Straight Up

by Lisa Samson

  “We don’t have much of an endowment, I’m afraid.”

  “We can talk about money later.” For it’s not about the money. How expensive can living in a city like Lexington be?

  He pats the back of the pew. “Right. It’s mid-June. How would the first Sunday in August work for you?”

  “That would be fine, Reverend …”

  “Smithers.”

  Smithers? I almost laugh. “Reverend Smithers.”

  He’s a sort of sheepdog in a clerical collar. Older than he looks, I surmise when I see the brown spots on his hands. The hands tell no lies, my mother always said.

  “Is there anything you’ll need to have done to the organ before you come on?”

  “No, not that I can see. I’ll know better when I’ve played her more. The sweet girl.” I pat the cabinet. “Organs have personalities, you know.”

  He stands. “Oh, I certainly do know. Every church I’ve been in seems to hold an organ that has its own ways and means despite the vestry!”

  I’m going to like him.

  “Your write-up for this position said organist. Do you have a music minister?”

  “No. As I said, we’re not that well endowed.”

  As you said. “How many members?”

  “About a hundred and twenty.”

  I cross my arms.

  He clears his throat. “Eighty are regulars.”

  “Older people?”

  “Ah—yes. You could say such.”

  “Any interested in singing in a choir?”

  He smiles, open mouthed. “Some. Mrs. Hanover possesses a beautiful soprano voice. And John Davies’s bass booms like a tuba, really.”

  “Perhaps we could come up with a quartet or something. Would you mind if I did a little more than just play organ? I promise I won’t charge you extra.”

  “I suppose. But don’t tax yourself. If all you did was play like that every Sunday, it would be an improvement so vast there’d be no room on anybody’s part for complaint.”

  Oh yes, church people do love to complain. I’d nearly forgotten.

  “By the way, Reverend, do you like jazz?”

  “Oh yes!”

  Fairly

  I married Hort in Hawaii near a lava channel flowing out of Kilauea. We had to rely on some mail-order clergyperson, but our hearts were sincere. Really they were.

  So we took helicopter rides, trekked to waterfalls, tried to surf. Honestly, men in their late forties are hardly old geezers now, are they? And people were always telling Hort how young he looked for his age. He loved life to the full. Maybe people are allotted only so much life to live, so much filling to cram in between the slices of life and death, and once they do, poof, they’re gone.

  If that’s the case, my cousin Georgia should be around for the next five hundred years. Uncle G called and reported on her visit. Getting drunk at a place called the Dame. She needs to find that Sean. She needs to tell him to come home and be who he promised to be. I’d give anything to have Hort back, and I’d like to think if he went off to find himself, I’d go along for the ride, eager to be the first person to see what he’d find. Why doesn’t she just tramp on down to Richmond and demand his return?

  The doorman came up with a box. I tipped him and opened it up.

  Just as I lifted out a gorgeous new brassiere from a catalog company, Solo walked in. The man makes me feel a little cheap regarding my behavior with Braden, but he can’t possibly understand how lonely I am. I never thought I’d be this kind of person when left to my own devices. A lot of people think they know who they are, but I believe we only learn the truth after the loving people who formed our boundaries are dead.

  I am who I am, and honestly, it’s not pretty anymore. Slick and shiny and striking perhaps, but not pretty.

  Solo sighed a while later as we looked through upholstery swatch books and a page of African prints came up.

  “You still miss her terribly, don’t you, Solo?”

  “Yes, Fairly, I do.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You miss your Hort, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “The young man who disrespects you will never take his place.”

  I try to smile. “Exactly, Solo.”

  Georgia

  Today I’m frying up some garlic and onions we bought from the Blue Moon Farm’s stand at the farmers’ market Tuesday afternoon, and boy was that a hike! UG walks everywhere.

  “Just doing my bit to conserve fossil fuels.”

  Uh, okay then.

  First step Lexington, next step some pueblo somewhere.

  But now, this aroma and the chili destined to result, assures me the trek was more than worth it.

  Which reminds me of a piece of advice my mother gave me when I was ten. We lay on the couch, Dad creating his red sauce in the kitchen. The aroma of sautéing onions and garlic settled in with us as we read, she down at one end, I down at the other, our legs twined together on the middle cushion.

  My father’s sauce, scented with garlic, onions, sweet Italian sausage, peppers, and fresh herbs before fresh herbs were de rigueur, filled our hearts with love in one of the few ways he could express it.

  He’d toss up a green salad with homemade blue-cheese dressing, set the table with candles, place the cutlery just so, slip on a little Billie Holiday, and we’d all feast on the pasta, the sauce, the candlelight, the music, and Gaylen Bishop. For Gaylen created sauce only when he was at his best.

  I don’t remember what I was reading that day, but Mom was reading Atlas Shrugged. She was always reading Atlas Shrugged.

  “Georgia, a man’s got to nourish you. Now, now, I know people say it’s the woman’s job, but I tell you, find a man who can cook. A man who cooks understands something essential about living.”

  Gaylen making red sauce. I haven’t thought about that in years. And I really do need to read his cards and letters. But they’re back in Baltimore, so there’s no help for it now.

  UG peers over my shoulder. “Looks good. Go ahead and add the cider.”

  Sean made an Irish stew that drove us between the sheets every time. Why didn’t I think about that stew before now? Or the sauce?

  “UG, let’s make a red sauce soon.”

  “You got it, dear. I’ll bring home the ingredients tomorrow.”

  “And maybe an Irish stew sometime.”

  “Why not?”

  So we’re sitting on the front porch, chili in stomach. Peg and Blaine, who stopped by with some more of that yummy Ale-8 to share, headed out to take in some artsy film at the Kentucky Theater a while ago, and I’m thinking there may be a budding romance in the works.

  “What time does your bus leave in the morning, Georgie?”

  “Ten twenty.”

  I’m heading back to Baltimore tomorrow to close up the condo and collect my cat from Aunt Drea. At least Miles is already a city cat. At least I’m already a city girl. Maybe that was part of my problem at the Grotto. Stuck out in the middle of the country, it never felt like home. Maybe All Souls will be a healthier alliance. Maybe I won’t feel the need to compensate with Jack and Jim. Or Ben and Jerry, for that matter.

  “So what’s up with Peg and Blaine, Uncle Geoffrey? Something going on there?”

  “Seems so.”

  “They seem like the two most normal people in the group.”

  “I know. Peg with her butter and meat, Blaine with his business.”

  “He should be at some big church out on Tates Creek Road.” I’d already heard about Battleship Boulevard, as the group called Tates Creek Road, where some of the area’s biggest churches lined up like boats at the dock of the road front.

  He shrugs. “Some people just need a little more in-your-face community.”

  “I’ll bet she likes Point of Grace.”

  UG laughs. “She does, Georgie, she most certainly does.”

  “Good for her.”

  “That’s what I say. Even a countercultural mold is just that, a mold. Th
is little fellowship isn’t about anyone having to shed their skin to pull on another one.”

  But I don’t know. I’d like to shed the skin I’ve got if I could trade it for a skin that didn’t like to drink so much.

  Clarissa

  The little girl loves her crayons. Once Reggie broke them all in half. She cried, but then she didn’t mind because she figured she has twice as many now.

  The things she likes to draw the best:

  unicorns

  Pegasus

  butterflies

  birds

  Sometimes she wishes she were a unicorn—just a whisper of tail and horn. Or Pegasus. Because then she’d have wings.

  Pretty wings. Strong wings.

  Georgia

  I walk along Charles Street, somewhat glad to be home. Sean and I lived here, right above Mick O’Shea’s Irish Pub.

  We squirreled ourselves away in an apartment the size of a linen closet and just as dusty. We scrubbed and wiped the wooden floors, laughing and throwing sponges at each other. And often, when Sean lost himself in the circles of foam and fingers, he’d sing, and I’d lose myself in him.

  Sean had always been a mystical sort of guy, retreating for hours with a prayer book, hiking through the woods with nothing but a song in his head, coming home hours late always saying he’d lost track of time. How I let something I once valued so deeply, this soulishness, this connected heart, become a matter of contention isn’t a mystery.

  Sean didn’t know about my drinking.

  It really was a bit easier to do without him around.

  I stare up at the window that once held a bouquet of flowers or a sleeping Miles the cat but now glows with the pallid light of an office. I grieve the people we once were.

  Because the truth of the matter is, he didn’t leave me.

  I left him.

  Fairly

  I’ve decided to wow the people of Lexington with my fashion sense and good taste. So I’ve packed my vintage items; I’m much more into vintage these days, and my olive green cocktail dress is going to be stunning when I take Uncle G out to dinner.

  Uncle G says his home is a hundred and thirty years old and sits on East Fourth Street. But since I have no knowledge of Lexington, or anyplace else in Kentucky for that matter, I don’t know if it is a posh area or not. Still, those old houses are dreams to redo, and it does have central air conditioning. I made sure to ask.

  He could gut the entire place and remodel in modern. Would I love to get my hands on a project like that!

  Today I’m flying out of Kennedy. If the morning is a harbinger of the trip in general, I’m doomed. Braden stopped by on his way to work and said he wanted to come along.

  “Braden, dear, what delights could Kentucky possibly hold for you?” I made him an espresso.

  “Why, you, of course.”

  “And that’s all. Can you imagine how backwoods this city must be?”

  “What exactly is it they do in Kentucky?”

  “Horses, I believe.”

  “The thought of you on a horse makes me want to laugh out loud. Remember what you said when I asked you to go fly-fishing with me?”

  I nodded. “Who’d want to fish for flies?”

  He laughed, reached over, and rubbed my arm. “You’re priceless.”

  “How romantic.”

  Truth is, Braden comparing me to money is like Georgia O’Keeffe comparing me to a flower.

  Braden went for more toast as Solo came into the kitchen for a coffee refill. I have to admit, well, my boyfriend embarrassed me. Frivolous. Smarmy. Smart but not wise.

  Solo finished helping me tote my suitcases down to the front entrance, and I invited him to stay at the apartment with his children while I’m gone. But he declined.

  He entered the kitchen as I drank my final cup of good coffee, because does Lexington even know what coffee is? “The desk called up. The taxi is waiting.”

  “Oh, Solo. I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

  “Kentucky will be good for you. Get you away from that rapscallion.”

  “You really think he’s that bad?”

  Solo winked. “I see much, Fairly Godfrey.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute. All right then. I’m off. Feel free to make yourself at home.”

  “Thank you. And when you get home, I’ll have a nice pot of Moambé stew on the stove.”

  A few hours later I settled into my seat on the plane. A gorgeous young businessman type sat next to me and asked me to close the window blind if I wouldn’t mind.

  Mind? For a winning fellow like him?

  He made a call on his cell phone before the flight attendants told us to turn them off. I couldn’t help but listen in.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gregorio. I just can’t be home by four.”

  …

  “I know you need to get to the doctor appointment.”

  …

  “Here, let me give you my sister’s number. You might be able to drop them off there.”

  He said good-bye and smiled, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. Most people hate to hear worried fathers making childcare arrangements.”

  “Is your wife out of town?”

  “No. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “I doubt if she’ll be home again this time. Cancer.”

  “Oh. My aunt died of cancer.”

  He shook his head, then leaned it back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  I couldn’t tell him about my parents or Hort. I knew he thought me flighty and didn’t understand when I mentioned my aunt. At least he didn’t know I was only five when she passed away.

  The grace and generosity of my parents bolsters me even now. And if I could do justice to their character and their capacity to love, perhaps I’d be a writer and not a design maven. Suffice it to say, I’ve never felt love like that from anybody else. Who can love like a parent? And who can love like a truly selfless parent? And who can not truly give her heart away once such love has squeezed her shoulders with such abandoned affection? It’s easy to see how I could love Hort the way I did.

  I didn’t deserve to lose my parents so young. What child does? And the thought that I was blessed to have such parents at all, even for so short a time, only goes so far when I’m listening to insipid mealtime gossip from the glitter people. So opposite of Hort.

  And Hort. How could I have told the man on the plane that I sat in his place once? Well, sort of. I don’t have children to grieve over, but I sat by the sickbed, then the deathbed, heard the big clock ticking and ticking. But children can be a blessing as well as a curse at such times. How much different would I be if I had a little Hort Jr. running around?

  The thought made me smile.

  A little Braden perhaps?

  The smile jumped away.

  Perhaps Solo was right.

  The plane landed, and I gathered my effects.

  I laid my hand on the lawyer’s forearm. “I’m sorry I sounded so callous about your wife. I lost both my parents eight years ago in an accident. It may not be the same kind of loss, but I understand grief. I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Thank you.” And he cleared his throat and blinked his eyes.

  I still couldn’t tell him about Hort. Some things will always remain too precious. But I felt sorry for his children. So sorry.

  People see me as a birdbath.

  I am a well.

  Georgia

  Sean played percussion and sang smooth as a ribbon of saltwater taffy. Add my piano and our friend Rick’s bass, and the resulting equation formed a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I’ve never experienced a groove like that again, in love or in music.

  Especially love.

  I’ve never wanted any other man.

  When I first met Sean in ninth grade, at my school of the arts no less, he glistened like copper, thick dreadlocks stuffed with cinnamon and walnut. The product of two musicians of the classica
l bent, both parents given to reading obscure literature and essays written by people I still haven’t heard of, both inclined to Eastern thought and foods, Sean oozed a certain aloof mystery. But he also possessed a faith his parents never could understand, something buried deep within him at birth, ready to germinate with the first nourishing ray of light. Faith in everything and this thirst for something bigger and grander, able to flower inside a happy, curious childhood that took him all over the world and inside the homes of intelligent, talented, and spirited individuals who saw children as the last vestige of purity and, therefore, to be learned from and appreciated.

  As Sean always joked, “That’s because most of them didn’t have any kids!”

  His parents reminded me of Fairly’s parents, only my aunt and uncle followed Jesus. Sean’s folks didn’t understand their son, but they recognized that faith was his pathway to follow and believed discouraging it would be like breaking the fingers of a child who loved to draw.

  I met Sean in the lunchroom at school. He sat by himself, eating an apple and looking out the window. He didn’t seem to mind the solitude. I’ve never liked it, though it defines my life. I couldn’t bear to see him sitting there all alone, so I approached his table and set down my tray. “Hi.”

  He turned and looked at me, saying nothing. When I was about to pick up my tray in embarrassment, he smiled.

  I’d like to say we were bound together by pain, that he rescued me from bullies who’d been bothering me for years, that he filled the empty space my mother left behind and my father seemed to be unaware of; I’d like to say we felt some amazing electrical charge; I’d like to even say I felt the touch of God when I sat down, some sort of destiny awaiting.

  But no. I simply sat down, and he smiled more broadly.

  When he started reading the Christian mystics, people like Saint John of the Cross, Madame Guyon, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Saint Francis of Assisi, he went somewhere else—first in his mind, then with his heart, and finally with his body, retreating to the monastery in Richmond and leaving me, a twenty-four-year-old organist, heartbroken.

  Not at first. Somehow I understood back then his need to follow his heart, to find some sort of fountain that would satisfy him like the woman at the well was satisfied. It was only for six months, he said, begging me to come too.