The View From the Seventh Layer

  When he finally locked the door and slid the key under the mat, the boy was sorry to see him go. The house seemed bare and lifeless without him. A silence soaked into the rooms. The furniture stood peacefully in the shadows. The only sign of motion was inside the photographs on the walls, where the bow swept across the cello, the leaves of the willow shivered in the breeze, and the glass fish swam in leisurely circles through the air.

  FATHER JOHN MELBY AND THE GHOST OF AMY ELIZABETH

  On Sunday the tenth of September, as Father John Melby stood groping his way through yet another sermon, he was taken aback by the sensation that one of his parishioners was listening to him—and not only listening, but listening with total absorption. Father Melby had never been a very good preacher. No matter how carefully he prepared his sermons, when it came time for him to take the pulpit, his words would go loose at the joints and scatter into the air like a thousand blackbirds dispersing at the crack of a gunshot. And yet suddenly, for no reason he could imagine, he had managed to excite someone's attention.

  Was it Mrs. Kiesig, sitting with her three children by the offertory, her lips pursed energetically around a cough drop? Or Mr. Passarello, whose oldest son Father Melby had visited just last Wednesday in the Recovery Center? Or was it Katie Becker, all brushed and straightened in the second row, who he was fairly certain had taken to flirting with him at the church's monthly service meetings? It was impossible to tell.

  The scrutiny he felt seemed infinitely charitable, and it caused his entire manner to change. His shoulders lifted, his voice took on vigor, and his thoughts began to come clear and strong. He looked out over the pews of St. Andrew's and saw the faces of his congregation slowly lifting free of their ordinary polite expressionlessness, a hundred little candles taking flame in the dark. The original spark of attention was still hanging in the air somewhere, but it was soon joined by so many others that it was nearly imperceptible, and try as he might, he could not trace it back to its source. Even so, it gave him a feeling of balance, of composure, and it was that feeling more than anything else that propelled him to the end of his sermon.

  He knew as he finished that every single person in the sanctuary was aware of the change that had come over him. For once the air was empty of that rainlike rustling sound that a thousand restless fingers made creasing programs and paging through hymnals. After the benediction, when he took his place by the front door, he could hear the shock of sincerity in his parishioners' voices as they offered him their compliments.

  That was something else this morning, Father.

  My husband sends his regrets. I think he'll really be sorry to hear what he missed this time.

  A pleasure that was . . . as always, of course, Father, as always.

  Father Melby pressed their hands and smiled, saying his thankyous in a voice no louder than a whisper. He was as baffled as they were.

  Over the next few days he found himself wondering whether he had only imagined that initial flicker of interest coming from some undefined pair of eyes in the congregation. It had always embarrassed him that he was such a feeble speaker. Years ago, he had handed himself over to the priesthood with all his heart. His weaknesses were not hidden from him, but he had never stopped believing that God would provide him with the strength to overcome them. So maybe he had truly turned a corner, he thought. Maybe God had reached down and given him his voice. Maybe, and at long last, he had settled into the pulpit.

  But the next Sunday, when it came time for him to deliver his sermon, he discovered that he was the same preacher he had always been, stumbling for purchase up a rickety staircase of words. He could hear the hesitancy in his voice, the awful timidity. He watched as young Jeffrey Rohrenbeck, nestled between his parents in the second row, began drawing on a leaflet with one of the church's little yellow half pencils. A trickle of cold sweat rolled down his side, soaking through his T-shirt and into his vestments. Then, suddenly, he felt it again, that pure white focal point of concentration arising from somewhere in the pews, and once more he began to speak with confidence.

  A week later the same thing happened—at the very second he imagined despondency was going to strip him of his voice altogether, he sensed that someone was listening to him, and he became caught up in the current of his sermon. And the week after that, it happened yet again. By then the news of his transformation had spread, and the sanctuary was nearly full. Was it wrong to feel elated by the sight of so many people leaning forward in their seats to hear what he was going to say? Even the children, it seemed, were stretched tight with curiosity.

  Later that day, in the silence of his office, he came to a realization. It was God, God and no one else, who kept fixing His attention upon him. God was watching over him—as He watched over everybody, of course—but with one essential difference: in Father Melby's time of need, in the moment of his despair, God had allowed him to sense the warmth of His gaze. That was why the scrutiny Father Melby felt was so exalting and yet so difficult to pin-point: it was coming from everywhere at once.

  For the next few days Father Melby seemed to view the world through a curtain of bright and rippling water. Entire hours might pass when he would forget that God had taken on a deeper presence in his church, and then, without warning, something would catch in the back of his mind and he would remember, like a new bride remembering she was married, and he would smile at the thought of the strange and lovely turn his life had taken.

  He slept in the vicarage on the second floor of the building. One night, as he was lying in bed thinking over the latest manifestation of God beneath the oak rafters and hanging brass lamps of the sanctuary, he became aware of an unusual sound, a tiny arrhythmic clicking noise, like marbles falling one by one through the inside of the wall. As he listened, he realized he had heard the sound before—had heard it several nights in a row, in fact—but always just as he was dropping off to sleep, when it was easy to allow it to fade into his fantasies.

  Tonight, though, he was wide awake. He decided to get out of bed and investigate.

  He put on his slippers and tightened the belt on his robe. The sound seemed to be emanating from a spot directly above his mahogany dresser, midway between the mirror and the crucifix. As soon as he put his ear to the wall, though, it went away. Despite several minutes of careful listening, he wasn't able to make it out again.

  He was just about to return to bed when it started up in another place, this time coming from the darkness of the hallway. He followed it through the door and across the carpet. Once again, though, when he bent in for a closer listen, the sound vanished and reappeared somewhere else, almost ten yards away, at the landing by the bend of the staircase.

  Father John Melby began to feel as though he were falling for some sort of elaborate trick, reaching for a dollar bill that someone kept yanking away with a fishing line, but just the same he decided to pursue the sound downstairs. He followed it past the altar and through the chapel, threading his way between one set of pews and another, until finally he came to a stop in the alcove that held the statue of the Virgin Mary. One last noise passed through the wall, a sudden cluster of surprisingly insistent knocks that reminded him of the odd metallic percussions of the radiator in the basement, before the sound fell flat to the floor.

  A votive candle was still burning on the pricket, which was unusual. The only candles the church provided had thirty-minute wicks, and, since he locked the doors every night at precisely ten o'clock, they ought to have burned out already. On any number of occasions, in fact, Father Melby had sat on the bench until ten thirty to watch the last few wicks send scribbles of black smoke into the air.

  He was debating whether to extinguish the candle himself when a little breeze came sailing in from somewhere, snuffed the flame out between its finger pads, and immediately fell still.

  Father Melby must have been cold, because the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

  The sound in the walls did not return, and the next morning, when he woke
up, he had great trouble convincing himself he had heard anything at all.

  The Sunday that followed was his most successful yet. The pews were so full that he had to send the altar boys to erect a row of folding chairs in the back of the sanctuary. Even then, the size of the crowd required that a number of parishioners volunteer to spend the service standing on their feet. Every time the front door opened, Father Melby allowed his gaze to pass out over the lawn to the sea of cars glimmering in the parking lot, more cars than he had ever seen at the church before. It was as though a second Easter had taken hold of the congregation.

  He began his sermon with the same terrible nervousness as always, that watery sensation in his knees and in his stomach, but God was much quicker to come to his aid this time. He found his self-assurance within seconds. All of a sudden it was as if his voice were traveling through him from somewhere else, a cool and pleasantly sunlit place where the wind sent ripples through the soft, high grass. His mind was luminous. His words perfectly filled their own shapes. He could see what the Pentecostalists meant when they talked about the Spirit flowing through their bodies.

  After the service, the receiving line came together in the central aisle like a river taking form from a hundred different streams. Father Melby stood at the door to greet his parishioners as they left, his face tingling with the kind of blood-heat he imagined long distance runners must experience after winning a race.

  That was one heck of a Mass today, Father, Simon McCallister said, smacking his shoulder. One heck of a Mass. My dad would have been here, but he's laid up in the hospital with a bout of the sepsis.

  Father Melby shook his head. I'll say a prayer for him. And let me know his room number. I'll make time to visit later this week.

  Next in line was Paul Pulido, who attended church every Sunday. Usually he sat as lightly as a sparrow at the far end of the back pew, fluttering faithfully out the side door as soon as Father Melby had delivered the benediction, but not, for some reason, today. Today he left by the front door, and though Father Melby could not imagine why, he sounded obscurely embarrassed as he quoted from the morning's sermon. The action of God in our own hearts and spirits. You've really given me something to ponder there, Father.

  Well, I'm glad to hear it, Paul. He watched the man open his mouth as if to say something else, then shake his head and blink a few times before slouching away. There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.

  Madeline Quinn covered her mouth as she spoke. Gene Barrett gave him a military salute. One of the Davidson boys accidentally stepped on his shoe. Katie Becker rubbed her finger along the inside of his wrist as she took his hand. He stiffened his arm and let his face go blank, trying his best not to allow her to think he was yielding to the gesture.

  Soon the last few members of the congregation were gone, and Father Melby was standing alone in the doorway. Sometimes, after the church emptied out, he could swear that he was still able to hear the din of the crowd lingering around him, as if the whole immense bubble of voices and footfalls had been absorbed into the walls and was gradually leaching back into the air. He walked through the dull cascade, knowing it would be hours before the full silence of the building was restored.

  Later that week he was in the confessional, offering absolution to the day's penitents, when there was a brief pause in the procession and he gave himself a few seconds to rest his eyes. Father Melby was used to dropping off easily when he went to bed at night, but ever since he had followed the noise of marbles downstairs to find the votive candle burning, his sleeping patterns had become erratic, and by midafternoon every day his energy began to flag. Perhaps that was why he failed to notice the sound of footsteps approaching before the curtain on the other side of the booth opened. The sanctuary light came scissoring through the darkness, and he opened his eyes, preparing himself to enact the familiar ritual.

  Immediately he could sense that whoever had entered the booth was sad and solemn, strangely willful, with a presence that was somehow plainly feminine.

  The usual “Forgive me, Father” was slow to arrive.

  After some time had passed and no one had spoken, Father Melby asked, Do you wish to begin, my child?

  There was no answer. The wooden grate that separated the two chambers of the confessional was composed of a dense pattern of St. Andrew's crosses and fleurs-de-lis, and the gaps were so slender that he could never see more than the vague conformation of a face through them, along with an occasional flash of muted color, but at the moment he failed to spy even so much as a single curve of skin. All he could detect was a soft rhythm of breathing, like water lapping gently over a shoal of small, rounded pebbles, and that peculiar aura of sadness and femininity.

  How long has it been since your last confession? Father Melby asked.

  Then he said, Can you hear me?

  Then he said, Hello?

  And maybe it was simply his exhaustion, but he had a sudden blossoming sensation in his head that made him feel as though he had become unfastened from the forward motion of time. How many minutes went by? He wasn't sure. But a voice finally answered, faintly but carefully, offering each word up to him like a berry picked delicately off a stalk. I'm afraid that I wasted my life.

  Why do you say that? Father Melby asked.

  I am here. I can feel that it's true.

  Father Melby responded in his gentlest tone. The Church teaches us that a wasted life is a mark of idleness. Idleness is indeed a grave sin. But in the eyes of God, no life is truly a waste until it's over. You still have time to change yourself, my child.

  The woman on the other side of the confessional gave a one-note sigh. No, she said.

  You do. You have time. You can't give up on yourself.

  It's not myself I've given up on, she said. It's time, and he heard the faint sound of her fingers brushing over the grate. Can you help me?

  How? How would you like me to help you?

  But before she could answer, the curtain opened again. The gaps between the fleurs-de-lis were filled with a white light, and the next thing he saw was the hunched outline of an old man taking the bench. The nimbus of barely restrained grief had disappeared. A throaty voice announced, Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

  Where did she go? Father Melby asked.

  What was that? Hold on a minute. The old man's hearing aid gave a ventilating whistle. Okay, now, what was that?

  The woman who was just in the confessional. Where did she go?

  Mrs. Bruno, do you mean? She was lingering over by the holy water when I came in. Do you want me to go out and fetch her?

  Mrs. Bruno was a retired hairdresser whose skin bore an indomitable odor of rose oil and baking flour—definitely not the woman who had been speaking to him. Father Melby felt something twitching in his lap and saw that his hands were sifting instinctively through his rosary beads.

  No. No, I'm sorry. Tell me, how long has it been since your last confession?

  Over the next few days he continued to think about the woman in the confessional. He wondered who she was and how he might have helped her. Where had she gone when the curtain opened? Why couldn't he pick her out from among the members of his congregation? He would be sitting at his desk trying to fit together the puzzle pieces of a sermon when all at once he would find himself reflecting on the timbre of her voice, fragile and whispery, so very unlike that of the other voices he knew. Or he might be organizing the pamphlets on the literature stand when he would glimpse the tail of one of the banners twisting against the wall and for just a moment he would suppose that it was her, leaning over to straighten a loose stocking. He was sleeping well again, deeply and without interruption, but often, just before he woke in the morning, he would sense that atmosphere of gentle sorrow he had noticed in the confessional, and in the last few crumbling seconds of his dreams he would imagine she had been sharing his bed.

  Sunday by Sunday, the audience for his sermons kept growing. The altar boys added
row after row of folding chairs to the back of the sanctuary, and when the back of the sanctuary was full, along the side aisles. It seemed that no matter what subject Father Melby chose to address—the parable of the vine and the branches, the visions of St. Lucy, the story of Jacob and Potiphar's wife—the ideas that came to him were shapely and true. It was as if his words were being incised into the air as he spoke. He could feel the members of the church becoming more involved with every syllable.

  He recognized the phenomenon for what it was, a miracle of God's grace, but he knew better than to tell anybody about it. He had always been afraid that his voice would desert him at the pulpit, but now he found himself nursing the opposite fear: that he would become too sure of his skill, losing his modesty before the Lord. It was the smallest of distances between pride and vanity, after all, and he was oddly relieved now by that moment of disquiet that unfailingly greeted him whenever the congregation closed their prayer books and he found himself fumbling for the opening thread of his sermon.

  Soon it was mid-October, and an unexpected cold snap had brought the first hard frost of the season to St. Andrew's. The dogwoods at the border of the courtyard began shedding their leaves in great bunches, and one day Father Melby decided to take care of them with a rake. Ever since he was a child, he had enjoyed combing carefully through the grass to gather all the leaves into a neat pile, which he would flip with the rake tines into a black plastic trash bag. The pleasure it brought him was mild but dependable, and he associated it with the satisfaction some people took in completing a crossword puzzle or wiping the rain spots off a window: yet one more symptom of the human desire for ideal arrangement. It was the same desire that had eventually carried him into the priesthood, after half a dozen meaningless retail jobs and an aborted semester as an accounting major.

  The trees were remnants of the town's original landscape, left standing when the church was constructed some forty years before. They fell pell-mell along the margin of the yard—a cluster of three here, another two over there, and four or five lonely strays in between. It took him half an hour of work to rake the leaves into a single pile beneath the center-most dogwood. He was just about to scoop them into the trash bag when a gust of wind blew past, plucking one glossy red leaf from the top of the pile and sending it rolling across the grass. He dropped the rake and gave chase. The leaf somersaulted up the concrete walk, showing first its bright side and then its pale side, and he ran after it. It veered away from the front of the building, slipping past the azalea bushes and circling the corner. The wind changed direction again and yet again. The leaf swerved past the vestry and the meter box, the memorial stone and the fire exit. It seemed that no matter how quickly he went, it remained always a few steps out of his reach, and yet the longer he ran, the more ridiculous it began to seem that he might give up before he actually caught it.