Heartbreak Town

by Marsha Moyer

  "I'm sure that was a great comfort to Joe. I sincerely hope you shared it with him."

  "Oh, Joe wants to kill Hardy. He said so. But, I mean, I'd rather be pissed off or hurting than walking around like a dead person all the time."

  I stood up, tossing the uneaten half of my sandwich into the trash. I went into the restroom and shut the toilet lid and sat down on it, gazing at my dark, flat, no-nonsense shoes lined up side by side on the linoleum.

  Through the door I heard the phone ring in the shop. There was a rap at the door.

  "Lucy? You okay? You haven't got that stomach crud that's going around, do you?"

  "No."

  "That was Dan Storey on the phone. Today's his wedding anniversary and he totally forgot. He wants two dozen roses carried over to his wife at their house, pronto."

  "All right." But still I didn't move. My feet looked so strange down there on the pale green linoleum, like I was viewing them through the narrow end of a telescope.

  "Lucy?" The doorknob rattled. "Come on, you're starting to scare me."

  "Call Peggy," I said.

  "What?"

  I stood up and opened the door. "I said, call Peggy. Tell her I need her to fill in for me this afternoon."

  I took my purse from under the counter and walked out to the Blazer, backed out of my slot, and started to make my way, on autopilot, across town. At the bypass, I stopped at Orson's Texaco and filled the gas tank, then got on Highway 59 and headed south. It was early afternoon, a weekday; traffic was sparse. I kept the speedometer steady at sixty miles per hour, the divided four-lane threading straight as an arrow through thickets of pine, past trailer houses and cow pastures, gas stations and roadside tomato stands.

  At the blinking yellow light in Jefferson, I turned left, snaking my way through shady old neighborhoods. The parking lot at St. Jude's was empty except for a gold metal-flake, beat-to-shit Pontiac with Louisiana plates. I parked next to it and got out, walking past the sign announcing the hours for confession and worship, around to the side door and up the steps. I paused on the landing to look down at the garden below. Despite the drought, the rosebushes were in full bloom, their scent wafting upward through the open window, but it was too hot for any human being in his right mind to be out there.

  The door which on my last visit had been closed was open. A woman in a pale blue polyester blouse sat at a computer, her fingers flying over the keyboard. Her gray hair was teased into a wild bird's nest, and an unfiltered cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth, like a gangster's.

  "Whatcha need?" she said without looking at me or breaking her typing rhythm, the cigarette bobbing as she spoke. The desk was a mess of papers and files, a scattering of framed photographs—kids' school portraits mostly, one of a man standing in the hull of a bass boat—and a homemade-looking wood-burned sign that read mrs . irma decker.

  "I'm looking for Father Laughlin."

  "He's over to the hospital. Edwina Mueller took sick again. Pneumonia. Poor old girl, they think it might be it this time."

  The woman turned in her swivel chair and exhaled, squinting at me through a plume of blue smoke. "I don't know Edwina Mueller," I said.

  "You ain't one of them, are you?" the woman said, looking me over head to toe.

  "One of who?"

  "A parishioner."

  "No, ma'am. No, I'm not."

  "You one of his others, then? The drinkers?"

  "No, ma'am. Not that, either."

  "How you come to be looking for Punch, then?"

  "Well, I'm married to one."

  "A Catholic or a drinker?"

  "Both, actually."

  She plucked the cigarette from her mouth, stubbing it out in a glass ashtray. Her skin was as tanned and leathery as an old satchel, hanging loose on the backs of her hands, deep folds around her mouth and eyes. "They do kindly go hand-in-hand, don't they? Least it sure seems that way."

  "Do you expect him back soon?"

  "Punch? Who knows. Those Muellers, they're a tricky bunch. Edwina's cousin, Sis, she hung on to ninety-eight. In and out of the hospital twenty years. Father Norton, he was priest here before Punch come, he must've said last rites over that woman a dozen times before she finally up and died at home, in her sleep. Fooled'em all, Sis did."

  "I guess I should have called ahead." I was feeling a little woozy, and I looked around the room for a chair, but every surface was buried under piles of junk. It didn't look like any church office I'd ever seen. There wasn't one single crucifix or picture of the Almighty on the wall, and the only thing religious at all was the little framed ditty on the door that I'd seen the last time, about angels unaware.

  "I could give him a ring on his cell if you want. See how long he expects to be."

  I pictured a weeping family gathered around their frail and gasping ancestor as the priest recited the holy words that would send her on to the sweet hereafter, when all of a sudden from the folds of his cassock—or his running shorts—a phone chirped.

  "Oh no. Thank you, though."

  "Well, you're welcome to wait. There's a couch in Punch's office if you feel like taking a load off."

  The idea of turning around and driving back to Mooney seemed beyond my capacity at the moment. "Thanks," I said.

  She pointed toward an adjoining door. "Make yourself comfy. There's magazines and stuff if you want something to do. Can I get you a cup of coffee while you wait?"

  "I— Are you sure it isn't too much trouble?"

  "Nah. Punch drinks it like water. You go on in while I make some up fresh."

  I walked into the priest's office, which was just as cluttered as the secretary's, with a heavy mahogany desk and an ergonomic chair, a credenza covered with papers and wilting African violets. Built-in shelves lined two walls, crammed with books and periodicals and a mix of objects both religious and ridiculous: crosses and rosaries, photos of Father Laughlin with an assortment of men in vestments including the recently deceased and much-venerated Pope, antique toy train cars, a battered baseball scrawled with a signature I couldn't make out, a beat-up sock monkey. It reminded me of Aunt Dove's garden, a place where the sacred and the everyday mingled with ease.

  Opposite the desk was an ugly plaid couch. I sat down on it, the springs giving under my weight as they must have under the weight of hundreds before me, and leaned back, fixing my eyes on the far wall, where I was startled to see a framed face that looked hauntingly familiar. It was, I realized, the figure from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the woman who months before I'd dreamed was standing in my yard, her head covered by a blue shawl, her eyes glancing warily to one side as she tried to tell me something.

  "What?" I said to her. "What do you want? Why are you following me?"

  "How's that?" It was Irma, coming through the door with a mug of coffee.

  "Nothing. Sorry." I reached up and took the coffee gratefully, lifting it to my face to inhale the rich aroma. #1 grandma, the mug said in red letters. "Thanks. This is very nice of you. Considering I'm not one of Punch's—whatever."

  "Oh, I reckon you're one of Punch's, all right," she said. "That man gathers folks like a dog gathers fleas. No offense intended."

  I sipped. "None taken. This is great coffee."

  Irma smiled, showing large yellow teeth. "It's why Punch keeps me around. For my coffee. That and I'm the only one knows how to work the computer." She seemed about to say something else, then thought better of it. "I'd best get back to work. You holler if you need a refill, hear?"

  I thanked her and sat back with my mug. A phone rang in the outer office; I could faintly hear Irma's side of the conversation, something about who was going to pick up Lanny from day care.

  On the table in front of me was a stack of books, and I leaned over and lifted one off the top of the stack. How to Be Happy, Regardless was the title. I started thumbing through it, looking for the chapter that denned "regardless," but my eyes just skidded over pages of psychobabble until they wouldn't focus anymore. I set
down my coffee and sagged back against the couch. Across the room, the woman in the print continued her cagey, sideways gaze, her secret permanently embedded behind her slightly parted lips.

  I woke to the touch of a hand on my knee. At some point I'd slumped over on Father Laughlin's lumpy couch, and I sat bolt upright, the blood singing in my ears. The figure kneeling in front of me appeared ringed by an aureole of amber light.

  "Sorry," Punch said, his knees creaking loudly as he stood up.

  "I didn't mean to scare you, but I couldn't think how else to wake you up."

  "Gracious," I said, pushing my hair out of my face, tugging at the hem of my skirt. "What time is it?"

  "Four-thirty, give or take a couple minutes. Have you been here long?"

  "I don't really know," I said. "Where's Irma?"

  "She leaves at four. She called me on my cell on her way out and told me you were here." He shrugged out of his heavy black cassock; underneath, he was wearing chinos and a Motor Racing Outreach T-shirt.

  "Oh, no! You didn't— What happened to the lady at the hospital?" I hoped he hadn't left some dying woman's bedside on my account.

  I watched him unhook his collar and toss it on the desk. "Edwina Mueller, you mean? Sitting up in bed complaining about the food and the shows on TV to everyone in earshot."

  "I thought she was, um, on her way out. So to speak."

  "Just between you and me? You couldn't kill a Mueller with an ax." He walked around his desk and starting flipping through a stack of phone message slips. He looked up at me and smiled tiredly. "It wasn't Edwina's time, praise God. Now, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

  "Maybe I should come back some other time."

  "Don't be silly. You've already been waiting a couple hours, at least. Anyway, I've been looking for you to turn up."

  "You have?"

  "Sure. Ever since your first visit, back in the spring. When you left that day, I said to myself, We haven't seen the last of that one." Father Laughlin set down the handful of pink slips. "Are you hungry? I haven't had a thing to eat all day except a pack of Cheez-Its out of the hospital vending machine."

  I thought of the half of the perfectly good turkey sandwich I'd tossed into the trash at work several hours earlier. "Come on, walk downtown with me," he said, offering a hand to help me up. "I'll buy you a piece of pie."

  He locked the office behind us and we stepped out into the late afternoon. The smell of fresh-cut grass was in the air, and sprinklers hissed in the yards on either side of St. Jude's. It was a four-block hike to downtown in the shade of tall live oaks and pecans arching regally over the wide side streets. Before long, we were strolling up the old-fashioned brick main street. We passed the Hamburger Store, widely famous for its pie, but instead of going inside, Punch crossed the street and motioned me after him.

  "Too many tourists in that place," he said. "Follow me."

  We went another half-block or so and ducked into the door of a tiny place called Dee's. All the tables were empty, and a woman behind the counter was filling sugar shakers. She looked up when we walked in and her plump face creased into a smile.

  "Father!" she said. "Haven't seen you in a coon's age."

  "At least since, what, yesterday?" Punch said. "Dee, this is Lucy Farrell. Lucy, Dee makes the best chicken pot pie on God's green earth. Her coconut's not bad, either."

  "Coconut's sold out," Dee said. "But I got plenty of peach and lemon meringue."

  "Well, I'm having the pot pie," Punch said. "I haven't eaten all day. Been over at the hospital with Edwina Mueller."

  "How's the old girl doing?" Dee said as she busied herself behind the counter.

  "The good Lord has seen fit to let her live through another day," Punch said.

  Dee glanced over her shoulder at him, their eyes glinting as they met. The Muellers' reputation was widespread, apparently. "And what will you have, Miz Farrell?"

  "The peach sounds good," I said.

  Punch glanced at me. "You sure? You look hungrier than that to me."

  I shook my head, and he shrugged at Dee, who reached into the glass case and pulled out a beautiful deep-dish pie, the crust fluted around the edges, with tiny leaves and acorns carved out of the top crust. "Oh!" I said as she set it on the counter. "That looks too good to eat."

  "Take my word for it, it's too good not to," Punch said as Dee cut a slice and placed it on a plate.

  "You want this heated, honey?"

  "Sure she does," Punch answered. "And vanilla ice cream on top."

  "Coffee, you two?" Dee asked.

  Punch laughed. "Dee. You know me better than to have to ask that."

  He beckoned to a table near the window, topped with a yellow checkered cloth and adorned with a jelly jar of daisies and purple cosmos. He held my chair for me, and we sat for several minutes in silence, watching the traffic on Austin Street. Sightseers strolled by in shorts and T-shirts and ball caps, toting shopping bags, and a little pack of Harley-Davidsons roared by, headed toward the bayou.

  "Bikers in Jefferson," I said. "I never thought I'd live to see the day."

  "We've gotten very eclectic, here in our little burg," Punch said as Dee brought our coffee in thick white cups.

  "Mm," I said after the first sip. "This is the second-best coffee I've tasted all day."

  "Irma's is hard to beat." Punch took a deep drink of coffee, then set the cup on the table. "So, Miss Lucy. What's on your mind that's worth driving thirty miles and sleeping two hours on the couch in my office?"

  "Maybe I just needed a nap."

  "You surely could've picked a handier spot. To say nothing of more comfortable. I've spent enough nights on that couch to know."

  "That lady in the picture in your office," I said. "Who is she?"

  Punch looked confused. "Lady?"

  "The one from the Sistine Chapel."

  "Oh! You mean the sibyl."

  "Sibyl?" The only Sibyl I knew of was in a movie about a woman with multiple-personality disorder.

  "The Greeks and Romans believed they were prophets. Seers. The one you're talking about is Delphica, who according to legend lived on Mount Parnassus, in a temple dedicated to Apollo. Among other things, she supposedly told Croesus, the king of Lydia, that by attacking the Persians he would bring down a great empire. Croesus figured out too late that the empire he was destined to bring down was his own. But her main claim to fame was telling Oedipus that he would kill his father and marry his mother."

  "But that's mythology! It's pagan, not Christian."

  "Well, the early Church Fathers more or less granted the sibyls a place in the Christian lexicon by declaring that their prophecies sometimes predicted things like the Virgin Birth and the Last Judgment, that in so doing, they foretold the coming of Christ. They—the sibyls—were seen as a sort of link between the Church and the pagan world."

  Dee appeared and deposited our food. "Have you been there?" I asked as Punch plucked a paper napkin out of the dispenser and shook it over his lap.

  "The Sistine Chapel? Three times. Once when I was a prep-school student, and then later when I was in seminary, and finally just a couple of years ago. On that visit I had an audience with the Pope, God rest his soul."

  "So you've seen it, then. In person. The ceiling."

  Punch nodded, squinting out the window at the street, flooded now with late-day sun. "I always tell people, I don't care what your spiritual beliefs are, whether you're Catholic or holy roller or died-in-the-wool atheist, but I dare anyone to look at that ceiling and deny that they're in the presence of something holy." He cut into his chicken pot pie with his fork, releasing a cloud of fragrant steam. "Have you? Been there?"

  "Only in my sleep."

  "Excuse me?"

  I told him about my dream, about the figures wandering in my yard. When I got to the sibyl's—Delphica's—remark about chocolate, Punch smiled. "That sounds about right. She was infamous for talking in riddles."

  "So you think she was trying to t
ell me something, then?"

  "I think our dreams are always trying to tell us something. Unfortunately, dreams are often riddles in themselves. Maybe she was trying to tell you to visit Italy on your next vacation." He gestured that I should eat, and I took a bite of pie. It was delicious, the crust crisp and warm and oozing with fruit, the ice cream melting in a velvety puddle on top. "Good?" Punch asked. I nodded, my mouth full.

  Dee walked over and refilled our coffee. "Got everything you need, folks?"

  "I think we're set, Dee, thanks." We ate quietly and appreciatively for a while. Maybe this was the quality that had compelled Punch to become a priest, or maybe it made him a good one— he made you feel like you could talk if you wanted to or just sit back and enjoy a piece of pie and the view of a small town on a summer day.

  I'd almost forgotten what I was doing there in the first place, so lost was I in the landscape beyond the window and the melange of fruit and dough and melting ice cream on my fork, when

  Punch pushed his empty plate away and said, "So, you still haven't answered my question. What brings you to Jefferson? And don't tell me it was a burning desire to talk about Michelangelo."

  I fiddled for a few seconds with the handle of my coffee cup. "If you knew I was coming, then you ought to know why I'm here."

  Punch laughed. "I'm a priest, not a seer."

  "What's going on with Ash?" I blurted out. "I just—I see him every now and then, and he's building his house, and spending time with our son, and maybe he's drinking but maybe not, he won't say, and, and…" I remembered my pledge never to utter the name of Heather Starbird. "And now this Hardy Knox person has turned up from under who knows what cabbage leaf, and I can't tell if he's a savior or a stalker, I mean, he's got it in his head somehow that he's going to resuscitate Ash's career, and at first I thought that was just a bunch of bullsh—of hogwash, but now Audrey, that's my delivery girl, who by the way I just found out broke up with her boyfriend so she can date Hardy Knox, tells me that Ash and Hardy are writing songs together! After Ash swore he would never play music again!"