Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

  "And you think this is why Ez has been having trouble sleeping?"

  "He's never had trouble sleeping before. Except when he sleepwalks, which is a kind of sleep anyway. This is totally different."

  "You think Abelardo put this holy card under the mattress in order to disturb Ezra's sleep?" Waldo said. His head sank back on his foam pillows, nice hygienic foam pillows with no resident pillow mites.

  "Things affect Ezra that don't affect the rest of us. You know that," I said. It was true. Sometimes it was as if Ez were missing the last layer of skin that protected the rest of us. He was so tender. Tender on the giving and the receiving end of things. He felt a change in the weather, a breeze, a drop in the temperature before it happened. Once in the middle of the night there was a small earthquake, four point something on the Richter scale, with its epicenter on the other side of the Hudson, and Ezra felt it. He came in to tell us the house had just shivered. Of course we assumed it was a dream until we heard on the news the next day that the tremor had occurred moments before he'd come into our bedroom, all soft and warm in his spaceship pajamas.

  "Yup. He's more sensitive than a seismograph. I just don't think this is the problem with his sleeping."

  "Then how about this?" I said. "How about we wait and see tomorrow how he slept tonight? I'll bet you anything he will be fine."

  "Anything?"

  "Anything," I said.

  "Five blowjobs. Whenever I want them," Waldo said.

  "Within reason," I said. "I don't do BJs at your mother's. Not in those bunk beds."

  "Granted."

  "Good," I said. "And I get the converse. Or is it the obverse? Whichever. Because I'm going to win this one."

  "Al, I hate to say this—" Waldo said.

  "No, you don't. If you hated to say it, you wouldn't say it," I said.

  "Fine. I'm delighted to tell you I think you're taking this all too far."

  "Is this because I don't have a job anymore? Because I got sacked twice? You wouldn't say this if I had a real job," I whinged.

  "That's another thing you're taking too far, the job thing."

  "Don't patronize me," I said. "I'm going to invite Hubert up here for dinner. It's time you all met him. He was the one who told me to look under the mattress, because that's where he keeps his."

  "I can't wait," Waldo said. "Can I go to sleep now?"

  We kissed. I rolled over and kneaded my pillow full of pillow mites one more time, and slept.

  But apparently Waldo did not sleep right away. Apparently Waldo was creating poems in his head. I heard this:

  "There was in Leon one holy dame

  She cured the hiccups to great acclaim

  But when she was dead

  Her panties were shred.

  An undressed corpse was that holy dame."

  "I love it, Waldo!" I said.

  "Thanks, Al. But we both know it sucks."

  "I don't think it sucks. I think it's amusing. I would give my little finger to be able to write limericks."

  "Be grateful, Al. It's bad enough when you can't get 'Wake Up, Little Susie' to stop playing in your head. Imagine putting all of life into doggerel, counting the syllables, playing with rhymes. It's a curse."

  "I think they're wonderful," I said. "If I had your talent, I wouldn't be so ungrateful."

  "There was a young wife of VerGroot

  Who simply did not give a hoot

  When her poor husband pled

  As he lay in his bed

  For an end to limericks in VerGroot."

  And then we slept. Or I slept.

  Later, I don't know how much later, I felt his hand on my bottom and his lips at my ear. "Put your hand on my penis."

  "Huh?"

  "Now," Waldo whispered.

  "You don't have to get huffy."

  I felt his tongue on my earlobe and knew where we were headed. "Far from it. I can't sleep. I'm horny and I'm desperate."

  "Sometimes desperation is a good thing. Focuses the mind."

  He took my hand and put it where he wanted it.

  "I'm going to win that bet," I said.

  "Fine," Waldo said. "Just focus."

  I touched his penis. It grew and it hardened, from a turtle egg to a new carrot. There was a miracle.

  19

  The Olfactory Sense

  BEFORE I COULD ASK Ezra anything at all, Posey called.

  "Alice, dear? Have you had any bears at your house yet? I've just heard about all the troubles you've been having with bears. You must be careful with those dogs of yours. I doubt they would be a match for a hungry bear. Or a mother bear."

  "We don't have bears, Posey," I said.

  "Of course you do, I just read about it in the Gazette."

  "I don't know what to say, then," I said. I turned to Ezra and Henry. "Hey, guys, do we have bears? Have you heard of any bears around here?"

  Ezra raised himself up as tall as possible, curled his hands into paws, and growled.

  "They think not, Posey. But we'll be careful," I said.

  "One bear went right into someone's kitchen—the family were all still asleep upstairs, and they had two little boys." She said this with Hitchcockian emphasis. "The bear ripped through the screen, waltzed in, opened up the icebox, and ate all the leftovers."

  "Posey?" I said. "You can't believe that."

  "Believe what? What can't I believe? I read it in the newspaper."

  "No bear would open a refrigerator door," I said.

  "Why not? You don't think they would?"

  "Why would they? They can't know there's food in the fridge. Fridges don't smell like food. That is their point."

  "Of course they know about iceboxes. What do you think they've learned in all these years living in our backyards?"

  "Posey, I need to get the boys off to school."

  "They really should give those boys more time off. I think this early-childhood education is vastly overrated."

  "I think that's referring to nursery school. Ezra's in fourth grade, Posey. He's ten."

  "I know how old they are."

  Waldo sipped his powerful coffee like it was ambrosia, took the offered phone, and said, "I'd love to talk, Mother. But I have to get to work. No, any color but green."

  Ezra was halfway out the door before I asked, "How did you sleep?"

  "Fine, Mom. Gotta go. Today is Opposites Day." Just like that.

  I won the bet.

  Hubert was finally coming up the river to have dinner with us, but as I was cooking that afternoon, all I could think about, in stomach-wrenching detail, were the cooking disasters of evenings past. The blueberry-balsamic marinated trout that was metallically inedible, the squid-ink pasta that had triggered a life-threatening allergic reaction in Morton V. Smart, and always, always the bloody chicken. Bloody chicken in our family was shorthand for a meal that had gone terribly awry.

  Not that I feared I might poison Hubert that evening. But I did worry that he might find us to be pedestrian heathens. Waldo might, just for fun, say something blasphemous about the concept of the Virgin Birth, that being one of his favorite credos to debunk. I was not worried about Ezra and Henry.

  Foodwise, I decided on grilled salmon and saffron rice and stuffed tomatoes. The boys loved stuffed tomatoes as long as I didn't put anchovies in them. And strawberries for dessert, because they were good for the complexion.

  I called Waldo at work and asked him to stop and get charcoal on his way home. We were out of charcoal. We were always out of charcoal, and yet I never remembered to get charcoal.

  "Couldn't you just cook it in the broiler?" he said.

  "No. Waldo, please. This is important."

  "Why such a tizzy? You make dinner on a regular basis. It's always fine," he said.

  "I'm not in a tizzy. But he's never met any of you before. I want him to have a good time."

  "Listen, Al, this guy lives alone with pictures of his dead lover, and has no one to talk to except the saints. How could he not have a g
ood time? Of course he'll have a good time."

  "Is that the impression I've given you? That he's some kind of mournful recluse? He talks to people at the club every day. No wonder I'm in a tizzy."

  "But you're not in a tizzy."

  "Correct," I said.

  Waldo came home in time with the charcoal, and the boys, dirty and hungry and filled with secret glee, returned with Dandy and Flirt from wherever they had been, and then I went to pick up Hubert at the 7:02.

  Everything was fine. The boys bathed without too much discussion. The grill did not go up in flames. The food was edible. The salmon was not incinerated.

  I said to Hubert, "I've been meaning to tell Ez and Henry about Christina the Astonishing."

  Hubert said, "The saint, or our friend in the dining room?"

  "What is so astonishing about her?" Henry said.

  "She was dead and then at her own funeral she levitated up to the ceiling of the church and sat in the rafters. She couldn't stand the stink of other human beings, so she stuck her head in the oven," I said.

  "It is often pointed out, by pedants and others, that hygiene in the Middle Ages was notoriously lacking," Hubert said. "But to my mind, it has always been more than mere body odor that repelled her."

  Ezra and Henry locked eyes, then averted their eyes from each other's. But the damage was done. They burst out laughing, and I knew exactly why. Those two words, body odor, were as amusing as any pie in the face. In the case of those particular words, it was more than just the reference to physicality that set off their reaction; there was the triple repetition of the o, and then the two hard-d sounds in the middle, as well as its iambic perfection.

  "Did I say something funny?" Hubert said.

  "No," Waldo and I said, more or less simultaneously.

  Henry and Ezra said in unison, "Yes!"

  "Oh, dear," Waldo said. "I'm afraid Christina might have found the company at this table objectionable." And then he held his nose.

  I couldn't believe this was happening. The dogs must have farted, and the smell was—as Waldo said—objectionable. What did Emily Post suggest one should do in the presence of a fart? Pretend it hadn't happened. Do not draw attention to it. Surely she would say to most definitely not mention it. But Waldo, Ezra, and Henry were in the habit of mentioning such things, as well as classifying them.

  "Where are the dogs?" Waldo said, and leaned down to look under the table. "Dandy! Flirt! You're going outside right now!"

  They were not under the table. They were not in the room. I remembered then that I had put them outside before we'd started dinner. Whatever the provenance of the objectionable fart, it was neither Dandy nor Flirt.

  "Yes," Hubert said. "Where are those beautiful dogs?" He turned to the boys. "Your mother is constantly speaking of those dogs and her attachment to them. Far more than she speaks of you two."

  There was a weird silence. Hubert said, "I was just kidding. Your mother is admirably devoted."

  Waldo came to the rescue. He said, with no apparent effort,

  "Saint Christina was an astonishing lass.

  She spoke at her own funeral mass

  And rose up to the rafter

  But it's what she did after

  That caused all the hoo-ha and fracas."

  Henry jiggled in his seat and said, "Way to go, Dad."

  "How remarkable," Hubert said. "I don't think I've ever heard a limerick about a saint before. This opens up wonderful new possibilities."

  Waldo said, "Alice can't abide it when I make up limericks."

  I protested, "You know that's untrue. I love them. In my opinion, we don't hear them near enough."

  Henry muttered, "Yes, we do."

  "I had a dream last night," Ezra said. "Do you want to hear it?" Waldo and I stared in shared shock and surprise. In front of a stranger? This was something wonderful and strange indeed.

  Ezra carefully laid his knife and fork onto his plate, in perfect alignment, and launched into the dream. "I am walking down the road toward Bogumila's house. A family of tall, skinny stick people lives there. There are rabbits on the road. They keep hopping in and out of the road, back into the woods and then back onto the road."

  "Ezra has a thing about rabbits," Henry explained.

  Waldo waved his hand distractedly. "Quiet, Henry. Let him finish."

  "I didn't know you have a thing about rabbits," I said. How could I not know he had a thing about rabbits? Wasn't it the very nature of having a thing that everyone knew about it? Had I not been paying attention?

  "You too," Waldo said. "Quiet."

  "So there were rabbits in the road. It was a room at Gran's house. Dad was taking the pieces out of a combination clock-toaster, and then he was lying down and I wanted to talk to him. He was using a rabbit as a pillow. So I opened my mouth to say something very loud to make him wake up and let the rabbit go, but no sounds came out and then the rabbit opened his eyes and said that I should be quiet."

  We all just sat there.

  "Does anyone want more salmon? Or rice? There are more tomatoes."

  "I'd like more of everything," Hubert said.

  "That's quite a dream you had there, Ez," Waldo said. "It's too bad you can't call in to that excellent radio show that used to be on the air."

  "I think it's really different to hear the dream of someone you actually know, and love," I said.

  "Different from what?" Hubert said.

  "From hearing the dreams of strangers. Strangers you can't even see."

  Waldo said, "Which do you think you can make more sense of?"

  "No question," I said. "A stranger's. With Ezra, or you, or anyone else I know, I can't keep myself from trying to figure out who is who and what it means."

  "Remember Saint Melangell?" Hubert asked.

  "Fifteen years in the forest? How could I forget?"

  "The hare. The hare signifies in her iconography."

  "Of course! I meant to tell Waldo, so he could rhyme hare and prayer."

  Waldo said, "How about beware and underwear? How about—oh, forget it!"

  Ezra said, "Is there dessert?"

  "Strawberries and cream."

  "Mom said you were an expert in saints who got their heads cut off," Henry said. "Is decapitation a common form of sainticide?"

  "That's quite good, sainticide," Hubert said. "But it can't really apply because, you see, someone can only become a saint after he or she is dead. For at least fifteen years. So you can't kill a saint. You can, however, kill someone who will become a saint. Decapitation was quite popular in early Christianity. Diocletian was rather fond of it. But he certainly didn't invent it. Anyway, we just say martyrdom, period."

  "Where did you hear about this?" Waldo said.

  "Mom told us," Ezra answered.

  "I assume she was referring to the cephalophores. I have something of a penchant for the cephalophores."

  "Exactly," Henry said with delight. "That's what Mom called them too."

  "I am working just now on an article about the Forty Monks of Magul. Perhaps you would like to hear about them?"

  "Go for it," Henry said.

  I had wanted this dinner to go off well, and I had wanted the boys to like Hubert, but now I was just a little unnerved because they seemed to like him so much. They seemed ready to tell him anything, things they might never have told me, and ready to hear anything, happily. Nor had Hubert ever told me about these monks.

  Hubert began, "I am fond of this story because it is such a wonderful example of the miracle of cephalolalia, the speaking of a severed head. We believe it took place on August the fourteenth, which would mean that the monks were singing the first vespers of the Feast of the Assumption. I am sure such brainy young boys as yourselves know what the Assumption is"—they shook their heads woefully—"and as I said, there were forty monks at the monastery of Magul. As they were antiphonally singing their vespers, a band of bloodthirsty heretics broke into the church and cut off their heads. All forty heads. Having
completed their heinous crime, then all their ransacking and pillaging, the heretics departed. The monks picked up their fallen heads, and those heads completed the singing of the vespers, back and forth, from one side of the chapel to the other. When they were finished, the monks laid their severed heads down upon the ground, and died their glorious martyrs' deaths."

  Ezra and Henry were transfixed, and then Ezra said, "Could that really happen?"

  "Chips off the old block," Hubert said.

  "I don't think so," Ezra said. "We don't think so. But we're not saint people."

  Hubert said, "No, you're not hagiographers. Are you asking if a hagiographer believes such a thing is possible? It can be true legend without being true history. I personally believe in miracles. Not all miracles. But always the possibility for miracles."

  "Strawberries, anyone? I'll let you put the cream on yourselves."

  "I'd rather put the cream on the strawberries," said Waldo. "If it's all the same to you."

  "Very funny," I said. I turned to Hubert. "You can see the abuse I take."

  "Why are the dogs barking?" Waldo said.

  "Are they barking? I don't hear anything," I said.

  Ezra said, "I'll go see."

  "Can I eat his strawberries?" Henry said.

  "You may not," I said.

  Ezra went out the back door and into the darkness. As soon as we stopped talking, we could all hear the dogs barking. Ezra shouted, "Flirt got skunked. It's gross."

  Waldo got up and went outside, muttering, "Damn, damn, damn that dog. She always has to stick her nose up a stinky asshole."

  We heard him calling the dogs, and then he yelled, "Don't come outside. It's pretty bad. Al, we need tomato juice, and the stuff."

  The stuff he needed was feminine hygiene spray. It worked better than tomato juice, but Waldo refused to buy it at our drugstore. I always made a point of telling the pharmacist, Larry Nachtagal, who had filled prescriptions for our family for years, that it was for the dogs. I told Waldo he too could easily explain it was for the dogs. He insisted that by explaining, I was only drawing attention to myself, and anyone in his right mind would assume that the feminine hygiene spray was indeed for me, and that I didn't even have dogs.