Good-bye and Amen (3 page)

 

Eleanor Applegate
I think the first thing I learned about Norman was that he had been a child prodigy, like Jimmy. It interested Monica a lot. Monica had asked about his name, since she'd never heard of anyone named Faithful except that English singer who slept with Mick Jagger. It's a made-up name. His father was an evangelical preacher in the Midwest somewhere. Little Norman had the gift too. He was calling people to repent when he was six; he could make grown men weep and open their wallets.

Of course Jimmy could do the same thing at the piano. Jimmy could hear a piece of music and play it back by ear when he was way too small to reach the pedals with his feet. Papa wanted him to slow down, learn to read, learn to play with understanding before he played in public, but Mother couldn't help herself—she loved an audience and this was sort of a Munchausen prodigy by proxy situation.

 

Monica Faithful
Jimmy was such a gorgeous little boy. I think he actually liked it for a while. I guess anyone would like the applause and stuff, and he probably liked being taken out of school. He looked very cute in his little gray flannel jacket and shorts and his little bow tie. But one day he was supposed to go into New York with Mother to play at some fund-raiser, and he just refused to come out of his room. That was the end of it.

 

Eleanor Applegate
Just wouldn't open the door until Mother left the house. Of course that wasn't the end of it…Mother tried a couple of more times, and she wanted Papa to make him do it, but Papa wouldn't. He thought the whole thing was weird, like grinding a hurdy-gurdy. I'd have given an arm and leg to have Jimmy's gift. Would things have worked out differently if he'd been allowed to grow into it? To feel it was something that belonged to him, instead of to his mother?

So Norman had been like Jimmy. He had had this astounding ability in early childhood. He gave sermons, he did healings, then one day he refused to do it any more. Monica thought it was such an amazing coincidence, I sometimes wondered if it was true. Maybe Norman's gift isn't that he was a child prodigy; maybe it is that uncanny ability he has to sense exactly where the crack in your head is, and use it.

 

Jeannie Israel
I never heard Jimmy play a note. He had already quit by the time we started going to Dundee in the summers and Nika and I fell in with each other. I asked him
once what it was like for him to listen to music, to be around musicians. He spent some time in his twenties as a roadie for a band called Raging Biscuits or something. He said it was like listening to a language he used to speak but couldn't remember.

 

Monica Faithful
The first thing that seemed to interest Norman about me was Jimmy. He wanted to meet him. I was about two-thirds fed up with Jimmy at the time, but I did see him now and then. He'd been up to Dundee the summer before, after Mama and Papa had left. He'd come out sailing with El and Bobby and me, and when we brought the boat in after a long day, and everyone was struggling to furl wet sails and clean out the galley, Jimmy stood on the deckhouse doing yoga with his eyes closed, as if he were just a child of God and couldn't be expected to do grunt work when the sunset was beautiful. Calling Harold Skimpole. I didn't think Norman and Jimmy were going to have a lot to talk about.

 

Leonard Rashbaum
I'd always had a sneaker for Monica. One day in the spring of 1971, I ran into her on the T. I remember it was stinking hot and I was wearing a suit, coming from a job interview. Monica was the only person on the train who didn't look like she was melting. She had that pretty dark hair all on top of her head, and a barrette thing made of a piece of leather with a stick through it. She said she was student-teaching. She said she loved it. And she said she was getting married.

I said, “That's great, anyone I know?” I'd been thinking of going looking for her myself, but I don't know, I didn't think Kim was over her. I guess I waited too long.

She said, “Norman Faithful.” I had a good laugh, then I looked at her face. I stopped and said, “Oh my god. You're not kidding.”

 

Eleanor Applegate
Maybe she
did
want the
Rolling Stone
. Oh dear. But Charlesie is the real sailor in the family. He spent the last two summers as Papa's boat boy, taking him out to the
Stone
every day to run the engine and pump the bilge, and talk him out of leaving the mooring. They'd get down in the engine compartment and look at things for hours. Charlesie loves that boat and he understands it. He can chart a course and do celestial navigation.

 

Edith Faithful
I always thought Charlesie expected to get the boat, since he'd spent all that time keeping Grandpapa from going onto the rocks, or sailing off toward Spain, but it's not as if he did it for free. It was a job. I'd have loved to do it, but no one offered it to me.

 

Josslyn Moss
Adam and Edith and I made lunch.
That
wasn't easy…it was Eleanor's kids who did the last grocery run and they bought cereal full of sugar and dyes, and whole fat milk, and supermarket cheese, already shredded. The only vinegar in the house you wouldn't douche with. I found an eggbeater with only one beater. The tea bags were Lipton. I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Moss gassed themselves on purpose.
I
would, if I ate like this.

We opened cans of soup. We made toast, and a salad with iceberg lettuce. Nobody starved. We ate in the sunroom.

Jimmy didn't get any of the silver. He took the piano.
Why? I didn't show how disappointed I was. It's their stuff. I could buy some secondhand. But my mother never had silver and I liked that it was in the family.

 

Bobby Applegate
Norman and I cleaned up after lunch, and he dropped the other shoe. I told Eleanor he would. I washed, he dried. We've learned, over the years, that if Norman washes he talks the whole time about what Saint Augustine meant or where Thomas à Becket's bones are really, and doesn't notice what he's doing and the next thing you know, you're taking clean plates out of the cupboard with strings of asparagus stuck to them. He said, “Can I ask you something? Did Eleanor show you her copy of the will?” I said, Of course. He said, “Nicky told me that when Jimmy was in his twenties, he asked for his share of the estate in advance. Is that true?”

I said it was.

“And they gave it to him?”

I said they did.

“Well then, why was the estate split three ways in the will?”

I said, “I was going to ask you. Don't you guys have a story about a prodigal son?”

At this point, I don't know where his towel is, but if these dishes are going to get dry they'll have to do it by themselves. He says, “We do, of course, but the Parables…well, you know there's almost no evidence that there was a historical figure called Jesus. No physical evidence, hardly any documentary evidence. Josephus mentions him, after the fact. There probably was a Jewish rabbi named Jesus put to death by Pontius Pilate, but the authentic Jesus, the
only evidence we really have is his voice, you hear a voice in the Synoptic Gospels that no one could make up. I call him Jesus the Asshole.”

I said I imagined that woke up the parishioners.

“No, not from the pulpit, of course not. But it's exciting, that voice.” It was clearly exciting to Norman. He was revving up. “He says outrageous things. Like, Leave your parents and children. Give away all your money. The kingdom of heaven isn't fair, get over it.”

“The prodigal son, Norman?” He's like a train running off track when he gets going.

“Yes. So, obviously, that parable is a classic example of Jesus the Asshole. It's an upsetting story. But you'll notice, the prodigal son is welcomed by his father. He is loved and celebrated and given honorable work. But it
doesn't
say he gets another share of the inheritance.”

I said, they weren't my parents, it was never going to be my money, and I didn't think it was my business. But I got the impression that Norman thought it
was
going to be his money.

 

Carla Lowen
I remember the time Monica first took Norman home to meet her parents. Not to Connecticut, she was taking him to Maine. It was August. They'd only been dating for a few months, but I knew it was serious, because she stayed in Cambridge most of that summer, even though she didn't have classes. She got a job doing research for some professor. Boston is beastly hot in the summer, and the house we lived in didn't have air conditioners. We had window fans. It was miserable.

Norman had left his wife and was living in Somerville.
He was a very compelling guy, very tall, thick hair, beautiful eyes. It was fun to listen to him talk, because he had a great memory and his mind worked fast. Though sometimes after he was gone you'd wonder, What was
that
all about? He had a summer job with some white-shoe law firm in Boston. Monica was excited that she and Norman were going to hitchhike to Maine.
That
would drive her parents crazy…My boyfriend had a little two-stroke motorcycle, an Indian, so I had a leather jacket. She borrowed that and wore blue jeans and she looked really cute, like an elegant teddy boy.

An hour later, she was back. Norman was furious at her. He expected her to know that she should go hitchhiking dressed as if she were going to tea with Mrs. Astor. She went out again in a sundress and heels, and Norman was right, they got a ride right away with a woman in a sports car who was going to Northeast Harbor. Norman sat in front and talked to the woman for five hours, and Monica sat stuffed in the tiny backseat with their duffel bags.

 

Amelia Crane Morriset
Jeannie and I thought Norman was very attractive, that first summer we met him. He was charming, very disingenuous, if that's the word I want. So pleased with everything, so enthusiastic. Aunt Sydney fell over herself flirting with him. Maybe Sydney was trying to make a point to Eleanor, that she was really a lovely, easygoing mother-in-law. She'd never quite been able to get a handle on Bobby. And she'd been so upset when Bobby and Eleanor eloped, she wanted to be sure she wasn't going to get cut out of things again. She didn't need to worry, though. Norman had a way of knowing exactly how to talk to whoever was in charge of the honeypot.

 

Eleanor Applegate
I don't think Mother and Papa learned about wife number one until about six weeks before the wedding. That wedding was huge, by the way. It was Monica's one big moment to be the most important person in the family, and she still wasn't. That wedding was all about me and Bobby, Mother showing off what we had missed. Monica wanted a morning wedding but it was in the evening because Sydney wanted a black-tie reception. Black tie! In Dundee, Maine, in August! No one even wears a dress suit to funerals in Dundee in August. A blazer and a tie without soup stains is as gussied up as we get.

Monica wanted the bridesmaids in simple linen sheaths we might be able to wear again but we ended up in these frothy floor-length numbers covered in eyelet. I was the matron of honor and still fat from my last pregnancy; I looked like a sno-cone. Norman asked Jimmy to be his best man, so right up to the moment she stood with Papa to walk down the aisle, Monica had to worry whether the best man would show up, or be able to
stand
up. I was amazed that Jimmy came at all, we hardly ever saw him in those years.

Annie was to be the flower girl, but Adam was too little to be ring bearer and Mother announced that she was going to rent one. Monica drew the line at that, even trying as hard as she could to have this perfect mother/daughter experience. Sydney couldn't understand it. She'd eloped, I'd eloped, this was her chance to have a picture-perfect wedding and Monica was standing in her way. “A cute little blond boy in a tiny blazer, with the ring sewn onto a little satin pillow,” Sydney kept saying. Monica an
nounced that the ring bearer would be Norman's son. It took a lot to stop Sydney in full spate, but that did it.

 

Amelia Crane Morriset
Norman never talked about the first marriage. It was as if he'd ordered a dish he didn't like at a restaurant. He'd sent it back to the kitchen and ordered something else, end of story.

 

Eleanor Applegate
Monica barely knew those children when she married Norman. She was very starry-eyed about them, but their mother didn't want them to have anything to do with Monica. She certainly wouldn't let them be in the wedding, but we did keep Mother from renting any more children for the bridal party.

Norman claimed that he woke up one morning and noticed that he had married the worst person in the world. He said she had a rage disorder. Her name was Rachel Cohen and she lives in Boston; I run into her from time to time. I was sympathetic to Norman; it's no fun to live with a person who might explode at any moment, said the voice of experience, Child of Sydney. Apparently once Rachel threw his suits into the bathtub and set them on fire so he wouldn't have anything to wear to work.
That's
not normal. But I begin to think there may well have been two sides to that story.

 

Bobby Applegate
There are always two sides in a marriage. Always. At least two.

 

Norman Faithful
I remember two things clearly from the summer of 1971. One was, I had to buy a tuxedo for my wedding. I'd never owned one. The other was that Nicky
and I took her father's yacht out to Beal Island one day by ourselves. I usually get seasick, but that day I was golden. I had been out to the island the summer before, with Nicky's parents. We'd had a picnic at March Cove. I remember I had hitchhiked up from Boston the day before and I was still stiff from sitting in this woman's little sports car, way too small for a man my height, but it was a lucky break that she stopped for me, since she was going to Maine as well, even farther north than I was, and she brought me all the way into Dundee.