Summer
Sometimes I caught Savannah watchin’ me play, and she’d get this look on her face like she’d seen God and she couldn’t understand why he looked so fuckin’ normal.
*
“Have you written that paper yet?” Bobby said.
“No.”
“Savannah asked me to tell you to get on it.”
“Why does she care so much?”
“You ever think maybe she sees what you don’t?”
“Imagine me at that school. I’ll be like some monkey using a tool. Heads will turn. Come see the redneck girl play cello. They’ll listen so hard they’ll reckon they hear my pain in every piece . . . echoes of my tainted life.”
“You worry too much.”
“It ain’t worryin’, Bobby.”
“So what is it?”
I shrugged. “I’ll die young. I won’t have to make these decisions.”
“That’s not a good plan.”
“People don’t plan to die young, it just happens. Some people ain’t made for this world.”
“Oh.”
“You reckon music can take you someplace else?” I said.
“Like to a fancy school in Maidenville?”
“No. I mean someplace you ain’t never heard of. You just catch a ride on the notes and let ’em carry you away.”
“Is that how you feel when you’re playin’?”
“Maybe. Maybe that’s how Savannah feels, when she closes her eyes, and when she opens them and they’re full of tears. Maybe she went somewhere during my piece. Maybe during Elgar it’s worse. The tears I mean.”
I glanced over and Bobby looked so sad, like he’d gone to that same place.
“Are you okay? You and Savannah, are the both of you doin’ all right?” I wanted him to tell me.
He rubbed his eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder.
I snatched it away when I saw Samson walk out of the office. He shot us a glance, looked away quick, then went out the main door.
“Marriage isn’t easy.”
“No.”
“Two people and one union.”
He put a hand on my knee.
I glanced at the sainted wall, at Madonna and her fat kid, rolls on his knees and ringlet hair. She’s got a hand up to the saints like she’s tryin’ to stop them from doin’ somethin’ bad. They’re saints though, they don’t do nothin’ bad.
I glanced down at his hand of glory so bold against my skin.
“Savannah is suffering,” he said.
He squeezed my thigh gently.
I was calm; I’d learned to slow my breathin’. I counted in my head.
“Marriage . . . the imbalance of rights and obligations. I watch them, the brides and the grooms, their faces and their unknowin’ smiles as I join them together. Imagine if you could hold on to that.”
I nodded and wondered if there was a difference between innocence and naivety.
“You’re not supposed to hinder . . . the children, they belong in the kingdom of heaven. I try to believe again. I do the Christian Youth thing. I drive out to the churches and talk to the teens. The Green Acres Baptists, the Mission, Valedale.”
I swallowed.
He shook his head, like he was sad or mad. He inched his hand higher and glanced at the door. I never thought about kissin’ him, or holdin’ him, it went beyond touch and feel and feelin’. There’s another level, below, so much of life piled on top I reckon most don’t even know it exists.
“Does being a pastor mean I don’t belong to me anymore?” he said.
I wanted to give the right answer, the one that wouldn’t see him snatch his hand away.
There’s a piece of music, Bach, his Cello Suite No. 1, there’s a point at the end of the prelude where it climbs so high I know what death feels like, so acute and so delicate, that end to a life so ordinary it barely exists.
“I count days that are short and endless.”
Another inch, under my skirt now. Then he stopped for a long while.
I reached for my book and held it up over my lap. The Call of the Wild. I thought of Buck and turnin’ feral, and I thought maybe civility should’ve been on that list beside envy and pride.
“You ever wonder where life is being lived?” he said.
“Yeah.”
Another inch. I held my breath till I saw light but no dark.
I stared at the pages. Words turn funny if you look at them long enough. Sticks and curves and dots.
“I don’t want to be sorry. I see sorrow. I see it in the broke faces. They’re so lost. They come to me thinkin’ they’re found again.”
“You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for.”
“What I did and what I’ll do.”
I held the book steady as he moved his hand across and rested it firm between my legs. I thought I was cool but I was hot. He had to feel it. My heart drummed loud enough to shake the walls of the old church. I saw it crumble and I saw it ruin, and I wondered about Augustine and hereditary guilt ’cause there was comfort in knowin’ we’d burn before we even took breath.
“I think about never meetin’ you,” he said. “If I hadn’t come to Grace. You find your own crossroads out there, or it finds you.”
“I don’t want to be sad,” I said, my throat so dry.
“The lows make the highs.”
“So it’s important to make the highs count.”
The lightest rub. I could’ve died. That edge I’d always been scared of, that edge where my sister lived her life.
“We’re supposed to set our minds on things above.”
“That means there’s no one watchin’ below.”
Back and forth and light and strong. The book was shakin’, I did my best to grip it tight.
“Stone and wood. Sometimes that’s all this is. This place. Human hands sculpting somethin’. What do you see?”
He didn’t know how hard it was to form words. “I see stone and wood and nothin’ more.”
The book hid me, when I felt my underwear slide and when I felt his skin against mine, I kept it in place. He traced a path across light hair, gently feeling around, like he was lost.
“I see life in differing shades of sunken color. There’s no red or yellow. Maybe there was before but before has happened. Sometimes I wish I was dead but I know it will come.”
I dipped the book as he found me.
I swallowed a cry. I tried not to move but couldn’t.
He didn’t stop, just kept the same stroke over and over, like he didn’t know that he was killin’ all that went before.
“It is beautiful though, the stone and wood. Whatever they meant, whoever they built it for, they achieved somethin’ in a world of nothin’.”
“Bobby,” I said, breathless.
I didn’t know why I was sayin’ his name.
“They made a thing of beauty.”
He pushed.
“Bobby.”
I looked at Abraham and the three angels, and I saw Sarah laughin’ ’cause she don’t believe it’s real.
“Bobby,” I couldn’t barely speak.
I tipped over. I leaned into him, stifling a cry in his shoulder. He didn’t stop. I shook, my whole body from my toes to my halo.
“So beautiful I can’t even bear it sometimes.”