Authors: Ann Warner
Absence of Grace (42 page)
“Do they allow non-Catholics to visit?”
“Aren’t you Catholic?”
“I’m nothing, really.”
“We often had non-Catholic visitors at Resurrection.”
“I guess an abbey would be a good place to, well, to sort through problems?”
“It was for me. The silence helped, but I found it was also good to talk about things.”
Hailey gave up on the soup and began fiddling with her knife. Clen poured more wine. Hailey looked up from the patterns she was pressing into the tablecloth with the knife to smile briefly. “If I drink any more, I won’t get anything done the rest of the day.”
“If you get behind, I’ll come help.”
Hailey put the knife down and began rolling the wineglass between her hands as she looked out the window. “You say talk can help. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would help if I tell you why I came to see Gerrum that day.”
If Hailey was willing, Clen wasn’t going to put her hands over her ears.
Hailey’s voice started out strong but began to tremble. “Gerrum helped me find something out. The answer to a question...” She shuddered. “When I had the answer, at first I couldn’t bear it. Gerrum was the only one who knew anything about it, that’s why I came here.” Her eyes, huge and dark, gleamed with tears that overflowed and started down her cheeks. She looked so vulnerable, so young, so bereft, Clen understood exactly why Gerrum had ended up with her in his arms.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to do this, Hailey.”
“Yes. I think I do.” Hailey took a deep, shaky breath. “Gerrum was helping me find out what happened to my mother. She was killed...shot. My father was convicted, but I figured out my brother had something to do with it.” Her teeth clamped on her lip, turning it pale from the pressure. “I’d heard from my brother’s widow, you see. She told me he was hit by a train, and they have a son...” Hailey bent her head, sobbing.
Clen went to her, putting an arm awkwardly around the other woman’s hunched shoulders. The story was garbled, but Clen understood enough to know why Hailey asked Gerrum not to tell.
Hailey wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“That’s okay.” Clen patted Hailey’s shoulder and sat back down. “Take your time.”
“It’s all so confused, what happened. I don’t think my dad shot her, but he bought the gun, loaded it, and left it sitting. I hate him for that.”
“You have every right to be angry.”
For a time they sat without speaking, and Clen thought about her own anger, at God. As useless as Hailey’s anger, but with a much less rational basis.
“Somehow, we have to figure out how to stop being angry and forgive.”
Hailey looked up, perhaps in response to the tone of Clen’s voice. Clen stood and started water heating for tea. She turned back to the table to see Hailey had caught a beam of sunlight in the contents of her wineglass and was moving the small rainbow it produced in an arc on the table top.
“Do you think...that is, would you mind giving me the address for Resurrection? If I went there...” Hailey sighed. “Maybe I could find a way to forgive him.”
1986
During the winter, a For Rent sign appeared in ZimoviArt’s window. When Clen saw it, she went looking for Doreen to ask about it.
“Oh, Hailey went off without renewing the lease. Afterward, she wrote Bill saying she ain’t coming back. He just didn’t get the sign put up till yesterday.”
Clen was concerned about Hailey, and Doreen’s news added to her unease. She asked for Hailey’s address, but Bill had misplaced the letter.
In the spring, Clen’s second in Wrangell, she and Gerrum were married in the tribal house of the Tlingit clan. Gerrum’s mother and sister, Clen’s family, and their Wrangell friends were in attendance. When the season started, Clen went back to cooking at the lodge. It was a decision Gerrum encouraged, saying for him the busy summers made the quiet of the winters not just bearable, but something he looked forward to.
It wasn’t until autumn, a year after Hailey left Wrangell, that she finally wrote. Clen scanned the contents of the letter, letting out a sigh of relief and beginning to smile as she reread.
Hailey was fine. She’d spent time with Sister Mary John at Resurrection, and then she’d met her brother’s widow, and that had gone well. She hadn’t yet contacted her father, who was still in prison, but she thought even that might be possible, eventually.
She wrote that she’d found a job in a gallery in Portland. The owner planned to retire in two years. If all went well, Hailey was going to buy her out. And last, but not least, she said she hoped Clen would send work for the gallery.
Winter tightened its grip with long, dark days of howling wind and sleet spitting against the windows. Clen countered the gloom by adding the absent sun to her paintings—a slant of light along the side of a boat, a reflection from a window, a shimmer in the water. While she painted, Gerrum worked on a new novel.
She’d once read about a scientific experiment where people were placed in a cave with no way to measure the passage of day and night. After a time, they began to eat, sleep, and live to a different rhythm. It was what she and Gerrum were learning to do.
Loving Gerrum was making up for all that had gone wrong in her life. The lost years with Paul—wiped away as if they were a story she could no longer remember clearly. The older pain—the loss of Saint—healed over as well. And the sorrow over Josh’s death was no longer tinged with darkness. Her remaining regret was Thomasina, but perhaps a person wasn’t meant to reconcile every estrangement.
“Thomasina was the first person to call me Clen,” she told Gerrum as they cooked dinner together. “She told me once, I earned more demerits in six months than anyone else had in four years.”
Gerrum humphed. “And you sound extremely proud of it. What did she do? Rap your knuckles.”
“Of course not. And I was proud of it. To punish me, she made me think.” Memories flashed and the winter dark receded. “She asked me once how I’d spend the day, if I knew it was my last. I said I’d spend it in the chapel on my knees, begging forgiveness for all my transgressions.” The memory made Clen smile. “She told me I was being flipping flippant.”
Gerrum chuckled. “You still are, my love. But how did you answer the question?”
“Oh, you mean the last day one? I didn’t. There were too many things I wanted to do, and one day wasn’t going to be enough to accomplish any of them.”
Talking about Thomasina had brought tears to Clen’s eyes. She sniffed and swiped at her cheeks. “I loved her, you know. But when she disappointed me, I pushed her out of my life.”
“What did she do to disappoint you?”
“Shortly after I told her Joshua died, she went away. Without saying goodbye. She had her own troubles, but it didn’t matter to me. All I knew was I wanted her to stay and fix me.”
“What made you think she could do that?”
“I was young, remember. I figured if I could manage to tell her what I’d done, and she didn’t reject me...” Suddenly, Clen was having trouble getting all the air she needed. “I went to see her last year, when I left Wrangell. But Marymead was closed. And she’d died. So I never had a chance to tell her how sorry I was. For acting the way I did.”
Gerrum put his arms around her. “Don’t you think she knows?”
“How could she? I refused to communicate with her. For years.”
“You believe the spirit lives on, Clen. It means we’re never finished. We can always say we’re sorry.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Maybe not, but it’s still worth doing.” He continued to hold her. “You do realize if you’d confessed to Thomasina way back then, we might never have found each other.”
“You’re saying I had to make a whole bunch of bad decisions before I was able to get it right?”
“Something like that. I’ve made bad decisions of my own, you know. But I like very much where they’ve led me.”
“Is that a compliment, Mr. Kirsey?”
“Definitely. So tell me. Now that you’re older and wiser, would you have a different answer to how you’d spend your last day?”
“Fishing for a compliment, are we?”
“I take every bit of encouragement I can get.” His tone was light, but his expression was serious.
Her own sense of play evaporated as she looked at the man she’d married. “I’d spend it loving you,” she said, laying the words like a gift before him, thinking how simple it had become. Questions about life, where she was going, what she was going to do. Her answer to all of them—Gerrum.
And could he be right about all those wrong turns being necessary for her to reach this right place? Or maybe they hadn’t been wrong turns after all. Because now, looking back, she was beginning to see that her life, through all its twists and turnings, ups and downs, had been illuminated by grace. A grace she’d thought absent.
But now, in the gloom of an Alaskan winter, the gleam of that grace was visible, intertwined inextricably with the dark strands. The whole made more beautiful by that random shining.
Thank you so much for reading
Absence of Grace
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