Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘My teeth are quite ruined. I take trouble to hide them.’

‘You wish to be painted at your worst; you may as well grant the poor things freedom to be seen.’

‘I’m an oul’ hag, it’s come to that.’

‘A beautiful old hag, I think. God showed great favor when he cobbled you together.’

‘It’s been my undoing.’

‘Yes, well, they do say beauty has its curses. I wouldn’t know.’

‘False modesty is unbecoming.’

‘So be it,’ said his wife. ‘The silver streak in your hair-very handsome.’

‘It came in after the death of my mother and sisters; I was but a girl.’

‘There. That’s all that can be done. Let’s have a go at the real thing. Water?’

‘Yes.’

The bent straw, the slightest raising of the head.

‘May I see it?’

‘I don’t show the impression, it’s for myself alone.’ The tearing of the painted page from the sketchbook.

‘You can be hard like your husband.’

The chime of the ferrule. ‘Keep looking beyond me, as you’re doing. Yes, he’s a hard old thing.’ She glanced over at him, sly as a ferret.

‘What favor has God shown you?’

‘Every favor,’ said his wife.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Companionship in loneliness, peace amid chaos, hope against desperation. Among other things.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He loves me. Your eyes, yes, keep looking just there. He loves me desperately.’

‘Desperately. A childish thing to say.’

‘It’s okay. I’m his child.’

‘I don’t understand you people.’

An actual giggle from his wife; the true music for him.

Panting, now. ‘You’ve been good all your days, I suppose.’

‘Good? Me? Hardly. I once tried to kill myself. It was the greatest impertinence of my life. But he gave me beauty for ashes, Evelyn. He unbound me and opened my prison.’

‘Why did he do that?’

‘Because I asked him to. I cried out to him with everything in me, I gave my old self to him, and he gave me a new self in return.’

‘Were you frightened to do such a thing?’

‘Frightened to do it, frightened not to do it. Yes.’

‘My heart is gall,’ said Evelyn Conor. ‘I realized that while lying here alone. I cannot imagine living with nothing to soften the blow of such knowledge, the loneliness of it. The drink was my friend. Do you understand that?’

‘I do, yes,’ said Cynthia. ‘Completely.’

A long silence; his wife visibly moved. ‘Friends can deceive us,’ she said, ‘even the best of them. God does not deceive.’

Evelyn gasped, closed her eyes against the pain.

‘Do you want Fletcher?’

‘No. Paint me.’

‘I had thought he might be deceiving, that he might even be fierce and churlish. But I found him gentle. I couldn’t have known that until I gave myself to him. I had gone to live in the country after failing to put an end to my misery, and it was there that it happened, that he came into my heart and spirit and changed everything. Of course, it had been happening all along, his coming to me and I to him, but I hadn’t seen it. All my life, I’d felt a famishing void, the thing Pascal talked about. There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, he said, and it can’t be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God-made known through Jesus Christ.’

‘You gave yourself to him, you say. All your control surrendered. I can’t imagine it. If he gives us the free will everyone seems so excited about, why would you give it back? That alone is an impertinence.’

‘Good question. What would you say to that, Timothy?’

‘Do not ask your husband to speak for you.’

‘Well, then, I gave it back not because I despised it but because I had no idea how to use it.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

Cynthia smiled. ‘You’re a difficult woman.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘You’re doing a very hard thing here, and you’re doing it alone. Fletcher, Seamus, Dr. Feeney-in this, no one else counts, really. You’re doing it alone and proud of that, I suppose.’

‘I’ve always been proud to do something alone, without assistance from the weak and cowardly.’

‘I found doing it alone too great for me to bear. It was disabling. I was Atlas with the world on my shoulders, I was Sisyphus-my heart the stone.’

‘I cannot fathom that kind of talk. Leave off, now! Leave off.’

The buzz of a bee marked the runes of his prayer.

‘Do you know what happened to my mother and sisters?’

‘I do.’

‘I have spent these many years trying to keep them alive. Thinking of what they would be doing, where they would be sleeping-sometimes in summer, Ailish slept on the roof. Would you sleep on a roof, Cynthia?’

‘I would not!’

‘So many crawlers in the thatch, I could never understand why she did it, she was peculiar, Ailish. Day after day and night after night, I have forced myself to think what they talked about and had for supper, about the dresses and aprons they wore-I have tried to remember the colors, the patterns in the cloth. I have tried to keep their smells alive-Aileen smelled of garden peas when the shell is opened, and Ailish, always of sweat, no matter how she washed off in the pond. My mother had a sour smell, she was a sour woman with sour thoughts.’

‘And Tommy?’

‘We adored him. Tommy smelled of tobacco and all the things men are to smell of, except in a young, bold, laughing way.’ She was quiet for a time, then said, plaintive, ‘It is very hard to keep the dead alive.’

Cynthia put down her brush. ‘It’s very wrong to keep the dead alive, for it keeps us from living truly. You must forgive yourself, Evelyn.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You must forgive God.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You cannot have peace without forgiveness.’

‘I do not deserve peace.’

‘It’s what God wants us to have.’

‘Does God ask me what I want him to have? I want him to have pity, to have mercy, and the common decency to give us a life without struggle and disgrace.’

Cynthia laughed. ‘Oh, my. We can forget that last notion. He is formed, himself, of the greatest pity and mercy, but without struggle and even disgrace, how would we ever know him, run to him, seek his refuge? We would not.’

The panting again. ‘I see no reason, anymore, to live beyond this agony. I had thought to be courageous, but courage doesn’t matter now, not by half.’

Cynthia laid her hand on Evelyn’s head, silent. Evelyn’s tears, wet on her face.

There was a long stillness in the room. The tears he had witnessed in his life as a priest might plenish a river.

‘Have you ever seen a rainbow over the lough, Evelyn?’

‘Often.’

‘I’m hoping to see a rainbow. Timothy hopes to see swans fly.’

‘One hopes all sorts of things in this life.’

Fletcher at the door.

‘There’s duck broth for you, Missus.’

‘Broth.’ A long pause. Then, ‘Give me something I can get my teeth into,’ she said, fierce.

The tearing of the sheet from the sketchbook. ‘There now, it’s done. I hope you like it.’

He knew Cynthia was anxious to please both Evelyn and herself.

‘Shall I sign it?’

‘Sign it, of course. They tell me you’re famous.’

‘Not terribly. Mostly with small children.’

‘Small children,’ said Evelyn, oddly wistful.

Cynthia showed the portrait to her subject, who studied it a long time. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Yes. Take the ring.’

‘Not yet. I’d like to paint you again, if I may, but we’re leaving soon.’

‘I find this taxing, but come tomorrow, then.’

‘What time?’

‘Call first. You’ll want to make certain I’m not lunatic and raving, as I’ve heard them say.’