Embrace Me (12 page)

“Naw, man. I just know this stuff in my heart. You can't prove any of it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I've seen all the statistics. You just gotta know it, like you know the way your nails are shaped or how far your heels stick out behind your foot. You don't got to know why, just that it is.”

“Maybe it's like that for you.” I pour the eggnog into the glasses.

“Maybe. But if it isn't for you, too, if
you
don't find faith, find Jesus around the place, then maybe I'm wrong; maybe He's really not here. Do you believe He's really not here, Drew?”

I hand him the mug. “I don't know, Hermy. I don't know about it anymore, I guess.”

He raises his arm in a toast. “Can we agree it's a holy night? A night of stars and stables and shepherds?”

“Yeah. We can.”

But then, Hermy's not really all there, is he? I mean, that was a pretty corny speech he just gave there.

“You want to walk down to midnight mass?” I ask after downing the eggnog.

“Sure.”

Hermy's game for pretty much anything.

We head to the corner of Baltimore Avenue and Talbot Street toward St. Mary's. A handbell choir is playing “Silent Night” as we enter. Very nice.

Everyone sits in their pew. It's quiet.

“Catholics sure know how to do reverence,” Hermy whispers.

You can feel it.

And I just let myself ooze into it. I don't sing the songs. I don't sit and stand, sit and stand. I just sit in the very back corner and watch Father Brian do his thing.

Or the church's thing. Or whatever it is.

What I do know is that he doesn't expect any more or any less than what he's doing right now. I think he's fine with that. A year ago I would have pitied him.

Now I'm not so sure.

SIX

VALENTINE: 2008

A
ugustine has shown up every day since Thanksgiving, drinking coffee, sitting with Lella and me to watch a movie. While Lella sits in her stroller and directs, he helps me string lights in all the shrubbery and along the rooflines, cover the front door with gold wrapping paper, hang the ugliest wreath in town, and figure out how to get the molded plastic nativity set Rick found at a flea market from blowing over in the wind.

“Thanks for the help. Last year it was a mess.” I hand him a cup of hot chocolate as we rest on the porch. “Who wants to keep running outside to rescue the holy family every time an errant gust of wind rolls down the street? Lella nearly choked last year when she saw Mary and Joseph scattered across the lawn.”

“Oh truly, Val! It seemed so sacrilegious! A little shameful, don't you think?”

“It's bad enough to make a plastic baby Jesus in the first place, but to allow him to be blown on his face a good twenty feet from his manger feels downright sinful. I'm not the most religious person in the world, but even I know this isn't right.”

“Well, it won't happen this year, friends.” Augustine had hauled over some weights from his bench and affixed them to the bottom of the figures with electrical tape.

“You work out?” I ask as he raises Joseph to his feet.

“Yeah. Some. I don't obsess about it. Just like to work out extra angst.”

That night I talk about it with Lella. “He seems kinda strong, doesn't he?”

“He surely does.”

“But he's still a little chubby; nothing major, just not the kind of guy you're dying to see in swim trunks. Notice I didn't say a Speedo. Those should be outlawed, all remaining pieces gathered up and thrown into a big Speedo bonfire in front of which a million thankful women dance in happiness and relief that they'll never again have to wonder if ‘that guy' will be around when they step onto the beach.”

“Oh, Valentine, you always make me laugh.”

“It's what makes it all bearable.”

“Surely. That and other things too.”

“Thanks for helping, Augustine.”

He cuts up bread for my sausage stuffing. He's pulled his gray dreads back into a blue rubber band, the kind that holds broccoli stalks together at the grocery store.

“So you know your way around a kitchen, Val. How'd that happen?”

“Before I went on the road, I was a cook at an elementary school in Lynchburg. I learned to make things tasty there, I suppose.”

“Obviously you're not scared of cooking for a crowd.”

“You kidding me? It's easier cooking for a crowd.”

He scoops up some bread cubes in both of his hands and deposits them in a big aluminum bowl. Five silver rings encircle his fingers. Blaze told me he has a Harley he hardly ever uses.

“So these walks you take at night. You and Lella ever want company?”

“Not really. I mean, we go at midnight, Augustine. That should clue you in on things.”

“True. True.”

I set a saucepan on the range to heat up the chicken broth, into which I'll melt two sticks of butter. On the back burner five pounds of sausage browns in Blaze's prehistoric cast-iron skillet. “Love the smell of sausage frying.”

“So would you mind if I came along sometime?”

Man, this guy is persistent. “Why do you even want to?” He deposits more cubes in the bowl. “Right. That's enough bread. Go ahead and dice up some onion. Really little pieces. I'll brown those in some more butter. I'm not shy about butter.”

“As far as I'm concerned, butter is the true lubricant of life.”

“You're obviously smarter than you seem.”

“Back to your question, Val. I'd like to come just 'cause I'd like to come.”

“You're still not trying to ‘reach out' to me, are you? Because I swear I'm just fine.”

He lays his knife on the table. “Do you find yourself that unworthy of other people's time? I mean, can't I just want to be with you two? I like you. You're both independent women in your own way.”

“Lizard Woman and Lella the Human Cocoon.” I can't help it, I laugh out loud.

“Don't laugh. There's more to offer people than good skin and arms and legs. I mean, how many times do you make a friend based on their skin, or if they have arms and legs?”

“You're a trip.” He deserves a bone. “Hey, we're working a benefit show tomorrow night for the local theater's fund-raising gala.” I stir the sausage. Getting nice and crispy. “The dinner's by invitation only, but you could come for the show. That would be no problem.”

“Sure I'll come. Thanks for asking. Where is it?”

“Elysian Heights Educational Center.”

He raises his brows. “Really? That's weird.”

I roll my eyes. “I heard they're doing more stuff for the community. Letting the place out on off nights. Maybe they're not trying to hog everything for themselves like they used to.”

Augustine winces. “That's a little harsh, isn't it?”

I shrug. “Honestly?”

“Okay, they deserved that, I guess.”

“Especially during the Drew Parrish days. I hated that guy.”

“He was a little plastic.”

“A little? It was worse than a sideshow, that show. And that poor Daisy woman!” I lean forward. “I've been on the freak show circuit for five seasons now, Augustine, and I've seen what they call Skeleton People. You know what I'm talking about?”

He shakes his head.

“Isaac Sprague, The Living Skeleton, was probably the most famous of these guys. He lived in the eighteen hundreds, was five feet, four inches tall, and weighed forty-eight pounds.”

“Did he have an eating disorder?”

“Nah, he had a good appetite. He worked as a cobbler, then a grocer, but despite seeing doctors and all, he continued to lose weight. And so”—I spread my arms wide—“the sideshow took him in. Because we're the place for folks who don't have a chance in the real world.”

I stir the sausage again.

“Sounds like my kind of people.”

“And you know what? That church, that guy, weren't they supposed to be like the sideshow too? Accepting and all? And yet, even that woman, Daisy, she wasn't accepted for who she was. She changed and changed and changed. And then, when she was finally formed into some freakish image, guess what? She disappears!”

“How do you know so much about her?”

“I like to read about sideshows, circuses, and television preachers.”

He sets down his knife. “Well, it doesn't take a genius to see the connection.”

“And anyway, you're not that kind of minister so that's a mark in your favor.”

“There are some good people at that church, Val.”

“Well, they're not beating down my door, that's for sure.”

We finish up the dressing, spoon it into gallon bags, and store it in the freezer to be used in a week's time for Christmas dinner.

“You know, Valentine, you don't have to wear that scarf in front of me if you don't want to.”

“Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.”

Roland's Wayfaring Marvels and Oddities isn't the greatest show on earth. Not by a long shot. We don't even begin to compete with The Brothers Grim. Now they've got it going on with The Enigma and Pumkin Head. And Zamora the Man of Torture, real name Tim, can shove all sorts of sharp things, needles and skewers and such, through his arms and legs. Even down under his tongue to come out of the bottom of his neck. I literally threw up when I saw him the first time. I—Lizard Woman—went running out of the tent with my hand clapped over my mouth, cheeks flared under the promise of the inevitable. Thank goodness we were at the edge of a wooded area.

I haven't watched him since.

I can't say anybody's thrown up upon seeing me, and I am glad for it.

Our show may be smaller than Grim, but we demolish them in the sparkle factor. We're a little classier if you want to know the truth. Seems crazy to say, like saying Melanie Griffith is classier than Madonna, but there you go.

Lella sits on Blaze's easy chair as I prepare our costumes for tonight's benefit show, the hand steamer burbling nearby.