38. Father Charmain
Reverend Cox had just taken down Bunyan’s Kerygma, which was already a week overdue, and settled down for a nice warm dip into his plodding, solid, reassuring prose, when the bell went Ding-Dong, and before she could unfold her legs, again, Ding-Dong. Someone was upset.
A dumpy old woman with a frazzled face, curdled flesh, the left eyelid drooping, the right eye popping out. As soon as the door opened the mismatched eyes went through the familiar motions of surprise, distrust, withdrawal.
“Please come in.” She gestured to the glow from the office at the end of the hall.
“I came to see Father Cox.” She held up one of the form letters the office sent out: If you should ever experience the need …
Charmain offered her hand. “I’m Charmain Cox.”
The woman, remembering her manners, took the hand offered her. “I’m Nor a Hanson. Are you … ?”
“His wife?” She smiled. “No, I’m afraid I’m the priest. Is that better or worse? But do come in out of this dreadful cold. If you think you’d be more comfortable talking with a man. I can phone up my colleague at St. Mark’s, Reverend Gogardin. He’s only around the corner.” She steered her into the office and into the comfy confessional of the brown chair.
“It’s been so long since I’ve been to church. It never occurred to me, from your letter … ”
“Yes, I suppose it’s something of a fraud on my part, using only my initials.” And she went through her disingenuous but useful patter song about the woman who had fainted the man who’d snatched off her pectoral. Then she renewed her offer to phone St. Mark’s, but by now Mrs. Hanson was resigned to a priest of the wrong sex.
Her story was a mosaic of little guilts and indignities, weaknesses and woes, but the picture that emerged was all too recognizably the disintegration of a family. Charmain began to assemble all the arguments why she wouldn’t be able to take an active role in her struggle against the great octopus, Bureaucracy—chief among them that in the nine-to-five portion of her life she was a slave at one of the octopus’s shrines (Department of Temporary Assistance). But then it developed that the Church, and even God, were involved in Mrs. Hanson’s problems. The older daughter and her lover were leaving the sinking family to join the Sodality of St. Clare. In the quarrel that had fumbled the old lady out of her building and into this office the lover had used the poor dear’s own Bible as ammunition. From Mrs. Hanson’s extremely partisan account it took Charmain some time to locate the offending passage, but at last she tracked it down to St. Mark, third chapter, verses thirty-three to thirty-five:
And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?
And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.
“Now I ask you!”
“Of course,” Charmain explained, “Christ isn’t saying there that one has a license to abuse or insult one’s natural parents.”
“Of course he isn’t! ”
“But has it occurred to you that this … is her name January?”
“Yes. It’s a ridiculous name.”
“Has it occurred to you that January and your daughter may be right?”
“How do you mean?”
“Let’s put it this way. What is the will of God?”
Mrs. Hanson shrugged. “You’ve got me.” Then, after the question had settled, “But if you think that Shrimp knows—ha!”
Deciding that St. Mark had done enough harm already, Charmain stumbled through her usual good counsels for disaster situations, but if she had been a shop clerk helping the woman to pick out a hat she couldn’t have felt more futile or ridiculous. Everything Mrs. Hanson tried on made her look grotesque.
“In other words,” Mrs. Hanson summed up, “you think I’m wrong.”
“No. But on the other hand I’m not sure your daughter is. Have you tried, really, to see things from her side? To think why she wants to join a Sodality?”
“Yes. I have. She likes to shit on me and call it cake.”
Charmain laughed without much zest. “Well, perhaps you’re right. I hope we can talk again about this after we’ve both had a chance to think it over.”
“You mean you want me to go.”
“Yes, I guess that’s what I mean. It’s late, I have a job.”
“Okay, I’m going. But I meant to ask: that book on the floor …”
“Kerygma?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s Greek for message. It’s supposed to be one of the things that the Church does, it brings a message.”
“What message?”
“In a nutshell—Christ is risen. We are saved.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Hanson. But what I believe doesn’t matter—I’m only the messenger.”
“Shall I tell you something?”
“What?”
“I don’t think you’re much of a priest.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hanson. I know that.”
39. The Five-Fifteen Puppets
Alone in the apartment, doors locked, mind bolted, Mrs. Hanson watched the teevee with a fierce, wandering attention. People knocked, she ignored them. Even Ab Holt, who should have known better than to be playing their game.
“Just a discussion, Nora.” Nora! He’d never called her Nora before. His big voice kept smashing through the door of the closet that had been a foyer. She couldn’t believe that they would really use physical force to evict her. After fifteen years! There were hundreds of people in the building, she could name them, who didn’t meet occupancy standards. Who took in any temp from the hallway and called them lodgers. “Mrs. Hanson, I’d like you to meet my new daughter.” Oh yes! The corruption wasn’t all at the top—it worked its way through the whole system. And when she’d asked, “Why me?” that slut had had the nerve to say, “Che sera sera, I’m afraid.” If it had been that Mrs. Miller. There was someone who really did care, not a lot of fake sympathy and “Che sera sera.” Maybe, if she phoned? But there wasn’t a phone at Williken’s now, and in any case she wasn’t budging from where she was. They’d have to drag her. Would they dare go that far? The electricity would be shut off, that’s always the first step. God knew what she’d do without the teevee. A blonde girl showed her how easy something was to do, just one, two, three. Then four, five, six, and it would be broken? Terminal Clinic came on. The new doctor was still in a feud with Nurse Loughtis. Hair like a witch, that one, and you couldn’t believe a word she said. That mean look of hers, and then, “You can’t fight City Hall, Doctor.”
Of course, that’s what they wanted you to believe, that the individual person is helpless. She switched channels. Fucking on 5. Cooking on 4. She paused.
Hands pushed and pulled at a great ball of dough. Food! But the nice Spanish lady—though really you couldn’t say she was Spanish, it was only her name—from the Tenants’ Committee had promised her she wouldn’t starve. As for water, she’d filled every container in the house days ago.
It was so unfair. Mrs. Manuel if that was her name, had said she was being hung in a loophole. Somebody must have had their eye on the apartment for a long time, waiting for this opportunity. But try and find out from that asshole Blake who was moving in—oh no, that was “confidential.” She’d known from one look at his beady eyes that he was getting his orange juice.
It was only a matter of holding out. In a few days Lottie would come home. She’d gone off before like this and she’d always come back. Her clothes were all here, except the one little suitcase, a detail she hadn’t pointed out to Miss Slime. Lottie’d have her little breakdown or whatever and then come home and there’d be two of them and the department would have to grant a statutory six months’ stay. Mrs. Manuel had emphasized that—six months. And Shrimp wouldn’t last six months at that convent so-called. Religion was a hobby with her. In six months she’d have thrown it all up and started on something new, and then there’d be three of them and the department wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.