John's Wife: A Novel (49 page)

Ecclesiastical sanctuary, a practice made famous in the Middle Ages but with roots deep in the pagan past, which is to say, in those preliterate times when all of man’s most sacred precepts were forged, was a principle in which Lennox (now blinking in the sunlight, feeling wistful and blue, on John’s back deck) had long had an academic interest—in fact, he’d once written a paper on the subject back in his college days, or at least had helped to write one with a fraternity brother, the theme being that the concept of a sacred place could survive only as an ineffectual metaphor in a free market economy where everything was up for sale, metaphors included—and a time-honored custom he had, moreover, in his own more dissolute and renegade era, vehemently espoused on the grounds of Christian charity and canon law (and also of Anarchy, yay! and Down with the pigs!), but until now he had never had to face the dilemma as a churchman of granting it or denying it in the real world. But there she was, camped in his church, a half-naked woman several times larger than himself, begging him to let her stay, at least until her boyfriend got back, and not to tell the police. And also did he have anything for her to eat, like for example a couple of turkeys, no need to cook them, just so long as they were defrosted? So what was he to do? Sure, providing sanctuary would be the Christian way to go, God’s love and all that, but on the other hand there were no, well, facilities for her here and his church was already a pigsty, full of garbage, dirty sheets, and other stuff he didn’t even want to look at too closely. Nevertheless, he was about to disregard all that and grant her request, when she reached up to loosen the beads around her upper torso and, with an explosive pop, put an elbow through a stained-glass window high over his head, whereupon he decided, God’s love be damned, she’d have to go. But then it occurred to him that with very few changes in his sermon-in-progress (the mother’s womb as the ultimate sanctuary, the notion of the high altar as a man-made center for a centerless world and thus a sacred refuge for all sufferers, and so on), he could make dramatic use of this creature, perhaps bring her on as a surprise boffo at the end, wake the congregation up with a kind of visual representation of the impossible paradox, or one of them anyway, he’d find an appropriate name for it, why not? Let it happen. But then her boyfriend came back, all out of breath, saying he’d found a real truck for her and they had to get out of here right away,
she
was coming! In the end, it was a good thing, because even the church’s big double doorway was already too small for her, it took a lot of pushing and squeezing (Lenny was reminded of the job he had back in high school, packing icecream into pint and quart boxes) to get her through it and she was in tears most of the time, especially when she snagged her beads and broke them all. Lenny was contemplating the deplorable state of his and God’s showcase and classroom after they’d gone, wondering who he could get to clean it up for him, maybe John could send some of his workers over or else order up a crew of garbage collectors from city hall, when the crippled lady from the downtown drugstore came thumping in, crunching scattered beads under her orthopedic boot, banging her metal walking stick on the floor and demanding to know where that jezebel was who had stolen her husband away. Lenny, foolishly, tried to explain the principle of sanctuary to a woman who was clearly not in the mood for a lecture of any kind, and, calling him a pimp and a home-wrecker and an accomplice of thieves and adulterers, she attacked him with the steel cane. The nurse who had followed her in tried to restrain her, but had to duck her slashing backswings, so Lenny, to defend himself, dove in under the weapon, throwing the startled woman to the floor where her glasses went flying, and proceeded to wrestle with her for possession of the walking stick. “How dare you strike a physically handicapped blind lady!” the nurse screamed and threw herself on him, biting and punching and kneeing him in the stomach. This freed up the crippled woman long enough for her to grab up her steel cudgel and, swinging blindly, to crack Lennox across the skull with it. When he came to he was in the arms of John’s wife, who was holding a cold compress to his forehead. She said she had just been passing by and wondered why all the doors were open and came in and found him here. She asked him how long he’d been lying here, but he didn’t know. He explained what had happened or what he thought had happened, and she said he was only doing his Christian duty and personally she was proud of him. Her hands were very soft and tender, and he lay there longer than he needed to. They got into a conversation about religion and sanctuary, which she asked him to explain to her, and then about life in general, what it all means, and so on, and meanwhile, with her help, he got to his feet and brushed himself off and offered to walk with her wherever she was going (she was going home) and to carry her packages, assuring her when she asked that, yes, he was going to have something of a lump there, but he was all right and he needed the fresh air. On the way to her house, he found himself telling her his life story with all its ups and downs, everything from his breeze through high school in the laps of his teachers, through his university days as a struggling religious studies major and chaplain of her husband’s fraternity, not excluding an account of the notorious Greek toga party at which Beatrice was introduced to the fraternity life, and then the rather unorthodox early years of their consequent marriage, leading to his abortive career as a college professor (he was made responsible for another person’s bad trip, a theme he had touched on in one of his sermons on the pastor’s burden, she recalled), and finally to his arrival in this town, all of it justifiably cast as rites of passage in his lifelong quest for meaning, by which time they had arrived at her house, and they walked on in. There seemed to be a lot of people toward the back of the house, but she ignored them, fascinated with his story, and asking him if now he was happy here, she started up the stairs. He admitted, following her with the packages, that he suffered a certain lingering discomfort, as he felt himself to be a free spirit entrapped in ever-narrowing circumstances and, moreover, there were things in a past shared with her husband and others that could not be erased, though he was certainly not a person to hold a grudge. Also he had to confess to a certain feeling of hypocrisy as a Christian pastor, for which he had few gifts and even less conviction, believing man’s condition to be more desperate than that assumed by the Christian faith, or any other faith for that matter; he’d once been a scholar, or a sort of scholar, of them all, and without exception they all offered consolations that were not such. By now they were in the master bedroom and she was taking off her linen jacket and her shoes, and she asked him if that was the meaning that he had found in his quest. He replied indirectly, setting her packages down meanwhile and unbuttoning his shirt, by saying that only shortly before she’d found him he’d been thinking about the terrible littleness and aloneness of man in the vast indifferent cosmos. Is there anyone else out there in the universe like us, he asked, as she reached under her linen dress to pull down her pantyhose, or are we, all of us, nature’s tragic freaks? His disquisition had excited him, almost unbearably, and it was a great relief to get his pants and shorts down, though he’d forgotten to take off his shoes and had to sit down on a chair to do that. In terms of cosmic time and space, after all, we are not even visible, he went on, kicking free of the entanglement at his feet and peeling off his socks, just ephemeral creatures rising from and fading into the dust of our insignificant planet. She was on the other side of the bed in her one-piece dress, removing her earrings. He’d tried to catch a glimpse of her legs when the pantyhose came off, but there had seemed to be nothing underneath them. Nothing at all. But she smiled at him, a smile full of admiration and of, yes, well, of faith in him, and emboldened, he said to her: Even history loses its meaning, you see, its consolations vanishing like those of religion. We don’t matter as individuals, as a community or a nation, or even as a life form. He stood, proudly yet humbly, in all his earthly glory. We are meaningful, he said gently, only in our nowness and to each other. Her face flushed with admiration and surrender and she lifted her dress up over her head and she was gone. John came in then and asked him what he was doing in his bedroom with his clothes off. “God knows,” was all that Lenny could think to say. John went over and picked up the puddle of clothes on the floor and tossed them in a hamper. “Well, you’re missing the party. Get dressed and come on down. And bring the resurrection and the life with you, Reverend,” he added, pointing. “There are plenty of desperate pioneers down there eager to receive the holy spirit.”

The Reverend’s oldest son Philip, often called Fish, and known also, to a certain beloved but unloving party, as the Creep, the possible—no, probable—circumstances of whose conception his father had just detailed during the recounting of his life story, was badly in need of a pal. His father’s narrative had been loosely based upon the heroic quest motif, and this motif, had he known of it, might have served his son as well as a way of understanding his own present ordeal, since being the butt of a popular joke was something he shared with many of those household names of the ancient past, most of whom were at least granted the company of a boon companion upon whom they could unload their woes when fate was knocking them around. But Fish’s best buddy had run away and, really, there was no one else, the only other person to whom he might turn for sympathy holding him in withering and unremitting contempt. She would be at the barbecue of course, it was at her house, but he was afraid to go there and take the heat. “Aw, go on, superstar!” his sister Jen had taunted. “You’re famous! Or anyhow your ugly duff is! You can open up a booth out in the gazebo: cut a flap in the seat of your pants and charge a buck a peek, two bucks to pop a pimple, you’ll make a fortune!” Of course, Jennifer was trying to keep him at home, she didn’t want him to see Clarissa today, she was afraid he’d tell. What he’d overheard. On the extension phone. And he would. Rejected as a lover, maybe he could at least become a trusted friend, and if that meant ratting on his sister, hey, easiest thing in the world. It would be less easy to explain to Clarissa what had really happened in the car dealer’s house, but Fish wanted to talk about that, too. With somebody. He could see what everybody was laughing about, but they didn’t know the real story, it wasn’t just a joke. He’d finally decided to call up the police and tell them what he knew, but when he’d refused to tell them who he was, the policeman had shouted at him, “We’ve had enough of this crap! Get off the line, sonny, or we’ll trace this call and have you arrested!” When he hung up, he felt he had to get out of the manse. Just in case they
did
trace the call. Not much hope, but he went over to Turtle’s house anyway. Turtle’s mom peeked out at him when he rang the bell, her eyes buggy like she was watching a horror movie, then she whipped the door open and yanked him inside by his shirt collar. She was always very nervous and bossy, but today she was out of control. She was still in her housecoat, her face was pale and wrinkled without any makeup on, and her hair was sticking out in all directions like something had scared her and made it all stand on end. “I really can’t stay,” Fish apologized, his voice squeaking a bit. “I was just wondering if maybe your son came back, but—” “He’s behind the refrigerator again!” she cried, sounding more like a squawking bird. “He is—?” “You’ve got to help me!” She dragged him toward the kitchen. He tried to hold back, but she really had her claws in him. “Maybe I could just come back a little later—” She pushed him in ahead of her, then shrank back, chewing her nails in the doorway, waiting to see what he’d do. The kitchen was a crazy scene, the floor smeared all over with some kind of sticky gunk, pots and pans flung everywhere, and half the furniture in the house piled up against the space between the refrigerator and the wall. “He’s back there! Please! Get him out of here!” “Uh, I don’t know, maybe your husband—” “My husband? My husband? He’d kill me if he knew!” Fish had no idea why this might be so, but certainly Turtle’s dad could be pretty nasty if his dander was up, which it often was. A man on a short fuse. “If I only knew where his father was!” “Who?” “It’s
his
fault!
He
should have to get rid of it!” All this talk about husbands and fathers seemed pretty mixed up, but Fish agreed with her: “Yes’m, that’s right. He’s probably at the barbecue.” “Barbecue—?” “You know, Pioneers Day, over at—” “Oh my God! Is that
today
—
?!”
And she was out of there, the front door banging open and her feet, still in bedroom slippers, slapping down off the porch. The house was suddenly very quiet. Fish hesitated. He could hear something moving behind the barricade, or thought he could. “Turtle? Is that you?” Nothing. “Turtle—?” Just a kind of squishy sound. Whoo. Time to go, man. He unstuck his shoes from the floor and took off, and as he reached the street a truck pulled up and the driver leaned out and asked: “Anybody home here?” “Nah. Everybody in this house is out to lunch!” He saw that the guy, that video games freak from the drugstore, was going in anyway, so he turned around and shouted: “Hey, while you’re in there, take the pet for a walk! Behind the fridge!” Fish longed to see Clarissa more than ever now and, determined to tough it out, he headed toward her house, come on, chicken, let it happen, but he lost his nerve a block later and turned homeward. Life was a bummer, it really was, no pun intended. You are what you get born with. Period. You don’t like it? Tough titty. And as for women, well, they weren’t at all like he’d thought they were, his father’s books didn’t show half of it. The manse was empty when he got back, everyone else at the barbecue. Except Jen, away on plans of her own. Nothing to do but beat off, Fish thought glumly, heading for his father’s library. The phone rang. A hollow unsettling sound in the echoey manse, but he let it ring. Then he thought it might be Clarissa trying to find out where Jen was, so he picked it up. “Hello, Philip?” Not Clarissa, but he knew who. He’d heard her voice earlier: silky yet firm with just a touch of a soft chummy twang. He figured it belonged to the woman he’d seen sitting with Jen and Clarissa sometimes at the mall. “Hey, this is a friend of your sister’s.” “I know.” “Your sister’s in a bit of trouble, Philip, and I need your help.” “I don’t think so,” he said. No more older women, that was one of his new rules, not even to say hello and goodbye. “Clarissa needs your help, too, Philip. Believe me.” “Well, but, I was just about to, uh—” “Are you alone?” “Sure, everybody’s gone to the—” “Stay right there, Philip. This is important. I’m coming over.”