A Common Life (11 page)

She had known she would never again be given such a connection, and she had moved bravely toward it, toward its heat, toward its center, while he had drawn back, shaken.

“‘Love bade me welcome,’” he had once quoted from George Herbert, “‘but my soul drew back.’” She found a delicate irony in the fact that George Herbert had been a clergyman.

She looked at the handwritten sheet pinned above her drawing board, something she had copied at the Mitford library from an old book by Elizabeth Goudge:

Eternity!

She moved from the window and walked quickly to the kitchen. She would do something that, if only for the briefest hour, had the power to solve everything, to offer certain and absolute consolation.

She would cook.

She removed the chicken from the refrigerator, already rubbed with olive oil and crushed garlic, with half a lemon tucked into its cavity. She misted olive oil into her ancient iron skillet, placed the bird on its back, and ground pepper and sea salt onto its plump flesh. From a glass of water on the windowsill she removed a pungent stalk of fresh rosemary and stuck it under the breast skin. The top of the green stalk waved forth like a feather from a hat band.

She turned the stove dial to 450, where it would remain for thirty minutes before being set at 350 for an hour, and slid the raw feast onto the middle rack.

The wrenching thing, she knew in her heart, was having no one to talk with about it all, and whose fault was that but her own? Had she not worked like a common stevedore since coming to Mitford, making a way for her work instead of making friends? Oh, yes, she was liked well enough, she really was, but there was no trusted friend to whom she might pour her heart out. There was no one, not a soul.

Except . . . she smiled at the thought . . . the priest himself. Her heart warmed suddenly, and lifted up. Hadn’t she confessed something to him only yesterday?

“They don’t like me,” she had said, despising the whine she heard in her voice. “They did, of course, until they learned you were actually going to marry me, but now . . .”

“Nonsense!” he’d said with feeling. “They think the
world
of you!”

That was apparently the most profound compliment a Southerner could pay, to insist that one was thought the “world” of!

She realized she wouldn’t finish the illustration as she’d promised her editor; she would finish it tomorrow, instead. She, who was ever loath to break a promise, would break this one.

“Timothy?” she said when he answered the phone. “Can you come over?” Her heart was pounding, and there was a distinct quaver in her voice; she was warbling like a canary.

“I’m scared, dearest, scared to death.”

She loved the way he sat with her, not saying anything in particular, not probing, not pushing her, just sitting on her love seat. Perhaps what she liked best was that he always looked comfortable wherever he was, appearing glad to live within his skin and not always jumping out of it like some men, like James, her editor, who was everlastingly clever and eloquent and ablaze with wild ideas that succeeded greatly for him, while with Timothy the thing that succeeded was quietude, something rich and deep and . . . nourishing, a kind of spiritual chicken soup simmering in some far reach of the soul.

“Tell me,” he said at last. “Tell me everything. I’m your priest, after all.” She thought his smile dazzling, a dazzling thing to come out of quietude. She had pulled a footstool to the love seat and sat close to him.

“I’m terribly afraid I can’t make you happy,” she said.

“But that was my fear! I finally kicked it out the back door and now it’s run over here.”

“It’s not funny, Timothy.”

“I’m not laughing.”

He took her hands in his and lightly kissed the tips of her fingers and she caught the scent of him, the innocence of him, and her spirit mounted up again.

“Why don’t we pray together?” he said. “Just let our hearts speak to His. . . .”

Sitting at his feet, she bowed her head and closed her eyes and he stroked her shoulder. Though the clock ticked in the hallway, she supposed that time was standing still, and that she might sit with him in this holy reverie, forever.

“Lord,” he said, simply, “here we are.”

“Yes, Lord, here we are.”

They drew in their breath as one, and let it out in a long sigh, and she realized for a moment how the very act of breathing in His presence was balm.

“Dear God,” he said, “deliver Your cherished one from feeling helpless to receive the love You give so freely, so kindly, from the depths of Your being. Help us to be as large as the love You’ve given us, sometimes it’s too great for us, Lord, even painful in its power. Tear away the old fears, the old boundaries that no longer contain anything of worth or importance, and by Your grace, make Cynthia able to seize this bold, fresh freedom. . . .”

“Yes, Lord,” she prayed, “the freedom I’ve never really known before, but which You’ve faithfully shown me in glimmers, in epiphanies, in wisps as fragile as . . . light from Your new moon!”

He pressed her hand, feeling in it the beating of her pulse.

“Father, deliver me from the fear to love wholly and completely, I who chided this good man for his own fears, his own weakness, while posing, without knowing it a pose, as confident and bold. You’ve seen through that, Lord, You’ve . . . You’ve found me out for what I am . . .”

There was a long silence, filled by the ticking of the clock.

“. . . a frightened seven-year-old who stands at the door looking for a father and mother who . . . do not come home.

“Even after years of knowing You as a Father who is always home, I sometimes feel—I feel a prisoner of old and wrenching fears, and I’m ashamed of my fear, and the darkness that prevents me from stepping into the light. . . .”

“You tell us in Your Word,” he prayed, “that You do not give us the spirit of fear—”

“But of power and of love and a sound mind!” she whispered, completing the verse from the second letter to Timothy.

“And so, Lord, I rebuke the Enemy who would employ every strategy to deny Your children the blessing of Your grace.”

“Yes, Lord!”

“Help us to receive Your peace and courage, Your confidence and power,” he said.

“Yes, Lord!”

“Thank you for being with us now, and in the coming weeks and coming years.”

“And Father,” she said, “please give me the grace to love Dooley as You love him, and the patience to encourage and support and understand him, for I wish with all my heart that we might grow together in harmony, as a true family.” She took a deep and satisfying breath. “And now, Lord . . .”

As the prayer neared its end, they spoke in unison as they had recently begun to do in their evening prayers.

“. . . create in us a clean heart . . . renew a right spirit within us . . . and fill us with Your Holy Spirit . . . through Christ our Lord . . . amen.”

He helped her from the footstool and she sat beside him on the love seat and breathed the peace that settled over them like a shawl.

“There will be many times when fear breaks in,” he said, holding her close. “We can never be taken prisoner if we greet it with prayer.”

“Yes!” she whispered, feeling a weight rolled away like the stone from the sepulcher.

“I smelled the chicken as I came through the hedge.”

“Dinner in twenty minutes?” she murmured.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

O
n the morning of September seventh, in the upstairs guest room of the rectory, Bishop Stuart Cullen checked his vestments for any signs of wrinkles or unwanted creases, found none, then took his miter from the box and set it on the bureau, mindful that his crozier was in the trunk of the car, as were his black, polished shoes and an umbrella in case of rain.

Rummaging about the room in a pair of magenta boxer shorts given him by his suffragan, he hummed snatches of a Johnny Cash tune as Martha Cullen sat up in bed and read an issue of
Country Life
magazine that Puny had placed on the night table three years ago and faithfully dusted ever since. Studying a feature on knot gardens, she was utterly unmindful of the bishop’s rendition of “Ring of Fire” as he enjoyed a long, steaming shower that caused water in the shower across the hall to trickle upon the rector’s head in a feeble stream.

Under the miserly drizzle, the rector counted his blessings that the bishop would be preaching this morning and he celebrating, a veritable holiday in the Caymans, as far as he was concerned. In truth, he feared that if he opened his mouth to deliver wisdom of any sort, it would pour forth as some uncertified language, resulting not from the baptism of the Holy Spirit but of something akin to panic, or worse. He despaired that the custard had vanished in the night, and fear and trembling had jumped into its place with both feet.

In his room across the hall, Dooley sat on the side of his bed and felt the creeping, lopsided nausea that came with the aroma of baking ham as it rose from the kitchen. He said three four-letter words in a row, and was disappointed when his stomach still felt sick.

He hoped his voice wouldn’t crack during the hymn. Though he’d agreed to sing a cappella, he didn’t trust a cappella. If you hit a wrong note, there was nothing to cover you. He wished there were trumpets or something really loud behind him, but no, Cynthia wanted “Dooley’s pure voice.” Gag.

“God,” he said aloud, “don’t let me sound weird. Amen.” He had no idea that God would really hear him or prevent him from sounding weird, but he thought it was a good idea to ask.

He guessed he was feeling better about stuff. Yesterday, Father Tim spent the whole day taking him places, plus they’d run two miles with Barnabas and gone to Sweet Stuff after. Then, Cynthia had given him a hug that nearly squeezed his guts out. “Dooley,” she said, “I really care about you.”

When he heard that, he felt his face getting hard. He didn’t want it to, but it was trained that way. He could tell she really meant it, but she’d have to prove she meant it before he would smile at her; he knew she wanted him to smile. Maybe he would someday, but not now. Now he was trying to keep from puking up his gizzard because he had to sing a song he didn’t even like, at a wedding he still wasn’t sure of.

In the kitchen of the little yellow house beyond the hedge, Cynthia Coppersmith stood barefoot in her aging chenile robe, her hair in pink foam curlers, eating half a hotdog from the refrigerator and drinking coffee so strong it possessed the consistency of tapioca.

On arriving home last night from the country club dinner party where, out of courtesy, she’d picked at a salad, she had boiled a hotdog and eaten the first half of it in a bun with what she thought was mustard but was, in fact, horseradish, loosely the age of her expiring Boston fern. It was the first true nourishment she’d recently been able to take, except for a rock shrimp and three cherry tomatoes at Friday’s bridal luncheon. She ate the remains of the hotdog in two bites and, feeling her lagging appetite suddenly stimulated, foraged in the refrigerator until she found a piece of Wednesday’s broiled flounder, which she spritzed with the juice of a geriatric lemon and, standing at the sink, consumed with gusto.

Two blocks south, Esther Bolick peered out her kitchen window as a straggle of rain clouds parted to reveal the sun. “Happy is th’ bride th’ sun shines on!” she announced with relief.

Going briskly to the oven, she removed three pans of scratch cake layers to a cooling rack, and stood with her hands on her hips in a baby doll nightgown and bedroom shoes with the faces of bunnies. She gazed with satisfaction at the trio of perfect yellow moons, then trotted across the kitchen for another cup of decaf, the black pupils of the bunnies’ plastic eyes rolling and clicking like dice.