We Are Still Married

by Garrison Keillor

  The reporters lean over the edge. “Anybody got a child’s toy we can toss in there for a good picture? a little red wagon or a doll? something to humanize all that rubble? Naw, a baseball glove isn’t gonna work. Looks like a cow flop. Something brighter. How about a dollhouse? Fantastic! A little wooden dollhouse perched atop the debris, undamaged, a child’s fantasy survives while the real world collapses around it—Somebody run into St. Cloud and get a goddamn dollhouse!”

  We lie with dirt in our mouths, gasoline leaking around us and meat juice, and hear their voices echo in the hole and assume that we are in hell. A life of faithful attendance on Sunday morning did not work in our case, and God in His infinite wisdom has chosen to hurl us down into everlasting torment. We hunger and He crushes us with frozen food, we thirst and He gives us gasoline, we despair and He sends the press. What indignity is left, dear Lord? Pain and misery all too evident, redemption hidden and all the good works of faith, friendship gone, love gone, children grown up and gone and no word comes back from them or anyone else we gave our lives to, life is over, it’s Memorial Day for all of us: what can we do but get up out of bed, make coffee, fix breakfast, and tune in WLB.

  Bea Lady does the kitchen show six days a week plus “Looking Up” on Sunday morning, and on Wednesday morning at 10:15 Ella Anderson listened to her give out a recipe for three-bean salad, and just before the women’s club news Bea said, “Here’s a tip for how to relax. Did you know that sighing is a proven way to let tension out of your body? Try it. Three deep sighs in a row.” To Ella this was wonderful news, to hear that what she’d been doing all her life was good for her. She sighed. It did feel good. And three deep ones felt better. She couldn’t remember a single bean of the three-bean salad, but she had gotten something to call up and tell to Arlene Bunsen: sighing is good for you, it helps you relax and it relieves the effects of beans.

  Immediately before the Bea Lady show is Orville C. Ball and “The Wall of Hope Gospel Hour” on tape from Grand Rapids: fifteen minutes including two of music, three of the mailing address, and ten minutes of Gospel preaching that could pulverize concrete into small chunks. You listen to O.C.B. and you wish for his sake that he is a hypocrite who goes out to motels and howls every Saturday night, the thought of a heart so sincerely unforgiving is too awful. His poor listeners, you can tell who they are as they drive by, heads slumped, arms limp, mouths open like beached fish. Orville says: “Oh, you can fool everyone else with your sweetheart ways and your big grin, you can be a wonderful friend, a good parent, a steady worker, a member of the church, and a true neighbor who everyone likes and trusts but you can’t fool me, I look in your heart and see a filthy rotten stinking cesspool of evil thoughts and shameful desires that if those people knew you were thinking along those lines, they’d turn away from you in disgust! Oh, yes! it’s true!”

  Down the road they go, slumped behind the wheel. If people really knew us, they’d hate us. He says, “Look here in the book of Romans, Chapter 3!” They’re driving and can’t look but they know the verse. They’ve heard the message before, many times, from their parents, and to hear Brother Ball now is to hear their father, in cold fury forty years ago, withdraw his blessing and prophesy a worthless unhappy life for them that they have suffered forty years trying to elude. He nails three more verses in them, gives the mailing address, the organ weeps a lonely pitiful hymn, and then Bea Lady is there in her sunny kitchen. “Good morning,” she says, like your favorite aunt, your third-grade teacher, “it’s so nice of you to join us again. Today we’ll be giving out a wonderful recipe that Virginia Ingqvist sent in for a salad you can make now and freeze for later—it only takes ten minutes to thaw—and we’ll talk about sighing. Did you know it helps you to relax?” It’s no wonder she’s so popular all over the county.

  Arlene Bunsen wasn’t home when Ella called. The phone rang eight times, exactly enough time for Clarence to step out of the shower, grab a towel, navigate the stacks of old clothes and curios and boxes of books in the upstairs hall, where Arlene was preparing a glacial contribution to the rummage sale, and clamber carefully down the bare wood stairs (being aware of where the two sharp nailheads stuck up) and trot demurely into the kitchen and reach for the phone as it stopped ringing. His midday shower was due to a mishap at the garage involving a quart of motor oil he hadn’t known was open, and he assumed the call was from Clint to apologize for what he said. This cheered Clarence up right away. Arlene was driving to Lutheran Women’s Circle lunch, which Bea mentioned right after she was done sighing. She said, “The lunch will be by Arlene Bunsen and you know that’s always something to look forward to. Mmmmm, yes.” Bea didn’t know Arlene from a bale of hay but still it was nice of her to say that, Arlene thought, listening to WLB as she drove past the school. Charitable. Arlene was also leading the devotions: maybe she’d mention charity. For lunch she was making a soup that Bea Lady had given out the recipe for last April, Primavera Soup. A white-bean soup with celery, bacon, two big onions, garlic, salt and pepper, oil, and bouillon, and Arlene was going early to church so she could prepare it in private and put red wine in. Devotions would be the love chapter from First Corinthians. She wheeled the big Fairlane up next to the back door, put the wine under her coat, and went to work. The kitchen was chilly. She kept her coat on. She put all the ingredients into the big soup kettle and poured in a cup of wine—two cups—three (the alcohol burns off, you know). This spring she is going to blow some life into Women’s Circle, bring up important topics at devotions, assign books by exciting authors, and maybe bring in speakers who know something we don’t. The Primavera Soup was bubbling along—meanwhile Arlene was distracted by thoughts of her new job as chairman of Memorial Day, which Clifford with a burst and a flourish had presented her with the day before, a tremendous honor, but who could she get to speak?—she tasted the soup, which needed more salt, and she took down the big tin shaker and salted the soup and the top fell off so that all the salt fell in the soup, a cup and a half or so, and dissolved instantly. It was 11:15. She dumped the Primavera down the drain and rinsed out the pot with a blast of scalding water. The only canned soup they had was cream of mushroom, twenty gallons of the stuff. Lutheran manna, it’s called. A food group all by itself: cream of mushroom. Some ladies put it in half the dishes they make—meatloaf, tuna hotdish, meatball delight, even chow mein. Mrs. Tollerud once poured it as a sauce over primerib steaks at the mister’s seventieth birthday.

  Arlene cranked open ten cans, dumped the grayish glop in the pot and ten cans of water, stirred, drank the rest of the wine, and wrapped the empty bottle in a paper bag and stuck it in an empty soup can as the women came trooping in. She looked tired but game as she read to them, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” She felt dizzy. She said grace with her eyes open to keep the horizon in sight. She served up the soup with a tin dipper and sat down at the end of the table. In thirty-five minutes she could go home and cry and take a nap. But as the twenty-six women tasted it, they each gave a little cry of pleasure and turned to her and said, “Oh, Arlene. This is the best soup. What did you put in this?”

  “It’s straight out of the can.”

  “It can’t be. What did you—what kind of mushrooms did you put in?”

  “They came with the soup.”

  “Don’t be silly, this is so delicious—is this a French recipe? Doesn’t this taste French to you, Marilyn?” Yes, Marilyn thought it had a sort of Frenchness to it but not heavily French, not so spicy and rich like so much French cooking tends to be. A suggestion of spice, a delicacy, a hint of mushroom, a very light French quality. They ate up every last spoonful and afterward they sighed, which made the soup seem even more delicious. Arlene excused herself. The others heard a report from Judy Ingqvist about Lutheran Lyceum, all finished for the season except the final performance (Mr. and Mrs. Ernie Lundeen and Their Performing Gospel Birds) on May 20, but even not counting the p
opular Lundeens, Lyceum was a big success, the December concert with George Beverly Shea and the Concordia Choir packing more people into the church than anyone thought possible: nine hundred, including the overflow in the basement and Sunday-school annex and the crush in the cloakroom and furnace room, and that didn’t count the choir and singer and conductor and pianist and bus-driver/harpist. An outstanding musical event, and when he sang “How Great Thou Art” people wept, and when he invited everyone to sing “Silent Night” and the entire building sang and then softly hummed the old Christmas lullaby, the tears flowed freely, people just fell apart in pieces over it. It was good they were packed in tight. The Lyceum series had also brought in a gymnastics act called the Five Tumbling Pastors and Little Wally Holmberg the World’s Tiniest Evangelist (4’2”), which Judy mentioned briefly. The choir concert was wonderful enough. You don’t need to be wonderful all the time.

  (Did I mention that, when Arlene left, she asked Judy Ingqvist to step outside for a moment and there, weeping, she begged her old friend to take the chairmanship of Memorial Day because after the soup disaster and what with all the pressure she was under at the Council with this sewage thing, she didn’t think she could handle another thing, and that Judy said, “Yes, of course”? No? Well, that’s exactly what happened.)

  Before May 20 or Memorial Day rolled around, however, Judy got a letter saying that the Performing Gospel Birds were indisposed and that a Lutheran flamenco troupe, La Pasionaria del Norte, would come instead. She was concerned about the birds, and phoned the Lyceum office in Chicago and talked to a man named Em who tried to sign her up for next season. He said there would be a Christian magician and also a troupe of firewalkers from the Ecuadorean jungle, former headhunters who were thought to possess a shrunken missionary—the entire body, not just the head. Em’s voice dropped to a whisper: “There’s an outside chance they might take the body with them on tour. I hope not, and we’re doing everything we can to stop them, but they’re not easy to deal with, and frankly they scare me.”

  The only reason Lake Wobegon Lutheran had signed up with the Lyceum, she told him—the single solitary reason—was to get the Concordia Choir and Mr. Shea, those two, nothing else, and an Ecuadorean troupe would be a tough ticket to sell, so if he was thinking of raising his prices on that account—“No, of course not,” he said. He was hurt. “I do this work out of my basement,” he said. “Maybe you think I’m a big promoter up in a swanky office suite, but I can assure you I’m not. I barely clear my expenses.” His voice cracked. “I went into this work twenty-three years ago, when my friend Dr. Wallace Graves Peterson told me he was considering giving away glassware and tableware to get people into church for midweek services. That was the situation. Churches empty. Lutheran Lyceum is bringing people in for entertaining programs that also preach the Word, and once you get them in, you can get them back. That’s our motto.” She asked about the Gospel Birds and he said that one of the doves had flown into a stained-glass window at a performance in Ashland and broken a wing. “You’re going to love the flamenco group,” he said.

  La Pasionaria del Norte was six Lutherans from Monte Olivetta Church, near Madrid, in the suburb of Brookdale, three olive-skinned slim-hipped caballeros with dark flashing eyes and three black-haired señoritas in flaming red dresses: passionate and extravagant, and yet Lutheran. They traced their faith back to a ship en route from Norway to England in 1783 that was caught in a nor’wester and blown off course. It landed on the Spanish coast, where kind Spaniards took them in and fed them rice in tomato sauce with green peppers and hamburger (what we know as Spanish rice) and in return the Norwegians gave them the Epistle to the Romans.

  Val Tollefson was supposed to meet La Pasionaria at the St. Cloud bus depot at 5:45 on May 20 and drive them to church in his van but unbeknownst to Judy he had forgotten. He and Florence had found their cat, Magic, dead in the alley early that afternoon, not a mark on him, poisoned (they were pretty sure) by a resentful neighbor, and when they tried to think just who might’ve done it, everyone seemed a plausible suspect. Everyone had some grudge against them. It was depressing. They put Magic’s body in the freezer to await an autopsy and after a while Val, upset, thinking about sneaking downstairs for a glass of whiskey, said that maybe they’d feel better if they worked outside for a while. He figured she’d get busy digging around her flowers and he could have a snort, but when he got to work hauling down storm windows she insisted on helping him, and at approximately five o’clock he dropped one on her. She reached up, not knowing how heavy it was, and it conked her on the forehead and knocked her dizzy.

  She sat down on the grass, bleeding. Blood ran down her face. “I’m all right,” she said. “You go without me. You go and enjoy yourself and have a good time.”

  He helped her indoors, put an icebag on the bump, and laid her out on the couch. “I’m all right. You don’t need to fuss over me.” Her right eye was swollen and turning black. “I’m sure it’s going to be a lot of fun. You go. I’ll be all right. You go and I’ll just stay and have some quiet time with the Lord.” Her tongue was bloody.

  Val ran to get Dr. DeHaven, first stopping in the basement to settle his nerves with a pull of Old Crow from the workbench drawer. He drove to the doctor’s house, where a note on the door said: “At Cabin All Day.” He drove like a bat out of hell six miles to Lake Malene and banged on the cabin door. A dog snarled inside. He let it out. “Find Ernie, Rex!” he said. The dog looked confused. Was its name not Rex or was it a guest dog who had no idea of the doctor’s whereabouts? Or did it know him by his last name?

  “Find Dr. DeHaven!” The dog turned and raced to the lake and ran into the water up to its chest, and barked. A red boat sat far away, a speck with two men in it. Val, imagining Florence in convulsions, ran back to the cabin and grabbed an old blue fiberglass canoe by one end and hauled it into the water, ran back for a paddle, ran out to catch the canoe floating away, and boarded it in four feet of water, which wore him out. Nevertheless, he paddled hard toward the fishing boat, yelling “Hey!” over and over, trying to steer and paddle, his fist scraping the side on every stroke, his breath coming harder and harder, the Heys weakening, until he stopped to rest for a moment and felt his heart convulsing and took out a pen to write a message about Florence in case he should die. The only paper he could find was his checkbook. He thought: oh, what an ironic end to a life too much spent as a church treasurer and member of the building committee. He wrote in big black letters: “HELP FLORENCE AT HOME, SHE’S HURT BAD. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME. I’M ALL RIGHT.” He signed it, “Love, Val,” and then, thinking of his children, he added, “With All My (Love, Val).” He felt limp as a dishrag. The red boat seemed to be moving off to another spot. Val slumped down into the canoe and set his head on the seat and dozed, the little craft rocking on the waves of Lake Malene. Meanwhile, it was 6:30, and then 7:00, there was no flamenco troupe at church, though twenty-seven people came and waited around, including Mavis, whose last name Judy forgets (Thorsen), who kept asking, “Can I help?” Judy was trying to raise Val on the phone. Finally she ran up to his house and pounded on the door.

  Florence answered. She had an icepack on her head and looked dazed and weepy. “Val hit me,” she said. “With a storm window. He was up on the ladder—” She started weeping in earnest. “I was trying to help—I didn’t know it was so heavy.” She leaned and Judy caught her and walked her in and sat her in the big blue easy chair covered with clear plastic. A photograph of their daughter Sherry sat in a gold frame, the poor girl whose life was ruined when she was elected Senior Homecoming Princess, missing out on Queen by (it was said) three votes, losing to a girl who had despised her since they were five.

  The haunted blond face made Judy forget about La Pasionaria. She perched on the arm of the blue chair and held Sherry’s graduation picture in her hands, wishing she had the power to change that tragic life that kept going wrong. Wrong college (Concordia in southern California, full of successful Lutheran girls
) and then the stigma of dropping out after a month, then a bad job (secretary in a Lutheran Life & Auto office where she sat staring out at the empty parking lot), then a bad relationship with a basketball player, finally a bad marriage to his younger brother, and three little whiny children and a messy little house and a problem with Bailey’s Irish Cream, and now she hardly ever washes her long blond hair, all because she couldn’t be Queen.

  “How’s Sherry?” asked Judy.

  Florence said, “She’s just fine. She’s very happy.” Florence’s left eye was swollen shut and there was dried blood around her lips. Judy thought: That bastard. Storm window my foot. Why does she lie for him? She wiped off Florence’s face and went to get her more ice and then she found the cat’s body in the freezer. Yes, it was a cat all right. On the plastic bag, written in black grease pencil, was the word “MAGIC.” Judy shuddered. She shut the freezer door. Magic. The man certainly made no attempts to hide his tracks. Odd for a Lutheran. The first priority was to protect Florence from seeing this, assuming she hadn’t already. One thing to be beaten by your church-deacon husband but quite another to know the man kills pets and uses the bodies in cult rituals. Judy shuddered to think of what she had to do, but she got out a grocery bag and was about to open the freezer when the phone rang. It was Mavis, asking if she could help. Judy thought. “Yes,” she said. “Tell them there’s no show. Just lock up the church and go home. Can you do that?” Then she put the cat in the grocery bag and carried it out and put it in the trunk of her car. She was going to confront Val with it directly, no tiptoeing around. Explain this. And then explain why you’re belting your wife around. What sort of secret group are you in and what activities are they engaging in? And exactly how many other members of the church are involved? Tell the truth.