Sunday morning

 Sunday morning  

Sunday morning. Some weeks ago but not that many. Still in bed. Listening to the air-conditioning cough, wake up.
     “What time is it?” Roz said.
     “Where’s your phone?”
     “Downstairs. Charging.”
     “I don’t know,” I said. “Still early.”

“Are you and Albert going to church?” She rolled over and punched me in the shoulder. “Do you go to church any more?”
     “Good question. Not often, do we?”
     “Doesn’t seem like it. Why not?” Her eyes look out of focus without her glasses as if they weren’t to help her see but to help you to see her. Her voice is always clear, though, from waking to sleeping and waking — even in sleep, clear.
     “It’s a lot of work for one thing, especially for him. But for both of us. Getting ready, getting out the door, getting in the doors, getting home again. . . . Then, what do we find when we get there? It’s like we’re still in the time of cholera. Masks. The wine in paper cups. The homilies a desperate attempt at good cheer. ‘God is working his purposes out.’”
     “It’s one thing when he depends on the rich to succor the widows and orphans and the sojourners in the land. It’s another when he allows the comfortable to get such bad colds they sometimes die,” Roz said.
     “Yes,” I said. “I guess,” I said. “Something like that.”

the bathroom clock

“But it’s over, isn’t it? Didn’t I read that we’re back to no excess of deaths?”
     “Whatever that means. Are we?” I got up, went to the bathroom. I came back. “So are we back to an excess of life?” I said at the same time Roz was saying, “What time is it, then?”
     “Six-thirty on the clock in the bathroom.”
     “Not at church, apparently,” she said.
     “What?”
     “Are you back to an excess of life? Or an abundance? At church?”
     “No,” I said. “No,” thinking we sang like we were already dead and time meant nothing at all so why count?
                                                                         07.19.23