Grace (31 page)

“That is a long way, what with the bullet still inside of you.”

“It's not far,” I said.

“If anything happens to you—just promise me you will not die.”

“I promise,” I said. “I will never die.”

“Don't make me cry. We have to take care of each other, just as they do. It is what our lives are for. If you die we won't be able to, and everything will be meaningless.”

“I won't die. I promise.”

“I believe you.”

“May I ask something?” We had finally pulled beyond sight of the shore.

“Anything you wish.”

“When did you first know you loved me?”

“When I first saw you,” she said. “You were in your boat, just like this, and I knew we were going to meet. And then you came to dinner. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“When did you figure it out?”

“At dinner, I think,” I replied. “Except before I could accept it, first it had to get through all the parts of my heart I did not know, until I could see it was all of love.”

We plunged the sculls into the water and watched it ripple, feeling how alive and fortunate we were.

“We might have died,” she said.

“We did not,” I said.

“How is your shoulder?”

“Holding on. Are we on the hypotenuse?”

“I remember the way.”

“Okay.”

“Can I tell you something?” she asked.

“Whatever you wish.”

“It sounds foolish, but when I was waiting for you at the shore, I felt in my whole body the energy of my feet plunged into the earth, and every particle within me started to disintegrate and pull toward the sun, and then all of my energy and all the energy in the world were flowing through me, and all of you, too, and I wept.”

“You had a moment of grace.”

“Have you felt such a thing?” she wanted to know. “I mean, really felt it?”

“Not before I met you. I think before I only knew the rapture.”

“Honey, what happened with your other woman?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The one before me. The one you loved, and never talk about.”

“I told you.”

“You told me the story, but not what it did to you. I know that you loved her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was afraid to ask about her before. Now I am not. Because I know we are together.”

“It is the past.”

“The past does not frighten me, unless it frightens you.”

I reflected a while, remembering deeper, an open window down a summer corridor, where a birthday cake cooled on a side table.
I walked toward its wafting aroma, a pilgrim, to my own first memory. Outside, a truck parked in the middle of the street with sirens that do not sound, but glow bright as candles on a winter night. I walked into the house, sensing something was the matter and asked where she was, and was told not to worry. And the way in which it was said made me ask again, and I am told again not to worry—She has only gone to visit friends. I pressed further and no one answered, so I submitted to those in charge. Later, when I would not stop asking, they told me she was in the hospital, and I asked what that was. It is for people who are sick. I asked what was wrong; what had happened, and when would she be well. No one answered. They were in charge, and I submitted. But later they confessed, She is not coming home, and I asked, Why? Because she has gone home. I thought this was her home, and asked where else her home could be, and they told me it was where God is. I asked about God. He is the Lord who made the world, and everything in it, and where we will all go one day. She is with Him, and is happy now. When will she be back? We all go to the Lord someday. And it is awhile before I unravel it. Heaven means death. And I remembered the song they sang in church, because it was her song, and her mother's song. And the cake that day is the last I had of her sweet breath in my face and sweet smell of her skin in my nose when I pressed to her bosom. And that dessert was the last sweet bite in my memory's mouth, and it was still sickly sweet. I did not have a mother after that, nor trust what my father said. I knew later all fathers were liars, the world demands it of them, but found out too soon, and wished for one more memory, but had lost all memory before that, except the light from her eyes sometimes, in dreams, in my cells themselves.

I did not know if the self we sometimes claim to know is truly the self, but I felt my entire being on a great ocean flowing into everything around the lake as I looked down and saw myself in the boat, and saw Sylvie, and saw the lake and both shores. I saw the errors of my life, and they fell all away as the overflowing price of being alive, and I saw its triumphs, and they enfolded me as its bounty.

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes.”

“It is okay, dear. You can tell me. Nothing will take us from each other. Don't worry about that. And if you loved her, and she loved you, well, then you don't have anything to regret. Even if it made you feel afterward like no one ever loved you at all, and no one could love you again, because not even you knew the depth of your aloneness. I am here for you. Harper?”

“Yes?”

“Stay awake, honey. Please stay awake.”

I heard her from down at the other end of the shore, as the pain pulsed and surged. “Maybe we will not have to row all the way, but will see a boat that can tow us the rest of the way to shore. See how fast we are going and how wonderfully the boat is holding us up and the water is holding the boat. Don't fall asleep, honey.”

“No. Not yet,” I said. It was too painful to row, and I put the oar inside the boat, and let my hand fall in the cool water, and splashed some to my face.

“I wish I could hold you now,” she said sweetly to me.

“You already are.”

“Promise me you won't die.”

“Yes.”

The sun was firing gold and copper in the distance, as it created and enthroned the new day, and the fog was burning away, and on the far shore light had already broken so beautifully, suffusing everything with crystal fire that seemed to burn from inside each thing alive as far as could be seen, filling the people everywhere around the lake with the awe and wonderment of certain mornings that make you see how good life is, and how eternal love is, and how perfect it would be to live your own life your own way, and how fine and beautiful it would be to live forever.

Copyright © 2015 by Calvin Baker.

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

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Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-4405-8578-4

Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8578-4

Paperback ISBN 10: 1-4405-8575-X

Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8575-3

eISBN 10: 1-4405-8576-8

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8576-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baker, Calvin,

Grace / Calvin Baker.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4405-8578-4 (hc) -- ISBN 1-4405-8578-4 (hc) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-8575-3 (pb) -- ISBN 1-4405-8575-X (pb) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-8576-0 (ebook) -- ISBN 1-4405-8576-8 (ebook)

I. Title.

PS3552.A3997G73 2015

813'.54--dc23

2014049308

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

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