Well, I had a bypass last year, Kristi—I sure hope that doesn’t affect the reception! (Beat) That was a joke.
Thanks for the caveat.
A new feature had been added to the Tuesday night dinners at my mother’s house—we all sat around digesting our meal as we listened to Kristi Casey on the radio.
“The name of the show is On the Air with God?” said my mother the first time we heard it. “That sounds so…presumptuous.”
We had been listening since the show debuted in January, but we missed a lot of what was said, owing to our habit of talking back to her outrageousness. When a caller said her brother was in a gay relationship and her husband no longer allowed her to go his house, Kristi said, “As Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, a wife must submit to her husband. I think that’s your answer there. Why would you choose your brother over your husband—especially a brother who has not respected God’s laws?
“God’s laws!” Aunt Beth said, so forcefully that she rose from her seat. “I thought God’s biggest law was to love one another!”
“She seemed so…I don’t know, modern in high school,” said my mother. “Now she thinks a wife should submit to her husband?”
“Try it,” said Len agreeably. “You might like it.”
“Remember,” said Kristi another time to a caller contemplating divorce, “in Mark we are reminded that ‘anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.’”
“I don’t get this show,” said Linda. “Is she trying to be funny?”
“Yes,” said Darva, “in a very sick way.”
Everyone had been entertained by the novelty of listening to someone we knew on the radio, but after several broadcasts, Len would start dealing cards for a game of rook before the show was ended, or Beth might start the coffee for dessert. Finally, one April night, when I had turned up the volume to better hear Kristi over a spring rainstorm that was pummeling the roof, my mother said, “Why don’t you just turn it off, Joe?”
“Amen,” said Beth.
Looking to the others and seeing from their nods it was a majority opinion, I shrugged and turned the knob.
“How about we turn it off permanently?” suggested Darva, who along with Len had been helping Flora build a LEGO house for her imaginary friend. “Whatever the novelty of listening to her was, the novelty’s gone.”
“I agree,” said Linda, sitting on the couch with my mom and Beth. “I get a stomachache listening to her.”
“Mme. Chou Chou got a stomachache at school today,” said Flora, fitting a corner piece into the house. “Because Miss Greer yelled at Derek Peterson for picking his nose.”
“I think Miss Greer yells entirely too much,” said Darva, quickly examining a LEGO before throwing it back into the pile.
“The earlier a kid learns it’s not cool to pick his nose in public,” I said, “the better.”
“Ha! A lot you know about appropriate behavior!” said Darva, pushing the LEGO pieces off her lap and standing up. “Come on, Flora, it’s time to go home!”
The child was as startled as the adults.
“Mais, Maman, je veux finir la maison.”
Darva didn’t care about finishing the LEGO house.
“C’est tard. On y va!”
“Darva, what’s the matter?” I asked, rising too.
“You don’t need to go,” said Darva, and in her voice she made clear her wish that I didn’t. “Thanks for the dinner,” she said to my mother, impatient as Flora made her rounds kissing everyone good-bye.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait out the rain?” asked Len.
Darva shrugged on her coat.
“Mme. Chou Chou does not want to get wet,” said Flora, knitting her eyebrows together in a frown.
“Quel dommage,” said Darva.
I caught my aunt’s eye; she gave me the same look that was being exchanged between others. They didn’t need to speak French to know that Darva had only said “Too bad.” What made all of us uneasy was her tone of voice; it was as if she had slapped Flora with the words. Darva was a mother with infinite patience, and if she raised her voice to her daughter, something was seriously wrong.
“At least take an umbrella,” said my mother, plucking one out of the stand by the door and handing it to Darva.
She took it and her daughter’s hand and raced out the door as if she’d been dry too long and couldn’t wait to get wet.
Later, after a halfhearted game of Scrabble, Beth and Linda gave me a ride home. The rain had faded to a mist, and if the night was a fabric, it would be a purple velvet.
“So what do you suppose is the matter with Darva?” asked Beth. The question had been asked several times already, but apparently my answers—different versions of “I don’t know”—were unsatisfactory.
“How’re things going with Bernard?” asked Linda of the man Darva had brought once or twice to Tuesday night dinners.
“Fine, as far as I know,” I said.
I didn’t pay much attention to her romantic life. Darva had been as noncommital in her relationships as I had; Reed had been replaced by Cliff, who’d recently been replaced by a fellow French teacher. We joked, in fact, that while we liked the people we went out with well enough to have sex with; we just didn’t like them as well as we liked each other.
“Well, I know there’s nothing wrong with her painting,” said Beth. “She just showed the series she’s working on—the season stuff? Wow.”
“Maybe she’s working too much,” said Linda “You know, with the painting and the teaching.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She loves both. How hard can it be to love what you’re doing?”
It wasn’t that hard…but it was, as I learned that night.
“Joe, before you say anything,” she said, greeting me at the door wearing a robe, her head wrapped in a towel turban, “let me just say I’m sorry. I’ve already apologized to Flora and Mme. Chou Chou, who, according to Flora, thought I was très impolie.”
I smiled and shrugged, awkward with the exchange—probably because we found the need to apologize to each other so rare.
“Come on in the kitchen, I’m making tea.”
“You sure got wet,” I said, noting her all-terry-cloth ensemble.
“Not from the rain. I took a shower.”
At the kitchen table, the scene of so many of our conferences, she told me why she had lately been so on edge and distracted.
“Joe, I can’t take it anymore.”
“Whoa,” I said, my heart taking a little elevator ride. “What do you mean?”
“My life.”
I can’t say what the look was on my face, but whatever it was, it inspired Darva to laugh.
“Oh God, what an idiot I am.” She reached across the table and took my hand. “You look like I just told you I’m suicidal.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. I was relieved, but only by degrees. I still knew there was something else coming.
“What I mean is, I can’t take my life here anymore. My American life. I think I’m going to move back to Paris.”
“You think or you know?”
Darva blew at her hot tea. “Know. I feel like my painting’s become more of a hobby—”
“But you had that show last year!”
“And I know for a fact I paint better in France. I’ve already got a couple of job leads as far as translation goes, and I’m working on an apartment.”
The elevator that had plunged with my heart on it took another drop.
A numbness spread through me, like a sheet of ice covering up the roiling waters underneath. “What…what…you mean is you can’t take your American life with me?”
Tears, like little sequins, sparkled in Darva’s dark eyes.
“Oh, Joe, you’re the reason I lasted here so long. You’re the reason it’s going to be so hard to leave.”
I looked at the handle of my mug, infinitely interesting to me at the moment.
/> “Don’t let it be hard,” I said, feeling as if my words were chunks of plaster I had to cough up. “Don’t go.”
“How about you come with us?” asked Darva brightly. “Live the life of an expatriate?”
“Sure, and maybe I can open up a Haugland Foods on the Champs-Elysées.”
It wasn’t a particularly funny response, but I felt I had to say something to distract me from the word us, because the full weight of losing not just Darva but Flora had knocked me off my chair, even though it looked as if I still sat in it.
“Joe, do you know I dream more in French than I do in English? I wake up sometimes thinking I’ll run down to the boulangerie for croissants and I’ll feel so happy…and then I’ll remember where I am and that I’ll probably have Cheerios for breakfast.”
“We’ll get croissants! I’ll get them at the store!”
“Joe, I never felt more at home—more me—than when I lived in Paris…and living here with you.”
“Then stay! We’ll take trips there—two or three a year! We’ll spend Flora’s summer vacation there!”
“Mon chèr, chèr Joe,” she said, her eyes glittery with tears again. “In a contest between home here and home there, it was always you who tipped the scales and made me want to stay. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. But now…well, Bernard is going back to Paris in September and…I’m getting serious about Bernard.”
“Bernard!” I said, practically shouting. “But you and I make fun of Bernard and his little tiny shoes and his lousy taste in music!”
Darva smiled. “He can’t really help the size of his feet and…well, nobody can be as perfect as us, Joe.”
I felt my whole body hunch over like an autumn leaf curling up to die, and Darva reached over to smooth the hair on the head that now needed the table for support.
Eighteen
Good evening, you’re on the air with God.
Hi, Kristi. I feel kinda funny calling you, like I’m writing a letter to the Christian Dear Abby or something.
What’s on your mind…?
Uh, Burt.
What’s on your mind, Burt?
Well, Kristi, it’s really about my wife. She, uh, well, there’s a casino just opened up near us and she’s kinda having a hard time staying away.
Is she gambling a lot, Burt?
Uh, quite a bit, yeah. (Sob)
And you’ve prayed for God to help her stop?
All the time.
Well, here’s what you do, Burt. You go public with your prayers. You go with her to the casino and you sit next to her, and you pray as loud as you can every time she puts a coin into the slot machine. You shout your prayers so loud that you drown out the noise of those slot machines!
Uh, I don’t know if I could do that.
Why not, Burt?
Well, for one, I’d feel stupid. And two, she’d feel stupid.
So you’re willing to lose your savings but not risk feeling stupid?
Uh, I don’t—
A reminder to you, Burt: Prayer anywhere, at any time, is not stupid. It’s effective. Thanks for calling, Burt, and try to have a little faith.
Like most kids, I thought the world had been created for my pleasure and amusement, but when my dad died, I learned that not only did the world not think I was its golden boy, but on a scale of its great concerns, I didn’t even register. When I say the world, I suppose I mean God, although after a childhood of Sunday school at Granite Creek Lutheran, I still can’t say I believe in the God that was taught there, the almighty Father. Especially not after the almighty Father let my real father crash in that soybean field with Miles Milnar.
My mother, who had been the church pianist and organist, continued going to Granite Creek Lutheran, even though she never again sat on a piano bench there.
“I still believe,” she told the choir director, “but right now, I just can’t celebrate. And that’s what playing music is for me: a celebration.”
In that first raw year of grief, I thought I had to be the strong one for my mother, but occasionally my mother wrestled me for the title, and so to me she said, “Joe, I can understand you thinking God let you down. But it wasn’t God. It was bad weather and a stalled engine.”
“Oh sure. Moses can part the seas, Lazarus can rise from the dead, but God couldn’t figure out how to get a little more gas into a fuel line?”
My mother tried to beat back her cringe with a smile. “So something from Sunday school has stuck.” She sighed, and took my hand in hers.
“Joe, I don’t have all the answers—in fact, I hardly have any answers. But I do have a couple big ones: love, of course, and faith and hope.”
“But what do those answer?” I asked, my voice dark with sarcasm.
“Lots of things,” said my mother quietly. “Especially ‘How do I keep going?’”
I hated to cry in front of my mother, and sensing I was battling back tears, my mom dropped my hands and wrapped her arms around me. It was a shelter I couldn’t fight.
“See, Joe,” she said as my body shook with little tremors, “I love you, and that makes me keep going. Faith that as much as this hurts, we’re handling it—that makes me keep going. And hope that things will get better for us makes me keep going.”
Gathering enough breath to talk, I said, “Faith and hope sound kind of the same.”
The laugh in her chest felt like a purr.
“I think faith is more everyday—like jeans—and hope is more dress-up. You know, you have faith you can get through this next hour, and you hope that someday everything will be wonderful.”
I was already confirmed, so she let me drop out of Sunday school, but I did go to church with her every Sunday, because no matter how much I silently heckled Pastor Allen when I listened to the sermons, or no matter where my mind wandered to when I didn’t, I knew that having her son sitting next to her was helping my mother dress up.
When we moved to Minneapolis, we fell out of regular church membership until my mother accepted an invitation from a fellow teacher to visit her church, which had great music. Apparently my mom thought so too, and that was enough to bring her back to church, and take Beth along with her. She let me choose whether or not I wanted to go or sleep in, and I chose sleeping in.
“It’s a holy thing for me,” I joked.
I was happy to rouse myself on those holidays that other non-churchgoers muster themselves up for, but as an adult, I was a member of no church. Eventually my faith settled around the beliefs I had as a boy, although it was a little less egocentric. I believed that the whole universe and every being in it was a part of God in a great and mysterious way—words like Force and Spirit come to mind—and I often found myself thanking this force and asking for its help. Yeah, I prayed. And the prayer I repeated over and over for Darva in August 1988 wasn’t that she not live in France but that she live.
It can be a clear sunny day, it can be a dark stormy night, or it can be any of those variables in between when the world as you know it stops and another one starts.
It had been a mild spring Saturday morning when my mother woke me up to tell me about my father’s death, shaking my shoulder so hard that I thought she was trying to be funny, and so I groan-laughed every time her hand pumped my back, in parcels of “Uh—uh—uh,” until she shouted my name and the panic in her voice let me know right away something was terribly wrong.
On this particular late morning I was at the store, in Banana Square with a small crowd who was deciding who should win a gift certificate to the Nokomis Shoe Shop. The contest had called for songs that had something to do with feet, and by their applause, it looked as if talent was going to best beauty. The crowd had responded politely to “Running on Empty” as sung by Randi, a young woman decked out in the summer bikini-top-and-towel-sarong uniform of teenage girls, but had gone crazy when Millie Purcell, whose summer uniform (in fact, her year-round uniform) read “Beeker’s Bowling Alley,” sang a soulful version of “I Walk the Line.” Mr. Snowbe
ck, resident Twinkies shoplifter, had offered, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” but only knew the refrain.
I presented the certificate to Millie, who certainly could use nice new shoes, partial as she was to wearing a pair of faded, tricolored bowling shoes whether she was working or not. As the shoppers ambled away, I was admiring the colors of the summer produce when Stan, my new assistant manager, told me I had a telephone call.
“It’s your mother,” he said, the type of guy who always wanted to give you as much information as possible. “I asked if I could take a message, but she said she wanted to speak to you. She probably wants you to pick up something.” Stan’s own mother called once or twice a day to place grocery orders with him.
Sitting down in my swivel chair, I picked up the receiver on my desk. I had no idea that this simple gesture was a bridge taking me from one world to another.
“Ma,” I said, “what are you out of? Chocolate or—”
“Joe,” she said, and her voice was like a tank barreling through the foliage of my greeting. “Joe, you’ve got to come home now.”
Beads of cold sweat sprouted on my upper lip and under my arms. She had come to our house that morning to babysit Flora while Darva and I worked.
“Is Flora—”
“Flora’s fine,” she said. “It’s Darva.”
When I pulled up to the curb in front of my house, my mother raced ran down the steps and jumped into the car.
“I’ll go with you to the hospital,” she said, fastening her seat belt.
“What about Flora?”
“Len’s with her.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, Joe, they just said there was an accident. A car accident.”
Sitting in the hospital waiting room, I realized the heavy white cloth my fingernail kept drawing circles on was my store apron. I stood up, reaching around to pull the neck loop over my head, but then I sat again, deciding to keep it on. If anything represented my normal world, it was my store apron, and I didn’t want to jinx anything by taking it off.