All Saints (3 page)

The dark is starting to lift. He can see the holes in the top button of Kelly's sweater, and the criss-cross of thread.

Is he flirting with professional suicide? Is that what this is about? The church's policy is clear about clergy not entering into relationships with parishioners. He appals himself sometimes with the silly risks he takes. Walking into her library that Monday morning. Pretending he didn't know it was the branch where she worked. Suggesting oh-so-casually that they go for lunch. And then that Sunday afternoon when he phoned her about a change to the proofs of the October
Saints Alive.
He didn't need to consult her. He just wanted to hear her voice. They got going about movies and books and things, and he heard himself say, “I could talk to you all day.” He tacked on an awkward, “But I'm afraid I have to go. Thanks so much for your time.” When he hung up, his heart was banging like a boy's.

 

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I crossed that question out, then put it back in, then crossed it out again. See?” She held up her notebook to show a page of scribbles, ending with the words
Do you believe in God?
“It's just, I've never asked one of you guys what you actually think about things. And sometimes I wonder. Because some Sunday mornings, I sit there in the pew and it all seems like a bunch of hooey. Sorry.”

“No. Don't be sorry,” he said automatically. The standard pastoral response when somebody blurts out an awkward truth, then apologizes for it. As if they think his collar is there to shield him from anything controversial. “It's an excellent question. The best possible question. And I'm very glad you asked it.”

So how in hell was he going to answer it?

He hadn't prayed since Ruth's death. He had conducted services, had mouthed the words of rituals. But when he tried to open himself and wait in silence, now that he had the time, now that he had so much less to worry about—

He used to pray constantly. For Ruth. About Ruth. In spite of Ruth. When she was happy, she sucked up all the happy air in the room. When she was sad, she sucked up all the sad air. There were times when he could hardly breathe, when he would beg God to help him remember that it wasn't her fault. That he must not blame her for sitting in a chair day after day, staring at the floor. Or for going off on one of her mad quests, maxing out their credit card on junk from the hobby store because she was going to make some marvellous, magnificent
thing
that was going to be worth millions and make them both rich and famous and—

Help me to remember
was his mantra.
Help me to understand
. That it was an illness. That she was not playing some fucking game. That he must not lose his temper and yell at her to stop. Just stop. Please. Just put a stop to it. The cycle. The never-ending up and down.

Ruth Ascended was a fearsome creature—eyes preternaturally bright, a crackle of energy around her like a halo. Ruth Ascended had no tolerance for ambiguity. Demanded to know what exactly he believed, and what exactly he expected her and everybody else to believe. Insisted on a clarity, an integrity, a sharpness of vision he could not give her. “You should have married a fundamentalist,” he joked once, in the early days before he understood. Before he had any idea.

Ruth Descended was not capable of belief. In anything. He begged her once, when she was on her way down but still reachable, to tell him what she saw opening up beneath her. Share it with him, so that he could pray into the void. Fill it up with God. She couldn't. One thing the descent robbed her of was coherent speech. Her words would get fewer and shorter, the sounds moving further back in her throat, becoming guttural, almost inaudible. A linguistic devolution. This time, when he asked her to tell him what she was seeing, where she was going, she rolled lightless eyes to meet his and opened her mouth. No sound came. No words. Just those eyes, and that mouth hanging empty.

But then, in between the highs and lows were those precious, fleeting bits of time when she was Ruth. Dear, funny Ruth. Neither dead cold nor white hot. Ruth he could touch and hold. And he would convince himself all over again that he could hold her and he could keep her and she would stay.

Did he believe in God?

At first, he had thought he must just be angry. He had counselled enough bereaved people over the years to know that anger with God had to be indulged before anything could heal. So he had waited for the hardness inside—so much like an adolescent sulking behind a slammed door—to soften. But it had not softened. And as the weeks and months went by he had begun to wonder if a door had even been slammed. If there was a door to slam. A face in which to slam it.

Kelly was waiting, pen poised over page.

“I find that, as I get older … ” he began. He would have to word this carefully. He was, in spite of everything, the new rector of All Saints. Whatever he said would serve to categorize him in the eyes of each member of his congregation. The one who took every word of the Bible literally and was anxious to know that he did too. The one who subscribed to a New Age Jesus that morphed conveniently into Buddha or Krishna or any other spiritual flavour of the month, and was anxious to know that he was just as laid back. And this one in front of him. An old hand who edits the newsletter. In the pew every Sunday. Yet possessed of enough negative capability to see it all sometimes as so much hooey.

“ … as I get older, I believe fewer things. But I believe them more deeply.” He paused to let her write that down. When she was finished, she looked back up at him, waiting. Giving him that grave, silent gaze he had seen when he told her his wife was dead.

“And I'm starting to wonder if the word ‘believe' shouldn't be retired in favour of the word ‘belove.' I didn't make that up, by the way,” he said, watching her scribble. “More than one theologian out there has written it far better than I can say it. But the idea of beloving, rather than believing. It gets you over that whole literalism hump which is so difficult for so many people, one way or another. And it captures the idea of relationship. Because it is an ongoing relationship. With its ups and downs, like any other. Its periods of anger and silence, followed by periods of intimacy and joy.”

 

“Especially … turning off my cell phone.”

He always comes round to that. The default detail. But better than nothing. How often has he said to a parishioner who was struggling with words, “Just tell me one thing. One small thing. Doesn't matter what it is. Just anything at all.” He remembers a woman finally bursting out, “I forgot to feed the cat this morning!” And from there they worked it round to her husband's affair with his dental assistant.

Now, as always, he imagines Kelly nodding and saying,
Okay. You turned off your cell phone. Then what happened?

“I took a nap.” He always comes round to that, too.

 

“All Saints is my first incumbency, Kelly.”
And it will be my last.

He had watched her putting the pieces together. She had asked him about his previous churches, and he had listed them for her—curate at St. Philip's-On-the-Hill, then associate priest at St. Paul's, then associate at St. Tim's and lately associate at St. Mark's. She had scribbled it all down then flushed slightly, looking at her notes. Obviously wondering how to frame the next question. Or whether to ask it at all.

“Most first-time rectors are a lot younger than fifty-eight,” he said, smiling as she visibly relaxed. “But I've no regrets. My talents and inclinations were always more pastoral than administrative. And I've worked with some wonderful clergy around the city. But I guess if you hang in long enough, eventually you get kicked upstairs.”

That was the official story. That, and his alleged lack of ambition. The truth of the matter, which everyone knew and no one spoke, was that if you were going to run a church, you'd better have the right kind of partner. A sturdy, reliable helpmeet. Who would neither chatter a mile a minute at parish events while people exchanged looks, nor slump in a chair, vacant-eyed and all but drooling, stoned on her latest medication.

The only one who ever wanted to talk about it, and once actually tried to talk about it, was Ruth. It was during one of her sweet, short respites from highs and lows. She sat him down. Calmly and gracefully, she started to apologize to him for wrecking his career. He cut her off. Would not hear what she was saying. Repeated the cant about his pastoral skills. His lack of ambition. Blamed himself for being timid. Lazy. Stupid. Lacking the balls for the job. After a while, she bent her head and stopped trying to protest. And she never brought the subject up again.

 

Turning off his cell phone. Lying down on the hotel bed for a quick nap before the evening reception. Not crimes. Not sins. But what he keeps coming back to. Probably because they are neither crimes nor sins.

“I left her alone?” he suggests to Kelly's sweater. “I cut myself off from her?” No. A step. Furthest he's gotten so far. But still not the essence. “I shouldn't have believed her? When she said she'd be all right? I should have insisted she come with me?”

The sweater still waits. He can see the pattern in the knitting round the collar now. And on the far wall, above the bookcase, the shape of Ruth's junk sculpture cross is dimly visible.

 

He went away for a weekend. One of those increasingly common—and increasingly desperate—“Whither the Church” conferences that are scheduled into the gap between Christmas and Lent. As a career associate, he was always the one who had to go to these things and take notes, sparing the rector to stay behind and do the real work. So, as he always did, he asked Ruth if she wanted to come. Preserving that courtesy between them—the illusion that her staying home alone was a real option.

For once, she said no. Stood her ground when he tried to argue with her. Insisted that he go without her. That she would be fine by herself for two nights and a day.

She was on new medication. It seemed to be working, but without the zombie side effects. She was as stable as she had been in years. Maybe because she was past the worst of menopause. They'd been told things might settle down once she was in her late forties, her early fifties. (They'd spent so much of their marriage sitting side by side on hard chairs in doctors' offices, being told what they could or could not expect, could or could not hope for.)

It was a long drive to the conference centre. The cold was so sharp he kept expecting the windshield to shatter with every gust of wind. In his room he unpacked and looked over the weekend agenda. A reception that night, followed by an open discussion about youth—“Cyberspace to Sunday School—Is There a Bridge?” He almost wept. He couldn't face it, after that drive. Not right away. So he turned off his cell phone. Just for a little while. Ruth would be fine. She had said she would be fine. Then he lay down on the bed for a nap. Just half an hour or so. That was all he needed.

 

A crescent of light is edging round the top button of Kelly's sweater. “It's not about leaving her alone,” Simon tells it. “Or the cell phone. Or the nap. Is it?”

No,
the sweater seems to agree.
It isn't.

They are all red herrings. They do not constitute his original sin.

 

“So what are your plans, as rector of All Saints?”

Do my time and get out
.

The facts, as he had explained them in his mind to his dead wife while he was packing, were these. Yes, he was moving up from associate to rector. Finally. But it was only happening because yet another priest had burned out, leaving an opening that had to be filled quickly. Yes, he would have his own parish. Finally. But it would be creaky old All Saints which was tiny and getting tinier by the Sunday. He doubted the bishop actually thought he was going to revive the place with his innovative ideas and commanding presence. More likely, it was a relatively painless way of getting rid of them both. Five or so years of ministering to a dwindling congregation would serve to end his career. And his retirement would make it easy for the diocese to turn a cool eye on All Saints, with its empty pews and emptier collection plates.

But that wasn't the right answer for the newsletter.

“My plans, Kelly, are first to touch base with each of the Sunday morning regulars. Ask them why they come, what they want and need from All Saints, how much of it they're actually getting, and how we can work together to build on that.”

Not exactly inspiring
, he thought, watching her write.
But doable
. The touching base business wouldn't take long. According to the records, Sunday numbers had rarely topped one hundred in the last five years and tended more often to hover around seventy-five.

There were no children at All Saints, and only a handful of teenagers. The biggest group were the old guard, the ones who had been baptised in the font some eighty years ago, confirmed on the chancel steps, married at the altar, then had followed their spouses' coffins out through the nave. They showed up every Sunday without fail to complain if the candles weren't lit or if the word
people
was substituted in the liturgy for the word
men
. Little changes terrified them. They were so close to the big one.

The only incoming were the so-called seekers. Late thirties and up. Just as terrified as the old guard, but for different reasons. They had stepped through the door of a church, some of them for the first time in their lives, because something had happened—a death, a divorce, a diagnosis, a downsizing. All of a sudden they were on their own, with no context, no frame of reference, no way to make it all mean something. Most of them disappeared after a few Sundays, as mysteriously as they had come. A few stayed on. The way Kelly had.