Now and Again

by Charlotte Rogan

  “I’m sorry to barge in on your dinner,” said Tula.

  “You’re not barging in,” Will said to Tula, and to his father he said, “You knew Tula was coming, Dad. So it’s not really a surprise.” He expected his mother to smooth over the awkwardness, but she was bent over a sheaf of papers and he had to tug on her sleeve to get her attention.

  Maggie had set the table with candles in special-occasion holders, but it was Tula who lit up the room, sparking off the faded china and transforming the old stories of Will’s childhood his parents insisted on telling into fresh and hilarious gems just by listening. “Headfirst into the diaper pail!” cried Maggie, tears streaming from her eyes.

  “How do you like working at the prison, Mrs. Rayburn?” asked Tula when the platters of food were empty and the laughter had died down.

  “It’s interesting,” said Maggie. “And I’m working in the prison school, which is rewarding too.”

  “I’m glad it’s working out,” said Tula.

  “It is for me,” said Maggie. “But not so much for the prisoners.” She tapped a quilted bag that slouched next to her on an empty chair.

  “Okay!” said Will. “Who wants dessert?” But his mother was already opening the bag and spreading some papers across the surface of the table.

  “I have evidence that some of the prisoners are innocent,” said Maggie. “Others are serving life sentences for petty crimes, and many were forced to plead guilty even if they’re not.” She took a tiny booklet out of the bag and handed it across to Tula. “And did you know,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “that slavery is still absolutely legal?”

  “At least you’re making their lives a little better,” said Tula.

  “Am I?” asked Maggie. “That’s like saying that the slaves are lucky to have roofs over their heads. If we’re the ones who create the conditions, isn’t it dishonest to feel virtuous for making them better?”

  “You didn’t create the conditions,” said Lyle.

  “No,” said Maggie. “We all did.”

  “You’re not the one who took their freedom away,” said Will. “They lost it by committing a crime.”

  “That’s only true for the ones who are guilty,” said Maggie.

  “But how do you know which is which?” asked Will. “I thought that’s what the judge and jury were for.”

  “I’ve done a lot of research. I have some of the prison files right here, and the evidence is pretty overwhelming.”

  “Files?” asked Will. “Do you mean you stole something from the prison?”

  “Heavens no,” said Maggie. “These are only copies. Anyway, which is worse—taking the files or burying the evidence?”

  Lyle jumped up from the table and began taking away the plates. “Stealing runs in the family,” he said, giving Will a desperate wink. “Does anyone want to hear about the time Will stole third base?”

  “I do, Dad!” cried Will. Anything was better than the embarrassing path they were on. But Maggie was already forging ahead with other facts and statistics: the increasingly burdensome laws and enforcement efforts that unfairly targeted minorities, the 33 percent of male African American babies who would grow up to spend some time in prison, the legions who would lose their voting rights for life and be ineligible for housing assistance or college loans, the confiscation of property based not on conviction but on arrest. “And get a load of this!” she cried, holding up a piece of paper with Witness recants scrawled across the top.

  Will snatched up the ketchup bottle and then the hen saltshaker, silently mourning the rooster pepper, which had broken long ago. The table rocked on the warped floor, its matchbook shim knocked out of place. The stubby candles slumped into their tarnished holders. In their frail light, everything seemed chipped and frayed, broken or about to break, including, he couldn’t stop himself from noticing, his mother.

  “Add to that the fact that people are practically forced to plead guilty,” said Maggie, “and you can see how the system creates a permanent underclass.”

  “I don’t see what you’re going to do about it!” Will blurted out just as Tula said warmly, “There must be something you can do.”

  “I can see the headline now,” said Will. “Red Bud mother orchestrates prison break to free innocent man.”

  “I’m not going to break anybody out of prison,” said Maggie.

  “That’s what I mean,” said Will. “There’s probably nothing you can do.”

  “But what if we all felt that way?” asked Tula. “We’re certainly not going to change things if we don’t even try.” Now she was moving around the table to sit with Maggie so that the women were allied against the men. It was Will who cleared the last of the dishes and Lyle who served up the yellow cake while the women exchanged Rainbow mottos and advice—because they believed in Justice and because Maggie had been a Rainbow Girl too, once upon a time. Dream rainbow dreams! Your smile is your rainbow, and you are the pot of gold!

  “Does anyone want ice cream?” asked Lyle. But no ice cream was to be found, so Will poured glasses of milk to go with the cake while Tula told them that the Rainbow Inspiration that year was Sandra Day O’Connor, the former Supreme Court Justice. “Despite graduating third in her law school class, the only job offer she could get was as a legal secretary. But she didn’t give up, and look what she accomplished.”

  “A Rainbow Girl never gives up!” cried Maggie.

  “Why don’t you contact her?” suggested Tula. “Some of the girls wrote to her a few years back and received a very nice letter in reply.”

  Will wanted to shout that these two adults had nothing to do with him, that they had only been thrown together by chance—but it wasn’t only his parents. He too shared in the blame because he had lured Tula there under false pretenses: Future doctor! Normal family! Raised with love and optimism to believe that good would triumph in the end!

  “Why don’t you write to her too—one Rainbow Girl to another,” Tula was suggesting. “It’s a long shot, but maybe she would give you some advice.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Maggie. “Why would she care about me?”

  “Once a Rainbow Girl, always a Rainbow Girl,” said Tula.

  “If it’s advice you want, there’s no one better than Pastor Price,” interrupted Lyle. “He’s sure to have some thoughts about what to do. What do you say, Maggie? How about we go talk to him and leave these young people alone?”

  “Good idea,” said Will, trading another despairing look with his dad. “You two go find the pastor, and Tula and I will finish cleaning up.” He had expected his mother to protest, but she didn’t. He had expected her to issue a set of instructions, but it was Lyle who said, “Don’t forget the dishwasher’s broken, so you have to wash and dry by hand.” Of course it was! “And don’t forget you have a game tomorrow evening.” He never forgot a game!

  “Don’t forget that your mother and I both have to work, so you’ll probably need to get a ride.”

  “I won’t forget,” said Will.

  And then the candles were extinguished, replaced by the cheerful brightness of the overhead fluorescents, and Lyle and Maggie were out the door, after which Will crowded in at the sink next to Tula, getting in her way and letting his hands bump up against hers under the soapy water as they both tried to find the sponge. And suddenly he had to admit that in spite of his mother or even because of her, his first dinner with Tula was going pretty well.

  5.8 Pastor Price

  When the doorbell rang, Pastor Price flipped the television to a religious station before opening the door to find Lyle Rayburn clutching his wife by the elbow. Lyle was saying something about how Maggie wanted to quit her job again, and Maggie was saying no, she didn’t. “Slow down, slow down!” cried the pastor, ushering them into the living room, where they settled into the chairs he liked to use for visitors.

  “Ask her about the stolen prison files,” said Lyle, which launched Maggie into a speech about the Constitution and prisoners
’ rights.

  “What is the point of a document that no one ever reads?” she asked.

  At first the pastor thought she was talking about the Constitution, so he said, “I imagine the lawyers and judges read it.”

  “Or ones that people aren’t even allowed to see,” said Maggie. “Ones meant only for a small, secret audience, even though they affect everyone else. Shouldn’t there be an open debate about that sort of thing?”

  “I’d imagine that’s what the man’s trial was about,” said the pastor, trying to follow the thread.

  “If that’s what you’d imagine, then you’d be wrong,” said Maggie. “These documents are from after the trial. They were hidden away in the prison basement until I found them.”

  “Let’s all take a deep breath,” said the pastor. In order to illustrate, he took one himself. His lungs expanded against his rib cage, which swelled pleasantly against the soft brushed cotton of his shirt. Then he closed his eyes and slowly opened them again, as if he were emerging from a deep and peaceful trance. “I have my ear to the ground, and do you know what I hear?” he asked.

  Maggie and Lyle didn’t know.

  “I hear that Maggie has gotten in over her head and is looking for a graceful way out. If there’s anything I know about, it’s grace.”

  Price was pleased with this formulation, but Maggie only stared grimly across the glass and mahogany coffee table while Lyle looked on, bewildered. Tiffany had cautioned him more than once not to start off with abstractions, so the pastor tried a more personal approach and told the couple that in order to become a preacher, he had had to constantly battle his anarchist tendencies, not to mention his libidinous ones. “What I lacked in inner self-control was thankfully imposed from without by the church. I shudder to think what might have happened if I had been allowed to run wild.”

  “What would have happened?” asked Maggie.

  “Praise the Lord we’ll never know! But my point is that total freedom is a very frightening concept.” Obedience was an underrated virtue, and the pastor had been looking for an opportunity to work it in when Tiffany stuck her blond head through the kitchen door and asked if anyone wanted a glass of sweet tea.

  “Do you have fresh mint?” asked the pastor.

  “I do.”

  “And maybe some of those famous cookies?”

  “Coming right up,” said Tiffany, retreating back into the kitchen.

  The pastor tried to remember where he had left off, but it didn’t really matter since all roads led to the same place. “My point is that man-made structures—institutions like the church and the prisons, for instance—exist for a reason.”

  “I’m sure they exist for a reason,” said Maggie. “But it’s not always the reason everyone thinks. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night.” Then she poured out a confusing story about profit motives and someone named Tomás and the ACLU and a woman who was in love with another someone named George.

  The television screen filled with a close-up of a preacher, his face uplifted and shining with sweat. A choir began to sing, and the camera panned out to take in their satin robes, their sparkling eyes, their white teeth and open mouths. “Look at that! Will you just look at that?” said the pastor, unable to take his eyes off the screen. His own services were being broadcast on the radio, but he had recently been approached by a TV producer, and he was cautiously optimistic.

  “We like what we see,” the producer had said when they met. “We also like what we hear about the Red Bud community. We’re envisioning a weekly reality feature where you counsel members of your flock.”

  The counseling feature was in the pastor’s mind as he switched off the television set and turned to look at Maggie: she was attractive, articulate, and more than a little misguided. Hells bells—she’d be perfect for the show! He almost said it out loud—praise the Lord he didn’t—but this was just the sort of thing audiences would want to see.

  A crash emanated from the kitchen. Hells bells! he thought again as Tiffany came scurrying into the room with a tray of drinks. “The cookies—” she said, but the pastor waved his hand and said to forget the cookies. He made a rectangle of his fingers as if he were setting up the frame: Maggie’s white face, Lyle’s frightened eyes. They’d be filming in the parish hall, so Tiffany’s stack of romance novels and the photographs of her in her high school cheerleading uniform wouldn’t be in the shot.

  When Maggie stopped talking, the pastor said, “All I can tell you is that this might be God’s way of winning George and Tomás and their fellow inmates over. Prison can be a powerful force in getting us to reassess our lives. Has George accepted the Word of God? Has Tomás acknowledged the Living Christ? That is where your efforts should be concentrated. What is freedom of the body without the surpassing freedom of the soul? What an opportunity for you to do some good!”

  “But how would we feel if we were in their position?” asked Maggie. “How would we feel if we were wrongly convicted and no one would listen to us?”

  “That would feel terrible,” said the pastor. He liked to agree with his opponent whenever possible. They expected him to argue, so he peppered his speech with phrases like, “you’re right there!” or “one hundred percent correctamente!” Then he’d pause for a moment to reinforce the bond of agreement before executing a quick pivot. He reached out to touch Maggie’s arm as he said, “Modern Americans worry far too much about feelings. Besides, what would feel worse, a few years in prison or an eternity in hell?”

  “I don’t think that’s the choice,” said Maggie.

  Lyle had been sitting quietly, but now he said, “I’m sorry, Pastor, but you can see she’s not herself.”

  “This is who I am, Lyle. For years we’ve only seen one side of each other, but there’s more to both of us—at least I hope there is.”

  When Price pointed out the opportunity for showing compassion and brotherly love, Maggie cried out, “But I don’t love them! To tell you the truth, most of them give me the creeps. But that’s not their fault. It’s the prison. It puts people in a position where all they can do is take, so why should I feel good about giving? I shouldn’t. I should feel terrible about it, and I do.”

  “Then perhaps you are not ready for this particular challenge, my child.” The pastor was remembering his own sense of superiority, his own feelings of—well, “repugnance” was a strong word—but he was quietly glad that he was not alone in his humanity. He was quietly glad of this reminder that he too needed to be vigilant about humility and service. Perhaps God had sent Maggie precisely to remind him of that very thing. “Perhaps you have taken on too big a task,” he said. “There are many other charitable venues. Tiffany is a dynamo when it comes to organizing the efforts of the parish. Ask her about her Mothers of Mercy initiatives—MoMs for short. Perhaps you’d be better off choosing one of those.”

  “It’s not about me being better off, and why should I get to pick and choose?” cried Maggie. “This thing chose me, and I should at least see it through.”

  Tiffany came into the room with a plate of broken cookies. Even though he knew they had been on the floor, Price took one and complimented his wife on the delicate flavor. “Do I detect a hint of cinnamon?” he asked.

  Now that the niceties were over, the pastor let his eyes burn into Maggie’s until she looked away. They had come to the point of the encounter, and he wanted her to know it. The husband wasn’t capable of understanding, but when Maggie looked back at him, Price could see she was. “I’m sure there’s an easy solution,” he said. One of his techniques was to lull the parishioner with calming adjectives before delivering his toughest judgment. He said “easy” a second time, and then he said “comfortable” and “humble” before telling her, “You’ll find that the right thing is usually the one you want to do anyway.” Pastoral counseling was like the martial arts, where a combatant used his opponent’s own weight and momentum to defeat him or her. “It is my experience that a person’s biggest enemy is herself
and that seemingly insurmountable obstacles and complications are often self-imposed.”

  Price could see he was making progress. Lyle’s mouth had gone from a thin, grim line to slack-lipped admiration, and Maggie’s eyes had gone from glassy and wild to flat and blank. He would eventually get them both to smile, but he wasn’t ready for that yet. He had to finish applying the lesson first. “We are the ones who clamp the manacles around our own wrists,” he said, letting a note of hollow warning into his voice. “And we are the only ones who can take them off.” Now his voice became lighter, optimistic. “That is true of George and Tomás, and it is true of you as well. George and Tomás got entangled with the law because of their own actions. And they are only wrongly convicted (here, the pastor made a set of air quotes) because you have decided that is the case. It is completely within your power to decide otherwise.”

  “Maggie doesn’t want to be unfair,” Lyle began, but the pastor interrupted him.

  “How is she being unfair? Is she the one who put those men in prison? Is she now the judge and jury too? It is my view that the problem is not with the American system of jurisprudence; the problem is with Maggie herself. And that is actually very good news, because it is a much easier problem to solve.”

  Lyle shuffled his feet and brushed the cookie crumbs from his trousers. Then he gave a slight nod.

  “The problem,” said the pastor, “is one of grandiosity. Maggie thinks she can know more about these things than highly qualified professionals. That’s just wrongheaded, and nothing good will come of it.”

  Now it was time to get Maggie to admit her role in things. Now it was time to draw closer to her and to use what he thought of as his boudoir voice, but the version with an implied threat. Finally, a tear rolled down Maggie’s cheek and she admitted, “Maybe you’re right.”

  “It’s my business to be right,” said the pastor, slipping into the mode he called release-and-resolution. “But I’ve been at this a long time. I want you to feel the rightness too. Most of all, I want you to be right with God.”