All Saints

by K. D. Miller

  But then, in between the highs and lows were those precious, fleeting bits of time when she was Ruth. Dear, funny Ruth. Neither dead cold nor white hot. Ruth he could touch and hold. And he would convince himself all over again that he could hold her and he could keep her and she would stay.

  Did he believe in God?

  At first, he had thought he must just be angry. He had counselled enough bereaved people over the years to know that anger with God had to be indulged before anything could heal. So he had waited for the hardness inside—so much like an adolescent sulking behind a slammed door—to soften. But it had not softened. And as the weeks and months went by he had begun to wonder if a door had even been slammed. If there was a door to slam. A face in which to slam it.

  Kelly was waiting, pen poised over page.

  “I find that, as I get older … ” he began. He would have to word this carefully. He was, in spite of everything, the new rector of All Saints. Whatever he said would serve to categorize him in the eyes of each member of his congregation. The one who took every word of the Bible literally and was anxious to know that he did too. The one who subscribed to a New Age Jesus that morphed conveniently into Buddha or Krishna or any other spiritual flavour of the month, and was anxious to know that he was just as laid back. And this one in front of him. An old hand who edits the newsletter. In the pew every Sunday. Yet possessed of enough negative capability to see it all sometimes as so much hooey.

  “ … as I get older, I believe fewer things. But I believe them more deeply.” He paused to let her write that down. When she was finished, she looked back up at him, waiting. Giving him that grave, silent gaze he had seen when he told her his wife was dead.

  “And I’m starting to wonder if the word ‘believe’ shouldn’t be retired in favour of the word ‘belove.’ I didn’t make that up, by the way,” he said, watching her scribble. “More than one theologian out there has written it far better than I can say it. But the idea of beloving, rather than believing. It gets you over that whole literalism hump which is so difficult for so many people, one way or another. And it captures the idea of relationship. Because it is an ongoing relationship. With its ups and downs, like any other. Its periods of anger and silence, followed by periods of intimacy and joy.”

  “Especially … turning off my cell phone.”

  He always comes round to that. The default detail. But better than nothing. How often has he said to a parishioner who was struggling with words, “Just tell me one thing. One small thing. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just anything at all.” He remembers a woman finally bursting out, “I forgot to feed the cat this morning!” And from there they worked it round to her husband’s affair with his dental assistant.

  Now, as always, he imagines Kelly nodding and saying, Okay. You turned off your cell phone. Then what happened?

  “I took a nap.” He always comes round to that, too.

  “All Saints is my first incumbency, Kelly.” And it will be my last.

  He had watched her putting the pieces together. She had asked him about his previous churches, and he had listed them for her—curate at St. Philip’s-On-the-Hill, then associate priest at St. Paul’s, then associate at St. Tim’s and lately associate at St. Mark’s. She had scribbled it all down then flushed slightly, looking at her notes. Obviously wondering how to frame the next question. Or whether to ask it at all.

  “Most first-time rectors are a lot younger than fifty-eight,” he said, smiling as she visibly relaxed. “But I’ve no regrets. My talents and inclinations were always more pastoral than administrative. And I’ve worked with some wonderful clergy around the city. But I guess if you hang in long enough, eventually you get kicked upstairs.”

  That was the official story. That, and his alleged lack of ambition. The truth of the matter, which everyone knew and no one spoke, was that if you were going to run a church, you’d better have the right kind of partner. A sturdy, reliable helpmeet. Who would neither chatter a mile a minute at parish events while people exchanged looks, nor slump in a chair, vacant-eyed and all but drooling, stoned on her latest medication.

  The only one who ever wanted to talk about it, and once actually tried to talk about it, was Ruth. It was during one of her sweet, short respites from highs and lows. She sat him down. Calmly and gracefully, she started to apologize to him for wrecking his career. He cut her off. Would not hear what she was saying. Repeated the cant about his pastoral skills. His lack of ambition. Blamed himself for being timid. Lazy. Stupid. Lacking the balls for the job. After a while, she bent her head and stopped trying to protest. And she never brought the subject up again.

  Turning off his cell phone. Lying down on the hotel bed for a quick nap before the evening reception. Not crimes. Not sins. But what he keeps coming back to. Probably because they are neither crimes nor sins.

  “I left her alone?” he suggests to Kelly’s sweater. “I cut myself off from her?” No. A step. Furthest he’s gotten so far. But still not the essence. “I shouldn’t have believed her? When she said she’d be all right? I should have insisted she come with me?”

  The sweater still waits. He can see the pattern in the knitting round the collar now. And on the far wall, above the bookcase, the shape of Ruth’s junk sculpture cross is dimly visible.

  He went away for a weekend. One of those increasingly common—and increasingly desperate—“Whither the Church” conferences that are scheduled into the gap between Christmas and Lent. As a career associate, he was always the one who had to go to these things and take notes, sparing the rector to stay behind and do the real work. So, as he always did, he asked Ruth if she wanted to come. Preserving that courtesy between them—the illusion that her staying home alone was a real option.

  For once, she said no. Stood her ground when he tried to argue with her. Insisted that he go without her. That she would be fine by herself for two nights and a day.

  She was on new medication. It seemed to be working, but without the zombie side effects. She was as stable as she had been in years. Maybe because she was past the worst of menopause. They’d been told things might settle down once she was in her late forties, her early fifties. (They’d spent so much of their marriage sitting side by side on hard chairs in doctors’ offices, being told what they could or could not expect, could or could not hope for.)

  It was a long drive to the conference centre. The cold was so sharp he kept expecting the windshield to shatter with every gust of wind. In his room he unpacked and looked over the weekend agenda. A reception that night, followed by an open discussion about youth—“Cyberspace to Sunday School—Is There a Bridge?” He almost wept. He couldn’t face it, after that drive. Not right away. So he turned off his cell phone. Just for a little while. Ruth would be fine. She had said she would be fine. Then he lay down on the bed for a nap. Just half an hour or so. That was all he needed.

  A crescent of light is edging round the top button of Kelly’s sweater. “It’s not about leaving her alone,” Simon tells it. “Or the cell phone. Or the nap. Is it?”

  No, the sweater seems to agree. It isn’t.

  They are all red herrings. They do not constitute his original sin.

  “So what are your plans, as rector of All Saints?”

  Do my time and get out.

  The facts, as he had explained them in his mind to his dead wife while he was packing, were these. Yes, he was moving up from associate to rector. Finally. But it was only happening because yet another priest had burned out, leaving an opening that had to be filled quickly. Yes, he would have his own parish. Finally. But it would be creaky old All Saints which was tiny and getting tinier by the Sunday. He doubted the bishop actually thought he was going to revive the place with his innovative ideas and commanding presence. More likely, it was a relatively painless way of getting rid of them both. Five or so years of ministering to a dwindling congregation would serve to end his career. And his r
etirement would make it easy for the diocese to turn a cool eye on All Saints, with its empty pews and emptier collection plates.

  But that wasn’t the right answer for the newsletter.

  “My plans, Kelly, are first to touch base with each of the Sunday morning regulars. Ask them why they come, what they want and need from All Saints, how much of it they’re actually getting, and how we can work together to build on that.”

  Not exactly inspiring, he thought, watching her write. But doable. The touching base business wouldn’t take long. According to the records, Sunday numbers had rarely topped one hundred in the last five years and tended more often to hover around seventy-five.

  There were no children at All Saints, and only a handful of teenagers. The biggest group were the old guard, the ones who had been baptised in the font some eighty years ago, confirmed on the chancel steps, married at the altar, then had followed their spouses’ coffins out through the nave. They showed up every Sunday without fail to complain if the candles weren’t lit or if the word people was substituted in the liturgy for the word men. Little changes terrified them. They were so close to the big one.

  The only incoming were the so-called seekers. Late thirties and up. Just as terrified as the old guard, but for different reasons. They had stepped through the door of a church, some of them for the first time in their lives, because something had happened—a death, a divorce, a diagnosis, a downsizing. All of a sudden they were on their own, with no context, no frame of reference, no way to make it all mean something. Most of them disappeared after a few Sundays, as mysteriously as they had come. A few stayed on. The way Kelly had.

  “I lied to her,” he says to the sweater. “That’s it, isn’t it? I should have told her the truth when I had the chance. But I didn’t.”

  You can tell her the truth now. It’s still dark. There’s still time.

  He woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the hotel-room door. He was still fully clothed, lying on top of the spread. He got up, confused by the light coming through the window. Stumbled to the door and opened it. It was the maid. Wondering if he was going to go down to breakfast, if she could come in and do up his room.

  He grabbed his cell phone and turned it on. Ruth had called at six the evening before. Called and left no message. Six. Just when it would have been starting to get dark.

  He gets up from his desk. Walks past the chair with the sweater on it. Goes to the bookcase. In the dim light the junk sculpture cross looks like a black and white photograph of itself. He puts his palms on the wall to either side of it and braces himself, leaning forward and hanging his head.

  “Ruth,” he begins, “that time, when you tried to tell me you were sorry for screwing up my career, I should have let you talk. I should have heard you out and accepted your apology. And then I should have said, You’re right, Ruth. You did screw up my career. You screwed it up good. Best thing you ever did, matter of fact. But you know something? It’s okay. Because if it was between the church and you, there was no contest. Even with all the ups and downs and the craziness and the shit and the maxed-out credit cards, the church never stood a chance. I chose you, Ruth. And I’m glad. There. That’s what my so-called career was about. And that’s what I should have said to you. And I’m sorry I didn’t. I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m sorry.”

  He stays leaning against the wall, head down. Breathing through his mouth. Feeling the tears well and drop. Forcing himself to see her. To ask himself the questions.

  Would she have heard the phone, if he had called back in time? Was she already out on the porch in that bitter cold, shivering under the quilt she had allowed herself, washing her pills down with the bottle of cabernet she had selected from their wine rack? And even if he had called and she had heard, would she have been capable of getting back inside the house?

  Or did she sit and wait on the couch? The quilt folded beside her, the bottle and pills resting on it? Feeling, as the darkness deepened and the stars got sharp in the sky, his tacit permission sinking into her bones?

  What was it about this woman? He had to take charge here. He was starting to feel ridiculously close to tears again.

  “How about I start by touching base with you, Kelly? What brings you through the door of this place every Sunday?”

  She had every right to remind him that she wasn’t the one being interviewed. But she stopped writing and sat very still, her eyes on his desk blotter.

  “It keeps me real.”

  He wanted to prompt her—real in what way—but sensed that the answer was coming.

  “I mean, I work with a lot of people who are a lot younger than me, okay? And they’ve all got their gadgets—their cell phones and their iPads and whatever everybody’s just got to have this week. And that’s what they talk about. Gadgets and clothes and TV. Even when I’m on the bus, I hear all the phones going off, and all the people flipping them open and saying, Hi. I’m on the bus. And I just get scared. And I’m not even sure what I’m scared of.”

  She was silent. He waited, watching her mouth.

  “It’s just so easy to—I mean, I worshipped my ex. I did. He was everything. And then he left me for somebody else. And I felt like Alice for a while—you know? Falling and falling and never touching bottom? And you want to touch bottom. But at the same time you’re scared of what bottom might be?”

  Simon nodded. “Getting back to your word, real,” he said. “Are you saying that coming here saves you from worshipping false gods? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be putting words in—”

  But she was nodding. “No, you’ve got it. I mean, I don’t know if All Saints is the be-all and the end-all. But it’s about something. And whatever that is, it’s not going to be obsolete next week. And it’s never going to dump me.”

  Simon is back at his desk. The window behind him is turning pale. He sits and faces the sweater. Searches his memory for the end of the penitential rite.

  “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven;”

  “And whose sin is put away.”

  “The Lord has put away all your sins.”

  He hesitates, then says, “Thanks be to God.”

  “Go in peace, and pray for me a sinner.”

  He smiles, imagining Kelly’s embarrassment, the way she would wrinkle her nose over having to say that final line.

  Kelly.

  He gets up, goes around to the front of his desk and lifts the sweater off the back of the chair. Shakes it gently and folds it. Stands looking down at it in the growing light. It’s as soft as ever in his hands. He raises it to his face. And still that hint of Ivory soap.

  What They Have

  They have two forks, two knives, two spoons. She sneaked each utensil out of the residence cafeteria last term. “You’re not stealing, Babe,” he told her. “You’re taking back.”

  It felt like stealing to her. She would sit alone, pretending to read. She would finish her soup, put her spoon down, then quickly drag it off the edge of the table and into her pocket. The next day, she would have a salad and do the same thing with the fork. Keeping her head down, letting her hair hide her face. Secretly proud of her new skill.

  They have no plates or mugs or glasses yet. They’ve just been using whatever they find in communal kitchens. But now, she’s thinking as she follows him to their latest address, they should get some of their own things. Mugs and plates, at least. Maybe a pot or two. A set of bowls.

  They have her student loan. His part-time job at the music store. They’ll manage.

  They have a mattress, almost new, which a friend with a car has already delivered to the house. Both their pillows are his, from a former relationship. The first time she saw them, she thought of pillows in cartoons—grey-and-black striped, with bits of feather sticking out. She quickly covered them with the white-on-white embroidered pillowslips she had brought from home.

  “There’ll
be sheets in the residence,” she had said when her mother showed her the set.

  “They’ll be like burlap. Here. Take these. Percale. Feel.”

  They have his Hudson’s Bay blanket, half an inch thick, with the trademark stripes. “All we’ll need, Mama,” he’d told her, winking. He was right. She was used to Ontario winters. Here in Vancouver she hardly needs her coat.

  They have their books, mostly hers, and their records, mostly his. Her unfinished poems and stories in a three-ring-binder. His harmonica, which he calls a harp. He plays it alongside his favourite blues albums, jerking his mouth back and forth, making a sound that reminds her of train whistles far off in the night.

  He is seven years older than she is—old enough to have been a hippie, one of the originals living on Fourth Avenue. She saw hippies once, the summer she was fifteen, in Yorkville. Her mother insisted on keeping the car windows rolled up as they drove through on their way back to Willowdale because of the threat of hepatitis. A young man who looked like Jesus tucked a flower under their windshield wiper. A young girl in a long dress smiled at them and made the peace sign. Emily looked down into her lap, aware of her mother’s eyes on her in the rearview. Her hand was making the peace sign back.

  Now in bed she sometimes fingers the scar on his temple that he tells her he got from a police baton. His knuckles are scarred, too, from old fights. He still carries a knife. His features are sharp and fox-like, his voice light but flinty. The look in his eyes, except when they’re resting on hers, is furtive.