Morning star
Roz took Uncle Albert to church this morning because our rector, Susan, the former Miss Virginia, had called asking about him and me.
Last night: “I told her you had the bug, but I would bring Albert.” Roz slumped her shoulders. “Why did I say that?” I shrugged mine. “Because I’m an idiot,” she said. “Though I do think Albert wants to go,” she said.
This morning: We talk across the room. We live now — we have lived for three weeks — across rooms behind masks when we aren’t in different parts of the house. It has worked, I guess you could say: I haven’t infected either Roz our Uncle Albert. I have kept my dis-ease to myself. Which may be why it has hung on so long. It has settled in where if not loved, it feels it has been accepted, made welcome.
“I had forgotten how pretty she was. More than pretty really.” She was talking about Susan.
“Yes. She was Miss Virginia.”
“Did I know that? If I did, I’d forgotten. Which is not likely. When?”
“2001, I think.”
“Hmmm.”
“What was the sermon about?” I ask.
St. Jude the Apostle
beach towel.
“That was an odd thing. It seemed to be on the back of an envelope.”
“It often is,” I say. “But what was it about?”
“Something about the bright morning star and guns, about how far earth can get from heaven so only heaven can bring it nearer again.”
Now I said, “Hmmm.”
“That’s what I thought,” Roz says. “But you know me, unreliable witness. Never really sure. You should ask Albert.”
“No,” I say, “that’s ... ” I start to say, “that’s good enough” or “close enough.” Instead I say, “I like that” though it doesn’t sound like Susan.
“Oh,” Roz says. “Good.”
She is looking down, picking at the back of the blue arm chair. I am looking at the top of her head, how her hair can both stay in place and look as if it is about to spring off in every different direction. She looks up,
“On the way home, I asked Albert why she became a priest, did he think?”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Why does anyone do anything?’”
05.29.22
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