by Mort Castle
That face was The Blues in Black and White, and it would probably be the cover photograph for the collection of pictures.
The man with the camera had no doubt. He had a photo that was tshatsimo, the truth.
Selena Lazone had tried to drink wine until she passed out, but long before that, she hit the stage in which her choking tears erupted, and for five straight minutes she had lain on the sofa, sobbing and moaning and hugging herself. After that came an attack of the hiccups, then a staggering rush to the bathroom to vomit her way back to near-sobriety.
It was after three in the morning, and she felt like hell and terribly alone. All the living room lights were on, as though she could defy darkness and any of its manifestations merely by flipping a switch. On the stereo, WFMT, Chicago’s fine arts station, played a Bach fugue for string quartet. She’d hoped the precise, eminently rational Baroque music would offer subtle comfort, a promise that the universe was structured and meticulously arranged, a puzzle, perhaps, but a puzzle with pieces you could identify and fit together until a sensible pattern could be discerned.
But the universe was mad and malign and never before had she felt so alone in it.
Where was David? She needed him.
Selena went to the window and for the thousandth time gazed out. The sliver of the moon scattered pinpoints of light that rode the peaks of Lake Michigan’s waves.
Where was he? She loved him.
Not that she wanted to. She had promised David Greenfield she would not love him. That would tip the delicate balances of their sensible relationship; after all, he did not love her, could not.
But David Greenfield understood her, perhaps even better than she understood herself He knew Gypsies and had been raised by them, growing up among the people of tacho rat, true blood—with them, but not one of them. His first major collection of photographs was the prizewinning study of Gypsies entitled Rom. David knew who she had been, what she had been, knew why she had split herself off from that person and her people to recreate herself as an entirely new individual, one who had a meaningful place in the Gaje world.
She did not hear his key in the door. A moment later, though, when he stepped into the living room, she sensed him and turned even before he said, “Selena,” the single word asking just what she was doing up at this hour, as he slipped the Nikon off his neck and placed it on the low coffee table.
“I need you,” was her only answer. She ran to him and threw herself at him, his arms strong around her. She pressed tight against him, feeling the familiar exactness of his legs, his stomach, his chest, that made him uniquely David Greenfield, him and no one else…
His lips were on hers, their mouths open, tongues touching, exploring protuberances and depressions, softness and hardness and wetness. His breath was inside her, hers within him.
Like clumsy wrestlers, they awkwardly dropped to the floor. His hands were under her green gown, peeling it from her like a banana skin. She threw herself into feeling, turning off the part of mind given to thought. There was the soft itch of the carpet beneath her buttocks and shoulder blades, his hands on her breasts, fingers forcefully scissoring her nipples.
She experienced a moment of separation and fear, long enough for him to work his trousers and shorts down, and then he was between her thighs. She reached out to guide him and he thrust hard, and she enfolded him with arms and legs, cocooning him within her flesh. Sensation overwhelmed her, and she writhed and clawed and spasmed until the blinding shock of release slammed into her.
She wept as, a few moments after, he hissed and stiffened and let out a deep groan.
They rested awhile as WFMT broadcast Prokofiev’s sardonic, teasing Lt. Kije Suite. The next time was slower. They were completely naked, skin upon skin, long caresses and bone deep shivers and, at last, peace.
In the still solemn moment before dawn, she told him what had happened. “It was an omen of diakka,” she explained. It was Baht, her fate, to encounter a child’s spirit, a lost soul that had not made the journey beyond the waters, anda I thema, a spirit so hungry for life it could suck the very life from the living. No, she did not know how or when, did not know anything more than that—except that she was afraid as she had never before been afraid.
David did not interrupt with a single question. When she was finished, he said, “I understand.”
The sun rose over Lake Michigan, radiant orange and eternal. David went to the window and recited the Romany words she asked him to say, offered the incantation she could not bring herself to speak because she was marhime, an outcast, an unclean woman.
Great Fire, Defender, and Protector,
Celestial Fire Who cleans the Earth of foulness,
Deliver us from Evil.
There were other words Selena could not speak aloud, but she said them to herself:
David, I love you.
— | — | —
Seven
“Good morning,” Laura Morgan said when Vicki walked into Blossom Time.
“Hi,” Vicki Barringer said, for variety’s sake. She’d already said, “Good morning,” a half dozen times as, with the sun shining in a sky dotted with white puff clouds, she’d walked the two blocks to the flower shop. There was a greeting to Ralph Sorenson, Grove Corner’s retired postmaster who’d been coming out of Milly’s Family Restaurant, to Vera Pelman, the school crossing guard at Main and Lisle who stayed at her post an extra half hour for the late-to-class kids, to Chick, a bag boy at Knutsen’s Certified, who was carrying Mrs. Tremont’s bags to her station wagon, a greeting for each of her neighbors.
Yes, Vicki thought, definitely a good morning, and a good day—Friday, her very first pay day! Tonight they’d have to celebrate; she would take the family out to dinner.
Vicki set about watering the plants, then checking the cut flowers in the refrigerated case. Laura took a telephone order for a plant to be sent RFD to a hospitalized friend in the central Illinois town of Chenoa. At 10:15, the old gentleman with the plaid cap, Mr. Shelley, Vicki’s first customer of the week, was back. “Another spat with the wife,” he explained, with a sigh. “Last night at supper, ’cause she don’t want me putting so much salt on my food. Can’t help it. When you get old, if you don’t put salt on your food, you just can’t get any taste at all.” He needed the usual—a single reconciliation red rose. “Married fifty-two years,” he said, “so I guess the trial period is over. We do a lot of fightin’, lot of making up and just keep on lovin’ each other.”
Time passed pleasantly. There wasn’t much to do, really, except smell the flowers, watch through the plate glass window as Grove Corner’s citizens walked by at a small town pace, and chat with Laura Morgan about this and that. One subject, of course, was “the kids.” Laura’s daughter, Dorothy, the same age as Missy, was in the same second grade class, and the girls had already taken the first tentative steps toward friendship.
Three years older than Vicki, red-haired Laura Morgan was a tall, big-boned woman with a plain face, round and freckled, that became almost pretty when she smiled. Laura’s incongruously delicate hands were naturally gifted at flower arranging, and, by the end of her second day of work, Vicki had decided that Blossom Time was as much an enjoyable hobby as a financial venture for Laura. Vicki thought it possible, too, that the main reason Laura had hired her was for company in the shop and not because she needed help. Judging by this week, on a good day, business was fairly slow, and on a bad day—business wasn’t!
When the hands of the antique Regulator clock on the wall pointed to one, Laura said, “Lunch time.”
“Sure,” Vicki said. “Go ahead.” Ordinarily, one or the other took first lunch.
Today Laura said, “Uh-uh, let’s both go ahead. My treat.”
“But who’ll take care of the store?”
“Anyone needs flowers the next hour, they can go to the forest preserve and pick their own.”
With a laugh and a “Closed—Back Soon” sign on the door, they went to Milly’s Family
Restaurant.
The question came with the second cup of after-lunch coffee. “Where do you go to church?”
Vicki felt herself redden, the heat moving up her throat and onto her face.
“We don’t. Why do you ask?” she said, disliking her brusque reply.
Laura shrugged. “For the sake of asking, I guess.” She sipped her coffee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject, if that’s what it is.”
Vicki smiled apologetically. “No, not really. My husband, well, Warren doesn’t go along with organized religion. I mean, he’s positively hostile toward it.” That was an understatement, she thought. Warren had declared, “Television is the opiate of choice for America’s many mindless. Church is a near second.”
“Mark never cared about church, either,” Laura said. “Oh, it wasn’t a big deal with him one way or the other. It just wasn’t anything he thought about. Me, I grew up in church, Presbyterian. Had a gold pin for regular Sunday school attendance and everything.”
I grew up in church, too, Vicki thought, but there was no Sunday school attendance pin. It was wrong to reward children or anyone for worshipping God as He commanded; that was the teaching of the Holiness Union Church.
“You know how it is. When Mark and I were married,” Laura continued, “I figured if Mark didn’t want to go, okay, we wouldn’t go.” She smiled. “And I told myself I didn’t miss it or need it and that was that. Besides, there was nothing to stop me from saying a prayer anytime I chose, was there? If I was working in my garden or putting together a casserole, God would hear me just as well as if I had an organ providing a sound track.”
Vicki liked neither this topic or the memories and feelings it was dredging up. But Laura was sharing something personal, something Laura obviously considered important, and Vicki could not try to change the subject. She nodded, encouraging Laura to go on.
Laura glanced down. Her index finger traced her coffee cup handle. “Then when I lost Mark, it got pretty bad. Dorothy wasn’t even two then. I mean, I was honestly happy, and then, just like that there’s a drunk driver who doesn’t even know Mark or me, and Mark is dead. We were okay financially, Mark had seen to that, but, you know,” Laura’s eyes were thoughtful, “after he died that way, nothing made any sense to me.”
Laura shrugged. “So that’s when I started going to church again. It helped. I’m not sure exactly how, but it got me through that bad time, Vicki. It was like, well, there’s a special feeling when people gather together to worship God. It’s reassuring. Maybe you have your own doubts, but when there are other people with you, and you’re all believing there’s a powerful Someone who does care about each and every one of us…” Another shrug. “But, okay, even if I didn’t understand that feeling, it was there, and somehow it kept me going when I didn’t think I could.”
Laura laughed lightly. “Sorry,” she said, “It’s hard to explain. Am I making any sense at all?”
“Yes,” Vicki said. She understood that special feeling, had known it years ago.
The brothers and sisters of the Holiness Union Church believed in God, in salvation through the Blood of His Only Begotten Son, in the surety of a heavenly home for the faithful and true believers, and the endless flaming punishment of Hell for sinners. The brothers and sisters of the Holiness Union Church believed in miracles, in the power of God to heal by casting out demons of the mind and heart and body.
The brothers and sisters of the Holiness Union Church believed that women wearing make-up were guilty of the sin of vanity, that women in pants were guilty of far worse, that dancing was meant to tempt too weak flesh to greater sins, that alcohol drove God out of your mind and spirit, leaving an inviting vacuum to be filled by Satan, that movies and television glorified godless people doing godless things, that the sole godly reason for sex was to fulfill the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, and that the Devil walked the Earth, eager and alert to snatch your soul and cast it into the pit the moment your eyes were not on God and your heart was not filled with Jesus.
The Millers—Brother Robert, Sister Lou Ann and their children, Victoria and her sister, Carol Grace, younger by three years—belonged to the Holiness Union Church. The girls learned to ignore the taunts of schoolmates. “Holy roller, bible banger, crazy, goofy, nutty, batty freaks.” The insults might wound, but God healed the wounds of the faithful. What harm could a poor lost sinner do to God’s children who walked in His path, knew Him as shield and comforter?
Victoria and Carol Grace believed with a single-minded intensity which only the young can achieve. “He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own…” is what the sisters felt from moment to moment in their lives, but it was when they prayed with the congregation in the white frame Holiness Union Church that they were overwhelmed by the shining force of His wondrous love. There with the benches pushed against the walls to clear the floor for those seized by the Holy Ghost, convulsing in an ecstasy of the spirit, crying out the streams of mysterious God-inspired words, they knew and rejoiced in God’s might and His magnificence beyond magnificence. And when Brother Earl or Brother Talbot or their very own father Brother Robert, laid hands on the sick, commanding “In the name of the Lord!” that Satan’s imps, demons, and devils quit the body of God’s servant, the servant was cured, healed of the common cold, rheumatism, colitis, psoriasis, and they beheld a miracle.
In church, when Victoria Miller thanked God for His grace, she often cried, sobbing at the splendor of His gift, freely given.
She was saved and Carol Grace was saved, because their blessed parents were godly people who brought up their children in the ways of the Lord. That is what Victoria Miller believed.
Victoria was 14 when her father died of a heart attack. She could have accepted that. Death was “The Lord calling his servant home.”
However Brother Robert died late at night in the mobile home of a bleached blonde who had known many men. Brother Robert was naked and died in a naked woman’s bed.
Victoria could not accept that. She could not accept her father’s burning in hell forever, could not accept his being a hypocrite, a liar, a fornicator, an adulterer.
Mrs. Miller could not accept it, either. Within a year, she was mumbling to herself about blood sins and winged serpents and communists, and six months later, muttering prayers, she tried to burn down the house. She was committed to a mental institution; a year later, she died there.
Victoria and Carol Grace were taken in by their father’s brother and his wife, Uncle Chester and Aunt Toni. It was Aunt Toni who began calling Victoria “Vicki” and kept calling her that until the time came when Victoria did feel like Vicki. Their aunt and uncle were not members of the Holiness Union Church or any church. Uncle Chester’s religious philosophy would coincidentally later become a beer advertisement: “What I believe is you only go around once in life.”
Vicki decided that that was what she thought, too, and in those moments when she heard a tiny voice within her mind saying, “You’re cutting God out of your life,” when she felt something that was not exactly loneliness or emptiness within her but a particular type of longing hurt, she found ways to refocus her attention on the here and now. There were books she had never read, had not been allowed to read. There were television shows and motion pictures, and there were high school dances. She wore make-up and high heels. “Hon, you’re an attractive young lady with a cute shape to you,” Aunt Toni counseled, “and there’s not one thing sinful about dressing yourself up!” She giggled and gossiped and went out with boys to picnics and parties. The here and now, she learned, was quite all right. It wasn’t sinful; it was just the world as it was.
The farther Vicki drifted away from her strict religious upbringing, the more Carol Grace embraced those early teachings. Vicki could not understand her sister. Carol Grace…well, you could not talk with Carol Grace. Carol Grace did not answer questions; she issued proclamations. She did not converse; she condemned or proselytized or b
oth.
Vicki Miller grew up, went off to college and dropped out in her third year to marry Warren Barringer, a graduate student who’d just been granted admission to the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Carol Grace grew up and married Evan Kyle Dean, a minister, an evangelist, a faith healer who had gone on to no little renown. Carol Grace and Vicki had not spoken in ten years.
Uncle Chester and Aunt Toni retired and bought a condo in Clearwater, Florida, where they meant to enjoy their golden years, but Aunt Toni was dead in six months, a brain aneurism, and Uncle Chester followed her with a fatal heart attack a mere two months after.
So Vicki Barringer lived her life entwined with the lives of her husband and their child, lived her life in the here and now, occasionally taking note that God was no part of it.
And sometimes late at night, so alone, when she had no choice but to be totally honest with herself, she admitted she missed…Him.
“Really, you don’t have to feel obligated,” Laura Morgan was saying. “I just thought I’d ask if you’d like to come to church with me this Sunday. I’m not trying to convert you or anything.”
She wasn’t tracking and hadn’t been for a while, Vicki realized; she had slipped away from the here and now, but she heard Laura’s invitation.
“Yes,” Vicki said, “I would like that.”
— | — | —
Eight
Melissa? Melissa!
How come you always bother me when I’m sleeping? It’s bedtime. I’m supposed to be asleep. You should be asleep, too, Lisette.
No, Melissa. I can’t sleep.
Well, I can, so good night. Go away.
No.