EPILOGUE
WE LIVE THROUGH A SUMMER, the air hot and heavy, wet with rain that seldom falls, but we do not complain. The heaviness of the air keeps it motionless, almost solid. Our skin is slick with sweat, and I embrace the feel of it, to the bemusement of our friends and neighbors. Fall delights us with its display. And winter —so much water, so much white. The air, sharp and cold, slices us, and we turn our faces to it, living pink-cheeked and red-nosed within the frost.
In the time between our first Easter and our first Christmas, Russ finds his place behind a new pulpit, and I stand proudly at his side, his lovely wife, warmly welcomed by this congregation. A photograph is taken to commemorate the occasion. Russ and I stand with the retiring pastor and his wife, matched in identical poses. Russ’s hand is at the small of my waist, drawing me protectively to him.
It is the first time he’s touched me since the dirt of Oklahoma dusted this place.
While Russ spoke his forgiveness with the sincerity of Scripture and treats me with the kindness of courtship, the brokenness of trust remains. There are no soft kisses upon waking, no sweet, swift embraces throughout the day. Every night I tuck in the children and go to bed, drifting and dozing while he studies downstairs. Deep into darkness, he joins me, and there we lie, parallel in our dreams. In the morning, I leave our bed as I took to it. Alone, to spend the rest of the day in careful, measured steps.
There are moments I long for a return to our cramped little apartment, where it was impossible to move without brushing up against each other. Here, in the grandness of this house, I live without the feel of his skin. Neither hands, nor lips, nor any other part of God’s design. We don’t speak of it; we simply agree. And the moment the smoke clears from that camera’s flash, Russ takes his touch away, and I begin to burn.
It is a Sunday afternoon in April, and we spend it the way we always have, only instead of reading a letter from Greg, we listen to the latest attempt to end his reign of bachelorhood. Last night, it was the niece of a well-meaning parishioner, homely even by Greg’s forgiving standards, who kept him out half the night trying to wheedle one more date.
“Aren’t you ever going to get married, Uncle Greg?” Ariel asks. She rolls lazily on the thick carpet with Barney —once again fat with kittens —pawing at her ribbons.
“Besides you kids, I’ve yet to see the benefit.”
Russ bends the corner of the Tulsa Tribune, to which we subscribe and have delivered weekly. “To be married is a beautiful thing,” he says, catching my eye over the headlines of destruction. “Endless opportunities for sacrifice and love.”
“Well, I’ve sacrificed enough of my time to Miss Edith Crauller,” Greg says. “And until the perfect woman comes along, I’ll be satisfied with loving all of you.”
Just then the door opens, and Ronnie bursts in, dripping with rain, shoes covered in mud, but I don’t even think to chastise him.
“Have you heard it?” He clomps to the radio and turns it on, setting his ear to find the station. “They’re saying it’s the worst one yet. That the whole sky turned black as night just like that.”
“Mama?”
Ariel, full of fear, crawls across the floor and wraps herself around my legs. Soon, our cozy back parlor, so recently full of warmth and laughter, is invaded by the cold voice of the radio newsman. Already they’re calling it Black Sunday, arguably the worst of these storms yet to pester the Oklahoma panhandle. Sunlight disappeared in seconds. Darkness descended for hours. Dark still, in fact, as a nation turns its heart to the poor, the plagued, the piteous lives left in the wake of such destruction.
“‘If any man’s work shall be burned,’” Russ says, quoting Scripture, “‘he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved.’”
I think about Merrilou Brown, who writes occasionally, her letters filled with the same strength and resilience as her strident conversation. What would she say about such darkness, other than she felt no surprise when the sun shone bright as ever behind it?
“Is it going to come here again, Mama?”
“No, baby girl.” I place my hand on her curls as substitute for a kiss I must remember to give later. Our windows are coated with thick sheets of rain, and I can hardly remember what it felt like to live with that fear. “I think we’ll be spared from it ever happening again.”
Later, in the latest of the afternoon, when it’s time to walk to evening church, Russ suggests we leave the children at home, tended to by their uncle, who has promised warm bowls of soup and a game of Old Maid to while away the evening.
“All right,” I say, thinking I might have joined them if I hadn’t already donned my slicker and rubber boots. Russ does the same, and after a final good-bye to the family, we’re on the other side of the door. His hand finds mine, a gesture immediately foreign and familiar, and he holds it all the way down the rain-slicked steps, down the walkway, through the gate, and onto the sidewalk, where I assume he will drop its grip.
He doesn’t; neither do I; and we are both silent for the next few steps.
Looking up, I can see each drop of rain illuminated in the streetlight. I stop, lifting my face to the beauty of it —still so strange. It’s cold and stinging, like tiny bits of life nipping my cheeks. I am cleansed and removed from the darkness that haunted me for so long. The rain holds every tear I dare not cry in the midst of so much blessing.
“I never thought I’d ever be so happy for such a small thing.”
I’m hoping he’ll think I’m talking about the rain, and not his touch, lest he realize his transgression and take it away.
“God is faithful,” he says. “Rain will return to Oklahoma, too.”
“Of course it will.”
“And I want to be there when it does.”
He’s still holding my hand, and when I try to take it away, he grips me harder. We’re walking again, toward the church two blocks away. Russ seems determined in his stride, and I match him step for step at his side as raindrops patter on my hat.
I shouldn’t be surprised that he wants to go back. He hasn’t flourished in this place the way the children have. The way I have. The fact that he pastors a church is a matter of convenience rather than passion, on the part of both the church and Russ. He doesn’t fit into the furniture. He no longer fills the room. While Featherling may have been the birthplace of my betrayal, this is the place where I confessed it, brought it to life. Here, too, for our marriage, there has been drought. The fields sown with salt. I can’t blame him for wanting to get away. Return home, in the way he has always defined it. Surrounded by families who will give when they have nothing, and then bring pie.
“Nobody goes back to Oklahoma, Russ.” Only my husband could see beauty in such a place, and the fact that he loves it so much gives me hope that he can still love me.
“All the more reason. There has to be somebody there by choice. I need to be where I’m needed.”
Just then, as if orchestrated to prove my point, I begin to step off the curb and into the street, only to have Russ pull me back to a safe-enough distance to let a car go by without drowning us in the wave created when its tire hits a puddle. He’s brought me close to him, his arms wrapped around me, and when I turn in his embrace, he is all I see. He is my home —not my escape, but my only shelter. Suddenly, my fear of returning to Oklahoma is eclipsed by the terrifying possibility that he might not see me as the same.
I allow the slightest dropping of my shoulder, just enough to create a space between us, and to my utter disappointment, he releases me. Drops my hand in favor of taking a pinch of my slicker’s sleeve and leads me across the street, where we resume our walking.
My last words, “I need you,” hang between us, begging a reply. Still, there remains nothing but a constant, fluid silence until the church, its pristine stained-glass windows glowing with welcoming warmth, beckons us with shelter.
I slow my steps.
“Darling.” The rain has intensified, something close to a downpour, and he reaches for me again. “We’ll talk about this later. At home.”
“You can’t leave me again.”
He looks puzzled, his face performing mini contortions with each splashing drop. “What do you mean?”
“If you were going to leave me, you should have done it last year. After I told you . . . what I told you. And I know you’ve forgiven me. You say so, and I believe you. But you haven’t —we haven’t . . .” The rain provides a valiant escort for my tears, so neither of us truly knows if I’m crying because I’m terrified, or wounded, or angry. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because in the next breath I am in my husband’s arms, an embrace that knocks the hat off my head, and my scalp comes alive with cool, clean washing.
“Nola, how could you think such a thing? Of course —of course we’ll go back together. As a family. We’ll start over, as a family. Us and the kids. We’ll find a new home, or build one.”
“But here —”
“Here is an escape. A place of refuge. But we can’t stay.”
“I’ll go anywhere.” I reach up, touch his face, thrill to the warmth of it. “I’m just so thankful that you want me with you. I didn’t think you ever would again.”
There’s a new surge in the storm, and through its pounding I hear congregants shouting to us, teasingly, that we don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. They don’t know the extent of our drought, the dryness of our hearts and skin.
“I’ve been a fool,” he says. It’s the same curse I’ve pronounced against myself too often.
“No, I —”
But there are no more words. No more confessions, or apologies. His lips touch mine, and in that moment, regrets wash away beneath our boots.
It has been a lifetime since he’s kissed me, a passing of far too many seasons. This moment holds the familiarity of every kiss we’ve ever shared. Russ pulls me closer, and we search each other, working to bring to light all the darkness of this past year, bathing one another in forgiveness. When I try to pull away, just for breath, he follows, trailing his lips across my cheeks, and when he kisses me again, brings traces of salt, and I wonder if his tears are intermingled with mine.
Beyond the curtain of the rain, good-natured calls continue from our flock, beckoning us to come inside, and I feel him smile against me.
“We really should go in,” I say, suddenly shy at our display.
He kisses me one more time —brief, but full of promise —and takes my hand to lead me across the sodden lawn and into the cloakroom off the vestibule. It smells like wet rubber and wool, and we shake our heads, sending tiny showers into the air around us. Some complain about the damp, the aches in their bones, and the mud that will be tracked on the carpets. Russ and I smile, sharing the secret of this bounty.
The gathering of a Sunday evening is smaller than what we see in the mornings, and the rain has cut us in half again, so that the crowd assembled in the warm, dry sanctuary fits easily within half a dozen pews.
We sing:
Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.
Russ himself leads the hymn, directing us with a hand that moves without any musical direction. None of us hold a songbook as the chorus builds.
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin!
I sing with the knowledge of God’s cleansing, feeling the gift of his rain and the forgiveness of my husband. All of it swirling together. Our eyes meet and my heart leaps the way it did the first time I saw him. As we sing about our sin, as cold as the sea, and the cleansing blood of Christ, I feel a part of me washing away with the tiny rivulets of rain trickling down my flesh. The song promises the brightness of snow, but I am more taken by the cleansing power of the rain. I think of how it bathed our kiss, restoring us to each other.
When we bow for prayer, my collar sits damp against my skin; tendrils of hair, dark with wet and cold, graze my cheek. Through the darkness, I hear my husband’s voice, thanking God for this deluge, remembering the way he once brought a flood up from the ground to cleanse the earth.
“You, O Lord, are our place of refuge,” he prays. “Your mercy is the ark that brings us safely home.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I open my eyes, only to find he has done the same. Our gaze wraps itself around his prayer, bringing it to silence before he says, definitively, “Amen.”
It is not until I open my mouth to echo that I realize how tightly I’ve been clenching my jaw, and in this moment my teeth begin to chatter. My body is racked with uncontrollable chills, my legs shaking against the unforgiving bench beneath me. It feels like my bones are snapping within my skin, and I clutch my arms about me, willing myself to still. With a whispered excuse, Russ is at my side, enveloping me in his embrace. He covers both of my hands with one of his, and slowly his warmth seeps through, overpowering the chill within.
“I should get you home.” He speaks directly into my ear. “Into a hot bath before you take cold.”
“Don’t be silly.” My words are loose. “I’m fine.”
And I am.
More than that, I am restored. Strong enough to return to Oklahoma. So thoroughly saturated with rain, I have no fear of drought.