Sweet Jesus (3 page)

Norm tossed her a pair of thin white cotton gloves.

What are these for?

So you don’t cut your hands when you’re gutting the animal, he said.

You think we’ll get one now?

You never know.

Norm carried the rifle and a cracked waxed army surplus bag that was heavy for its size. Inside were bandages and a lighter in an old tobacco tin, a compass, topographical map, a small axe, hunting knife, whetstone, disassembled handsaw, and a yellow cardboard pack of rifle cartridges. The shells were for a Lee-Enfield .303 – an English rifle made in 1943. When
Hannah called home before leaving and happened to mention to her father what kind of gun they’d be hunting with, Tim Crowe had said, That’s the same gun I used as a fifteen-year-old cadet in the British Army. I used to win sharpshooting competitions. And Hannah had said, I wonder if it’s in the blood.

They followed the razed path beneath the power lines, then headed into the woods. Norm gave Hannah the gun and she didn’t hand it back. They saw nothing, and after a while the shooting and the anticipation and the physical exertion of carrying a twelve-pound rifle and the joyful privacy of walking where there were no trails and the clarity of the bright sunshine on the red grass and the brittle grey branches of dead trees and the dark green fur of the stunted junipers made them feel very alive.

We haven’t talked about you beating me up for a long time, Hannah said.

Norm had come up behind her. He was unbuckling his belt.

They had got lost inside a fantasy, in the early days of their relationship, born of a desire to merge, to obliterate and dominate each other. It was, for Hannah, a way of exploring the rare temptation to surrender, of wanting to be broken open, but not knowing how, short of an act of violence. I wanted you to drag me through the woods by my hair, she said, remember? We talked about coming to a place like this and doing it.

Norm dropped his pants and Hannah heard the clink of .303 cartridges in the front pocket of his jeans. She had her hands on the scratchy bark of a fallen tree.

I wanted you to yank me over logs, and the sound of breaking twigs. I wanted my skin to be cold and scratched and streaked with dirt and pine needles.

You’d be naked, Norm said, but I’d have my clothes on. Like in that film by Buñuel.

Naked and tied to a tree and totally vulnerable, Hannah said, breathing heavily through her mouth. She was getting close and then Norm pulled out and came on the ground and it was like pulling a trampoline out from under someone in mid-air and,
God
, why won’t he come in me? And then the frustration and the unachieved climax and the throbbing nub of her arousal pulsing furiously.

Hannah sank to her knees and rolled over onto her back. The faint warmth of the sun on her belly. Legs bound at the ankles by her pants. One hand above her head. I wanted you to bring a couple of friends, she said, arching her back and pressing her ass into the moss. Couple of guys just sitting around smoking roll-ups and spitting tobacco on the ground. Gorgeous young men in parkas, with fur-lined hoods.

They could take turns, Norm said, picking up the rifle.

C
onnie Foster wanted to wear white. That’s why she was on her knees, digging through a laundry basket full of clean clothes, trying to find her yoga pants, when Mary-Beth arrived after the vestry meeting – a meeting she was supposed to have been at, but her husband still hadn’t come home. He was staying out later and later these days and it was making Connie nervous – nervous and short-tempered – when all she really wanted was to be patient and caring and wise.

She’d put the kids to bed and was trying to get focused before Mary-Beth arrived to watch a rerun of the second presidential debate that had aired earlier. She wanted to clear her head, and getting into something clean and white was part of that. The situation in the world right now was so dire that, in the last six months, she and Mary-Beth had watched more
CNN
than they thought they could bear. On top of it all was the three-ring circus of the Republican Party. While they shared many of the belief practices of their charismatic brethren south of the border, they were convinced they were
being politically misled. They knew how the Christian right had voted during the primaries in the spring, and were now praying for God to give those people discernment in the upcoming election.

Connie had been raised in the Anglican Church and loved how cerebral and rational it was, with its emphasis on the power of words and metaphor and ritual. She felt there was a mysticism in the Anglican liturgy that could erupt at any moment by its sheer recitation every week. It wasn’t until she met Mary-Beth that she found somebody who shared, in her own way, a profound spirituality. Mary-Beth was open to all sorts of manifestations of God. She’d been to charismatic gatherings and been hurled to the floor by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also loved the quiet, dignified poetry of the Book of Common Prayer.

Mary-Beth had moved to Vancouver Island sixteen months earlier because she’d found an excellent special-needs school in Mill Bay for her teenaged handicapped son, and could afford to open up a hair salon and live nearby. She catered mainly to the wealthy high-school students at the local private boarding school, and had done about thirty up-do’s last spring at graduation and twice as many manicures and pedicures. She would sometimes witness to the girls as they sat getting their hair dyed or nails done, especially if it was a quiet afternoon and the salon cosy with the heat from the hair dryers, the windows fogged up like milky stained glass. The girls are in their own element, she told Connie, so it makes the gospel seem more friendly, more accessible. I tell the story of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her hair.

Her salon was called The Beauty Ministry –
Making Women Beautiful Inside and Out –
and it was there that the two women met. To Connie, Mary-Beth was like a breath of fresh
air. She’d led a secular life until her conversion four years earlier at the airport in Seattle, where she’d been visiting an old flame. Her return flight was cancelled because of a snowstorm, so she’d sought out the chapel, thinking it might be a quiet place to sleep. She told Connie she was curled up on the carpet when a woman walked in, kneeled, and started to cry. Mary-Beth offered her a small pack of kleenex she had in her purse. The woman’s son had recently drowned. Mary-Beth told her, I have a son too. He’s got
MS
. He’s in a wheelchair. I understand what it’s like to feel angry, to want to rail. But the woman had said, I’m not railing. I’m thanking my saviour for walking beside me through this terrible journey.

It was at that moment Mary-Beth felt compelled to commit her life to Jesus. She didn’t bristle or judge at the news of somebody’s drug addiction or delinquent child, she was honestly forgiving. And it wasn’t until she’d experienced Mary-Beth’s compassion first-hand that Connie realized intimate friendship and genuine acceptance were two things sadly lacking in her own life.

There’s no such thing as a scandal, Mary-Beth once said. Look at me? Divorced, a single mother, a handicapped son most people refuse to make eye contact with. I probably used to have a bit of a drinking problem too.

She was so open that Connie trusted her opinions unreservedly, though there were those who thought of her as vain, that her profession indicated a weakness for the adornments of the flesh.

Connie opened the door and her friend walked in, billowing a waft of Estée Lauder. What a day, she said. How are you, darling?

Oh fine, Connie said, taking Mary-Beth’s leopard-print coat. How was the vestry meeting?

We argued for thirty-five minutes about whether or not the worship band should have a dress code, she said and poked her long fingernails into her hair.

I made walnut brownies, Connie said, offering up a tray in the kitchen and nodding towards the living room.

You’re such an angel, Mary-Beth said and followed her down the marble hallway. Nothing like a vestry meeting to work up the appetite, she said and plucked at the corner of one of Connie’s elbows with her fake nails, and it gave Connie a shiver.

Connie pushed the French doors to the living room open with her foot and carried the tray in. Her living room was white and she found it helped. A cut-glass bowl with five pink marble eggs, one for each member of the family. The coffee table was white and the carpet oatmeal. What a bland, pale room this was, she thought, but it was how she liked it.

Mary-Beth stood at the huge picture window. You really do have the best view of the water, she said even though it was dark outside and the window a perfect duplicate of the living room. She crossed the room and collapsed onto the sofa. I’d be more jealous if I didn’t know I could never keep a house this clean with Jay around, she said, referring to her son.

Well, I don’t let the children in here except for birthdays and holidays, Connie confessed. And I told Harl I want a fibre-optic Christmas tree this year, as an eco-decision, but it’s really because I don’t want pine needles worming their way into the carpet again. Connie was kneeling next to the coffee table. She flashed Mary-Beth one of her furtive looks while pouring out the tea, but Mary-Beth wasn’t looking. She was flicking the
TV
on with the remote.

You know, Mary-Beth suddenly said in a passionate voice, I just wish I could grab Obama by the wrists and drag him to his knees and force him to pray for his soul, the whole soul of
America. I mean, he made all these promises four years ago, that’s what he was voted in on. And what did he do? Protected the interests of the rich, that’s what. And is he going to invade North Korea now? You start that kind of thing and it’s hard to get out. Look at Iraq. It took him a lot longer to get the army out of there than what he assured everybody in his campaign.

But that war was started, Connie said, well before Obama got into office.

Exactly, but he was supposed to put an end to it.

Connie handed Mary-Beth a cup of tea. The sad thing is, after 9/11, people thought they were fighting a righteous war.

Even if it
was
a righteous war, Mary-Beth said, deflated after her short outburst, it’d still be hard to contemplate. War should be the last resort. I’ll never forget how excited Bush looked, addressing his troops on that navy ship, in one of those leather bomber jackets with the sheepskin collar. Like he was announcing the start of a football game. He made it seem like some kind of party.

And now they have the Tea Party, Connie said.

Mary-Beth raised her cup and lifted her pinkie off the handle.

It’s not like we’re having a field day up here either, Connie said. As they chip away at all our social institutions. What’s it going to be next? And she reached up and felt the solidity of her jaw bone beneath her skin.

Ever since Theo had been born, life seemed more precarious. Her first two had slipped out slick as seal pups, but Theo had come into the world blue and screaming, in an explosion of blood that covered the doctor. Connie saw the doctor wince, as if she’d never been covered in blood before. She’d been sawing the handle of the suction cup up and down in the air between Connie’s knees with such force that it made
her husband think of a construction site, he told her afterwards. The way an electrician might pull a bundle of wires through a tight pliable rubber hose, slippery with dish soap, out of a hole in the wall, one foot braced against something solid. Those were his words. The blood gushed and in the air she heard –
hemorrhage
. For six whole minutes people rushed around the room. The nurses pulled blue masks up over their noses. Harlan’s face was so close. There was sleep in the corner of his eye and this outraged her. And then she panicked, Where’s my baby?

He’s okay, Harlan said. Ten fingers, ten toes.

You must take care of him, Connie said. If.

Excuse me, a nurse had said, pushing the father aside, and then a grey needle shrank against the yellow skin on the inside of Connie’s arm. Between the pale V of her knees the sudden red of the doctor’s gloves when she raised them, like a child’s pair of winter mittens. Pain again. Connie didn’t think she could feel any more pain. She rolled her head. Something large, a wrecking ball, swung down and entered her vagina, smashing her innards. What was left of them. Or so it felt. God help me, she thought. I don’t want to die.

They were going to call the baby Andrew, after his grandfather, but they decided on Theo. The name for God.

You know, Connie said to Mary-Beth, ever since Theo’s birth, I’ve been so aware of the possibility of a sudden extinction.

Well, every year the world gets more dangerous, Mary-Beth said. Remember that murder in Langley?

I think so.

A woman was killed in her car while her four-year-old son sat in the back seat.

That was so terrible.

They shot the car full of bullets, and she drove into a tree. Fortunately, the boy was unharmed.

Thank
God
, Connie said.

Apparently, she had some connection with a gang.

How can you do that to a child?

So, of course, you’re
worried
, Mary-Beth said. We’re all worried.

Well, you and
I
are worried, Connie said, and they let the melodrama of their concerns open for a moment like a window, then close again.

I just don’t want to smother my children by being overprotective, Connie said, leaning back against the sofa and holding her brownie over a small china plate.

No parent should worry about smothering their children in a world like this.

But I had such freedom growing up. I would like them to know that freedom.

Well, you give them some freedom, of course.

And then you hold them close and will a conviction that God will take care of them?

He
does
take care of them, Mary-Beth said, stressing the present tense.

With my own vigilance and God’s love.

They’ll be fine.

But that life persists at all, such a tiny flame, seems like such a miracle to me.