by K. D. Miller
“Ash Wednesday is a tough one,” Simon goes on. “We get told not to make an empty show of things, to rend our hearts instead of our garments. And in the gospel reading for today, Matthew says that only hypocrites stain their faces with dirt to show how pious they are. So what are we doing here? Is it a good thing to receive ashes on our foreheads or isn’t it?”
His eyes meet Kelly’s for a second. She knows she must look like hell. Her eyes are still smarting and her nose feels big. He quickly looks away from her.
“When I was going over the readings last night, I was struck by all the references to hearts. Given that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, it got a little spooky.” He grins again. “And then I remembered a concert I took in late last year—a performance of the oratorio Ecce Cor Meum, by Sir Paul McCartney. Ecce cor meum means behold my heart, and according to the program notes, McCartney took the title from an inscription he found in a church, beneath a depiction of the crucifixion.”
You’re so good at this, Simon. You charm your way through a service. Just the right balance of light and serious. The way you charm your way through a phone call. A lunch.
“In the first movement of the oratorio, McCartney invokes what he calls Spiritus, and asks it to teach us to love. And in the final movement there is a magnificent outpouring, over and over, of Ecce cor meum, behold my heart, in which he makes his central statement, namely, that to hear his music is to know what is in his heart—indeed, that his music is his heart.”
So what’s your heart, Simon? She remembers him in her dream, chattering away in his red plaid shirt.
“The part of the oratorio that touched me most deeply, however, was not the climax I’ve just described. Between the second and third movements there’s an interlude which, though voiced by the choir, is wordless. Just a kind of humming, and ah-ing. It’s very slow. Very sad. Elegiac. And indeed, it is a lament for Paul McCartney’s wife Linda, who as you know died of cancer several years ago.”
He pauses. Kelly wonders if he’s thinking of his own dead wife.
“So, as I was trying to pull all this together last night, it occurred to me that just as the resurrection would have been impossible without the crucifixion, so too that joyful musical climax—that Ecce cor meum, behold my heart, may not have been written, or at least, may not have been written with such beauty and power, were it not for the heartbreak that preceded it.”
Well, that’s pretty goddamned convenient. And what do you know about heartbreak, Simon? Oh all right, maybe you know something. Maybe you know plenty. But what has it taught you?
“And I think that’s why Joel tells us to rend our hearts rather than our garments, and why Matthew warns against disfiguring our faces. It’s not that these gestures are intrinsically wrong. But in order to be something other than vain show, they must be done wholeheartedly.”
Who do you think you are, telling me you could talk to me all day? Saying things like that to me? I’m not some dog for you to pat on the head. And I’m all by myself. And in three years I’ll be sixty. If I live that long.
“So we can certainly begin Lent by receiving ashes as a reminder that our lifespan is limited. But we shouldn’t stop there. We need to go on to acknowledge the thing in our life that most frightens us, most pains us. The thing we are most reluctant to face. It doesn’t have to be death, though it can be. It can be the need to confront someone and say, ‘You have hurt me.’ Which is the first step on the road to forgiveness. Or it can be the need to tell someone that we love them. Whatever it is, I suggest you enter this season of Lent with the intention of saying, in effect, Ecce cor meum. Behold my heart.”
He goes to the altar rail and picks up the brass bowl. He turns back to them and recites, “We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes, an ancient sign, speaking of the frailty and uncertainty of human life.” Then he gestures them forward.
When Kelly’s turn comes she keeps her eyes down. Does not give him a chance to smile at her. Or wink. His fingertip feels gritty and dry on her forehead. “Kelly, remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”
Once they’re all back in their pews, Simon wipes his sooty hands on the linen cloth. Then he steps forward and says, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”
They respond, “Thanks be to God.”
He walks down the chancel steps through the church to the narthex. They wait until he’s out of sight to start buttoning coats and gathering up purses and scarves. Then they make their own way out. Simon will be waiting for them at the entrance to shake hands and say hello.
Kelly stays in her pew. That’s the tradition. If you need to talk to the priest, you stay in your pew after the service. He won’t be long, with only seven people to greet.
Polyp.
Her eyes fill again. Spill over. It’s not dying that she’s most afraid of. What she’s most afraid of is picking out a valentine with a safe nothing of a message inside. Then deciding not even to send that.
She wipes the wet off her cheeks, then pushes her bangs back off her forehead. Too late, she remembers the ash. Now her fingertips are black. She stares at them.
She can hear the last murmurs of greeting. He’ll be pulling the door shut now. Coming back through the narthex. Soon he’ll turn and enter the church.
She raises her hand to her face. Draws her sooty fingertips down one cheek. Then the other.
And there are his steps, coming up the centre aisle toward the chancel. They pause. Resume more slowly. She does not turn to face him. Not yet. Her heart is thumping against her breastbone. She takes in a deep breath. Ecce cor meum. Lets it out. Behold my heart. Breathes in. Ecce cor meum. Out. Behold my heart.
Kim’s Game
No. Surely not.
He takes a second look round, turning in a circle as if doing a slow dance. The light has thickened from yellow to gold. The shadows of the trees have grown together in a tangle. And in the minute or two since he stopped to get his bearings he has started to shiver.
He turns in a circle again, jerkily this time, peering hard through his glasses from each point of an imaginary compass. Trying to ignore the sudden sick clenching in his stomach.
There is no undergrowth. He should have registered that when he set out from the cottage. He does remember being a bit disappointed that the trees were mostly conifers. He would have liked a bit more autumn colour. A crunch of leaves underfoot. Something that might give him the first line of a poem.
Now an old geography lesson from school comes back to him. How pine needles form a layer on the forest floor that turns the rain into acid, making the topsoil infertile. That’s why no undergrowth. And no path.
No path. All this time, first on his way into the woods, then doubling back the way he came—or so he thought—he has merely been walking in the spaces between the trees. And now, wherever he turns, such spaces beckon like the paths they resemble. A dozen mock paths. A hundred. Leading out in all directions from his thin-soled shoes.
“No. Surely not.”
He shouldn’t have spoken aloud. It was a concession of defeat to send his voice out into the darkening quiet. He will not do it again. Instead, he will think. Conserve warmth and think.
He wishes he had brought his gloves. His bare fists are icy in the pockets of his windbreaker. He crosses his arms over his chest, shoves his hands up under his armpits and does a mental inventory. He has no matches. No flashlight. No water. No blanket. No compass. So much for his old scouting motto—Be prepared. All he has with him are his wallet and the keys to his apartment. Which is hours away. South of here. Wherever here might be. He’s sure Cathy must have mentioned what town the cottage was near. But he never remembers such things. Not that it would help him now.
Just north of Toronto, he had said vaguely when someone at work finally asked him where this cottage was. He had made a point of saying he was spending the weekend
in a cottage with friends. He had said it more than once. He doesn’t often have something to say as Friday rolls round and everyone starts talking about what they’re going to be doing.
He chafes his hands and blows into them. Wonders why people do that. All it does is wet the hands and make them colder. Wallet and keys. Christ. Going to rub them together, Owen? Start a fire? He recalls picking them up off the green-painted dresser in the little room that was his for the weekend. Thinking about leaving a note—Just going for a walk. Back soon. Then deciding not to. Any note from him, however breezy in tone, would at this point seem precious. He had, as the younger people say, blown it.
Do you want to come, Owen? One of them—one of the women—Sue? Jen?—said this over her shoulder as they were all heading for the door. It was an afterthought on her part, he could tell, one of those little half-hearted kindnesses that come his way. And he knew how to respond to it, as surely as he knew, when the subject of the excursion first came up—a trip to town to pick up wine and food for that evening’s dinner—that he was not expected to come. It is a lore he acquired early, knowing when to step aside.
“No, no, no,” he chuckled, making a shooing motion. Trying for avuncular again. “You all just go along. I’ll be fine. Might take a nap.” Then he barked a laugh, as if this was the funniest thing in the world.
He was just as glad to be left out. He had not wanted to cram again into a car, packed thigh-to-thigh with people who were all two decades younger than he was, and whose names he was still trying to memorize. The trip up last night had been bad enough.
The worst part was the stop halfway for dinner. The talk was not of writing or even of books, as he might have hoped, but of television shows he does not watch and movies he would never think of spending money to see. The one time he spoke up was to ask if anyone else’s food was as cold as his had been. He hadn’t meant to put a damper on things. But they had all gone silent and startled looking. No, no, mine was fine. Mike? Was yours cold? Nope. Sue? How about you? Then when the waitress came to ask how everything was, they all said it was fine. But he felt he owed it to himself to point out, politely but firmly, that his food had been cold. So of course the waitress said that he should have told her, that she would have taken it back to the kitchen to have it heated up. Which obliged him to remind her that she had chosen to absent herself from their table until they were all but finished eating, and when people are paying inflated restaurant prices—
Just then one of the group interrupted to say they still had a ways to go, so they’d better hit the road.
He hadn’t meant to cause any unpleasantness. Be the complainer. While he was getting ready for the trip, shopping for his windbreaker and his pair of blue jeans and all the miniature travel toiletries he was going to put into his new leather case, he had thought up things he might say, little jokes he might tell. He was starting to look forward to the weekend. With Cathy. So when the idea of Kim’s Game came to him, it had seemed nothing less than inspiration.
He doubted any of the rest would even have heard of Kim’s Game. But that would be good, for once. After all, the writers’ meeting they were going to have on the Saturday night wouldn’t last forever, thank God. There would be a long stretch afterwards by the fire. They’d be glad of a game to play.
He imagined himself gathering objects from each of them—a watch, a set of keys, a comb, a pencil—then explaining the rules, the way his scout master used to. Maybe throwing in a charming anecdote or two about this scout master, who had been so kind to him. Always sitting beside him at the annual Father and Son banquet because his own father wasn’t living—the phrase his mother had always preferred he use. So much more tactful than the word dead.
Perhaps he wouldn’t mention the scout master after all. No. He’d just stick to the game. He’d arrange the objects on a card table—every cottage has a card table—then cover them with a sheet or tablecloth. Once the group had gathered round, he would whip the covering off and give them exactly three minutes—he would time them by his watch—to memorize what was on the table. After that, he would replace the covering and give them another three minutes—no more—to write down from memory everything they had seen. Longest list would win.
It’s all about observation, he imagined himself saying while they listened raptly and Cathy’s eyes glowed with pride for him. It’s the way spies used to be trained. I believe soldiers are still given it as a test. And police. Furthermore, there is a more complicated form of the game. If I may. He would instruct one person in the group to wait until he had his back turned, then remove one object from the table and nudge the other objects together to close the gap. When he turned back around, he would amaze them all by guessing the missing object almost immediately. It’s harder than it looks, he would caution them while they all clamoured to be the next to try. Seeing what isn’t there. Out of sight out of mind, you know.
He knew he would emerge the victor, just as he used to all those years ago in scouts. He was never very good at the practical side of things. He didn’t like eating outside and was nervous around water and always managed to come home with a cold. But he was the undisputed Kim’s Game champ. The secret, which he had never divulged but thought he might just share with Cathy, was to take particular note of the most ordinary, least interesting objects. Anybody could remember the jewelled brooch or the unusual keychain. But the plain book of matches? The worn and smudged eraser? It was his peculiar talent to notice such things and, more crucially, to remark their absence.
Yes. The game would be his contribution. He had reminded himself of that when they stopped for dinner on the trip up, and it had lifted his spirits after the cramped ride. Even without Cathy the weekend might turn out to be not so bad after all. Bit of an adventure. He had even toyed with the idea of springing for a round of beers. Once they all sat down, he had almost said, Let me spring for a round of beers. The older fellow, jolly and avuncular. Yes. That’s who he could be. Who he always used to be at work. Sort of a built-in mentor for anybody who was new. Something of a grand old man, as time went on. Until the damned computers came in, and turned him into—
If Cathy had been there, he wouldn’t have hesitated to suggest a round of beers. But Cathy wasn’t there. So he missed his cue. Started to worry that his generosity might look patronizing. Wasn’t even sure, come to think of it, if that was the way you said it these days—spring for a round of beers. And then the baffling conversation about television and movies had started up, and after that the business of his food being cold.
At breakfast this morning—brunch he supposed it was, at ten-thirty when he had already been awake for hours without so much as a cup of coffee—he had thought he might redeem himself through his spice loaf. He had baked it, after all. From scratch, as they say. Using his mother’s recipe, transcribed in her lovely handwriting on one of the yellowing index cards he had asked her to fill out for him when he left home. He had imagined smiling modestly at the compliments the loaf would garner, murmuring something about an old family recipe, finally giving in when they all but begged him for it, reciting the ingredients and directions he had made a point of memorizing, for just such a moment.
But the moment never came. He sat and watched his spice loaf disappearing slice by slice into the chattering mouths. God, they all looked alike. No wonder he couldn’t keep them straight, what with their generic names. A Jen and a Jan. A Mike and a Mick. Two Chrises—a male who looked female and a female who could be anything. He suddenly missed Cathy so fiercely that tears started into his eyes. Cathy was as young as the rest, yes, but she seemed older somehow. More mature. Ageless. Classic. Eternal.
Still, he had tried, at breakfast. Brunch. “That’s an excellent fruit salad,” he had said pointedly to the woman who had just swallowed the last of his spice loaf. “It’s fresh fruit, isn’t it? Not canned?”
Now, really. What had been so funny about that? Maybe if they’d been born in England
while the war was still on and knew what it was like to grow up seeing exactly one orange a year, on Christmas morning, and not even that until he was fully eight years old, they might not turn up their noses at the notion of canned fruit.
“Did you sleep well, Owen?” one of them asked, probably seeing the look on his face and feeling a twinge of guilt. Kind of thing you ask an elderly aunt. And no, he had not. The bed in his tiny room had been lumpy and the sheets damp. But he knew by then not to complain. “Very well, thank you. And you?”
He was just as glad to see the back of them when they all left for town. Besides. There was another reason—secret and a bit shameful—that he needed to be alone.
He hadn’t been able to move his bowels that morning. The restaurant food of the night before, the strange bed, but above all the exposed pipes of the old cottage through which rang the sound of every opening of a tap, every flushing of the upstairs toilet, had blocked him. Plus, there was no air freshener that he could find, not even a scented candle the like of which he had at home in his own bathroom. The thought of executing a potentially thunderous and malodorous movement for an audience gathered in the living room directly beneath was simply—well, unthinkable.
So the second they all got into the cars and left, he grabbed the box of matches he had spotted on the fireplace mantle, got his book of Larkin’s collected poems from the dusty wicker lamp table beside his bed and headed for the bathroom.
Nothing. He felt solid inside, as if he was made of fudge. Fudge that won’t budge, he thought desperately while he sat and strained, listening for the sound of the cars returning. He had no idea how far away this town was. Well, maybe he should write a poem about constipation. Read it aloud at the meeting tonight after dinner. My latest excretion. Rub their noses in it.