Rachel looked at me for a while with that look on her face she would give when I clearly offended a fat person or an Asian. It’s a look of loving pity, the way a mother might look at her retarded kid who tries to eat cereal with a wristwatch. I pointed vaguely at her sister’s grave, but I never actually said anything. She kept smiling at me though. She took a little step forward and asked if it was weird to see her like this. It gave me an opportunity to look her up and down which I always enjoyed doing. All these years of being away from her, imagining her, I never thought she would be dressed in black. And why couldn’t I see her hair? It was behind a head scarf so that all she looked like was Rachel’s face in the midst of some old black sheets. Don’t get me wrong. Even in this state she was still smoking hot. “Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?” she asked, but I still didn’t say anything.
She said she had made a mental bet about whether her brother or I would visit first. Would prison and rehab beat out stubbornness, she asked. It had. Her brother visited three years ago, just days after getting out of rehab. “We stood right here, right at Angie’s grave,” she said. “The day came when I realized you just wouldn’t come, and that everyone who was going to see me like this had seen me like this. I think only then did I really belong here. To let everyone know I wasn’t running from anything. That I needed to be with these people because I belonged here. I needed everyone to see me. Now here you are. I’m glad.” I still didn’t say anything, though.
She took another step forward. She was just a foot or so to my right side, and for the first time in many years I could turn my head and see her face. I wanted to see her hair. I almost reached out to pull the head scarf away just to see that it was still there, but I bit my nails instead. She asked if I was going to come up to the chapel for a service. I still didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. She looked up at the clouds like she wasn’t sure she should speak, but then she started: “The first time you came to Angie’s grave on Labor Day I had to convince Mother Agatha not to run you out. I told her you were here for me, and I asked her if I should go see you. She said for me to stay. And I cried a bit I think. She said, ‘No, you can’t go down there.’ Then you came the next year at Labor Day, and I thought this year he’ll come say hello to me, he’ll look me in the eye, but you left again. And the next year. And the next. All the sisters called you the Labor Day Pilgrim. Every year you came, and the sisters would check what the temperature would be that night, hoping it wouldn’t get very cold. One time when you were out here a whippoorwill called, and Sister Mary said to me, ‘Do you hear that? It’s a whippoorwill?’ I knew it was a whippoorwill because you taught me what they sound like.”
I still didn’t say anything, though. I wished she would stop talking about chapels and mothers and sisters that weren’t really her mothers and sisters but really just women who stared at me from a distance. They could be like this, but not Rachel. When Rachel says she’s leaving you, that she is dying to her old life, she needs to mean some disease, or needs to be freefalling in an airplane that just lost its second engine but thankfully there was still time to make this last phone call.
Rachel said, “I thought I would come talk to you since it wasn’t your normal Labor Day trip. Maybe you’re making progress.” She paused and sighed. “But you won’t talk to me, will you?” I wouldn’t because the only thing I knew to do was to tell her I loved her. She said, “Maybe next year. Bless you, Cyrus.” Then she turned to walk back up the path to the monastery. So I blurted out, “They’re all leaving me, Rachel.”
She said she knew. Ever since she had become an official member of the community Charlotte had brought Boyce Jr. once a month. All the sisters at the monastery knew Boyce Jr. He would bring his guitar and play songs for them. Sometimes Sammy and Boyce came with them. In fact, she knew just about everything. “They told me you’re getting rid of everything. That since they’re leaving you’re going to leave, too. But they know what I know. What you know. That you don’t have anywhere to go. Even those migrating birds know where they're going, don't they?”
I got quiet again, but this time she didn’t turn around to leave. She waited for me, and even though I’m pretty sure she knew it all anyway, I told her everything that’s happened to me. About Hank. About Harris Ames. About Dr. Keegman. About the Resplendent Quetzal. About Bruce Barenburg. About Virgil Ray. About the Thunderbirds. About Antonio. About Marcel and Rex and Janice. About Virginia Blare. About my uncle. About my mother. About my father. About the time when she and I drove up to Boyce’s house and she hit a crow with her car. How it thumped and flipped over the windshield, she began to cry, and I shouted in disbelief and alarm: “You hit the crow! No one hits a crow! Corvus brachyrhynchos, no!” How we got out and stared at the crow that rocked back and forth on Boyce’s long driveway. We took it out to a barn behind the house and when I put it on an old wooden table the crows outside the barn really began squawking. How I made a little splint for its leg that only took a few minutes to make and attach, but I really milked it because I liked watching her look at that crow with all that worry, and then me like I was a hero. How I had told her she shouldn’t be sad about the crow, that it will live, and that all the other crows will remember we did this good thing. Crows can distinguish human faces, and will attack those who harass them and show affection for those who nurture them. How she shouldn’t be sad because all these crows around Boyce’s house will remember we did this good thing, and will show us good favor. And how from that time on every time we all sat out together crows would drop bolts and screws onto the picnic table as a reward for us helping that one bird. And even now, though she doesn’t come anymore and Boyce has a for sale sign on his front yard, they still bring nuts or bright pieces of metal to the front steps as a reward.
I finally stopped talking and she told me that it was true I was a good person. I told her Rex Tugwell didn’t think so, but she said, “That’s because Rex Tugwell is an asshole.” She told me she should go, that she shouldn’t be speaking in private like this with me. She asked if I would come up to the chapel and I said no. She asked if I was going to visit sometime and I said I doubted it. I resisted telling her I loved her and would give up every bird on this planet if I could come visit her and have it not hurt.
Before she became a nun, her girlfriends threw her a we-can’t-believe-you’re-really-doing-this party, and they were good enough to invite me, Sammy and Boyce. I couldn’t go inside that apartment, however, without throwing up. Sammy and Boyce went instead, asked Rachel to come out, and then went and waited in the car. She had already been over things with me several times, but I still wanted to ask her why, in the 21st century, any young woman wants to join a monastery. She was done trying to explain things to me with any real significance, so she finally just told me out on her doorstep, “If Sammy and Boyce started a monastery on some island, you would join it. You would do it because that’s the place you needed to be to love them more. And that’s why I’m joining.” I told her it was a fairly terrible comparison since no one is claiming Sammy and Boyce are God, but she said, “For you, yes they are. That’s the closest to understanding God you’re going to get it. And damn it, Cyrus, that’s better than most people.” Then she went inside. I never saw her again until that day at the monastery.
When I got home that same evening, I called Keller Bigsby and told him to take the first bid he gets on my mother’s house.
