Works and Days

The Second Coming of Ann Ford

5

“Breakfast was excellent!” Bobby said, coming back into the kitchen and rinsing off his dish. He made for the dishwasher. Ann touched his hand.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

“Thank you, Ann!” Bobby smiled at her.

Only Wednesday and it was already exhausting. As the new priest left the kitchen, Ann reflected that everything he said ended in an exclamation point. Ann looked outside. How could he be so cheerful in a world grey as this? The sky was white and grey, the asphalt of the church parking lot-turned-school playground was grey beyond the grey and white early winter garden. When Ann looked around the kitchen, even it seemed grey.

She found herself in the church with Hannah on one of the days when the two women sang and played piano to teach the students at Saint Adjeanet’s the new hymns they’d all be singing at Mass on Friday. Today they were rehearsing Christmas songs, though. All the blue trousers, all the white shirts, all the navy ties. All the plaid skirts, all the green sweaters, all the navy cardigans sitting there singing. The sixth grade. Or was this the seventh?

Hannah’s playing was dull, far away, the kids’ mouths moved in slow motion.

“Sleep in heavenly peace.... Sleep in heavenly.... Sleep.”

The children blurred. Ann saw the rosette window over the choir loft, and then the brass lanterns, and then she heard a thud, which was vaguely irritating. Then there was nothing.

And this relieved her.

 

Ann Ford blinked and blinked in the sunlight, and then there was Hannah Decker’s face before her, eyes smiling in commiseration through her glasses. Hannah reached up to shut the blinds. Ann looked around. They were in one of the two little sick rooms the nurse kept. Ann remembered this place. From childhood. When she was a little girl, hating school, she’d play sick and spend as much time here as possible. The window overlooked More Street. She felt so safe then. And a little naughty. She felt a little naughty being here now, as if she’d taken the easy way out. Blinking, and looking out the window, ignoring Hannah a little, she saw the houses on the other side of More Street. Could she have imagined as a school girl here that in life she would go many places only to end up living next door to the school?

“You fainted, Ann,” Hannah said softly. “You haven’t been yourself. Have you been feeling okay?”

“What do you think of me, Hannah?”

“Ah?”

“Do you think I’m pathetic?”

“Ann, who told you that?”

“No one had to tell anything. I don’t wonder if people say it behind my back. I bet they do. No one really likes Geoff either, do they? I can’t imagine them being in love with his sister. His weird sister who’s over thirty and lives in the rectory like a maid—”

“Ann!” Hannah’s voice was both stern and gentle. Ann had never heard it that way before.

“That’s what people think, right? What the parish thinks?”

“The parish?” Hannah laughs. “The town? What? Who gives a damn what they think? Why should it matter?”

“It does matter,” Ann told Hannah, “if the parish are the only people you have. I see that new Bobby. He’s not Geoff. He’s not the brother that needs to be cared for. He’s just the new priest. And I’m the maid. And that’s not right. I didn’t live my life to end up being a maid to a priest. But... but maybe I did. No... no... It hasn’t always been like this...”

 

 

It hadn’t always been like this.

There had been a day in this very sick room lit with that ugly fluorescent tube when she made a vow she’d never be teased, she’d never be disrespected again. She’d go far. She would show so many people so many things. Danny Cook, JoAnn Risedale, Suzie Nickener. The odd thing is the names of the other people, the ones who had not made her feel small, she could no longer remember. She remembered these people not worth remembering. And despite the fact that she had it on good authority that none of them had ever done anything great in life, that they, in fact, still lived in Lothrop County if not this very small city, she had never seen them again. They had faded with childhood, The boys before high school, the girls in high school, though they had all gone to the same one.

The year she’d made this vow, after having been called a cross-eyed freak (why did she remember the bad things so well?) was the year after Geoff had graduated and Mom and Dad had sent him, not to Our Lady of Mercy, but to Saint Jerome, the good school in Saint Gregory. There had been no brother to protect her anymore. Their older brother, Anthony, had left Saint Adjeanet’s long before that, first in his class and all. Tony would be Valedictorian of Saint Jerome’s that year everyone was certain.

Aside from making that vow, life did not change in sixth, seventh or eighth grade. It did not change when her parents sent her to Rosary for high school. Rosary had been especially dreadful. She was a poor fit there, and it was far from the best school in town.  Her parents never thought she should have the best girl’s school. It wasn’t necessary. She applied to Saint Mary’s down in South Bend for college. Her parents said she couldn’t get in. She crossed her fingers and lit candles anyway. Saint Mary’s agreed with her parents, but they made her what was called a Link, going to Holy Cross, living at Saint Mary’s provisionally until her grades were up and she could be formally accepted to the school of her longing. She lived like this for a year, and went to Holy Cross right as her brother was transferring to Notre Dame.

There was a solidarity she felt with Geoff and not with Tony. Geoff, like herself, had something to prove. The much older and by far more attractive Tony—who never went to Holy Cross Junior College, but had done four shining years at Notre Dame and was on his way to Catholic University of America—had nothing to prove to anyone.

So she had tried for her two years at Holy Cross to finally be acceptable to Saint Mary’s. She had dated then. That was something most people would scarcely believe. She had heard people, on occasion, whisper about if she or if she hadn’t ever had anybody. She’d had Ralph senior year and had—in college—written a letter to say she didn’t want him anymore. He had driven down to South Bend to declare his love for her, and then weep knowing he couldn’t have her. And then there had been Andy Redman who was very tall, and a little bit fat. She had lost her virginity to him. She was not sure if he was bad or if sex was bad. It was the only sex she’d ever had.

She’d broken up with Andy too and gone to Marietta, sure that now, still in the Midwest, but not at all in Michigan, she would do well. Only Ann had no idea what it was that she would do well. So when school was over she found herself back in Geschichte Falls for the year, working as a secretary then at a construction company then at this or that before nursing school looked good, looked okay. It seemed natural. Whenever Geoff came home from seminary he seemed so in need of care. Tony almost never visited, but he made little comments about how nice it must be for Ann not to have to worry about ever leaving home. She did leave home, though. Then she lived in Grand Rapids, in a little apartment not far from the nursing school. Somehow she was sure this was not what her brother meant and it was around this time that she realized she didn’t have any dreams. She checked around. Neither did anyone else, which made her feel better, and so she moved on.

About the time Ann was seeing a timid musician, Dad died. It was not a gradual sickness, he just dropped dead without warning. Tony was in North Carolina now, and he flew in and Geoff came up from Colorado where the Order of the Holy Cross had sent him now that he was ordained. Ann was not prepared for the fact that looking into the coffin at Princes of Geschichte Falls mortuary, she was not sorrowful. All the pictures of her and her parents showed her as doted upon. The pictures of her with Daddy showed her as Daddy’s little girl. But Daddy had never counted on the fact that little girls must, in time, grow up into women. As a result, here the girl was, nearly thirty years old and quite dried up, looking close to forty, feeling fourteen.

 

No one now ever talked of Father Ransom, but he had been the pastor before Geoff. He had two associate pastors, both older than God, that the diocese had no plans of replacing. When Ransom died, Geoff was made the new pastor, and Ann was happier than she ought to have been. Her companion and her protection had returned.

It was especially good because in the early days when Geoff returned and Ann had moved back into the house with her mother, she would often flee to the rectory for a bit of an escape. The place looked out of date. They couldn’t get new furniture, but Ann could help to take the old man smell out of the place, and she spent many weeks with Geoff making the place look a little bit better.

Finally, one week before her thirtieth birthday, Geoff had said, “Why don’t you just stay here a while, that way you don’t have to bother with Mom.”

“Mom needs me.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Geoff said. “And I don’t think you need her.”

And if the latter could not be verified, the former could, for only a few weeks later, Muriel Ford was not in need of anyone as she died watching Oprah. Again, going through the house, cleaning out things, Ann was startled to discover, sitting on her parents’ bed, that she did not miss her mother either.

And the next morning she had gotten up a half hour before Geoff to prepare the coffee for him, and so things had begun. They did not change, not really, until today. On this bed in the nurse’s office.

“Ann?” Hannah whispered. “Ann Ford! Honey you’ve been staring off into nothing for the last few minutes. Now what’s wrong? Of course it wasn’t always like this. What’s going on?”

“I’m a mess. I don’t... I don’t know what to do,” Ann said. “I can’t... I don’t think I can keep doing what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing?”

“That’s just it!” she came to life. “I can’t go forward and there’s certainly no going back. I am so stuck right now. I feel like I’m dead. I want to... I think I want to leave.”

“Life?” Hannah tried, warily.

“Sometimes,” Ann confessed. “But that’s not what I meant. I meant... Home, only I don’t know... where to go.”

Hannah was quiet a while. She dropped her eyes and sucked in her breath before speaking.

“Ann?”

Ann looked at her, dully.

“The other day me and Will were talking about you. He said, ‘She sure is a nice girl. I wish we could help her.’ Ann, if you want someplace to go, 8411 Shuster Street is always open to you for as long as you need.”

Ann looked at Hannah in amazement, not knowing what to say.