All Saints (24 page)

“Kelly.”

Pete nods, thinking
Brian.
Brian Bellingham.
He can feel the name on his tongue, nudging against the inner seam of his lips. There's a box of Kleenex on Simon's desk. Do people still sometimes come to a priest instead of going to see a psychiatrist? He can imagine Simon being detached, professional. He can see him putting an arm around someone, too. Pulling them close. Pressing their face into his shoulder. “Could I say something?”

“Please do.”

“Maybe what happened to you—and to me—is just part of the story. That's something I used to say to the high-school kids I taught. They'd tell me stuff—a drama teacher hears all kinds of things. Stuff about their parents fighting. Heading for divorce. Or the love of their life dumping them for their best friend. All the hell of being a teenager. And when they were done, I'd tell them to look at their life as a story. They're the protagonist. They don't know how the story's going to end. Or even what's going to happen next. And they can count on a certain amount of shit, because it would be a pretty boring story without it. But no matter what happens, they're still the protagonist. They're the hero.”

“Thanks. I don't feel much like a hero at the moment. But thanks.”

Pete picks the prayer book back up. “Maybe now we can get started?”

Simon nods and opens his own copy. “We've got a couple of stage directions up front. ‘
Unless there be special cause to the contrary, the first part of the Service shall take place in the Church.'
Well, I'd say we have special cause to the contrary, so here we are. Just let me grab some holy hardware.” He stands and goes across the room to a cabinet. Pete watches him. All of a sudden he's very attuned, sensually. The slope of Simon's shoulder. The hardness of the chair seat. The smells of varnish and incense.

Simon comes back, carrying a brass bowl. “This is what we put the ashes in on Ash Wednesday.”

Pete takes a faded brown envelope out of his jacket pocket and puts it in the bowl.

Simon looks at it. “I have to ask. What kind of marks did Miss Vipond give you?”

“Have a look.”

Simon picks up the report card and opens it. “Well, your reading and spelling were pretty good. Your arithmetic not so much. Oh, here's something.
Deportment excellent.
”

“That means a lot coming from Alice Vipond.”

Simon reads aloud, “
Peter sometimes gets upset about rather unimportant matters.
”

“Yeah. I was a little perfectionist. Still am.”

Simon smiles, slipping the report card back inside its envelope and putting it in the bowl. “These are the letters I got from Alice,” he says, pulling a brown paper bag out of his bottom drawer and tipping the contents into the bowl. He looks at Pete. “Do you want to—”

“Read what she said about me? I thought you'd never ask.”

Simon sorts through the letters, checking the dates. He unfolds one of them and hands it to Pete.

Pete reads the passage silently. “
There was one child absent that day—Peter Aspinall. I remember looking at his name on the list as I took attendance. Peter Aspinall. Not thinking, “He alone will live,” or “Why him and not some other,” or anything melodramatic like that. No, just looking at it. Thinking it curious that by sheer accident—a sniffle or slight fever—he would escape.

Odd little boy, as I remember. Bright enough. But a touch of the fay, as we used to say. The Grade Twos had begun to notice him too. His difference. Not in a cruel or teasing way. No, that would come in Grade Three. I might have looked out my window the next year and seen Peter Aspinall trapped inside a screeching, taunting circle of his peers.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pete breathes. He looks at Simon and says, “Sorry.”

“It's okay. I say all the words.”

Pete folds the letter back up, remembering the big brothers and sisters of the vanished Grade Twos.
Why you, Pee-ter?
In his ear.
Yeah, why you, you little sissy?
In his other ear. Circling him. He turns to one but now they're behind him. And the one that was behind him—

He puts the letter in the bowl.

Simon looks at his prayer book and says, “The service continues over the page. What say we do this next part responsively?” He reads aloud: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

He nods to Pete, who reads the next passage: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”

Simon responds, “Out of the deeps have I called unto thee, O Lord; hear my voice. O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, who may abide it? But there is forgiveness with thee; therefore shalt thou be feared.”

He stops reading and turns two pages. “I'm cherry-picking a bit here. What follows is a bunch of pretty orthodox stuff. Death and resurrection and the last trumpet and all that. I haven't believed any of it for years. What happens when we die. Whether there's an afterlife. Reward and punishment. I used to think I had some answers, but now it's all just as mysterious to me as it is to anybody else. And I'm pretty sure Alice would have made mincemeat out of it too. So I think we should cut to the chase. When we come to the bit about those we love but see no longer, I can read out the names of the kids, or you can, or we can alternate, or maybe—”

“There's one more name.”

Simon picks up his pen.

“No. I'll write it. Just—give me a minute. ”

Simon puts the pen back down. Waits.
All I've learned,
he thinks,
in all the years, is when to shut up and listen.

Pete begins, “We lived next door to each other. Walked to school together. Played with each other at recess. Our desks were close enough to pass stuff back and forth.”

But there was more. There was the way Brian would be waiting for him on the sidewalk every morning, too. His eyes would go round and his whole face would lift when Pete came out the door. And they would rub and bump and jostle each other as they walked side by side—not deliberately, just letting it happen. And now and then Brian would catch sight of something, and grab Pete's hand and say,
Look! There!

“We had a fight. After school at his house. The night before. Just a stupid little-boy fight over his toy crane that I was jealous of. I was still mad at him in the morning so I played sick. That's why I'm alive. Because I picked a fight with my best friend, then lied to my mother.”

“Have you ever told anybody else that you weren't really sick?”

Pete shakes his head.

Simon pushes the pad and pen across the desk. After a long moment, Pete picks up the pen and writes,
Brian Bellingham.

“Lord, we beseech thee,” Simon reads again from the prayer book, “look with compassion upon those who are now in sorrow and affliction; comfort them with thy gracious consolations; make them know that all things work together for good. Give rest to thy servants, where sorrow and pain are no more. We pray to thee for those whom we love but see no longer.”

He puts the prayer book aside and pulls the list of names back toward him. “Sharon Fulton. Andrew Stenkowski … ” He reads the whole list, ending with “Sammy Goldsmith.” Then he looks up at Pete. Would you like to say this last one?”

Pete nods. Says, “Brian.” His mouth is dry. He clears his throat. “Bellingham.”

Simon puts the list of names in the bowl along with the report card and letters. He did not reread Alice's correspondence prior to this meeting. He has her last words to him memorized.
By allowing me this last missive, Simon, you are, so to speak, placing the ball in your own court. Another way of expressing it would be that you are placing yourself in my debt. For you will always owe me a letter. And I will never cease to wait for one. You engaged with me, Simon. And as long as I live, you will never be able to fully disengage from me.

He rummages in his desk drawer for a book of matches, strikes one and touches the flame to the corner of a letter. “Should maybe have scrunched things up a bit,” he says. “Made some air spaces.” But the paper blackens and catches, then spreads its flame to the rest.

He reads aloud again from the prayer book, “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to receive unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed: we therefore commit her body to be consumed by fire.” He and Pete sit breathing the last of the smoke, watching the mass burn down.

When nothing but ash remains, Simon says, “There's a tiny old graveyard out back of the church. Bring your prayer book And don't forget your coat. Oops. Flashlight. I'm a fine one to talk.” He rummages in his desk.

They leave the office, go back down the steps and out into the dark. The air smells damp. Pete can just make out the shapes of small white gravestones tilting at different angles.

Simon puts the bowl on the ground, trains the flashlight on his prayer book and reads, “We commit her ashes to their resting place; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

He hands the flashlight to Pete, who reads, “Rest eternal grant unto her, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon her.”

Simon picks the bowl back up. Offers it to Pete, who takes a pinch of ash and scatters it into the dark. Simon scatters some, then Pete. They take turns until it's gone. Then Simon upends the bowl and taps it gently. Pete turns the flashlight off. They stand side by side in the dark and the silence.

Lines from a poem go through Simon's mind—
The grave's a fine and private place,
but none, I think, do there embrace.
He feels again that odd compulsion to take Pete in his arms.

Pete is trying to remember if he and Brian ever hugged each other or kissed, the way little boys sometimes do. He is very aware of Simon beside him. His height. The way his own face would just fit against the priest's shoulder.

“And here comes the rain,” Simon says, looking up. Pete looks up too, feeling the cold drops on his face. He raises his hand to wipe them away, then lowers it. He just stands, eyes closed. Letting it come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

 

 

I wish to thank
Biblioasis,
The New Quarterly
, The Porcupine's Quill and Thomas Allen Publishers for recommending this collection of stories
for Ontario Arts Council Writers' Reserve grants. I am also grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for a Works In Progress grant.

Many thanks to the friends and colleagues who read the book in manuscript form: Kim Aubrey, Mike Barnes, Elaine Batcher, Mary Borsky, Melinda Burns, Andrew Leith Macrae and Richard Tanner. Finally, I owe much to Dan Wells and John Metcalf of Biblioasis, for their good faith and good humour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

 

Photo: Andrew Leith Macrae

 

K.D. Miller
is the author of three previous short story collections,
Give Me Your Answer
,
A Litany in Time of Plague
, and
­ The Other Voice
, as well as an essay collection (
Holy Writ
) and a novel (
Brown Dwarf
). Her work has twice been collected in
The Journey Prize Anthology
and
Best Canadian Stories
, and she has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for Fiction. She lives and writes in Toronto.