Come Rain or Come Shine

  This simple admission was all that God wanted of her right now, she felt certain of it. To forgive or not to forgive would be their choice.

  He was searching for a backup cake server for the barn when Pauline came into the kitchen, out of breath. She had been looking for him, she said.

  ‘I need to tell my children I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sammy will be leaving and Kenny . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Pray for me, please. Pray that I won’t cry. I don’t want to do that to them.’

  He nodded yes, crossed himself.

  She looked desperate. ‘Is there anything you can tell me, Father?’

  ‘God is with you. Speak the name Jesus if you can’t do more. He’s listening.’

  She tried to breathe.

  ‘I just saw Sammy in the library,’ he said. ‘He’ll be coming down to the barn in a few minutes. And Kenny is getting something out of their rental car at the front door.’

  Both of them at once . . . if she could hold back the tears, she could do anything.

  She would no longer use the crutch of blaming their father or the old, disastrous craving over which she tried to believe she had no control—blaming, always blaming someone or something—and she would no longer try to believe that her dues had been paid in that terrible fire years ago.

  She stepped out to the porch. This was the hardest. Of all her heedless acts of disgrace, giving her son into the hands of a stranger had been the most unforgivable.

  He closed the hatch of the car and looked up. He was holding a diaper and a sippy cup.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She couldn’t speak above a whisper.

  Kenny felt his heart cracking open like a geode. Someone had sent the tickets anonymously; they just showed up in the mail. He’d known that if they came to the wedding, it would come to this.

  To forgive her was the right thing. It’s what God asks people to do and what Julie would want him to do. He actually felt a certain compassion for this woman who he didn’t know. To forgive her would free him in ways he couldn’t imagine, maybe even to be a better husband and father. But he could not.

  ‘For everything,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ he said. ‘Sorry I can’t forgive you for handing me off to a stranger. Sorry you’re not even anybody I remember.’

  She watched him walk around the corner of the house, toward the barn and his life in Oregon and the years of his future. She had added to his sorrow, not subtracted. She could not seem to stop hurting the people she loved.

  Sammy stood by the table with a cue, squinting at the balls on the felt.

  She forced herself to walk into the library, felt her chest heave with the pounding of her heart.

  Sammy concentrated on the table, not looking up. The set of his jaw, an old scar livid on his cheek; he knew who had come into the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘So sorry.’

  ‘No,’ he said. He stood like a statue, refusing to look at her. ‘No.’

  She would not force anything from him, nothing at all. She turned and walked away on legs that would barely support her and went into the hall room and locked the door and lifted the seat.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said, weeping, and vomited into the toilet.

  Dooley. Her spoken repentance could be a gift to him or it could be a stone. She prayed against the stone. If she waited beyond this day, she would be free to keep believing the old lie that Dooley understood, that it was all forgotten, and she should forget it, too.

  She thought maybe he had forgiven her, but there was no way of knowing. Throughout his school days in Virginia and Georgia and North Carolina, he often came to visit Pooh and Jessie. He was always open and kind with Buck, but distant from her. She hadn’t known how to find again the small bond they had when he was little, before he went to her poor daddy and then to Father Tim. He had been the one she dumped the care of all the others on, and he’d done his very best and she had never even thanked him. No, they didn’t talk of such things, the old times, their holocaust. How is it that one can turn to God and believe and be changed, but not changed enough to accept the consequences? She knew it was dealing with the consequences that would make her strong, bring her closer to her children and to God; it was perhaps what makes people good, if becoming good is ever really possible.

  And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late for Jessie. She and Buck felt Jessie was lost to them. But starting now, she would not accept that. Starting now, she would do everything in her power to keep from losing Jessie again. She would talk to her tonight, after they got home, and this time she would enter fully into the consequences of Jessie’s rage and contempt.

  She found Pooh on the back porch, tossing pebbles toward the woodshed and waiting to walk her to the barn where Buck was helping Willie.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ The breath was raked out of her.

  ‘What for, Mama?’

  ‘For everything.’

  She went to him and put her arms around him. Her seventeen-year-old son, her dear Pooh—the one she had ‘kept,’ if it could be called keeping.

  He looked into her eyes, unafraid, and listened.

  ‘For all the times I neglected you and left you and didn’t look after you and love you enough.’ She tried to hold it back, but she could not, she could not.

  ‘That’s okay, Mama.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘You can stop crying if you want to. It’s okay.’

  Lace prayed on her walk to the barn with Dooley and Jack Tyler. Maybe Sammy and Kenny and Pauline would just avoid one another or maybe there would be some kind, any kind, of healing. Just a start would be a relief.

  She had never had a problem with drinking, but she knew how it worked, she had lived with it. It was demons unloosed, it was total craziness and consuming bondage and she understood the pain of that bondage. But she was weary of Pauline clinging to the role of victim.

  Pauline and Buck were standing outside the entrance to the shed. She had always embraced Pauline first; she was startled when Pauline embraced her.

  ‘I’m so happy for you,’ said Pauline, realizing suddenly that she was also happy for herself and Buck and all her children, if only for this fleeting moment. She embraced Dooley and felt his reserve and stood away and pressed his hand. ‘So proud of you,’ she said. She hoped to speak with him before the evening ended and was surprised to find that she looked forward to it, was eager for it. Her mission, after all, was to acknowledge and confess, she was not seeking miracles.

  He saw Pauline smile as she took Jack Tyler’s hands and looked into his upturned face.

  ‘The dam has burst,’ he said to Cynthia. ‘It will soon overflow the banks and water the dry land for the harvest to come.’

  She assumed he was talking about the long-awaited wedding and was amused by what sounded like the proclamation of Jeremiah on a good day. It was his special white vestments, of course—after a stint in all that brocade and gold trim, he could on occasion sound positively biblical.

  Dooley squatted and patted his shoulder. ‘Climb up here,’ he said to Jack Tyler. He liked the feel of his son’s sturdy legs on his shoulders, the heft of this boy. Dooley stood then and took his wife’s hand. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Here we go,’ she said.

  ‘Here we go!’ said Jack Tyler, holding on.

  The lanterns, so many!—even along the rafters, and the candle flames dancing against the shade of evening. The roses, the great masses of Seven Sisters everywhere, and the long table with its double rows of fancy napkins and shining plates and sparkling glasses and the miniature hand-carved replica of Choo-Choo at every place.

  This is what they had worked for, prayed for, dreamed of. And here it was, with everyone happy and cheering and clapping as they entered the shed—all of it so much more than they could have
imagined.

  ‘Everything looks so beautiful, so perfect,’ Lace said to Lily.

  Lily was in recovery from a scene in the kitchen that involved her sisters. No, Violet could not sing with the band, she had not been invited to sing with the band, what was she thinking? Then Arbutus requested leftovers to take home to her brick house with a screened porch, which was the most outrageous thing she ever heard of. Leftovers, she said, are what this couple will be livin’ on for days to come, give me a break. Then Rose’s back went out because she wore the wrong shoes.

  This coming Friday, thanks to a very thoughtful gift from the new Miz Kavanagh, she was drivin’ to Myrtle Beach—totally alone!—where she would lie in th’ sun an’ ruin her skin and get her head back together.

  ‘I recommend th’ barbecue,’ Lily told the bride. ‘Th’ coleslaw’s to die for, you want th’ deviled eggs on th’ yellow platter not th’ other platter, an’ Miss Louella’s biscuits are blue ribbon. As for th’ chicken—so-so. But don’t bother, I’ll fix y’all’s plates right now, before th’ band rolls in.’

  Lace kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re the best,’ she said.

  Lily had been watching the busy little woman in spike heels and goofy glasses. She was a worker, all right.

  ‘Get you a plate,’ said Lily.

  ‘Oh, I’m not a guest,’ said Vanita. ‘Just, you know, a professional—gettin’ ready to pack up an’ go home.’

  Lily smiled, which she realized felt good to her face. ‘We do takeout,’ she said, loading barbecue and all the trimmings on a paper plate.

  Mary Ellen Middleton had never met a cleric with such a lot of physical mien. Not that clerics didn’t have muscle and all that—surely they did, some of them, anyway. And not that his physique was overdone, not at all. Just—robust, perhaps, though that sounded like a Cabernet. Father Brad was different. He didn’t smell of church, if one could say what such a smell would be, but of something light and moving that couldn’t be caught or confined.

  When they met earlier today at the fence, she made conversation as best she could, based on what she’d heard. ‘So I hear you have . . . lived in the wild?’

  Oh, what laughter he had. He was brimming with it, absolutely running over.

  ‘I’m no John the Baptist,’ he said, ‘but yes, I like the outdoors. You can ask Sammy Barlowe about that. And you?’

  ‘I’ve had my nose in a book most of my life. Except during summers at the lake when we took out the canoes, and I was on a swimming team in college. And I love fishing, come to think of it.’

  ‘Trout? Salmon? Marlin?’

  ‘Crappie,’ she had said, amused.

  Just two minutes ago, she had looked for him among the chattering throng at the food tables and saw him talking with Father Tim’s brother.

  Yet as soon as she took her plate to the table and sat down, he popped into the chair next to her, with his own plate. How did he do that? Perhaps clergy had a knack for being everywhere at once.

  ‘Wonderful wedding!’ he said, putting the napkin in his lap. ‘Memorable in every way, to say the least. Thanks in part to Beth, who is a wonder.’

  ‘She is, I agree. Thank you.’ She felt suddenly shy with him, though they had talked earlier about his deceased wife and his daughters and grandchildren and she had spoken briefly of Paul. He had brought out his cell phone and scrolled away until he was able to show pictures that she could barely see because of the glare. Everyone did that these days, she couldn’t understand it.

  He looked at her and smiled. He was very direct and very nice-looking. If she had to find just one word for him, it would be vivid. No blur. Sharp contrast. Alive. She hadn’t felt really alive since Paul.

  ‘What’s your schedule?’ he said, tucking into the barbecue.

  ‘To the hotel in Wesley tonight and back to Boston in the morning.’

  ‘May I ask who you’re going back to?’

  ‘My eighty-four-year-old mother, still living on her own. My piano; my cat, Sofia; my orchids.’

  ‘Orchids! They never rebloom for me. I’m a nut for gardenias.’

  ‘I love gardenias,’ she said. ‘But they’re so finicky.’

  ‘Completely. You never know where you stand with a gardenia. With a geranium, yes. With a pot of ivy, cool. But gardenias? It’s easier to raise teenagers. Nevertheless, I’m hooked.’

  ‘Then there’s the maidenhair fern,’ she said.

  Clearly he enjoyed laughing.

  ‘So, Mary Ellen, I ask you—why are we talking about houseplants? I’d rather know if you like your fries with ketchup or aioli, whether you’ve ever rafted the Colorado River or fried trout beside a stream in Montana. In the morning, you’ll be flying to Boston and I will be . . .’ He looked up to the rafters, as if seeking words.

  She was smiling. ‘You will be . . . ?’

  ‘Bereft!’

  She laughed.

  He didn’t know how he said this stuff. He never said this stuff. He was outgoing in the pulpit, outgoing on a raft with a berserk youth group or asking the parish for money if absolutely necessary. He was, however, notoriously shy around beautiful women.

  Kate had been gone eight years and there had been nobody since; his Marine Corps motto had applied there, too. Kate had been the love of his life and now, out of the blue, here was somebody else he didn’t want to let go.

  ‘Okay, you were hungry, so let’s eat,’ she said. She held out the forkful of baked beans. He shook his head.

  ‘A deviled egg, then. I just ate one, they’re delicious.’ No.

  She knew about trying to get kids to eat, a bonus learning curve from the nonprofit art school. Most of them devoured their free lunch, but some were in a lot of emotional pain and ate like birds. She had been there, done that, got the T-shirt, as Lonnie would say.

  ‘Are you worried about something?’

  He was quiet for a moment. ‘Am I bein’ good?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ She was startled. ‘You’re being very good.’ Amazingly good, considering all that was going on now and all that had happened before. ‘Why?’

  He couldn’t answer that. He just wondered if he stopped being good and started being bad, what would happen? Would it still be forever? Sometimes he was bad and couldn’t help it.

  ‘Come sit on my lap,’ she said. Soon, very soon, he would think himself too big for lap-sitting. He got down from his chair and she picked him up; he was solid as anything. She held him close and swayed her body a little, like a cradle rocking, and soon he looked at her with the lovely solemnity that seemed a hallmark of their Jack Tyler, and said, ‘I could prob’ly have a deviled egg now.’

  And there came Dooley with Sammy and Kenny and Julie and Etta and Ethan and Pooh and Jessie, and they would all sit together as family. Happiness. So much of it, all at once. And no, she mustn’t be frightened of grace. She must let God give her all this and she must receive it with a glad heart.

  ‘Sunset, seven forty-five!’ called Willie, passing among the crowd under the shed. ‘Right yonder!’ He pointed west.

  He was the old lamplighter, going his rounds, announcing the way of things in this world in case anybody was interested. All they had to do was turn around and look. But maybe people didn’t care about how the sun set behind the mountains and how the mountains turned deep blue, then black as coal after the sun was gone, which made a person think if a person cared about thinking. All that sight to see, and then the stars coming out. It was a miracle he had appreciated all the days of his life.

  He was putting together a nice dinner for the barn cats and the new kittens when he noticed a little handful of guests havin’ a look. Harley and his Miss Pringle, for one, and Kenny and his young family, and Father Tim, he liked a sunset and so did his wife, an’ the woman from Boston, she turned around and the other preacher in a collar, he did, too, and Miss Agnes from up th’
holler and her boy who did the carvings, they turned around. You could tell a lot about people who would stop what they were doin’ to watch the Almighty go about his business.

  Helene Pringle was looking smart, he thought. He was fortunate to have such a tenant in the rectory, which he had owned for some years.

  ‘Helene! We’re glad you could join us.’ She had patiently endured Sammy Barlowe’s rude behavior years ago, and Kenny’s long bunk-in with Harley.

  ‘I’ve missed you and Cynthia being next door,’ she said. ‘And Mr. Welch living downstairs. And of course, dear Barbizon, just a month ago, il est mort.’

  ‘He was a very amiable cat.’

  ‘Twenty-one years.’

  ‘It gets better with time.’ All he seemed able to summon was a platitude, albeit well-meant. ‘I wish you could have seen our friend Harley being chased by the bull. He went into the field at the age of sixty-seven and came over the fence looking twenty-nine.’

  She smiled. ‘Adrenaline, Father. It’s cosmetic.’

  Ironically, Helene Pringle had given him one of the great adrenaline rushes of his life—the day they drove down the mountain in her vintage car with next-to-zero brakes.

  Twenty-one years. He gave her a hug.

  ‘You’ll be alone no more, Helene. We’ll be home tonight with a car full—and there goes the neighborhood.’

  ‘So, anybody in this group going to make a toast?’ said Dooley. Bowser nosed his leg, looking for a scrap.

  ‘Not me,’ said Pooh.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Hey, I’m happy for you guys, I love you, that’s m-my speech.’

  ‘We’ll take it. Ken?’

  ‘God is good. End of discussion.’

  Laughter, high fives. And there was Bonemeal giving him a look.

  ‘How about you, Jess?’

  She shrugged, looked away.