by Lisa Samson
The door inches open. He peers around it first. “Okay to come in?”
“I just said so, right?” I pointed to a space heater on the floor. “But hurry up and shut the door, okay? We’ve got bootleg warmth going in here.”
“What?”
I sit on the desk and push the chair out with my foot. “Have a seat. In case you didn’t notice, the house is freezing. Blaze keeps the heat at, I don’t know, fifty-five degrees?”
“It’s sixty, I believe,” Lella corrects.
“Yeah. Sixty. And so Lella has a hard time with the cold. On our walk last night, someone put this heater out by the curb to be picked up.”
Lella nods. “I said, ‘Valentine, why not take that back with us and give it a go? Maybe they’re just wasteful folk who simply don’t need it anymore.’”
“So we plugged it in and suddenly we’re in sunny Florida.”
“Is it too hot in here?” Lella asks.
“No way. This is a treat.”
“You seem like the conservationist type.”
“I am. But if you two don’t deserve a little warmth, I don’t know who does.”
I move to the bed, cross my legs Indian-style, place a pillow on my lap, and settle Lella’s head on the softness to give her a better view of Augustine. It’s easy to see why she likes him. There’s something cute about his face, even though not much of it shows with that beard he wears.
His T-shirt tells me God is not a Republican or a Democrat. I point to it. “Does anybody really think either of those things?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“So what’s up?” I ask. “You all having a New Year’s Eve party at Shalom?”
“Nah. Jessica and Rachel are going down to the square to watch the fireworks, and that just leaves Justin, who’s in bed by seven every night.”
“Are they all monks?” I ask.
“Well, they’ve taken the vows.”
Lella lifts up her head. “What vows?”
Augustine explains, going so far as to tell about the whole eternal chastity business.
She lays her head back down on my lap and listens. “I’ve never heard of this sort of thing, Augustine. Is it binding?”
I smile. He smiles. “Of course. I promised God.”
“But does He hold you to these promises if, well, if other opportunities come along?”
Augustine’s no dummy. He reaches out and touches Lella’s cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Lella.”
She closes her eyes. A tear slips from the corner and slides down the ledge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Augustine kneels in front of her. “No need.”
“I wish—”
“That your eyes didn’t display your heart?” he asks.
“Oh, yes.” Her eyes remain closed. I look down upon her.
Oh, Lella. Oh, Lell.
“There are other ways to love.” He lays a hand of blessing on her head and he looks at me. “You know that. Many ways. Look at the love between you and Valentine.”
I nod, yes, that’s right. Lella nods. She opens her eyes. “Do you love us, Augustine? It seems as if you do.”
“Yes. God’s stamped you on my heart. And when I see the both of you, something rings, a sort of song.”
“I could never be much good to you or Shalom,” she says.
Confusion stitches a line from brow to brow. “You two have no idea how precious you are, do you?”
We stare at him.
“I wish I could hug you, Augustine. I’ve never given anyone a hug in my entire life.”
Augustine lifts her into his arms and holds her against his chest. “I’m sorry, Lella. But pretend you’re hugging me, all right, and I’ll feel it in my heart.”
She closes her eyes, screws up her face.
Augustine blesses the top of her head with a kiss. “Yep. I felt the love!”
Lella smiles. “I did too. You can put me down, if you please.”
“She hates to be held like a baby, Augustine.”
“Oh! Sorry.” He lays her back on the bed then sits back down, rests his palms on his knees.
I shake my head. “Don’t mind me for saying so, but that was a little, well, TV movie-of-the week.”
“I’m not very original, I guess.”
“It was a lovely gesture.” Lella.
“Why don’t you tell us why you’re here, Augustine?”
He taps his fingers in succession. “I came over with an invitation for tonight. Blaze told me yesterday you all had no plans for New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh, dear me, no!” Lella almost gasps. “It’s the most depressing night of the year as far as I’m concerned.”
“We were just talking about that,” I say.
He rubs the tops of his legs with the palms of his hands. “Remember Poppy Fraser?”
“Of course,” I say.
“She’s part of a group of ladies who get together for prayer every week, along with Charmaine and a few others. So they’re having a little feast over at Charmaine’s to ring in the New Year.”
“Ring in or pray in?” I ask.
“Ring. Wanna come? I’ve borrowed Rachel’s truck. Room enough for all three of us.”
“How can we, Augustine?”
“Oh, but, Val!” Lella screws her head around, eyes teeming with excitement. “Wouldn’t it be fun?”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t. You should have known better, Augustine.” I lift Lella’s head with the pillow and slide out from under her. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Maybe you should see yourself out now.”
I close the bathroom door behind me and lean against it, feeling the indentations of the panel along the back of my ribcage. With about as much emotion as a refrigerator, Judy Garland, recorded years ago in Girl Crazy, sings my favorite song.
My bedroom door clicks shut. Augustine must be gone.
“He tries too hard,” I say loudly enough for Lella to hear.
She doesn’t answer. She’s probably a little miffed at me for turning down the invite for the both of us.
After slapping some cold water on my face and combing my hair back into a neater ponytail, I step back into the bedroom. Lella’s gone.
Lella’s gone!
He took her with him? That rat!
I rush down the steps and yank open the coat closet door, the coat I made her nowhere in sight. The stroller is gone. Shoving my feet into my boots, I grab my parka, my scarves, and run out the door into the coldest night of the year. Nine o’clock, the hall clock begins to chime. Nobody loiters about. No pedestrians traverse the sidewalk.
And there are the tire tracks. I am not going to Charmaine’s. But I’m not going to sit alone with the space heater either.
Zipping up my coat, winding one scarf from ear to ear and the other to circle around my face, I head off under the stars toward Lake Coventry. I walk by the hot spots on the town square and beyond. Hotel Oak is thumping with a live band, Java Jane’s has a guitarist and a singer in the back corner. Nobody looks my way. Just another soul bundled up against the soon-coming January.
On the road to the lake I pass Josef’s. A party’s going on there too.
What in the world are these people so excited about? Don’t they remember they failed almost every resolution last year and that life is still a big old pile of quiet desperation? What in the world is the matter with them?
I haven’t come here yet this season. To my dock on Lake Coventry. Its stumpy legs disappear into the shining waters of the lake, a full moon lighting the expanse sitting calm in no wind at all as if nature proclaims it just another night, not even worthy of the breeze. I wonder if Charmaine will show up.
She’s been meeting me here for three off-seasons now.
Probably not.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on the world. Maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe I could take a lesson on this night when people decide to pull back a little or take chan
ces, when hope for change ripens fully yellow, begging to be plucked and bitten down to the seeds.
But it’s at night when I feel with a desolate song that we are allowed only a few drastic chances, and Daisy, as she rubbed the Drano into my skin, used up almost all of them.
I was pretty. I was just one of those fresh pretty girls you see on the street with swinging hair and a little bounce to her breasts.
A board creaks behind me. I turn.
“I knew you’d be here. When Gus came carrying Lella, and you not in sight, I just said to myself, ‘Charmaine, now get on over to that dock, ’cause sure as rain in spring that girl’s going to be there.’”
“Hey Charmaine, come on over.”
She sits down next to me. “I’m not going to ask why you didn’t come. I already know.”
“Yeah. So how come you left the party?”
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a knit cap. “Oh, I don’t know.” She shoves the cap over all that hair. “I figured it would be so much better out here in the freezing cold night than sitting by our warm fire with a cup of tea and a plate of homemade cinnamon rolls. Call me crazy.”
Charmaine just makes me laugh.
“Why don’t you come on over, Valentine? Poppy made crab cakes and she’s from Maryland. They’re really good.”
“Nah. I really don’t want to. Plus, you’ll have to say you found me, and I don’t want everybody coming down feeling sorry for me and acting all sad. I mean, pity’s okay, but not when it pulls people away from a party. And then they’ll realize we’re closer friends than anybody knows.”
“Except Harlan. He knows everything.”
“I don’t want everybody in Mount Oak thinking they can be my friend just because you are.”
She sighs, puts on some gloves, and leans back on her hands. “Sometimes it’s nice to keep something or somebody mostly to yourself. I like that about us. So you’ll never guess what I did.”
“What?”
“I actually volunteered to cook dinner next week at Shalom.”
“Oh no, Charmaine. Why would you ever do a thing like that?”
“It’s Augustine. He could talk a fish onto dry land. He said he needed a couple of big pots of stew or soup or something for Wednesday night. There’s some group coming into town, The Psalters. They’re a band of Jesus-minstrel types or something like that. Augustine had a hard time pinning down their style.”
“Jesus-minstrel types?”
“That’s what he said. Kinda gypsyish too.” She waves a hand. “Don’t ask me, Valentine. And there’ll be some of the street people. When they hear there’s a meal at Shalom, a few always show up. Folks from the neighborhood too. You need to help me cook. I’m terrible in the kitchen.” She waves a hand. “Oh, I try and Harlan’s so nice about it, always complimenting the meal no matter how horrible it tastes, but cooking for a crowd? You know how to do that in your sleep.”
I lay a hand on her leg. “Charmaine, think about it. I don’t want to go to a party tonight or share you with anyone. So why would I help you out in public?”
“Because I need help. Augustine went on and on about moving outside our money and busyness so we can see God in fresh new ways.” Her eyes deepen like the waters. “I need to see God in fresh new ways, Valentine. And so do you. You.”
Her hot steel gaze slices through my frozen soul. She knows. She knows who I really am down underneath this crust of skin and scar.
Looking up at the crystal stars, I say, “Can we cook in the middle of the night and maybe you can heat it up the next day?”
Charmaine hugs me. “Of course you silly.”
“I was just totally manipulated, wasn’t I?”
“Not a bit, Val. You talked yourself into it all on your own.”
“I must be slipping.”
The next Tuesday, Charmaine drifts into the driveway at midnight, lights off, engine off.
I jump down off the porch. I open the passenger door to her plain white sedan. “Well, we don’t have to be quite this clandestine.”
She waves a hand. “I just thought it’d be more fun this way.”
“You’re right, it is.”
“I got bags and bags of groceries in the backseat.”
I look in the back as I hop in. Seven paper sacks line the bench seat. “IGA?”
“Only game in town far as I’m concerned. I got everything on your list.” She starts up the engine. “I tried that new Safeway out near the mini-mall right when it opened. Too big and fancy. My lands, I don’t need to buy Chinese take-out where I get my Captain Crunch. Honestly, how we’re going to support a big Safeway is beyond me.” Charmaine turns onto Mortimer Street. “So I got in the checkout line and you should have seen the magazines at eye level! My lands, talk about body parts. More body parts than I want to see!”
“You crack me up.”
“It’s not that I’m all against body parts, in the right circumstances. Fine. God made all the bodies and all the parts. I just don’t want to see your body parts when I’m buying milk and eggs.” She quick turns her head in my direction. “Well, no personal offense meant.”
“None taken. I’d rather keep my body parts to myself anyway.”
“Me too. But bras are pretty good these days. For a while, back in the eighties there were those underwire things with the flimsy fabric. Now me, I like a little padding.”
“Me too. Not too much, but enough for no topographical show-through.”
“That’s exactly right!”
“Don’t you just love girl talk?”
Charmaine’s the only person in the world who talks to me like I’m just another woman. “You don’t know how much.”
“Glad I can supply the need. Did you forget your scarf on purpose?”
Oh no. “No. Shoot. Do you think anybody’s going to be awake?”
“Nope. We’ve made sure of that!”
“Well, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t, Valentine.”
She turns down Oakly Road, probably one of the most forlorn, forgotten lanes in town. It’s only a few blocks from our house, but it seems miles away.
“Shalom is on Oakly?”
“Uh-huh.” She leans toward me while still keeping her eyes on the road, lined on either side with shotgun shacks, crumbling frame houses and one or two heroic little homes with fresh paint that seem to be saying, “We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve been given.”
She gestures up and down the street. “He moved down here with those other people. And one of the homeless guys said to him, ‘You movin’ onto Oakly? Dag, but I’d never live there!’”
We laugh.
“He’s a unique piece of work,” I say.
“Oh, don’t I know it. When I look at him, I see what maybe Jesus might look like if He came back to do it all over again, but in Mount Oak, not Jerusalem.”
“Does he ever get in trouble?”
“All the time.”
“What’s he do that’s so controversial?”
She leans over again. “He tells people they can’t serve God and money.”
I shake my head. “Exact opposite of that guy that used to have that show with you and Harlan. Do you know what happened to him?”
“Nope. Nobody knows. His show did real well for a time, but then his cockiness started to show through.” Her voice turns even more down-home than usual. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned after all these years on the air and on the road, it’s that people don’t like arrogant. They don’t like that at all. It’s a shame, though. There was a good man underneath there.”
I just grate out a hmpf and then add a little snort for good measure.
“I know, I know, I see the good in everybody. Harlan says it’s a good thing I’m not a Calvinist because that whole total depravity thing would be lost on me!” She laughs as she pulls up to the building at the end of the road. Low-slung, it’s held in closely by the edges of the narrow lot outlined by a rusty chain-link
fence, its surface a pebbly concrete that makes you want to stand there and pick out all the stones.
“What did this building used to be?”
“An old laundromat. You can see in the big front room there’s a lot of water damage on the tiles. Where there are tiles.”
She fumbles with her key ring, locates one in particular, then shoves it in the lock of the front door, a glass door with a push bar anchored from side to side.
“I’m a nuisance for making you come out so late, Charmaine. It’s a good thing you don’t mind that.”
“Are you serious? I’m just thankful you’re here at all. Let’s just get back through to the kitchen. Don’t cut on the lights or somebody might see us!” she whispers. “Oh, isn’t this so fun?”
I follow her to the back of the room, past two card tables, then two old couches facing each other with a coffee table in-between. Somebody made the coffee table from four cinder-blocks and two lengths of evenly cut board. On its surface several votive candles sputter amid Bibles, prayer books, and incense cones on brass plates. “What is this? Some eastern religion stuff?”
Charmaine waves her hand. “They pick and choose from church practices throughout the ages. I don’t begin to understand it, but it really means a lot to Gus. And it’s all Jesus, so no worry there. At least there’s that.”
“Like I care.”
“There was incense in the temple, you know,” she says.
“Like I care about that too.”
“Oh, Valentine, you care more than you’d like to admit.”
She ushers me through a doorway into a small kitchen. An old 1970s gas range in that dark gold color with a tea kettle on one of the burners, a porcelain sink, and a worktable, probably an old folding table from the laundromat, seems to be the sum and substance of the food preparation operation. “At least it’s a gas stove,” I say.
“The fridge is on the porch.”
“I’ll start bringing in bags.”
“No, no. Let me do that while you get cooking.” She points to an old armoire. “Pots and stuff are in there. My lands, you can tell this place is run by unmarrieds. There’s just some spoons, a couple of knives, and a few pots, but somehow they make it work.”
“Then we will too. I’m not going to let these monks have anything on us.”