Salome had asked Jesus if her sons, James and John, could sit by his side in heaven, Solome asked Jesus to be by her side. Well, now she had Jesus. What next?
The sin would disappear from her life, the minister on television said. What was her sin? She was faithful. Punctual. Conscientious. Consistent. What had she done that Jesus had to die on the cross?
When she picked Stephen up from the airport, she said nothing to him about her television evangelistic experience.
Stephen Savard
In the airport forgot which gate looked at pass again again. Had trouble sleeping in hotel. Pillow hard. These— episodes turmoil. Thought of meeting. Disinterested. Only wanted to leave. Why didn’t I care about this? Always careful in meetings and information dissemination.
There were episodes? Our lives running through. Keys with Soos’ car. A call when. Have it towed. There clear up. I’ll take care I’m on my way back.
I could hear the baby cry.
Solome Savard
Solome was used to upward mobility, but now she sensed a collision with life as she knew it. No, life as she knew it was colliding with what she didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. She hardly was aware of it, but Stephen was stepping off a continental shelf. Maybe it was a recognition that moved in her sleep, deep in her dreams. Could Solome continue without Stephen? What had she ever done without him? Could she face herself before God alone? Oh God, what could she do? There was a landscape like a Salvador Dali painting in her head when she opened the Bible. “The Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.”— I Thessalonians 4:16–18. What comfort was that? Solome thought— Being yanked through the sky when she didn’t want to go. She closed the Bible.
Sometimes she numbered her duties to herself. Her book of numbers. Cordiality was part of Solome’s fabric, her veil. She remembered her line of duties. Her children always had been ready for school. She had been at home when the children returned from school. She oversaw homework. She got them ahead. She hosted parties when her husband was chair of the history department at Cobson College. She hosted more parties when he was division dean, and when he became provost. Once, she had planned to continue to host parties when Stephen was president.
Sometimes everything numbed her. She called Reverend Croft, her minister, and made an appointment. “I need to know about faith.” She wanted more from church. How could she tell him that? What was she doing? After their talk, a woman with the last name of Forman called Solome and asked her to their Bible study group. What conspiracy was in the church? Solome agreed to come before she knew it. She would go just once to see who these strange people were.
It wasn’t church, but the Bible and the reading of it. Maybe that was the barking dog. There were words that demanded to be heard, to be paid attention. She was a Christian in a Christian nation. But she didn’t know what that meant. She was a nominal Christian in a nominal nation. What was it like to be a believer who walked in faith? Was she in or out? Hot or cold? Maybe that’s what Brown wanted. Meaning in his life. The dog was part of Solome out there in the yard. Digging trenches as if for war. Did soldiers even dig trenches anymore?
Two of her children, Gretchen and Mark, were in college. One daughter, Susanna, whom they called Soos, returned home after her marriage and the birth of a daughter, Solome and Stephen’s only grandchild. But after a few months, Soos had reconciled with her husband. Sometimes when Stephen worked late, or had meetings, she began to feel her life was her own.
What if, in the middle of this new feeling of self-direction, her life turned a corner where she didn’t want to go? What if the walls of her house were pinching together? Slowly, of course, so slowly she hardly noticed. What if her outward course reversed? The fear gripped her. What if her direction changed to downward mobility? She couldn’t stand the thought. It was not what she wanted. What if it was some sinister force? Solome realized she was sweating.
On Monday evenings, Solome went to Bible study. She wanted to grow stronger in her faith. What did that mean? She would rely on what the Bible said, rather than on her circumstances?
Stephen Savard
Gretchen and Dennis were coming. No— they had called they might be coming but it wasn’t settled yet. What was his last name? Solome tried to remember.
“Dennis something.”
“Yes I know but what?”
“I don’t know, Stephen,” Solome said. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
What would I say to him? Why was he coming?
In the end, they postponed.
Solome Savard
Solome took the dog for a walk. She would stop to talk with Hetty Grunswald, her neighbor. Later, she would talk with her friends on the phone. She called Soos everyday, or stopped by her house. She talked to her mother nearly every day on the phone. Sometimes, on Wednesdays and Fridays, her mother met her at the Historical Society for lunch and they spent time in the exhibits. Sometimes Soos and Susan came also. Then there were the calls to Gretchen in New York of an evening while Stephen sat in his chair. Sometimes it seemed as if Stephen was purposely disengaging, losing interest in their lives. She could sense him preparing to leave, not her as his wife, but leaving his own life; not dying yet, but slowly taking his hands off the wheel. It couldn’t be time for the end yet.
Solome lived in America where there was a heaven and an earth. But there was something coming for Stephen. They both felt it in the night. It was a new territory neither of them wanted to enter.
She remembered once at her parents’ place at Crane Lake, a large boat docked. A woman in a black swimming suit ran toward her parents’ cabin where Stephen worked with her father to screen the porch. She watched the woman run toward her husband like a dream that followed sleep into waking. Soon the woman realized she was running toward the wrong house, and turned to the house next door.
“Who was that?” Solome asked her mother.
“She’s the daughter of a woman who looked in on the old couple,” her mother said.
Yes, the people who lived in the next cabin with their retarded daughter.
Solome watched Stephen return to his screening after a woman in black ran toward him in the afternoon, a black butterfly, ready to carry him away, to unthread him from her.
Once there had been a common Indo-European language with words for winter and horse, but no word for the sea.
Wear warm clothes, Solome remembered.
Once she had taken a course on language. She still remembered it, or some of it. After the common language, there had been closely related Germanic languages that formed the basis of English, which formed the basis of her American language. There had been links to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. There was a Norman conquest; there were the Anglo Saxons. Imagine a language that could move over, make room for others. Imagine new words joined to the old ones, crossing to other worlds, spreading like the sea.
The English and American language wasn’t as rigid as other languages. New ideas were given new words, maybe new words were given new ideas. There were openings for possibilities: abstractions and complex thought.
Christianity also had added words: cedars of Lebanon, camels, myrrh. Even language had been converted by Christianity. There also was the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible, where language was purposely mixed.
Solome felt the piles of language like laundry yet to be folded. She felt cardboard. Artificial. What was her language telling her? She didn’t like herself. No, that wasn’t it.
Where were all the facts she had once memorized?
Where was all the wood she had chopped? Chores she had done?
What if she had had the opportunity to develop a career the