The Beggar's Pawn

by John L'Heureux

  “Fuck that,” Claire claimed to have said, frankly, though at the time she replied that such a probationary period seemed too long. She could be poor on her own, she decided, though she had liked the idea of caring for the old and the ill as the Little Sisters of the Poor did, and she liked their costume. As to caring for the old and the ill, she could take care of Misery and Poop, as she called her mother and father, even though family care lacked the satisfaction that came from caring for strangers. She decided to check in with them—just a short visit—and see how they were doing in their old age, at seventy-something.

  They were doing well and pretended to be pleased that Claire had reunited with Willow, the lesbian theater person.

  “You’re not pleased.”

  “It’s your life, darling. You must do whatever is right for you.”

  “You like me in my native condition,” Claire said. “Alone.”

  “We like you just as you are,” Maggie said. “You have the most beautiful eyes.”

  David got them drinks and the tension subsided.

  “The Little Sisters of the Poor refused me. That’s what they’re called.”

  “Aren’t they those poor nuns in the Poulenc opera?”

  “No, those are Carmelites. Anyhow, you’ve got to be a Catholic to join. I feel that’s just another kind of bigotry. An Old Boys’ club, but for Catholic women.” She had already begun to turn her experience into an anecdote that might entertain.

  Maggie did not know how to reply so she remained silent.

  “She was all fired up about charity, the Mother Superior.”

  More silence.

  “I told her that charity has to be earned.” Claire thought about this. “She hated me.”

  “Catholics are strange. They like their own kind.”

  “Yes, like academics.”

  They seemed to have run out of conversation already and the visit had hardly begun. Claire was expecting some comment on her weight.

  “You’ve lost some weight,” Maggie noticed finally. “You’re developing a lovely figure.”

  “I know, I know . . . and if I’d only wear makeup. I’ve heard it all before.”

  “But do look at Dickens!” Maggie said. “Have you ever seen a more beautiful dog?”

  Everything always came back to Dickens.

  * * *

  —

  REGINALD WROTE THEM a note that they found, handwritten and hand-delivered, sticking through the mail slot.

  Dear Professor and Mrs. Holliss,

  I would like to invite you to dinner to thank you for your great kindness. At a time that is convenient for you. This Sunday would be ideal, but any Saturday or Sunday evening this year would be fine. Shall we say this coming Sunday, at 7 pm?

  Gratefully,

  Reginald Parker

  Claire was curious. “Who’s this Reginald Parker?” she asked. “With a handwritten note, no less. Nobody writes by hand anymore. And why is he grateful?”

  Maggie and David exchanged a meaningless look. She had not yet told him about the two-hundred-dollar loan and he had not told her about the picnic hamper of goodies.

  “He saved the dog,” David said.

  “He saved Dickens,” Maggie said.

  “So why is he grateful?”

  “I drove him home. He was nearly killed jumping in front of the truck to save Dickens. I bandaged his hands and drove him home.”

  “And for this he wants to have you to dinner?”

  “How do we get out of this?” David said.

  “Dear God,” Maggie said.

  “God has nothing to do with this. Think of a way out.”

  “Why not just go? It might be fun,” Claire said. “Tell him I’m visiting and maybe he’ll invite me as well.”

  “We could tell him Claire is visiting and so we can’t come . . . go. Is that plausible?”

  “But he says any Saturday or Sunday this year.”

  “This year!”

  “At least he has a sense of humor.” This was Claire. “He leaves you no way out.” Claire laughed and they both turned to look at her since she was not given to laughter.

  In the end they decided to get it over with as soon as possible.

  They accepted and Claire was invited along with them.

  3.

  Reginald met them at the door of the little cottage looking confused rather than welcoming, as if he hadn’t really expected them to show up. Maggie and David introduced him to Claire and at once Claire and Reginald faced off.

  “Welcome,” Reginald said. He smiled.

  “A pleasure,” Claire said.

  “Call me Reg,” he said.

  Claire made an instant assessment. She guessed he must be about forty-three, her own age. He was tall and skinny with sandy hair, balding in front, and a thin patchy beard. He was gazing at her with mild disappointment, as if he had expected someone younger and prettier. You’re no prize yourself, she thought as she gave his hand a firm, manly squeeze. His looks were satisfying: he would be no challenge to her.

  There was no telling what he thought of her.

  “I love these guest cottages,” Claire said.

  “Reg,” David said, and pressed on him the bottle of wine he had brought. “A modest merlot,” he said, “with pretensions.”

  They all went inside. Suddenly a woman and child emerged from the kitchen. The child was a girl of eight or nine, smiling shyly. The woman could have been any age, with her anxious face, pointed and foxy. They both had extraordinary red-gold hair pulled back in a ponytail and a trail of freckles across their noses. The mother looked thin to the point of malnutrition. She was smiling bravely but she appeared frightened.

  “My wife, Helen,” Reginald said, “and my daughter, Iris.”

  This was the first the Hollisses had heard of a wife and child.

  They greeted each other carefully, except for Maggie, who suddenly lapsed into her old Sedgwick sociability.

  “How nice!” she said. “We didn’t know you existed. I mean, Reginald never mentioned a family and so we naturally thought . . . and what a pretty girl you are, Iris! Such lovely hair!”

  Iris flushed with pleasure.

  “Shall we sit down?” Maggie said, forgetting in her anxiety that she was not the hostess. “Well, what a nice surprise,” she said. She looked from Helen to Iris and to the living room beyond.

  The living room was small, with a dining table set up at one end and a desk and filing cabinet at the other. In the middle of the room two couches faced each other, a fireplace on the wall in between. The three Hollisses sat on one couch and faced the Parkers on the other. Reginald was still holding David’s modest merlot.

  “Lovely,” Maggie said. “Cozy and lovely.”

  “We don’t have a grand piano,” Reginald said. “We don’t have a swimming pool.”

  “Neither did we . . . once.”

  “But you do now.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “It must feel good to have everything.”

  “‘There must be more to life than having everything.’ Do you know that book by Sendak? It’s absolutely delightful. Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life.” She began to wonder if they had gotten the date wrong or if they had drifted by mistake into the wrong guest cottage. “This is a lovely room. And so nicely set up,” Maggie said. “So.” It was up to someone else now.

  “I have to see to the dinner,” Helen said. “Come with me, Iris.”

  “The boss has spoken,” Reginald said. He got up and followed them into the kitchen.

  Maggie poked David and whispered, “Good God!” He looked at her, shook his head, and said, “Don’t.”

  Claire moved to the couch facing her parents. She was pleased with herself. She looked at her mother and father—Misery and P
oop, just like the old days—and measured their growing discomfort. This was going to be an interesting evening.

  “What can I get you to drink?” Reginald asked. He was leaning across the pass-through from the kitchen. “We can offer you tomato juice or orange juice or Calistoga water.” He ducked his head back into the kitchen and a few seconds later joined them in the living room. “We don’t drink here,” he explained. “Not alcohol. So what would you like?”

  They all decided on Calistoga water and Reginald disappeared again into the kitchen.

  “This is gonna be one long night,” David said.

  “Shhh.”

  “What larks!” Claire said. “Tomato juice or orange juice or water!” She laughed happily.

  Reginald returned with water for everyone. He seemed more relaxed now that he had drinks out of the way.

  “Here’s to the end of the Bush era,” David said.

  They raised their glasses toward one another.

  “Alas,” Reginald said, and no one followed up on that.

  Claire let out a small giggle. “What larks!” she said.

  Dickens first, and then the weather—unseasonably warm for Northern California—and then university gossip: this got them through the water aperitif and then it was time for dinner.

  * * *

  —

  “THIS IS DELICIOUS,” MAGGIE SAID. “What do you call it?”

  They were eating an egg and avocado casserole with some green and red bits here and there, peppers and tomatoes. It was a concoction devised by Helen herself under the double pressures of economy and vegetarianism.

  “It’s just a thing I made,” Helen said.

  “Well, it’s perfectly lovely,” Maggie said. “Lucky you, Reginald. Reg. Have you been married long?”

  Reginald and Helen exchanged glances and then Reginald said, “Just long enough to produce our lovely, obedient daughter.”

  Helen smiled. Suddenly she looked to be in her early twenties, remarkably fresh and pretty.

  “And how did you meet?”

  Helen began, “We met . . .”

  “That’s a long story,” Reginald said in a way that made clear that he was not going to get into it and neither was Helen.

  “Well?” Claire was not to be put off. “We’ve got all evening.”

  “Delicious,” Maggie said. “You should be a chef, Helen.” Inspired, she said, “We know Reginald is a novelist, but what do you do? Or are you a full-time mother?”

  “I work at Walmart, part time.”

  “Walmart! How interesting! It’s always in the news.”

  “For taking advantage of their part-time workers,” Reginald said. “They keep you on a part-time schedule so they can deny you benefits. Health care, for example.”

  “And everyone needs health care,” Maggie said, then there was a silence. “Something should be done.”

  “For the sake of justice,” Claire said. She looked around but there were no takers. She nudged the subject forward with a little speech on the exploitation of women in communes by a patriarchy she likened to the Taliban but nobody responded and so she gave up and asked, “What grade are you in, Iris? You look very smart.”

  “I’m in fourth grade.”

  “She’s supposed to be in third, but she skipped a grade,” Reginald said. “But we don’t praise her because we want to keep her humble.”

  “Why?” Claire said. It had an accusatory tone.

  “To walk in the way of the Lord,” he said. “Why else?”

  “And how did he walk?”

  “Humbly. Aware that he was God.” He added, “And man.”

  “I’ve always wondered; if he was God, how could he be man?”

  “It’s the great Christian paradox,” Reginald said.

  “Yes, sure, but really?”

  “What’s so difficult to understand about paradox?”

  Claire leaned forward to engage him. “Leave it,” David said, and smiled at Helen and Reginald. “I’m afraid all the Hollisses are a bit deficient in the religion category.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Claire said. “I almost became a nun.”

  Maggie sighed.

  “A near miss,” David said, and added, “for the nunnery.”

  “Poop!” Claire said, and Maggie said, “David!”

  “Kidding. Just kidding.”

  “Tell us about being a nun. Or almost being one.”

  Claire went on at length about her interview with the Mother Superior, who had told her she had to be a Catholic before becoming a nun. And of course she had known that, Claire said, she was not an idiot, but she didn’t want to become a Catholic before she was sure that becoming a nun was right for her. She wasn’t about to plunge into another total commitment without some sense of how it fit her needs. She’d been through the commune business and the motherhood business and the lesbian business and this time she wanted to be certain before making a major commitment. She was sure he saw her point. Life was too short not to get the best. And she had decided religion was not the best.

  She finished and looked to Reginald for some response but he seemed for the moment confused by her lengthy speech.

  “How about opening that wine I brought,” David said. He had reached the end of his patience with Claire’s dreams of the good life or, in her case, the best. In the next moment she would be onto “give peace a chance.”

  “We don’t drink,” Reginald said.

  “But we do,” David said. “And I wouldn’t want that wine to go to waste.”

  “The truth is we don’t have a corkscrew.”

  “Yes, there’s a kind of corkscrew thing on the side of that Swiss Army knife you’ve got,” Helen said, and Reginald gave her a hard look. He got up and went out to the kitchen, where they could hear him rattling through the knives and forks in search of his Swiss Army knife.

  “It’s not too late for the wine?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s exactly the right time,” David said.

  “I’d love some wine,” Iris said confidentially. “When I’m older.”

  Maggie smiled at her. Iris was a sweet child, and pretty. Why did they want her to walk in the way of the Lord? Why couldn’t they all just have a good-night drink and go home?

  “How’re you doing out there, Reg?” Claire was invigorated by the likelihood of further conversation about her fling with the nunnery.

  “These will have to do as wineglasses,” Reginald said. He clutched three yellow juice glasses in one hand and the wine bottle in the other. He made a ceremony of pouring for David first and then for Maggie and Claire. In the yellow glasses the wine looked poisonous.

  “I hope it’s all right,” he said.

  “It’s modest,” David said, “with pretensions.”

  “Mmm,” Maggie said.

  Reginald sat down and cleared his throat. “This seems like the right moment to propose a toast.” He raised his glass of Calistoga water. “To my friend Maggie in gratitude for the loan of money and to my friend David for his gift of food. Two perfect acts of Christian fraternity. Good health.”

  David drained his glass and refilled it. The others sipped decorously.

  “Hear, hear!” Claire said. “Christian fraternity with the Hollisses!” She was delighted.

  David and Maggie exchanged a look. They knew what Claire was up to—she loved to sabotage a party—but they did not know what to make of this new, Christian Reginald. And they were not at all happy at his revealing the loan and the picnic basket.

  “Tell me,” Claire said, “are you a born-again Christian? With Jesus as your personal savior and all that?”

  “We’re Christians. I wouldn’t say we’re extreme. We just believe in Christian values . . . like kindness, generosity, humility. We follow the Bible.”

  “So you believe
in justice. Justice for part-time Walmart workers. Justice for immigrants, legal or illegal? Justice for gays and lesbians? Or do you only believe in justice for Christians, period?”

  “We believe in the Bible and the brotherhood of Christians.” He peered at Claire through his thick glasses. “I am my brother’s keeper.”

  “Religion is so complicated,” Maggie said.

  “Life is complicated,” Claire said. “Christianity is easy.”

  “Dear God,” Maggie said.

  Once again David filled their yellow glasses with wine.

  “Back to the subject,” Claire said. “When I almost became a nun, the Mother Superior I interviewed with was—like yourself, Reg—all excited about Christian virtues. Justice, I told her, is the one that matters. It pretty much includes all the others. But she wanted to insist on charity. Charity this. Charity that. And I said to her, ‘Well, do you mean charity like giving to the Salvation Army and so forth or do you mean thinking nice thoughts about people, even when they’re a pain in the behind?’ She hemmed and hawed and it became evident that she meant both. From what she said I could see she had confused charity with faith. Now I realize I’m simplifying what is probably a complicated theological distinction—I’m not a theologian—but my point remains the same. Justice includes charity because charity has to be earned, it has to be deserved.”

  David had never heard such an exercise in sloppy thinking. He wondered for a wild moment if she really was their daughter. He had always held, sensibly, that all religions were dangerous but it was now clear to him that religion could make you crazy.

  “So where does your notion of Christianity fit into this?” Claire asked.

  “My works are Christian,” Reginald said. “They’re infused with Christianity.”

  “Your works. Like your novels, you mean?” Claire leaned forward, ready for him.