Our Lady of the Forest (40 page)

Let me help you, said Carolyn. She rose and draped an arm around Ann's shoulder. My poor little girl, she added.

Father Butler dropped his pen on the desk and tipped back in Father Collins' chair with his hands clasped behind his head and his elbows spread like wings. We'll continue later, he said.

God bless you, said Ann. Thank you.

She went out, leaning on Carolyn. Father Collins hauled along the tea things, feeling like an overgrown altar boy. From the vestibule it was now evident that the parking lot of his little church had become a new locus of Marian obsession—throngs had massed to sing, pray, hold forth tapers lit against the night, and exhort Ann of Oregon steadily by name, more intensely when she came into view through the vestibule's dirty windowpanes. Some had their faces pressed to the glass, the better to see inside, no doubt, and at the sight of Ann they passed word of her presence so that others rushed forward to peer in too, until Father Collins feared the windows would fracture from the weight of all their zeal.

He put the tea set on the counter in the kitchen and hurried back up the hall to the sanctuary, where Father Butler was now seated in a pew, as was Carolyn, farther up, apparently studying a missalette. Ann stood at the communion rail with her head craned toward the crucifix suspended above the tabernacle. It was canted forward and hung from guy wires so that it looked like a monstrous bird of prey in the moment before its stoop. Father Collins felt personally responsible for the generally unexalted state of things, as if it reflected on his tenure. The pews in the nave were scarred by years of use and a lack of consistent maintenance and the kneeling boards sagged and creaked. The communion rail was also well-beaten by time, friction, and circumstance, and the organ pipes appeared tinny, warped, and in need of a muscular polish. Most embarrassing was the chancel addition, commemorated in 1963 according to a plastic wall plaque. The arch dividing it from the nave was poorly built and let precipitation in; buckets were needed to catch the drip that compromised the atmosphere at services. Father Collins, performing the mass, had often been distracted by the sound of water. Pock, pock, pock, pock. During interludes of silent meditation it even seemed to reverberate.

Ann knelt inside the tent of her blanket and teased out her rosary beads. That floor is cold, called Carolyn. Don't you kneel there, please.

I have my blanket.

That doesn't matter.

I have to kneel.

No you don't. You don't have to kneel. God isn't that unreasonable, is he? He's sitting up in heaven, sweetheart, shaking his head and saying to himself What on earth is she doing on the floor?

The answer is: I'm praying the rosary.

I'm sure God will let you dispense with that in favor of securing your health right now. Because God is logical, isn't he?

No.

And anyway, you're wheezing.

Ann made a feeble sign of the cross and began to mumble her rosary. Father Butler sighed and joined his hands across his belly. The sanctuary light, thought Father Collins, made his face look furrowed. A pruny shriveling at his upper lip, a telltale geriatric feature, revealed itself for the first time. Psilocybin mushrooms, he whispered.

One thing to remember, said Father Collins, is that Abbé Peyramale, the parish priest at Lourdes, was Bernadette's paramount skeptic and doubter before becoming her paramount supporter.

Yes.

So anything can happen.

In principle, yes.

You yourself have pointed out that the whole question is inherently vague. Inherently vague and difficult.

Yes.

Father Collins straightened up missalettes left in disarray by parishioners. I just don't think we should be premature, he said, in coming to any judgment. I, for one, wouldn't want to be hasty, sign my name to some document or other, and then be proven wrong.

No.

You've gotten terse.

I've done this before.

Then you know about caution, said Father Collins.

I know about going through the motions, brother. Especially when drugs are involved.

Father Butler removed his glasses, settled them on his lap—against his gut—and began to massage his eyes. You're difficult to understand, he said. Do you really think the Church will sanction the claims of a girl who admits to the use of a potent hallucinogen? To recurrent use of psilocybin? Why in God's name do you defend her?

There's no answer to that, said Father Collins.

They sat in silence contemplating this and feeling weary together. They were silent for a long time and in the absence of their constant noise Father Collins was aware of mildew and of not wanting to age any more. He was aware of his superficiality, of the incessant power of vanity. He noted the visionary's durable stillness, her labored and obstructed breathing, her ability to sit in a motionless trance like a meditating monk. He began to yearn for a good night's sleep, partly as an anodyne for his overwrought senses and partly to anesthetize his soul. He wanted to disappear. He wanted sleep's forgetfulness. It seems to me, said Father Butler, that my work is probably done for this day. So I'll hie myself to bed, I think. And see you again in the morning.

Father Collins gave him the trailer house key and the key to his battered station wagon. I have to stay, he said.

Duty can be an awful thing when what you need is a good forty winks.

So make yourself comfortable. You know where the towels are. Make yourself entirely at home.

Good of you, brother. I'm with you in spirit.

Hold down the gas pedal when you start the car.

We'll weather this beautifully, you and I.

I suppose we will. After all.

We'll laugh about it one day, hoisting a pint. Quaffing a pint together. Someday.

Carolyn came up the aisle toward them and halted with her hands turned backward on her hips like somebody with mild lumbago. Okay, she said. She's fine for now. So I'm going out to the parking lot because I have to address her followers.

And I'm off to bed, said Father Butler. I can't waste time any longer.

This isn't a waste of time, said Carolyn. She's asking the Lord to soften the hearts of the Stinson Company pharaohs. And you two clerics ought to join her in that. Make phone calls to the bishop, send telegrams to the Vatican. Lead already. Like Moses.

Go on, said Father Butler. Address your followers.

Her followers, said Carolyn, not mine.

Father Butler worked his way out of the pew. I'll make myself scarce through the side door, he said. I can't take any more of this business. He gave a chilly automatic wave and went in search of his coat.

Father Collins accompanied Carolyn to the vestibule. I'm worried about Ann's health, he said. Her breathing is just so seriously congested. I think she has to see a doctor.

Solicitous of you. You're a man of compassion.

I don't know why you've decided to hate me.

I don't hate anybody. It's not worth the effort. Carolyn hugged Father Collins stiffly and thought of Judas Iscariot's kiss. I'm sorry, she said. I just think you're weak.

I am weak. You too are a seer.

I also think you're totally confused.

Yes, said Father Collins. I am.

Carolyn zipped her jacket to the throat and said I have to go out there now and deal with this crowd a little.

I'll lock up behind you.

Then how will I get back in?

I'll give you the key, said Father Collins.

Carolyn took it, went outside, and made her way through the crowd of pilgrims with her palms joined in the prayerful position and a beatific smile. The gathering had the feel of a protest now, a swelling militancy. Glory! she called. Praise to the Lord! Our Ann is at prayer in the sanctuary. Abide with me, rest for a while. Have patience, friends, like Jesus.

There were, she estimated, two thousand fanatics, keeping a manic evening vigil and spilling into the side streets. Their faces were illuminated by flickering candles and by the halogen lamps on North Fork Avenue and a group had joined hands to sing a hymn recently familiar to Carolyn, so that as she walked she sang too, casually, as if she'd known it her whole life. We pray for our Mother, The Church upon earth, And bless, Holy Mary, The land of our birth, bestowing the blessing of her smile.

In her van she locked up, drew the shades tightly shut, and made up a sign—
DO NOT DISTURB: SILENT MEDITATION
—which she propped on the dashboard. She lit two votive candles and drank long from a plastic jug of orange juice. After stuffing a handful of hazelnuts in her mouth she ran her hands through the money in the collection buckets, shaking her head and exulting. Praise the Lord! she said aloud, as the candlelight glinted among the coins. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil: for Mammon is with me! Carolyn laughed, bolted more hazelnuts, and fingered her vial of pepper spray. The buckets were full, it was surely a miracle, and she took ten minutes to pick out the large bills and ten more to organize them into neat packets and hide those in the chemical toilet chamber underneath the rear bench seat. By her most conservative, cursory count, she had twelve thousand dollars. She also had the option to exit, depart town quietly at 3 a.m. and make tracks for Cabo San Lucas. She could stop at banks along the way and convert the cash into traveler's checks that would not be questioned at the border crossing where every year she drew Mexican suspicion because of her hippie-ish Volkswagen van and generally left-wing demeanor. Twelve thousand dollars tucked beneath the seat would definitely raise another red flag labeled, in bold,
YANQUI DRUG DEALER
. And who needed that? Carolyn just wanted to get where she was going, settle into a beachfront flat, and not be bothered by anyone while she worked on her tan all winter.

The prospect of ennui—of tropical doldrums—presented itself to her mind. In winters past she had noted this: that her Mexico was enticing and seductive from a distance but inert from closer up. The rhythm of life as she'd once known it there—dance clubs, hangover, beach swoon, dance clubs—had been replaced by morning marijuana and light nonfiction reading. Paperbacks on trekking in the Andes, camel-riding the Outback, and bird-watching on Bali. But the stoned frugality of her last few years, it turned out after not very long, was simply newly boring. In fact, she'd found, most things were boring. She was thirty and bored by everything. Most of the time she felt tense and aimless. Free-floating anxiety informed her existence. Being sardonic and wry was a ruse. Inside she was seething with existential turmoil, just like everybody else. Why are we here? Et cetera. Half the time her life seemed meaningless and the other half she felt tormented by her appearance, which would only get worse with the years. Getting older just could not be faced. She would have to descend into the pit of despair in which, she guessed, the elderly wallow and learn the mystery of subsisting there—but not before she went south of the border with a major pile of money.

Money! She flipped through a thick wad of legal tender as though it were a deck of cards. Money, she thought, was a lease on life she hadn't known before. It occurred to her that with enough of it she could visit a liposuction clinic. What I wouldn't pay to be sexier, she thought. Streamlined, svelte, sleek, honed. As trim and nubile as the models in
Cosmo.
Were there side effects from liposuction? Especially the type done in Guadalajara? She made a mental note to research this. My legs, too, she told herself. Thinner legs would be excellent. She thought of her mother's cellulite, the black-and-blue clots behind her knees, the varicose calves, the spider veins, My God, pleaded Carolyn silently, please never, no, help, give me death or give me surgery, I don't want to look like my mother!

Carolyn picked up her travel book,
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.
We were in a great meadow of level green grass, springy underfoot and wonderfully restful to my battered feet.
She hadn't read from it since the previous Friday and she missed Eric Newby's cantankerous mirth and extra-dry British bafflement. She missed vicarious travel and escape. She thought with pleasure of hitting the road. A drive in darkness down the interstate, lounging by morning on the Oregon coast, drinking a demitasse of potent espresso and indulging in a chocolate croissant, her wallet stuffed amply with fives, tens, and twenties.
On the far bank sheep and goats browsed in a deep water-meadow.
Carolyn decided to begin her diet immediately after that breakfast celebration. One perfect morning, with sunglasses, in Bandon. She would wear a scarf like Melanie Griffith, tilt her demitasse with European class, and think of herself as wanton. A voluptuous and mysterious single woman. She liked that word—voluptuous. So maybe she should skip the chocolate croissant. What was the French term for one of those? They were always greasy anyway. Full of butter and calories. There was no way to eat one and remain
très chic.
A
pain au chocolat
would undercut everything, make her feel like the hog from Indiana she felt like most of the time.

Carolyn peeked past a curtain. Twelve thousand dollars was very good—especially since posing as Ann's disciple was a fantastically farcical pell-mell lark, far easier than foraging in the damp for mushrooms—but as long as there remained a crowd outside there remained more money to be pilfered. And why stop now? Why not twenty thousand? A big grift rarely presented itself, if Carolyn understood Hollywood correctly. To not go with it or to go halfway was to miss this god-given, holy opportunity. Carolyn thought she could double her money before it was time to pull out.

Double or nothing, she said out loud, tinkering with the dial on her compass and noting its insistence on north. Yet she had to admit to a strained moral doubt. To a compunction grounded in fear and trembling. There was Pascal's wager, always, to consider. And in truth she felt no sympathy for the devil. She thought of herself as a decent person who didn't cause harm to sentient beings. So what was this about right now? This fraud she perpetrated on a major scale? Ripping off the religious faithful—not to mention Ann of Oregon—was certainly no way to hedge one's bet against that ultimate, looming cardsharp, vast, colorless eternity.