On Friday of the week before Christmas, the door opened, as it always had on her day to scrub, the instant I let up on the bell button. When that interval was measured against what occurred with her sister novices, I still clung to the possibility that she was waiting for me, despite the rebuff I feared I’d received for loitering. So short was the interval it almost seemed that, even though she couldn’t walk through a wall, she could see through a thick walnut door. Since the age of miracles had passed, I settled for the explanation that, estimating the time of the arrival of the mail, she would stop scrubbing, rise from the floor, begin to dry her hands as she’d cross the vestibule, and post herself with her ear, which I’d never seen but imagined was small and pink as a cherry blossom, against the door to listen for footsteps outside. The sloshing of the galoshes I was wearing against the cold and slush the recent snow had turned to made such a conjecture plausible. Certainly it was a possibility that gratified me.
As always she sang the little song, which I chose to believe she’d composed and sang only for me, though the spontaneity with which it had come out the first time our lives had touched forced me to entertain the possibility she had been singing it playfully to Mitch, who was old enough to be her grandfather, a disconcerting thought. Then, fixing her emerald eyes on mine, something she’d never done before, without smiling, she asked, “And what might your name be, Mr. Postman?”
So taken aback was I that, instead of first producing the packet of mail from my bag, I rooted around and brought out three small packages, no doubt Christmas gifts for nuns and novices, perhaps one for her, a present from the lover my tortured imagination had created, and placed them on the dry floor at her feet. I didn’t dare to look. And so slow was I to reply to her straightforward question that when I did manage to get out the single syllable, I thought she might have concluded that I didn’t have a name or couldn’t remember it. Only afterward I realized that what had seemed like minutes to me actually must have been mere seconds.
“John,” I finally managed to mutter. To my ear, in contrast to her melodious voice, the sound I produced was a grunt, like that coming from a man in the late stages of emphysema. Then I brought out and circumspectly handed her the packet of St. Margaret’s mail. Her face opened into a full-blooming smile.
“John,” she echoed, though it was mellifluously pitched a full octave above my growl. “John, the bringer of good news. So right it is for a postman!” Although I’d never much taken to Sunday school, I was grateful to whichever of the maiden lady teachers I’d been exposed to for having informed me of John the Baptist’s role.
As with her left hand she accepted the mail and clasped it against her chest, the contour of which I never had been able to make out beneath her thick loosely-fitting woolen gown, I was reminded of how the girls when I was in high school— that seemed to me to be in another time and place— had carried their books, proudly swelling out their young breasts. Then she pivoted, again reminding me of a dancer, twisted the knob with her free right hand, and delicately pushed open the inside door of the vestibule with the toe of her left foot. How mysterious the darkness of the long hallway I took in with one quick glance before she pulled the door closed behind her! So abrupt was her departure that I’d have thought somehow I’d offended her if I had done any more than reply to her question by muttering the monosyllable of my name. The only alternative I could come up with, tormenting as it was to entertain, was that she was frantically anxious to carry the message or package, if there were one, from the lover I’d imagined for her to the privacy of her cell-like room and open it.
Since the stern brawny novice had been scrubbing the vestibule the next day, Saturday, I expected that the taciturn novice would be performing the obligation on Monday. Which she was. That meant that the rotation had the beautiful novice in the vestibule on Tuesday, the day before Christmas, my final day as a substitute mailman.
On that Tuesday, protected by my pea jacket and watch cap, which I’d kept after my discharge as a reminder of the war I couldn’t get over, rather than as a souvenir of victory, the knit cap pulled down to cover my ears and eyebrows, and of course wearing the ugly yellow gloves, I slogged through the foot or so of snow that had fallen over night. Pellets the ice flakes had turned into by morning, propelled like antiaircraft shells by a gale-force wind driving in from the northeast, thwacked my cheeks and chin. I kept my eyes slitted. Slung over my left shoulder, so my gloved right hand was free to brush off the ice that was forming on my eyelids, the mailbag was loaded with last minute Christmas cards and packages. The effort to lift each foot through the deep snow and to shove my body against the wind seemed to add to the weight of the bag I was carrying, a physical correspondent to the heaviness of heart, which I believed was more than metaphorical. I’d be delivering mail to the beautiful novice for the last time.
The closer I came to St, Margaret’s, the more apprehensive I became that I’d be denied even this melancholy gratification. It might well be that the rotation would be disrupted for some reason and that I’d find the brawny or the pallid novice behind the door. Or might it be that when the bell was rung, a nun or the mother superior herself would re- spond, all chores for the novices being suspended on the day of Christ-mas Eve? Maybe I’d have to leave the packet in the mailbox outside and carry the packages back to the post office for delivery by Mitch the following Monday.
My gloved finger went ahead and pushed the button in the hope that the well-known legend, “neither snow nor rain nor ice nor gloom of night…”—the last of which I found myself in although it was half past nine in the morning—was believed by the nuns and that the someone appointed to receive the mail would be the beautiful novice.
Instantly the door opened and there she was, pail and scrub brush on the floor behind her. Fearing she might quickly take the packet of mail, then shut the door immediately to keep out the wind and pellets of ice I’d allowed in, I dared to pull the door closed behind me. Brief as it would be, I cherished this last occasion we’d be enclosed together alone in the vestibule, a space I’d come to consider a sanctuary, a place of escape from the narrowly regulated life practiced behind one door and the seemingly limitless freedom of life that went on outside the other. Now, after all the years that have passed I still think of that entryway as a shrine.
“I was worrited you might not be coming this morning, the storm being sent surely by the Devil himself on the eve of the birth of our Lord,” she said, forgoing her little song. Even so, I could hear the lilt in her voice. And my ear had picked up the fact that she had a manner of phrasing somehow different from Mitch’s, my parents’, that of others in our city, and mine too. And where had the word “worrited,” which I distinctly heard have come from? It had to be her way of saying “worried.” “Yet here you are, John the postman, on this bitter cold day, bringing us the mail despite.”
Confounded by the reverence in what she’d said to me and unable to come up with an appropriate response, I blurted out “And what’s your name?” As I dared to keep my eyes fixed on hers, shining green in the dusky vestibule, to my disgust again I heard my voice come out hoarse as that of the ragpicker who when I was a boy would come by in his horse-drawn wagon chanting, “Eny rags, eny bones, eny boddils tuday/ They’s a puh ole ragpicka comin yuh way.”
“Deirdre I was christened, but when I’m no longer a probationer, I will then be Sister Lucia.”
“Deirdre?” I echoed, changing the intonation and ignoring the Lucia to be. “I’ve never heard that name.” Even as I spoke, I was reprimanding myself for revealing the naiveté I was exposing by responding with what sounded prejudicially dismissive.
“Why it’s a Gaelic name, to be sure! Deirdre is a heroine in our old Irish stories. Yet sure I’m sorry to have to be telling it turns bad for her at the end. That’s why when I take the holy veil I’ll give up ‘Deirdre’ in favor of the name of a blessed saint.”
Irish, of course, I told
myself, while she was speaking. The lilt, the phrasing, the use of such a word as “worrited.” And in retrospect I realize her eyes and dark coloring had not been infiltrated genetically by the reddish blond of the Scandinavian raiders and invaders but were pure Celtic. “Blacks” the highlanders are called in one old border ballad to distinguish them from the fair “bonnies” of the lowlands.
“And who might you be named for, John? One of the Popes? Or a saint? Perhaps for the apostle who wrote the Gospel? Or the John who sees the end before it has come to pass? So many Johns have there been. As well, the John who washed our blessed Savior’s body in the river, baptizing Him.”
“None of them, I’m afraid. I was named for my grandfather.” She tinkled a laugh and scrunched up her piquant nose. “Well, it just could be your grandfather was named for one of those Johns, going back some years in time it might be. Which then would come down to you. Do you know what I am thinking, John?”
“What are you thinking, Deirdre?” That we were addressing each other by name, which I wouldn’t have dared had she not taken the lead, made me aware of the excitement my blood was charged with.
“Even though John the water man was a bringer of good news as are you, which I said a time ago, I’ve thought it for the best if you were named after the John who was the apostle our Savior loved, as the Scripture tells us. Yet whichever John it be your name has come from, you are John the postman, who brings the mail to St. Margaret’s. For which I say may God bless you, John, and may you celebrate the birth of Jesus our Lord and Savior with a deal of happiness.”
During the silence that set in I stared at my galoshes. A little puddle had formed around them. For me to acknowledge that I was not a Catholic, not even a believing Methodist, was impossible. I felt at once like a hypocrite and a coward. Though I could think of no pretext for lingering, I couldn’t bring myself to go. We were down to our final minutes alone together. Scarcely knowing I was doing it, I wriggled the yellow glove from my right hand and, peeling my fingers free, tucked the glove in my left armpit.
“I’m afraid I’ve brought the storm in on the floor you’re scrubbing clean,” finally I managed to get out to fill the emptiness. For falling back on such a prosaic phrase as “scrubbing clean” at such a moment, I reproached myself again. Even ‘washing’ wouldn’t have been so crude.
She let out another bell-like laugh. “That’s no care,” she said. “You’re John the Postman.” Then she sang her little song, modifying the final line from “The postman is bringing us mail” to “It’s John who brings us our mail.” And that made all the difference.
Although I found it hard to credit, at that instant I did believe she too wanted to prolong our time together, motivated by something more than not wishing me to venture out in the storm so soon again. Something passionate, if not sexual. Could it be that she was reluctant to renounce her womanhood?
“Well,” I said breaking another bewildering silence, “guess I’d better get back on the route. People will be wanting their last mail before Christmas.”
She was standing just inches from me, perfectly rigid, not much taller than my mother. How I longed, even if it would be only to say good-bye, good-bye forever, to throw my arms around her shoulders, to draw her against me, to bend and press my closed lips against her sealed lips! Not only did I know I didn’t dare. I also knew that, even if she wouldn’t cry out in protest or push me off with her little hands as she uttered “no, no, no!” I’d be doing her a great wrong, perhaps irreparable harm.
I forced myself to stoop, draw the packet of mail labeled St. Margaret’s from the pouch in my bag, which was leaning against my calf beside the puddle I’d made on the floor. And I settled for holding the packet not by the end between the tips of my fingers but across the middle, well inside my bare hand.
When her little hand came up to accept it, I felt her fingers against the flesh of my palm. It was, I swear to this day, more than a grazing touch. Remaining in that posture for countable seconds, I closed my eyes and lowered my head, as in prayer, while, perversely, I felt blood swelling my manhood.
“I’ll light a candle for you, John, and again I say, may our Lord bless you on the day of His birth,” I heard her say. As she whispered the words, her voice seemed to be coming from faraway, from wherever it was her eyes sometimes appeared to be. When, surrendering the packet and feeling her take it and withdraw her touch, I opened my eyes to see her turn toward the inner door of the vestibule. I heard a screech from the turning knob, a sound I at the moment convinced myself was coming from her, a soft scream of protest, though surely it was the latch wanting oil. Watching the door opening toward whatever mysteries lay behind it, I found just enough voice for her to hear me say, I hoped, “And may you have a wonderful Christmas, Deirdre.” It wasn’t enough. I should have but couldn’t add a blessing. That it would occur to her I was using “wonder ” in its literal sense, “full of marvels,” I couldn’t deny doubting.
After the door had closed softly behind her, I found myself in the vestibule with her bucket of gray water and scrub brush and my mailbag. Bending, I picked up the brush and, soggy wet as the bristles were and covered with who knows what, I rubbed them across my lips. They tasted roughly bitter.
“Soon to be Sister Lucia,” I added aloud, not as a reproach but as a sigh of grief. As I gathered up my burden of mail, opened the front door of the vestibule, descended the brownstone steps, and, facing the storm of ice pellets, tugged on the obscene yellow gloves, I wondered whether she was fully, partially, or not at all aware of what had happened, to her, I felt certain, as well as to me.
By mid-afternoon I’d finished my route. The storm had ended. An overcast sky was just giving way to a Madonna blue. Suddenly, bouncing off the pristine whiteness of the world around me, brilliant sunlight almost blinded me.
After surrendering my mailbag to Mitch, I vigorously shook his thick hand, which responded with a crunch that would have cracked open a walnut. He had the strength to move huge boulders.
“Thanks for everything, Mitch,” I said, “and merry Christmas.”
“Hey, yuh wuz a big help, not like one a these college deadbeats wur sometimes stuck with. Yu’d make a helluva good mailman. Yuh ever wanaply fur permanent, I’ll put in a good word fur yuh with the man. It ain’t the wors job in the world, if yur dogs and gams don give out. With a pension that ain’t too bad either that I’ll be collectin in a cupla years. Hey, don swig too much anjul juice, yuh know whad I mean. ’N have a murry Chrismas. See yuh ’round, kid.” All this was bellowed in his spooky foghorn voice and was punctuated by his jaunty laugh. When he punched me between the shoulders as an expression of our camaraderie, his hand felt like a hunk of lead. The punch turned into a caress.
Carrying a voucher for what I’d earned, which sum would arrive by mail on a check I’d be receiving in a week or so, instead of for home I headed for the trolley-line avenue with its rows of shops, all decorated for Christmas and crowded with mobs of late shoppers. As I was certain I would, I came across a reliable-looking jewelry store. In my pocket was all the cash I had to my name.
“Just a plain cross on a chain,” I told the clerk who asked whether he could help me. “Real gold, solid not plated.”
As he dangled in front of me precisely what I had in mind and assured me it was twenty-four carat, he looked me up and down. Conspicuously displaying the bills extracted from the pocket of my slacks, I instructed him to wrap it in white paper, “nothing Christmasy,” and to put it in a simple white box, then to use heavy brown paper for mailing.
“No, thanks, no card inside.” I said when he produced one. As he went on wrapping, he raised his pale eyebrows. In the bright fluorescent light his slick black hair with comb marks shone. The cross cost more than I’d earned delivering mail the past three weeks.
Back at the post office, which was scheduled to stay open until six o’clock, instead of the usual five, this being Christmas Eve,
before joining the long line at the stamp and mail window, I wrote “Deirdre, St Margaret’s Convent,” followed by the street address I knew so well. The place for a return address, the upper left-hand corner, I left blank. Then, as an afterthought, just in case there was more than one novice named Deirdre, I squeezed “Soon to be Sister Lucia” between her name and the convent’s. For having revealed the fact to me, I hoped Deirdre wouldn’t be violating any rule of the convent’s discipline. Although I knew she wouldn’t receive it until after Christmas, I sent the package Special Delivery.
At Christmas dinner I informed my parents that I’d applied for admission to a liberal arts college in the center of the state and had been accepted, to begin the spring semester in mid-January. This concession had been made, I supposed, because I was a veteran.
“Thank the dear Lord!” my mother cried out, as she clasped her hands and jerked her head up at the chandelier hanging over the dining room table. I couldn’t help interpreting her gratitude to “the Lord” as a rebuke of me, for not having acted sooner, quite a contrast to the communal and beseeching of “our Lord” by novice Deirdre. My father arose from the table, walked to a station behind my chair, squeezed my shoulder, and murmured “Atta boy, John.”
As our three-member family—I was an only child, as was my father—was eating mince pie, not bought but baked by my mother, I thought it a propitious time to inform them of another development that would serve as evidence I was emerging from my self-imposed seclusion. After breakfast, returning from a solitary walk in the little park nearby, still gorgeously decorated with snow, I’d run into one of the two young women living just up the street from us. She happened to be the one I’d fastened on as the prettier of the two.