Our Lady of the Lost and Found

by Diane Schoemperlen

  Tucked beneath the box, with just one corner showing, was a small white envelope. On the front was my name, written in black ink in a fine calligraphic hand. I realized that I had not seen any samples of her handwriting during the past week, but of course it was hers. I would have known it anywhere.

  Inside was a single folded piece of paper, heavy, creamy, edged with gold. Her note was brief:

  It’s time for me to go now. It will soon be May and I am needed elsewhere. Thank you for everything. Keep in touch. I am with you always.

  Love, Mary.

  I sat on the bed for a length of time that could have been seconds or hours. I held her note in my hand and the box on my lap. Over and over again I slipped my other hand deep into the box, lifting the milagros and letting them fall. Winking in the light of the bedside lamp, they slid through my fingers like sand or pearls.

  I could not immediately think of what to do next. I could not imagine how I was going to pass the rest of this day or any other.

  Finally I put the note into the box and carried it to my bedroom. I opened the top drawer of my dresser and took out my charm bracelet. I put the bracelet into the wooden box on top of the milagros and the note. I put the box on top of the dresser beside the white candles.

  Then I went into the kitchen and made coffee, just as I did every morning. I turned on the radio. The weather report promised clouds, wind, and rain for the morning, clearing later in the afternoon.

  I went to the back porch and brought in the newspaper. The wind pulled the open door from my hand. It banged against the side of the house before I could grab it and pull it closed again.

  I stood and looked out the kitchen window while the coffee brewed. The sky was more like autumn than spring. The clouds were moving in the opposite direction to what they usually do on a windy day. I thought about how many ways there are to describe dark gray clouds passing quickly across a colorless sky. It began to rain. A robin flitted around in the lower branches of the fir tree. A red car passed in the street going too fast, its driver intent upon his destination, whatever it might be, and oblivious to me, the observer there at the window, alone and invisible.

  When the coffee was ready, I poured myself a cup and opened the fridge to get out the milk. There in the middle of the top shelf sat a plain white bowl with three plums in it. Purple, perfect, out of season. I ate them and then licked the sweet juice from my fingers one by one.

  I opened the newspaper. I was not really reading. I was just turning the pages and skimming the headlines out of habit. Toward the back of the section called Life, on a page filled mostly with stories about fashion, food, and a new treatment for depression, with ads for luxury cars, laptop computers, and diamond jewelry, my eyes fell upon a small headline in the lower lefthand corner. It said: MOTHER MARY TO THE RESCUE.

  The item below was short, not more than four column inches. It told the story of two young brothers who lived on a farm twelve hundred miles west of here. It seemed that, on the previous afternoon, despite their mother’s repeated warnings, they had been playing near a creek at the far edge of their property. Although normally shallow and innocuous, the creek was now swollen with the spring run-off. The younger boy, who was only five, slipped and fell into the deep, fast-flowing water. Neither of the boys knew how to swim. The other brother, who was eight, ran back to the farmhouse for help. By the time he returned with his frantic mother in tow, the younger boy was sitting on a tree stump beside the creek, perfectly safe and dry and eating a chocolate bar.

  He said that a pretty lady in a long black dress, a brown sweater, and white Nikes had come swooping out of the sky like a giant bird and plucked him from the water. He, of course, was terrified. But the lady, he told them, said:

  —Fear not. It’s me, Mary, Mother of God.

  Then, the little boy explained, she set him down on the tree stump and gave him a chocolate bar and a stern lecture about the importance of listening to his mother.

  Just as the boy finished telling his story, the pretty lady stepped out from behind a large tree. Her feet were not touching the ground and there was a circle of stars around her head. She smiled and waved and then she disappeared.

  Upon witnessing this, the boys’ mother, a devout Catholic, fell immediately to her knees, sobbing and praising God. She had no doubt, she said, that the Virgin Mary herself had come down from heaven and saved her young son’s life.

  I had no doubt either.

  And now I knew where Mary had been the afternoon before while I was at the grocery store.

  I continued to go through the motions of morning. I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and fixed my hair. I went into my bedroom, got dressed, put away my nightgown, and made the bed. I went back into the kitchen. I put the plum pits in the compost bucket, set the white bowl in the sink, and poured myself yet another cup of coffee. Just as the grandfather clock was striking ten, I went into the living room to open the drapes.

  There was a statue standing in front of the fig tree.

  She was about three feet tall, wearing a long white gown trimmed with gold at the neck and the hem. Over her dress there was a blue cape also edged with gold and, over her hair, a white shawl. There was a gold cincture at her waist. Her hands were raised to her breasts and between them there was a painted red heart with pink rosebuds encircling it and yellow flames shooting from the top. The heart was pierced by a golden sword. Her head was slightly bowed and her brown eyes were downcast. Her pale plaster skin was flawless and her pink lips were caught in a gentle half-smile. Her bare feet, perched on the top half of a blue globe, were very small.

  Taking a step closer, I could see there was a silver chain around her neck. Hanging from it was a simple gold cross and one silver milagro. It was a miniature book, opened flat to reveal two blank pages.

  I made my solitary-laughter smile and sound into the empty room. Then I carefully picked up the statue. She was much heavier than she looked. Cradling her in my arms, I went down the hallway to my study.

  I set the statue down in the corner between my computer desk and my work table. I lifted the necklace from her neck and placed it around my own. The cross and the book were cold against my skin.

  I opened the blue notebook. I began to write:

  Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs. In the week before it happened, there was a string of unusual events that I noticed but did not recognize. Seemingly trivial, apparently unconnected, they were not even events really, so much as odd occurrences, whimsical coincidences, amusing quirks of nature or fate. It is only now, in retrospect, that I can see them for what they were: eclectic clues, humble omens, whispered heralds of the approach of the miraculous.

  Her skin was very smooth, golden brown as if she had been spending time in the southern sun. Her eyes were deep brown and the skin below them was a little crepey and thin-looking. There were fine friendly lines around her mouth.

  Tell me no secrets, I’ll tell you no lies.

  I knew that I was already in over my head. She was already here. She had already talked to me, eaten with me, used my bathroom. I knew there could be no turning back now. I knew there was nothing else I could do.

  —Yes, I said. Yes, of course you can stay.

  I could hardly write fast enough to keep up with the sentences that were coming fully formed into my mind.

  Over and over again, they whispered their prayers of petition. Sometimes their prayers were answered.

  And sometimes, sweating and sleepless in the middle of a long hot night, I, too, with the humid darkness pressing down upon my mouth like a hand, had whispered:

  —Forgive me, God. Please forgive me.

  I already know how stories are made.

  Ideas were sparking off each other like flint, tumbling one after another through my brain like autumn leaves in a windstorm. I felt a little feverish, breathless, shaky. My heart was beating too fast. I was talking aloud to myself or to the statue as I wrote.

  Eve
rything they have ever said about me has become true.

  In one way or another.

  Years have passed since that day. It is another spring now, an unreliable one this time, balmy one day and frigid again the next. Easter was late this year, falling near the end of April. That weekend there was an overnight storm, and in the morning the budding tulips were buried under six inches of snow. By the next morning it had melted and all around the neighborhood the flowers had cheerfully reemerged, undaunted by their ordeal.

  The neighborhood itself has both changed and stayed the same. It is still quiet, comfortable, respectable, and safe. But there have been a few more paint jobs, two new front decks, one new garage, and a major addition to the house across the street occasioned by the birth of their fourth child, a girl this time. Bulldog, ferocious guardian of his front yard, is older but no wiser. For reasons unknown to the rest of us, Peter and his family, the people with five striped shirts and Jesus’ face on their clothesline, did not stay long. Their house is now occupied by a young childless couple who are never home and who apparently dry their clothes in the dryer.

  There have been a few changes at my house, too, both inside and out. I have had my driveway resurfaced and my roof reshin-gled. I have painted the bathroom green. I have hung new ivory-colored drapes in the living room and, of course, new calendars throughout the house each January first.

  My kitchen calendar this year features twelve paintings by Salvador Dalí. The picture for last month, April, was The Persistence of Memory with its familiar melting watches and a distorted face with long eyelashes lowered, sleeping, we presume, or dead or otherwise lost in some metaphysical limbo where time and space do not exist. It is May now and this month’s image is The Madonna of Port Lligat.

  Against a background of deep blue sky and slightly deeper blue water, Mary sits with the baby Jesus on her lap. They are framed by six unconnected blocks of masonry floating above the water, two of them cracked and worn to reveal layers of rock inside. Mary and Jesus, too, are floating unanchored in space. Directly above Mary’s head hangs an egg suspended by a string from a large, bowl-shaped seashell. There are other shells in the picture, too, also a gold-embroidered square of cloth, two somewhat battered lemons, and a fish on a broken plate, all of these laid before her like gifts. She is wearing a voluminous gown with red shoulders, blue sleeves, lilac and brown layers of satin draped over her legs and feet. Her head is bowed, her eyes are closed, her hands are raised in an incomplete gesture of prayer.

  But whole parts of her body are missing: her upper arms, her throat, a wedge-shaped piece in the middle of her head. Her torso is an open rectangle in which Jesus sits, floating above a green cushion. His head, too, is bowed and he is naked. In the middle of his chest there is a small rectangle like the opening for a lightswitch. In his right thigh there is a circular hole with a cross at the bottom, forming the traditional scientific symbol for woman.

  When I began to write this book, I had no idea how it would end. I had to put my faith in the process of writing it. I had to believe that in the time it would take to tell this story, the ending would sort itself out and come clear to me. I have always known that writing is an act of faith, the one which has always been my own salvation. I imagined that, given time, I would find the perfect ending after all, the ending which would unlock the beginning and, when I looked back over the story I had written, everything that came before would be changed and it would all make sense.

  I have come now to the end. The statue stands beside me as I write. I wear the silver necklace while I work, often rubbing the little book milagro between my fingers like a worry stone. By the time I’m finished for the day, it is warm when I hang it back around her neck. I like to imagine it filling up again with stories while I sleep.

  When I am expecting visitors (family or friends, the plumber, the electrician, or the refrigerator repairman), I hide the statue in my bedroom closet.

  —Sorry, sorry, sorry, I say as I tuck her carefully in among the tail ends of my clothes and they fall softly over her face.

  She doesn’t seem to mind. When I return later to rescue her and carry her back to my study, she is smiling just the same. But she has never moved around the house on her own. She has never changed position or color. She has never wept tears, oil, milk, or blood.

  Sometimes I talk to her. Sometimes I tell her what I’ve been doing lately, how the book is going, when I hope and/or expect to have it finished. I suspect she already knows all this, but I tell her anyway. Sometimes I ask her the questions I should have asked when she was here but didn’t, out of diffidence, discretion, or imagining that I had all the time in the world to find the answers and get it right.

  Sometimes I pray and sometimes my prayers are answered.

  But I still have my questions. I still have my doubts. I still often feel fed up with all the irony and injustice and suffering in the world. I still watch the ten o’clock news every night and frequently find myself furious with God. I am still alone and sometimes I am still afraid. I still don’t understand about evil.

  —I don’t know, I say to the statue and she remains silent.

  She, in fact, has never said a single word. The irony of this does not escape me.

  But sometimes, early in the morning, when the light is just right, her brown eyes are shining, her silver-streaked curls are sneaking out around the edges of her white shawl, and I can see the fine friendly lines around her mouth.

  I have come now to the end and all I know for certain is that I both am and am not the same person I was when I began. I know that I have barely begun to fathom the gifts that Mary gave me.

  I know now that her story will continue whether I am writing it or not. Now I understand that there is no way of knowing how the story will end: her story, my story, yours.

  And that, for the time being, is a great relief. That, in itself, is an unspeakable gift.

  Acknowledgments and Permissions

  I am grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their generous financial support.

  For their many and various contributions to the writing of this novel I would like to thank:

  Margaret Atwood, Michael Durham, Father Andrew M. Greeley, Genni Gunn, Diarmuid O’Murchu, John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Jane Urquhart, and Reverend Mark Ward, for answering my questions;

  Derek Besant, for the Marian mementos from Mexico and the wonderful descriptions of the veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe;

  the Beth Israel Synagogue Creative Writing Class, for our monthly meetings, which are always thought-provoking and inspiring;

  Phyllis Bruce, Molly Stern, and Laurie Walsh, my editors, for their thoroughness, their kindness, their good humor, and their enthusiasm;

  Jim Campbell, for remembering the graffiti on a bathroom wall in Guelph, Ontario, which I felt free to paraphrase;

  Carla Douglas, for conversations about purses, lottery tickets, and obituaries;

  Eric Folsom, for the photograph by Carol Stevenson called Visitation at the Supermarket;

  Nora Gold, Wayne Grady, Katherine Lakeman, Jim Mountain, and Susan Townsend, for their enduring friendship;

  Dr. William Closson James, for inviting me to read at the Queen’s University Department of Religious Studies Biweekly Colloquia in October 1998, thus providing me with the perfect opportunity to give my Mary her world premiere;

  Karl Mohr, for lending me his milagro cross until I could get one of my own;

  Timothy Luke Meyer, for his masterful copyediting and his knowledgeable comments on the manuscript;

  Bella Pomer, my agent, for her patience, her faith, and all her hard work on my behalf;

  Gini Rosen, for her infectious energy and enthusiasm, and for broadening my knowledge of Werner Heisenberg;

  Alexander Schoemperlen, my wonderful son, for being, as ever and always, the light of my life;

  and especially to Merilyn Simonds, not only for her inspiring books and her important essay, but also for our c
onversations about the fiction/nonfiction continuum/conundrum, as well as about poetic justice, punctuation, list-making, ironing, dishes, flowers, spider veins, les nuits blanches, Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, and the trials and jubilations of the writing life. I am privileged to call her my best friend.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  The Crossroad Publishing Company: Excerpt from Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics by Diarmuid O’Murchu, copyright © 1997 by Diarmuid O’Murchu, M.S.C. Reprinted by permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.

  The Crown Publishing Group: Excerpt from Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton, copyright © 1998 by Brian Morton. Excerpt from Blessed Among Women by G. Scott Sparrow, copyright © 1997 by G. Scott Sparrow. Reprinted by permission of The Crown Publishing Group.

  Dell Publishing, A Division of Random House, Inc.: Excerpt from Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips, copyright © 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 by Jayne Anne Phillips. Reprinted by permission of Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc.