Wish You Well

CHAPTER THREE

There was a calm piety in the sonorous ring of the church bell. Like steady rain, its sounds covered the area, where the trees were starting to bud and the grass was stretching awake after a winter’s rest. The curls of fireplace smoke from the cluster of homes here met in the clear sky. And to the south were visible the lofty spires and formidable minarets of New York City. These stark monuments to millions of dollars and thousands of weary backs seemed trifling against the crown of blue sky.

The large fieldstone church imparted an anchor’s mass, an object incapable of being moved no matter the magnitude of problem that assailed its doors. The pile of stone and steeple seemed able to dispense comfort if one merely drew near it. Inside the thick walls there was another sound besides the peal of holy bell.

Holy singing.

The fluid chords of “Amazing Grace” poured down the hallways and crowded against portraits of white-collared men who had spent much of their lives absorbing punishing confessions and doling out reams of Hail Marys as spiritual salve. Then the wave of song split around statues of blessed Jesus dying or rising, and finally broke in a pool of sanctified water just inside the front entrance. Creating rainbows, the sunlight filtered through the brilliant hues of stained glass windows up and down these corridors of Christ and sinners. The children would always “ooh” and “ahh” over these colorful displays, before they trudged reluctantly into Mass, thinking, no doubt, that churches always made fine rainbows.

Through the double doors of oak the choir was singing to the very pinnacle of the church, the tiny organist pumping with surprising energy for one so aged and crumpled, and “Amazing Grace” trumpeted ever higher. The priest stood at the altar, long arms tenaciously reaching to heaven’s wisdom and comfort, a prayer of hope rising from him, even as the man pushed back against the tidal wave of grief confronting him. And he needed much divine support, for it was never an easy thing explaining away tragedy by invoking God’s will.

The coffin sat at the front of the altar. The polished mahogany was covered with sprays of delicate baby’s breath, a solid clump of roses, and a few distinctive irises, and yet that sturdy block of mahogany was what held one’s attention, like five fingers against one’s throat. Jack and Amanda Cardinal had exchanged their wedding vows in this church. They had not been back since, and no one present today could have envisioned their return being for a funeral mass barely fourteen years later.

Lou and Oz sat in the front pew of the full church. Oz had his bear crushed to his chest, his gaze cast down, a collection of tears plunking on the smooth wood between skinny legs that did not reach the floor. A blue hymnal lay unopened beside him; song was really beyond the boy right now.

Lou had one arm around Oz’s shoulders, but her eyes never left the casket. It did not matter that the lid was closed. And the shield of beautiful flowers did nothing to obscure for her the image of the body inside. Today she had chosen to wear a dress for one of the few times in her life; the hated uniforms she had to wear to meet the requirements of the Catholic school she and her brother attended did not count. Her father had always loved her in dresses, even sketching her once for a children’s book he had planned but never got around to. She pulled at her white socks, which reached uncomfortably to her bony knees. A pair of new black shoes pinched her long, narrow feet, feet that were quite firmly on the floor.

Lou had not bothered to sing “Amazing Grace.” She had listened to the priest say that death was merely the beginning, that in God’s enigmatic way this was a time for rejoicing, not sorrow, and then she did not listen anymore. Lou did not even pray for the lost soul of her father. She knew Jack Cardinal was a good man, a wonderful writer and teller of tales. She knew he would be deeply missed. No choir, no man of the cloth, no god needed to tell her these things.

The singing stopped, and the priest once more took up his ramblings, while Lou picked up on the conversation of the two men behind her. Her father had been a shameless eavesdropper in his search for the authentic ring of conversation, and his daughter shared that curiosity. Now Lou had even more reason to do so.

“So, have you come up with any brilliant ideas?” the older man whispered to his younger companion.

“Ideas? We’re the executors of an estate with nothing in it” was the agitated response from the younger man.

The older man shook his head and spoke in an even lower tone, which Lou struggled to hear.

“Nothing? Jack did leave two children and a wife.”

The younger man glanced to the side and then said in a low hiss, “A wife? They might as well be orphans.”

It was not clear whether Oz heard this, but he lifted his head and put a hand on the arm of the woman sitting next to him. Actually, Amanda was in a wheelchair. A wide-bodied nurse sat on the other side of her, arms folded across her flop of bosom; the nurse was clearly unmoved by the death of a stranger.

A thick bandage was wrapped around Amanda’s head, her auburn hair cut short. Her eyes were closed. In fact, they had never once opened since the accident. The doctors had told Lou and Oz that their mother’s physical side had been mostly repaired. The problem now apparently was only a matter of her soul’s having fled.

Later, outside the church, the hearse carried Lou’s father away and she did not even look. In her mind she had said her good-byes. In her heart she could never do so. She pulled Oz along through the trenches of somber suit coats and mourning dresses. Lou was so tired of sad faces, moist eyes catching her dry ones, telegraphing sympathy, mouths firing off broadsides of the literary world’s collective, devastating loss. Well, none of their fathers lay dead in that box. This was her loss, hers and her brother’s. And she was weary of people apologizing for a tragedy they could not begin to understand. “I’m so sorry,” they would whisper. “So sad. A great man. A beautiful man. Struck down in his prime. So many stories left untold.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Lou had started saying right back. “Didn’t you hear the priest? This is a time to rejoice. Death is good. Come on and sing with me.”

These people would stare, smile nervously, and then move on to “rejoice” with someone else of a more understanding nature.

Next, they were to go to the grave-site service where the priest would no doubt say more uplifting words, bless the children, sprinkle his sacred dirt; and then another six feet of ordinary fill would be poured in, closing this terribly odd spectacle. Death must have its ritual, because society says it must. Lou did not intend to rush to it, for she had a more pressing matter to attend to right now.

The same two men were in the grassy parking lot. Freed from ecclesiastical confines, they were debating in normal voices the future of what remained of the Cardinal family.

“Wish to God Jack hadn’t named us as executors,” said the older man as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit up and then pressed the match flame out between his thumb and forefinger. “Figured I’d be long dead by the time Jack checked out.”

The younger man looked down at his polished shoes and said, “We just can’t leave them like this, living with strangers. The kids need someone.”

The other man puffed his smoke and gazed off after the bubble-topped hearse. Up above, a flock of blackbirds seemed to form a loose squadron, an informal sendoff for Jack Cardinal. The man flicked ash. “Children belong with their family. These two just don’t happen to have any left.”

“Excuse me.”

When they turned, they saw Lou and Oz staring at them.

“Actually, we do have family,” Lou said. “Our great-grandmother, Louisa Mae Cardinal. She lives in Virginia. It’s where my father grew up.”

The younger man looked hopeful, as though the burden of the world, or at least of two children, might still be shed from his narrow shoulders. The older man, though, looked suspicious.

“Your great-grandmother? She’s still alive?” he asked.

“My parents were just talking about us moving to Virginia to be with her before the accident.”

“Do you know if she’ll take you?” the younger man eagerly wanted to know.

“She’ll take us” was Lou’s immediate reply, though in truth she had no idea at all if the woman would.

“All of us?” This question came from Oz.

Lou knew her little brother was thinking of their wheelchair-bound mother. She said in a very firm voice to the two men, “All of us.”