A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  “But,” Father Lucke said, holding up one finger, “he was referring to Genesis with that.”

  “Exegesis. Not in the spirit of the game.”

  Father Lucke twisted in his seat to see the Doritos clock. “We shall see,” he said. “It will soon be daybreak in St. Paul.” He leaned over to her, leaning dangerously sideways in the lawn chair. “The city,” he said. “Not the apostle.”

  “Exegesis?”

  “A furthering of the allegory,” Mr. Li Song said, “on a drunken whim.”

  Both cigars were dead in the ashtray, and she played with her own pack of Marlboros, the pack that had been living so happily in her pocket for so long.

  “So,” she said, “you were never really Buddhist?” She tore off the cellophane, feeling reckless and thinking she was not really going to smoke one. Mr. Li Song pushed the ashtray toward her.

  Father Lucke said, “That’s three questions.”

  And Mr. Li Song said to him, “The one about exegesis was an interjection.” He looked at her and said, “Correct?”

  She said yes, but she was not sure why. They’d lost her.

  Mr. Li Song nodded to Father Lucke, then closed his eyes and slowly shook his head no. “Never Buddhist,” he said. He opened his eyes.

  “You just happen to know all those sayings?”

  “Berkeley,” he said. “1969. I was in the physics department. But Buddhism was in the air.”

  Mr. Li Song young, in the sixties. She tried to do the math. Gave up.

  “In Berkeley,” he said. “In the sixties, if you could quote the Sutras, they saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon you.”

  Father Lucke pouted. “That was a stretch,” he said. “And you are a show-off.”

  “John,” Mr. Li Song said to her, “chapter 1, verse 32.” He nodded at her. “Your turn.”

  But she didn’t know any Bible stuff, and her butt ached from sitting on the newspapers, and she hated bourbon.

  “I don’t know any Bible stuff.”

  Mr. Li Song reached out and touched her elbow. “No,” he said. “We will restrain ourselves. We will simply play Scrabble. Everybody’s rules. We don’t want to leave you out.” He untouched her. “That simply will not do.”

  “And this bourbon,” she said. “This bourbon needs more sugar.”

  They both nodded, and Father Lucke said, “If I may, I have a question for you.”

  “As do I,” said Mr. Li Song.

  She waited. They both looked at each other. They both said, “Where’s Bullfrog?”

  “Sleeping. Home. Blanket.”

  Nods.

  Jen once gave her a birthday gift of a calligraphed piece of legal two-letter Scrabble words, plus one which was not legal. Pattianne still didn’t know which word was not legal.

  By the time the teapot had been emptied and filled and emptied again, she had beaten them both. Rain gusted. Father Lucke took his leave, saying, “I must take my leave,” and pushing himself up out of the lawn chair.

  Mr. Li Song stood up, too, and he said, “Wait, I have that book for you,” and he slid down the cookie aisle in his socks.

  Father Lucke held his hand out to her to help her up, and she realized she had become one with the stack of West Side Signals. She took his hand, and it was cool. She expected something so fat and pink to be warm and damp. He kept her hand in his, she pulled away, and he pulled back and said, “I’m glad you came.”

  She didn’t know if he meant to Tofino or to the convenience store.

  He said, “I would be happy to offer you a ride to the village.” And he returned her hand to her and took his jacket from the counter.

  Mr. Li Song came sliding back up the aisle to Father Lucke and put a paperback book in his hand. Erle Stanley Gardner. Father Lucke took it and walked to the door, and he seemed steady enough at least to steer the minivan down the highway to Tofino. He turned the key in the lock and opened the door to the sound of the night and the rain.

  Mr. Li Song picked up her jacket from the wastebasket and held it up. She reached for it and he reached too, around her, draping it around her shoulders. Then he leaned to her and kissed her on the forehead, one sweet, bourbon-scented kiss.

  The minivan revved outside, and the headlights came on and lit up the store.

  “Good night, Li Song,” she said.

  “Traveling mercies,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”

  She climbed into the front seat of the minivan and buckled the seat belt. Then she had to unbuckle it to reach out and pull the door shut. “Are you okay to drive?”

  Father Lucke said, “May the Lord bless us on our travels.” He backed out and pulled gently onto the road, checked in his mirror, and said, “So far, so good.” The speedometer indicated between 22 and 25.

  “Nice van,” she said.

  “Western Provinces Outer Parishes Transportation Project,” he said, and he patted the dashboard. “If we had more First Nation People on our list, I could have got us a full-size.”

  The right wheels were on the shoulder and the left wheels on the road, the gravel sound under the tires reassuring. It was steady. It was warm, and the seat was a big easy chair after the stack of West Side Signals. It was quiet in the van.

  “So. Brother Tim-Tim.”

  It was drunk in the van.

  He giggled.

  “What kind of a priest are you?”

  He was driving by the light of the brights, and the road was a lovely curve of black and white and silvery wet brush.

  He said, “I’d say conservative.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Ultra-conservative.”

  “Ultra-conservative.”

  “Pre-enlightenment?” he said. “Pre-papal power plays? Pre-Catholic?” He was leaning over the steering wheel, and they were only going about twenty. “How about a priest who has chosen to break my vow of obedience in favor of being a follower of Christ?”

  He had one eye closed.

  “Are you all right to drive?”

  “I am,” he said. “A metaphorical priest?”

  “Metaphorical?”

  “I would say,” he said, and then he didn’t say, he drove, aiming the van carefully at the road.

  “I would say,” he said. “I would say that most people confuse truth with fact. This devalues metaphor.”

  “What?”

  “Metaphoric priest.”

  The speedometer showed an even eighteen.

  “The gospels?” he said. “The love that followed Jesus? The passion he incited with his social message? Piece of cake for God. A miracle for a man.”

  “So you don’t believe those stories?”

  “Ah,” he said. The speedometer jumped back to twenty. “The stories. Well. The Bible is a source of great wonder. All you have to do is read it, and you begin to wonder. You wonder how it could possibly be true, or what if it is true, or how could anyone believe it is true. Then you find yourself wondering about the nature of belief itself. A wondrous thing. You find yourself wondering about God.”

  The church came up on the left, in the darkness, and she felt like she might throw up, and Brother Tim-Tim slowed down, and they both watched it go by.

  “You know,” he said. “Believe means ‘to love.’”

  She breathed in, breathed out, swallowed. She was weeping silently.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Old High German,” he said softly. He touched her knee with one soft hand. “Maybe, Middle German. Lief, to hold dear.”

  He put both hands back on the wheel. They were down to sixteen miles an hour.

  “I believe in those stories,” he said. His voice was deeper, quieter. He was speaking carefully, speaking to her. “I love wondering about them. I believe it’s terribly, awesomely important to wonder.”

  He didn’t sound drunk anymore, and she was not drunk either, she was exhausted, and she wanted to lie awake in the dark and listen to Bullfro
g snore, wait for the first cries of the five-o’clock birds, and then the sounds of Tofino waking up.

  “My husband believes those stories.”

  Father Lucke just nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Catholic?”

  They were doing about twelve now, and he turned down toward town.

  “He wants an annulment,” she said.

  Tofino was dark, except for a light in the lobby of Ruby’s Roadhouse and the light in her house behind the rock.

  He smiled and turned to her, and it was a tired smile, or maybe a drunk smile.

  “And you don’t?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He stopped the van in front of the post office. “You know, I don’t like our Holy Father very much,” he said. “He seems to favor exclusionary tactics. One of them was an encyclical, 1992. Divorced Catholics may not receive communion. Although annulled marriages don’t count.”

  So she had to do the whole marriage tribunal thing. To admit she had an archdiocese. It was the way to make it right for Michael.

  14: IT SEEMED SO SIMPLE

  The sign on the back wall was black marker on bright orange paper: Rain Gear for All. Mrs. Taskey leaned on the counter, both elbows on the Vancouver newspaper.

  “Good morning there,” she said, looking through the top half of her glasses.

  It was afternoon.

  There were yellow raincoats for kids, olive-green raincoats for grown-ups, and rain hats for all, green ones that went over your head and then stuck out over the back of your neck. When Pattianne stood in front of the counter, her hands full of rain gear, Mrs. Taskey straightened herself up, and one hand went to her back down low. She poked at the puzzle with her pencil.

  “Do you know a three-letter word for a river island? The middle letter might be I.”

  “No.” Stingy with good Scrabble words, an old habit. Jen was vicious when it came to Scrabble, and Pattianne would never do a crossword puzzle in pencil. “Sorry.”

  The rubber rain gear was the smell of second grade.

  The pencil went into an apron pocket―it was the pink rickrack today―and Mrs. Taskey said, “How’s your cough?”

  “I don’t have a cough.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” she said. “Do you have a good wool muffler?” Wool scarves on a coat hanger hung from the cigarette rack. Lumpy and hand-knitted and quite colorful in a preschool sort of way. Mrs. Taskey stroked a yellow-and-red one with her finger. “This is Josie’s work,” and she turned around a paper sign pinned to a yellow-and-yellow-and-yellow-striped scarf. COMMUNITY FUN RAISER in red crayon letters, and under that, a red crayon happy face.

  “I don’t like wool,” Pattianne said. “Itchy.” And she couldn’t remember which box the purple-and-blue crocheted scarf from Aunt Shirley ended up in.

  Mrs. Taskey pulled a long black hair out of a pink-and-orange scarf and held it up to the light. “Lakshmi!” she said. “You know, pink is the navy blue of India. It just seems to be the basic color.”

  Pattianne wouldn’t be here long enough to come up against her in Scrabble.

  “Try ait,” she said.

  “Eight what?”

  “A-I-T.”

  She bought the Vancouver newspaper with the crossword and went back home and waited for the night that might bring a silver tide, and while she waited, she fed the fire small sticks that popped and smoked, and worked on the crossword. And Bullfrog slept in his favorite spot of the day, which today was halfway between the bed and the door.

  She had not waited for long when Lakshmi banged on the door. She knew it was Lakshmi because of her clever personal knock, shave-and-a-haircut. This time a smaller version of Lakshmi stood there too. Pattianne caught a glimpse of her as Lakshmi pushed the door open and stepped in, and the door banged against the wall and then swung shut, shutting the smaller girl out.

  “Sugarlips,” Lakshmi sang out, her backpack landing on the floor, and she dropped to her knees in front of him. He wagged. “I’ve brought you cookies,” she kept singing to him. More wags, cookie being one of his words.

  “You should open the door,” Pattianne said.

  “What?”

  “Open the door. Your cousin-sister-friend-sidekick-whatever is still outside.”

  Lakshmi got up and opened the door to the girl, who hadn’t moved, and said, “What are you doing out there?” She stepped aside and said, “Come on in. This is him. Sugarlips. His real name is, like, Bullfrog. Well, actually, I think his real name is Sugarlips, but she calls him Bullfrog.” The girl had dark golden skin and a sweet little pointy nose. She came in and stood just inside the open door.

  Lakshmi picked up her backpack and tossed it onto the bed, took the backpack off the girl’s thin shoulders and tossed it there too. “I have cookies,” she sang, and bounced onto the bed and unzipped her backpack, and started reaching around in there.

  “You’re getting my bed all wet.”

  “Just your sleeping bag,” Lakshmi said, and to the girl, “She sleeps in her sleeping bag, like, all the time? Like she’s camping out. Here, Sugarlips,” and she got back down on the floor and held out a Milk-Bone. The wind got at the fire, cold wet wind, and Pattianne put down the crossword as loud as she could, which was not loud enough to do any good. “Close that door.”

  “Close the door, Maya,” Lakshmi said. “It’s really smoky in here.” She let Bullfrog slobber up one of the cookies out of her hand. “Our Auntie Lovey smokes those clove cigarettes?” she said. “It gets all smoky in her room, like in layers.” Maya finally closed the door.

  “This is Maya,” she said. “She’s in second grade now.”

  Lakshmi got back up and fell backward onto the bed.

  “That jacket of yours is all wet,” Pattianne said, and Lakshmi wiggled out of it and pushed it into a pile next to the pillow. She grabbed her backpack, and she said, “Okay, now, look here, girlfriends.”

  It was a makeup kit, a big clear plastic purse full of bottles and brushes and nail polish and who knows what.

  “Maya, let’s put makeup on you.” This got a reaction. Maya smiled and pulled off her own soaking-wet jacket, dropped it on the floor, and bounced onto the bed next to Lakshmi. She even spoke. “I’m not allowed,” she said. “Uncle Kamal said no, not until fourteen. Not even lipstick.” Her white sweatshirt had streaks of something, yellow, pink, blue, smeared down the front.

  Lakshmi dumped the contents of the makeup kit onto the bed.

  “Hey,” Pattianne said. Besides makeup and nail polish and an enormous pink comb, there were gum wrappers, colored pencils, a can of hair spray, and what looked like a piece of Josie’s knitting, pink and orange stripes, one long string of which went back inside the backpack.

  “Don’t you have a big mirror?” Lakshmi said.

  “No. Listen, is your father coming here to get you?”

  Lakshmi pulled on the long string until she got the end of it out, and she gave Bullfrog a look. “Does Bullfrog ever wear, like, outfits?”

  “I want eye shadow,” Maya said. “And eyelashes.”

  She had thick dark eyelashes that ringed her eyes like stars.

  “Let’s start with some lips,” Lakshmi said, and she uncapped a tube of bright pink lipstick.

  “What’s the name of that lipstick?” Pattianne asked her.

  Lakshmi looked at the bottom of the tube, looked at the top, said, “Number 651.”

  Pattianne hated that, when nail polish or lipstick had boring numbers instead of names. “That’s boring.”

  Maya’s delicate black eyebrows frowned for a second and Lakshmi pulled her by the chin and said, “Look this way.” And to Pattianne, “So, what, are you in a bad mood?” Maya shook her head, her long black hair in its ponytail swinging back and forth, and Lakshmi said, “Not you. Her. You be still,” and she carefully touched pink on Maya’s lips.

  Yes, Pattianne was in a bad mood. Her sleeping bag was getting all wet, and she wanted to do the crossword. She poked at the fire
and smoke puffed out.

  Lakshmi turned Maya around by her shoulders and pulled up the long black ponytail into a twist. Maya was facing Pattianne, who watched the long hair flip and twist, and Maya was watching her, smiling an amazing, sweet smile, this happy girl sitting on her bed, but then she squealed and grabbed at her hair. “Hey, hurting me.”

  Lakshmi slapped at Maya’s hand and said, “Stand still.”

  Maya did, the sweet smile instantly back there on her face, just for Pattianne, because it didn’t really hurt, because Pattianne was watching, because they were in cahoots somehow.

  Lakshmi poked a long clip into the hair, and then grabbed the can of hair spray. “Close your eyes.” And she fogged the whole room with the smell of cherries and flowers and some rat-killer kind of smell.

  Pattianne said, “Quit spraying that stuff.” Said it kind of loud.

  Bullfrog headed under the bed.

  Maya opened her eyes and blinked in the cloud of hair spray.

  Lakshmi said, “Just a touch here.”

  Pattianne said, “That stuff fucking stinks.”

  Lakshmi sprayed Maya’s bangs, and Maya, whose eyes were wide open now, squealed for real this time and knocked the hair spray out of Lakshmi’s hand. It went rolling across the floor, and Maya started to cry.

  “You got it all in my eyes.”

  Lakshmi said, “I told you to close your eyes. Why didn’t you close your eyes?”

  And Maya was off the bed and over to Pattianne’s chair. “She got it all in my eyes.” Big tears, and she wiggled in between Pattianne’s legs and was practically on her lap with her face pressed against her, crying.

  Pattianne went, “Shhh,” rubbing her hand up Maya’s backbone and down―bones like beads under the white sweatshirt. “Sh, let me see,” she whispered, and Maya shook her head no and cried harder, and Pattianne said, “Don’t rub your eyes.”

  Lakshmi sat still on the bed. Her face was one of patience. She said, “Sorry,” like she was not really all that sorry, but it worked. The crying quieted a little, and Maya rubbed her eyes.

  Pattianne took the small fist and held it. Small knucklebones.