A Choir of Ill Children (11 page)

Seekers of every variety wander the grounds, searching out God, themselves, their pipe dreams, and their sins. They seem to enjoy the bread though, and a certain amount of pride fills me. The trick is to knead the dough for at least twenty minutes, until your wrists begin to ache, before placing it in the oven. And raisins, use lots of raisins.

More pilgrims, acolytes, alcoholics, and the insane arrive every day. Some are irritated and bitter, some driven by their fears and nameless needs. They wear the cowls hoping to lose their desires within the depth of shapeless robes, but that almost never happens. They walk the wire across the chasms of their own souls, looking down into the great depths as, step by step, they cross to the distant side. On occasion they’ve learned something by the time they get there, but not always, and usually not what they expect.

Each to his own method. They run naked in the woods or recite the same prayer two thousand times while tapping little gongs before them. Or they howl from the abbey rooftop or cut the heads off of chickens and paint the ground with bloody symbols that appear more childish than Satanic. The penitents strip the skin off their backs with cat-o’-nine-tails that have jagged pottery shards tied to the leather. They flay themselves so they might one day be covered in fleece. Meditation can be like murder for some of them.

At sixth hour Abbot Earl finds me. He’s still got the hard muscles from when he drove a bulldozer and worked to drain the swamp. I keep the dollar he paid me for the old hospital in my wallet, and I take it out every now and again and think about how that single pack of bandages in the abandoned building saved his life. I glance around wondering what might save my life if I ever needed it—the raisins I use in the bread, these thistles in my robes, or over there, that pile of donkey shit. Perhaps they all have their place in God’s plan.

He says, “I need to speak with you, Thomas.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m not sure how important this may be but I felt that I should broach the subject with you. It concerns Sister Lucretia.”

“Lucretia Murteen.”

That’s the one-eyed woman he was bedding down with a few years back while drowning in tequila, after he’d grown as lost as my father over the failed project to clear the jungle and bring in strip malls. When he found his faith she did as well and became a nun in the order, a bride of the Flying Walendas. I’ve seen her in the monastery tending the gardens mostly, keeping to herself.

“What about her?”

“You know that she and I were once intimate. Before we started the order. Back when—”

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about.”

“And I’m not, to be sure. But it’s also true that she’s been acting . . . reticent lately. Perhaps a bit taciturn. She refuses to tell me what’s bothering her. I’m afraid that these troubles are actually making her consider leaving us.”

“That’s her right.”

He waves a hand in the air. “Of course, and normally I’d simply wish her well if that were her decision. We’ve all got our own courses to follow, wherever they may lead us. I wouldn’t dare to interfere so long as she chooses to go willingly and not because she feels she’s being forced to do so.”

“Forced?”

“Either by this burden or because of someone else here.”

“You think one of the monks or travelers has been bothering her? Threatening her?”

“Not as such,” he says. “But perhaps she does feel threatened nonetheless. She is a complex woman who’s had a lot to bear in her life.”

“Why tell me?”

The vertical scars at his wrist are bright in the late-afternoon sun as he steeples his fingers under his chin. He nods, thinking things through first before relating anything on to me. “She has . . . a secret.”

I want to say
Not anymore
but manage to restrain myself. “I see.”

He taps his incisors together in a nervous tic, eyes beginning to roam. A trickle of blood trails down his neck from where a barb had plucked his skin. “I overheard her praying. She mentioned a name.”

“Mine?”

“No. Your brother’s. Sebastian.”

At the sound of it my side begins to hurt. His teeth marks are still on me where the face had once been. The bite scars are no longer red. They’ve cooled to a dull gray. A dentist could take an impression and make a good set of dentures.

“Anything specific?”

“No, but I admit that it bothers me greatly.”

“Me too.”

We stand beneath the darkening sky looking at one another and not getting anywhere fast. I’m not sure what he expects me to do but I’m glad that he came to me. I turn it over for a while trying not to brood, wondering why Lucretia Murteen might mention my brother’s name. I head off.

“Where are you going?” Abbot Earl asks.

“To ride the jackass.”

S
ISTER
L
UCRETIA
M
URTEEN WEARS A WHITE EYE
patch that catches the moonlight and spills it at her feet.

She isn’t quite dancing but she’s more than swaying as she moves across the floor of the empty nursery. She mimes being an RN checking on the preemie babies in their incubators. These are precise, fixed actions: turning on the monitors, scrutinizing the tubes, and examining the oxygen flow. The controls are delicate.

She reaches into nonexistent cribs, coos and picks up newborns that aren’t there—phantoms, perhaps memories. She sits in a rocking chair and rocks the infants as they sleep, carefully inspecting their tiny mittens and woolen beanie hats. There is no rocking chair and I’m shocked at how well she can perform the movement, in that hideous position, tottering to and fro in a seat that’s not even under her. Her legs and back must be ready to collapse.

This isn’t a selfish endeavor or dream. She walks down the hall and hands the newborns to their spectral mothers in the maternity ward. She sits talking with them for a time, discussing the beautiful infants, their bright and open futures. I can almost hear the mothers sobbing with joy, kissing the tiny foreheads of children whose eyes haven’t yet opened.

Sister Lucretia thanks the holy name of Flying Walenda and walks her own wire of conscience. We all do. She stares out the window up at the stars and moves her patch over her good eye.

Moonlight fills her empty socket until it runs into her mouth.

Her teeth glow in the night as she turns blindly to face me, arms wide.

S
WEAT DRIBBLES TO THE KITCHEN FLOOR.
D
ODI AND
Sarah, the two women of the house, face off like ancient enemies watching each other across desert wastes. They’re in the kitchen, equidistant from the knife drawer. This has been a battleground for much longer than they’ve been in the house, and the ghosts in the walls and closets are proof that all it takes to go to war is a matter of time.

Sarah’s parents have been mailing long letters to her, begging her to come back home and resume her life as a film student. They offer to pay for graduate school, a new apartment overlooking Central Park, a therapist in midtown, whatever it is she might need. I can see by the phone bill that she calls them often, but their conversations usually last for less than five minutes. They no more understand her than she understands herself lately.

Fred has been sending letters too, written on yellow stationery, college-ruled. His penmanship is excessively large and he only writes on every other line. He’s in rehab, doing well, clean for nineteen days, and preparing to film a documentary on addiction.

He’s in with two famous rappers, a mediocre actress from a prime-time courtroom drama, the grandson of the guy who invented Tater Tots, and a NASCAR driver who hit the fence and took out three bleachers of fans in his last race. After the guy gets clean he’ll be formally brought up on manslaughter charges and he’s eager to talk about his troubles.

Fred already has six tapes of the driver’s confessions on video. Fred’s arm is healing okay though it annoys him on rainy afternoons. He hopes she’s doing well with the retards. He still wants to be friends and have coffee someday, maybe discuss a few of the older projects that they shelved.

So far as I know, Sarah hasn’t written him back yet.

Dodi glares and clicks her fingernails together like castanets. There’s a nice salsa rhythm there that almost gets my foot tapping. She and Sarah eye one another with death on the plate. They’ve shared their beds, but when it comes to my brothers there’s no longer enough room for everybody. The tension has been building for weeks now and it’s about to snap.

This isn’t mere possessiveness. This is desperation. This is a hunger for what the future may bring—love, acceptance, wealth, poetry, maybe even the fate of Potts County. Dodi is still under orders from her mother to keep an eye on me. I’ve been expecting her to move out, but she remains, night after night, a helpmeet for my brothers.

Jonah defies Dodi’s advances. He won’t let her give him a sponge bath or feed him or help to brush his teeth anymore. Sarah aids him when she can get by Dodi’s defenses. He keeps the three mouths of my brothers going at all hours with the wooing of Sarah. His sonnets have poorly stressed syllables but the meaning is worthy. He has talents that would have meant something a century ago.

His hands, which are the softest of any of ours, can touch her in the right way, delicately brushing her flesh like the advent of a fall leaf. It takes a real passion. Sarah still doesn’t join them in bed. She hovers and lingers and abides.

Theirs is a classic structure of tragedy in the making. Dodi floats back and forth between sleeping with me, my brothers, or alone in one of the other bedrooms. There are invisible lines drawn all over the halls, places that cannot be crossed, entered, or left. Sarah is often seated on the floor, her head settled against the base of the footboard. A midtown shrink would be expensive as hell but maybe he could help.

She purrs while Dodi growls. Jonah whispers while Sebastian spits his malice. Cole seeks only to love, his voice is only love, and Sarah and Dodi should both love him, but of course they hate his guts.

Dodi’s breath still smells of bourbon and chocolate, although I haven’t bought bourbon for weeks. She says, “It’s time that Yankee up and left.”

“Why?” I ask.

“You already know why. Only one woman can rule any roost and that woman’s me. She’s gettin’ in the way. I got my duty and I don’t shirk none’a my responsibilities no matter what.”

Sarah is losing the high lilt of a Jewish American Princess and says, “You don’t know anything about this place, you little backwater swamp tramp.”

“You shut yer mouth!”

“You’re only here because your mother gave you up and you’ve nowhere left to go. Now there’s the truth, and that’s not enough of a reason for you to still be here. I belong here because I’m willing to stay.”

“Are you?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sarah doesn’t answer.

This is my house, my home, my space, and my family, but none of what’s going on concerns me really, and they all know it. Sebastian is eager for a bloodletting. From the bed upstairs he urges the girls to fight so that a hierarchy can once again be established. The bitterness in his voice is so powerful that it spooks a murder of crows out of a tree in the backyard.

Cole tries to calm everyone with reassuring words, but Dodi is gaining a few steps on the knife drawer. Jonah speaks his poetry, also attempting to elicit calm.
“At the egress of your repentance, there, with yet a different sentiment swirling about in your hair, I hear the separate winnows of your beating in time to my heated afterthought, You cry, I weep, and at the heights of our sacred crusades, we drift, we slumber, and at last we sleep.”

Sarah enjoys listening to his words and is spurred on by his sensibilities. I see now that the faded tattoo on her hip is of the masks of Comedy and Tragedy. She wears her blouse tied at the midriff exactly like Dodi, but Sarah wears jewelry, a touch of makeup, Christian Dior undergarments. The slight scar around her pierced belly button is hauntingly pale set against her deepening tan.

I inch closer hoping nobody decides to go under the cupboard for a meat cleaver. The windows rattle while Dodi begins a slow smile. She’s going to make a jump soon. Sarah still seems a little lost without the coke and Fred and her film, but she’s always enjoyed distractions, and this whole thing—us—is just another diversion.

The three throats wail in Sebastian’s voice, raving in his wrath, underscored with stanzas dedicated to longing and rapture. Each third of that immense brain wanting nothing else but out.

Jonah continues with his love song. Sarah and Dodi circle each other. I step between them.

My brothers breathe each other’s stale breath.

They writhe up there in the darkness while we writhe down here in the light.

M
AGGIE IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER,
sitting in the tall grass with an orchid in her hair. This is about the spot where Drabs married us before being taken by the tongues. I distinctly remember how, even as a nine-year-old boy, my heart slammed in my chest and how it hurt to look into her beautiful face. Some lessons we learn too early for our own good.

Even children shouldn’t play these sorts of games under the eyes of God. Maggie kept smiling and looking at me then, just as she does now. Our hands were twined together with wildflower vines, a quaint touch that Drabs despised but Maggie insisted upon.

The Bible lay on the shore where he’d dropped it before thrashing out of sight. The water lapped across the sunlight and Maggie stepped closer. God had something to say to us and she tilted her head up as if listening. I brushed the freckles of her throat with my knuckles, which left white impressions upon her sunburned skin. Pages of the Bible flapped in the breeze, as though someone unseen were searching for a particular passage and couldn’t find it.

The pages stopped whirling, rested open for a moment, then began to flutter again.

I didn’t kiss her because I didn’t know how to kiss. I had never played doctor. I started to tell her that I wasn’t sure what to do next when she rammed her hot tongue into my mouth and halfway down my throat.