The Solace of Leaving Early (18 page)

“I’m actually not much interested in the local court news.”

“It fills me with pleasure, that paper,” Amos said, still abundantly cheerful. Langston noticed that his hair seemed to be growing seventeen different directions at once, and that some sections, inspired by the intense humidity, were standing up like antennae. “They answer to no one, not Knight-Ridder, or Murdoch, or a conglomerate, they just print whatever they wish. The amount of lawlessness in small towns is often overlooked, in my experience.”

“I don’t think so. I think the whole world is aware of the criminal tendencies inherent in small-town life.”

“I’m talking about a revolutionary sort of lawlessness.”

Selma rattled a cup and saucer in front of Amos, dropped his menu, splashed some coffee in the general direction of his cup, then poured more toward Langston.

“Thanks, Selma,” Amos said, glancing at her button. “I’ll have the usual.”

“That seems a tremendously naive thing to say.” Langston retrieved the paper, opened it, and spread it out on the table as a place mat. “Revolution, whether it’s political, economic, or artistic, has its own constructs—is governed by its own laws, if you will—as terrorism generally is. And like prophecy, a revolution can only be judged by its accuracy, not by its initial aim.”

Amos tapped on his ear, as if to dislodge water. “No; yes. I see your point. I was talking about the lawlessness of the frontier or the prairie, but this isn’t the frontier, is it? Not since we got cable television and the Internet. Now the world is the same all over. I guess what I enjoy are the last vestiges of . . . something.”

“A dying thing.”

“Vanishing, for certain. That dog of yours is wonderful. One of the best dogs in the history of the world.”

Langston felt her face heat up again. “Thank you. Germane. Yes. He saved my—”

Selma slid a plate in front of Amos: eggs over easy, gelatinous in some bright yellow grease, with bacon, a biscuit, and hash browns. “Plate’s hot,” she said, before walking away.

“Are you not eating?” Amos asked, covering his lap with his paper napkin.

“No, no, I’m not hungry, but—”

“Oh, of course—AnnaLee has mentioned—there’s nothing here you could—”

“But do go ahead yourself.”

“What about oatmeal? There isn’t much that can go wrong with oatmeal, is there?”

Langston hesitated. “I make it with bottled water.”

Amos looked at her, his expression a question.

“I just don’t trust our well water, and there’s no reason to think Lu’s is any different—”

“No, no, I see.” But he looked away from her. “Life must be very difficult for you, here,” Amos said, reaching for the salt and pepper.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I understand.”

Langston took a drink of her coffee, which managed to be both bitter and watery at once. She thought with longing of the extra-dark French roast her mother was able to find at a grocery store in Jonah; of her bean grinder, her coffee press, the only part of the day she still—

“May I ask you something?” Amos spread more of the yellow grease on his biscuit, from a small container barely visible in his large hand.

“I don’t know,” Langston said, leaning into the back of the booth, away from the table.

“The only thing I really dislike about living here is the assumption—it’s the way people don’t know what to make of the fact that I’m not married and don’t have children. I’m marginalized, I’m treated as a vaguely pathetic . . . like a marked man.”

“Is that a question?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You said you wanted to ask me something.”

“I did?”

“At any rate, you
are
marginal because you’re a single man at, how old are you?”

Amos bit into his biscuit. “Nearly forty,” he said, chewing.

“A forty-year-old man who has never taken a wife is a curiosity here. I’m sure everyone assumes you’re gay or otherwise unfit.”

“What I don’t understand,” Amos said, wiping his mouth, “is how people go about marriage so blithely here, and then by and large stick it out. I don’t—well, it’s possible, now that I think about it, that I don’t understand marriage at all. Like this, for instance, like wedding rings. I look around at the people in my church, or the people I see here at the diner or in the Grocery Store or the post office, and they’re all wearing wedding rings, and you can tell they don’t think a thing about them. They don’t consider those rings any more than they consider their noses or their shinbones. Nothing to it. But I would never
stop
considering that ring. I would puzzle over it all the time; what does this mean? I would ask myself, and How have I done it? and Am I getting it right? And that would cause me to consider my partner—the word ‘wife’ is another thing that stumps me, ‘
my
wife,’—who on earth is she and what does she have to do with me? And—”

“Wait a second, wait,” Langston said, running her hands over her hair, just checking. “You glossed right over a critical element of life in Haddington society, right at the point at which you said that people wear their wedding rings and never think a thing about them. Truly, you could stop right there and your question would be answered. The people in this town, indeed, all over the Midwest, I would venture, live lives which are entirely outward-directed; they take in and synthesize stimuli at the shallowest possible level, and simply act. They have no concept of an inner life, and so are often, in my experience, puzzled by their own behaviors when those behaviors don’t fall neatly into certain preestablished categories. Look: if you said to any married couple, let’s just choose those two people sitting over there, that woman with the white-blond hair and the dark roots and that farmhand-ish man sitting across from her, don’t turn around—”

“That’s Clint and Debbie.”

“Clint and Debbie, then.”

“They’re not married, they’re having an affair. Debbie’s actually married to—”

“Let’s pretend? Pretend they’re married? If you asked Debbie about happiness, if she is happily married, I guarantee you’d get a look that suggested you’d carried something in on your shoe. Because Debbie isn’t going to think about something as simple even as happiness, in terms of a condition of the psyche. She’s thinking about getting her physical needs met, and making sure she’s constantly distracted, and how to keep her hair that color without finally causing it to melt into a clump.”

“I see what you’re saying, but I think—”

“Happiness is a theory, and we in Indiana do not traffic in theories. We are an
applied
people. Of course no one gives a thought to a wedding ring, because it’s a symbol, and a symbol represents theoretical thinking on the part of the collective—”

“Yes, but,” Amos pinched the bridge of his nose, lifting his glasses, “if we asked Debbie if she is happily married, don’t you suppose she’d simply say no? Because there she is, sitting with Clint for the whole world to see, while her husband drives a semi back and forth between here and San Diego. She’d simply say no.”

“Ah, look what you’re doing: you’re confusing
what
she does and
how
she lives with how much she is willing or capable of thinking about it, and once again, you’re mistaken. Just because she isn’t happy and you and I can see she’s unhappy doesn’t mean that she would understand that or confess it. The more important thing is that she doesn’t want to be asked. Trust me. She does not wish to be asked.”

Langston realized with a shock, just before Selma refilled it, that her coffee cup was empty.

“How about a biscuit, Langston?” Selma asked, not looking at her.

“A biscuit? No, thank you. But it was very kind of you to—”

Selma walked away, gathering up plates from neighboring tables. Amos was nearly finished with his breakfast, although Langston had only seen him take two or three bites.

“The wedding rings aren’t at the bottom of what puzzles me, anyway,” Amos said, placing his knife carefully on the edge of his plate.

“No. I know they aren’t.”

“You do?”

“What puzzles you is how an institution can be both sacred and profane at the same time? Something like that? Or whether there is truly a transcendent element in an entirely mundane economy?”

“Yes! That is sort of what I was thinking. But also weddings, I’m very disturbed by the nature of a wedding, by the way we are forced into believing that we’re witnessing a sacramental event—”

“—when we’re actually witnessing an existential event.”

Amos sat back, looking a bit winded. “Do you ever let anyone finish a sentence?”

“You should think faster,” Langston said, picking up her book and pencil and slipping them back into her coat pocket. “And was I wrong? Or was that what you were about to say?”

“No, no it wasn’t.”

“Go on, then, I’m sorry.”

“Never mind.”

“That’s what I thought.” She slipped into her coat and stood up. “Thank you for your time, Pastor Townsend.”

“Oh, my pleasure,” he said, beginning to stand.

“Don’t get up.” She smiled at him and headed for the cash register. One of the men at the register spoke to her, but she couldn’t tell which one, so she directed her reply generally. Selma ambled up toward her, saying, “Your daddy left money for whatever you wanted.”

Langston nodded. “Then let me pay for Pastor Townsend’s breakfast. Shall I?”

She picked up her umbrella and opened the door. The rain continued to fall in heavy sheets; the sky was gunmetal gray. Germane was lying on the top step, waiting. Just before she closed the restaurant door, Langston looked at Amos, at his height, his slightly slumped shoulders, his uproar of hair. He was sitting perfectly still, staring at the opposite side of the booth, alone. She stepped out into the rain.

Chapter 17

INSTRUCTIONS

Amos kicked through the rain, walking directly into puddles without noticing them. He didn’t, he would grant, know very much about children, but he did know that they needed to be
listened
to, they couldn’t constantly be
stepped
on. He remembered in particular a woman from his father’s church, Vera Markham was her name, strange he could recall it, a compulsive talker, a woman who tortured other people with talk. She had imagined herself in a unique position to instruct, and her own children, who were Amos’s age, had borne the worst of it, but no child was safe. One afternoon, just before he left for college, Amos had been in the Fellowship Room in the basement, helping a committee of people prepare for a potluck, and Vera had been one of them. She was holding in her arms a child about a year old, a little boy, while his mother ran home to get some eggs, and Amos would never forget the look on the child’s face as Vera marched him around the room. “Charles, this is a
broom
. Can you say broom? We use a broom to sweep the floor. We’re going to sweep up all the dust on the floor, and all the crumbs, anything we can find we’re going to sweep up. I’m getting the broom out of the closet now, can you say closet? The broom stays in the closet when we’re not using it. It’s
good
to keep things in their proper places,” and on and on she went, describing every gesture she made, asking the baby to repeat both nouns and verbs and then never giving him a moment to attempt it, had he been so inclined.

Amos began to sweat inside his black coat, thinking of Vera Markham. Thinking about Langston. If she would talk to him that way, if that was her style of conversation with him, what was she doing with the children? He stopped in the middle of the alley and tried to wipe some of the steam off his glasses with his shirt pocket, but couldn’t do that and hold his umbrella. He put the glasses back on. What would she do if they tried to tell her?
Oh, of course you believe you’re being visited by the Virgin Mary; it’s simply a matter of reaction formation to your phobia of abandonment, and rightly so;
or,
Let me explain why, in terms of the literature on the subject, a Marian visitation is unlikely in this part of the world. Historically, confirmed sightings have been limited to rocky terrain which was difficult to farm, and as you’ve probably noticed, Indiana is . . .

Or worse: what if they really opened up to her, what if they exposed their hearts and she interrupted or treated them condescendingly, children can’t
bear
that, and these were Alice’s children, they would see right through her. They would see her for what she really was and they would hear what she was saying, the depths of her tone, and they would be wounded, and he hated to cross AnnaLee, he hated to put his foot down, but Langston was impossible, he wouldn’t allow it to go on. She really, really needed to go back to graduate school: it was the perfect place for her.

Amos looked up, confused and soaked to the bone. He’d walked a block past his house, as if in a dream. His pants were wet up to his knees, water flowed from his shoes with every step, and his hand kept slipping off the umbrella handle. He turned around and looked at the parsonage, gray against the gray sky, and began the walk back.

Chapter 18

THE FLEA

“Thus concludes our unit on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance,” Langston said, shutting the book. “Do you have any questions?”

Epiphany was chewing on her bottom lip and rubbing her foot against Germane, periodically blinking and squinting against the bright sunshine. They had been three days without rain, and there wasn’t a trace of it left.

Immaculata stared at Langston. She seemed worried. Twice she had picked at the picnic table so vigorously a piece had come off in her hand.

“Epiphany, don’t chew on your lip, it’s primitive. Immaculata, what’s wrong with your face? Why are you squinching that way?”

“What’s a moolado?” Epiphany asked. One of her fingers slipped up toward her nose.

“A
mulatto,
say it with me, mu-lat-to, is a term, no longer in use, I believe, which designates a child born of one black parent and one white parent. Younger girl, if your finger gets any closer to your nose I will have to run away screaming. Immaculata, what is bothering you?”

“Well,” she said, “what about that person hanging from a tree? What does that mean?”

“Hughes is talking about a lynching, an activity formerly enjoyed by white people in small towns in the South and in the Midwest, in which innocent black men and women were hung from trees. One of the most famous photographs of a lynching, in which a whole group of handsome, well-fed townspeople are ogling the bodies of two young men, was taken in Marion, Indiana. Not far from here.”

Epiphany stuck her thumb in her mouth, then pulled it out. “Were they died, those men?”

“Were they
dead,
yes, they were. Oh, but look at the time. We need to get busy on Do This In Remembrance of Me.”

They stood up and headed for the sandbox. Langston took her usual seat on one side, and the girls sat down on the other. “I’d like to be the priest this time,” Langston said, hoping Immaculata would say yes; she was tired of always being the parishioner.

Immaculata shook her head.

“Why not? I am perfectly capable of transubstantiating the host.”

“This is for
pretend,
Langston.”

“All the more reason. Plus, I know a fair amount of Latin.”

“You aren’t even
Catholic
.”

“So.”

Immaculata shook her head. “No.”

Epiphany said, “No.”

“Fine, then. I’ll just sit quietly over here on my side of the ‘church’ and not bother anyone and not ask for any authority. That’s what women have always done, isn’t it?” They ignored her.

“. . . He took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given to you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ ” Immaculata raised the little plastic loaf of bread to the sky.

“Ding! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!” Langston rang. For some reason she was allowed to be the bell.

“And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.’ ” She raised the little pitcher with the daisy sprouting out the top.

“Ding! Ding Ding!” Langston cleared her throat. “Immaculata, I think you got some of the words—”

“Shhhhh!”

Langston and Epiphany lined up to receive the Eucharist: “Body of Christ.”

“Amen.”

They had barely gotten through Blood of Christ when Immaculata realized it was ten o’clock, and the girls dashed off for their walk.

*

On the drive to Jonah, Epiphany decided to randomly replace the beginning sound of certain words with the letter
b.
Her sister became Bimmaculata and Langston became Bangston, a name she found tasteless and completely unfitting.

Immaculata sat in the middle of the front seat, next to Langston, and Epiphany rode next to the door. Germane lay peacefully on the backseat, which was wide enough for him and two or three other dogs. They drove slowly along the country roads between Haddington and Jonah, the windows down, taking in the beautiful weather after the days of rain. AnnaLee had been forced to fashion outer robes for the girls out of trash bags, because they insisted on their morning tree time, even in the most inclement conditions.

“Beautiful as a June bride,” Langston said, admiring the light on the cornfields.

“June is poppin’ out all over,” Immaculata said.

“Bune is my bavorite monf.” Epiphany began to hum something sweet and tuneless.

“Okay,” Langston said, returning to an earlier subject. “So you prayed without ceasing and on the third day in front of the tree, the Virgin Mary appeared and began to speak to you?”

“Right.”

“Bight.”

“And what did she say? Tell me what she said the first time, and then tell me what she’s said since then.”

Immaculata thought a moment. “Well, the first thing she said is, ‘I am your Mother.’ ”

“Your Bother.”

“And then she said, ‘There is nothing but peace. Pray for peace in the world.’ ”

“And do you pray for peace in the world?” Langston asked.

Immaculata looked at Langston as if she were slow-witted, but still human. “Yes. That’s what she
told
us to do. Mostly she says things like that, and that we must honor her son, and listen to him, and do what he says. She reminds me that no one who ever came to her for help was turned away, and that she is watching over us night and day, and won’t let anything bad happen to us. One time she quoted Matthew
16:3
–
4
, but I didn’t recognize it until I came across it in my reading
that very
s
ame night.
‘You know how to read the face of the sky, but you cannot read the signs of the times. It is an evil and unfaithful generation asking for a sign, and the only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah.’ ”

“
Mary
said that?”

“She was quoting the Gospel, is all. She didn’t make it up. And also, I don’t know what some of the things she says mean until later.”

Langston shook her head. “The sign of Jonah? Don’t you find that . . . ironic?”

“Swallowed up in a whale,” Immaculata said, rather hopelessly.

“Ballowed up in a bale.”

“I’m waiting for her to tell me to do something,” Immaculata continued, “you know, like she told Bernadette to dig. But so far all she’s said is Pray, Forgive, Say Your Rosary, and Eat Fruit. Stuff like that.”

“Just like a mother.”

They drove along quietly for a minute or two.

“Do you believe me?” Immaculata asked, looking hard at Langston’s profile.

“Me?” Langston said, tapping her chest. “Do I believe you? Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Pastor Townsend doesn’t believe us, I don’t think.”

Langston made a little spitting sound before she could catch herself. “No, he wouldn’t. But it isn’t his fault. He’s jaded.”

“Baded.”

“What is ‘jaded’?” Immaculata asked.

“It’s like corruption. He’s corrupt somehow, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Mary ascended
un
corrupted to be seated with her Son at the right hand of God.”

“So I’ve heard, yes.” Langston turned onto the Old Dupont Road toward the Milky Freeze. “There is more in heaven and on earth, Immaculata. If I could be innocent of history, and were presented with two notions, Nazis or a visitation from Mary, I know which one would seem less likely.”

“Also,” Immaculata said, fiddling with the dial on the broken radio, “Lillian Poe doesn’t believe us. She says that she understands why
we
might need to believe it, and that it isn’t a bad thing, but that when we’re better, later not right now, we’ll let go of it. Of Mary.”

Langston smacked the steering wheel. “She said that to you? Always always
always
it’s the most dull and bereft who take money to tinker with our psyches. No one who really understood the soul would dare.” She was so mad she felt a little sick. “I assume that Ms. Poe, who undoubtedly has a degree from an esteemed state university gracing the wall of her office, was never asked to read
Equus,
oh no. We can’t have clinicians and behaviorists reading literature. She’ll take Mary away from you, and when Mary goes she’ll carry your intestines in her teeth.”

Immaculata gasped. “Langston—”

“Oh, sweetheart, sorry, sorry.” She patted Immaculata’s knee. “I just paraphrased a line from a play. Mary would
never
do such a thing.” She pulled into the drive-thru line at the Milky Freeze. “Girls, listen to me. Hand me my wallet first, and then listen to me. Thank you. Your visitations from Mary are not pathological, and they have nothing to do with illness. Lillian Poe may imagine that she can diagnose you as delusionary or exhibiting advanced defense structures or whatever she finds in those idiot textbooks, and undoubtedly she has an eye toward insurance reimbursement. But she is wrong, and every time you sit in her office and talk to her about whatever you talk about, remember that she is wrong. Mary has come to you because you are blessed and innocent and faithful, and I for one hope no one can
ever
take that away from you.”

Neither girl said anything. Immaculata just stared straight ahead, clenching and unclenching her jaw muscles. Epiphany bounced her legs up and down, causing the car to rock slightly.

The sliding window of the drive-thru opened, and the same frumpy, dispirited, and vaguely rude middle-aged woman they saw every day stuck her head out.

“Yep.”

Langston smiled at her, but collapsed inwardly; she lived among savages. “I’d like a chocolate dip cone, a vanilla cup with multicolored sprinkles, and an ice-cream sandwich. Thank you.”

The woman closed the door without a word.

“Can we do crafts when we get home?” Epiphany asked. She wanted to do crafts every day, even though Langston found them profoundly tedious.

“Today is lessons, Epiphany,” her sister said. “We’re doing the Ten Commandments. We
promised
we would.”

“Let’s, how about this, Immaculata, let’s make some crafty thing out of the Ten Commandments, a poster, or something to hang on your bedroom wall.”

“Yeah yeah yeah a poster to hang on the wall, Immaculata. Do you have any gum?”

Immaculata’s shoulders fell in defeat. “You have a whole drawer filled with gum, Epiphany. Pastor Townsend brings you some every day, spoiled baby.”

“Boiled baby.”

Surly Woman slid back the window, and handed Langston the ice cream in the order she’d requested it, and then just before she took Langston’s money, gave her an extra cup with a swirl of vanilla ice cream and half a dog biscuit stuck in the top. Langston’s eyes filled with tears, and she had to turn her head to hide it from the girls.
What is wrong with me?
she thought.
I’ve become so emotionally labile
. Before Langston could say anything to the woman, she’d taken the money and gone to get change. The girls immediately began to argue about who got to hold the cup for Germane, and when the woman came back Langston was only able to get out, “Thank you so much for that unexpected kindn—” before the window closed with a “Yep.”

*

When they reached Lillian Poe’s office (which occupied the front of her small, square house), Langston walked the girls into the waiting area. Lillian’s door was open, and she was standing behind her desk, reviewing notes or her calendar. Langston didn’t like Lillian’s officiousness, or the severity of her haircut, which was painfully short, or the way she wore tailored suits in neutral colors, or the squatness of her fingers.

“Come on in, girls,” Lillian called, without looking up. Langston didn’t like that, either. She had her hands on the girls’ shoulders, and she exerted just the slightest pressure, prompting them toward the door. Immaculata reached up and took Langston’s hand, and Epiphany wrapped her arms around Langston’s leg.

“Hey, hey.” She knelt down until they were all at eye level, then wrapped her arms around their waists. “What’s this?”

Immaculata had a tic under her left eye which had gotten worse over the past few days. She stared at Langston, unblinking. Epiphany bumped her head repeatedly against Langston’s temple.

“Just remember what I said,” Langston whispered. “Epiphany, you’re giving me a concussion. Lillian can’t take anything from you that you won’t give her, and you don’t have to see her forever. In two weeks she’s going to reduce your visits to just once a week. I’m going to sit right out here and wait for you. I’ll be sitting right here by the plant.”

Immaculata nodded. “Sit by the door.”

“Yes, bit by the boor.”

Langston stood up and guided them through the doorway. “Go on then, soldiers. March on in there.”

*

They skipped lunch in Jonah because Epiphany said her stomach hurt. All the way home she made little moaning sounds, some of which seemed genuine. Others had all the marks of malingering. She asked if she could get in the back with Germane.

“Sure,” Langston said, at the same time Immaculata said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you do,” Immaculata spoke to Epiphany just loud enough for Langston to hear, “something very bad will happen.”

Without thinking, Langston pulled the car off onto the shoulder of the country road. She looked at the older girl as if she were a stranger. “Immaculata! That is just patently cruel, and untrue. Apologize to your sister.”

Immaculata said nothing. She stared at the windshield ferociously.

“Well, then, we’ll just sit here in the blazing sun for the rest of the day. I mean it, that was unacceptable.”

“No, I won’t apologize! She’s just faking. She’s always been like this, she used to all the time tell Mo—”

They never mentioned their parents. In fact, they never mentioned their life before they moved in with their aunt, as if their mutual past had been erased.

“Okay, okay, let’s just assume she means it this time.”

No one moved or spoke, until Epiphany said, quietly, “Can we go now?”

Langston eased the car back onto the road. Neither girl made another sound all the way back to Haddington.

*

Langston was turning off Main Street onto Chimney when she noticed a car sitting in front of her house, a white—