Our Lady of the Forest (44 page)

You're wearing rose-colored glasses, Carolyn.

Five minutes, I swear, she pleaded.

         

They went into a confessional room, where Carolyn perched on the edge of her chair and for effect and to practice staying in character crossed her large thighs and filed her nails. You remember I was arrested, she said. But I don't know after that what details you got. I kind of lost touch with you.

Very few, said the priest, and checked his watch. I was busy with things. Incredibly busy. And I haven't stopped being busy.

Carolyn filed away myopically, even with the reading glasses. I got released on personal recognizance. After three long boring days in jail. You don't want to be in jail, by the way. And my public defender thoroughly distressed me when he said I might get second-degree manslaughter. Or possibly reckless endangerment. For my stupid pepper spray… murder.

It wasn't murder.

Yes it was.

Accidents happen.

Not according to you Catholics.

So you've wrestled with guilt.

Like anyone would.

Is that why you're here?

I don't do confession.

Well, said the priest. As I say, it wasn't murder. You needn't beat yourself up over something that exists only in your mind.

Carolyn uncomfortably recrossed her legs and paused in her frenzied manicure. Ann is still dead, she pointed out. That's not just in my mind, is it? The fact that Ann is dead?

No one is to blame for that fact, though. There is a conjunction of events that is in the stars, not in ourselves, et cetera, I guess I'm mangling Shakespeare.

So you believe in fate.

Not exactly.

You believe in the stars.

Metaphorically.

Stars as a metaphor for what specifically?

Stars as a metaphor for God.

Carolyn rotated her file once. So working backward through your statements, she said, I guess we ought to blame God.

The priest shrugged. I suppose, he said. Though I would quibble with word choice. Blame.

Isn't it a bad thing that Ann is gone?

It's a bad thing, yes, I'll grant you that, if in return you promise not to walk me through that boorish argument from evil.

Boorish, said Carolyn. Maybe so. Boorish but at the same time completely compelling. Don't you think it's compelling?

And yet, said the priest, so many persist on the path of God despite its admitted persuasiveness.

Carolyn paused, considering this. That just doesn't work, she said. Saying that doesn't change the fact that
God exists
and
Ann died
are logically incompatible statements.

Your mind is finite, the priest explained.

I've never bought that argument, though. You can't make me see how innocent babes skewered on the tips of Cossacks' swords make the world a better place.

She rotated her file another turn and scrutinized her cuticles. The real point, she said, is that in this present case I myself was the catalyst.

No.

I was the one with the pepper spray.

Yes.

The cause of death was pepper spray.

No.

Are you going to let me feel bad about it?

Of course I am, said Father Collins.

Good, said Carolyn. Because I do.

Father Collins smoothed the creases in his chasuble. At any rate, he said. Enough self-blame. Events seem to have… conspired.

The last thing she said to me was troubling, said Carolyn. She said she could see my aura.

Hmmm.

Whatever that means.

I don't know.

Aura, said Carolyn. That's so Carlos Castaneda.

I've never been certain what aura means either.

It's so like cosmic or sixties or whatever.

Well people see things when they're under duress.

But they don't usually see my aura, do they?

I suppose, said Father Collins, it's a nimbus or a halo. An aureole, perhaps.

Carolyn began to file again. That sounds kind of divine, she said. Like the light surrounding an angel's head. The supposed light around an angel.

That could be. I suppose.

Except that I'm not an angel, said Carolyn. So the whole idea is ridiculous.

The priest checked his watch surreptitiously. I'm sorry I'm short on time, he reminded her. But I have to ask what you've been doing, Carolyn. Over this last year. With yourself.

I've been in Mexico. Not far from Cabo. I winter in Cabo every year. This time I stayed much longer.

Father Collins thought of the classified advertisement he'd considered more than a year ago in the pages of
The National Catholic Reporter: parish position in Ecuador, fishing villages on the sea.
Sounds lovely, he said.
Muy
restful.

Actually, it's boring, said Carolyn, scratching her neck with the nail file. And this year I spent a lot of time worrying. Calling my lawyer constantly to see if the prosecutor had charged me yet and—I'm in a confessional right now, right?—I drank a few thousand margaritas.

Not healthy.

And slept around considerably, too.

The priest made a show of plugging his ears.

And got high a lot. Whenever I could.

It sounds depressing and empty, said the priest.

The prosecutor never charged me, said Carolyn. She winked and gave him the thumbs-up sign. This confession business feels good, she added. Did I tell you about the lipo, Father? I had a guy in Ensenada do my thighs. That's when the rest of me blew up like this. The fat just migrates somewhere else. Carolyn pinched her chin again. Those guys rob you, she told him.

She opened her purse, tucked her file away. Also depressing, said the priest.

One other thing, said Carolyn. I've been on-line a little bit lately. Doing my satanic research.

She took from her handbag a pill foil pack. The tiny lids had been pulled open, and the pill compartments were empty.

I found this in my van, she said. Cleaning the place out I found it beneath a seat. You could call it a relic or something, I guess. One of Ann's empty pill packs.

He took it from her. He recognized it. Did you come here to give me this? he said. Is this what brought you here today?

It is, said Carolyn. Yes.

She shifted in her chair, turned sideways, draped an arm. Our Ann had terrible allergies, she said. Dust mites and mildew drove her crazy. And for that she was taking something called Phenathol in doses larger than normally prescribed. Way larger. You remember, right? She was constantly popping a bunch of those pills. The ones in that little pack you're holding. Well you know what I found on Phenathol, Father? Phenathol taken in excessive dosages? It has a variety of pertinent side effects—pertinent, I mean, to Ann of Oregon, to Our Ann the Inspired Martyr and Visionary. I mean like trembling and shaky hands, seizures, muscle spasms, and—whoa: hallucinations. Like seeing things that just aren't there. Like—for example—seeing God's mother. You understand what I'm trying to say? Mary was just a big Phenathol overdose. Phenathol's behind this massive spectacle. This multimillion-dollar film-set church. That's what you're presiding over, Father. A Phenathol trip. A lot of Phenathol.

That might be, the priest replied. Because Father Butler—remember Father Butler?—he made the same point nearly a year ago. After the autopsy results.

I see, said Carolyn. So I'm an idiot.

And you should know, too—since we're talking about her autopsy—that Ann's brain, at the end, denatured. Comparable to cooking the white of an egg. That was the official cause of death, not bronchial constriction or asphyxiation or whatever might happen in response to pepper spray. The priest now folded his hands in his lap. Her brain, he said, was cooked by her fever. By the heat and force of her rising fever. An adverse reaction to Phenathol, perhaps. But maybe, too, the hand of God. However you want to construe that term. However you want to construe God, Carolyn. Because behold—by her fruits, we know her.

Hail Mary, I guess then, Father.

Your cynicism does you zero good.

It's what I have, said Carolyn.

         

On the thirty-third Sunday in ordinary time—leaves in dark damp molder on the ground—the Our Lady of the Forest Church was dedicated. The procession began at noon in a gray pall that felt to most of the pilgrims present as limitless as the trees. It began to rain while they were under way and the raindrops caused the oxalis to shudder and streamed down the alabaster statues of Mary, Bernadette, and Catherine Labouré. Rain wrinkled the water in the pool and elicited from its opaque surface an effluvium of leaf meal. The crossbearer led, and his cross shone wetly. The presbyters covered the relics with shrouds. Some of the pilgrims carried lit candles, but these went out immediately. They walked and sang God in His Holy Dwelling and Let Us Go Rejoicing. The forest, though, deadened their voices. Their hymns drifted off and were lost in the trees. At the threshold of the church they halted as one and were further soaked and seized by uncertainty. Something was happening at the front of the crowd but who, really, could tell what it was? Some of the pilgrims soon went inside but the great majority were left in the downpour and shifted inside their rain gear, waiting. Among them was the stooped-shouldered widow who had read Bishop Berkeley and Thomas Aquinas. Were we led all that way for Birth or Death? she thought. Nothing was what it seemed.

The acolytes had set up sixteen loudspeakers, but the sound system produced an irreducible hiss and crackled persistently. The pilgrims listened while inside the church Father Butler blessed the holy water and they imagined him sprinkling it on the church's walls and on people already wet. Then they sang I Saw Water Flowing. The rain increased and, with it, the static. The rain made the liturgy of the Word unintelligible. The pilgrims endured this development too. Some thought of retreating to their cars, but most were trapped by circumstances and anyway preferred to endure conditions as a private measure of spiritual worth. Who would confess to such vanity? This was a veritable storm, though. In truth it was raining with unsettling vigor. Indeed it was possible now and then to discern in the distance the boom of thunder softly pealing across the hills as if muted by the density of clouds. The world seemed flooded, inundated. There had been a downpour the previous day which seemed to have gathered angrily again. Cars on the roads had appeared like boats trailing muddy, rippling wakes. There'd been reports of slides on the highway, and in North Fork, on the west edge of town, a child had been swept into a drainpipe.

What could the pilgrims make of things? There came—they thought—the depositing of relics, but nobody could be certain. Then the anointing of the altar and church walls with holy chrism or—for those who couldn't help the play on words because of a perennial immaturity—with holy jism instead. A man whispered it to his neighbor, sniggering, and they stood there in silent comic communion. What else was there to do? How else to pass the time? The pilgrims looked up at the sky without hope. It was going to keep raining in all probability. What could they do? Where might they go? God had chosen, for this day, rain. The thing to do was to stand in it suffering and implore insistently the Blessed Mother. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

         

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Guterson is the author of
Snow Falling on Cedars
and
East of the Mountains,
and of the story collection
The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind.
A Guggenheim Fellow and PEN/Faulkner Award winner, he is a co-founder of Field's End, an organization for writers.

         

ALSO BY DAVID GUTERSON

East of the Mountains

Snow Falling on Cedars

The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind

         

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Harcourt, Inc:
Excerpts from “Journey of the Magi” from
Collected Poems 1909–1962
by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1936 by Harcourt, Inc. Copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

Sony/ATV Music Publishing:
Excerpts from “Let It Be” by The Beatles. Copyright © 1970 (renewed) by Sony/ATV Songs LLC. Excerpts from “Lady Madonna” by The Beatles. Copyright © 1968 (renewed) by Sony/ATV Songs LLC. Excerpts from “I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive” by Williams/Rose. Copyright © 1952 (Renewed) by Sony/ATV Acuff Rose Music. All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Songs LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

Universal Music Publishing Group:
Excerpt from “Gimme Three Steps” words and music by Allen Collins, Ronnie Van Zant. Copyright © 1973 by Universal-Duchess Music Corporation obo itself and Longitude Music (BMI). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Universal Music Publishing Group.

         

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2003 by David Guterson

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments
for permission to reprint previously published material
may be found following the text.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guterson, David.

Our Lady of the Forest / David Guterson

p.                  cm.

1. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—Apparitions and miracles—Fiction.                  2. Migrant agricultural laborers—Fiction.                  3. Washington (State)—Fiction.                  4. Runaway teenagers—Fiction.                  5. Mushroom industry—Fiction.                  6. Teenage girls—Fiction.                  7. Loggers—Fiction.                  8. Clergy—Fiction.                  I. Title.

ps3557.u846o94 2003

813'.54—dc21                                                                        2002043322

eISBN: 978-1-4000-4186-2

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