Angel in the Parlor (6 page)

The moon peeps in at the window. He hears carolers singing far away, perhaps as far away as Montgomery Place. He wishes snow would fall and lighten the trees and the dark streets.

Coming by here? He raises his head from the pillow to listen.

No, no. The sound is moving farther off.

A passing car slides its shadow on the wall opposite his bed. He remembers as a child watching the shadows cast by the candles in church, and he hears his mother say, as she said so many years before, “Why do all the flames have such long haloes on them? They didn't used to.”

Neither of them knew that she was just starting to go blind.

II

The third Sunday in Advent, women from the altar guild stay after the ten o'clock service to decorate the church. Now a sharp smell of pine and resin fills the sanctuary. Branches green the windowsills, and the cold flames of poinsettia ignite the spruce boughs on the steps below the pulpit. Father Hayden kneels on the first step arranging the crêche, which the sexton finds scattered every morning and which Father Hayden, smiling to himself, sets to rights. The dead bishop troubled Father Martin too, throwing all his books about at night till the old priest was obliged to move them out of the rectory into his office, untenanted by any lingering spirits.

In the evenings Father Hayden works on his sermon. The ragged music of the choir practicing in the library pleases him, though he hates to hear them start a hymn he especially loves and then break it off in the middle.

O, praise the Lord, all ye heathen!

He tries to recall the Christmas sermon he gave before his fellow students at the seminary. What was the topic of that sermon? Why can't he remember his own? He only remembers the face of his teacher and a sermon on the Last Judgment, given by Bartholomew Kelly, who died in a car accident last year.
Do you think Christ the servant, born in poverty, will come in glory to judge the living and the dead? Holy and gracious Father, teach us to judge ourselves.
Father Hayden writes it down.

Then he stands up and wanders over to the bookcase and pulls out the history of the parish, careful not to lose the bookmarks he keeps there. He resolves to remind his flock that not so long ago the rich rented the front pews and had them upholstered to their own taste. Yes, he will revive the history of the first black communicant, the rector's cook, who sat on a bench provided for her at the back of the sanctuary.

And he'll tell them about the church where he conducted his first services, at Milltown, not far from Yarmouth, and how during the Christmas offertory, the people brought the fruits of their labor—chickens, bread, fish—directly to the altar. A rooster, its legs hobbled, crowed once, twice, three times during the sermon, and Father Hayden motioned the deacon to take it away. Not until he turned to bless the bread and the wine did Father Hayden discover that the deacon had wrung its neck.

A knock at the door makes him jump. The sexton, not waiting to be invited, pushes it open and stands there clasping a large duffel bag which Father Hayden recognizes at once.

“Pardon me, Father, but as I was emptying the garbage, I found this.”

“Where did you find it?” demands Father Hayden. His voice sounds louder than he intended it to.

“In the furnace room, Father. Shall I throw it away or keep it?”

For an instant there splashes across his mind the image of the old man lying dead under the everlasting arms of the furnace, like a trapped animal.

“Did you find anything else?”

“No, only this.”

“Well, put it back where you found it. Whoever left it will surely come back for it.”

The sexton shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“Shouldn't you call the police?”

“I can't telephone the police about a bundle of old clothes. How on earth did he get in, I wonder, without anyone seeing him?”

“I leave the door open on Thursday nights for choir practice, Father.”

He waits attentively for his orders. Father Hayden sighs.

“Put it back, put it back. If you see any suspicious persons, come and tell me. Don't call the police.”

The sexton nods. Father Hayden turns back to his notes, but they reveal nothing to him now.

He goes to bed earlier than usual and does not drop off to sleep until early morning. And then he dreams that the sexton is chasing him round the sanctuary with a broom, shouting, “Do not loll on the altar! Keep your elbows close to your sides! When you make the sign of the cross, make crosses, not circles, and make them high or you'll upset the chalice.”

Then he dreams that he wakes up. And in this two-storied dream, he sits up in his bed and hears music on Mansion Street, as from a parade far off. Running to the living room he throws up the shades and opens the great window that looks out on the street. From where do I know this tune? he asks himself, for it teases him like the smell of soap or tea when the memory of the smell has outlived the memory of the place it belonged to.

The street shines, paved in silver.

And now he sees the animals, the foxes beating their tambourines, the bears juggling firebrands, the goats tossing saucers and drums on their horns. The camels sing in thin, reedy voices. The hares and the marmots walk on their hind legs, paw in paw, all their grossness purged away as the souls of hunted and useful things must be, permanent as ivory, yet touching as flesh and fur. And he recognizes them at once; they walked on the silver lip of the tide on the first mornings of his childhood, before he learned to speak. Holding his mother's hand, he often watched them pass. And now he knows they have been walking all these years, looking for him.

But are they real animals or men in animal masks? he asks himself. For what animals could create such a radiant presence?

At once the whole company vanishes, and he wakes up, ready to weep at the loss of them. He runs to the front door and unlocks it and stands for a moment blinded by the white brilliance of Mansion Street, empty but glazed with last night's rain. Rain in December! He wishes that he might spend the morning walking that street, but he has four sick calls to make, and he has promised to visit Bertha Wells, the oldest living parishoner, who is bedridden and cannot attend the Christmas services that night. She lives in the Episcopal home across from the rectory. The others live in places less convenient to himself. Ah, he tells himself, someday there will be money to hire a curate who can make some of these visits for him.

Later that afternoon, he enters the sanctuary and pauses by the steps to choose a poinsettia for Bertha Wells. He lifts out the smallest pot, hidden among the spruce boughs. He stands up, hesitates.

Someone is watching him. He feels the skin on the back of his neck prickle. But looking out over the empty pews into the darkness, he sees nobody.

Is somebody watching me?

Nobody.

Holding the pyx in one hand and the pot in the other, he crosses Mansion Street and climbs the steps to the front door. Behind the frosted oval glass, the shadow behind the desk rises to meet him. And for a moment he feels like his father, calling on the sick, and he wishes he had the power to heal bodies as well as souls. To make the lame walk and the blind see.

The door opens and a young woman in a white uniform admits him.

“Father Hayden,” she smiles. “How wonderful to see you. Won't you come with me?”

He follows her across the empty lobby. The sound of his footsteps sinks into the carpet. A TV set flickers soundlessly in front of a huge leather sofa. Hearing a clatter of dishes and voices to the left, he turns, but the young woman motions him to the elevator. They ride up smiling at one another.

“Flowers,” remarks the woman. “How nice.”

“Has Mrs. Wells had many visitors?”

“Hardly any. But she gets lots of cards. She's outlived everyone in her family, you know. Her husband died five years ago. Her daughter died two years ago of TB. There were no grandchildren.”

“TB? I thought no one died of that anymore,” says Father Hayden.

Leaving the elevator, he walks close behind his guide down the corridor. When she holds a door open for him, he enters without hesitation.

“Bertha, you have a special visitor.”

In a bed against the far wall lies—is it a man or a woman? The figure is nearly bald. Father Hayden sets the flowerpot and the pyx on the bedside table. The bed nearest the door lies empty, immaculate. He puts his coat on the foot of it, and comes forward, extending his hand.

“God bless you, Bertha, and merry Christmas to you!”

The old woman's blue eyes study him. Then she leans forward and whispers, “Just look at those people in the corner, Father. And they aren't even married.”

Glancing behind him, he discovers that the attendant has vanished, and in that instant the door across the hall opens and he sees an old woman in a bathrobe peering into the drawer of her table and scolding somebody.

But Bertha still stares into the space behind him. Touching his arm, she draws him lightly toward her.

“I know they're not real, Father, because you walked right through them.”

Hastily he takes his prayer book out of his pocket.

Hearing the familiar prayers on his lips, the old woman lifts two fingers to receive the host. Arthritis has crumpled the others.

“Here,” she says in a scratchy voice, “between these two.”

When she has received his blessing, she seems all at once to come alive. She sits up, stares at Father Hayden, and says, “Are you the curate?”

“I'm the new rector,” said Father Hayden.

“The rector?” she repeats, surprised. She studies him, as if she hoped to unmask an imposter. Then, satisfied, she says, “We had a curate when Father Legg was rector. But it was Father Legg I always wanted to serve me. Still, you couldn't tell which side he would serve on. And if I sat on the right side, then I had to go to the right rail, and if I sat on the left side, then the left rail. And if the curate served me, I confess I felt as if I'd hardly taken communion at all. And then I had to wait a whole week to take it again.”

Father Hayden laughs in spite of himself.

“And we young girls, we always got our hands folded just so, long before it was time to go up.”

She closes her eyes. She is silent so long that he fears she has forgotten him. He takes her hand. Outside, snow is falling at last, draping the gravestones in the yard, the roof of the rectory, the steps.

He feels the warmth of her hand like a lining in his glove all the way back to his own door. And it's there the sexton takes his sleeve and whispers, smiling.

“That bag of old clothes I found—it's been taken away.”

And Father Hayden thinks, he's been waiting for me to tell me this.

“Taken away? Who took it away?”

“I don't know. It was gone this morning. Taken away,” he repeats, as if he has done nothing his whole life but bring old clothes together with their rightful owners.

“Well, that's fine,” says Father Hayden. “A merry Christmas to you.”

“And to you too, Father. Peter Beasley tells me you'll be taking dinner with his family tonight, before the service.”

Father Hayden nods. He unlocks his door and steps inside. The sexton is padding across the snow back to the sanctuary which is already aglow with candles for Christmas. Darkness comes now at four o'clock. Time! Time! There is not much time. Father Hayden remembers he must wrap the puppets he has bought for the deacon's children, but a growing uneasiness has paralyzed him.

Can a man be living in this house and I not know it?

He hurries through all the rooms downstairs, turning on the lights. Then, standing in the vestibule, he snaps on the light in the second floor hall. Then he ascends the stairs, making as much noise as possible. He whistles. He bangs his feet. He sings a little. He reaches the top landing.

Now he goes into the first bedroom. Turns on the lights.

Nobody there.

Into the second bedroom and the third. Empty rooms he has forgotten ever existed, rooms painted colors he never chose or papered in fruits, ships, and flowers. His footsteps shake the floorboards, his shadow follows him, gigantic, inhuman.

Nobody there.

At the foot of the stairs leading to the third floor, he turns on the light. His chest tightens, he can hear the thump of his heart. How frail a thing the body is! That his heart continues its work without a word from him amazes him, that his limbs move in spite of his doubts and confusion fills him with a peculiar tenderness toward them.

Noisily he marches up the stairs. Into the first room. Nothing but dead flies in one corner, thick as sand. Now the second room. His hand on the light switch, he hears a scrabbling sound that nearly sends him running. In his heart miniature boxes of cereal are falling like hail and a pickpocket's hand is snatching them up.

And then he hears the twitter of starlings in the eaves and relief floods him. I must call an exterminator to get rid of them, he thinks, for he has heard stories of starlings stealing lighted cigarettes from ashtrays left by open windows and sticking them into their nests. Great buildings have been brought low by such small causes.

Carefully turning off all the lights, he walks downstairs. The house is empty. And this certain knowledge floods him with a loneliness he had not expected.

Time! Time! The deacon is sitting down to dinner without him. Father Hayden hurries to take the box of puppets from his closet shelf. Is it possible he dreamed of animals this morning? He cannot remember their shapes now, only that he wanted them and looked for them in the street he saw upon waking.

And now see him. It is eleven o'clock, the faithful have arrived in their best clothes, they rustle in the pews, waiting eagerly for the service to begin. In the corridor, Father Hayden fastens his cope; its scarlet cross slopes down his back as he takes his place behind the acolytes and folds both hands over his prayer book. The acolytes lift their candles. Now he is standing at the borders of the forest of lights. He hears the opening measure of the processional hymn. And as the door opens and they move into the sanctuary, his heart too is lifted. For among the faithful, perhaps the madman has come back and is even now sitting on the bench behind the last row of pews like a stray animal that has slunk out of the cold, caring nothing for the Word but wanting only to warm its paws at these mysterious fires.