All Saints

by K. D. Miller

  Oh, bloody hell. What does she want now?

  Lunch. Has your lunch ready for you. Well, it’s a peace offering. Better go up. Marriage. One ceasefire after another. Potshots in between.

  Need your lunch, anyway. Keep your strength up. Might not be able to get through to Barney by phone. Might have to go to Grimsby. Take the bus, now that your night vision’s shot and she has to do the driving.

  Try the Legion first. If he’s kept up with the Legion. Then make inquiries at the Chamber of Commerce. Man like Barney, he’d have made a name. Or if not, try the local churches. What was he? Catholic?

  All else fails, go door to door.

  You’ll know him, even through the screen. The eyes don’t change. And he’ll still have that smile. Garth! he’ll say, and open the door and pull you in. And then—

  Oh, here’s a thought. Amazing what comes to you.

  What if Barney’s been building a room too? All this time? For you? Place you could come and just be, Garth. Figured it was time to put my money where my mouth was. After sixty years. Time to make a place for Garth, I said to myself. Time to bring Garth home.

  Christ. What a thing to happen. Make you laugh, it would. Laugh till you cried.

  Still Dark

  Simon closes the door of his office behind him. Locks it. Checks that it is locked. Turns and wades through the dark until he nudges the edge of his desk. Works his way around to his chair and sits.

  He pulls open the bottom left drawer, bunches the hanging files together and reaches into the cavity at the back. Touches a softness that always surprises him, like the fur of a sleeping animal.

  While his eyes adjust to the dark, he lifts the sweater out, holds it up and shakes it gently. Telling himself again that he should be keeping it in a plastic bag. Telling himself again that he shouldn’t be keeping it at all.

  “Simon? Hi. It’s Kelly again. Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I left my sweater in your office this morning.”

  She had. She had been wearing it when she arrived to interview him for Saints Alive. “Hot for September,” she had murmured halfway through, unfastening the top button and pulling her arms out of the sleeves. She was wearing a white shirt underneath, tucked into jeans. The sweater had slipped down behind her on the chair, and she must have overlooked it when she was gathering her stuff to leave—purse, pen, notebook, hat.

  “I don’t see it, Kelly,” he said into the phone. Which was technically true, if not the truth. He had spotted the sweater—a small black bundle on the chair seat—the second he returned to his desk after seeing her out the door. He had picked it up, thinking to call her back. But then he had just stood, holding the thing in his hands.

  “Is there any chance you left it in the ladies’ downstairs?” Compounding the lie, now. “I can ask Gail to have a look.” Implicating his secretary.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ve been all over the place since I left the church, so it could be anywhere. I’ll just have to retrace my steps. Thanks anyway.”

  “I—” He what? Had just told an untruth, in addition to committing theft? Two out of ten. Not bad for his first week. “I enjoyed our chat this morning, Kelly.”

  “Me too. You’re an easy interview. Well, I guess I’ll see you Sunday. Bye.”

  Simon lifts his face. There’s a warm patch near the neckline from his breath. And still that hint of Ivory soap, after—It’s the middle of November.

  How much longer is he going to do this? Try to do this? He should just give up. Have the sweater cleaned and give it back to Kelly.

  And tell her what? And what, exactly, would he be giving up?

  Easier just to get rid of the thing. Right now, while the place is empty. Sneak downstairs and slip it into the donation box in the hall outside the sanctuary. A classic, unadorned black cardigan. Chances are not even Kelly would recognize it if she came across it at the rummage sale or saw it on one of the neighbourhood’s homeless.

  But what, exactly, would he be getting rid of?

  He has this argument with himself every morning.

  When he can see well enough, he gets up and goes around his desk to the facing chair. Drapes the sweater over the back and arranges it so the button at the neckline is centred. That’s important. It gives the garment a presence, a sense of awareness. And there is something sweetly composed about the curves of the fabric joining at the button.

  He sits back down at his desk. Looks for a long time at the dim shape of the chair, the dimmer outline of the sweater. Imagines Kelly sitting facing him.

  “This is beautiful.”

  She had arrived early for the interview. He’d had some forms to deliver to Gail downstairs, so he’d asked her to make herself comfortable. When he came back up into the office, he found her looking at the cross hanging on the wall above the bookcase. It was one of the first things he’d unpacked when he arrived the week before. It’s so fragile.

  “My wife made that,” he said, coming and standing beside Kelly. He hadn’t realized how short she was. Her head barely reached his shoulder.

  “I don’t know why the paint brush is so right,” she said. “It just is.”

  It was an old brush, the kind a house painter would use, all splattered and stiff with dried paint. Ruth had wired twigs across the handle to make a rough cruciform shape, then had hung trinkets from the twigs. There was a blue beaded bookmark she had picked up in a gallery gift shop. A pink heart-shaped pendant she had worn as a girl. A round white shell she had found on the beach, with a convenient hole in it for the wire to go through. A brass Buddha pin she had worn in university. A jade pendant in the shape of some Maori god that a childhood pen pal had sent her from New Zealand.

  “It’s probably the best thing she ever did,” he told Kelly now, as they stood looking at it together. And one of the few things she ever managed to finish.

  It helps, in this new place, to look up from his desk and see it on the wall. It helps to imagine Ruth working away at it, her lip caught between her teeth, her braids—she would have braided her hair to keep it out of the glue—swaying back and forth. “It was BYOJ,” she had told him, flushed and bright-eyed. Simply happy for once. “And there was this big communal pile of junk in the middle of the floor that we all got to pick through.” She was always starting some course or other—yoga, watercolour painting, meditation, collage, acting, creative writing, and now junk sculpture. The workshop had been a one-day affair, and had coincided with one of her good days. “Trust me—you haven’t lived till you’ve watched two grown women in a tug-of-war over a headless Barbie doll.”

  “So she’s not doing this kind of thing anymore?” Kelly asked.

  “No, she—” Surely his story would have preceded him? Churches are such gossip centres. “I’m sorry. I should have said something. Ruth—my wife—died. About a year and a half ago.”

  Kelly turned and looked up at his face. He braced himself for the I’m so sorry to hear that or the My condolences on your loss or even the What did she die of? that had long since ceased to shock him. But she said nothing. Just gazed at him gravely for a moment, then turned back to the sculpture.

  “See how it moves,” she said softly. “See how the bits of it are swaying back and forth, just with our breath.”

  “Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins.”

  Simon keeps his eyes on the sweater, hearing the words in Kelly’s voice. Then he whispers the response: “His mercy endures forever.”

  He imagines her saying the first line of the psalm: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness;”

  He whispers the next line: “In your great compassion blot out my offences.”

  “Wash me through and through from my wickedness;”

  “And cleanse me from my sin.”

  It’s been years since he’s heard a confession, much less asked anyone to hear his own
. The Reconciliation of a Penitent is there in the prayer book, available for anyone who wants it. All may, some should, none must, as the saying goes. People confess to their psychiatrists now, or to the Internet. Words like sin and mercy and wickedness strike them as quaint at best, more often baffling or even offensive.

  But the lofty language serves a purpose, as he’s tried to explain, the few times he’s gently urged a parishioner to consider confession, even just as a way of offloading some guilt. It helps both confessor and penitent to focus. It maintains a boundary between them, and preserves the dignity of both. It—

  Who is he preaching this sermon to?

  After a couple of abortive attempts in the pool of light from his desk lamp, he committed the rite to memory. He needs to get through it without having to see the page. He needs to start in the dark, to come gradually into the light. Otherwise, he’s just reading to a sweater.

  Simon hadn’t felt much of anything in months. His body had become a thing to feed and wash and clothe. It got him wherever he had to be and anchored his floating mind. Then Kelly said what she did about them breathing on the sculpture and making it move.

  He took a step away from her. Turned and headed for his desk. “Do you mind if we get started?” Even to himself he sounded abrupt. “I have quite a day ahead of me.”

  A few hours later, he lied to her and stole her sweater.

  “May God, who enlightens every heart, help you to confess your sins and trust in his mercy.”

  Kelly has a slight lisp. Simon smiles, imagining her damp delivery of those last few phrases. He whispers the response: “Most merciful God, have mercy upon me, in your compassion forgive my sins, both known and unknown, things done and left undone.”

  He pictures the word especially as it appears at this point in the prayer book, italicized and followed by an ellipsis. In seminary, it had been a running joke: Especially … the toenail clippings down the back of the chesterfield. Especially … the crusted Kleenex under the mattress.

  “Especially … ” he whispers, then stops, as he always does. The sweater waits. It is easy to read patience into its silence and stillness.

  He recognized Kelly, that day in his office. Knew her instantly—as his confessor and more—and had to get away from her. Right then and there. His arm was too ready to lift, reach, pull her to him.

  Something they weren’t taught in seminary is how erotically charged the confessional can be. A secret will wait for years, decades, until the right pair of ears comes along. A new priest, maybe. Or a stranger on a bus. Or a woman making an innocent remark about breath. He was so close, that day. If he had let himself, he could have dissolved into her. Soaked his tears and sweat into her, and the spit from his bawling mouth.

  And then what? Would she have run screaming from his office? Or would she have stayed and received him—all of him—in her arms?

  It’s still dark in the office, but not as dark. The window behind him will soon start to turn pale. And Gail gets in at eight-thirty.

  “Especially … ” he whispers, then stops again. Every morning for weeks, he has gotten this far, then has stopped.

  “So did you always want to be a priest? Or, deep down, do you still wish you were a fireman?” Kelly clicked her pen and waited, notebook open on her lap.

  Safe behind his desk, Simon let himself take a good look at her. He wouldn’t call her pretty. Certainly not beautiful in the classic, patrician way Ruth had been. With her big eyes blinking behind those glasses that managed to stay perched on the bridge of her small nose, she was more like a friendly alien. A Disney-drawn bug.

  “Some people would say that I am a fireman, Kelly. Or maybe that I sell fire insurance.” Oh hell. She was writing that old chestnut down. “What I remember is wanting to be anything but an Anglican priest. Probably because my father was one. Typical rebellious son. Then one day, well, I won’t say I heard a voice, exactly. But something in me did seem to be telling me to grow up.”

  “What is a priest?”

  Hello. He wasn’t expecting that one. “Good question. Okay. Let’s see if I can remember my own job description from seminary. I think the formal definition is ‘one who is set apart by the church to preside over the sacraments and minister to the community.’”

  When she stopped writing, she sat looking down at her notebook for a moment. He wondered if she was disappointed in his answer. Maybe she was expecting something more poetic. Personal. She looked up again and he had to smile. She was kind of buggy, with those spiky bangs. And so unlike Ruth. Odd he would have felt—

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Especially … ”

  He’s confessing to a sweater. A woman’s sweater. Every now and then the weirdness of what he’s doing hits him. He imagines the sexton walking past the office on his rounds some morning. Hearing something. Using his pass key to open the door. He can just see himself trying to explain that it’s not the way it looks.

  Or is it?

  Okay, he’s been friendly with Kelly. But he’s always maintained a pastoral reserve. And he’s only had lunch with her a couple of times since the interview. Three times. But eating with parishioners and getting to know them is part of the job.

  She’s a year younger than him. Single. Works in a library. Not a cradle Anglican. Wandered into All Saints about fifteen years ago, in the wake of a divorce. He was at St. Tim’s fifteen years ago. What if she had wandered into St. Tim’s?

  He never cheated on Ruth. Never seriously wanted to. Not even during those long stretches when she couldn’t stand to be touched. He could have. There were always women who were attracted to the collar he wore and the rituals he enacted. He did sometimes get a certain look over the rim of a communion cup. And he would probably have been more pitied than blamed, by anyone who knew Ruth. Knew about Ruth.

  He wasn’t a saint or anything. He just could never stop hoping. Whenever she was coming down from a high or up from a low, he would see again that girl standing in the middle of the student centre, a rubble of dropped books and binders and papers at her feet. His first week of university, and here in front of him was this unbelievably beautiful blonde girl. And when he asked if he could give her a hand, she laughed and said, “I’ll take two if you can spare them.”

  He needs to focus. “Especially … ”

  The dark is starting to lift. He can see the holes in the top button of Kelly’s sweater, and the criss-cross of thread.

  Is he flirting with professional suicide? Is that what this is about? The church’s policy is clear about clergy not entering into relationships with parishioners. He appals himself sometimes with the silly risks he takes. Walking into her library that Monday morning. Pretending he didn’t know it was the branch where she worked. Suggesting oh-so-casually that they go for lunch. And then that Sunday afternoon when he phoned her about a change to the proofs of the October Saints Alive. He didn’t need to consult her. He just wanted to hear her voice. They got going about movies and books and things, and he heard himself say, “I could talk to you all day.” He tacked on an awkward, “But I’m afraid I have to go. Thanks so much for your time.” When he hung up, his heart was banging like a boy’s.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I crossed that question out, then put it back in, then crossed it out again. See?” She held up her notebook to show a page of scribbles, ending with the words Do you believe in God? “It’s just, I’ve never asked one of you guys what you actually think about things. And sometimes I wonder. Because some Sunday mornings, I sit there in the pew and it all seems like a bunch of hooey. Sorry.”

  “No. Don’t be sorry,” he said automatically. The standard pastoral response when somebody blurts out an awkward truth, then apologizes for it. As if they think his collar is there to shield him from anything controversial. “It’s an excellent question. The best possible question. And I’m very glad you asked it.”

 
So how in hell was he going to answer it?

  He hadn’t prayed since Ruth’s death. He had conducted services, had mouthed the words of rituals. But when he tried to open himself and wait in silence, now that he had the time, now that he had so much less to worry about—

  He used to pray constantly. For Ruth. About Ruth. In spite of Ruth. When she was happy, she sucked up all the happy air in the room. When she was sad, she sucked up all the sad air. There were times when he could hardly breathe, when he would beg God to help him remember that it wasn’t her fault. That he must not blame her for sitting in a chair day after day, staring at the floor. Or for going off on one of her mad quests, maxing out their credit card on junk from the hobby store because she was going to make some marvellous, magnificent thing that was going to be worth millions and make them both rich and famous and—

  Help me to remember was his mantra. Help me to understand. That it was an illness. That she was not playing some fucking game. That he must not lose his temper and yell at her to stop. Just stop. Please. Just put a stop to it. The cycle. The never-ending up and down.

  Ruth Ascended was a fearsome creature—eyes preternaturally bright, a crackle of energy around her like a halo. Ruth Ascended had no tolerance for ambiguity. Demanded to know what exactly he believed, and what exactly he expected her and everybody else to believe. Insisted on a clarity, an integrity, a sharpness of vision he could not give her. “You should have married a fundamentalist,” he joked once, in the early days before he understood. Before he had any idea.

  Ruth Descended was not capable of belief. In anything. He begged her once, when she was on her way down but still reachable, to tell him what she saw opening up beneath her. Share it with him, so that he could pray into the void. Fill it up with God. She couldn’t. One thing the descent robbed her of was coherent speech. Her words would get fewer and shorter, the sounds moving further back in her throat, becoming guttural, almost inaudible. A linguistic devolution. This time, when he asked her to tell him what she was seeing, where she was going, she rolled lightless eyes to meet his and opened her mouth. No sound came. No words. Just those eyes, and that mouth hanging empty.