Believe Me Part 4

I will fall over and die the day that I see an Anglican paris.h.i.+oner slapping her thighs, swaying, clapping and bellowing "halleluja" in the presence of the Lord, instead of staring stone-faced at the backs of other people's hats. It's no longer about G.o.d, as far as I can tell. It's about decorum.

If one belongs to the Church of England, one bakes biscuits for the after-service social in the parish hall. Not too many biscuits, however, for one does not wish to appear vain and bountiful.

One is never bountiful, and certainly never ecstatic. One does not get knocked off one's horse, like Paul on the road to Damascus, for one could not abide such wild and discomposing surrender-the equivalent of making a sound during o.r.g.a.s.m.

How does one find G.o.d, once one has lost Him, in all the distracting busy work of making biscuits and writing books of etiquette, one might ask?

One does not know.

10.

On Monday, I had a glorious epiphany. After twenty years of drinking takeout coffee, it suddenly occurred to me that the little square dent in the middle of the cup lid was put there to hold down the plastic flap, so that it doesn't slap against your lip when you drink.

I announced my discovery to Calvin during our evening phone call, and he reminded me that it took me two years to realize that I could skip messages on my call-answer service by pressing the number six.

"Not that that's important," he added. "Congratulations on your new relations.h.i.+p to coffee-cup lids, Frannie, but you'd be better off knowing how to start a fire with twigs."

Calvin ought to know, of course. He has started approximately no fires, ever, with twigs, or anything else, not even matches. The only thing he lights is his hash pipe. Still, he merely warms to concepts of self-sufficiency, inasmuch as his world-view distills into something like this: The world is gonna end. We'll blow ourselves up and germs'll take over; good riddance to humans. This is Calvin's version of clarity. He gets it from his father. Anybody who survives Armageddon will subsist on a diet of rodents, and if they don't know how to hunt rats with pointed sticks, they can shove their Palm Pilots up their a.s.ses and beg for mercy.

Now and then, I press Calvin to elaborate on this vision, or at least on its psychological origins, and he argues that he is not a gloom-ridden misanthrope, not at all, but that it is hubris for anyone to believe that technology improves our lives in a meaningful way. In the end, he says, it cannot save us from ourselves.

The most important technology in Calvin's life at the moment is the kitchen blender, upon which he has recently learned how to play "A Bicycle Built for Two."

11.

Here are some of the important technologies in my life, and I can't help noting, as I jot them down, that the majority have yet to be invented: A TV that automatically turns on at seven every morning, and shows three back-to-back episodes of Franklin the Turtle.

A breakfast robot-other than myself-that can dispense toasted English m.u.f.fins with peanut b.u.t.ter on a plastic Ikea plate to small children watching Franklin on TV.

A genetically engineered money tree.

Laser-guided eyeb.a.l.l.s for the back of my head.

A remote that can put other people on mute.

A radar device that can track the flight of angels.

On Tuesday, technology confounded me again. It was teatime at the Regional. In a hospital, teatime generally means supper time, because everyone keeps farmers' hours for no apparent reason. Bernice and I were discussing the foodstuffs on her tray.

"Dr. Richardson said to put the medicine in my ginger ale?" she asked, her expression a wondrous mingling of horror, skepticism and disgust, as if I'd just advised her that she'd swallowed a grub.

"He just suggested it," I rea.s.sured her. "He thought you'd be happier about taking it if you dissolved it first in a drink." I squeezed her hand, which was papery and cool.

"It's a cancer medicine, isn't it?" she demanded to know.

I shook my head. "I really don't think so, Bernice, I think it's for indigestion."

Her expression grew pensive. She rolled herself onto her side, away from where I sat on the chair. "These doctors don't know nothing," she muttered. "When I get home, I'm changing to that doctor in Sydney. The one s.h.i.+rley had last year. Get him to switch my asthma medicine and take me off all them other pills."

I dipped my head down. Felt my chest tighten. Did Bernice need to arrive at some sort of reckoning about her predicament? I tilted a can of strawberry Ensure into her gla.s.s, and then sat quietly for a few minutes. To judge from the rise and fall of her shoulders, she was falling asleep.

"Do you want to have a nap now?" I asked softly.

She nodded weakly. I got up to reach for her mask. I had initially thought it was an oxygen mask, but Celia explained that it misted some sort of respiratory medication that Bernice needed to inhale before sleeping. A jumbo dose of Dristan, or something. I pulled the mask off its hook, and wondered if it hadn't gotten a bit smudged and dirty in the last few days, going on and off her face with no one cleaning it. So I breathed into it-"haaa"-and wiped it with my sleeve, the way you do when you're cleaning your sungla.s.ses, and was just thinking that I really shouldn't have done that, when the neon lights blinked out overhead. All at once the room was lit only by the pallor of a winter afternoon, which felt simultaneously more natural and somewhat alarming.

"Good heavens," said Aileen, who had been listening to the radio. "My music stopped and now my fan isn't whirring."

A most interesting coincidence.

"It's the power," murmured Celia, who was sitting cross-legged in her bed with one hand ma.s.saging her back, and the other lightly on Lester, to whom she had been reading Poppleton in Spring. She was sweating profusely. "My morphine drip has cut out."

"Good heavens," Aileen said again, but now she was staring at Julia's corner of the room.

Julia's special air mattress was slowly deflating. The electric pump that regulated its pressure had stopped. She was sinking, fast asleep, between the metal bed rails, like a n.o.blewoman on a funereal Viking boat drifting out to sea. We all gaped, open-mouthed.

"You'd better do something, Frannie," Aileen said.

I dutifully rushed over to Julia's bed without being able to formulate the slightest inkling of what the something was that I should do. "Julia! Wake up!" I urged softly as I clutched her bed rails. It turns out that a deeply slumbering and arthritic ninety-three-year-old is slower to leap into action than you might hope. I tried to cus.h.i.+on her slow-motion descent, as she perilously closed in on the bed's metal underpinnings, by ... oh ... hmmm. I yanked Bernice's pillow from under her tousled head-which went thwack against her mattress-and began trying to push it under Julia's back.

Aileen struggled to get up and help me, throwing her arm out with such haste that she knocked over her fan, whereupon the power surged back on, Julia suddenly reversed course and began to ascend, and a large number of Hostess potato chips flew across the room like a cloud of locusts, propelled by the overturned fan. Lester shouted in delight and reached out to catch them. Celia curled forward, head to knees, collapsing in laughter, and Aileen joined in, covering her mouth with the back of one hand and looking mischievous, as if she'd played a deliberate prank. Bernice, on the other hand, flailed at the chips and began to wheeze.

"Oh dear," I said, trotting to her side. "I'm so sorry." I fumbled with her mask as she gasped for air, bug-eyed. But I couldn't make out which b.u.t.ton to push to start misting her, and came close to tears at my own stupidity. When I finally had her settled, I went and stood in the hallway, bereft.

Dr. Richardson was approaching with his arms behind his back, and this time, I was the one who ran away.

I am comforted by sunlight, like a cat. I basked in it the next morning, as I sat by the tall, bright windows of the hospital meeting room, face tilted upward, hands behind my head, waiting for Father McPhee. The light was so serene and the room so neutral that I felt briefly out of time, the way one feels on an airplane when the sun has just risen above the feathery bed of clouds outside the window, radiant, and there's nothing to antic.i.p.ate but coffee and a square of scrambled eggs.

"You wanted to see me?"

Father McPhee barged into my solitude. I opened my eyes to greet him, and saw that he was enormously fat, mostly about the middle. He was shaped rather like a top. He whirled in, grabbed a chair, swung it around and plunked himself down, knees apart, directly in front of me, chair to chair at the window. He had a huge grin on his face.

"You're Frances, Bernice's daughter-in-law," he announced, slapping me on the leg. His movements were expansive and c.o.c.ky. This jarred me. For some reason, I thought Bernice's beloved "Faa'ther McPhee" would be a member of her own generation, morose and outdated, a fading apparition of piety. But no, this guy looked as if he were barely pus.h.i.+ng forty, with trim, receding chestnut hair, a pointy nose and sharp little eyes that glinted through rectangular spectacles.

"Yes," I said. "That's right. Or, at least, I'm with her son Calvin. I don't know if you know him."

"The orchestra player," he replied, his expression brightening back into a grin. "Bernice wouldn't know the difference between Sid Vicious and Mahler, is that fair to say?" He winked.

I stared at him in surprise. "You know that Calvin doesn't play in an orchestra?"

"Oh, sure, sure." He kept grinning. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. I suppose he and Calvin met when Stan died. To arrange the funeral. It quickly became evident that Father McPhee was expansive with his physical presence, but not with his words. He kept staring at me. Kept grinning, his hands clasped between his knees. I cleared my throat.

"Right. Well, anyway, thank you for meeting with me, I appreciate it because I wondered if I could have your advice."

"Oh, sure."

"I need to talk to Bernice about her health."

"What health?" He winked.

I smiled, har har, and looked down at my hands. "Well, exactly, that's the problem. Her cancer has come out of remission and the chickens are, as some might say, coming home to roost."

"Sounds like you've been talking to Dr. Richardson." He winked again.

"Well, yes, so I don't know the specifics, but I have to a.s.sume that she's close to dying-I mean, I guess that's what Dr. Richardson means-and I feel this is something she should be discussing with people who love her."

"Oh sure." He was jiggling one fat knee up and down. Too much coffee?

I wondered-what should I call him? Father or Your Honor? I wasn't sure and it seemed important. Doctor, doctor, what do I do?

"The thing is, um, sir," I cringed, "it's difficult to talk to Bernice about the situation in medical terms." I frowned, trying to think of the right words. "Or even, you know, even existentially or spiritually, or ..." I tilted my head back and breathed in deeply, fiddled with an earring. "Am I making any sense? I feel like I should be reading her some Dylan Thomas poetry-you know that famous poem 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night'? Although, of course, Thomas wound up dying by falling drunk off a barstool, so I can't say he set the most inspiring example himself, maybe that's not a good idea, but there's a wonderful poem by Walt Whitman I could read her, this beautiful section of Leaves of Gra.s.s."

He nodded in recognition, but said nothing.

"But then I can't," I went on. "For one thing, what Whitman is talking about is totally posthumous, and that's weird, and kind of mean, and then if I ever bring up any kind of prospect of reckoning, it would be like triggering a smoke alarm. I'm worried she'll shriek with terror." At that, I faltered, and smiled apologetically.

"Sure, that's Bernice," he said, still grinning. Was this funny? I opened my mouth, then clapped it shut. I suddenly worried about what I was doing, in the Good Father's mind. I was gossiping, maybe. Perhaps he had no intention of advising me at all. I swallowed hard.

Father McPhee at last rid himself of his grin and straightened, pus.h.i.+ng at his gla.s.ses, coughing, and gazing downward as he a.s.sembled his thoughts.

"Frances," he ventured, "my experience, such as it is, and maybe I'm not old, but I'm certainly around the old, is that people die the way they live." He held my gaze. "Bernice has not lived her life reflectively and searchingly, is that fair to say?"

I nodded and bit my upper lip, suddenly on the verge of tears. How would I know if she's lived her life searchingly? I've only met the woman three times.

"In some ways," he continued, "Bernice is more like a child than an old woman. Which is-you know, the elderly often become childlike because they lose their faculties, they grow dependant-but Bernice has always been like that. Since I've known her. Like a particularly upsettable child. I don't why that is, Frances." He paused, in case I wished to provide an explanation, which I could not. "But I do know that she will not change on her deathbed. In most cases-G.o.d will correct me if I'm wrong-people just keep on living, keep on complaining or joking or raging or drinking, you know, whatever, until they fall off their barstools. Even when they're administered their last rites, they are still very much animated by what drove them all along. With Stan, your father-in-law, I came in-I don't know if Calvin told you this-I came in when he was in the Regional with pneumonia a couple of years ago; we thought he was very close. And the nurse explained why I was there, and he said: 'I ain't seein' no priest on my deathbed. This is a special occasion, and I ain't gonna talk to no one but the Pope.'" He laughed at the memory, his sides shaking, then sobered and leaned toward me. "Nor should you feel obliged to change her."

I wasn't about to argue. I sat there still as stone, considering the truth of what he'd said.

"On the other hand, Bernice has always been very open to receiving G.o.d. As I recall, she is very devoted to St. Anne de Beaupre. I believe that's her patron saint?"

I nodded. I'd seen several St. Anne knickknacks in the house. Curious, I looked her up on the Internet and found out she was the patron saint of broommakers, French-Canadian fur traders, housewives and lost articles.

"So the great task," McPhee concluded, crossing his hamlike arms, "of bringing the soul closer to G.o.d, has already been accomplished. Do you see this? All that is left for you to do, Frances, is to call upon G.o.d with your own prayers."

"What do you mean?" I bit my thumbnail. Was G.o.d going to take care of this and let me get back to my own life?

"Pray for Bernice. Support her soul's journey toward death and onward to Heaven through prayer."

"Oh." I winced at my childishness.

The priest c.o.c.ked his chin to one side and considered me, clearly attuned to such instantaneous Good Person/ Bad Person struggles within his paris.h.i.+oners. "Is there anything you would like to confess?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The words spoken in confession are guarded by the most solemn obligation of confidentiality, and I certainly hold that to be true in all circ.u.mstances. Is there anything you'd like to confess to, Frances?"

"Oh ... that's very nice of you." Did he know I wasn't Catholic? I was caught between confessing that I didn't understand what he meant, and confessing anything else. "You mean, right now? Today's sins?"

"Whatever is troubling your conscience."

My shoulders drooped and I sighed. I thought about Bernice's kitchen stuff. The greed tic. How I'd lied about something to Avery in November. How I dumped that guy in high school. And then, for some reason, I remembered that jet-lagged morning in Spain, long ago, in the house my mother rented in Malaga, when I accidentally went number two in a bidet. In a panic of embarra.s.sment, I denied all responsibility when my mother found something wrapped in paper, sprayed with perfume, and concealed in the wastebasket. I suggested that she ask my grandmother. Rank exploitation of the elderly was emerging as a theme. I remembered other things too, worse things I'd done, which flashed into my conscious mind and disappeared into the dark of denial as swiftly as heat lightning. If, by your late thirties, you haven't gone to confession, it's more like Life Review on Judgment Day than a quick Hail Mary.

"Nothing important," I mumbled.

"Everything is important in G.o.d's eyes."

"Well, I can't see that." I raised my head to argue, "I imagine someone confessing to strangling eleven old ladies with a nylon is going to have a more important conversation with G.o.d than someone who wants her dying mother-in-law's wok."

"You are covetous, then."

"Only of appliances."

"Go on."

I felt like kicking myself for giving him something to work with. "It's not like I want to go out and buy appliances. I do not covet all appliances. It's just that I don't have very many, and Bernice has tons, which are all just sitting around her house unused. Really, some of them are still in their boxes. And I wouldn't even bring it up, except that I feel guilty about the fact that I'm thinking of Bernice's stuff this way. But I can't help it, because ... the truth is, I don't like her. I don't like Bernice, and I want her wok."

I was aflame with a sense of my own ridiculousness at this point, and couldn't meet Father McPhee's eyes. He said nothing for a moment, and then I felt his palm resting lightly on my knee.

I looked up, tentative. "So?"

"So?" he echoed, amused.

"So, what should I do?"

He resumed his original posture, elbows on his knees, eyes glinting behind the gla.s.ses, that big fat grin. "Don't pine for woks, Frances. Set them aside. Give them away. Take Bernice herself up into your arms and pray for the Lord's guidance."

I nodded, rubbing my eyes, playing an imaginary game of Whack-A-Mole with the disgruntled and irritable thoughts that kept popping up in my mind, chief among them, "d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l."

"I know what you're thinking," McPhee said.

Oh, G.o.d, I hope not.

"You're thinking you can't do it. But I'll tell you something: I may be a Catholic, but I'm not so narrow-minded I can't quote a Jewish rabbi. Do you know Rabbi Herschel?"

"No," I shook my head.

"That's okay. You don't need to know who he was, just what he said. He said-and I've always liked this-'Religion begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.'"