The Off Season

by Amy Hoffman

  “Patsy,” I said, feeling annoyed. As a minister, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from advising. “It’s my mural, and he’s my friend. So, he’s in it.”

  “What about me, then?” she said. “I’m your friend too.”

  “And I’ve been meaning to ask you!” I said, exaggerating a little. She was right; she belonged in my piece—but for some reason I had put off talking to her about it. Today, for her meditation she was wearing, as always, her collar—which would be a nice touch in a portrait—with a blaze-orange windbreaker against the spring chill and a pair of faded red sweatpants with the word P-TOWN in big letters across the butt.

  She noticed me evaluating her outfit. “A gift from our teen chat circle,” she explained, about the sweatpants. “Not the most clerical, I suppose, but my meditation teacher says to make sure to wear something loose and comfortable.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said. “You look great.” I could make posters another time, I thought, and she was wearing the perfect Reverend Patsy getup.

  “Now?” she said. “But what about my walking meditation? And I grabbed this jacket from the free box; I really should put it back.”

  “I’ll disguise it,” I said. “Seize the time!”

  “I see,” she said. “Spontaneity! Well, I was almost done anyway, and you broke my concentration.”

  “And we’re almost at my studio.”

  “It was meant to be, then,” she said cheerily. After we arrived, as she was settling into the plastic chair, she continued, “Although maybe I shouldn’t say that. It’s just coincidence that I ran into you. Or really, you ran into me.”

  Setting up my pads and pencils, I wasn’t really listening.

  “And some people say there’s no such thing,” said Patsy. “Fate, destiny. Versus free will. What do you think?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Free will. Try to relax more and not grip the chair arms.”

  She glanced at her hands and quickly pulled them back from the chair, settling them onto her thighs, palms up. Then she rolled her head a few times from side to side, looked up at the ceiling, and exhaled noisily, sticking out her tongue. Looking back down and closing her eyes, she asked, “Better? It’s my meditation preparation. Very effective. I’ve done it enough by now so it almost automatically puts me into an alpha state . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Can you do it again? I just want to get that part where you stick out your tongue.”

  Patsy opened her eyes. “It’s not a performance, Nora. It’s part of my spiritual discipline. I was thinking of our session here as a kind of co-creative, co-meditation. But perhaps for you, the iconoclastic artist, it’s something different.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It looked interesting, that’s all.”

  “Honestly, I wonder about the visual arts sometimes. All the attention you people pay to appearances.” She stopped, then said, “Wow. That would make a good sermon topic.”

  “In this town?” I objected. “Aren’t most of your congregation artists?” I was hardly the only person in Provincetown with a day job and an art habit; sometimes it seemed like every person you met was busy creating in their spare time: The guy who ran the taffy store painting quite good watercolors of the ever-changing view of sea and sky from the back of his shop. My manager at the Stop & Shop piecing quilts—the kind you hang on the wall, not the kind you sleep under—who had been sewing frantically for months to get ready for an exhibit she had lined up in Boston in July. The teetotaling dyke who drove for Art’s Dune Tours, whose photographic specialty was tourists’ tattoos—she had become so expert at it that she had begun a second job at the tattoo parlor, providing her services to the grateful clients, because isn’t the whole point of getting a tattoo showing it off? Her own skin she had preserved unmarked—she hadn’t permitted even the most conventional piercing in her ears—and on the hottest days of summer, when she arrived at the shop wearing running shorts and last year’s Swim T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the tattooer would look greedily at her hefty, pink arms and legs. Too bad; she had an ineradicable fear of needles.

  People always said it was the light, and the way the surrounding ocean glittered with it, then bounced it back to shore, that inspired the artistic outpouring, but I wondered if it wasn’t also the prospect of the long, lonely drag of winter after the frantic festivity of the season that drove people to their various canvases.

  “Oh, you’re probably right—I’d be stepping on too many toes,” said Patsy. “The board chair says I have to learn to respect people’s choices—and of course I agree with that. Though sometimes, you know, it feels like cowardice.”

  “But what do you have against beauty?” I asked her.

  “The Muslims and the Jews forbid the representation of the human form, did you know that? They believe it’s against their commandments—graven images, and all that. They think it gets too close to idolatry.”

  “Harsh.” I put down my pencil.

  Patsy got a distressed look on her face. “There, you see? I’ve done it again. Ruined things. Stepped in it! That’s what my meditation teacher calls it. The walking was supposed to help. Please, finish your drawing.” She went through her stretching routine, ending up again with her hands on her thighs and her eyes closed.

  I tore off the page I had been sketching on and stared at the new one. “It’s not working, having you just sit in the chair. Let’s try something else.” Patsy’s philosophical dilemmas were making me feel claustrophobic. “Let’s go outside.”

  She blinked a few times and obediently, for once, stood and followed me out the door.

  “Try standing next to that bush,” I suggested, although as soon as I said it, I realized the scene was probably a mistake. Unlike other bushes in the yard, which had started to put out red shoots and tiny buds, the one by my studio door was still a heap of gray sticks.

  “Like this?” Patsy planted herself where I had indicated and clasped her hands behind her back. Then she clasped them in front, then crossed her arms across her chest. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her sweatpants but quickly removed them. “I don’t know what to do with my hands!” she said, holding them out to me, as though I could take them and do something with them.

  “I don’t know either,” I said. “Can’t you just stand naturally?”

  “Oh, for goddess’s sake!” she said. “What’s natural?”

  At that, we both started laughing. Janelle, my scientist, had been a stickler about that. “Ridiculous,” she would say when she heard of some preacher damning our kind because of our unnatural lifestyle. “As though human beings aren’t thoroughly socialized creatures.” I told Patsy, “Stand queerly, then.”

  “Ha! Nice,” she said. “But I don’t think this is working out.”

  “No, don’t say that. Sometimes it just takes a while to loosen up. Forget I’m here. Walk around the yard.”

  “I’ve been trying to be more spontaneous—like you—and less planful all the time. More open to experience. But maybe that’s just not for me,” said Patsy. She began walking a big circle in front of the shed, like she was picketing it. From the far end, she called, “I tried it with my sermon last week and it was a disaster. I had it all worked out in my head, and I decided to deliver it without notes. But I completely froze up. Fortunately there weren’t that many people there, and when I realized I’d forgotten what I wanted to say, I just started them on a hymn.” Patsy began humming, then sang, quite tunefully, as she approached me, “We are a gentle, angry people . . .”

  Startled by her sudden performance, I said, “That’s a hymn? ‘Gentle angry’? Isn’t that a contradiction?”

  “It’s women’s music—I’m surprised you don’t know it,” she said. “And aren’t we all full of contradictions?” She sat down and pretzeled her legs into a lotus position. “I’m hoping that as the body grows more flexible, the mind will follow,” she explained.

  “Stay like that,” I said.

  “I’ll try.
After a while though my hips give out.”

  “Tell me how you became a minister,” I said, hoping the answer was complicated enough to give me time to draw her pose. “It seems like you’re more of a Buddhist or something.”

  “Quick version or real?”

  “Real, of course.”

  “I’ll give you both,” said Patsy. “The quick answer is—oh, I like studying ethics and theology, and I didn’t want to be a college professor. I wanted to be out in the world, helping people. And that’s all true, but on top of that, I was called.”

  “You actually heard something?” I said.

  “I did,” said Patsy proudly. “I was a very conventional person—not like you, with your art. I got married after college. I worked while my husband went to law school.

  “It was my birthday—September—and I told him that to celebrate, I wanted to go for a hike. We both loved nature; it was something we shared, so we decided to climb Mount Monadnock, up in New Hampshire. It was a weekday, so not too crowded, and nice and sunny, just a few leaves starting to turn. I got to the top before Bruce—he wasn’t in as good shape as me—and he was wandering around the summit taking pictures or something. I was enjoying the view—and I heard a voice. At first I thought it was just Bruce, complaining that now we were going to have to hike all the way down over the rocks—except it didn’t sound like him. And it wasn’t exactly a voice . . .” She trailed off into silence, and I drew her sitting on the ground, her head bowed.

  She looked up. “Even now, all these years later, after everything that’s happened, it makes my skin crawl to remember it. You might think an encounter like that, out of the blue, just when you were sick and tired of appeasing your crabby husband and writing his law school papers, would be a joyful event—but it wasn’t at all. It was scary and creepy. Of course I thought I was going crazy—hearing a voice. And I must’ve yelled something back at it, because Bruce came rushing over and made me sit down on a log and eat some of his Raisinets, to get my strength back.”

  “So, what was it? What did it say?”

  “That’s something I’ve never revealed to anyone, Nora.”

  “And that’s that?” I put down my pencil.

  “I mean, I would, but I can’t put it into words that anyone else would understand. And it’s never happened again, either—thank goodness!”

  “But—that’s a totally disappointing explanation! How does hearing a voice after hiking up some huge mountain translate into ‘be a minister’?”

  “A small mountain, really. That’s why it’s usually so crowded. And it’s so strange; it wasn’t at all, that day.” She unraveled her legs. “Sorry, I can’t keep sitting like that.” She stood and began pacing again. “Who knows? Maybe what I thought was a call was just dehydration,” she admitted. “It took me years to interpret it. It wasn’t literal—‘be a minister.’ It was more like validation that I could become a competent and caring person. That I could lead—” She caught herself. “Wrong word, too hierarchical. I could encourage the people up the mountain, where it’s calm and beautiful. I’d never believed I was capable of something like that—but that was the message.

  “So anyway, when we got home Bruce had made a coconut cake—I remember that, because he wasn’t usually a baker—and he kissed me and lit birthday candles. And I became fascinated with the little flames dancing around. ‘Blow them out already!’ he said, and I did, but then I began to light candles for all kinds of occasions, and to do rituals—started going to a women’s new moon circle. Things like that.

  “Bruce thought I was wasting my time, and he got annoyed. But I told him I wanted—needed—to go to divinity school, and even though we’d decided to separate by then, he said he’d pay my tuition, just like I’d paid his. He’s a great believer in fairness, even if he is a dork. So our split was pretty amicable—I still talk to his mom all the time.

  “I know I’m not the perfect minister—but mostly the people in the congregation like me, and I’ve been able to offer them help or at least comfort in their difficult times. And I’m always trying, always learning. So I think I got the call right—I truly love this profession, in a way I never thought would be possible, back in those married days.

  “And you know something else? I’ve never eaten another Raisinet. Not even at the movies.” She stopped pacing and hugged herself. “It’s getting cold out here. Can we stop now and go inside?”

  “It’ll be freezing in there too,” I said, packing up my pencils and paper. “I’ll put these away, and then let’s go to Spiritus. We can sit inside and order a vegan pie.”

  “My favorite,” said Patsy.

  The Swim

  A few days before the swim, Baby and I were finishing our morning coffee, and I was about to gather my things together to leave for my shift when Baby said, “By the way, I told Broony I’d stay over at her place the night before the Swim.” She was attempting her usual casualness.

  “Oh,” I said. I had assumed she had spent nights with Broony before, but now it seemed that the sleepover was unprecedented, and a big deal. I wished she hadn’t mentioned it.

  “You can understand, sweetie, can’t you? It’s special for Broony,” she added in a rush. “After all our training together.” At least with me, Baby had never been susceptible to pressure or guilt. I wondered how Broony had done it, and if it meant their thing was turning into something else. A relationship.

  “I’ll try,” I said, choking out the words. I cleared my throat. “I’ll try,” I said again, louder than I had intended.

  Baby reached across the table and took my hand. “You’re the best,” she said and gave my hand a tug. “Come here.”

  “But aren’t you athletes supposed to refrain before a match?” I asked hopefully.

  Baby laughed, as though I had told a joke. “Oh you. Don’t be silly; that’s an old wives’ tale.”

  I stood, and she caught me around the waist and pulled me into her lap. She began teasing my earlobe with her tongue, and as I relaxed into her arms, she murmured, “When the swim is over, I will devote myself to you. Promise.” She gave my lobe a final nip, pushed me off her lap, looked me up and down. “I can’t wait,” she said.

  But if she was so eager to be with me, then why oh why was she messing around with Broony? I reminded myself that it was simply her nature, which I should emulate, and live more as she did—appreciate her when we were together, and not worry about what she was doing, or who she was with, when we weren’t.

  Fat chance, though. For the next few days, I worked, made dinner for Miss Ruby and me, and took advantage of the lengthening days to walk in the evenings. No matter how often I had wandered any particular side street, there always seemed to be a quaint little house that I had never noticed, its lighted windows warm and inviting. Many had so little frontage that I could see into the living rooms, to couples watching TV together on the couch or sharing a glass of wine. I always ended my walk at the bay, where I took off my shoes and dabbled my feet in the freezing water until my bones started to ache, and I felt sorry for the swimmers, until I remembered that they would all be wearing wet suits and booties, and anyhow, it served them right, two of them at least.

  On the morning of the Swim, Tony pulled up in her truck, honking like mad, at about 7:00 a.m.—way before Miss Ruby liked to be roused. I went into the living room to see what was going on and found her, annoyed, wrapped in a huge terrycloth robe that according to the red crest on the lapel had apparently been stolen from the Lisbon Hilton. She yanked open the door and stuck out her head. “Quit that racket!” she yelled.

  “Are you gals at it again?” someone answered her from across the street.

  “Jeez, that was years ago,” Miss Ruby yelled back. Tony honked a few more times and then descended from the cab. “Get in here!” Miss Ruby told her. “The Swim doesn’t even start until eleven.”

  “I was excited,” Tony said. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  The forecast had been for a clear day, but the s
ky was low and gray. “It’s going to rain,” I commented hopefully.

  “Nah,” said Tony. “This kind of thing, it’ll burn off by 8:30.”

  “I don’t know, Tone,” said Miss Ruby. “Nora could be right. It has that settled-in look.”

  “And what exactly makes you think that?” said Tony.

  “My pop was a fisherman,” said Miss Ruby. “I’ve got the instinct. You’ll see.”

  But Tony was right. It drizzled a bit, which caused Miss Ruby to gloat, but little by little, seams opened in the cloud cover, and by the time the three of us loaded our signs into the truck and squeezed into the front seat, the sun shone brightly on a pretty Cape spring day, sparrows twittering in the trees, humans and nature alike ignoring the mourning doves’ continual, ominous hooting.

  I was pleased with my signs. I had decorated the “Go Baby!” sides with multicolored curly ribbons and sequins and shards of purple-streaked scallop shells that I had gathered on the beach, while the reverse, “What’s Polluting Our Water?” sides were stark, black sans serif caps on white. Tony dropped off Miss Ruby and me and the signs at the Boatslip motel and bar, from which the swimmers would be ferried out to Long Point, the very tip of Cape Cod, the cupped hand that sheltered the harbor. From there they would swim the mile and a quarter back to the Boatslip, accompanied by a motley flotilla of kayaks, canoes, rowboats, and other floating devices. Tony drove away to find parking.

  “Careful how you carry those,” I told Miss Ruby. “I don’t want everything falling off them.”

  “Figures Tony would get out of hauling this stuff around.”

  “I just hope she doesn’t miss the swim looking for parking, with town being so crowded.”

  “You’d think it was the Season already,” Miss Ruby agreed and chanted the Jaws music. “Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum.”

  “I bet people do that who never even saw the movie,” I said. “Do you think the guy who wrote it gets good royalties?”

  “Movie?” said Miss Ruby.