Life Goes On

by Philip Gulley

  “Don’t be such a wet blanket, Sam. It’s time I lived a little. By the way, if you see Dale, remind him to water the houseplants.” Then she hung up the phone on me, again.

  I got dressed, ate breakfast, then went past Dale’s house. He was still in bed. The doorbell played through four verses before he opened the door. He had slept in his clothes.

  I steered him toward the bathroom, turned on the shower, and laid out fresh clothes. While he was getting dressed, I fixed his breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast with butter and strawberry jam (butter first, then jam—he was getting pickier every day), bacon (not quite crisp, but not chewy either), and coffee.

  By now his appetite had recovered and he tapped his coffee cup against the edge the table in rapid succession when he wanted it refilled. It was all I could do not to break it over his head. “Don’t forget the cream,” he said.

  “Dolores phoned this morning,” I said.

  “She did! Is she comin’ home today?”

  “No, not today. She and her sister are going to Louisville for a boat ride.”

  “In the middle of winter?”

  “Apparently so. Anyway, she wanted you to water the houseplants.”

  “Gee, Sam, could you do that for me? I just don’t have it in me right now.”

  “Sure, Dale.”

  There were a lot of plants. It took me fifteen minutes to water them, then another twenty minutes to wash the breakfast dishes.

  “Do you know how to run a washing machine?” Dale asked, as I wiped the counter dry.

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe you could start a load of laundry. I’m running out of skivvies.”

  “I can show you how to run it, Dale. It’s not hard.”

  “It’s those basement stairs,” he said. “I can’t get up and down ’em very easy on these old knees.” He chuckled. “Guess I’ve worn ’em out praying on ’em all these years.” Vintage Dale, taking every opportunity to remind me of his piety.

  “Tell you what, Dale, why don’t you gather up your underwear and I’ll get them started.”

  I started the washer, then prepared to leave. “I’ll be back later today to move them to the dryer.”

  “What’s for lunch?” he asked.

  “How about the Coffee Cup?”

  “Can’t afford it,” he said. “They’re wanting three-fifty for the hamburger platter now. Must think people in this town are made of money.”

  I reached into my wallet and pulled out a twenty. “This’ll get you through the week, Dale.”

  “What about my pie?”

  “What pie?”

  “The pie I like to eat with my hamburger platter.”

  I fished out a ten-dollar bill and handed it over.

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “No problem, Dale.”

  “Sure am gonna be awful thirsty, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Coffee’s a dollar a cup now.”

  I handed him a five, which was the last of my money.

  “How about tip money? I’d hate for Heather to think I’m cheap.”

  “Check your couch cushions.”

  It took me an hour to track down an address for Dolores’s sister, and another two hours to drive to the city. I sat for four hours in her driveway until they arrived home from the riverboat.

  “What are you doing here, Sam?”

  “I’ve come to take you home, Dolores.”

  “Is Dale at the end of his rope?”

  “No, I am. Now please get your suitcase and come with me.”

  “Sam, you don’t know what it’s like to live with that man.”

  “I’m starting to get an idea, and I am not without sympathy. But you’ve made your point, and we’ll make Dale promise to go to marriage counseling if you come home. I think he’ll agree to that now.”

  “You think?”

  “If he doesn’t, I’ll kill him. Either way, your problem will be solved.”

  I had her home in time for supper. As we turned into the driveway, she began to tear up, and when Dale came to the door, they broke down.

  I arranged them in a sodden lump on the couch. “You,” I said, pointing to Dale, “will attend marriage counseling with your wife. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you,” I said, singling out Dolores, “will stop being a doormat and stop running away from home and gambling and letting strangers massage you. Is that clear?”

  She sniffed and nodded her agreement.

  “I’m going home now. I’ll meet with you tomorrow, and we’ll make arrangements for marriage counseling.”

  “Sam, before you leave, could you switch my underwear to the dryer like you promised?” Dale asked.

  It was going to be a long winter. I could tell that now. And if I made it through without violating my commitment to nonviolence, it would be a miracle.

  Twenty

  Our Winter Meditations

  The weather broke at the end of January. It had been a cold winter with heavy snow, the schools had closed four times, and parents all over town were deep in prayer that the weather would improve, which it finally did. Ned Kivett at the Five and Dime was so desperate for warm weather, he set up his annual bathing suit display a month early. He dressed his new mannequin in a bikini and propped her up in the front window, causing no small amount of scandal among certain townspeople.

  It was the first bikini to ever appear in the window of the Five and Dime. Before this, Ned had only sold one-piece bathing suits that covered everything but the wrists and ankles. He had received the bikini by mistake. At first he thought it was a pair of ear muffs and an eye patch, though a closer look revealed it was, in fact, a bikini, and not a very large one at that. If the weather hadn’t been so bad, he would have returned it. But the cold weather and the gray days have weakened his moral defenses, so he put it on the mannequin instead.

  While the Friendly Women were busy circulating petitions demanding Ned cease and desist, the men at the Coffee Cup began speculating about who might purchase the bikini. After much deliberation, it was decided only three women in town could actually wear the bikini and do it justice—Heather Darnell at the Coffee Cup, the recently dethroned Sausage Queen, Tiffany Nagle, and Deena Morrison.

  Bets were placed as to which of the three would eventually purchase it. The smart money was on Tiffany Nagle, so you can imagine our surprise when Dr. Pierce waltzed into the Five and Dime on a Wednesday afternoon, plunked down twenty dollars, and waited while Ned undressed the mannequin, packed the bikini in a plain brown wrapper, and handed it over to Dr. Pierce, blushing all the while.

  This led to all sorts of theories about Dr. Pierce among the Coffee Cup crowd, none of them complimentary, until Asa Peacock pointed out he probably bought it for Deena, his bride-to-be. “Probably for their honeymoon,” Asa said.

  “That’s gonna be some honeymoon,” Kyle Weathers observed, with more than a touch of envy.

  The Coffee Cup fell silent as the men contemplated Deena’s honeymon.

  “So has anyone heard where they’re going?” I asked, feeling it my duty as a minister to shift the focus of their attention away from Deena and her bikini.

  “Someplace warm, I’d guess, with a bikini like that,” Bob Miles said.

  “Where’d you and Barbara go, Sam?” Asa asked.

  “Cincinnati, to see the Reds play.”

  “That’s some wife you got there,” Vinny Toricelli said. The other men nodded their agreement.

  “Me and Jessie went to Peoria to visit her aunt,” Asa said. “I think about it every time I hear our song.”

  “What’s your song?” I asked.

  “‘Moonlight Over Peoria.’ Do you know it?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “It didn’t get a lot of play time around here,” Asa conceded.

  We discussed other trips we’d taken, being careful not to sound too enthusiastic. Travel is viewed with suspicion in our town, as it implies a diss
atisfaction with staying home. Travel to the neighboring states is fine, so long as one doesn’t make a habit of it and is quick to declare that, although it was a fine place to visit, they wouldn’t want to live there. In 1971, Harvey and Eunice Muldock visited Puerto Rico and came back with pictures. People still talk about it, and not charitably.

  As for honeymoons, they are opportunities to visit relatives you haven’t seen for a while, so spouses can know what it is they’ve gotten themselves into.

  Travel to Europe is acceptable, but only in the event of war, to put down the occasional fascist uprising. Otherwise, it’s pretentious and people will think you’re a snob. Dr. Neely and his wife visited France this past August. The trip was a gift from their daughters, so they had to go. But they did the right thing and told everyone they had a miserable time, were glad to be home, and if they never went back it wouldn’t be too soon. People have been willing to forgive them, because if they hadn’t gone, then Dr. Pierce would never have come to town and he and Deena wouldn’t have met. So it was God’s will that Dr. Neely and his wife went to France. Yet one more example of God bringing something good from tragedy and hardship.

  The trustees at the church have been painting the inside of the meetinghouse, on the assumption Deena will be getting married there. She had told me she might be married in the city, where she grew up, though I haven’t told anyone, for fear the trustees will lose their motivation for sprucing up the meetinghouse. I encourage them each afternoon by mentioning how grateful Deena is for their thoughtfulness, then suggesting that while they’re at it they might as well replace the carpet.

  The carpet was installed thirty years ago. It was donated by the late Esther Farlow, who knew six months in advance she was going to die and used that time traveling from one carpet store to another before finding the carpet she wanted—an utterly repulsive lime green shag. Esther, I now suspect, was passive-aggressive and wanted to annoy us in perpetuity, knowing once a church has installed carpet it takes an act of God to get it removed.

  To my utter amazement, the trustees let loose of ten thousand dollars and had new carpeting installed. They sought no one’s counsel but their own. They simply ripped out the old carpet and replaced it, figuring it would be easier to apologize than to ask permission.

  The carpet is a muted gray, the meetinghouse walls a soft blue with white trim. It is a vast improvement, well worth the headache I received from the paint fumes. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the back booth of the Coffee Cup, writing my sermons there until the fumes dissipate and I can return to my office. Though I might not go back. It has been a pleasant experience. Heather keeps my glass of iced tea full, and Vinny lets me eat all the day-old pie I want.

  The restaurant patrons have been diligent in providing me a variety of illustrations and ideas for my sermon. They tell bawdy jokes about traveling salesmen and farmers’ daughters, then grant me permission to use them in my messages. That sets off a round of chortles and snickers. They seem to delight at the opportunity to lead me astray.

  “You hang around here long enough, and we’ll expand your vocabulary,” Vinny promised. “You ministers spend all your time with little old ladies. You need to get out more, like Jesus did. You never saw him hanging around with church people. He ate with sinners.”

  “Yes, and it got him killed,” I pointed out.

  I told Vinny if he wanted me to stay he’d have to install a phone jack at my booth so I could call people, and three days later, there it was, along with a sign: The Harmony Friends Meeting Annex. Some people spend their winters in Florida, which I can’t do, given our town’s feelings about travel. So I’m spending my winter at the Coffee Cup, in the warm fellowship of sinners.

  There are benefits I didn’t anticipate, which make my time here all the more pleasant. Fern Hampton won’t come near the place, citing the moral depravity of its patrons. In fact, they’re quite virtuous. They just act depraved so people like Fern will keep their distance.

  I’ve even been doing some counseling here. I’ve noticed people feel freer to stop by and visit, people who would never show up at my office and admit to having problems, but who will join me at the annex, sip on their coffee, and unburden themselves.

  Dale and Dolores Hinshaw have been stopping by. After their brief separation, I’d met with them twice and suggested to Dale that he might spend less time saving the lost and more time with his wife, so he’s been bringing her to the Coffee Cup for lunch. Though that isn’t quite what I had in mind, it seems to be working. She told me it had been two weeks since she’d had the urge to choke him.

  If they hadn’t been married so long, I’d be worried about them. But there is, I’m discovering, an inertia inherent in some long-term marriages that makes parting difficult. Divorce would require opening new checking accounts and cleaning out the basement, which, when you’re past fifty, strikes some people as too much work. So they put up with one another and maybe hope that God in His mercy might call their spouse home and grant them freedom.

  Couples who should never have married in the first place stay together sixty or seventy years so the dreadful task of cleaning their basement will fall to someone else, namely, their children. My parents get along well, though I live in mortal fear they will stay in their home until their deaths, leaving me to deal with the staggering accumulation of their union. For years, I have urged them to have a garage sale, which they’ve refused to do. Now my only hope is that they will divorce and be forced to clean their own basement.

  There was a woman in our town, years ago, named Myra Stapert, whose pack rat husband died, leaving her with a house full of junk, which she remedied by setting the place on fire and moving to an apartment over Grant’s Hardware. People rushed to assist her, giving her clothing, food, Tupperware, mismatched sets of dinnerware, and old television sets. Within three months, she was worse off than before, a victim of charity. Her only option was to leave town in the middle of the night. We never heard from her again.

  I shudder to think what Deena and Dr. Pierce’s children will think when they happen upon her bikini fifty years from now, tucked away in a trunk up in the attic. Or maybe find an old, yellowed picture of their sainted mother standing on a beach dressed very simply. “Is that Mom? That looks like her, but that can’t be her, can it? She wouldn’t wear anything like that, would she?” I’m glad I won’t be around to have to deal with the fallout.

  Or when Dale and Dolores pass away and their oldest son, Raymond Dale, will clean out the top drawer of Dale’s desk and find the letters he wrote to Dolores when she left him for a week. He’ll recognize his father’s spidery handwriting. “Why did you leave? Please come back. I promise I’ll change. I’ll get the money back. Please come home. I miss you. I need you.” Letters Dale wrote, but never mailed. They’re still there and soon he’ll forget about them and one day, years from now, Raymond Dale will discover them and the image of his parents that has sustained him all these years will be shattered.

  Myra Stapert had the right idea when she burned all the evidence.

  When people came to church the last Sunday in January, they walked in, saw the new carpet, and had a fit. Why weren’t they told? Had this been discussed? Did the trustees have the authority to do such a thing? Why gray? Why not red? For that matter, what was wrong with the old carpet? With all the starving children in the world, was it good stewardship to throw money away when we already had perfectly good carpet?

  Fern Hampton demanded to see the bill of sale, so she could find out which trustee had the temerity to order new carpet without consulting her. But it couldn’t be found. The trustees had the good sense to dispose of everything that would connect them to this heinous crime.

  “I think it was Harvey Muldock’s idea,” Asa told Fern, who promptly stormed off to Harvey, only to be told it was Ellis Hodge, who admitted to nothing except to say he thought it was Dale’s idea. Dale sent her to Stanley Farlow, who forwarded her to Bill Muldock, who told her he’d heard it was h
er idea.

  It hasn’t been an easy winter for Fern, having to oversee the town’s morality when it seems bent on depravity. She stopped by the Five and Dime to harangue Ned Kivett for selling bikinis.

  “What bikinis?” he asked. “I don’t see any bikinis.” He pointed to his mannequin, now attired in a floor-length gown. “Does that look like a bikini to you?”

  He has ordered more bikinis, which he keeps behind the counter, out of children’s view. He only sells them to people twenty-one and older, if they promise not to wear them inside the city limits.

  The church elders postponed the January meeting because of the painting, so we met the first week of February instead. After we had waded through the committee reports, Miriam Hodge asked if there was any new business. With Dolores home, Dale has revived and happily announced he would be launching five hundred salvation balloons the next week, targeting the annual convention of Unitarians in the city. Miriam wanted to minute our appreciation to the trustees for sprucing up the meetinghouse, but Fern nipped that in the bud, then demanded we investigate rumors of financial improprieties concerning the trustees and their purchase of the carpet.

  Winter, I’m starting to believe, gives us too much time to contemplate the world’s evils—bikinis, world travel, new carpet, and Unitarians. Then again, we have to think about something, and it’s always more fun to meditate on someone else’s sin instead of our own.

  Twenty-one

  A Sudden Turn

  It’s been two months since Miriam Hodge advised me to speak my mind. I’ve been looking for the opportunity, but no one has cooperated. I kept hoping Dale would do something stupid so I could take exception, but he’d been most compatible, going so far as to recommend the church give me a raise. Everyone has been unusually reasonable, except for Fern Hampton, and I wasn’t about to stand up to her. Speaking my mind was one thing; suicide by Fern was another.