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There was no time to say goodbye to anyone at the party. My father ushered me to the car and drove off as quickly as he could.
“I’m sorry, son. I’ve got to get you on the nine o’clock train,” he explained as he pulled into traffic. Something was wrong, and no mistaking it.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“I can’t really say, Mannie. Audra’s things are in the back.” Indeed, two suitcases were propped in the seat behind me, with paper tags identifying them as belonging to Audra LaPoore. “I want you to take them to the house. So we have to make the nine o’clock. It’s the last one to Springfield. Father Humboldt will meet you at the platform.”
“But why do I have to go home? What’s going on?”
“It may be nothing.” He didn’t want to say more than that, but he can’t have thought I would be satisfied by such vague answers.
“Has something happened to Mum?”
“No, son.”
“To Audra?”
“We don’t know,” he said, a bit angrily.
“What’s wrong with Audra?!” I all but yelled back.
“Mannie, please! I don’t know anything. I’m sure she’ll be fine!” It was so rare for my father to raise his voice. I said nothing else until we reached the train platform.
Just before I boarded, Dad put his hands on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry I was cross with you. We had to take Audra to hospital. You’re mother is with her now, and as soon as everything checks out, we’ll bring Audra home. I want you to help Father Humboldt get everything ready, all right?”
I nodded and Dad gave me a quick hug, then hurried back to the car. I knew things were worse than he was letting on.
I spent the forty-minute train ride in worried silence. The city slipped away outside the window. The plains and scrubby hills were only shadows, even harder to see because of the reflection of interior lanterns in the window glass. There were few passengers on the train. I sat at the back of a coach that held no other riders. I drew my legs up onto the seat and hugged my knees, a position I often took when I wished to be alone with my thoughts. Just now, they were chaotic. I had nothing tangible to worry about, except that something was wrong with Audra. A wisp of annoyance had begun, that instead of taking me to Audra, my parents had thought it best to ship me back home unattended.
Father Humboldt was waiting for me at the Springfield platform. His burly frame was easy to pick out, even in shadow. When I emerged from the train, he ran to me, with a kind of bouncy jog, and took both of the suitcases from the porter. His expression was grim, but I reminded myself that Father Humboldt’s expression was always grim.
“Welcome back, Mannie. How was the pageant?”
“It was good,” I said. “You would have liked it.”
“And the party after?”
“Good,” I answered, tonelessly. “I had to leave early.”
“I know. I thank you for coming back so soon.”
We rode to our church, St. John’s, Trinity Parish, just outside of the farming village of Clarketon, in Father Humboldt’s beat-up truck. He had a more dignified car, now in its sixth month of disrepair. Father Humboldt, stout, tall, with a proud, stern face, looked comical driving the wood-sided pick-up. It made him less intimidating, at least.
“Have you talked to anyone?” I asked as we rode along the narrow highway to St. John’s.
“I spoke to the vicar. He must have told you the same that he told me.”
“Dad didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “I had to pry it out of him that Audra was in hospital.”
“I suppose he didn’t want to worry you.” The old man smiled at me. A smile from that face, so often austere, was more worrying than comforting. “Your aunt has long had trouble with her heart. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a scare.”
“Has she had a heart attack?” I had never heard this about Audra. Panic instantly made itself home in my mind. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“They don’t yet know, Mannie! We must hope and pray that it’s nothing more than a brief disturbance.”
“I want to go back,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, I want to go back to the hospital and see her.”
“I think instead, we will hold out hope that she is able to board the train and come here, all right?” They were words of encouragement, but firmly spoken, with an unmistakable subtext. Don’t make trouble!
The Church of St. John of the Trinity included a sanctuary, with small office building attached, a parish hall, and the vicarage where I lived with my family. My father also ran the church school that served our village of Clarketon. Physically, this comprised four classrooms and a chapel attached to the parish hall. In the yard beyond were a barn and stable, where we kept our horse, Joey Pete, and a coop of chickens.
Father Humboldt placed Audra’s luggage on the porch of the house and asked me where we intended to put her up. The house had no guest room.
“She can have my room, if it comes to that. I can sleep in the living room,” I said.
“There are the guest quarters in the parish hall, but as you know, the archbishop could arrive at any time.” This was Father Humboldt’s constant refrain. The guest room must always be ready for surprise visits from the archbishop, whom I don’t recall ever having stayed. In fact, Father Humboldt lodged himself there several nights a week, though he had a small townhouse in the village. He surely coveted that room for himself for the duration of Christmas week.
Once inside the house, I put Audra’s cases in my parent’s room and went on to my own. I placed my small carrying bag on the chair at my desk. I changed into clean day clothes, knowing I would not sleep very soon. I wanted to wait up in case the phone rang.
Our only phone was in the parish hall, and it shared a party line with several homes at the edge of the village. I sat in the living room and kept the front door open. I would be able to hear the jingle of the phone from here.
I brought my toy theatre out into the front of the house. For three years, ever since Christmas of 1934, it had been my chief hobby. When I was ten and visiting Auckland, Audra took me on my first trip to the theatre. We saw an elaborate pantomime complete with fairy princesses, trolls and pirates. I was transfixed by the sets and costumes, by the way the audience got caught up in the whole fantastic story. I told Audra it felt a bit like church, except fun. She laughed so loud I thought she would rupture something, and then she took me into the gift shop by the lobby, and bought me the most beautiful wooden toy theatre, complete with half a dozen sheet sets of famous plays. (It was called Little Lyceum, labeled in fancy script on the proscenium. It was a childish sounding name, and I kept meaning to paint it over with a new designation: Candler Hall.)
The previous Christmas, Audra sent me the sheets for a presentation of Aida. I wanted to have the many sets and characters fully painted, cut out and assembled on the stage when she got here. I imagined that if I could complete the job before morning, it would all but guarantee her arrival, like some totem of obligation. I worked on it, with paint and scissors, to occupy my mind, and to keep from worrying.
***
This is the hardest part of my story to tell. A little after midnight, I drifted to sleep, my back against the sofa, my little paper company not quite finished. I woke up when a knock came to the front door. It was Father Humboldt.
The instant I saw his face, I knew the worst had happened.
He sat down on a chair, across from the couch. He told me he had just spoken to my father. So the ringing of the phone hadn’t been loud enough to wake me up.
I still remember the way he phrased the news.
“Your Aunt Audra has passed into the next life. It happened about half an hour ago. I’m very sorry.”
There was little else to say. That was all he knew. He asked if I wished him to stay with me, in the house, and I told him no. He returned to the parish hall, and the rest of that night is a merciful grey void in my memory.
It will serve no purpose to dwell for too long on the miserable days that followed, for there were strange wonders about to begin. But the sorrow of that time was, in a way, the soil from which those joys grew, and so, I must tell a little about it.
My father arrived home the next morning. He asked me if I had slept. Since the moment I learned the news, I had not. I hadn’t cried, either. I knew that I would soon enough, and that it was going to be terrible. My dad encouraged me to eat something, and then to try and rest. I asked him if we were going to return to Christchurch, and to Mother. He didn’t yet know.
Anaru Rongo got to the house a little past nine, and I sat at the breakfast table with him. Anaru was sixteen, a Maori boy who started attending our church grammar school when he was ten. My father paid him a weekly stipend to help with yard work and upkeep. (Father never said so, but his chief reason for hiring Anaru was that I was clumsy and indolent when it came to physical chores.)
Anaru ate and I didn’t. He was always quiet, and I initiated no conversation. It didn’t occur to me that Anaru had no way of yet knowing what had happened. I avoided his gaze. Before long, I hopped off my chair and returned to the living room, where my toy theatre still sat on the floor.
I returned to painting and cutting out the paper figures. I didn’t know what else to do. For a while, it was a distraction, a way to avoid facing what I knew I must sooner or later face.
Sometime, maybe an hour later, maybe two, Anaru knocked at the window and beckoned me to come outside.
He met me on the front lawn. He stepped close to me, took the back of my head in one hand, and placed his forehead against mine. “I just heard,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mannie.” Then, in silence, we stood, head to head. I closed my eyes, and felt powerful emotion stirring, ready to surge. My shoulders began to shake, but then, I fought it back. Not in front of Anaru. I have to look strong. I squeezed Anaru’s shoulder, releasing him from contact, and I thanked him, then turned and walked back into the house.
I spent the day in a pallid haze, doing nothing, afraid to let myself feel anything. That Monday morning seemed to last for weeks.
My mother came home in the afternoon. By then, I was out in the barn, brushing down our horse, Joey Pete. (My parents bought the horse before I was born. Dad wanted to call him Pete, Mum wanted to call him Joey. The double name was their eventual compromise.) Father Humboldt drove mother in from Springfield, and when I heard them arrive, I walked out to the grassy field and watched her disembark from the old truck. Father Humboldt carried her bags, and the two of them walked up to the porch.
I was close enough to see her face. I tried to read her expression. She looked cross, and that made me angry for a moment. Then I stopped, told myself that I ought to greet her, and ran to the house. She had already gone into her room and closed the door by the time I got in.
I hardly spoke to anyone that day. There were a few restrained words over supper, and Father asked me if I was all right. I said yes, looked at Mum, who said nothing and did not look back at me. It didn’t seem as if she had been crying. I wondered how she could seem so cold and indifferent. Then I remembered that I hadn’t cried either.
On Tuesday, there was plenty of emotion, most of it anger. I set off the powder keg myself.
Through the night, I had pondered my last conversation with Audra. On our coach ride, she had gently introduced the subject of her own disbelief and asked if I was troubled by it. I had been evasive, politely on-the-fence. Now, I knew what I should have said. I should have told her I would never again worry about Hell, because surely there was no such place. There was no chance that Audra, or anyone, could go there. The idea was so obscene, so unjust. I was now ashamed that I hadn’t told her so.
I knew it was the right and reasonable conclusion for me to reach. Audra did nothing but love others her whole life. Eternal punishment was now the most unspeakable idea to me.
And I said so over the breakfast table.
“I think she’s all right,” I said softly.
Mother glanced at me. “What’s that, Mannie?”
“Audra. I think she’s all right. I mean, I don’t think she’s gone to, you know...to the bad place.”
“What are you talking about?” Her expression was a strange mix of worry and surprise. It was a look I had never seen from her before.
“What I mean is, I don’t think Audra is in Hell. Do you?”
My father interceded. “Mannie, how dare you introduce such a topic at this table.”
“Because Audra and I talked about it. During our ride together. She told me it was something I shouldn’t ever worry about. And I think she was right.”
Father rose from his seat. “And what would ever possess you to repeat it to your mother at a time like this!”
“Because I don’t want her to worry either!” I shouted it so suddenly, the intent can’t have seemed anything but petulant.
“Stop it, Mannie!” Mother yelled.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I just...”
“I will not have this conversation with you!” She rose from the table and went to the bedroom, once more closing the door behind her.
For a terrible moment, my father and I stared at each other.
“Should I go talk to her?” I volunteered.
“No. This is not the time, son.”
“Why not?”
“Because your mother is grieving. We all are.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s grieving.”
“Mannie, I am ordering you to stop this absurd conversation.”
“It is not absurd!”
Father took my shoulder and marched me to my room. “I will not hear another word. You will stay in your room until I am ready to deal with you.”
And so I sat alone, no longer numb. Now I was angry. It was the first time I could remember being in trouble for having an opinion of my own. No Hell. I knew it was the right conclusion for me to reach. Surely Audra would have wanted me to defend it.
An hour later, Father came to my room and demanded I talk to Father Humboldt at once. I was sent off to the fellowship room of the parish hall. Father Humboldt was waiting there for me. He greeted me with a warm, parochial smile.
“Ah, young Emanuel. Please do sit down.”
I pulled up a rickety wooden folding chair, and he sat opposite me at one of our aging banquet tables. Behind him, I could see a paper sign that hung on the wall during the school year. It was a picture of an eye, radiating beams of light. It was captioned: The eye of the Lord is ever upon thee. Everyone in the school hated this sign, and it was frequently taken down and disposed of. Father Humboldt always managed to replace it. Students joked that he had a large stack of copies locked away in a safe somewhere.
Father Humboldt cleared his throat. His smile morphed into a morose, hangdog expression that, in other circumstances, I probably would have found amusing.
“I have not yet had the opportunity to fully express my sorrow about your loss.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“I can only imagine how it must affect someone your age. And at Christmas, of all times.
“Yes sir.” I could hear the dullness of my tone. So could Father Humboldt. After an awkward interval, he continued.
“There must be a lot of questions going through your mind. I want you to feel free to ask them.”
I knew what questions he was alluding to. He had obviously talked to my father.
“No sir.”
Father Humboldt sighed and shifted in his seat. “I hope you will not mind my saying so, Master Candler. I can’t help sensing a certain anger, a somewhat disdainful attitude.”
“No sir.”
“Are you sure? Your father was struck by the same feeling, and I daresay your mother ...” He grimaced. “I think your mother finds herself a bit wounded by it.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“You needn’t apologize to me. It is your mother who ought to hear it.”
“No sir.”
Another terrible silence. I stared at Father Humboldt, feeling nothing. He became tense.
“I appreciate how difficult this must be, but can you really wish to hurt your mother at a time like this!”
“I don’t wish to hurt her,’ I said. “But I’m not sorry about what I told her.”
Father Humboldt had no more patience, and he let me know it. “I cannot condone this insolence! You really think having your say is more important than the feelings of your grieving mother!”
“She’s not grieving!” I shouted, and the old priest slapped his hand flat against the table.
“That’s enough! How dare you presume to know what she’s going through!” He stood and crossed to the kitchen door. “I am going to leave you alone now. Our emotions are running too high for reason.”
“I’m sorry, Father.” The words came out of my mouth with no premeditation. He moved back out of the kitchen. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to feel right now. I haven’t even cried, and I know I should.”
He came back to the table. “That’s all right, Mannie. You have to work that out in your own time.”
“And so does she,” I said, knowing that it was true, but not yet feeling it.
“Yes, good. Now, will you tell her you’re sorry? Please.”
I nodded and stood up. “Father, you never met my Aunt.”
“No, lad. I’m sorry to say, I never did.”
“She wasn’t a Christian.”
“Perhaps, when she was younger,” he said, and it almost sounded like a plea.
“I don’t know. Anyway, she was lovely. And sometimes I think Mother didn’t like her very much. Especially because she wasn’t...”
“Later, Mannie. Let this work itself out later.”
I went back to the house, aware that at least one emotion, remorse, was peeking through the gauzy vale of emptiness. I determined to find my mother and apologize, fully and unconditionally.
But it didn’t work out that way.
I don’t know if the words came out of my own personal need, or curiosity, or spite. I only know that when I opened my mouth to say, “I’m sorry,” something different came out.
“Did you love her?”
My mother was folding linens in the dining room. Her first reaction was to laugh, in disbelief. I shook my head, as if trying to deny what I had just said. “What?” my mother demanded.
“I need to know that you loved her,” I said. She dropped the fabric from her hands and stared open-mouthed. “What an absurd thing to ask!”
“Well, did you?”
“How am I supposed to answer you. What do you think!?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking.” I meant this as a reasoned defense of the question. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Without meaning to, I had made things much worse. I turned away and darted from the room, muttering the word ‘Sorry’ as I went.
I shut the door to my room and sat on my bed. Not ten seconds later, Mother opened the door. She yelled, with trembling voice, “I want you to go out there right now and pick up that damned theatre. I’m tired of tripping over it!”
I immediately got up off the bed, but this didn’t stop her from adding, “Did you hear me, young man?”
“Yes, mother,” I said under my breath as I walked past her. I hurried to the living room and began collecting up the many bits: sticks of balsa wood, tiny Egyptian soldiers and guards, a painted barge. I stuffed them all into the proscenium of the wooden stage. Mother stepped into the living room.
“You know, you aren’t the only one who’s troubled here!” She spoke with an urgency I had never heard from her before. “You aren’t the only one who doesn’t know how to feel or what to do! Now, don’t you ever dare treat me like that again!”
And she vanished down the hallway and slammed her door.
I returned to my room, and in newfound rage, I hurled the Lyceum at my closet door. The stage burst into a dozen pieces, and clattered to the floor, amid a flurry of paper figures. Finally, I cried.