Decatur (34 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Help Wanted

Returning to work hadn’t been easy. It wasn’t that anyone was mad that Marilyn had missed her shift the day before; it was because the Surrey had the look of a place that she had once known, like going back to high school, everything seems familiar but smaller somehow, like the hallways all shrunk. The regulars ordered their club sandwiches on whole wheat toast or the day’s special oven roasted turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and the yellow yellow turkey gravy that Scott insisted the customers wanted, dyed from Amanda’s homey light brown to the color of lemons even though Marilyn always thought it ruined it.

She had tried to seem all smiles and easy confidence as Tooley, looking every inch to her like an FBI agent, took his time eating lunch at the counter. She fetched him an extra big piece of Amanda’s coconut cream pie on her knowing that he was there because they were keeping an eye on her in case Gar tried something. She kept moving, her rayon skirt tight around her thighs, her ballerina flats pattering on the dark wooden floor; was just like it had always been but completely different as she swayed around the tables, picking up dirty dishes, wiping the tops clean, and pocketing tips. She was in the kitchen taking a breather for a second when the one-thirty freight train rattled by the back of the building, and she couldn’t help but stare out the kitchen window remembering how she had first seen Gar hop out of one of the Central Illinois box cars and come shattering into her life. Walt was sitting on an overturned plastic bucket near the window with his trembling hands studiously reading the Herald, the front page folded in thirds with a picture of Clarkson’s funeral home and the headline blazing,
Drifter Attacks Local Priest: Eludes Police
and with lurid detail describing how Father Troy’s “project” had turned on him at the Monsignor’s wake. Betty, humming tunelessly to herself, was picking up a ham sandwich and Amanda was eating a bowl of turkey and stuffing standing up. Out of the portholes in the swinging kitchen doors Marilyn could see Scot was by the register, flashing his best used car salesman smile, and Mona was topping off everyone’s coffee. The order bell had dinged all during the rush, but now that things were slowing down Marilyn felt the whole restaurant closing in on her like a prison.

So when the front door opened and a hot breeze rushed in like a fevered breath Marilyn was ready for it and, in her own way, wanted it. To the late customers sipping coffee or paying their lunch checks it looked like an old man in a camel colored suit and white shirt, striped grey and red tie, pointed Western style boots, and big black straw hat had come in maybe for a piece of pie and coffee. But to Marilyn, even though she hadn’t seen that face for over twenty-five years, the man appeared almost exactly the same as when he drove away from Charlesworth Place for the last time, in the front seat of the convertible coupe with the big chrome bumpers, looking like an ancient crow, wearing that same big black straw hat against an August sun.

“I’m here now, baby girl, to get what’s mine back. Been a long time coming, a lot of asphalt and years, Marilyn. You always knew I’d come for it didn’t you?” the old man rasped and every customer felt a chill, pictures suddenly flashing like camera lights across their brains of places they had never wanted to go or wished they had never been. For Tooley, standing up in slow motion, the sound of choppers was deafening and he covered his ears, bending over in pain as the interior noise assaulted him.

The silverware of the Surrey had been handled by Marilyn thousands of times; it had felt the vibrations of her life force on it as she would lay down forks, knives and spoons for the customers over and over. It was the tableware of the old train club cars, the old hotel restaurants, thick and fat, made of stainless steel and it had been laid on the wooden tables of the Surrey since the forties. So when Marilyn pulled it to her like a magnetic force; called it to her aid, the flatware rose and hovered in front of her like a silver shield, as the hoarse old man tried to will an evil energy through it. But the flatware had endured decades of careless dishwashers, mean spirited teens trying to twist and bend it awry, and the soft gums of old women; the awareness of Marilyn over the last eleven years had helped it endure; it knew it would not fail her now. “I told you, J.J. I never took nothing of yours,” Marilyn said; she was silently directing the flatware on every table in the Surrey to come between her and the glowing red-rimmed eyes of the black hatted old man who was fighting for control of her mind. First her mind, then her spirit: instinctively she knew that was the way it would go, so she was throwing off every inner caution that had told her
to keep it low, keep it hidden away.

The being inside J. J. Charlesworth grinned out from behind its flesh facial mask. The silverware was dancing up and down creating a moving wall between him and the source, deflecting the coercion he was aiming at her. But the other people in the restaurant were all wide-eyed, their brains swirling with terrifying pictures as the scene before them taunted everything they thought they knew about being in Decatur, Illinois at a favorite lunch spot.
She was stronger than he had expected, time had not diminished her powers, the dirty grit of disappointment and confusion that dulled most Instruments absent. She was still as clear as a bell.

“You think you can hold me off, you can’t. You’ll bring him to me with it in the end, just as you did before.” J.J.’s voice sounded like smashing tombstones.

Him?
And then she knew:
Gar - he was talking about Gar as Allegherio
, Marilyn thought as the layers of her lives unpeeled like an onion and she saw the hermit inside of J. J. She almost stumbled and the old man took a step closer but then the memories closed back up and she willed the hundreds of knives, forks and spoons to stay hovering protectively in front of her.

“Only now, with all that time that’s ripened the moment, you’ll
turn
. You’ll
turn
baby girl, into what you were always meant to be,” J. J. said as Marilyn felt herself go cold like she’d been dipped in ice. Then, with a peculiar little bow, he swiveled his hips as he waltzed backwards back out the front door, and disappeared.

The silverware showered down, clattering in a heap on the floor in front of Marilyn. Nobody spoke then. Marilyn bit her lip and then went back to the rear booth, the waitresses’ office, and picked up her pocket book, head scarf and cardigan. She gave a little half smile, “I gotta go now,” is what she said.

Scott, who had held onto the cash register to stay upright during the whole episode, grimaced. “Yeah, you do,” he said, his breath coming out in one big exhale.

Marilyn felt the eyes of the entire place on her as she walked out the front door. She imagined Scott’s hand reaching underneath the host area to the little shelf where the help wanted sign had lain dusty and unused for seven years, since Mona had come and replaced the old lady Harriet. He’d have it up in the window by closing, she knew, and didn’t care. It was time.

The funeral luncheon in honor of Monsignor Lowell was a strained affair. It seemed copies of the newspaper story about Father Troy were everywhere, in the trash, serving as a liner under a leaking flower arrangement, stuffed in the back pockets of the altar boys’ trousers. The Knights of Columbus in full uniform with sashes and plumed hats didn’t even have the heart to pour the big jugs of cheap wine into the jelly glasses for a ceremonial farewell toast as the altar society ladies lay out the pans of catered lasagna. The church basement was dark and it seemed to Father W that reminders of Gar were everywhere; he helped set up the tables for cripes sakes. Father Mahoney and the Bishop were sitting at a big round one by themselves, fingering the program from the Monsignor’s Mass. That had been bad enough; Father W had struggled through the whole thing distracted, the ritual seeming hollow to him, as the congregation knelt and stood, and the school choir warbled through the hymns, as the big black casket covered in flowers stood in front of the communion rail. The only comfort he found was in the mundane: putting out the programs in the pews along with the ushers and helping the ladies lay out the food. As Father W brought out a big plastic tub of salad to put on the buffet table he couldn’t help but notice that the Bishop and his aide had gathered the entire lay council of the parish at their table and had neglected to save a spot for him.
Oh, well, last man standing
.

The nuns who taught at the parish school had been allowed out for the mass but were now back in the classroom with their charges as the rest of congregation settled in for the luncheon. For the first time it didn’t seem fair to him, and he found himself thinking over the horrors of Isabella and her time at the Nunnery of our Lady of Consolation instead of paying attention to the Bishop’s grace over the salad, lasagna and rolls. For all his doubts about his own inner goodness, Father W had tried his best to be a good priest, and while he had failed miserably from time to time he now wondered why it had all mattered so much to him. It felt like the order and authority of the Church was grinding him down, whittling away at his soul as he went through the motions of the high mass and the wake. There was no real emotion, just duty in the whole proceeding. The pans of layered tomato sauce, ground beef, pasta and cheese seemed too greasy and large for the gentle Monsignor. He was irritated and uneasy as he made the rounds of the tables, finally sitting with the old ladies as if things were even close to normal. His ears pricked up when he heard the Bishop telling his table about a parish in Louisiana that the Bishop of Baton Rouge felt was a special case, with the poorest congregation east of the Mississippi: made up of illiterate and superstitious alligator hunters, their kids and wives, a wooden church with a leaking tin metal roof and worst of all it had just lost its only ordained priest. But the Bishop didn’t sound sincere to Father Weston, he sounded like he had rehearsed the conversation as he and Father Mahoney painted in the sad details. Father W had been around the priesthood long enough to know that Bishop Quincy and Father Mahoney were doing some spade work with the parish council. They were putting in motion a transfer: it might take a couple of months but St. Patrick’s would be getting new leadership, fresh faces at the pulpit and he, Father W, was getting set up. If Bishop Quincy got his way, and bishops had a way of getting their way, by next November he would be drinking coffee with chicory in a shabby two room rectory that overlooked a bayou in the sugar cane and oil fields of Louisiana as the rain came down in sheets.
Or not.

Gar had slept on Adele’s nubbly beige couch. When he got up he carefully spied through the sheers in the hallway window watching as the station wagons pulled out one after the other from the smooth new cement driveways of South Shores. When he was sure that the neighborhood was off to work and school he opened the white front door and reaching out a long arm scooped up the morning paper. He read about himself,
The
Drifter,
sitting on the floor cross-legged and snacking on Jiffy peanut butter from Adele’s cupboard. She might be dead in the bedroom but he was no drifter, he had a purpose in life, and he’d left that woman’s essence alone, out of respect, that wasn’t the act of a common bum.
Jesus, newspapers always got it wrong
. Then he read the Monsignor’s obit and the funeral schedule that the paper published, and finally sticking his finger in the jar to scrape out the last of the peanut butter, he paged through the help wanted ads fantasizing about getting a job and living in the little ranch house with Marilyn. But he knew as the newspaper ads got all sticky and the jobs looked all stupid that it was never going happen so he decided to go back to sleep until it was time to move.