers making shadows on his face. “There are two gifts. Carnal and spiritual. Itivuttaka.”

  She couldn’t stand it. She didn’t want to ask. Sometimes secrets like that made her not care more than she might care otherwise, but now two words were involved―dapa-whatever, and now this one, itivuttaka. She said, “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Penan
ce for the sin of racism,” Mr. Li said. He laid his cigar in the dish and leaned back and steepled his fingers. He was watching Father Lucke, who stared at his letters. “We have chosen the gospel of John for tonight,” Mr. Li went on. “Double points for every significant word from the gospel of John.” He picked up the teapot and freshened her cup, then Father Lucke’s, then his own. “However, if I can quote a parallel saying from the Buddhist tradition, he loses those points, and I get them.”

  “Racism?”

  “Mea culpa,” Father Lucke said. “Mea maxima culpa.” He looked at the end of his cigar and Mr. Li handed him the lighter. Father Lucke said, “These cigars are not doing it for me,” and he put his cigar in the dish and stood up, reaching across Mr. Li’s head and pulling a pack of Marlboros out of the rack. “I owe you,” he said. He sat back down, tore open the pack, and said, “So, to continue, I made the egregious error of assuming . . .”

  “On the basis of my racial heritage,” Mr. Li said.

  “On the basis of Li Song’s racial heritage,” Father Lucke said, “I assumed he had an understanding of Buddhism.”

  Li Song. He hooted. “Incorrect,” he said. “You assumed I was a Buddhist. Not to mention Chinese.” It was a hoot like a small animal on a nature show.

  Father Lucke bowed his head. “Mea culpa.” He hiccupped.

  “And you’re not,” she said to Li Song.

  “Correct,” Mr. Li Song said. “Was. Baptist. And Korean, not Chinese.”

  Korean.

  “Which means he can kick my butt on the Bible,” Father Lucke said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I think I get it. But I have one question. Well, two.”

  Father Lucke’s cheeks were ridiculously pink now. Mr. Li Song leaned one elbow on the table, and he looked like he always did until the elbow slipped off the table and he pretended it hadn’t but then said, “Damn card table.”

  “Why was it cheating to start with WORD?”

  “It was not cheating, because I did not give him the double points for opening with Genesis.” Mr. Li Song leaned back and gave Father Lucke, a slippery smile. “John is not the author of Genesis.”