The
shuffling steps grew louder, louder, and then stopped on the other
side of the door. How thick was the door? One inch? Two? Eight, ten,
twelve inches would not have been enough to keep the girl at bay.
Like Mary Guaire, Emmy Kydd had become both a part of Hance's life
and the story of his life—inescapable,
undeniable, insufferable.
But she was a student. His student. He had to say something to her.
If not, she would linger, worried, whining with her face instead of
her voice, alerting others either to her childishness or to his
unwillingness to deal with her. He rested his forehead against the
door, summoning the nerve to go out to her. The single knock on the
door could have been made on his own skull, not on the other side of
the panel that separated him from his prey.
“John?”
Hance
opened the door.
There
stood Dario, with
the expression of a student who knows he's missed one two many
classes and dares the professor to say something. He looked like a
student, too. Very young, very earnest, and very certain that what he
did was worthy of forgiveness, if the professor would only take the
time to examine every aspect of the incident and apply a little
empathy. His voice was
low. “Sorry, John, I tend to forget that not everyone has an
activist’s enthusiasm. Or obsession, as the case may be.”
Hance
hadn’t expected such humility and had steeled himself for argument.
This proof of remorse was a surprise. It sucked the desire to argue
out of him. No longer wary, he saw what he should have done all along
but had been too riled, too eager to have his own way, to realize.
“We'll ask the choir. If they want to do a benefit, then we’ll go
to the dean for approval. How does that sound?
Dario
was nodding—with
the enthusiasm of an activist, Hance noted. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry
we didn’t think of that in the first place.
“We’re
thinking of it now.” He didn’t enjoy the idea, but he was mad at
himself for not finding the middle ground before now. Yes, he was the
department chair and he had a certain amount of prerogative. But the
position also required diplomacy. He hadn’t been seeing much of
that in himself, lately. He couldn’t tell which he was losing, his
tact or his mind. Probably both, as his interactions with first Emmy
and now Dario suggested. He was tired of dealing with things that
didn’t matter to him anymore. It would be a relief to let the choir
decide at least that particular matter. Whatever they chose, he
resolved not to fight it. Let them have their own way. Let them taste
their hubris.
As
Hance expected and as Dario wished, the choir—Hance's
choir—
elected to make the Christmas concert the fund-raiser Dario needed.
They even decided to perform the concert not in the campus chapel, as
tradition would have it, but at Dario's church instead. The dean and
the administration gladly approved and thanked Father John and Father
Dario for giving the college the opportunity to support an important
humanitarian cause.
Emmy
never mentioned what had happened the day of her aborted lesson.
Neither did Hance. But he couldn’t help watching Emmy for signs
that she knew odd things about him. Her lessons with him became his
own lessons in agony and relief—agony
because he never knew what she would say to reveal her knowledge, and
relief when nothing emerged. She
spoke no more about her dream school for the homeless children.
Hance
was glad when he glanced among the faces gathering in the pews of
Dario's church the night of the concert and didn't see her. Her
absence implied that she at last realized her plan was unrealistic;
she had cast aside her fixation.
Celeste
Warren, who had helped set up the orchestra's music stands before the
musicians went out on the floor, caught him peeking through the door.
“Nice
tux, John,” she quipped, gesturing to the black suit with the Roman
collar. “You should wear black more often. You look like a rock
star.”
Still
smarting from the “You're young; you've got hair” remark with
which she had forced Emmy upon him as a voice student, Hance granted
her a look that said, “Thanks, but no more of that, eh?” She
smacked him lightly on the arm with a roll of sheet music. “Lighten
up. It's a Christmas party, not a funeral.”
“Yes,
Cel,” he grumbled, but Celeste was smiling.
Though
conscious of the work at hand, Hance during the performance was
disappointed that Emmy wasn't there. For all her delusions, she was
the kind of person who should have been there: the kind who had a
heart, not a self-serving reason to be there. Most of the audience,
he knew, lived in houses the size of small department stores, bought
more of what they wanted than what they needed, and supported causes
and events because it made them look good, not because they cared
about the recipients of their funds.
But
that was the kind that was there. From the rousing opener “Happy
Solomon,” from Handel's oratorio Solomon, to the medley of
Christmas carols at the end, they gave his musicians ovations that
signified they didn't care if a soloist sang off-key or if the
execution of some instrumental passages was not as precise as it
should have been. They were there for one reason: to be seen doing
something that was nice to be seen doing.
But
they were not the only audience. There was another, a group of
listeners made of people who couldn't afford the tickets to hear the
concert inside, who gathered beneath the windows, listening to the
music that reached them through the panes of stained and leaded
glass. They were the people for whom the party was being held. And
they were not allowed to go inside. Hance saw them as he stood at the
door, thanking the paying crowd for coming out on a winter's night.
It was a lovely night, too. Dry. Crisp. Seasoned with flurries that
sometimes grew into a teasing, more-earnest snow shower.
Shadowy
clumps were moving into the woods behind the church. Several of the
clumps broke away, waving their arms toward Hance.
“That
was beautiful, man!”
“God
bless you!”
“This
is the best Christmas ever!”
Drunk,
on drugs or demented, Hance thought as the men melted into the woods.
A
girl the cut and coloring of Emmy Kydd straggled behind, carrying a
small child and leading three more at her side. Was it really Emmy?
Hance
excused himself from the receiving line and strode after her. She
turned around before he spoke. “Come on! We're having a party.”
Should
he go? Was it a trap? Why would she trap him? He'd been in prison for
two centuries; neither man nor God could anything else or different
or more heinous to him. Besides, Emmy Kydd was a student, known to
staff and students, and he had just given a concert for the people
she so ingenuously wanted to help. How could he refuse to go? He
motioned behind him. “My coat.”
“You
won't need your coat. You'll see.” Like censer smoke curling into
the ceiling, she slipped into the woods.
Hance
stepped lively to keep up with her, knowing he needed his coat but
afraid he wouldn't find her if he went back for it. “What are these
children still doing here? I thought social services would have taken
them away by now.”
“They
don’t stay in the woods at night, if that's what you're thinking.
They sleep in the rectory.”
“Where
are they during the day?
“In
the rectory. Volunteers from the church mind them. I mind them, too.
And I teach them.”
“Even
the ones who don’t speak English?
“There’s
always someone around to translate. Besides, most of them already
know some English. They’re teaching me Spanish. And Creole.”
Hance
was about to ask her, in French, if she spoke French. But if she knew
he was fluent in French, she might try to persuade him to help her
teach the Creole speakers.
The
camp continued to be no formal outpost, but a haggard layout of
sheets and tarps thrown over shrubs, branches, construction refuse.
Hamburgers seethed on a propane grill tended by a bloated hooded
parka with fingerless mittens.
“Some
of the people here work for restaurants,” Emmy said, as if guessing
Hance was wondering where people who had nothing could have
appropriated raw ground beef. “I think it's old meat. But it's
okay. If it was bad, they wouldn't be cooking it.”
She
didn't seem to consider that raw meat really could be bad, but Hance
decided not to press the point. Emmy was confident, and he wouldn't
have let the stuff pass between his own lips, any way.
Still,
the sight of that bloated parka and its occupant, whose gender could
not be discerned, and the camp's overall sense of deprivation and
dilapidation, made him queasy Why did he ever allow himself to come
here? Was it because of Emmy, or was it because he wanted more people
to thank him for the concert, and to tell him how beautiful the music
was?
People
who had attended the concert were already calling for him to sit on
one of the low metal folding chairs around an oil barrel brimming
with flaming branches and paper refuse. As Emmy had promised, he
didn't need his overcoat; he'd have been uncomfortably warm. Sit any
closer, and the air from the homemade conflagration would have seared
his face.
Some
of the homeless were American; some, Hispanic and Haitian. Hance made
small talk with those who spoke English and smiled a lot with those
who did not. He was almost grateful for a sign that not everyone was
fascinated by him: A
couple of young women who seemed to have no interest in him sat on
the other side of the barrel, painting their nails from the same
bottle of polish. Funny, how women could still be enslaved to fashion
despite their poverty, when money was better spent on food, fuel,
clothing.
True,
they were sharing a bottle, and that bottle must have been bought, if
not lifted, from the kind of store that charged only a dollar or less
for merchandise that was old or expired or made of substances that
escaped regulation by the proper agencies. But why were they
bothering? To make themselves pretty? Why would they want to make
themselves pretty? To flirt with the men? To find a mate? What kind
of a mate could they find out in the woods, in a makeshift camp,
inhabited by makeshift people, behind a church?
Did
it matter? People were really animals—mammals
with teats for suckling, nails for clawing, toes for climbing, and
openings through which offspring were made and born. Their physical
attributes meant they were created for doing what all animals do: run
around naked, copulating at whim. No woman needed glitter to enhance
what happened in the region below her waist. A woman's beauty lay on
the inside. Not “inside” as in sweet or noble sentiments, but
actually within her body: in the silky, wet-hot passage between her
legs. In the ability to sustain the force of a man's repeated, rabid
incursions into that passage. In the desire to withstand the
explosions, male and female, that marked the end of those incursions.
Paint was color on a surface. No body ever shivered in ecstasy over a
facade.
The
arrival of the hamburgers dampened the speed of the conversation
around him, but not the good intentions behind it. Nobody seemed to
take offense as Hance politely refused the meat; he was offered hot
chocolate, and cupcakes that must have come from a place that carried
goods donated from supermarkets because they were past the “sell
by” date. The children sang Christmas carols in Spanish as well as
English.
One
of the children who had been dancing around Emmy on the way into the
woods, a boy of perhaps nine, held a guinea pig out to Hance, and
Hance, not knowing what else to do, took the little animal between
his hands. As soon as he touched it, the guinea pig started
squealing, squirming, and kicking out its little legs. The boy gasped
and scolded the pet, but Hance, saying, “No, no, no, it's all
right,” presumed the pet sensed what he was and his former penchant
for benefiting from the blood of small mammals. He held the small
fluffy mammal out to the boy, thinking to give it back, but it was
Emmy who took it, and held it to her chest, and stroked the top of
its head.
“Be
nice to Father John; he doesn't have any pets,” she said, and once
again the animal was placed in the guest of honor's hands. This time,
however, the guinea pig made no fuss. Hance followed Emmy's
directions and held it against his shoulder as if he were holding an
infant. Emmy scritched its head. Its legs straightened; it started to
purr. She backed away, telling Hance, “Your turn. Go on. He won't
bite.”
So
she thinks I'm afraid of animals? Hance thought. Perhaps she doesn't
know about me, after all.
He
did as commanded. (Why was it so easy to do as she commanded?) The
purring continued.
Tired
out by a long day of teaching that ended with conducting a
full-length concert, Hance stopped analyzing his surroundings and
gave in to the comfort of the fire and the contented creature at his
shoulder. The goings-on, he perceived, were the stuff of happy
gatherings among people everywhere. Food was cooked and consumed.
Children played and were corrected when they became too raucous.
Adults kidded each other, counseled each other, consoled each other.
Amid
it all, Hance experienced something he had always decried as a device
found only in fiction: an epiphany. It occurred to him, without
searching, that the homeless lived every day knowing they were
reviled and that someone wanted to punish them and make them suffer
for what they were, as he too had been punished and reviled and made
to suffer for what he himself was.
But
the homeless didn't reject or revile him, just as Dario, Evarista,
and Celeste Warren didn't reject or revile him. They accepted him as
a dog accepts its master. They looked to him for help. And who did he
himself look to for help? Nobody. He wanted no help. No man or woman
could help him. To help him, people would have to know the truth
about him. He was in no position to be helped. That too was part of
the punishment.
Why?
If people, who the Catechism stated were made in God’s image, could
treat him as one of their own, why, then, couldn’t the
representatives of God on earth? Weren’t they too made in God’s
image? Or had they come to love and honor their own images, as false
as the things the Israelites worshiped in the desert during the
Exodus
What
could Emmy and Cel and Dario and all the people in the camp that
night see that the Vatican could not? Or were they all as damned as
he, and knew they could never attain the peace, the happiness, the
perfection of soul they all desired?
A
blast of childish giggles slapped open his eyes.
The
guinea pig's owner was pointing at him, saying something excitedly to
a woman Hance presumed was the boy's mother.
“He
says the guinea pig has put a spell on you,” said Dario, who was
standing over him with his coat.
It
took Hance a moment to understand that he'd been so lost in thoughts
and fatigue that he never heard Dario join the party. He'd never
noticed himself nodding off, either. But he couldn't have been that
far gone: he was still holding the guinea pig. The mini-mammal's hind
legs stretched comfortably down his chest. “I'm sorry, I didn’t
think I was that tired.” He gave the animal to the boy, who swept
it to his own shoulder, smiling broadly. “Guess I should go. I've
got classes in the morning.”
The
campers were sorry to see him leave so early. He thanked them for
their hospitality, and they again thanked him for the concert.
With
no trace of shyness, Emmy asked him if he'd be driving by the
college.
His
home at the rectory was two towns over, but she needn't know. “Do
you need a ride back?”
“Would
that be okay?”
He
pulled the keys from the inner pocket of his overcoat. “Come on.”
She
said nothing until they were under way, and the woeful little vehicle
clanked along the sleepy streets. “Funny, isn't it? Here people
live in families, with roofs over their heads and heat within their
walls. But it's so dark and empty. It's the people back in the camp,
the people who have nothing, who are spending the night amid light
and music and each other. You'd think the people in these houses
would want to stay awake and enjoy what they have. I wonder: are they
sleeping, or are they huddling in fear, hiding from something they
don't understand and that they couldn't name even if they knew what
it was?"
“What
do you think?” Hance asked as uncertainty over what she knew about
him wormed its way through his psyche on a string of nausea.
“I
think they're afraid.” Emmy replied right away. “They're afraid
of losing everything they have. They're afraid of becoming not like
the people in the camp, but of becoming the
people in the camp."
She
should know. She herself had had a home. She herself had lost
everything. But did she consider herself among the people of that
camp? From the corner of his eye, Hance could tell she was looking
out the passenger window, pensive yet undefeated. “Did you ever
speak to Mother Evarista about setting up a school?”
“I'd
like to start a school, but after speaking with you, I thought maybe
it’s not the time. I’ll do what I’m doing at Father Dario’s
church. Something will come of it. I know. Just as I knew someone
would give me a ride home tonight."
“It
was an educated calculation. You knew people from the college were
going to be there tonight. Why didn’t you get a ride back with one
of the sisters?”
“They
were gone before I could ask."
“Why
didn’t you make plans with any of them before this evening?”
The
answer was a sigh and a glum confession: “I'm stupid, you know.”
Did
she want him to say she was too clever to be stupid? He was too tired
to indulge false modesty. He reminded her, instead, that all good
teachers had a streak of stupidity. Instead of dwelling upon it, they
strove to learn as much as they could and become better teachers.
She
embellished yet another sigh with words. “I'll be learning until
the end of the world.”
“That's
how it is with teachers. All of them. Even me.”
He
felt the long look upon him. “You're not saying that to make me
feel better?”
“Lying
is unethical. For professors ... for priests … for anyone, really.”
Emmy
was silent but far from still. Something was going on. She thought
she was hiding it, but she wasn't. He could tell. He could always
tell. But he cold never guess the cause. Was it something about him?
Something about herself? Should he ask? No. Not while he was driving.
The last thing he needed was to cause an accident and be found with a
young student in his car. Better to wait until he pulled into the
convent's driveway.
He
realized he'd lost his chance to say anything when Emmy opened the
door before the car came to a complete stop. “You went out of the
way to bring me home. I’m sorry. But I’m grateful. Strange, isn’t
it, how we can be sorry and thankful at the same time? Is there a
name for that sort of feeling?”
“I
don’t know,” Hance said, wondering if this is what Emmy had been
ruminating about
“If
there isn’t, then we’ve got to invent one. G’night!"
A
car that had passed them as they approached the convent came up
behind them. Hance, finding the timing curious, opened the door and
half stepped out. The car screeched to a stop, and out came Ev and
Sister Margaret. They both dashed to Emmy, whose face proclaimed to
him, “I told you so.”
Hance
had seen that look before, in all the paintings of the Finding of
Jesus in the Temple with the teachers. He waited for Emmy to say what
the boy Jesus had told his parents : “Why did you seek Me? Did you
not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’” But he
heard nothing. That look alone sufficed.
He
drove home and was asleep before his head hit the pillow, entranced
by the memory of Emmy’s quietly defiant face.
