Edward became a real asset to the lower-class community that lived in the derelict tenements around the storefront. Everyone who lived there knew it. He would be walking through the park and he would meet somebody whose mind was all mixed up. Someone whose mind had grown all wild like weeds in a garden and whose notions were all tangled up in knots and who could not get out of the labyrinth of their own mind as they ran around and around, always arriving at dead ends, always coming to the same signposts over and over again. Edward would talk to them and calm them right down.
There was a little boy who was having trouble seeing out of his right eye. Edward went over to his house and asked to see the boy. And Edward took the bandage off the boy’s face and the boy was able to see perfectly. His mother said that it was a miracle.
She brought over an enormous rhubarb pie. We couldn’t get over how delicious it was. We were all so low on cash and we were hungry. We kept declaring how good it was. The little boy’s mother sat on the other side of the table and wept. Sometimes she would go ahead and dab her eye with a napkin and then other times she would let out a violent sob. We were all so happy. Edward swore to the woman he had nothing to do with it, but she told everyone otherwise.
Edward went and sat next to a child molester on a park bench. He did not think that there were evil people. He thought only that there was evil inside of people and they needed help to have it removed. He spoke to the man on the bench for nine hours.
That was another thing that was incredibly comforting about Edward. He would never be the first to tell you that he had to go. He always stayed with a person until they didn’t need his company anymore. He would end up in these smelly old ladies’ apartments for hours and hours. He always said that time was the most precious thing that one person could give to another. You were giving them some of your life.
This old woman got Edward to go and talk to a drug dealer who was going to kill her son because he had stolen a bag of weed, or had smoked it all, or something like that. And Edward made the situation okay.
There is a solution to every problem and Edward seemed to know them. God wouldn’t have created a world full of problems if he hadn’t also created an answer book.
Jimmy found an ad for a minister at the back of a magazine. I thought that Edward was going to think it was a stupid idea. But to my surprise, Edward filled it out and sent it in with a cheque.
He said that a lot of the older people in the community would be comforted knowing that he was an actual minister. They didn’t feel easy knowing that a skinny eighteen-year-old in a ratty jacket could offer words of wisdom and had the power to heal people. They had never, ever heard of anything like that before. There had to be a name for someone like Edward. They were so thankful when he got himself a card with a little dove on it.
We had picked up a couple of second-hand bibles that had pages that looked like they were made out of moth wings.
Nikki said that we should call the church the Holy Dove Parade. I thought this was a ridiculous name, but Edward said fine.
There were more and more people coming to the ice cream parlour every evening to hear Edward’s sermons. There were always different characters showing up. I really liked them. They were the type of people that my dad always put down. There was this fat cat that was always hanging out there who always felt like he’d just come out of the dryer.
We were always starving, though. All the money that we made was from passing out a collection plate around the church after Edward’s sermons and from selling pamphlets that Edward had written with his ideas on them. And let me tell you that this was not a lot!
Still, we were young and carefree. It seemed like it wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all if we just continued the life we were living. During that period, we all got pretty much accustomed to eating very little and doing without. Except for Nikki. She would get all crazy when we were broke. She didn’t think life would be worth living if she couldn’t go to Nickels Deli sometimes. She would go and turn tricks and then spend her money on food and cigarettes and going to the movies. We disapproved, of course, but she would bring home big jugs of wine and chocolate and we would stay up late having a good time.
There was a roll of photos taken of us all one day when we went to Oka beach. We ate some mussels and french fries and filled our pockets with pretty stones. Edward and I were messing around in the water, splashing about. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat and cut-off jean shorts. I had on a bikini and heart-shaped glasses.
There is one photo where Edward has his arms around me and his chin on my shoulder. This photo was really popular and was in all the papers. The thing that confused people was that we looked so happy. And if we were so happy, then what on earth motivated us to do what we did? And why did we go and throw away our lives if they were happy ones?
Then we started to make money. Sometimes I was shocked by the amount of money that was in the collection plate after sermons, especially considering the average income of people in our neighbourhood. But there were people who believed in Edward so much that they insisted on giving him amounts of money that were quite large for them — even twenty or fifty dollars. When I sometimes tried to give it back to them, they held my hands in theirs and told me that I did not understand the value of what it was that Edward had done for them.
There was one guy who won the lottery. His winnings were $250 and he insisted on giving $125 of it to Edward. He told Edward that his life had, without a doubt, become incredibly lucky ever since he started going to the church.
We started to see more and more well-dressed people showing up. Some had fur coats and three-piece suits. I kid you not. They came from different parts of town. I mean, you would never see that type of person down there. I don’t even know where they were parking their cars!
I had to open a bank account. Jimmy and I even built a website together that received donations. It was the first time that Jimmy and I got along. It was amazing to be working on something that mattered like that. We couldn’t believe that we got to be a part of something important.
Nikki went around handing out flyers and ranting and raving to people about the church. She would go knocking on doors. She had to be a big part of this too. Edward and Jimmy and I laughed because we thought that surely she must be driving people away. But a lot of people showed up with her flyers in their hands. She was very proud of herself. I guess she had a right to be.
And then you started hanging out at the church. We never did take away the gold letters on the window of the store, so every now and then a little kid would come in with a fist full of change, asking about the different flavours. There were a lot of kids in that neighbourhood. There were always little girls skipping rope on the sidewalk, like they were popcorn kernels exploding on a frying pan.
In the paper it said that one of the reasons that we ran an ice cream parlour was so that we could lure children into our trap. But who thought like that? We weren’t sinister. We liked kids. We acted like kids who had no rules ourselves. There was this aura of wildness about us then and that was why children were always drawn to us. There was no ice cream for sale!
When you first came in we thought that you were full of light. (Is your hair still so blond? No one will ever send me a picture.) You came in with a shoebox that had a sparrow with a broken wing in it. You wept and wept. Edward had never seen a child so full of compassion. And when that bird’s wing was mended and it was brought back to life, you declared that it was a miracle. And we liked that you believed in miracles. And we all thought that you sure fit so well into our world.
You were so daring. Once you stood up on a chair in the back row in the middle of one of Edward’s sermons and you called out, “Hallelujah!” We loved that. Everybody in the ice cream parlour cheered. Edward said that you were going to be a powerful preacher one day.