All Saints (20 page)

“I know, Bob. I know. It's just that, unless I'm up and doing something, making myself useful, I feel guilty. As soon as I sit down and try to relax, all the stuff I could be doing or should be doing crowds into my head and starts yelling at me. And there's only one way to make it stop.”

When she finishes vacuuming, she replaces the bag, even though the old one's not even half-full. Then she has to vacuum again, because replacing the bag makes dust. Everything makes dust, she thinks, wheeling the vacuum cleaner back toward the hall closet. Would she have to dust and vacuum in a brand new condo? Maybe somebody else comes in and does it. Maybe they have—what do you call it—concierge services.

Now you're talking.

“Bob, just leave it alone for a bit. Okay? I'm busy. I have to … ” She looks around. Sees the crystal cabinet. “I have to polish the crystal.”

She starts taking the goblets out of the cabinet and setting them on the dining-room table. They look like a little long-necked audience gathering to watch her—all clear, bland faces. When was the last time she used any of them? Book club, four months ago. They always have wine at the meetings. But she hasn't given a full out dinner party in years. The last time, even though Bob had been dead for ages, it still felt strange not to have him there before the guests arrived, telling her not to fuss, that everything would be fine.
Bob
, she always used to say,
we all have a purpose. I was put on this earth to fuss.
Then he'd pat her rear or squeeze her breast, saying,
I know why you were put on this earth, Baby,
and she would laugh and fight him off, struggling to get out of her apron because the doorbell was ringing.

She feather dusts the empty shelves of the crystal cabinet, erasing the pattern of dark circles the goblet bottoms have left. Then she takes a clean tea towel and polishes every piece, biggest to smallest. Red wine, white wine, sherry, liqueur.
She enjoys the squeak of the polishing and holds each piece up to the sunlight, imagining that it appreciates the attention.

She tried to start dating again, a year or so after Bob died. Her friends kept setting her up with this divorced brother-in-law or that single neighbour they were pretty sure wasn't gay. It wasn't that the men were complete jerks. They were nice enough. But they were—Gail had searched her mind for ages for the right word. Closed. Yes. And so was she. Something had closed over. Whenever she tried to imagine anything happening between her and the latest one, she saw the two of them bumping and rolling apart, like billiard balls.

With Bob, she could hardly tell where she ended and he began. The way they finished each other's sentences. And those episodes of her life that seemed to belong to him, that only he could report on. Like the time they went to buy a car, and got one of those bullshit salesmen who sat them down and leaned in all close and intimate and said that sure, he could just go ahead and sell them a car, but that wasn't why he was there. Bob loved telling the next bit, how Gail had leaned in all close and intimate herself, and said that sure, they could just sit there and listen to him not sell them a car, but that wasn't why
they
were there. Then she had gotten up and left, without even looking back to see if Bob was following her.

Gail has only tried to tell that story once by herself. It made her feel as if she was stealing Bob's material. She isn't much good at telling stories to begin with, and she kept waiting for him to interrupt. Remind her of bits she had left out.

One flesh. That's what they were. As if he did the breathing in and she did the breathing out. Or they only had one heartbeat, and he was
lub
and she was
dub
.

She gave up on dating. Told herself, Okay, that was it. You've had your big fat love. Anything else is bound to be thin and stringy.

She finishes polishing the crystal and puts it all back, trying not to clink each piece against its close-packed neighbours. The cabinet tinkles as if full of bells when she closes the door. Silence. Nothing left to do. And the rest of the day still ahead of her.

Maybe she should tell Simon about what's been happening to her. He is her employer, after all. He's bound to have noticed how driven she is lately, how she practically embraces anybody who comes through the church-office door these days, even the PPA's. Perpetual Pains in the Ass, as she explained to him when he first arrived. She's seen three rectors come and go, and she's tested each one with PPA. Simon laughed. And once he even deadpanned the code back to her, in the office, within hearing of a parishioner.

So maybe she should talk to him. Not make a big deal of it, not book an appointment or anything. Just, one morning when he comes down into the office to check his mail and touch base with her the way he does, say something like, “By the way, Bob's back.” To which, if he's a little distracted, he might say, “Oh? Back from where?” To which she would not say, “The dead,” but just wait a few seconds for the penny to drop.

No. She would never do that to Simon. It's still early days for him—not even five years. She's an old hand by comparison. He's probably still finding bits of Ruth here and there. A box in the back of a bathroom cupboard with one tampon still in it. A single earring down the back of a couch. They take their time taking their leave, the dead.

The first laundry she made herself do after Bob died, she found a pair of his shorts and two of his socks. He'd died early in the week, so there were no shirts or pants. She washed them and dried them and then wondered what to do with them. They weren't the kind of thing you donate. But they were too new to throw away. And she didn't want to keep them either. She had an old plaid shirt of his that she was sleeping in. But she couldn't imagine herself pulling his shorts on. Flopping around in his big old socks.

She put them in a shoebox. Watched herself cutting brown paper from the roll she always kept on hand. Wrapping it round. Tucking and taping. She wrote Bob's name and their—her—address on it. She was still in the house then. She took the wrapped shoebox to the post office and paid to send it regular mail. Three days later, the mailman knocked on the front door. She accepted the package, closed the door, then went and sat down in Bob's easy chair. After an hour or two she took a black magic marker and wrote DECEASED across Bob's name. Then she went down into the basement to get the garden spade.

She hasn't thought about that shoebox in years. She wonders if the people who bought the house ever dug up the petunia bed and thought,
What the hell
?

Up till now, that's qualified as the craziest she's ever been. Maybe she should tell Simon about it, as a sort of preamble to telling him about hearing Bob in her head, giving her advice. Or maybe she wouldn't need any kind of preamble. Simon told her once that he wished he had a buck for every time somebody had pleaded with him not to tell anybody what they were about to tell him, because it sounded so insane. Then, when they finally came out with their awful secret, it was all he could do not to move his lips along with them. They were sitting beside a loved one's hospital bed, so the story went. Or they were at a friend's funeral. Or they were just riding the subway, worrying themselves sick about maybe losing their job. And all at once they felt a presence. They didn't see or hear anything. It wasn't like a ghost. It was just someone there. And somehow they knew that, whoever or whatever it was, it was on their side. Rooting for them. But please, please, don't tell anybody, because people would think they were nuts.

“I'm their priest, Gail. And they're begging me to try to understand that they may have experienced something of a spiritual nature. They're practically apologizing to me. As if what happened to them has nothing to do with what I've been going on and on about, week after week.”

Gail would have to explain that what's been happening to her isn't quite in the same league. And before she even got to the part about Bob, she'd have to explain the context. The backstory, as they say.

She checks her watch. She's been standing in the middle of the living-room rug for twenty minutes. Staring into space.

This can't be the way it's supposed to be. There must be something the matter with her. Why isn't she out shopping in the kind of store she's always hurried past without even bothering to look in the window?

That's more like it, Gail.

“I just can't take it in, Bob.”

She never really believed she would win, even though she's played the same numbers every week for years, and always asks the same nice young Korean man in the variety store on the corner to check her ticket. She's watched that young man grow up behind the counter of his parents' store. Maybe that's why it felt so odd—wrong, somehow—to hear the special little tune that plays when there's a big win, and to see him look at the machine, then at the ticket, then finally at her. As if he'd never seen her before.

She still hasn't told anybody. The only ones who know are Bob, Mr. Bay Street and the nice young Korean man. She hasn't gone back to his store since that day. Of course, the lottery corporation knows too. They charged her ten percent as a penalty because she refused to be photographed or to have her name published in the papers. She could tell they expected her to cave in when she heard how much she would be losing. But losing was as unreal to her as winning. If she tried to write down the amount on the cheque they gave her, she would probably have gotten the number of zeroes wrong.

She has to get out. Breathe fresh air. Get some exercise. Right. Like she hasn't been working her ass off all morning.

You could join a health club, Gail. Work out on those machines they have. Sit and sip margaritas in one of those hot tubs.

“Right, Bob,” she says, pulling on her jacket and picking up her purse. “First take the weight off. Then put it back on. Sounds like a plan.”

Outside it's a typical April day, a bit raw and smelling of mud. She heads up the street, taking long strides, trying to look as if she knows where she's going. She passes the cleaners. Does she have anything to pick up? No. And it's too soon to take her winter coat in, even though it could use a clean. April can always turn nasty.

Gail. Take your coat to the cleaners. If it starts to snow again, buy another coat.

“I'm not going back for it now,” she mutters, and keeps walking. She hates to admit it, but Bob has a point. She doesn't know how to be rich. Now that she can have anything she wants, she can't seem to want anything at all.

But she's never been good at wanting things. Back before everything changed, when she used to think about how it would be if she won a fortune, all she could imagine doing was sleeping in. Not having to rush to get to work. Not having to work at all. Okay. So now she doesn't have to work. So why does the thought of quitting her job—

Every morning when she switches on the office light, the pieces of her day are waiting for her to assemble them. She gets the phone. Books rooms. Does the final tweak on
Saints Alive,
then prints it and posts it online
.
She revises the liturgical guide. Opens and files the paper mail. Replies to the e-mail. Answers questions when people drop in. Then there are the pew statistics to update, and the website to maintain. “I am the paperweight on the desk of life,” she intones whenever Simon kids her about maybe drawing chalk circles around her stapler and her scissors. “Nobody notices me till there's a high wind. Then they want me to be everywhere at once.” Still, nobody's indispensible. She could train a new person. Somebody younger. Just out of school. Up to their eyeballs in debt.

Except—

She stops in her tracks outside the grocery store. Damn it, she doesn't
want
to quit. Not that she loves her job. It's not about love. Or is it? Isn't love a matter of doing? Paying attention? The way she takes care of her plants? How often did she just stand still and
feel
herself loving Bob?

Not often enough.

She pulls a grocery cart from the line in the parking lot and wheels it through the IN door. She doesn't think she actually needs anything, but maybe once she's inside something or other will jog her memory.

There's another food drive on. She takes a brown paper bag from the stack, punches it open and makes a mental list: Dried pasta. Rice. Beans. Canned fruit. Canned vegetables. Peanut butter. Kraft dinner. Pabulum.

She turns first into the condiments aisle, looking for peanut butter. There is one part of her job that she loves, she reminds herself. She lifts down a jumbo jar of smooth and creamy. Puts it back. Takes a jar of chunky instead. More nourishing. She loves maintaining the archives. Scanning the old church records into the computer. Baptismal and marriage certificates going brown around the edges. Black and white photographs of Sunday School picnics and the Ladies' Auxiliary through the decades. Records of funerals and burials going back to 1858, when the place was built. She pauses, then reaches again for the creamy and puts it in the bag beside the chunky. What the hell. She can afford two jars of peanut butter. She wheels her cart out of condiments and into the canned goods aisle. She's very tender with those old bits of paper and film, letting them waft down onto the glass of the printer, then not quite closing the cover before pressing SCAN. All those people being born and getting married and having kids and dying. Touching base with All Saints at every milestone. Coming in, going out. As if the place was breathing. She lifts down a can of sliced peaches. Then one of mixed peas and carrots. The place
is
breathing, damn it. Maybe a bit shallowly, these days. But the little brown toad isn't dead yet. She reaches for a can of beans.