Noah's Wife (2 page)

T
wo days before Noah was called to this church, the previous minister walked into the river and didn't walk out again.

When Noah arrives to take his place, the town is still debating the nature of his death. It is true, people say to one another, that after so many months of rain, the river has become higher and faster than it was before; and yet it has not become so high or so fast that anyone would have expected death by drowning to be a very real possibility. This is a town of strong swimmers.

Then again, as Mrs. McGinn observes in hushed tones to her daughter on the morning of the burial, one can die just as well in two feet of water as in twenty. It's a fairly simple matter once a person sets his troubled mind to it, and everyone knows that that's exactly what the poor man was. Troubled.

God rest his soul.

It is a blessing, at least, to have the town cemetery on the high ground behind the church. Most of the townspeople grumble about having to slosh up the muddy hill in their worn-out galoshes, but Mrs. McGinn is glad to do it because she is determined to get a better look at the new minister and his wife. She only caught a glimpse of them through the foggy windows of their car as they rolled through town last night. The woman looked beautiful, Mrs. McGinn admits to herself, but she is hoping that the beauty of the minister's wife will turn out to be something like the beauty of a fine impressionist painting: lovely in certain lights and best when seen from farther away, but a muddle of colors and textures when one stands with one's nose right up against the gilded frame. It has been years since Mrs. McGinn was in an art museum—whatever museums this town once had have long since closed up shop and taken their objects elsewhere—but there was once a time when she was quite interested in art and she likes to think she still knows a thing or two about beauty.

She would not begrudge anyone a beautiful wife, but in truth she would prefer for the woman to be a little plainer so that her own daughter would look a little better in comparison. Mrs. McGinn is not worried about herself; when it comes to good looks she has certainly had her day, and she is reassured by the belief that if she were twenty years younger she would not pale in comparison. Indeed, when she glances in her most trustworthy mirror at certain times of day, and especially when she
applies a touch of lipstick before doing so, she doesn't believe that she pales so much even now.

“It's not a competition, Evelyn,” her husband reminds her gruffly when he sees her craning her neck for a better view at the cemetery.

Mrs. McGinn sees the flicker of his irritation (she is always on the watch for it), and so she falls back on her heels and lowers her chin. “I know that it's not a competition, Jackson,” she retorts. “But I feel as though they're looking down on us.”

“That's because we're all standing on a goddamn hill,” he snaps. He waves his hand at the minister and his wife, both wrapped like seals in slick black raincoats while the steeple looms pale and solemn behind them. The cemetery runs down on an incline from the backyard of the church, weeds creeping across the graves, puddles collecting at the bases of the tombstones. The minister and his wife are standing closest to the church's whitewashed siding while the mourners range unevenly across the drowning grass below them, all sheltered beneath the nylon canopies of their umbrellas. Mrs. McGinn swivels her head to count her neighbors, surprised to find that nearly everyone is here. She nods at Mauro, the silver-haired Italian who owns the general store, and watches Leesl, the former music teacher, pace the ground beside her father's grave. Mrs. McGinn's daughter is leaning back against her fiancé, wrapped up in his arms. Mrs. McGinn shakes her head and turns away.

“The whole town turned out for this,” she mutters to her husband.

He shrugs, glowers at his neighbors. “No one cared enough to check up on the old man when he was still alive,” he replies, “and now that the guy's gone, suddenly everyone feels sorry enough to make the trek up here and stand in the goddamn rain and hear the new one tell us that all is forgotten, our sins are forgiven.” He spits into the grass to show his wife exactly how he feels about this.

“What sins, Jackson?” she demands, her whisper fierce. “What do you mean by that?”

Her husband spits again. “Why would a
minister
walk into a river, Evelyn? What could have driven him to it?” He starts to say something else, but Mrs. McGinn snaps at him to keep quiet and tells him she doesn't want to hear it.

The truth is that she has, in fact, already heard it. For the past few days her diner has been buzzing with speculation over the death of the minister. Was it an accident or not? Did anyone know anything about the old man—what he was thinking, how he was doing? Had anyone seen him since they stopped attending services at the church all those months—years?—ago? Was he happy or not? And if not, why not? Many of the townspeople admitted that they, too, were largely unhappy in this place. They looked out the windows of the diner at the river, the water shoving at the crumbling banks, and a collective shudder ran through them.

Mrs. McGinn is grateful that the new minister begins to speak right then. She peers at the woman standing behind him, trying to get a better glimpse of her face.

“Good morning, everyone,” says the new minister. His voice is booming, his stance wide and self-assured. “My name is Noah. I haven't met most of you yet, but I'm glad to be here with you. Of course I wish that I had been called to this town under happier circumstances, but I am certain that we will make it through this difficult time together. None of us is ever given a heavier burden than he can bear.”

He has a speech prepared. With the calm and practiced grace of his vocation, he lays out his plans for the church and the congregation, his hands fluttering like swallows and his face shining as radiantly as the future he describes for them. Grace and faith; light and life. Mrs. McGinn dismisses these words as they reach her and waits for Noah to say something more concrete, something more helpful. She waits for him to acknowledge the rain, at least, or to say something about the nature of his predecessor's death. Her neighbors wait, too—she can see them all leaning slightly forward, their gazes flicking between the ruddy face of the new minister and the open grave of the old one. They look as disappointed as Mrs. McGinn feels when Noah wraps up his speech, shivers a little in his damp clothing, and steps away from the headstone while the grizzled undertaker and his son shovel dirt over the coffin.

“That was it?” exclaims Mrs. McGinn. “That's the extent of his advice to us—
hope
and
pray
? For God's sake!” Before her husband can growl at her to stop, she has stormed her way through the throng of colored umbrellas and come to a halt in front of the minister and his wife.

“Noah,” she says, jamming her hand into his. “Evelyn McGinn.”

“Evelyn!” repeats the minister with evident delight, beaming at her. “Yes, I've heard all about you! People say that you're the one who keeps this place afloat. Is that true?”

Mrs. McGinn leans backward, disarmed. Noah's grin is more engaging than she had anticipated. “Well,” she says, “I do my best.”

Noah nods, looking past her to the jumble of gray buildings that squat along the river below them. A drop of rain falls on his nose, and he wipes it away with impatience. “What a charming little town!” he exclaims. His stilted enthusiasm reminds Mrs. McGinn of a candidate for public office. “The downtown looks exactly like a postcard. When you have some free time, I'd love to have you tell me more about it.”

At this, Mrs. McGinn snorts. No one cares about this place anymore. The only reason Noah is expressing interest is because he feels that, after only two days, he already has a claim on it—but this is
her
town; not his. Mrs. McGinn is the one who has spent a lifetime here. It is she who was elected to head the town council (the first woman, by the way, to ever serve on it), and she will not have her authority undermined by this man's ignorant enthusiasm.

“Really, Minister?” she says, her voice sharp and unforgiving. “Well, what would you like to know?”

Surprised by her tone, Noah doesn't answer immediately. In the silence that follows, his wife takes a step forward.
Mrs. McGinn's eyes rake across the woman's paperlike skin, coming to rest upon her steady, slate-gray gaze. She is good-looking, but in an unremarkable way. Average nose, average ears. The only feature that might stand out in a crowd is her hair: glossy waves the color of ravens' wings. At the sight of it Mrs. McGinn reaches up to pat her own carroty curls, piled high into a loose bun on the top of her head. She dyes her hair herself at least once a month but even so, she still finds fresh silver strands every few days and then she yanks them out, unhappily, clamping her mouth shut to keep from crying out. No one ever said that beauty would be painless, her mother had told her on her sixteenth birthday as she unwrapped her first pair of high heels. The same thing goes for love and for marriage, Mrs. McGinn has told her own daughter time and again when the girl walks into a room to find her sweeping up a heap of broken china. No one ever said that love would be painless.

Noah's wife makes a broad and graceful gesture with her arm that seems to take in the clouds, the umbrellas, mud, and the river in the distance all at once. “Is it true what we've heard about the weather here?” she asks Mrs. McGinn. “Has it really been raining for so long?”

Mrs. McGinn hates this question. “Yes,” she says curtly. “It's been raining a long time.”

Long enough to drive the mayor away, after all; long enough to lose most of the old police force, many of the shopkeepers, the artists, the businessmen. The sheriff has kept his office in
the decaying town hall and there are still two firefighters with little else to do but play poker in the empty firehouse, since most everything is too damp to burn. A few years back they were so short on teachers that they started busing children to a school a few districts over. It is Mrs. McGinn's husband, in fact, who drives the bus there and back on muddy roads, one trip in the morning and one in the afternoon, an hour each way. He doesn't like the job, of course; he claims that the crying of the children nearly drives him off the road.

Worst of all was the effect of the rain on the zoo. That zoo had been what placed them on the map; it was what made them famous, what provided their income, what gave this town its character. There are exotic animal tracks in the sidewalk, for goodness' sake; there are statues of polar bears and elephants at intersections. The walls of the diner are crowded with wildlife paintings, and most of the townspeople sport zoo paraphernalia on their key chains, T-shirts, and jackets. In the old glory days, items such as these would fly off the shelves faster than Mauro could stock them, but lately he has been giving them away for free. The townspeople used to find it hard to believe that what had started out as a two-goat operation in a businessman's backyard had grown into a two-hundred-animal operation that drew high-rolling tourists all the way from the other side of the country. Now they find it hard to believe that the institution that allowed them to flourish for so long has wilted and waned to such an extent that no one but the zookeeper and his fiancée
will set foot in it. They shake their heads, disgusted by their situation. And what is there to do about it? they would like to know. Nobody goes to the zoo in the rain.

“Is there any explanation for the weather?” Noah wants to know, taking over from his wife. “It's amazing that so many of you are still here, with conditions like these.”

Mrs. McGinn frowns, and her entire face puckers. “Well, there used to be a lot more of us,” she says finally. “This place is nothing like it once was.”

It hurts her to admit this, as it always does. Mrs. McGinn understands perfectly well that this town has its problems, and that these days it is difficult to scratch out a life for oneself here. She knows that when her daughter's classmates and friends decided to establish careers for themselves in teaching, in business, in law, they looked elsewhere because this town had no real future for businesses more ambitious than her own diner, Mauro's general store, the dwindling demands on the single pharmacy, the department store, or anything other than the very bare essentials required for life in a small gray ghost town. She suspects that even her own daughter is champing at the bit to leave this place, and she is well aware that once the girl is gone, there will be little reason for her to return. Mrs. McGinn is a woman of strong convictions, but she is no fool. She knows how the world works.

“What we need from you, Minister, is some kind of action,” she says now to Noah. “The rain has kept us too low for too long. We don't know why it's still raining, and we don't know
why Reverend Matthews did what he did. People are looking for answers, and now that you're here, they'll be looking to you. I hope you won't let us down.”

If Noah's face loses some of its enthusiastic color at her words, Mrs. McGinn does not notice. She is gazing instead at the town that lies below her, the buildings battered and weary. She knows that many of the town's former inhabitants—indeed, even many of those malcontented souls still living here today—would tell her that it would be wiser to give up on this place, to pack her bags and try her hand at life in a place that isn't forever haunted by its own past, that needn't live within the shadow of its former glory. But who among us is not haunted by her past? Mrs. McGinn would like to know. Who among us is as bright or as full or as strong as she was, or as she could be?

I
n the town where Mauro grew up, the showers were brief and radiant.

When he remembers Italy now, he remembers the sun beaming through sheets of rain that slid in colored panes from the clouds to the ground. He remembers indigo skies and salty gusts of wind and the crisp, clean air at the end of thunderstorms, when standing water shimmered in piazzas like small and shallow wishing wells. He has been to Rome many, many times, and he has heard the legend the tour guides feed the tourists between slices of street pizza and cups of handmade gelato, so he is well aware of the connection between water and wishes.

What he wouldn't give right now for two scoops of pistachio!

The legend goes like this: By throwing one coin in the
fountain, the tourist is guaranteed to return someday to Rome. The second coin promises marriage; the third is for charity.

When he was a child, so cynical of superstition, it was easy to scoff at the foreigners and dismiss the legend. As he has aged, however, and as his return trip to Italy has become more and more unlikely, he has found himself wishing that he, too, had the assurance of knowing that he would one day set foot again on Italian soil. When he thinks about the untossed coin, he realizes that this simple act of faith, the flinging of the token, would have been of great comfort to him. Perhaps it would not even have mattered whether he returned, as long as he could remain happy in his hope. Now that he is older and, as he would say, wiser in the ways of the world, he tends more toward the superstitious beliefs initially impressed upon him by his grandmothers because it reassures him to feel as though he has some control over his fate, as if he possesses the knowledge necessary to crack the code of an enigmatic and exasperating cosmos.

How was he to know what fortune had in store for this place? When he arrived here, the future shone like a silver river in the sun—and now all the hope that is left in this town is rotting in the rain. Mauro tries not to think about it, for what good does it do to dwell on these things? He makes wishes on puddles and wards off bad omens. He has been betting on this town for years, and when the situation begins to go from bad to worse, he has little choice but to hold his head high and continue to bet on it still.

True, he also has a plan that is more concrete. At the end of every month he transfers the remainder of his profits from his cash register into sealed plastic bags, which he then carries down to the river and tucks under the seat of his old fishing craft. He knows this is a senseless place to hide his life savings, but that is what he likes about it. It is illogical, unreasonable. No one would think to look for it there. He has not yet saved enough to buy a ticket to Italy or to reestablish himself at home, but one day he will. He is sure of it.

In the meantime, he has the general store. Perhaps he shouldn't have it, but he does, thanks to one of the few lucky hands he's been dealt in his life. The owner of the store was drunk on Mauro's wine when he made up his mind to gamble it, and the day after he lost it to Mauro he packed up his wife and his kids and took off. No one has heard from him since. Mauro believes that the man was planning to leave anyway, that there must have been some other, underlying reason for his behavior, something else that was distressing him—why else would he have been so careless with the store?—but Mauro never found out what it was. And then he was gone. Mrs. McGinn blames Mauro for the family's departure, but Mauro tries not to let this bother him. That woman is always blaming somebody for something.

“But only because she is loving this town,” he explains to the minister and his wife when Noah tells him what she said to them. “Her love is a rough love.”

“Do you mean tough love?” asks the minister, a bit perplexed, but Mauro has already ambled away.

It is the day after the burial, and Mauro is walking through the old church with Noah. The new minister requested his advice for fixing up the building, which has fallen into disrepair. Rain is seeping in beneath the windowsills and dripping through a leaky ceiling. As he goes, Mauro marches through the moss sprouting plush from soaking carpets, swinging his arms through cobwebs, stepping over broken glass, and compiling a mental inventory of everything that needs to be cleaned or repaired. He speaks aloud for Noah's benefit.

“The benches, they are seeming okay,” he says, rapping the back of the pew with his knuckles. He climbs the steps to the altar. “The carpet up here, maybe we need a new one, because of the things that are growing. Painting, we do that. We fix the windows and dry the basement and check the pipes and the wires and the fans.”

“But the birds?” asks Noah's wife from the back of the church, gazing up into the rafters. “What will we do with them?”

Mauro glances up, and then down. The ceiling is high and dark and the white plaster is cracked, crossed with oaken beams that are lined with scraps of leaves and hollow pieces of yellow straw that the birds have carried inside to construct their nests. The floor is littered with twigs and halves of broken blue eggshells. Some of the birds perch on the backs of empty pews and peck at hymnals while others fly from beam to beam in great
swooping arcs, diving at Noah's head when he accidentally steps below their nests. He ducks and hurries to join Mauro at the altar, where the Italian proceeds to point out the warped wood of the pulpit and the rust eating away at the chain that bears the eternal flame. The flame has long since gone out.

“There's certainly a lot to get done!” exclaims Noah, lifting a hand and wiping it across his brow. It is cool in the church, but his forehead is beaded with sweat. He turns to Mauro with a smile so broad that his face could have buckled with the weight of it. “Well, as Solomon would say—let us arise and be doing! Fear not, be not dismayed!”

“What?” says Mauro.

“First Chronicles,” cites Noah's wife, still at the far end of the aisle.

“Ah,” says Mauro. He shoots a toothy grin back at the minister. “What the optimist! How full are your glasses!”

“I'm sorry?” says Noah.

“It's an expression,” Mauro explains. He loves nothing better than a good idiom. “You and me, Minister, we are like the two beans of the pod. We are the happy ones, the hopers. I am hoping that one of these days I will be going home, and you are hoping that if you can be fixing the roof and the lights and the carpets and the windows and the pipes and the—”

“Yes, I get it,” says Noah, a little more sharply than before.

“You are hoping that if you are fixing those things, then everyone will be coming to your church!”

“Why wouldn't they?” presses Noah. Mauro sees him glance
toward the silhouette of his wife, her face tinted blue in the wet light of the stained-glass window. “Why wouldn't they come for me, if they were coming for Reverend Matthews?”

Mauro shrugs, waves at the moss in the carpet. “Why do you think this place is looking this way? We have not been coming to the church for a lot of time now.”

“But you did once?”

“Of course,” replies Mauro. “But then the rain was coming. And then it was raining here for a long time. So long that nobody now is remembering when it was starting. And finally one day the old minister said, enough and enough, we will all go to the church and we will pray for the rain to end. So, we all went to the church for the praying. Even the people who were not really believing in God were praying because why not? And we prayed and we prayed. For a long time we were going up to the church every day, and we were praying and we were singing and we were lighting the candles. It was beautiful, the church with all the candles.”

“And what happened?” asks Noah.

Mauro shoots him a wry grin. “Look to the windows!” he says. “What do you mean, what happened? Nothing happened. No one heard the singing, no one answered the prayers. After many days some people stayed home, and were not climbing up to the church anymore. Then more people stayed home, and more, and finally no one was going to the church at all.” He peers at Noah, his gaze keen and kind. “It is good to believe about your God. It is a beautiful dream, and it helps some people, it gives them strength in heart. But it is harder to believe
about your God when we are asking and asking and asking for help and it is turning out that no one is listening to us. Then we are thinking: What is the bother? Maybe there is no God up there, or maybe He is there, and He is hearing us, but He doesn't care.”

There is a pause. Noah moves to the splintered bench behind the pulpit, his limbs heavy. He drops down to the bench and takes a long, slow breath. His wife is by his side before Mauro has a chance to speak, flitting around her husband with worried hands.

“Noah,” she says. “Are you all right?”

He shakes his head as a dog would shake off water. “Of course I am,” he says briskly. “Of course. This church will be even more of a challenge than I had expected—but it's nothing I can't handle.”

His wife agrees. “Right,” she says. “It's nothing we can't handle. You helped double the congregation in the city, remember? People here will love you just as much as they did there.”

She slides into place beside him, opens her leather satchel, and removes a pen and a softcover notebook. While Mauro watches, the two of them sit together with their heads bowed over the paper, speaking in soft, low tones to each other. After a few minutes they seem to forget that Mauro is there, and although he considers leaving, he remains where he is. He whistles to the birds in the rafters and pulls a stale cookie from his pocket to tempt them down, and when they alight calmly on the railing right in front of him, he wonders if this is how the old minister
filled his time throughout all those rainy months while he was waiting for his congregants to return to him. When one of the birds pecks the crumbs from Mauro's palms, Mauro feels a quick stab of guilt. Why didn't he come up here to check on the man? Why didn't he invite him for a glass of wine or for a meal? What was the old man thinking about as he watched his church disintegrating around him, as he waited for the rain to cease its pattering against his leaky roof?

When Noah and his wife rise from their bench and approach Mauro with a list of supplies they will need from the general store, Mauro nods at them and accepts the list without comment. He shrugs, shakes Noah's hand, and promises to deliver the supplies tomorrow morning. Who is he to tell them that their plan to rebuild this congregation is a futile one? Would they even listen if he told them to get out of here while they still could?

The truth is that Mauro is not certain what he believes. He will not pray to Noah's God, but he will throw salt over his shoulder if he spills it and he will only have his hair cut at the new moon. His neighbors find him ridiculous, but that hasn't stopped him yet.

If, in order to avoid bad luck, Mauro refuses to set his hat on the bed, or step on a spider, or place his bread upside down on the table—where is the harm? If he deliberately does not tell a mother who enters his general store that her baby is beautiful because he fears calling a hex down upon the poor child's head—should that mother not be grateful? When Mauro left Italy for America he did not believe in any of this because he
was immature and impressionable and he believed instead in things like justice and science and humanity and friendship. If he realizes now that these ideals are harder to come by in this country than he expected them to be, if he sometimes feels friendless or heartsick, why not place some faith in the other powers that could be? Why not allow himself to feel as though his small human choices (the placement of a hat or a feather), the actions that no one else notices or cares about, are not unattended but instead are witnessed and remembered by a highly responsive universe?

In any case, if he had thrown a coin into that Roman fountain, at least he would have more hope of returning. He didn't always love the rain in Italy, either, but at least there it didn't feel so heavy, or so dark. At least there, the sun shone through. This is how he remembers it.

He has never yearned so much for home.