Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  When Rose was strong again and before Claire Louise went back to Walter and her own home, she did her very best to talk Rose into coming with her. But Rose knew with more and more certainty that Jack would be moving back and she didn’t dare be anywhere but waiting at home for him when he came.

  Rose had saved enough money from the good wages Leo paid her that she didn’t need to work for a while. But after the first month she found herself spending too many lonely hours doing nothing, so with Viola’s blessing she brought the baby’s basket downstairs to the store where she could keep busy and at the same time care for the infant. That proved to be a blessing for everybody. Viola and Leo adored the child, they were soon calling themselves Granny and Gramps, and Rose had some freedom from the loneliness and the complete responsibility of being a single parent.

  From time to time, one male customer or another—unwed, separated, or widowed—would take an interest in Jack Nash’s good-looking, deserted wife. Although Rose might not have been adverse to male companionship now and then, she was definitely not ready to become attached to anyone. And since it always seemed to lead to that, she finally had to turn away every special attention from the start. There were only two men with whom she dared spend any time after her initial bad experiences: Leo, whose love for her was pure and fatherly, and Walter, whose love, while it may have been less pure, was nonetheless safe and very solicitous. In fact, while his feelings for her were growing less and less brotherly, he himself was not aware of it until one Sunday when he was driving Rose on her rare but regular searching trip through those suburbs whose names she recalled Jack had mentioned, while Viola, Leo, and Mary Jean looked after Cynthia at the apartment.

  It was pretty much accepted by Rose and Walter that they weren’t going to run into Jack Nash anywhere, but the drives gave Rose a sense of hope and a feeling that she was doing something more than just waiting helplessly.

  June 1935

  They had started later than usual on that particular Sunday in June. A shower had passed earlier and the streets, still wet, glistened while the late afternoon sun teased Walter and Rose, appearing and disappearing behind fast-moving cumulous clouds. The trees and lawns were aglow with the bright pastel green of spring and everything looked fresh and clean. Rose, nurtured by the warmth of the elusive golden sun felt her hopes growing just like all of nature around her.

  Unable to contain herself, she commenced singing and her sweet folksy-soprano voice captivated Walter who started to harmonize with her. Rose had begun with some old-time spirituals she had learned as a child at revival meetings, but after a while Walter introduced some of the popular songs from the radio and pretty soon they were completely absorbed in the sound of their own voices. Rose was swaying rhythmically to the music and he was keeping time on the steering wheel with his hands. As their harmonizing got better Rose became more and more animated and less and less concerned with propriety until finally she was next to him, her knees almost in his lap, her left arm and breast crushed against his arm and her right hand on top of his keeping time with him on the steering wheel while her eyes watched his mouth form the words of their song. At the finish of an especially enthusiastic version of “Anything Goes,” Rose broke into a fit of giggles and threw both arms around his neck and then, feeling emotionally reckless, she planted a big noisy kiss on his cheek.

  Without knowing how he did it, Walter found himself with his arm around her pulling her tight against him and turning his head so her mouth was no longer against his cheek, but under his own impassioned lips. He felt her resist for a moment and then sag against him and as he persisted in his seduction, she melted altogether and her mouth responded with heat.

  The harsh sound of an automobile horn broke into their moment when the car wandered dangerously into the left lane. It brought Rose to her senses, but Walter wasn’t as easily deterred. He brought the car out of the traffic and to a halt against the curb without letting go of her even though she twisted against his arm. “Walter, please let me go. I didn’t mean to lead you on.”

  He turned in the seat and pulled her back to him and his mouth was on hers again: there was no way she could excuse the kiss he was giving her as brotherly. It was a long time since Rose had been kissed that way and in spite of her own good sense and better judgment she was beginning to like it and since she couldn’t seem to get away from him anyway…

  After a long time he raised his head but was still holding her with one arm when he turned back to the steering wheel and pulled back into the traffic. She, on the other hand, didn’t move at all, in fact she pressed herself closer against him and closed her eyes. If she tried really, really hard she could believe it was Jack’s shoulder she was leaning against—Jack’s arm holding onto her—even Jack’s mouth on hers. She trembled with longing. Yes. Walter could be Jack for her, until Jack finally returned and sat in that place himself. Not a twinge of guilt assailed her at that adulterous notion. It didn’t seem wrong at all. She wasn’t after all, being in the least unfaithful. She wasn’t lusting for Walter Bradley, her sister’s husband. She only hungered for her own husband who was always and forever the only man she wanted to lie with. It wouldn’t be wrong at all. It was Jack’s body she wanted … Jack’s body she needed. Then, in her mind she was explaining to her husband…

  “O Jack! You’ve been gone so long and I just cain’t wait any longer. I just cain’t stand bein’ alone anymore.”

  Walter wasn’t making any such excuses to himself. He knew it was Rose he had kissed and he knew it was Rose he wanted. Without turning to look at her, he started talking. “I know Jack was—is—very special to you, Rose. I can’t begin to take his place and I don’t want to try, but I can love you, Rose. I do love you. You have always been special to me. Extremely special! I’ve never known anybody like you.” Then he looked at her, but quickly averted his eyes. “If I could come to you sometime and I could—stay with you for a couple of hours sometime…” There followed an uncomfortably lengthy silence. Eventually, he broke it.

  “Claire Louise….” He said her name and then, nervous and agitated, he chewed on his lip a while. “Claire and I don’t sleep together anymore, Rose.” He made an odd sound of frustration. “This is all so personal and almost too shameful to talk about … but…”

  Then he was silent awhile again and Rose waited patiently.

  “Claire can’t have children, you know.” He glanced sideways at her. “So … so she says to have martial relations with no hope of conceiving a child is wrong. She’s worked it up in her mind until she thinks it’s sinful somehow and so she sleeps in one room and I sleep in another.”

  He was squeezing her so close it began to be uncomfortable but Rose waited for him to finish his explanation.

  “Rose, you know I’m still a young man. I’m not 40 yet, Rose. I still feel the need sometimes—” and then he snorted, “to be honest, Rose! I feel the need all the time. And it’s pretty strong. I’ve been tempted. There are lots of young women at the office and even some in our neighborhood. And I’m not a real religious man,” he swallowed “Claire has her religion to fortify her. She goes to church three or four times a week, and I don’t think she needs physical love.” He looked at her again. “You do though, don’t you, Rose?” He waited for an answer but she didn’t choose to give one.

  Walter turned his face forward—it was no longer easy looking her in the eye. “I know you and Jack had a very passionate love relationship,” and his voice lowered. “Doesn’t your body sometimes ache for the touch of a man? It was plain Jack could barely keep his hands off you even in public, so he must have been very demonstrative in the privacy of your bedroom.” He felt as if he was hanging onto a rope over a river and he was losing his grip—probably he’d slid too far already. “I’m saying this badly, but it’s because I feel so strongly about it, and I feel ashamed and embarrassed now that I’ve put it into words. At any rate, I don’t expect you to feel like that about me. I’ll be honored? I don’t know if that’s the
right word.” When he finally turned his head to look at her, his expression was tense. “If you’ll just allow me … just let me love you once in a while. Now and then. You can even pretend I’m Jack if it helps any.”

  They were stopped at a red light with three or four cars in front of them, and Rose listened without comment, though she was smiling. She already knew her answer. She was going to let him love her. She’d be a blessing to him and he’d be a blessing to her. Surely that couldn’t be a sin.

  Then suddenly her attention was drawn to a man getting out of a car at the curb two car lengths ahead of them. She watched him leave the car and hurry across the sidewalk into a store. She moved away from Walter to look at the sign above it. “Fletcher Pharmacy” she read and as she did she cried out. “Stop! Stop, Walter! Stop the car! It’s Jack! Jack just walked into that store!” She was trying to open the passenger door and Walter grabbed for her.

  “Be careful, Rose. You’ll be killed!”

  “Stop then! Stop this dang car!”

  “I will, Rose! I will as soon as I find a space. I can’t stop in the middle of the street.”

  “O sweet Jesus! Don’t let him leave that store. O sweet Jesus!” She was praying frantically. Then she glared impatiently at Walter. “Why don’t you stop?”

  “I will as soon as the light changes. Right up there’s a place,” he pointed out, hoping to calm her. “Just keep your eye on the door he went in and we won’t lose him.”

  It seemed to Rose it was taking hours to get properly parked.

  “Oh! Please hurry, Walter! Please, Walter!”

  As soon as she could she was out of the car and bouncing up and down on her toes, unable to bear the waiting. “Hurry, Walter, it’s Jack! It’s Jack after all these months!”

  As soon as Walter’s feet hit the sidewalk she was away. “Come on, Walter. The pharmacy!”

  Walter hurried to keep up. “Are you sure it’s Jack? After all this time you could be mistaken.”

  Rose threw a look over her shoulder that was at once offended and scornful. “Mistake my Jack?” and she thought about how many times she had looked upon that special stride of his with pride that he was her man and she snorted. “Mistake Jack Nash? Are you out of your mind? I would know my Jack from the sound of his shoes on the sidewalk!”

  They were at the drug store and Walter reached past her to open the door. Rose rushed inside with high expectations and he followed.

  As her eyes searched the building, which wasn’t large, a sense of doom settled around her. She didn’t see him.

  Frantic, she raced up one aisle and down the other. There were several booths near the back and all of them were occupied but not by Jack. Her eyes met Walter’s when she turned and they were so desperate, he felt frightened for her.

  “He’s not here, Walter.”

  “I know. Maybe this is the wrong store. Let’s look in the ones on either side of this. Maybe you made a mistake.”

  He tried to take her arm but she flung off his hand. “I didn’t make a mistake. He came into this store.”

  “But he’s not here. Just look around, Rose. It must have been a different store.”

  “No. It’s not a different store. It’s just me. I’m goin’ crazy is all. I just thought I saw him because I wanted to so bad.”

  Walter looked up as a man in a white pharmacist’s jacket stepped from behind the counter and greeted him. “Can I help you?”

  Walter smiled and shook his head. “I guess not.” And then he asked Rose, “What was he wearing? How was he dressed? Maybe this gentleman saw him,” and then he asked the man if there was a back door.

  But Rose had already turned away from him and was heading toward the exit. “Never mind, Walter. I was just wrong, that’s all.”

  Walter shrugged over his shoulder at the pharmacist. “Thanks anyway,” he said and followed after her.

  Rose’s disappointment was so great it made her bitter and angry and she wasn’t the least receptive to his offers of help.

  “Let’s try these other stores. It can’t hurt and you’ll never forgive yourself if you just get back in the car and don’t try to find him.”

  She flung away from him again and then noticed the car she’d seen the man get out of. It was still parked there at the curb. At least she hadn’t imagined the car.

  A desperate thought occurred to her. What if she got in that car and just waited for him. If it wasn’t Jack she could say she’d mistook that car for hers. And if it was him … “O, Sweet Jesus, show me what to do!”

  She walked toward the car as Walter, in spite of her attitude, went into the variety store to the right of the pharmacy. She watched him disappear inside and then recklessly jerked open the door to the car. She hesitated as she looked inside. A familiar fragrance wafted up at her and her heart began to race. It was Jack’s aftershave! Nothing could have stopped her from climbing into that automobile after that.

  Walter had exited the variety store and was looking up and down the street but being unable to locate her he decided she’d gone back to his car so he pushed open the door to the little cafe on the left of the pharmacy and went inside.

  In the meantime, Rose was tearing that car apart, front and back, glove box, pouches on the doors.

  There were papers in the glove box but nothing with a name on it. Nothing anywhere that would reveal the driver, except that fragrance.

  Rose began to lose her courage. Probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of men in that town wore that same aftershave. What kind of proof was that? She was about to step back out when the thought occurred to her that the man she saw leave that car was the image of Jack Nash. That sighting was what led her to the car in the first place. So putting the fragrance and the man together, the chances got better suddenly and she decided to settle down and wait.

  She watched Walter go past her and on down the sidewalk to where his car was parked. She saw him move back onto the sidewalk when he realized she wasn’t waiting there.

  He was agitated and worried and she started to feel bad for him, so while he paced up and down, her conscience made her open the door and get out. He saw her coming and he took note of the car she had stepped out of and he panicked.

  “Good Lord, Rose Sharon! What do you think you’re doing? You could get arrested for doing that.”

  Rose raised angry eyes and scowled at him. “Shut up, Walter! I think Jack was driving that car just like I thought in the first place and I’m gonna stay here till he comes back to it!”

  “But he’s not in any of those buildings, Rose. It was somebody else you saw.”

  Rose’s teeth clenched and her hands coiled into tight fists. “I am not mistaken! It is Jack Nash!”

  Walter threw up his hands and then backed away from her toward his car again. “I can’t help you anymore, Rose. I’ll sit in my car and wait until you’re ready to go.”

  She made no move in either direction, just stood close to the wall in the shadow of the building and watched Jack’s car.

  Minutes passed and then it was an hour.

  Walter walked over to her. “Rose, we can’t stay here forever.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  So he sighed and went back to sit on the front bumper.

  Another fifteen minutes and still no one came to the car. Rose looked nervously at Walter, who sat there glaring back at her.

  After another five minutes she went reluctantly to him. “I’ve decided to go, Walter, but I’m gonna leave a note in that car. I’m gonna tell him I was here and saw him and waited and that I love him and want him back.”

  Walter nodded with some gratitude. He kept a notebook and pencil in the glove box, and he tore out a page and handed it to her along with the pencil.

  She laid it on the hood of his car and started writing her message. “Dearest Jack Nash.” It was short and to the point and when she finished she read it and added one more short paragraph after her name. “P.S. I lay every night alone and pray I’ll look up
and see you open our bedroom door. Please come home, Jack. I’m the same as dead with you gone.”

  She handed the pencil to Walter, who waited silently but with frustration plain in his eyes. Then she carried her note, folded neatly three times, to Jack’s car. She had a moment of worry … what if it really wasn’t Jack? That would mean she was baring her most intimate feelings to a complete stranger, but she pushed that worry aside. If it wasn’t Jack, whoever it was would have no way of knowing who she was anyway and if it was, as she thoroughly believed, her beloved husband, than she had to tell him how she felt since this was the closest she had been to him in a year and a half.

  Walter drove back toward her apartment in silence. Not only was he exasperated with her stubborn insistence she’s seen Jack Nash and the hour and a half of useless waiting, but he was embarrassed with the memory of his humiliating attempt at seduction which was interrupted by her supposed sighting.

  They were just a block from the grocery store when he finally got up his nerve to broach the delicate subject. “I think we should just forget what happened earlier.”

  Rose, whose thoughts were full of Jack and her note for him had a moment of confusion as she tried to imagine what he was referring to. So she only nodded

  Walter glanced at her from the edge of his eye. “I am really ashamed, Rose. I had no business asking you a thing like that.” He slapped his hand against the steering wheel. “I would like to make excuses for myself, but there aren’t any. I just got carried away with my feelings for you.” He sighed, “I just couldn’t handle having you touch me. I felt like an adolescent boy with his first crush.” Rose heard a self-conscious chuckle wrinkle his voice. “I am so sorry, Rose, and I feel like such a fool. I hope you know I could never have followed through on that—proposal.”

  Having the incident brought back to her mind gave her an embarrassed moment of her own and she felt her cheeks flush. She really had let herself get all worked up being in his arms and kissing him like that. She opened her mouth and took a couple of deep breaths before she could get her words strung together. “I reckon we both ought to give thanks to God that he stopped us in time.”