The Passion of Mary-Margaret (25 page)

Of course Gerald heard the burbling putter of Mr. Cinquefoil's engine as he pulled up near the lighthouse. He hurried onto the deck in his robe and slippers. “Who's that?!” he shouted and I saw the silhouette of his shotgun in the porch light.

“Put that peashooter down, Gerald!” Mr. Cinquefoil shout­ed back. “It's me. Randy. And I got Mary-Margaret here. She wants to see you folks so bad she practically commandeered my boat!”

I stifled a laugh.

Gerald shielded his eyes, trying to peer into the darkness, his form a fuzzy silhouette in front of the white siding of the lighthouse. “MM? What's the matter?”

“I've come to see Jude. This was the only ride I could get. I wish you all had a phone.”

“He's real sick.”

“That's why I've come.”

“Well, suit yourself. Although I don't know how you found out about it.” He leaned the shotgun against the house. “Want me to row out and get you?”

“I'd be thankful if you did,” said Mr. Cinquefoil. “I wasn't much keen on losing my lifeboat today. I mean, you just never know with this bay.”

“Give me five minutes.”

Mr. Cinquefoil's boat was much too big to pull up to the dock beneath the lighthouse, so I waited while Gerald dressed, then climbed into his small boat, pulled on the starting cord of the outboard motor, and came to collect me. With each minute, my nervousness seemed to increase exponentially until I hoped and prayed I'd be able to make it from the fishing boat down into the motorboat.

What a dope!
I thought. People disobeyed God all the time and God was merciful despite it. In fact, they were the ones who ended up with the best stories. Wouldn't he be merciful to me as well?

Gerald's face lit up in the lights of Mr. Cinquefoil's boat and it brightened further with a smile.

Oh, but I wanted the good stuff from God. Not the second best or the mercy despite the disobedience. I wanted fresh-picked grace from the top of the heap, ripe and burgeoning with refreshment. I had to believe that obedience right away made a difference; that those who honored God without wandering
received something special, that it mattered. If I didn't believe that, my sisters, I would have told Mr. Cinquefoil to turn that boat around and take me back to the Brays'. The next morning I would have returned to Baltimore and the mother-house and I would have dedicated my life to God through my order and the holy Catholic Church.

And I would have been turning my back on the wild, seemingly insane plan that Jesus cooked up for me that made about as much sense as high-heeled tennis shoes.

By eight thirty I'd yet to see Jude. After I'd dozed some on the couch, ate a breakfast of Hattie's biscuits, fried ham, and scrambled eggs, and read a searing chapter from one of Hattie's dime-store romances—well, as searing as they got back then, anyway—Gerald took me into the kitchen and sat me at the table over which Hattie had laid a yellow cloth covered in embroidered daisies. Over that—a sheet of clear vinyl, corners of which could draw blood on your thigh if you weren't careful.

Gerald occupied the chair catty-corner from me, folded his hands, then smoothed back his hair, which, I'd noticed, was going quite gray at the temples. He was a looker too, like his brother. Just more contained.

“You look weary, Gerald.”

“I'm more than weary, MM. I feel like punching Jude right now.” He had rolled up the sleeves on his blue shirt and began applying some sort of creamy ointment to his arms. Poor Gerald had eczema so badly on his appendages and his job didn't help the matter. “He said he won't see you.”

“Really?” The response sat on my tongue like a stamp I'd moistened but forgotten to remove. My chest tried to support the weight of his words, but it couldn't. I sank into myself. “I didn't expect this. At the very least—”

“Neither of us did.” He shook his head. “Darn it, MM! I don't know what's gotten into him. He asked if we'd take care of him while he recuperated, but he's been laying in there for a week now and he doesn't seem to be getting any better.”

“Has he taken any penicillin?”

“For the flu?”

Oh dear.

“Hattie can't even convince him?”

“She's trying.” He stood up. “I'm hungry. I know. I know we just ate breakfast, but I always eat when I'm nervous.” Opening the fridge door, he peered inside and grabbed a plate of sliced salami and something wrapped in brown paper.

He set them on the counter, unwrapped the paper to reveal several slices of Swiss cheese.

“Can I have a slice to nibble on?” I asked.

“Yep. Here you go.” He peeled off a slice and handed it to me.

I don't really like Swiss cheese all by itself, but I'm with Gerald when it comes to nervous eating. You hope the momentum of feeding your mouth will continue out into the universe and bring about resolution regarding whatever's eating at you.

I bit into the musty slice, the fumes gently filling my nostrils, the tang spreading from my tongue into the back of my jaw.

Gerald spread some yellow mustard on a piece of rye bread. “He said he'd see you until I told him you came out here at five thirty in the morning. Then he got suspicious. How did you know he was here?”

I told him about my visit to Rosalie LaBella. Minus the syphilis information, of course. Jude's shame was his own to deliver to others, not mine.

Hattie entered the kitchen and picked up a piece of salami. She rolled it up and bit it in half. Anyone could have told you she was a nervous eater. “I don't understand it. It's a mystery why he doesn't want to see you.”

“How does he look?” I ask.

“Not well. He's lost a lot of weight since I've last seen him.” She popped the other half into her mouth, leaned against the counter, and chewed, crossing her arms across her bosom. “The saddest thing, which leads me to believe it might be more than the flu, is that his hair—”

“His hair?” I leaned forward.

“There are some patches where it's gone. And so much thinner. He looks—”

“Like a Halloween skeleton,” Gerald said, still disgusted. “But with a rash.”

“What kind of rash?”

Hattie grabbed another piece of lunchmeat. “All over his abdomen. And the bottoms of his hands and feet.”

I had to get to the library and research the disease.

She rolled up the salami like before. “I think he's sick from going down in the water like he did. It's still cold enough to take your breath away.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“He rowed out here and the boat—I think he stole it from one of the older folks's homes. You know how there always seems to be a boat rotting somewheres on people's properties.”

“Indeed.”

“So it sprung a leak and he had to swim the last hundred yards or so, sick as he was. I told him when I pulled him out of the water, ‘That was a baptism of stupidity, Jude Keller.'”

“What'd he say?”

“Laughed and said, ‘Well, I had to be dunked sometime. Might as well be now.'”

“Maybe you can talk him into seeing me tomorrow.”

“You got binoculars?” Hattie asked.

“Yes.” You don't grow up on the bay without a pair.

“I'll hang a sheet over the railing when he says it's okay for you to come out. No sense in making poor Randy bring you out every day like that. Not that he wouldn't do it.”

“All right. Gerald, would you mind taking me back to the island then?”

“Not at all, MM.”

Hattie said, “Let me see if Jude wants you to pick up anything while you're there.”

Gerald rolled his eyes as his wife disappeared from the kitchen. “She's spoiling him! I'm telling you. The good Lord didn't give us a child, so I think she's figuring he gave us Jude instead. Which, to my mind, isn't a very equitable trade.”

I laughed and finished my piece of cheese.

Hattie returned a few minutes later. “He wouldn't budge. But here's the thing, Mary-Margaret. If he doesn't agree to it, what's he going to do if you go in anyway? Throw you off the lighthouse?” She winced and laid a hand on Gerald's arm. “Oh, baby-doll, I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, Hattie. That was all a long time ago. Don't worry about it.” He looked at me. “Ready to head back to shore?”

I nodded.

Time to go learn about venereal disease.

I find myself doing the oddest things sometimes.

What did Jude think when I left that day? I never asked him, but I think something inside him softened a bit, maybe broke in two, or just twisted a little. It might have been the start of the next leg of his journey or the ending of his present track. Sometimes they're one and the same.

Even so, I spent two days in the library reading all I could about syphilis and looking at pictures in medical journals. Thank goodness a heavy dose of penicillin would clear things up. Most likely Jude had already received the treatment
at the doctor's office and he was waiting for it to take effect. Gone were the days of having to die from the disease, going blind when it attacked your eyes, or demented when it attacked your brain. And, indeed, let's not discuss the liver. Syphilis progresses to the tertiary stage in about one-third of those who contract the virus. Perhaps Jude would escape it altogether.

Here are the stages:

Primary stage: lasts four to eight weeks after infection
Secondary stage: one to two years
Latent stage: one to twenty-five years
Tertiary stage: until patient receives treatment or dies

The primary stage begins with a chancre, a disklike sore, normally painless, and sometimes hidden. It can be on the penis, near the anus, the mouth, or any place the virus entered the body. I saw one picture of a woman with one on her thumb.

I know. I know. As a former religious sister, I was dealing with sex in a way I'd never dealt with before. These are simply the medical facts, sisters. I'm not trying to shock you purposely, or make you feel sick; I just want you to understand even a little bit what I was facing. Quite honestly, this information wasn't making me at all excited about marrying Jude.

With syphilis, Jesus? Really? Did you know about that when you told me?

Of course he did. I just felt miffed sitting there in the library. Now, I loved that small library down Talbot Street, tucked between the hardware store and the print shop. I spent many hours there as a child, looking at picture books in the U where two parallel shelves met the wall. The same display case of birds, stuffed by a local man who dabbled in taxidermy, still sat near the restrooms. The water fountain still tried to clean out your nose before its stream got to your mouth. The same tables rested around the place, chunky wooden legs and tops polished yet bearing the gouged-out names of people I never met and people I still knew. Of course, on the first table, right smack in the middle of a pool of sunlight for a good portion of the day, Jude had emblazoned his name. Mine, on the other hand, was carved on the underside of the very back corner table, the table near the auto mechanic manuals.