“We were loosely affiliated with the King of King’s parish and if we ever spoke with members of that church, we talked about ourselves like we were a foster home,” she says. “Some of the girls came to us through that church—but Kitty was particular in who she would accept for residence. You’re right, though, there was recruitment involved, especially on campuses. One or two of us would make friends with the same girl and invite her to worship with us. We’d try to make contact with her every day, usually more than once a day, and eventually we’d try to preempt her other friends. Every so often one of us would be too aggressive and we’d lose her, but usually young women on their own want to meet other women. We picked foreign exchange students or women who were already looking for a community of faith. We’d go to prayer services on campuses and watch for girls who came alone—”
“Hannah didn’t seem vulnerable,” I tell her. “She had plenty of friends—”
“We wouldn’t have been successful with Hannah in the long run,” she says.
“But this was something you were actively involved in?” I ask her. “Meeting girls and bringing them to back to the house with you—”
“I was very religious,” she says. “I don’t know if you’d understand if you’ve never been religious, or if you’ve never felt something so strongly that you think it’s God. I thought I was helping those girls—”
When I don’t answer, she says, “You know, I really fucked up my life. I can’t have that back—all those years of shitty choices. It wasn’t until after I was free of Timothy and Waverly and that house did I feel the weight of what I’d done to those women—it’s like a panic, whenever I realize what I helped do. I didn’t know what would happen to them, what Timothy and Waverly did to them—all that time I thought I was helping bring them closer to what I called Jesus. I was deluded and still feel sick, physically sick, when I think of my part in that house. I had to stop believing in God before I realized what it meant that we all bear the weight of the cross. I had to stop believing in God before I wanted to atone for what I’d done in His name—”
Albion pushes the pace and I fall behind—I can’t keep up with her when she picks up speed, but I also realize I’m not meant to, so I slacken my pace and let her pull away. Whenever we come to a creek or some vein of running water, she pauses to listen. She once asked me if I was a Christian and I told her that I wasn’t, that I don’t believe in God.
“You believe in love,” she said.
The New Castle Farmers’ Market and Super Flea, perfect for plums. Saturdays the worst for crowds, aisles difficult to thread through, vendors in tents or wooden-framed booths draped with tarps. Steelers jerseys, Confederate flags, bootleg MMA sims, strawberries—I still need strawberries. Strawberry rhubarb cupcakes for Albion, if I can figure out the recipe. Scroll, scrolclass="underline" one-quart saucepan, heat strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, flour, butter. Four of five stars, but sounds easy. Do we need butter? Ping Albion and ask, Do we have butter? Rhubarb, ten dollars for a bundle from Tuscarawas Farms—SmartShopper says I can do better.
Good on butter, pings Albion.
I purchase a package of plums. Booths of jarred preserves, bell peppers in plastic wrap, gourmet marshmallow cubes, dark honey of Ohio. The aisle’s capped with a booth for the handmade ginger soap Albion likes, so I grab a few bars and pick up a dozen bananas Foster marshmallows. Trust SmartShopper when it flashes BEST BUY on a package of rhubarb sprigs.
I buy groceries from lists she writes and she prepares our dinners. She has me on a vegetarian diet. With our walks and what I’ve been eating, I’ve lost weight—I feel trimmer than I have in years. I try to dress up for our dinners, sometimes even wearing Gavril’s suit if I know she’s making something special. I pour wine and set the table, just the small kitchen table, and she serves our food. Albion still likes the act of prayer, to remember what her life was once like and what it has become, but says she doesn’t know what or who she prays to any longer. I bow my head and clasp my hands and say “amen” when she’s finished but spend my time thinking over what I’ve lost but also what I’ve found.
I clean the dishes while she works in her studio. I tidy up the place as best I can. Around nine I brew tea and around nine thirty she joins me on the sofa and we talk. Most nights we talk about art. She shows me her designs and sometimes I read to her. At some point it became tacit between us that Albion would leave behind making images of the house in Greenfield if I started to write poetry again—that we would help each other move forward. We go to bed nearing midnight and every night I wonder if we’ll kiss good night, but we never have. She uses the only bed. There’s a mattress on the second bedroom floor and an antique trunk she found for fifteen dollars at a Goodwill I use for my clothes and books. I lie on my mattress staring out the window into the dark tops of our pines until I no longer hear the soft sounds of Albion readying herself for bed. I can’t sleep until she’s asleep.
I can never have Theresa back.
She’s been deleted and Albion believes that even Mook couldn’t have brought her back, that Mook’s work is thorough. She asks how we met.
“It’s not a romantic story,” I tell her.
“It’s romantic to me,” she says.
“So, there was a conference every year about social networking tools called PodCamp,” I tell her. Albion wants to see the moment I met Theresa, so we immerse together—strolling downtown Pittsburgh like tourists in a foreign city lost to time. The City’s working through its infinite loop of weather, the sky a leaden ceiling, snow and rain slurring into an intolerable frozen mush that grays out the buildings and dampens everything. From certain angles, there is a beauty to these downtown streets, even on days like this, when car windows fogged and people huddled in grotesque wet coats, using umbrellas and slipping on the sidewalks. It’s November in the City. Windshield wipers brush away globs of snow. Albion and I duck into the Courtyard Marriott where it’s warmer, and sit together in the lobby drinking hot cocoa. Despite the weather, dozens of people arrive for PodCamp—designers, students, young professionals, all dressed better than the rest of us wading through the muck outside. I scan their faces, recognizing people whose names I’ve forgotten.
Albion and I wander the hotel hallways together, looking behind room doors at televisions playing to empty rooms and out-of-town travelers inadvertently filmed as they fetched ice from the vending machines or went to the pool or checked into their rooms, their images trapped in the Archive like ghosts haunting wrong, unfamiliar places. Throughout the morning the PodCamp attendees settled into folding chairs to listen to PowerPoint presentations and take notes in PodCamp binders, but after lunch the sessions became more specific. The room was called Partitioned Conference Room B, and the session was “Generating a Realistic Income with WordPress and Affiliate Marketing.” There were only six of us registered. Theresa came in just after me—a peach blouse and blue jeans, a suede jacket, her hair longer then. She doesn’t come in now. She sat a few seats away, I remember, and I stammered when I introduced myself.
“Theresa Marie,” she said, and I remember that hearing her name was like hearing a rare and sacred word, but all I could come up with was, “Aren’t you Elvis Presley’s daughter?”
“Itching like a gal on a fuzzy tree,” she said, “but I think that was Lisa Marie—”
We talked—about statues of horses in Washington, DC, for some reason, I don’t remember why, some sort of small talk, but we talked. What one hoof lifted from the ground meant, what two hooves lifted meant—I think I asked her what four hooves meant and she said “Pegasus.”