He was mowing out near Highway 905, which ran in front of the house, and doing long, lazy sweeps in and out of the new gully. When she stood on the front porch, Sandra could watch him ride the mower down the slope—he would disappear from sight as if the earth were swallowing him and the mower whole, only to reappear in a different spot with a wave of his hat like an explorer just returned from a trip to the earth’s core.
But on that Saturday, as Carson angled in and out of the trench, he spied a beer bottle in his path, thrown there undoubtedly by some of the redneck teenagers at the high school who had nothing better to do than get drunk and destroy property or litter. So he stopped the mower, climbed off, and deposited the bottle into the Hefty bag he kept on hand just for such purposes. The problem came when Carson went to get back on the mower. He had parked parallel, so that his wheels were running in the same direction as the embankment rather than against it. As Carson got back onto the mower, the whole thing just tumbled over on top of him, like a child going head over yonders on a tricycle.
He didn’t even come to the house straightaway. Sandra hadn’t been watching him at that moment. She had been inside, happy as a clam, ignorant as a goose, re-creating a recipe from Miss Virginia’s South of the Rio Grande, a Mexicana chicken casserole to take to a potluck dinner at church. If she had been watching, she would have called 911, she told herself later, and things might have been different. But she hadn’t been watching, and so he righted the mower, climbed on, and finished his work. When he finally did come up to the house, he told her what had happened, that he felt like a durn fool for making such a stupid, careless mistake, and said he had a terrible stiff neck and a pain in his shoulder, could she please put some Deep Heat rub on it. He adamantly refused to go to the doctor.
“Doctors are for when you are sick,” he said, “and I am not sick. I’ve just pulled something is all.” But on the Tuesday following, when he wasn’t feeling any better, he relented and made an appointment to see the chiropractor in Morris. She fussed and fumed, saying he needed a real doctor just this once, but Carson believed that a little poking and prodding of his muscles and a good quick snap of his neck was all he needed to make him 100% again.
She had never understood Carson’s fascination with chiroprac-tory (“chiro-quackery,” she called it), but she figured it probably had something to do with his downright fear of needles. She had seen him go white as a sheet and keel over at a Red Cross Blood Drive once, and if there was ever a medical show on with an operation or where they were giving a shot to someone, he would change the channel quick as a wink or hurry off to the kitchen for a glass of water. He said having regular spinal adjustments was all he needed to keep fit, and she had to admit, they seemed to work for him. Carson was a strapping, healthy man—full-chested, muscular, with big arms and a thick coating of hair across his upper torso and stomach. She let him go to the chiropractor.
The night after his appointment he told her he felt better but complained of a slight headache and said his vision was fuzzy. He didn’t eat all the dinner she had made for him—salmon croquettes with cucumber-dill sauce—and went to bed before the late news. The TV picture was hard to focus on, he said, and it was making him nauseous to look at it.
The next morning during his bowel movement, he fell off the toilet onto the bathroom floor. This time she did call 911, but it was no use. They told her at the hospital Carson had an embolism in his shoulder area, which had most likely been dislodged by the chiropractic adjustment. The strain of trying to move his bowels threw the blood clot to his brain—he was dead before he hit the floor.
She never realized how much she depended on Carson, how empty her life was without him. Sandra felt utterly lost and abandoned. This was not the way things were supposed to go. She had put in her time, lived a good, upstanding life—in her opinion, the sums did not balance out.
In the days and weeks after the funeral, anger propelled her. It was her only fuel. She was angry at the chiropractor for his negligence. She was angry at the attorney for telling her that she had no legal recourse against the chiropractor. She was angry for how her friends hovered around her when she wanted to be left alone with her grief and for how they neglected her when she needed the comfort of their company. She was angry at Carson for being so set in his ways. Angry at herself for all the things she had not done for him. But most of all she was angry at God. She had served God all her life, attended church regularly, been recording secretary for the Women’s Society of Christian Service for three years in a row, and always contributed to any bake sale to raise funds for the youth group or for mission work. It was not fair that she be repaid like this.
One night, she rolled the Toro Lawn Master from the tool shed Carson had built adjoining the garage. She could not bring herself to sit on the mower and drive it, and it took nearly all her strength to push it out behind the house to the edge of the vegetable garden. If anyone could have seen her as they drove past on Highway 905, she reckoned they would have thought her mad, rushing around in her nightclothes in the middle of the night, barefoot, her hair uncombed, unkempt. She soaked the mower with gasoline and, standing back, flicked a lighted match in its direction. That was all that was needed. The mower ignited with a whumpf, and as she shielded her face from the heat of the blaze, she looked to the dark, moonless sky. She thought how in India and other, nonChristian countries, wives would often throw themselves onto the blazing funeral pyre. Whereas once she would have thought such an act to be irrational or uncivilized, now it did not seem entirely without logic or merit to her.
“You wanted a sacrifice,” she said. “Here is your burning altar, you son of a bitch.” She left the mower smoldering in the backyard, unconcerned if it burned the garden or the yard or the whole damn house as far as she cared. The next morning, when Peggy Adcock called to say she and her husband, Donald, had seen what they thought was a fire coming from the direction of her house, was she okay, Sandra told her to mind her own damn business, to take care of her husband, and to leave her alone.
The hardest thing to get used to was cooking for one. It broke her heart just to think of having to halve the recipes that she made every night for Carson and herself—Meatloaf Surprise, chicken divan, stuffed flank steak. She could not bear to do it. Even worse was the concept of leftovers. Packing his uneaten portion into Tupperware for the following night. That made it seem to her that Carson was away on some interminable business trip—while she was left behind, dutifully stockpiling food, always waiting, waiting, waiting for his return.
She finally settled on sandwiches. She could make herself a sandwich and there was nothing left over. Nothing wasted. Nothing in excess. It was a perfect meal made for one—a widow’s meal. She ate them for nearly every meal except breakfast, when she would have toast instead.
The yard began to grow up around the house. The vegetables they had planted in the garden, she left rotting on the vines. Weeds choked the flowers in their beds. She could not sleep, and spent days in her nightdress, wandering through the house or sitting vacant in front of the TV, flipping the channels between the Home Shopping Network or infomercials for exercise equipment or get-rich-quick real-estate schemes. One afternoon, Sandra took the duct tape from Carson’s workbench and sealed off the spare rooms in the house—rooms she did not use regularly, rooms she felt she no longer needed. She removed all reminders of her past life, souvenirs and photos from the mantel and hallway—framed snaps of her and Carson when they had vacationed in Flat Rock or Cypress Gardens—and placed them in the rooms like artifacts into a crypt. When she was done and nearly all the duct tape used up, only the kitchen and the den and her bedroom remained opened. She had considered shutting off the bedroom as well since she no longer slept in her bed, but the bathroom was in there, as were her clothes.
She did not answer the calls left for her on the answering machine by the church ladies. Finally, she turned off the machine and just let the phone ring itself to exhaustion. One day she heard a car in the
driveway. She peeked through the curtains. It was the young, pimply-faced minister who had been assigned to their congregation. He had preached Carson’s funeral and she hated him for it. She did not answer the door. He stood for a long time in the doorway, first ringing the door bell, then knocking, then ringing again. Finally, Sandra decided he wasn’t going to leave, and opened the door.
He seemed startled by her. “We haven’t seen you at services for a long while and we—I was wondering—hoping you are all right.”
“You’ve seen me,” said Sandra. “Now go away.” She closed the door in his face.
She wrote a letter to the church and told them to cancel her membership. It was as easy as stopping a magazine subscription. She started driving into Myrtle Beach for her groceries. It took longer, but she did not have to encounter anyone she knew. Friends from the past whose lives had continued on their merry ways. The TV became her only friend, her companion. She had it on continuously—it did not matter what was on, as long as there was sound, voices.
She learned by heart the names of the soap characters and the intricacies of their dilemmas as if they were her own blood kin: would Brooke sleep with Tad, would Natalie’s evil twin leave Ashley imprisoned in the basement, would Summer tell Adam the baby was not his but his brother Jason’s. She became an expert on retail prices for major brand-name items, and would curse and yell at the contestants on The Price Is Right when their stupidity cost them the grand prize. “Everyone knows the large-size Armor All is more expensive than a single-serve can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. You stupid bastard. I could leave here right now and go out and buy two cans of Dinty Moore and a loaf of bread for what you say it costs. You didn’t deserve the maple bedroom suite. I’m glad you lost everything. That should teach you, you sorry asshole.”
As the late summer turned to fall and fall fell into winter, her life with Carson became a vague memory—like the photographs she had stuck away in the drawers of the bureau in the sealed-off room, left to yellow, turn brittle, decay. She wondered if it would have been better if she had died as well.
Then, on the second Sunday in January, a cold, steel-gray day, the strangest thing occurred. Sundays were always hard for Sandra because there weren’t any soaps or game shows. TV was filled during the day with public service programs, news commentaries, sports events, and religious services. Sundays interrupted her routine, made her uneasy, agitated. On that Sunday she was standing in the kitchen making herself a bacon and egg salad sandwich, using the remote to scan the airwaves for company. She had breezed past two old coots talking about politics, a black-and-white western movie, and a children’s show with a talking hippo, when she suddenly heard Carson’s voice. She halted dead in her tracks. “And I tell you, brethren, the du-hay of the La-hord shall ca-hum!” She stopped chopping the sweet pickle for the egg salad, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and went to see what Carson was doing on TV. Sandra squinted her eyes. It wasn’t Carson, not really, she knew, but it could have been him when he was younger or perhaps his brother if he had had one.
There on the picture tube stood a handsome, clean-shaven man in his early thirties wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms, his striped tie loosened and collar button undone so his chest hair popped out of the top of his shirt. He waved a floppy leather-bound Bible in one hand and pointed his other hand directly at her. Sandra was mesmerized as he disclosed the untold glories of heaven and the ferocious perils of hell. The way he described them sounded like he had visited both firsthand. Heaven was endless green pastures and golden streets. Hell was fiery lakes and mountains of molten lava. If he had been selling tickets to either place, Sandra would have bought one just to see for herself.
This wasn’t some scrawny pale preacher. This was a man—a real man, strong and self-assured—a farmer or laborer who had taken up the call. As he preached, striding around the platform, pounding the podium for emphasis, his dark, wavy hair, which he had slicked back, became disheveled and fell across his forehead almost covering his left eye. He smoothed it back without notice.
That gesture. That confidence. Sandra stood transfixed.
She felt hot and dreamy as his words poured out of the television over her. It was then she realized she was touching herself—down there. She was shocked to become conscious of it—she had always left those matters to Carson. But she didn’t stop. Instead, she pulled her nightdress up and waved her privates at the preacher. He waved his finger back at her. She spread her legs wide so he could see. The camera zoomed in on the preacher for a close-up shot. She pulled her fingers from inside and brought them to her mouth to taste the delicate saltiness of herself. The preacher closed his eyes, tilting his head back toward heaven. His smile was ecstatic. He began to pray softly, earnestly.
Sandra stuck her fingers back in deeper, harder.
“Come to Jesus today,” he crooned.
“Yes,” said Sandra. “To Jesus. Come to Jesus.”
Her knees gave way beneath her and she slumped down onto the braided rug in front of the TV. She held herself—her body felt electrified, on fire. In the background, she heard an announcer invite her to join Reverend Shep Waters next Sunday morning, same time, same station. Sandra looked up from the floor, hoping to catch another glimpse of the preacher, but it was too late. Shep was already gone and she was alone again. The emptiness roared within her.
It took a long while before Sandra got up from the floor. She felt as if she were waking from a fever dream or some sort of drugged sleep. She threw the sandwich she had made into trash. She felt queasy, as if she was going to vomit. She showered—turning the water on as hot as she could stand, using the cloth to scrub her skin till it was red, nearly raw. She toweled off with her back to the mirror. She did not think she could stand to face herself.
How could she have done such a thing? She was nearly sixty years old and she had never ever done anything like that in her life. Even when she was a girl, she never dreamed that it was something a woman could do—would do—to herself. Yet, coupled with the shame was another sensation—deeper, and more troubling to her, the almost delicious feeling that she had been outrageous, that she had crossed a boundary of some sort. If her women’s circle at church knew what she had done, they would have been shocked by her behavior, mortified.
She resolved that it was an aberration, something brought on by the shock of Carson’s death. It would never happen again. She would not allow it. To ensure this, she decided that the next Sunday, when she knew Shep Waters would be preaching, she would take a long walk around the house and the property. But when she woke on Sunday, it was storming fiercely outside and a walk was out of the question. Another of God’s cruel jokes on her, she thought. Then, without realizing it, she found herself bathed, perfumed, her hair combed, makeup applied, dressed in a pale blue satin peignoir, one she kept tucked in the rose-scented drawer of her dresser that held her special lingerie.
As the hour approached for Shep’s arrival, she fluffed the pillows on the couch and made sure there were no sandwich crumbs on the rug. Instinctively, she knew everything needed to be just right.
And then he was on the air. She watched intently as the announcer introduced the Hour of Praise and Worship brought to her by the Shep Waters International Evangelical Ministries. There was singing and Bible reading, and during much of the first part of the hour, Shep was merely a peripheral figure, though there were video clips of him at various rallies and crusades. He was always dressed the same: dark slacks, white shirt and tie, and the effect was unfailing—he always looked rugged and intensely masculine, as if he had just come from closing up a hardware store or checking to see if there was enough feed for the livestock or doing some other sort of men’s business.
Sitting in the maple rocker Carson had bought for her at Christmas three years ago, she tried to resist the urges she felt, wanting to merely listen as Shep preached. There was no harm in that, she told herself. She had not gone to church in over ten months; maybe t
here was something she could gain from the sermon. But before she knew it, her nightgown was hiked up around her waist so that she could finger herself as he talked. Her touch was light at first, like a feather duster, but as the sermon progressed it became more intense—searching deeper, probing.
The address lasted nearly twenty minutes and even though it was freezing cold outside, Sandra was perspiring heavily as he reached the end, when he gave the altar call. She wept as those on TV crowded around Shep to have him touch them, pray for them. She could almost feel his gentle caress as he laid his hands on them. She untied the top of her gown so Shep could see her breasts. He opened his arms to her and she got down on her knees in front of the TV to kiss his image on the screen. “You must pray every day,” he implored. “You must pray every day and you must read the Word every day so that God will stamp it in your heart.”
“Yes, I will,” she said. “Every day. I promise.” The static from the TV tickled her bare skin and her climax was even more ferocious than the week prior. She let herself lie back in the golden glow of the moment. She felt alive. She felt loved.
And then he was gone again. Sandra thought she would die knowing it would be another week before she could see him again. Even worse was the understanding that what had happened was no accident, no aberration. That what had occurred last week and then again today would take place next Sunday as well. And she felt helpless to control what was happening. It was as if a force greater than herself compelled her.
It was then that Sandra got the strangest idea. Perhaps Carson’s death was not an accident after all. Perhaps it had been Divine Intervention. Carson’s death. Then the appearance of Shep Waters like Moses and the burning bush. What else could it be? Moses had been tending sheep when God called him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. When Moses had doubted his ability, Jehovah had replied: “I AM WHAT I AM.” Yes, God was God, and He had somehow decided He needed Sandra for something—something so important that she needed to be free to follow His instructions. Ruth and Naomi had been widows. Yes. And God had used them to do great things. All that had come before had been a part of God’s plan for her. The hurricane. Carson’s accident. It was all necessary, like the flood that cleansed the world for Noah. Now she was free—no more women’s circle at church, no more potluck suppers. She had been chosen. Like Mary, she could feel the Spirit of God move up inside her like a warm hand. Why else had she been free to touch herself, to open herself up like never before. There could be no other explanation for it. She just had not been able to see it before.
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