Works and Days

Spent Hen

Part Two 

Russell was coming out of Father Wilkin’s Religious Values class that afternoon when he heard someone call his name.

It was from room 106.

It was Chuck Shrader.

Russell eyed the man. Ralph Balusik, beside him said, “You’re gonna get it now, Lewis,” and Russell crossed the crowded hallway into the sunlit room filling up with seniors.

“Mr—Ch—Mr. Shrade....” Russell let it die.

“Russell,” said Chuck Shrader, “I wanted to talk to you.”

He leaned in so the incoming seniors wouldn’t hear them.

 “I’m sure this isn’t the right place, but I don’t really know a better one, and I wanted to know if you had a problem with me seeing your mom.”

Russell swallowed, tilted his head and tried to think of something sensible to say, and then only said, “No. Mr—no. I mean, if you’re happy then—I mean, if my mother’s happy, I’m happy, and she seems to be happy. You make her happy, so... It’s great.”

Chuck looked lost in pleasure for moment, and then he came back to the world.

“Is it true?” the teacher asked the student.

Russell blinked and readjusted his bookbag.

“Is what true, sir?”

“Is she really happy? Do I make her happy?”

Russell bit his lip, and nodding his head, smiled at Chuck Shrader.           

 

 

“We gotta make this quick cause I need to be sexy by four,” Jackie said as they swung away from Our Lady of Mercy. Russell found a place  in the back among empty boxes. They had thought of going to get the robes earlier, but both Jackie and Chayne had suspected Russell would want to go on this adventure.

And why was it an adventure? Chayne wouldn’t say, so Jackie didn’t know the answer, but she suspected something was up.

Diggs was with them. The four of them sped down Kirkland. After it intersected with Key, the street awakened. Here were the strip malls and the ranch houses, Jerrold Parkway and Finnalay Parkway, tree lined, wide and bordering Saint Gregory, Orrin Park Mall, Cramer Mall and, on Easterling Street, north of it all was Evervirgin Catholic Church.

Surely this part of Geschichte Falls, asphalt, crowded and sunny, should have given the town a population more than twenty-five thousand people, but the people driving and shopping here were not Fallers. Breckinridge people came here, yes, but mostly it was the people from East Sequoia, from Saint Gregory and from that subdivision, Keyworthy, that was in Geschichte Falls, but certainly not of it, that was... a township. North of Keyworthy and its cul de sacced, treeless, meandering ways and its prefab houses was old Easterling Street, and on Easterling Street, was Evervirgin.

Saint Adjeanet’s on Kirkland Street, across the street from three story brick shops, was humble and white, plain on the inside, charming. The Church of Saint Mary the Evervirgin was huge and brick and double towered with a great rondo of the Annunciation over the enormous portico, and bells ringing out three o’clock from the carrilons that boomed down on Chayne and Russell and Jackie and Diggs as they drove around their massive red brick nemesis and parked at the back, in the alley, not in the parking lot, which lay to the left of the church between it and its modern school.

“Chayne, what are we doing?” hissed Jackie as they moved through the trees and the little walkway between the rectory and the church.

“Shush,” said Chayne, and he came into the church through the side door. “And grab a box.”

Evervirgin was always open, ever ready to display her wealth, her gorgeous German lancets inscribed with innumerable stories and inprobable saints. The church was filled with a golden light from the rondo that sat above the large choir loft, shining over the rows of polished pews.

They moved under the arcade, under the balconies that were above the arcades, past the grottoes with their saints. They came to a door at the back of the church with a plush rope across it, which Chayne ignored and went past, going up the winding stair into the darkness.

There was something not right about this. It made the other three all the more excited. They followed Chayne up the stairs with their boxes. They stood in a room that grey light entered from a little door at the right which led to the choir loft, but here were rows and rows of choir robes hanging on racks before them.

“Oh, Chayne....” Jackie’s voice trailed off, half in condemnation, half in wonder, all in comprehension. “We can’t!”

“Maybe you can’t,” Chayne said, moving to the robes. “Which colors do you like best?

“I really liked the green and gold,” Diggs volunteered.

“They are the nicest,” Russell admittred, putting his box down and considering them.

“Let’s not take the nicest,” Chayne said. “Let’s get these,” he settled on the white ones toward the back. “The purest.”

Chayne pulled down four, and solemnly folded them into his box.

“Is this right?” Russell whispered.

“No,” Chayne said, stuffing more robes in his box.

Jackie was the last to join in. It was a short job. There was—in the heart of every member of Saint Adjeanet’s, a feeling of not rightness about the lofty people of Evervirgin. Their first sin was that a hundred years ago part of Saint Adjeanet’s had left, moving to the north end pf town and founding Saint Mary the Evervirgin. While the new congregation built up a much more elaborate church for congregates who were becoming wealthy from the steel trade, Saint Adjeanet’s had looked on with blessing and even given them their old statue of Saint Mary the Evervirgin. But the ultimate crime was that Evervirgin, forgetting from whence she had come, had exalted herself to heaven. And this made it all the more easy for these four to walk off with the robes.

Once, as they were tipping out of the church, the front door opened up, and they froze, hearing footsteps, and then Chayne hissed, “Go! Go! Go!” and they ran to the side door, and then, coming outside, Chayne whispered, “Stop, stop, stop. Look casual.”

Quickly, they walked, casually, to the station wagon, loaded it up, got inside, and did not dare to laugh until they reached Bunting Street.

After they had laughed through Bunting Street and Helvering, Chayne rolled down the window and screamed for a whole block. Then, catching his breath, he confided in his friends, “I love being me!”

 

 

 

 

Graham Kandzierski, turning to the entertainment page of The Saint Gregory Herald, did not hear the car honk three stories down on Royal Street.

Sharon Kandzierski did, and when Graham saw her striding out of the bedroom in heels that could fillet a fish, and a poisonous red dress, tight as a sausage casing, he asked her, “What in the nation’s going on, woman?”

“I’m going out to raise some hell,” Sharon said, picking up her handbag and kissing her husband on his balding heard.

“Don’t wait up.”

 

The remains of the sun were slanting lazily into the church when the doors of Saint Adjeanet flew open and the RCIA group just breaking up that included Thom Lewis, Jeff Ford, his sister, Anna Castile and Jeff Cordino looked up to see Chayne, Russell and Diggs marching in, proud with robe filled boxes.

“What’s all this?” Geoff Ford asked with a delighted look that said he knew.

“Choir robes,” Chayne’s eye had just caught Thom. He felt bad for dissembling in God’s house, but pretended he hadn’t seen the other man all the same.

“Where did you—” Father Ford began delightedly, then with a careful frown and a wave of the hand said, “I don’t suppose it really matters as long as they’re here.”

“That’s the spirit, Geoffy,” Chayne smiled, and he and Russell headed to the old choir loft.

“Russell—” started Thom, and his son turned around.

“We still on for tomorrow?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Russell heard his voice come out lighthearted, and was surprised by his acting ability.

“And that,” said Geoff Ford, “is about it for this part of the meeting. Now go back to the parish house or go back to your own houses, but I want catechumens and sponsors to spend some one on one time together asking questions. I feel that it’s the one on one contact that is important....”

Chayne could hear Geoff as he and Russell began hanging up the robes and Russell said, “You’re right, Chayne, these robes are just right.”

 

 

 

 

“Boys!” Faye was screaming from the rooftop of 1421 Curtain, “Get up here! Get up!”

Over the years, Chayne and Russell had both forgotten it was no easy affair to climb to the roof of a two story, gable roofed house. They’d forgotten to the point that it no longer was, and now all three of them sat with Faye who was smoking a Newport.

“I have succeeded,” Faye reported, “so far. The first meeting of the Literary and Artistic Society of Geschichte Falls is convening tonight.”

“Really?” said Chayne.

“At nine. Here. I even made goodies.”

“Can we have some now?”

“Don’t you dare, Russell!”

Faye crushed out the Newport and lay back, planting her hands on the old tiles behind her.

“Just look at that!” she exhorted.

The western sky spread a pale pearl blue over Saint Adjeanet’s, the Curtain, and the covering of deep green trees while the melting sun poured a glowing red line over the horizon and lit the rooftops and streets red gold, a heavenly copper of a descending day.

 

“Wow,” said Jeff Cordino, jamming his hands in his pockets and kicking one leg up as his eyes went around the loft. “I’ve never been in Jackie’s apartment before.”

Thom, in the kitchen area, shrugged. “I figured this was better than the parish house with everyone sitting around on all that harvest gold furniture. Especially when Lee Armstrong went back to her house with Rose, and Jackie’s out on the town tonight and all.”

“Grand Rapids?”

“No, Chicago.”

“Oh!”

Silence.

“Wanna beer?” Thom offered.

“No,” said Jeff. “I mean, yeah. Yeah I do.”

“You can sit down, you know,” Thom told Jeff, raising an eyebrow as he opened the refrigerator and smiled.

“Ah,” Jeff seemed to be coming back to himself.

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckled, sat down on the sofa under the large window, and placed his feet on the steamer trunk.

Thom came out with two Michelobs in long necked bottles, and pulling out a milk crate to sit on the other side of the steamer trunk, passed a beer to Jeff.

“Not my favorite,” Thom remarked of the beer apologetically.

Jeff, unceremoniously putting the beer in his arm pit and twisting the cap off said, “Oh, I like it. Why? Whaddo you drink?”

Tom, about to answer, realized he didn’t really drink beer and tried to think of an answer.

“There was the one Mexican one, the best beer I ever had—”

“Corona?”

“God, no. I hate Corona!”

“Me too,” Jeff said with a laugh. “My sister uses a lime to drink it. I tried it with a lime and salt. That’s the only way it’s any good.”

“Yeah,” Thom said, rubbing his hands together and nodding. “You wanna order a pizza or something? It’s on me, Jeff.”

“Okay. Alright? Parisi’s?”

“Yeah. Jackie’s got their phone number on the fridge.”

Thom got up and called. He was put on hold. During the five minute hold he asked Jeff what he wanted on it, and Jeff shouted sausage, and together they agreed on mushrooms then Thom came to the steamer trunk, the beer tasting like a warm sock in his mouth.

“Jeff, I haven’t done this before. This sponsoring thing. So I’m not sure if I’m even doing a good job—”

“You’ve been great,” said Jeff. “I’m serious.”

“I don’t want to be a Chayne Kandzierski sponsor.”

“Wha?” Jeff started to laugh.

“Chayne was Russell’s Confirmation sponsor.”

“I didn’t know Russell was Confirmed.”

“He wasn’t. Eighth grade year he went into the whole thing sort of half heartedly, the way all the other kids do, and midway into the whole—candidacy, I guess the word is—Chayne had Russell’s head full of questions he’d never asked before and me and Patti couldn’t answer, and I guess Chayne couldn’t either. Or he didn’t. So Patti went and bought the suit for Confirmation—it was the night before Pentecost—and all the family—Irish Catholic on both sides—was getting presents ready, getting ready for this big party when Russell announces, ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not getting Confirmed.’”

“But,” Jeff said, “He goes to church and everything. Is Russell not a Christian?”

The word sounded strange to Tom. He never used it, not to describe himself or anyone else, and Thom said, “It’s not that he didn’t believe, he said, but that it was too much to believe and be ready for and commit to right now, so he didn’t.”

“But you said Chayne talked him out of it?”  

“I think he did.”

“Well, Chayne’s a Christian. I mean, he’s different, but he’s serious about... religion. Isn’t he?”

Thom sat back, his eyes bugged a little, and he exhaled. “It’s hard to get a handle on Chayne.”

“Well, I think he is,” said Jeff. “And I think—and maybe I’m wrong—that what he did with Russell was good. I don’t think I would have been ready to get Confirmed, not in eighth grade. I wouldn’t have understood what was going on. I’m glad it’s happening now, when I can say I’m a grown-up and ready to make this commitment. I guess that’s what Russell’s waiting to do.”

Thom sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Thom, when did you get Confirmed?”

“Right when we moved here,” Thom said. “When my mom moved us here from West Virginia. I was twelve. I think.”

“What was it for you?”

Thom looked strange. He thought about laughing it off. He scowled.

“Well, we all did it. I mean all the kids in my grade. It was... the done thing. I mean, I don’t mean it like that. I was proud. I felt like I’d done something.” Thom smiled gently. “Though I’m not exactly sure what it was I had done.”

Jeff smiled broadly and said, “I don’t really think I know what I’m doing now. But I want to do it.”

His face grew sober. “Thom?”

“Jeff?”

“Are we friends?”

If Thom was used to thinking, not afraid of thinking, then he would have known why the question sent deep currents inside of him rolling far beneath the surface. He only answered, “Yes, of course we are.”

“Good,” Jeff bit his bottom lip.

“I’m going to say this quickly and not bring it up again. We’re meeting in Jackie’s apartment, and I teach Russell and we’re just casually ignoring the fact that well... you and Patti aren’t together anymore and Russell’s not... living with you.”

“Does that cause a problem for you?”

The question was flat. The answer to it could send Thom’s emotions anywhere.

“No, Thom. But it might for you. And if we’re friends, then I want to know what I can do to help.”

Thom’s mouth was a little open. He felt like the whole world had turned inside out. He felt that he’d been phony for a long time until this moment when he told Jeff, “Thanks. Thank you, Jeff. You’re a good man.”