THERE IS ONLY LITERATURE AND LIFE. The priest had a real hard-on for alliteration. It drove Maggie nuts. The church was the only Catholic one in town. Maggie didn’t go in for the Protestants. She’d once sat through a sermon that lasted an hour. No God of mine, she’d thought.
The previous summer she’d been in Italy for a spell, watching pigeons flood the square. After his death, she’d decided to travel. She hadn’t liked the trains or the tall, loud Italian men. She’d liked to smoke cigarettes and hope for clouds. The streets were full of red dust, and it smelled metallic after the rain.
After her husband’s death, she’d taken up cigarettes again. She said it was either that or another man. She meant it as a joke, but no one ever laughed. Such was the way of things. You couldn’t always get the measure.
The tour guide had been handsome and flirtatious. She didn’t go in for that anymore. The Tiber was a dirty river. A thin little ribbon. She missed staring at the oak in the yard, which was somehow less lonely than the Tiber.
Back home, she read Dubliners by Joyce, then Finnegans Wake. There were things she’d been meaning to get to. The dog thumped its tail on the carpet in an arrhythmic fashion. She found a lot of American prose flat, which was why she was reading Joyce. The priest had been yammering on about him during their weekly meetings.
There was clean light falling on the grass. Squirrels cartwheeled the air. The priest folded his hands neatly in his lap. He was saying something about the Holy Spirit, who had always struck her as the least significant member of the Trinity. There was a dog on the television, but the real-life dog didn’t seem interested.
She’d always been fond of Job. But it made God seem miserly, the way he treated Job. The dog wasn’t hers anyway, really. It had been her husband’s dog. She didn’t have a lot of fond feelings toward it as a result. The dog didn’t ever seem to mind.
Which of the bits do you go in on? she’d asked the priest.
All of them, he’d answered.
Even the part where he curses him with sores? It’s all a bit much.
The priest squirmed in his chair. Maybe she should go back to Europe and try a different country. Perhaps the French would be quieter, more amenable to her in old age.
We have to take them all.
I don’t see why, she said. Let’s just take the good bits.
Before the church, she’d tried meditation, listening to the sound of her breathing. It had worked well enough for a while. Then she’d heard one where she was supposed to repeat dried shit stick over and over. It was unserious. There was only the quotidian and the beautiful. This was the ragged truth of the world.
People were always so certain of themselves these days. It irritated her.
The priest folded his hands in his lap again. He told her that God was forgiving, but she didn’t believe him. She had no interest in that meek sort of thing. Her friends hadn’t visited her in months. She knew she made them uncomfortable.
Agnes had stopped by and offered to teach her knitting.
She couldn’t stand an insult like that. There were always sirens now. Everything was going to hell.
The next summer, the priest was transferred to a new parish, and she didn’t have to abide his weakness anymore. The new priest understood her well enough to keep away. In Slovenia, she admired the castle and drank coffee in dank little shops. It was the last trip she’d ever take. You could feel this sort of thing. She smoked outside in the mist and admired the turrets. It was good here. Things were quiet.
She slept in her hotel room that night and awoke to the sirens, and the voice of her mother calling from the next room. Breakfast was ready, another irritation. She hated the way her mother buttered the bread so unevenly, leaving the thick white glob on the toast. But there was light in her mother’s auburn hair, a cigarette in her hand. Slink of smoke, riot of dust motes.
The sirens were approaching now. She wondered if someone had died. She wondered if everyone had died. Her mother turned to face her. Blackbirds darting through the branches of the oak.
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection The Body Is a Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus) and the short-story collection One Person Away from You (a Moon City Short Fiction Award winner).
Photo by Marialaura Gionfriddo on Unsplash
