The Day's Heat Page 28

  He misunderstood. “See, you admit it. I know now what you’re doing.” He was renewed. “You want to make me suffer and you have. I have suffered.” He wiped down the side of his drawn face with a hand.

  Once more she tried to explain. “David, I swear by God, by everything I hold dear—I’ll have blood work done—this child isn’t yours! Can’t you count?”

  She started, enumerating, holding her fingers up: “November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July. This full-term baby was born in June. A child of yours would have been born in July.”

  For an instant, the logic of math seemed to register with him, but then he shook his head, no. “You’re making stuff up,” he said.

  Lee thought, Only women count the months of pregnancy.

  “But it means so much, just having you say you want me—and him.” She stood and went to the priest and tried to take him by the wrist. He resisted, kept his arm stiffly on the couch. “It meant so much having you to love for just that little while. I needed it so badly. But I can’t let you leave the priesthood, especially since you don’t have to. You’d never be happy.”

  Her getting up, the noise, made Baby Charlie start and squirm in her arms. The girls came running, their shoes clattering down the hall.

  Ah, this is more like it, Lee thought, noticing that the room immediately seemed smaller and now a bit untidy. Lill was grabbing at the priest’s pants leg.

  “You really have to leave, Father,” Lee said. “I have to nurse the baby.” I, unlike you or Charles, am bound by physical ties you could never understand.

  “Oh, I had no idea ….” he began. “I’ll come back. We have to talk this through.”

  Lee shook her head, no, and kept shaking it even as she followed him to the door. “There’s nothing else to talk about. Please go, and please don’t blame yourself. It’s all my fault.” He stood on the threshold, looking similar to Furlough the dog when he was being shut out. She shook her head “no,” even after the door closed and she undid her jacket to nurse Baby Charlie.

  Cassie and Lill started arguing about who would drink the leftover coffee out of their mother’s cup, who would pour out of the teapot. Cassie took the disputed cup, knowing she shouldn’t drink out of anyone else’s and sipped, asked could she pour Lill some coffee out of the teapot.

  “Yes,” Lee gave permission, “but add lots of sugar and milk.”

  The perfect little nest that some demon had conjured up for the priest’s sake dissolved entirely. Why, for those few minutes, had we seemed so idyllic? Lee wondered, knowing Father Palmer would carry that false image with him forever, that he would believe the child was his forever, too, or at least until they both faced judgment, when all truths are known.

  Chapter 19

  Let all your words be sweet just in case you have to eat them later

  Andy Rooney for 60 Minutes on CBS

  With the priest gone, as though she’d invented him—another daydream—the November afternoon passed as a hundred afternoons had passed before. Outside, the sun baked the flat-roofed houses, and inside Cassie and Lill took their naps on the couch. Lee changed into a white shift, sewn with elastic to let the shoulder slip down below her breast. She nursed Baby Charlie, who also fell asleep, so full the milk rolled in a string out of his mouth. Then she set up the ironing board to press the hems she’d put up the previous night. As she dampened the cloth and steamed the marks of the stitches away, she felt hollow and headachy—a little like after drinking those three beers with Willie Mae.

  Finished, she turned off the iron and lay down on the pallet beside the baby, putting her face so close that she could smell the warm milk breath he huffed out as from a tiny bellows. A fading melancholy sunlight, flecked with the shadows of storm clouds, moved across the floor. The sounds of the children breathing, of the cicadas outside calling for rain mingled with that of a car being repaired down the street, coughing again and again. She bit her lip, turned toward the wall, and shuddered.

  She’d told the truth, so why was she feeling so dismal, and it had only been two hours since the priest left? Was she sorry about turning down his proposal? His, “I’ll marry you. I’ll give my son my name”—banal; what he thought she wanted. No, she wasn’t sorry.

  Because it was your own fantasy for over a year, she reminded herself. Was it possible to give up on a dream so quickly? No, she knew she would always love him. All the months of wanting that empty desire over with, and all she’d put into its place: the houses, Willie Mae, the children, receiving and giving, could never take his place. And now there was nothing to wonder about, nothing to hope for. That’s good, she reassured herself, to work without hope, not worn out with dreams that cannot come true.

  Numbly taken with this new sorrow, as if with a new lover, she went back over the priest’s visit, reheard his words and her replies the way one watches a favorite old movie—waiting for the good parts—reviving the pain. And then, knowing that this loss would be with her for as long as she lived, she pulled her knees up and, as full of milk as the baby beside her, she fell asleep.

  Later that evening, with a steady rainstorm blowing against the windows, she cooked soft scrambled eggs, cheese grits, silver-dollar pancakes—everything she didn’t have time for in the morning. Baby Charlie was given his first tiny bites of grits and butter mixed together. Amazed at a taste and consistency different from milk, he pushed out as much as he smacked down. Cassie and Lill laughed until they fell back in their chairs at their brother’s blare-eyed reaction to the first bite and then to his hand-waving attempts to get more. He grinned, lopsided, his mouth still learning the mechanics of eating, seeming to understand that he was being entertaining.

  “Just wait till Daddy sees you smile,” Cassie encouraged.

  Having breakfast at night and letting Furlough in out of the rain to eat the leftovers was still a conspiracy—what they’d done before when Charles was out of town. But even with the hot food and the snug hidden-away feeling of the lighted rooms against the wet and darkness outside, Lee sighed loudly and deeply, could not help herself.

  After the dishes were washed and put away, the children were bathed and tucked away, too. Pretty much the same kind of chore, Lee thought: each dish, each child in its place. Except that dishes didn’t give warm goodnight kisses or say soft, demanding prayers to God: “Make Daddy come home early tomorrow night.”

  Lee pulled the next sewing job from the bottom of the sewing pile and started ripping a waistband off. “As long as Jane Tifton’s weight goes up and down, I’ll have alterations to do,” she whispered, reassuring herself.

  Water poured from the roof eaves, and the wind blew against the sides of the house. Suddenly, too restless to go on carefully slicing through threads with a razor blade, she put aside the skirt and went to check on the children. They slept according to their natures: Cassie’s covers were neat, her arms holding them down at her sides; Lill’s blankets were wrapped around her legs and she was already half on and half off the bed; and Baby Charlie was tightly wadded into a corner of his crib as if trying to dig an escape hole. Lee moved him back to the middle of the mattress.

  Feeling like a sentry on duty, she walked up and down the dark hallway for a half hour and at last came back into the living room and cranked open a window, putting her face up to the cool mist that sprayed through the screen. I must have a fever, she thought, and patted the water down her warm throat and up on her arms. The rain was coming in fits and starts, pouring out of the gutters and then letting up. Through the sheets of water blowing across the street, she saw Father Kennedy’s black and red Buick pull into the driveway and the old man hurry, as much as he was able, hunched and limping, toward the carport of the house.

  “It must be a day for unexpected visits,” she whispered, as she stepped over Furlough and opened the door on the dripping priest, his great round head shaking with age, his gray beard shining in the light, full of trembling rain drops.

  “Come in, come in,
Patrick. You look like a drowned rat,” she said, pleased to have someone to break the dreary evening, and then she ran to the linen closet for a large bath towel to rumple over the old priest’s head and shoulders, soaking up the water. “Goodness, you’re wet to the skin. Take off your jacket.”

  He slowly removed the worn black jacket, so ancient it had acquired a greenish sheen, to reveal an equally ancient shirt underneath. His stiff Roman collar was missing and an edge of white undershirt showed.

  “I’ll make us a big pot of fresh coffee,” she offered, recalling the coffee she’d made earlier that afternoon and would have to pour out.

  All the while the old man, bending to her services was agreeing, repeating, “Good, good, very good.”

  He stood and watched, silent as a waiting child, and when the coffee was poured, sat down at the table. As usual, he lit a cigarette but then did something unusual: he took a small silver flask from his pants pocket and poured its amber contents into the steaming cups before them. The alcohol mist rose in Lee’s nose. She was glad of his company but nervous. Father Kennedy never visited at night.

  “Dear girl, dear girl,” the priest said slowly, and after the first long draw on the cigarette and the first long swallow of coffee, he leaned back in his chair and looked her over. Lee was conscious of her bare arms and the fine lawn material that covered her shoulders and breasts, that her curls, wet and dark, clung to her face, and that no matter how aged he was, the priest was still a man. Yet she knew he was waiting for her to speak.

  To free herself of the searchlight in those deep-set eyes, she rose, put a glass into the sink, wiped the counter, and asked, “Do you want some cookies, Father?”

  “No, thank you,” he grumbled. “And please stop puttering. We have to discuss some matters.”

  She took the large moist towel, now full of the tobacco, old man smell, from the back of his chair, and draped it over her shoulders and sat back down in front of him.

  “Are you a-wanting to tell me about it, Lee?”

  “About what?” she answered, calculating: What could the old priest know? By now he’d know about Charles’s leaving, yes—but, pray God, not about Father Palmer. Ever since seeing the younger priest, realizing that no matter how late the offer, he’d been willing to give up his priesthood, the awful truth of the child to him had tasted like bile in her mouth. What she’d told herself before, that the lie had been fathered by David Palmer and Charles, didn’t work. She’d been the one who’d mouthed it, and even that acceptance didn’t explain, didn’t make her feel any better.

  Father Kennedy raised his shaggy dark eyebrows and looked up as if listening for a mouse in the attic. “What happened this afternoon?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the ceiling.

  So he knew. “Please?” she asked, willing her voice not to tremble, not to break. With Father Kennedy, he was so blameless, there could be no excuses.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing, without violating the confessional ….”

  Lee turned her face away, making a shield with her hair and putting her hand up. “Don’t, please?” she asked again.

  “No, my girl, you must know. He’s for going off, off to South America—Columbia, I believe. There was a call last month for volunteers. You know, requests from the missions. They’re always trying to get something from us—money or people. And often priests who are in trouble, or unhappy, go that route. So now, he told me tonight. He’s for going.”

  “And he told you why?”

  “Don’t bother with what passed between us, child. I felt you should know before he left, in case you were awanting to change your mind.” The old priest drew hard on his cigarette and puffed out a great billow of smoke that hung like a veil between them.

  Instead of “your mind,” Lee thought he was going to say “your story.”

  “No, why should I?” she answered. “I told him the truth finally.”

  “But he doesn’t believe it.”

  “Oh, I know. Poor man. He believed the lie much easier.”

  “And the child is not his?”

  Lee shook her head, water stinging at the corners of her eyes.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. If she spoke, there would be no way to keep the tears in, to keep them from sliding into sobbing.

  “Ah, so that’s the way of it.”

  She covered her face with her hands and spoke from behind them. “He offered to marry me, Patrick. But I couldn’t let him do that, give up his priesthood.” It was good to be able to say David Palmer’s offer out into the air. “And now it doesn’t matter, one way or the other. I loved him, but he’d never be happy with me, away from the Church.”

  “And is this a good thing for you?”

  Lee nodded; felt she could say no more. Charles had found what he wanted in the lie—a reason to leave—which still amazed her, and Father Palmer, guilt and release shining in his eyes as he backed out the door, knew what he wanted. For her there was just an empty sensation that had replaced all the guilt, which while at first seemed lighter, now suddenly seemed far more oppressive and longer-lasting.

  “Well, I must take your word on that, love.” The old priest raised his cup, toasting her, and took a huge slurp of coffee and liquor. “Marriage is like the Church—the structure, I mean. They’re good as far as institutions go, but they sometimes seem to hurt the people who are in them. But they’re necessary, you know: institutions, vows, the glue that holds the world together. So, now you must be a-working to return the father to this household and to his children.”

  Lee shook her head. She knew Father Kennedy’s stand without asking—the sanctity of marriage, of vows—and she knew there was no arguing with him. The old priest would hold to the lines of tradition. It made her weary to think of it. Always, at the end of his short Sunday sermons, he said, “We, a people in Christ, keep our promises.” He drained his cup, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand even though a napkin sat at his elbow, and seemed content that he’d said what he had come to say and could relax a bit. “Of course, I have to admit Father Palmer’s going is not for breaking my heart. He was a high and mighty one, His Eminence, all the while asking for a fall. But I’m sorry you were parcel and part of it.”

  Lee bent her head as though receiving absolution. “You don’t seem surprised,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with tears and all she couldn’t say.

  “When you’ve heard as many confessions as I have, love, there are few surprises. No new sins under the sun so to speak.” He chuckled loudly, as though at some private joke, at a lifetime of classifying human failure.

  The familiar humor released Lee from the need to cry. She reached across the table and grasped the old priest’s thick hand and shook it. “I can barely stand my own sins, Father. How do you tolerate hearing everyone else’s?”

  “Mostly I don’t. Sins are so boring. Half a century ago, I decided to let them pass over my head and go straight into the ears of God.”

  “But you heard his confession tonight?”

  “Yes. I’m just now a-coming from him.”

  Lee sighed inwardly at the narrative she imagined the young priest telling the older one. Still, she wondered: if she could have heard Father Palmer’s side, would she understand his actions?

  Father Kennedy cleared his throat, “Um, underneath all the confusion, I had the feeling he was proud to have a son.”

  “But he doesn’t, Patrick!” she reminded the priest, irritated all over again at how that lie would not go away.

  “True, true, but for most of a year now he’s thought he had, and you can’t erase such a fiction in a day.”

  “I know,” Lee conceded, and assumed that the old cleric was finished, that he’d accomplished what he’d come for, and in a few minutes would rise and leave. And yet the old man dawdled, asked for another cup of coffee, lit another cigarette.

  “Now, if you can believe it, there is one more difficulty,” he began, “one last question.” He wiped his mouth again. “Wh
at is this about your selling your house to a colored woman?”

  Exasperation shivered through Lee. “How do you know?” she demanded.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does!” She smacked the flat of her hand on the table. “I’m sick of all of you discussing me behind my back, making up your minds on what I should and shouldn’t do without having the decency to ask me.”

  “But I’m for asking now, as you can see, plainly.” The old man fanned his hands out in appeal. His thick black eyebrows and the wrinkles in his forehead formed an arch of supplication.

  She stopped in mid-anger. What could she do with such reasonableness but acknowledge it and give up her need since that afternoon to “pitch a fit,” something she’d done as a child; to scold someone, anyone, loud and long.

  “I’ll tell you everything if you’ll just tell me who told you,” Lee bargained.

  “Well, it’s no great secret. The woman didn’t make me sign my name in blood anywhere.” He lifted the coffee cup as if looking for such a paper under it, stalling, seeming to gauge how Lee would react. “Algebra is concerned is all, and I think she’s right.”

  My God, Lee thought, that woman again, babbling to everyone.

  “Don’t sell the house to this other woman, love. Now, that Father Palmer is for going, things can get back to normal. We might be able to re-open St. Jerome’s. All the coloreds want it.”

  “All but one ‘colored,’” she put the same emphasis on the word that he had, “and she wants to buy my old house. She’s my only friend outside of you, Patrick. And I’m selling it to her.”

  “You’re taking on more than you know, child. Don’t you see what’s happening in Atlanta, in Birmingham? The coloreds are pushing too hard, and too fast. There’s a price to pay.”