When We Were Saints (15 page)

Archie glanced at Clare sitting up straight in her seat, as calm as usual.

"Who? Who told you it was time?"

"Jesus."

Archie sat back in his seat and thought about that for a second, then he said, "Did you really hear a voice or was it like this urging inside?"

"Jesus spoke to me, Francis."

"With a voice?"

"With a voice." Clare nodded. "Jesus speaks to me all the time. Jesus told me to give you that card at your grandfather's funeral. He's speaking to me now."

"Like right now? Jesus is speaking to you?"

"Yes."

Archie sighed. He didn't know what to think. Part of him felt jealous that she had that kind of connection with Jesus, and that she was so far along on the path while he was so far behind. He wasn't even sure he was still
on
the path. But another part of him loved her so much, loved her because she was so perfect, so good and holy, so full of the love of Christ, that he wanted to touch her. He wanted to be touched by God.

They again rode in silence for a while, with Archie on the constant lookout for police cars, checking the rearview mirror as often as he looked straight ahead, and then he asked her "How much money do we have, anyway? Isn't New York expensive?"

"I think we have enough money for gas," she said.

Archie gripped the steering wheel. "What do you mean, you 'think'? What about food? Where will we stay? What if we run out of gas? How long are we staying, anyway? It's going to take us a couple of days to get there unless we drive all night and all day. And why the Cloisters? What are the Cloisters?"

"It's a museum."

"'A museum'?" Archie shifted in his seat and held the steering wheel even tighter. "We're making a pilgrimage to a museum? I don't get it. I mean, I love the idea of going to a museum, but how is that a pilgrimage? Tell me what's going on. What are we doing?"

Clare nodded. "We are beginning our pilgrimage. And pilgrims usually don't take any money at all with them. They rely on the kindness of strangers, and they eat when they are offered food and sleep when they are offered a place to sleep. But if we went on foot, we would get picked up as runaways, so we have to take the truck and we need money for gas. If we need any more money, we'll have to ask for it."

"But how? You mean beg? Beg from strangers?"

Clare laughed and patted Archie's leg, and Archie felt his face flush. "You worry too much, Francis. It will be all right."

A car came up behind them and Archie strained his eyes to see if he could make out lights on the roof of the car. He couldn't tell. They rode in silence for a few minutes, with Archie glancing back at the car every few seconds, certain that lights would start flashing any minute. Then the car sped up and passed them, and Archie let out a long, deep breath.

"You'll like the Cloisters," Clare said, her voice calm and soothing. "It's a museum filled with art from the Middle Ages—paintings and sculptures of the Virgin and child, angels, the Annunciation—all kinds of things. And the building is like a monastery. It's a most holy place. All the art is sacred and beautiful. You'll see for yourself, and your life will change. The Cloisters, Francis, is where I was born."

"
Therefore do not be anxious, saying,
'What shall we eat?'
or 'What shall we drink?'
or 'What shall we wear?'...
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be yours as well.
"

M
ATTHEW
6:31-33

C
LARE TOLD
A
RCHIE ABOUT
the times when she would go to New York to visit her aunt. "My parents didn't get along, and I got so upset being around their fighting all the time that in the summers they would send me to Aunt Clare's."

"'Aunt Clare'?" Archie looked at Clare, surprised. "So she's the real Clare and your name is really Doris."

Clare shook her head. "No, I'm the real Clare. I am Clare and my aunt was Clare, too. She lived in New York, in White Plains, and she worked at the Cloisters. She took me to work with her every time I went to stay. I loved it there. It was peaceful. We would step into the building, all that stone—big, thick stone walls, with carvings of angels and saints and Jesus and animals—and I felt surrounded by love. All the cares of the world just fell away the minute I stepped inside. And when I walked through the rooms, my footsteps would echo all around me, and everywhere I looked, on all the walls, in paintings and tapestries, there were stories.

"My aunt was an art historian. Her concentration was on the Middle Ages. She was a guide there for a while, and over the years worked herself up to assistant curator She knew everything about the Cloisters. When she gave a tour she could barely skim the surface in telling the stories that were in each room, but after work each day she would take me to one room and we'd spend a couple of hours there, with her telling me all the stories. Then, after a few days, she would take me to another room and tell me its stories. There were hundreds of stories in every room. Even tucked up into the corners above a pillar or a window, there would be stories—the story of the Nativity carved in stone, or in another corner the story of the raising of Lazarus. There are stories of the Bible everywhere—carved into the heavy wooden doors, in the stained-glass windows, on golden goblets. Do you like stories, Francis? I do."

Archie glanced at Clare's rapt expression, and he felt a stirring in his heart. He couldn't wait to see the Cloisters and feel the way Clare looked at that moment. When he turned back to face forward, he half expected to see the stories from the Cloisters playing on the windshield like a movie.

They became silent again, and Archie, despite his anxieties, grew sleepy. He had never driven in the dark before, and the road looked to him like a tunnel of endless night. He stared at the distant taillights of the car ahead of him. They were tiny red eyes glowing in the dark, and Archie followed them as though he were hypnotized. His lids felt heavy. He wanted to sleep. He glanced at Clare, who sat back with her head leaning against the window. "Are you getting sleepy?" Archie asked.

"No, I'm not sleepy. I'm just remembering," she said. Clare turned and looked at him. "Are you sleepy? Do you need to stop?"

"No, I'm okay."

"Let's talk," Clare said, sitting up straight and turning the air-conditioning vent near her toward Archie.

The cool air blew against his arms and he got goose bumps. The air helped. He felt more alert. "What did your mama and daddy fight about?" he asked, recalling his own fights with his grandfather,

"Philosophies, I guess," Clare answered. "Before they were married they loved to argue about things. It was fun for them. They're complete opposites. My mother is an accountant. She likes numbers and logic and order. My father likes mystery and chance and intuition. The one thing they agreed on was religion. They were both atheists. My mother and her sister my aunt Clare, were raised Catholic. Aunt Clare got all the attention and admiration because she was so spiritual and was always praying and talking about becoming a nun. My aunt said my mother used to try to be spiritual, but it wasn't in her. She was always jealous of my aunt. Mother would pretend to be really religious to get her parents' attention, but when she went off to college, she dropped all that and she rebelled. So she's an atheist. My father rebelled against the church because he believed it was religion that causes most wars."

Archie glanced over at Clare. "But what happened, then? Isn't your father a believer now?"

"That's right," Clare said. "I was born two months prematurely and I almost died. That's when my father started praying. It just came naturally to him. One time he was in the hospital reaching into my crib and stroking my hand with his finger and he felt God's presence. He told me it just filled the room. He knew right then that everything would be all right, and it was. He told my mother what had happened, and of course they argued about it. My mother said he was just exhausted and didn't know what he was doing. But my father ignored her and started reading the Bible and attending church. He believed that I was special, that God had given me as a gift, not just to him and my mother but also to the world. He named me Clare, after my aunt and after Saint Clare. But my mother wanted the name Doris, and that's on my birth certificate. My father still refuses to call me anything but Clare. So, anyway, they fought about my name and everything else that had to do with me."

Archie nodded. "The only times I heard my grandparents argue it was about me. Granddaddy always wanted to give me a whippin' and Grandmama didn't want him to."

"My mother thinks it's my father's fault that I'm so overly sensitive and 'dramatic,' as she calls it," Clare said.

"Then why does she let you live with your father and why would she send you to her sister's house?"

Clare looked down at her hands and hesitated, taking a deep breath. When she spoke it was almost a whisper and Archie had to lean toward her to hear. "My parents can get into some really bad fights. The fighting used to make me ill, they upset me so much, and that scared my parents. So they decided they needed someplace to send me, but they had only three choices. It was either to my mother's parents, and she hadn't talked to them since college; my father's mother the palm reader and my mother couldn't abide her at all; or my mother's sister. She chose Aunt
Clare. And my mother let me live with my father now because I kept running away from home."

Archie looked at Clare, surprised. She hadn't run when those boys threatened her in the woods, when her life might have been in danger but she ran from her mother. It didn't make sense to him and he told her so.

She said, "There are worse things than physical pain or death, Francis. There's the death of the spirit. That's far worse. Nobody should be allowed to destroy another person's spirit."

Archie didn't know what to say, so he changed the subject. "Where is your aunt Clare now?" he asked. "Is she still living in New York? Are we going to go see her? Is that why I don't have to worry about anything?"

"She's dead," Clare said, lowering her head and sniffing. "She died two years ago. It was cancer." She looked out the window. "It's starting to get light out."

Archie glanced up through the windshield. The stars were still out. "Just barely," he said.

They became quiet again. Archie looked at the sky and thought about the times his grandfather would wake him in the early morning, before light, and they would go hunting. Sometimes they hunted in their own woods, and other times they would take the truck and join some of his grandfather's hunting buddies on trips to Alabama. They would ride on the highway, just as he and Clare were doing, and they'd watch the stars fade and a pink light streak the sky, at last catching sight of the sun.

Those trips had always excited Archie. He loved getting out on the wide-open highway. It made him feel like the whole world was before him and the possibilities were endless as to where he might end up. He loved speed and used to wish his grandfather would drive faster and pass all the other drivers on the road. He had always longed for the day when he would have his license and his own
car,
a Porsche, and he could speed along the highway on a cross-country adventure. This time, though, he was afraid to drive too fast, and yet he felt the familiar excitement of being out on the highway, realizing that for the first time in his life he was leaving the South. He was going to New York City.
Maybe,
he thought,
my racing heart is just excitement.

"Hey." He tapped Clare on the leg. "We're going to New York. New York!" He rolled down his window, stuck his fist out, and shouted, "Ye haw!"

W
HEN THE SUN CAME UP
and they saw that the sky was clear, Clare and Archie agreed that it was a beautiful day for driving. The traffic had picked up, but Archie stayed in the center lane and drove at the speed limit. When he realized they had been on the road for almost four hours without mishap, he relaxed. He noticed that Clare was humming. It wasn't a tune. She hummed just one note, a low buzzing sound. She'd made the same sound when they had prayed together on the mountain, and Archie asked her if she was praying.

Clare turned from the window. "I'm always praying. You know that."

"Do you know you hum when you pray?" he asked.

"I'm talking to God."

Archie nodded. Why wasn't he talking to God? He tried saying his prayers, but the sun on his face and Clare's humming made him feel sleepy again. He glanced at Clare. She was humming and smiling with her mouth closed, her eyes shining on something out beyond the cars on the highway. Archie thought she looked so beautiful, he wanted to say something, tell her how beautiful she looked; but he didn't know if she would like hearing that, so he said nothing. He checked the gas gauge. The gauge was almost on empty, so at the next exit he pulled off the highway and into a gas station.

Archie got out and pumped the gas. Clare went into the little store to use the bathroom. Archie watched her enter the store. He saw her say something to a woman standing in line, then the woman turned to her with a big smile and the two of them talked.

Archie shook his head, amazed at the way people responded to Clare. He saw her head toward the back of the store and then lost sight of her. He watched the people going in and out of the store, carrying sodas and candy or sweet rolls out to their cars. Seeing them made him hungry. When Clare returned from going to the bathroom, he asked, "Are you hungry?"

"No," she answered, "are you?"

"No, I guess not." Archie set the pump handle back in its cradle and screwed the gas cap back onto the truck.

Clare looked at the pump and pulled a couple of bills out of the back pocket of her jeans. "I'll go pay. I'll be right back," she said.

Archie nodded. He watched a family pull away in a white van. They were all waving to Clare. Clare waved back with a big smile, and a little girl called out, "Bye, Clare!"