The Color of Ordinary Time

by Virginia Voelker

  “It’s okay. Help me pack. I have to leave. I’m sorry I can’t stay. Maybe you can come to Chicago later this year. We’ll make it up then.”

  “What happened?” asked Ivy.

  “John proposed, and she declined,” said Linus from the doorway of Ivy’s room. We jumped when he spoke. I hadn’t realized he’d followed me up the stairs.

  Ivy looked at me for conformation.

  “It’s true,” was all I could manage.

  Ivy’s face fell. “Oh. Oh no.” She started for my duffle bag.

  From behind me Linus came in, slipped a fatherly arm around my shoulders, and planted a fatherly kiss on my forehead. “He’ll get over it. You’re always welcome here, and he’ll get over it. By next summer, things will be back to normal. You’ll see.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  “You’re like a daughter to us Kay. You know that it’s not that we wouldn’t want you for a daughter in law too?”

  “I know. John and I would just be bad for each other in the end.”

  Ten minutes later, with hugs and reassurances from Linus, Dory, and Ivy, I was on the road home. At Litchfield I pulled over and had a good cry, followed by a chocolate shake.

  Fifteen

  When I got home, waiting for me was a large box from Ruth Ann. I dragged it inside with my duffle bag before closing the door with a sigh of relief. Then I took a shower and fell into bed. The next morning, I tripped over the box as I carried my first cup of coffee to my living room couch. Inside the box there was a short letter from Ruth Ann, and a large, green leather album.

  The album contained picture after picture after picture of my mother. In each one she looked happy. In each one she looked promising. I closed the album after a minute, and set my coffee next to it on the coffee table. Then I called my grandmother to thank her for the best gift I’d ever received.

  Ruth Ann and I talked for a long time. She told me the stories that went with the pictures. Stories of the birthdays, books, and boyfriends that I had never heard. Pam had been a late bloomer. She’d always wanted to travel. She’d been smart. She’d always loved music, but didn’t have a talent for performance. Just like me. Even though they weren’t the stories my mother would have told me about herself they started fill the part of me that had always been hungry for her.

  After that, for a long time, things were ordinary.

  Ivy sent me e-mail when she got back to Anna. She was safe, things were fine, John took the job in St. Louis. She told Dylan Morris that he’d deserted her once and she wasn’t interested in getting to know him. According to her, he took her decision gracefully. I wondered, but did not pry. Time would show if he had taken it well, or just put on a good front.

  I e-mailed Pastor Brett, Jeff, and apologized for not saying good-bye. I did not tell him why, but when he replied to me, he seemed to know the story. Hardly a surprise. Someone, perhaps John himself, would have told all. I didn’t ask how he knew. Either way Jeff was full of the same reassurances as Linus. John would get over it.

  For a while I expected Susan, or Jodie, or maybe both of them to show up on my front steps. Neither of them did. Then, in August, Jeff e-mailed me about local news in general, and added that my father and Susan had married in the completed church on Hiram’s Hill. It also seemed that Porter and his contingent had not left the congregation. Of course, Jeff didn’t have any details. I didn’t need them, anyway. I had a pretty good idea of what had happened. I was sure that Porter had been persuaded not to go only after Susan had agreed to the marriage. Having agreed, she could hardly back out. Jilting my father would have had the same consequences as not excepting in the first place. I doubted he even bothered to give her a graceful way out. Once a thing had been ordained by Walton Taylor there was no going back.

  June slipped into July as I caught up on my reading, and researched various ESL programs. In July, Pastor Travers, at my home church of Zion, found me the perfect volunteer position as an ESL teacher: one night a week at a local Chinese-language mission church. I would start in September. I started curriculum research for the committee I was on at school. I looked over my lesson plans. July became August. I saw my friends, and took the ESL volunteer training. I talked with Ivy. She was occupied much as I was. She wanted to come up over spring break. I talked to my Grandmother — she wanted me to plan on Kentucky for Christmas. I agreed. August became September. Back to class. All of it normal. All of it straightforward.

  Then October came around. ESL was going very well. Ivy had been right. I loved teaching the class. It gave me the positive experience I needed to keep plugging away at my day job, and with more satisfaction. Perhaps even more than the teaching, I loved the authentic Chinese meals that followed the classes. I even learned how to make dumplings, sitting at a long table with all the students and teachers around me making dumplings together. After that, well...

  The next time I heard from my father — in any way — was a desperate call from Susan that came as I was walking out the door for my Saturday-morning foray to my favorite coffee shop. I thought about letting my machine pick up for a second, but stopped and picked up the phone.

  “Keziah, it’s Susan. Can you come to Charity?”

  “I guess I could. I hadn’t planned on being down that way again until December.”

  “I don’t mean for Christmas. I mean now.”

  “What has he done now?”

  “He hasn’t done anything now,” she said.

  “Susan.” I heard the hard tone in my voice. I didn’t care.

  “Two nights ago there was a thunderstorm. Our church was hit by lightning and mostly burned down. After the flames were put out Walton went in and sat down in the ruins. He’s barely moved since, and not at all since yesterday. We can’t get him to come out. He won’t talk to us. I need you to come down and help.”

  I almost said, “Ah, the shaman’s curse.” She wouldn’t have found it amusing, or perhaps wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. So, instead, I said, “I don’t think so Susan. If you can’t budge him, there is nothing I can do.”

  “Please, Keziah, just come down and try. I can’t leave him out there another night in the cold. He’ll freeze. He’s not all that well just now.”

  “He’s a grown man. If he really wants to freeze to death, I can’t stop him.”

  “Keziah.” The tone of command she tried to take didn’t suit her sweet voice. I almost laughed at her attempt.

  “If I come, you have to understand: this is absolutely the last time. I’m not going to run down there at his every whim. I won’t be giving into any more of these phone calls for your sake, either. The two of you have made your choices, and I’ve made mine. Enough is enough.”

  “That’s fine. Hurry,” said Susan.

  Fifteen minutes later I had packed an overnight bag, and was on my way to Charity.

  *

  Five hours later, I stood nervously on the front porch of St. Paul’s parsonage. I had gotten to town... and gone chicken. I didn’t want to go out to Hiram’s Hill by myself. Ivy was in Anna. John was in St. Louis (and out of the question, in any case). We hadn’t communicated at all since that horrible day in June. There was only one real choice. I rang the doorbell.

  “I need back up,” I said to Jeff when he opened the door.

  He looked down at me in total shock at finding me on his front porch. “Keziah? Is this about the fire?”

  “Yes. Susan called. She wants me to take a shot at getting him to come out of the structure.”

  Jeff nodded. “I had heard something like that was going on.”

  “Will you come with me? I can’t be out there alone.”

  “Sure. You want to drive, or shall I?”

  “I will,” I said.

  Jeff nodded. “Just let me grab a jacket.”

  *

  I parked my hatchback under a maple tree just going orange, and got out of the car at the bottom of Hiram’s Hill. Jeff got out too.

  “Am I com
ing up too, or do you want me to wait here?” he asked.

  “If you don’t mind waiting here,” I said.

  “That’s fine.”

  “But... if I’m not back in a half hour or so, come get me.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I noticed as I walked up the hill that even though it had been a warm day, and it was not yet evening, the air had begun to cool. The grass was damp, but the ground was not muddy, making the climb much easier. I was surprised to see that they hadn’t done anything to put a stair up the hill, or even make the road more even. When I reached the top, Susan and Porter stood waiting for me outside the burned out shell of the church. It had been hard to tell from the road, but the wall that held the cross which hung over the pulpit still stood, barely, and half of the wall on my right still stood. The roof was entirely gone. The pews and floor were charred, and covered in ash.

  Susan, now wearing the dark grey dress of a married woman, and looking even more beautiful if it was possible, hurried forward to greet me.

  “Bless you, Keziah.”

  “How’s it going, Susan?”

  Susan’s eyes met mine for an instant. I tried to see the truth there for a moment, and failed. “He’s a good husband, Keziah,” she said.

  “Porter,” I said.

  “Keziah,” said Porter.

  We stood in silence for a minute, then I moved up the wooden steps of the church. I didn’t see my father at first. The black of his shirt hid him well in the blackened church. When I did spot him, I saw he sat hunched over in what was left of the front pew; as if in prayer, or pain. I moved forward gingerly, picking my way through pieces of fallen ceiling. There was room next to him on the first pew, so I sat next to him gently, slowly. The abused pew creaked, but held. For a while we sat there not looking at each other, not touching. I could hear each breath he took, but not my own. It was odd.

  “It will rise again. Gloating over this setback would be a mistake,” he said at a whisper.

  “I don’t doubt it will.”

  He snapped back, “It’s God’s will.”

  I remained quiet. I wasn’t about to get sucked into an argument over God’s will.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked after a few deep breaths. He sat up straight, looking at me.

  “Susan called. She’s worried about you. Thinks you’ll freeze or starve sitting out here.”

  “So she called you?”

  “Desperate times,” I said.

  He scowled. “I will have a word with her when I’m done here.”

  “No need. I made it clear this was the very last emergency call I was making,” I said.

  His scowled deepened. I was not playing my role, and I didn’t care.

  “So, while I’ve got you here, let me ask you this. You always taught me love was a choice we make over and over again. That the emotion wasn’t the point, that the action was the point. So I have to ask myself why you chose not to love me? Was I so misbegotten from the start that you couldn’t bring yourself to take action on my behalf? You owed me the truth, and you didn’t even give me that. How is that love? And if you didn’t love me, you could at least have left me with people who would have loved me. It didn’t have to be this way. We didn’t have to be this way.”

  “You’ve been talking to them. You’ve defied me again, and been talking to that woman and her son.” His words were harsh, but not full of disbelief. Having defied him in every other way, it was hardly startling that I would defy him in this, as well.

  “My grandmother, and my uncle. Yes, I have talked to them.”

  “Too late you will realize I gave you the only truth that matters, and you rejected it. Just because my love didn’t come in the form of action you would have chosen doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Do not speak to me about love and truth. Your heart is hard and dark. You are damned.”

  “That may be. But even I know what the love of a father looks like. What actions a loving father takes for his child.”

  “What do those actions look like? Like the actions of Linus Brandt? Is he your ideal?”

  His words were too close to home. I flinched.

  “Yes, that’s it. Supporting his whoring daughter while magnanimously looking the other way. I’m so cruel not letting you play the harlot while spending money to put a roof over your thankless head. So mean not paying for you to run off to college where you could sleep with whomever you wanted. So hateful not letting you have your own way. A good father raises a child in the way she should go!”

  There was no argument I could offer to counter him. No proof of my virtue would be enough. Even had I been willing to try and prove my virtue, the condition of my heart would still be in question. My soul’s condition would be, as always, unfit in his eyes. Why argue?

  I rose from the pew, as calmly as I could, and started back up the debris-strewn center aisle. He was after me as quickly as he could manage. He wasn’t moving fast. I imagine he was stiff from all the sitting he’d done.

  “You will come to fear hell too late. You will look back and wish you had stayed and been obedient. The day will come, and the angels will weep for your soul. Remember when that day comes that I warned you. Remember that I tried to save you. Remember...”

  At the place where the door had once been I stepped out of the church and walked down the stairs. He stopped at the top of the stairs and continued his rant.

  “...this day and tremble with the knowledge of your fate. You are going to Hell.”

  Turning back to him, I looked back up at him. “You are going to be very surprised who you see in Heaven.” I walked back down the hill, leaving the three of them at the top, silent and still behind me.

  I found Jeff leaning on my car when I got to the bottom. He smiled as I got close. “How’d it go?”

  “Dreadfully. But It’s going to be okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know what I know.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I’m not going to live this everyday, anymore,” I said, a second before realizing that I was telling the absolute truth.

  He took my hand and gave it a little squeeze. “Even better.”

  “We should go.”

  “Dory and Linus want us to stop for dinner with them, if you’re game. John isn’t there.”

  “How’d you talk to Dory and Linus?”

  Jeff reached into his jacket and pulled out a cell phone before waving it under my nose.

  “Of course,” I said, smiling at myself. “Dinner sounds good.”

  I glanced back at the church on Hiram’s Hill before getting in the car. I knew then I would never set foot on that hill again.

  *

  Every Sunday two billion Christians worldwide pray for the end of the world. I’m sure most of them don’t even think about it. It is so much a part of what they do every week. So many words on a page. So many words mumbled while they think about their football game, or getting lunch on the table, or when the service will be over, and why the air conditioning isn’t turned up further. It’s right there in the Lord’s Prayer: Thy Kingdom Come. Those words mean we want Jesus to come again, to take us all to heaven because we’re saved.

  Of course, in not thinking about it too hard, we avoid thinking about what that really means. There’s the good part of the meaning where we go to live with Jesus forever. There’s also the sad part of the meaning, where we believe that there are people who may not go to live with Jesus forever. And then there’s the scary part of the meaning, where we have to ask ourselves how sure we are that we’re in the first group.

 

 

 
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