The Canterbury Sisters

by Kim Wright

  Matthew places the accoutrements of his craft on the stone floor before us. “Why do people pilgrimage?” he asks.

  I assume the question is rhetorical, the start of some prepared speech or prayer. But Valerie sees what I don’t, that he’s really asking us. As he begins to pour water in the basin, she gives him the same explanation that Tess gave us back in the George Inn.

  “They come seeking forgiveness and healing,” she says.

  “And which do you seek?” he asks.

  “Both, I guess,” she says. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  He looks up from the bowl and winks at her. But a priest wouldn’t wink at a dying woman, would he? Of course not. I’ve been teetering on the verge of a full-blown hallucination all week, what with the swarming bees and kisses in the smoking garden and children being struck by cars in the middle of an empty street, and if I didn’t know better I would swear I had somehow gotten myself drunk again. But I guess Matthew might wink at Valerie, that it’s possible they’ve shared something during their brief private talk that I’m yet incapable of understanding. Which at this point could be just about anything, because I’m feeling very stupid and I’ve even started crying again. And I don’t know if I’m crying because my mother is dead or crying because Valerie’s cancer has come back, or crying because someday I will be dead too. Death feels realer than life in this place and despite the fact that Matthew has poured water into the basin, he is now picking up the other bottle, the one with wine. So apparently we are to have communion before our blessing, sharing before absolution. He pulls a plug from the top of the earthenware bottle and a plastic cup from where it has been wedged onto the bottom. This is simultaneously the most humble and most exalted of ceremonies. Valerie looks over at me, and this time the wink is definitely real. What wine will this be—what vintage and what grape? Is God’s sense of humor broad enough to send redemption in the form of a nice white zinfandel?

  But instead it is a red wine, blood-colored and serious. Matthew’s hands enfold the plastic cup, and as he moves toward me I can see he has a bump on his third finger, the type of cyst a child gets when he is first learning to write. He raises the cup to my lips and I take a deep breath to pull in the aromas, more from habit than anything else, but there is nothing before me but grapes and alcohol. It feels warm and thin on my tongue.

  “This is the blood of Christ,” he says softly, “spilled for you.”

  I struggle with it. Dip my head too far and when he tilts the glass I nearly choke. It rushes at me, not a sip but a swill, and I know that whatever I’m feeling is not because I am dazzled by the Cathedral. Not by the riches of Canterbury or even its history. What would happen if I began to laugh hysterically during this communion, here in this holy place? Probably nothing. Matthew would continue with the sacrament. He’s that type. He would soldier on without judgment, no matter what his pilgrims do. The Cathedral is ancient and enormous. Everything that can happen to a human being has undoubtedly happened here at some time or another. People have laughed and cried, died and been born, choked on Jesus or accepted him without question, made love and made murder, all within these walls.

  I close my eyes and pretend to pray. Hear the murmur of Matthew offering the wine to Valerie, her own smaller and more ladylike slurp. This is it, Mom, I think. I’ve got you all the way here and if this isn’t enough, then we’re both of us sunk. Because, God knows, we’ve got no plan B.

  When I open my eyes, Matthew is back on his knees before me, which seems overwhelming too, and somehow wrong. If it’s hard for a modern woman to bow, it is even harder to be bowed before. To accept the fact that this man has dropped to his knees and is taking my boot in his hand. Or rather Valerie’s boot, for we never bothered to swap them back. He dips the cloth into the basin of water, then wipes the leather with a single damp corner, smoothing away the dust of the trail and a little of Diana too, I’d imagine. Even though this modern version of foot washing is not quite so intimate as the original, it’s still touching, and as he moves to Valerie he continues to murmur something softly. Apparently this is the blessing, and I can’t catch all of what he’s saying. Something about “the circle of life,” but surely that’s wrong, too Elton John and Broadway, and then he says, quite clearly, “May the broken world ride on your shoulders,” and I lean back in the pew and exhale.

  It’s a real exhalation, the kind you make only a few times in your life. I sneak my hand into the bag in my backpack, which is balanced on the pew beside me.

  The cat’s ears rise hopefully at the reappearance of the white fish-and-chips bag. He is probably thinking Yum. I try not to rustle the paper. Valerie and Matthew need their moment, and he has taken her hands in his now. She is bent forward and they hover, their foreheads nearly touching, completely absorbed. I ease the baggie from the bag, slip my fingers inside of it, and then slowly expand them, pushing the walls apart.

  The bag tears. Easily. It has been held together by Band-Aids and desperation for some time now. It is more than ready to break. As my fingers continue to open, the plastic gives way, and the last of Diana’s ashes run down my palm, falling to the stone floor.

  My mother is gone. My mother is everywhere.

  This would be the logical time to cry. The logical time to give in to the emotion I’ve been tamping down all morning. All week, all year, all my life. So of course I don’t. Now that my great quest has been completed, the energy seems to go right out of me. I sit back against the pew. Watch Matthew and Valerie, still forehead to forehead, his lips moving and then hers. I close my eyes too.

  Is this enough? Enough for Diana or even for me? Life will always be a mystery. Whatever you think you own can be taken from you in an instant and—even more confounding—all the things you once thought were lost can come rushing back. The veil that hangs between worlds has felt very thin to me lately. As easily ripped as a ziplock bag, and almost illusionary, like maybe death isn’t so awful or even so far away.

  I open my eyes and look around me, at the great windows in the distance, high and colorful, full of saints I can’t name and I know that my body, this body I now sit in, dusty and tired, is just one more thing that I will someday lose. And when that day comes, whether it is fifty years from now or tomorrow, whether I’m sleeping in a nursing home bed or looking the wrong way as I step off a curb, I hope I will die exactly like my mother did. I hope that I toss my body aside just as she tossed hers, with no more thought than Claire throwing one of her many sweaters across a rented bed. I hope I leave this world gracefully, like a pilgrim slips from the back of his donkey at the end of a long ride, like a traveler disembarks from an airplane that has carried him across a great ocean. The way a letter slides from an envelope once it has finally been delivered.

  Seventeen

  You never got to tell your story,” Tess says.

  It’s another thing that frets her. One more loose end. There are certain experiences she tries to provide for her guests on each guided tour and she’s afraid she’s failed with this one. Already she’s apologized twice for the fact that Valerie and I had to walk into Canterbury unescorted and, even worse, that we were forced to receive absolution from the hands of a man.

  This afternoon has had a great deal of coming and going. When the other women arrived at about three, they’d stopped by the lodge first, only to find Valerie and me bedded down in our separate rooms, both sleeping off the effects of our spiritual bender. Then they had walked over to the Cathedral and had their own ceremony with a priest named Virginia, who’d evidently been quite a hit. When Angelique had asked her, “Where do I go next?” Virginia had said, “Home,” and this had set off their own collective crying jag, followed by what I gather was a couple of rather large checks written to the Canterbury Preservation League, courtesy of Claire and Jean. It is just past six now, and the women are all back in the lodge, putting ice packs on their faces and preparing for their final dinner together. Wh
en Tess stops by my room, she seems alarmed by the fact that I am still dozing.

  “Seriously, don’t worry about it,” I tell her, sitting up and propping pillows around me. There are plenty of them here in this bed, overstuffed and heavily tasseled, covered in gold-and-burgundy brocade, the colors of royalty. “I promise on my mother’s grave that I got everything out of the trip I needed.”

  But she’s still distressed, perhaps because I’ve told her I won’t be joining them at the final dinner, when they will crown the winner at Deeson’s. She stops just short of pushing me on the matter. She says she understands that I might rather rest. I must have been quite a sight yesterday, lying on that café table giving blood. I must have looked either exceptionally noble or exceptionally pathetic, because the women have changed in the way they’re treating me. They look at me with big wide eyes now, as if I might suddenly take flight.

  Although I point to the chair, Tess continues to stand. The poshness of our rooms at this final lodge is a sign, I suppose, that our journey truly has come to its end. Our reward for completing the trail comes in the form of duvets, coffeepots, well-lit mirrors, and pulsating showers with unlimited hot water. And there’s a whole closet for Claire, a walk-in, with thick wood hangers. All the rooms have enormous picture windows looking straight at the Cathedral, or at least some piece of it. We’re positioned too close to get any perspective on the whole thing, but a lovely expanse of stone is outside my window.

  “Join us just for a drink,” Tess says, pausing in her pacing. “Or an appetizer, perhaps. You can tell your story and then come back straightaway to bed.”

  I start to say something about how giving blood to the little boy was perhaps my version of a pilgrim’s tale. Which would be total bullshit, of course. The fluke of having B negative blood is not a story. Or I could recite the first line I’ve been practicing in my head the last forty-eight hours. My story begins with the death of my mother . . . Either of those things would make Tess feel better. She’s haunted with a sense of unfinished business, of eight women walking but only seven stories told. So it would be a kindness to give her something, anything, some sequence of words that would allow her to check my name off the list.

  “The priest who blessed us today,” I finally tell her, “was really good at his job. And while he was serving the communion—”

  “Communion?” she breaks in, with genuine surprise. “That isn’t part of the blessing.”

  Just a little bonus they throw in for the dying, I think, but out loud I say, “I don’t know what the standard deal is. I only know he offered and we accepted.”

  Tess is frowning, trying to reconcile just one more irregularity in her mind. “I didn’t know either one of you were practicing Christians.”

  A bell from the Cathedral strikes. A single gong, and Tess and I both look at the clock on the bedside table. 6:15.

  “It’s loud, isn’t it?” she says. “I sometimes wonder why we stay here, so close, despite the view. There’s that big boom every quarter hour and of course when midnight comes, the whole lodge is shaken awake. It sounds as if all the angels of heaven have declared war on earth at once.”

  “I think it’s magic,” I say, rolling over in bed to face the window. “Everything about it. Valerie used that word today in Becket’s chapel and at first I was afraid she would offend our priest. But now that I’ve slept on it, I can see it’s exactly the right word, and maybe all places are magical if you stop to pay attention. I mean, look at how many miracles we encountered along the path. They’re all around us, even the way that hops turns into beer . . .”

  But Tess is still frowning, her head tilted and her arms folded across her chest. She looks like a buried monarch. She came here expecting me to say something, but this evidently wasn’t it. I try again.

  “My trip wasn’t incomplete,” I tell her. “I had to get all the way to the end to see that the end wasn’t what counted. Because the trick isn’t being able to recognize the holiness of Canterbury. I mean, look at it. It’s practically standing there in the window screaming, ‘Wake up, woman. Get out of bed. I’m holy.’ But the real trick is seeing the holiness in everything. Everything along every step of the trail, the whole broken world. You get that, don’t you? You must. It’s why you lead these tours.”

  Tess hesitates. She’s more comfortable asking questions than answering them. “I’m not entirely sure why I signed on with Broads Abroad,” she says. “I enjoy meeting the women, of course, and it’s extra income during the weeks when university’s not in session.”

  “Oh, come on. It can’t just be that. I doubt they pay you that much money.”

  “You’re right,” she says, glancing out the window. “The salary’s an insult and yet I keep signing on for just one more tour. How many times have I been here now? Twenty or thirty? Likely more. I always imagine that this is the trip that will be different. What you Americans call ‘the one.’ Oh, the Cathedral is architecturally marvelous, of course. No arguing with that. And the historical significance is profound . . .”

  Her voice fades. So there we have it. The Tale of Tess, the shortest of them all and in some ways the most poignant. She leads tours to a destination she herself can never reach. But she shakes off this singular moment of vulnerability, like a dog shaking off rain, and asks, once again, “But you’re satisfied? You found what you were hoping to find here?”

  It’s actually more accurate to say I lost what I was hoping to lose here, but there’s no point in telling her this. It would only confuse the matter more, so I nod vigorously and smile.

  “When I was in the chapel I made myself a promise. That tomorrow and going forward I’m going to take a few steps toward Canterbury, every day, no matter where in the world I happen to be.”

  “Well, that’s quite marvelous,” says Tess. “Really, very good. Do you mind if I write that last bit down, the bit about walking toward Canterbury every day? Perhaps they’d like to use it on the Broads Abroad website.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Tess makes one more halfhearted stab at trying to convince me to come to dinner with them, but when I beg off a third time, she lets it go. I tell her all I want to do is order room service, soak in a tub, and make it an early night. And it’s true enough. The symmetry appeals to me. I was not with the women on the first night of the pilgrimage and I won’t be with them on their last.

  She pauses at the door and looks back. “And your mother?”

  “All gone.”

  She nods. “Good. So that’s one thing we’ve managed to finish off properly, at least.”

  AFTER TESS leaves, I do everything exactly as I said I would. I order a mushroom flatbread and a Diet Coke in a can, relishing the carbonation like a crack addict. Put some of the lovely ginger-scented bath salts in the tub for soaking, and afterward go straight back to bed, wearing the terry cloth hotel robe. The sun faded while I was lingering in the bathroom and the Cathedral looks especially dramatic at night. It’s lit from below, with golden light pulsating upward like water from a fountain, throwing strange shadows over the facade of the building. I chew on the remnants of the flatbread crust and contemplate the fact that I will probably never dine with another view like this one, at least not from my own pillow.

  But it’s not yet eight. If I go to sleep now, after spending half the afternoon in bed, I will awaken at three in the morning and that’s not good. Tomorrow is stacking up to be a hell of a day: the break-of-dawn goodbyes, the train to London, a dash across town to the George on the off chance someone has returned my phone, then six hours on a plane back to America. Fetching Freddy from his kennel and beginning the long slog of making sense of my post-Ned life. It exhausts me just to think about it. If I don’t get a good night’s rest now, I’m ruined.

  So I decide to get up and take a few laps around the Cathedral, forcing myself to stay awake at least until ten. The longer I’ve lain here, the more I’ve
grown curious about what Canterbury feels like at night. The main gates are said to be closed at seven, so the only people on the grounds are worshippers straggling from evensong and those of us staying in the lodge. Even circling the perimeter of the building should be a decent walk, and when, if ever, will I be here again? Besides, this morning I went to Canterbury for Diana, to fulfill my final promise. I still haven’t gone there for myself.

  I only have one set of completely clean clothes left, put aside for the flight home, so I drag a somewhat smelly sweater and dusty jeans out of my suitcase and pick up Valerie’s boots. Just looking at them makes me feel guilty. If she could buck up and make it to the last dinner, it seems like I should be able to. Find my way to Deeson’s and join the women at least for a drink or two. Congratulate the winner. I’ll do that, and then take my evening stroll of the grounds.

  I walk down the wide, carpeted hall, past the lobby where a group of businessmen is checking in for a conference, through the well-tended garden, and out the front entrance, which leads me into the city. Tess said the restaurant is on Sun Street, which I noticed coming in today, and I can always ask for help if I need it. More people are out than this morning, college students walking by in packs, tourists taking pictures. A young man is handing out flyers for a boat tour of the city the next morning. I take one.

  I should stay longer, I think. I should have tacked another day onto the vacation, taken the time to relish a bit of Canterbury now that I’m finally here. Maybe I would like to take a rowboat down the Stour, that romantic little river with its unromantic name. But I’m booked back to America on the noontime flight. At least that’s what I believe my phone said, so I have little choice but to show up with my passport and half-assed explanations and hope they let me on the plane.