Fragile (24 page)

“But now in Christ Jesus, you who sometimes were far off are brought near by the blood of Christ.”

She can see that he is struggling. And she can tell, instinctively, that he must believe, at some level, the things he is saying. How could he not? But he looks from one to the next at the people shifting their weight and scuffling their feet impatiently among the rows of armless chairs, searching for someone who will greet his words with a smile of recognition. “For He is our peace, who has made the two one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us; for to make in Himself out of two one new man, so making peace.”

She wants to meet his eyes and show him that she understands, but these things are better left to the lawyers and the priests, these fine points of rhetoric and reason.

“Through Jesus we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” There is something in the way he says this that lacks conviction. He is letting it slip—he knows his words are not enough for something this big. And these words, the droning of his voice, and the trace of a lisp, are making her head throb again. Two tight spots at the back of her neck. The wound on her wrist is knitting together nicely, but she should not be here. They were talking about keeping her in the hospital for a week.

Through the fog of her headache, Holly hears a chair scrape against the wood floor and sees the girls picking at each other again, out of boredom. Zoe is tugging at the hem of Jenny's dress, slyly keeping her hand at her side so no one else will see, because she knows this will annoy Jenny and perhaps force her into an act of retaliation. Holly is close enough to reach over and give Zoe a quick smack on the hand, and is about to, when she sees Tom put his hand on Zoe's shoulder, gently, the way a genuine father would, and calmly whisper to her: “No.”

And then, when she is about to smile at Tom, to give him the look she has been thinking about giving him all through the service, a sudden, preening movement deflects into the corner of her vision.

She looks in the direction of that shy man hunched in the vestibule with the suspicion that it must be him, but it is only a fluttering aura in the mirror directly behind him. A bird, caught in flight within the particular angle of the mirror's glass, a trembling image reflected from the window on the opposite side of the room. In a play of the unyielding sunlight, the bird tosses its wings another time and is gone, leaving only the face of that
man, and she can see now what she must have also heard in his weary voice over the phone, that he has always loved this woman lying in the casket, who has lived a separate life, beyond his ability to imagine. The thought of all the days stacked one upon the other in which they both inhabited this earth, separated by thousands of miles and more than that, makes him shudder. All the other women he has known, the two or three others he dated in college, the one he eventually married, were nothing more than pallid replacements for this first woman. He has always been a prisoner of convenience. He settled upon Laura as his wife because she had left him behind after senior year, and it seemed if he didn't follow her and ask her to marry him, he would be making the same mistake twice. He would not lose his nerve again. That's what it had all boiled down to, when he heard what Louise had done that day and how furious Amelia's father had become, he had simply lost his nerve and left Amelia, standing on a corner, alone.

In the space between that memory and the present moment, time collapses, then expands outward, grows immense; a series of concentric circles receding away from the present, ripples in a black pond disturbed by a falling pebble.

There was a foot, a young girl's foot in a sock hanging off the edge of a hammock. The foot bounced, and in bouncing, the ankle tipped the hammock, rolled her body closer to him. The heat of her tucked inside the envelope of the hammock with him; only the two of them and the sky deep and cloudless above, the branches of the pinoak tree swinging side to side as
they swung. The sound of the bells ringing, heavy and dense, their iron lambent noise drawing the deep crescent of sky and her body closer together with him, swinging, swaying, all together as one. He understands that he has always loved me and always will, he has always been with me, a solitary star in the first breaking of the dawn. This thought, this realization, comes to me like a light in the distance, and I know that he will never leave me. Now I know he never did.

I slip away from the hands that bind me. I am lighter than water, lighter than air. I am lighter than darkness and night. Restore to me the bright smooth flame, the dawn of white-hot filaments enormous singing into one another, singing into waves of candles glittering, radiant and white.

Sheer immensity sweats away all sins. I embroider all the wreathed and savoured offerings, in entrance caught by pure delight; I launch the tumbling hasted river. I behold the firmament of halfmoon, the vivid purest ray, gently universal and serene.

When two of you agree, it shall be done. So today I am in union, the marriage of my Soul and my Spirit, through this unison remembrance, sanctified and whole.

Chris Katsaropoulos is one of the founders and partners at Emergent Learning LLC, developers of educational content for major publishers. He has traveled extensively in Europe and North America, and enjoys collecting books and music.
Fragile
is his first novel.