Ivyland (11 page)

“When's the last time
you
did?”

She waits a while before suggesting we head back in.

I stand there alone, wondering what happened to instinct. Phil startles awake from a broken reverie and collects himself, patting down the wrinkles in his tux and preparing to stand. I stall, then flick my long-dead cigarette and walk over to offer him a hand, which he's overjoyed about.

“Thank you: thanks,” he says a few times, loopy sounds of gratitude.

“What happened to your hat there?” I ask. He gropes the tattered thing without taking it off, raises his eyebrows suspiciously. Then memory kicks in.

“A dog tried to take it! I fight him, boy. I fought for victory.”

“May as well have let him have it,” I say.

“I lose my drink,” he admits, tapping the chest pocket where his treasured flask once lived. “But, my hat … I keep. A private place for my head, yes?”

*

Inside, the night's winding down. Donald is furious that I haven't refilled water glasses. The dance floor is barren but for two women trading seductive moves. I spot their husbands consoling each other over cake. A bridesmaid nearly catches fire when the palsied maitre d' does his banana flambé bit. Phoebe just works.

I call Henri. No answer.

*

Phoebe offers to drive me home. Nice of her, but even this late, traffic on the one remotely safe highway is a special horror. She says a word or two but no more than necessary, nixing small-talk until I stop trying to initiate it. The headlights of cars across the divider bathe her face in white triangles.

Drivers ignore signs warning that the road will narrow to one lane, instead zipping as far ahead as possible on the right and cutting in at the last moment. Phoebe has none of it and gets flipped off accordingly one, two … five times by various Jersey denizens.

The mall parking lots have been converted into skeevy hangouts, ghost-lit stores and frosted mannequins the only signs of civilization, an odd shaft of light cast down by extraterrestrial streetlamps capturing baggy skateboarders mid-ollie. Bushes alongside the road rustle fluidly, morphing with weightless ease.

A cluster of pines ahead expunges a doe that soars perfectly out of hiding and lands in the gridlock, its muscles giving off a small aftershock when hooves meet pavement. Black eyes search out friendly soil; she slips between stuck cars and vanishes among Viking Putt's burnt plastic skeletons. Always more of them, always less afraid: they ignore the fact that they've nowhere to go.

Henri, years ago, was in the car when his parents hit a buck that took out their windshield. It struggled and bled on their hood for ten minutes—they watched its ears twitching. He missed the whole next week of school, but I could never figure out why. He wasn't hurt, anyway. I brought him homework, all the subjects he aced without trying. He and Cal both made it look easy. I wish Phoebe would rescue me from this, aged questions that slide past each other like eels, stealthy, deliberately strange. Covert dreads run together.

On the side of Route 22, just past the cooked mini-golf course, is a post-accident tableau. Cops standing by their cruiser, chatting over 40-oz. Adderades. Cheap sedan and SUV sitting twenty feet apart, bumpers mangled. The SUV holds a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a younger woman riding shotgun, bare feet propped on the dash. The other car has a guy slumped over its open passenger door, shaking his head. Ahead of it, an ambulance prepares to depart, sirens winding up.

Everyone slows to a lewd crawl, inching by to study the picture like penniless window-shoppers. Past the scene, the traffic breaks, and an actual road opens up before us.

“Glad this whole thing was for a worthy cause,” Phoebe says, smiling sarcastically. We drive for another half-hour and take our exit before she adds: “Sorry.”

“Are you apologizing in case we crash?” She laughs as tastefully as one can on the subject.

“No … whatever. I have shitty days sometimes.”

“
Sometimes
?” making a face of ugly astonishment.

“Stop!” she says, punching me. “Trying to be nice.”

“And I'm not letting you off the hook.”

“You already have,” she says. “I mean it about Henri. He's the nicest guy, and you love to shoot him down.”

“Yeah, I'm an asshole. So be it.”

“No you aren't. You're just being one because you think it gets girls all wet.”

Talk about a call to arms. But there's no time for rebuttal—the scene on my lawn as we pull up is an automatic change of subject.

“God.”

“You guessed it.”

A few dozen points of flame hovering in the night, candlelit faces gathered around the miracle tree. The neighborhood is otherwise dark—our block's power must be out again. Heads bowed, the group chants together, voices sometimes stretching beyond the frayed edges of unison. Anastasio stands closest to the tree, facing the group but not leading it. He holds his candle to one side, illuminating the face of an old man in religious robes that I recognize from childhood as the local monsignor. Sweat rolls in bulbs along the jagged lines of his neck, the crowded air and insects endured. Shivering light ignites gold flecks in his heavy getup. Phoebe is spellbound by the congregation but leaves hands on the wheel, anticipating a getaway. Lowering the windows, we can hear the monsignor speaking in a fine plastic voice.

“Jesus is always there, not just in our time of need, but in our minutiae and our ecstasies, errors and triumphs, ever vigilant and sure. But he is nothing without the promise of renewal. What is the forgiveness of one sin if no one absolves us of the next? What is the first lesson without the next? Humanity's greatest thinkers have insisted our education is never complete. In God's universe, we are always children, always learning. Likewise, even an ordinary life requires ongoing salvation. The crucifixion is Jesus's absolution of humanity captured in one crystalline, timeless gem, one enduring image and act. Yet this is only efficient summary of his sacrifice. Neither is any litany of His miracles meant to convey His entire goodness; they are the fleeting accounts of an eternal savior. Every Christmas, Jesus is born again. Every Good Friday, He dies on the cross. Every Easter, He is resurrected. The Gregorian calendar is marked with these days, Christian festivals replacing old pagan ones. Christmas takes place on one of the year's shortest days—we make it a celebration of light and a conquest of the dark, as people did a generation before Jesus, and a generation before that, and so on. Easter's date is determined by the lunar phases that so occupied the imaginations of nature-worshippers.

“Do you see that the dates are of no significance? That all could occur consecutively, that the progression of holy weeks could be reversed, and it would have no ill effect? What we attach to these days, that sense of repetition, gives them their power. In each
annus domini
the promise that Jesus will be born, live, breathe, and die again is what sustains us. It is in the pregnant womb of the Madonna, the Virgin Mary with child, that our promise dwells. The beauty of that picture! An icon of perfect joy. The mother, the son, old creating new, day by day, before our eyes! Jesus is reborn instant to instant, renewed with each supplication, each confession, each cry for guidance, salvation. All His glories converge at the present. How terrible our lot would be if Jesus was born but once, how lonely and remote we'd feel, at such a remove in time and space.”

He broods on this alternative, steepling his index fingers as glittering eyes sink into the grass. Anastasio shuffles his feet. The narcotic drone of cicadas strings the night like a handful of beads.

“But this”—the monsignor gestures at the gutted tree—“tells us that we needn't fear that fate. That if the divine has not revealed itself,
one day it will
. That it may hide in the womb but will break forth and make itself known. That the world will crack open and reveal a holiness inside. Revelations are unique to each; hope's path is open to all.

“Some condemn so-called ‘blind faith,' and would have you believe our convictions are inferior to those adduced empirically, in labs. This friction is not as black-and-white as evolutionism or creationism, pro-choice or pro-life. Those are empty and symptomatic distinctions. No, conflict between the religious and the irreligious boils down to that villainized phrase: blind faith. Many cannot accept the fastening of spirit to a presence that cannot be scientifically sensed.”

The congregation grows restless now, sensing a climax. The monsignor strains for a second in the mindless heat, placing a hand on the tree. Anastasio quickly inserts himself between the old man and the blackened trunk, which slinks invisibly upward, its twisted half-branches bleeding out into sky. But the old man straightens.

“We should rejoice in the message borne by images—the message of knowledge and good and redemption that can shape the heart—not the image itself. In the absence of Heaven, even in the absence of belief, we must have faith that belief will find us. The agnostic, the atheist, anyone can summon it. It serves as our point of contact, the common thread that binds us all. God needs faith. But faith does not need Him.”

Even the cicadas hush at this dénouement, exposing the soft cricket song they'd overpowered. The congregation waits one robotic second before moving its lips once more:

 

Hail Mary

Full of Grace

The Lord is with thee;

Blessed art thou among women,

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary,

Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners,

Now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

 

“Hm,” I say. “Thanks for the ride, then.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe says, descending from a different plane. I slide out of the car and see she's parked with one wheel up on the little rock wall separating yard from driveway.

Out-of-focus colors of a congregation dissolving in midnight, walking to cars parked along the street or continuing down the sidewalk to wherever. The talk subdued and churchly. One or two attendees stay to speak to the monsignor, beside whom Anastasio, unflappable, remains.

Phoebe's car slushes out, and her panning headlights cast their weak beams on Henri, who is moving stealthily into the house, holding something that appears to be struggling in his arms.

“Henri!” I shout. Phoebe's lights realign with the road and he's lost in the darkness of the house—I can barely see now that the candle-holders have dispersed. I hear the front door slam as I move carefully up the front walkway.

“You are looking for Henri,” Anastasio observes from behind me.

“Actually— “

“He attended a bit earlier, our prayer meeting, but seems to have left. Is he ill?”

“Ill?”

“Ah. Aidan, I would like to introduce you to Monsignor Diavolo. From my church,” he says. And only now do I truly remember him, this craggy man with smoothed edges, features that absorbed a lifetime of incense. Between memories of tone-deaf Sunday sermons that enumerated the effects of leprosy or chastised the parish, sinning machines all, there was this man, with his out-of-place eloquence. Talented. Despicably so. And a face that shone weirdly in the dark, I discovered.

“I must thank you for your hospitality.”

“You're welcome, but the hospitality isn't mine.”

Anastasio makes a mild choking sound but seems okay despite it.

“Nevertheless. You have been most gracious.”

“Is Henri inside?” Anastasio says, “So the monsignor may express his gratitude also to him?” I'm getting sick of manners. Lacking an excuse, I invite them in, the monsignor's age turning the front steps into an arduous five-minute climb.

I light candles in the living room. Combined with Anastasio's mentor here, it looks like I'm setting up my own damn chapel. These men are too imposing for the worn, faint home, and stand statue-like rather than settling on our dingy sofa. They clasp and unclasp their hands in the seizuring light.

“I'll get him,” I say.

Henri is cooped up in the second floor room, his old one, with the door locked. I can hear him puffing and clattering about inside.

“Hey. You've got visitors.”

“Can't.”

“You're not leaving me to fend for myself against these people.” The clattering resumes. A swear sneaks through from inside. “What candlelit work are you doing that's so fuck-all important?”

“Please. Don't make me come out right now.”

“When have I made you do anything?” I catch the inexplicable fear of being compressed by the hallway, the house closing in. In this dark, who knows, it might be. “Henri? Why can't you come out?” I expect an irreverent answer, a one-liner, anything but what I get: a climactic thud. This wasn't worth it.

I start down the stairs.
Stop
, I hear.

“Henri?”

I look up. He's squinting right down at me from the third floor landing, like I'm an artifact under a blanket of ice or I've blended into the walls. His face is pushed together, hands on the banister. Not the usual joke, I don't think.

“What is it?” I ask. He shakes his head to clear something from it and retreats from the banister.

Back in the living room, neither Anastasio or the monsignor have moved, and their faces are pulled with exhaustion.

“White Whale can't come out to play. He's sick. Sure you can come back and jam some other time.”

“I know you,” the monsignor says. “Your family. You don't attend services anymore, then?” The lack of hostility in his voice makes this all the more annoying. A snort jets through my nostrils. Anastasio is on the cusp of interfering, but the monsignor beats him to the punch.