No Story to Tell (42 page)

She stood up, crossed to her rocking chair and sat down. She did not rock. Did not wait. Just sat quiet and empty watching out the window as creation slowly reversed itself. Softly, she stroked the envelope until her hands found their way inside.

Her fingers traced the lettering as she read it. Strong, slanted consonants and soft, feminine vowels joined together with promises of true love, godly unions and happiness eternal. Reaching under her chair she pulled long handled, sharp scissors from her knitting bag. She began to make quick, intricate cuts. Consumed with her task she didn’t notice when she cut herself and her blood was smeared along the sharp, tight creases and folds. She worked intensely until her shoulders began to ache so convincingly that she had to stop. In her lap lay a tiny square box and an exquisite origami crane. Taking the lid off of the box, she placed the bird inside and tried gently to make it fit until finally her patience failed her and, taking it back out, she clipped short its wings and forced it into place.

It was raining. Not a driving, healthy rain but a sick, miserable drizzle that had eventually overwhelmed the potholes and transformed the fine, powdery road into a greasy, gray paste. As they approached the church, Victoria was surprised to see a steady stream of muddy vehicles pouring into the yard as the valley’s inhabitants, most of whom had forgotten Bobby’s mother in her life, now came out to remember her in her death. She kept her eyes riveted to her feet as Bobby slopped the truck through the puddles and bounced it to a stop. As usual they were running late and Bobby immediately rushed off into the church, leaving her standing alone as she struggled with her umbrella. Shielding herself from curious stares, she held her umbrella low and made her way into the vestibule. Pastor Jack’s wife spotted her immediately and waved pointedly from across the room. She was a hawkish woman, brittle as last week’s toast, and she fit no one’s ideal of what a good pastor’s wife should be. As if to counteract this sentiment, she’d taken to fluttering her lashes helplessly, as though she had a constant irritant in both her eyes. Her smile, perfect, open and painted, never left her face, and Victoria wondered if she removed it at night and dropped it into a glass on her bedside table along with her false teeth. Despite her attempts to appear otherwise, no one ever had any illusions that a hand other than hers puppeteered Pastor Jack’s every move.

“Well, well, well. And how are you doing, Vic? Tsk. Wasn’t it just a pity about Mrs. Lackey’s passing?” gushed Pastor Jack’s wife. She grabbed Victoria’s cold hand, patting it vigorously as if checking for life. “And how are you yourself, dear? After the accident and all? Trust you’re doing better now?” She crushed her face into a question mark as she left off, hoping Victoria would fill in the story.

Victoria returned a stiff nod. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Oh, well praise the Lord, dear. Praise the Lord. Our ladies group prayed for you every Wednesday, you know. Not a Wednesday went by when we didn’t raise our voices to the throne and beseech the Father on your behalf.”

“Oh. Well, thank you,” Victoria offered dryly. She knew the more likely truth was that they had bantered around the latest gossip about her, then quickly offered up a prayer to appease their guilt. Nausea was beginning to disrupt her stomach again and she gently tried to retract her hand, but the older woman held on.

“And so . . . what was it that happened again, dear? Goodness sake, you hear so many different things. Most of it such nonsense.” She shook her head and fluttered her lashes with manic exaggeration.

“Nothing happened,” Victoria shot back coldly.

Pastor Jack’s wife dropped her hold on Victoria’s hand and leaned back slightly. “Oh. Well, of course I wasn’t meaning to imply anything . . . um, well. Well, you’re sure looking good now, anyhow. Isn’t she, Sara?” she said to an elderly woman just passing by.

“Ay? What’s that?” crackled the old lady as stiff fingers fumbled with her hearing aid. “What’s that you say?”

“I said—” intoned Pastor Jack’s wife loudly enough to draw several stares, “—that she’s looking well, now. Since the accident. She’s looking much better now. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Accident? Who had an accident?”

Victoria shifted uncomfortably as the women’s loud interchange attracted several, rather obvious, eavesdroppers.

“Tsk. Well, Vic did, Sara. Down by the bend in the river. She drove off the bridge. Remember?”

“Drove off the bridge?”

“Yes. Down by the gravel bed in the river.”

“Well,” the older woman hrumphed. “Now what in tarnation did she do that for?”

Pastor Jack’s wife again seized Victoria’s hand and patted it consolingly as she whispered below the other woman’s hearing. “Don’t pay her no mind, dear. She’s getting a little daft in her old age.”

“Hrumpff! I most certainly am not getting daft!”

“Oh. No, no, nooo. I didn’t say daft, Sara. I said deaf. And that’s mostly just the fault of your hearing aid not working so well sometimes. Remind me to check those batteries for you.” She slipped Victoria a sly wink as she took the older lady’s hand and began to pat it like the withered back of a spotted, yellow frog.

“Now, anyhow, Vic, we just want to welcome you to our little church and to invite you to join our Wednesday night prayer group.” She paused an extended moment as she melted her face into an image of pained compassion. “Just remember dear, the Lord is faithful to those who worship him and no matter what you may have done . . . His grace is sufficient for all, and all one needs to do is throw all of themselves, mind, body and soul at the Father’s feet and beg for forgiveness. Praise God!” She ended with an inspirational glance at the vestibule’s stained ceiling, and for a moment Victoria suppressed the urge to applaud.

Instead, she excused herself. What her mind, body and soul were begging for right now was a washroom. Pressing the bathroom door open, she was relieved to find both cubicles empty. She flipped down the toilet lid, sat on it and locked the door. Resting her head in her hands, she closed her eyes and tried to will the swirl in her stomach down. Failing to do so, she flew onto her feet, smashed open the lid and erupted with painful dry heaves. Sitting back down again, she loosened the button of her skirt and ran a soothing hand over her stomach. Cold pricks of sweat glistened on her forehead. She had to get back upstairs and find Bobby. Make sure he didn’t drink too much before he had to pack his mother’s coffin across the slippery churchyard to the grave site. Although he tried to hide it, his mother’s death had winded him like an unexpected punch, his steady injections of alcohol deepening his moroseness.

An organ began to wheeze a dusty hymn and she looked at her watch, trying to calculate how long it would take to bury the dead. Not long at all if most people had their way, she knew, but Pastor Jack rarely saw fresh faces to preach at and was sure to take full advantage of the situation. She stiffened at the sudden irritated squeak of the bathroom door, instinctively pulling her feet up from the floor so no one could see she was there. She followed the other person’s movements with her ears, heard their shuffling about, opening and closing cupboard doors, then stop. The footsteps came closer and Victoria held onto her breath as she waited for the woman to enter the plywood cubicle next to her but instead she started as a hard push rattled her own door against its lock.

She sat very still, her legs cramping against the discomfort of their position and knowing it was only a matter of time before she had to set them back down. Closing her eyes, she willed the other woman to use the empty toilet and leave. She had no desire to talk to anyone, even less so to have to try to explain why she was holed up in the toilet with both feet off the floor. The other woman, however, appeared to be making no effort to either use the toilet or leave but rather seemed to have positioned herself outside the cubicle to wait and see who would come out of it. Her thighs beginning to scream, Victoria edged herself over to peek through the gap in the door and was shocked to meet two shiny brown eyes staring in at her. She darted away in an instinctive movement that came far too late. Clearly she had been seen, and now felt as trapped as a rabbit in a one-way hole. In a somewhat belated attempt to save face, she coughed, grabbed some toilet paper and blew her nose loudly.

“Who’s that in there?” the eye’s voice demanded.

Victoria ignored the request, struggled to refasten her skirt button, wiped the black smudges under her eyes into gray ones, and opened the door.

“Oh,” Pearl said. “Just you. What you doing hiding in there?”

“I wasn’t hiding, Pearl,” Victoria countered peevishly. “I was blowing my nose. What are you doing here? Cleaning up?”

Pearl stepped her stick legs in front of her bag, which sat on the floor, straining with its bounty of pilfered toilet paper rolls. “Naw, I came in to check my makeup.” She snorted with sour humor. “You don’t look so good.”

“Well, thank you, Pearl. Neither do you. Could you move please, so I can wash my hands?”

“Be my guest,” Pearl said, gesturing to the sink behind her without budging an inch. She looked at Victoria with unflinching intensity. “Yup, Pastor Jack’s wife was right. I figured she was carrying on a bit but, nope . . . you really do look like hell. What’s wrong with ya, anyhow? Got cancer or something?”

“No, Pearl. I don’t. Just picked up a flu bug, that’s all.”

Pearl visibly shrunk, pulling herself away. “Well, don’t be breathing no germs on me, then. I sure as hell don’t want it.”

Victoria moved toward the sink and Pearl, grabbing her bag up quickly, sidestepped out of the way.

“Too bad about the old girl, hey?”

Victoria looked glassily into the mirror, not comprehending a word being said as waves of nausea again started to spill over her.

“About Mrs. Lackey,” Pearl offered again loudly, thinking Victoria hadn’t heard her. “It’s too bad, hey? About what happened to her.”

“What’s so bad about it? She’d have been better off if she died years ago. Laying there in that home just waiting for life to go by—”

Pearl’s face combusted with disbelief. “Well, ain’t that a nice thing to say.”

Victoria looked at Pearl’s combative position in the mirror. It irritated her, this sudden misplaced concern, but she was far too tired to care. She silently pushed past Pearl and escaped up the stairs.

Pastor Jack had droned on through the Beatitudes and several more hymns, threatened all the nonchurchgoers with a fate worse than hell, then summed up by inviting everyone to join him in the church basement for coffee, cakes and tea. She barely made it through the service, the church wreaking of old wax and mildew and the sweaty armpits of men unaccustomed to wearing suits. She excused herself abruptly and hurried back downstairs. Tongues wagged in the pews, pleased to see her obvious grief at losing her mother-in-law. She leaned her head against the bathroom divider and listened to the wooden shuffle as a hundred dragging feet slowly escorted her mother-in-law’s carcass outside to the graveyard. She marveled at the refining effect that could be delivered by a simple pine facade. She knew from memory the slick winding path that rode up over a small hill and out of sight, then ended at a ratty patch of unkempt field sprouting a harvest of head stones. And that Bobby and the other pallbearers would make a big performance about almost falling on the rain-greased ground and end up engaged in a contest of muscles, shoveling mud back into the grave as though their very lives depended on it. Soon she heard the tramping of feet as the first few returned back to the church. Before long she again heard the bathroom door squeak open, ushering in the smells of syrupy perfume, fresh coffee and the excited chatter of several female voices. Taking a breath to brace herself, Victoria opened the cubicle door and stepped to the sink. Dropped conversations hung on the air as quick looks were slipped from eye to eye behind her back. Rose stood next to the door, and Victoria quickly averted her eyes when their gaze met.

“Oh! It was you in there, Vic. Imagine that,” one of the women said. “We were just saying how nice it was to see you out again. Did you enjoy the service?”

“Hmm,” Victoria murmured as she angled her way toward the door.

“Well, that’s good. Quite an awful thing that spill you had.”

The always-helpful Millie Miller rushed to gather up some paper towel and handed it to Victoria to dry her hands.

“Thank you, Millie.”

“Don’t run off, Vic. Okay? I have something for you.”

“For me?” Victoria asked warily, the room growing suspiciously quiet around her.

Millie nodded enthusiastically, red curls bobbing like rusty springs across her shoulders. “It’s upstairs in my coat. Are you going up or should I bring it down?”

“No, no. I’ll come up with you,” Victoria rushed, seeing a clear route free of all the questions she felt stirring up around her.

Slipping out the door, Rose somehow attached herself along by engaging Millie in a question about the girls. Turning the landing halfway up the stairs, they were met by Doris, half encircling her older sister, who she was slowly helping down the stairs. Mrs. Spiller had been forcibly moved into the home weeks before, and the changes were obvious. Her white hair was neatly split down the center and pinned into place by two bobby pins, and she was dressed in a matching newborn-girl pink sweater-and-slacks set. The two of them were thrown off balance by the sudden encounter and almost toppled down the stairs.