Then she remembered the day at least half a year ago when a single maroon sock was cursed for being without a mate and thrown into the trash. She’d cared that much at the loss of symmetry. Now, without further thought, she tossed this second sock into the wastebasket and resumed scrubbing. Perhaps the scrubbing itself was the purpose for which she had been cured.
When she was about four feet from the windowed wall in front of the loft, Dempsey stopped and sat back on her haunches for yet another rest. She brushed her arm across her forehead not because her hair had fallen into her eyes or because she was sweating. It just seemed the required gesture for someone scrubbing a floor. She’d already done it more than several times while working on the vast acreage that lay clean and fresh behind her. And she would probably do it at least once more before the final patch was done.
When she leaned forward again, putting weight onto the brush, getting ready to make the circular motion, she realized that she had, without knowing it, made an uncounted number of gestural paintings in the course of her scrubbing. Monochromatic they may have been, and somewhat repetitive, but surely she had performed a major exploration of what lay within the motion of her hand, her arm, her entire body. Everything within her, all her strength, all her patience and persistence, had gone into this work. She had given it all she had to give. She was tempted to look behind her, to view her achievement, to be awed by the immensity of her accomplishment. But it had all, of course, disappeared even in the act of its own creation. The rags with which she’d sopped up the detritus of the scrubbings had erased the frothing swirls, whole skyscapes and emerging galaxies, the limitless configurations of a universe at last revealed—all lost. There was nothing but an expanse of flooring, battleship gray, marked by parallel grooves between the boards.
She finished the scrubbing. She slipped the brush back into the pail so it wouldn’t splash. When she braced her hand against the floor to help her stand up, she realized that the task she’d chosen, scrubbing the floor, was a task that could be performed only on one’s knees. She wanted to laugh, but nothing seemed funny to her anymore.
Dempsey’s next attempt was a cliché, but clichés became clichés because, more often than not, they began as a truth: She would give herself to good works. If she were the beneficiary of divine intervention, if she was, indeed, one chosen among many, she should at least offer some token of gratitude. And if she was merely a freak case, yet one more of nature’s playful little tricks, she had nothing to lose. She might accrue an even greater grace from the act since it had no purpose beyond itself. It would gain her nothing. It would simply be. The degree of merit she would leave for others to decide. She herself would just go and do it.
Her choice was an obvious one. Johnny had told her about the soup kitchen run by the good priest—Father Dunphy if she remembered correctly. It was on a specific day of the week, at a specific hour. Johnny had also told her where the church was, not too far uptown, in the Village. It was the church in which they were to be married. She would go to the soup kitchen and offer her services. It might have no effect; it might do nothing to rouse her from the stunned state her cure had inflicted, but it might be of some help to others and she had no real objection. (She recalled the words of Sister Sarah on the subject; “If you’re a Catholic and you don’t make the poor your first concern, you’re nothing but a freeloader. To those who ignore or, worse, punish the poor, the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, becomes nothing but a free lunch. God gag them, I say.”)
And so, wearing her jeans and a paint-spattered T-shirt, Dempsey dutifully went, prepared to accept whatever might happen, even though she had little interest in what it might be.
The church looked like an Irishman’s idea of a Greek temple. It had fluted columns in front, but the rest was made of stones cleared from what must have been the surrounding pastures, the grazing land upon which it had been built more than a century and a half before, as a plaque informed her. The columns’ claims of a lineage that went back to antiquity were allowed to grace the portico and the facade, but the actual stones must have known the rooting of cows and sheep, horses and pigs. The walls were ramparts culled from the rocky earth; a fortress for a pastoral rather than a mighty God. There was a sturdy honesty to the structure itself that suggested a homely faith hospitable to glory and to grandeur.
Along the side of the church and down the block the long line of people ran. Most were men. The dress code was obviously casual. No rags or tatters were readily visible but little thought seemed to have been given to the fit and cut of what was being worn, mostly sweats and T-shirts. The line itself was formed on a ramp coming from the direction opposite to where Dempsey stood, at the top of some stone steps that led down to the church basement. It seemed that as a volunteer she should go down the steps, through the door, into the basement, and offer her services. And she should not hesitate. The line was already moving. But she did hesitate.
A man carrying a huge black plastic garbage bag on his shoulder, the bag stuffed, it seemed, with empty beer and soda cans, was passing through the door, the man a reverse Santa Claus collecting the city’s clutter, the recipient of urban largesse rather than the dispenser of unearned gifts and undeserved toys. Behind him was a woman who looked like a schoolteacher, gray hair pulled back into a bun, steel-rimmed glasses, a plaid skirt and a cardigan unbuttoned over a pale green blouse. She wore white shoes, not all that scuffed, and ankle socks with dainty pink flowers embroidered at the top. In her hand was an empty two-pound Maxwell House coffee can without a lid. Perhaps she was hoping for carry-out. Next came a teenager, a boy, with scabs on his nose and under his right eye. His T-shirt was dirty and torn at the neck so that some of the material flapped away from his chest, exposing his right nipple.
As the teenager was passing through the door, Dempsey turned away from the steps and went down the street, past the ramp, along the file of people and took her place in line. This was where she felt she belonged. In front of her were two men who stopped talking and faced front the moment she joined them. One had just said, “You can’t do it that way. That way, they won’t oblige. You got to get them to oblige.”
Nothing more was said, as if Dempsey were there to enforce discipline and ensure proper conduct. A man singing inaudible words interspersed with an occasional “Yeah” came into the line behind her. And behind him came a young man with long hair and a vacant stare that made him look like a deposed comic-book prince who had been sent out into beggary and would never find his way back to hearth and home.
Dempsey lifted her tote bag and held it against her chest so it wouldn’t rub the knee of the man behind her or hit the leg of the man in front. Why she had brought the tote, she had not the least idea. Habit, probably. There would be little opportunity for knitting or for reading the book buried somewhere toward the bottom. The clean underclothes kept there for emergencies, the shield replacements and, probably, an extra shield, which should have no purpose for her now. Nor would she ever need again the small box of latex gloves tucked in there somewhere, or the colored pencils and sketchpad she’d stuffed into the bag the afternoon she’d gone to see Doctor Norstar, hoping Joey might be there and he and she would draw together to make some peace between them. But Joey hadn’t been there. Only Doctor Norstar and the movers. Chances were that she would never see Joey again; they would never draw, they would never make their peace. Dempsey hugged the bag closer.