Oh, I was ecstatic—!
“He’s out for his walk,” I said. And we spoke about how she felt no sickness at all, just a slight queasiness at times, and she was eating like a horse. She said they were not going to know the sex of the child. “We want to be surprised.” Then she said how glad she was that William had gotten rid of Melvin. “Can you imagine, Mom? I mean, I was pregnant that day, and if he had moved in with us— Oh Mom.”
“I know,” I said. “Are you still going to the protests?”
“Don’t worry about the protests, Mom. They’re small, and I stay really safe.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
* * *
—
Oh, I was absolutely euphoric when we hung up! Chrissy was going to have her child! I thought about holding the baby and baby clothes and how Chrissy would be such a good mother; I pictured her with a boy, somehow, and— Oh, the whole thing just thrilled me!
* * *
—
And when William came back his face glowed as well; we spoke of it immediately. “She told you they’re not going to learn the sex of it, right?” William asked, and I said, Yes, she had told me that. William said, “It’s great, Lucy. This is great news.” And I said I was so excited I could barely stand it.
And then not soon after I saw that William’s face fell, and he said, “I miss Bridget.” He walked over to look out at the water. He said, “I need to go see her again soon.”
“Go anytime!” I said, but he did not answer me.
* * *
That night William was tapping on his computer, and he looked up and then closed it. He said to me, “Do you remember how when we wrote the vows for our wedding, you asked that we put in not just ‘until death do us part,’ but the words ‘forever and beyond’? Do you remember that?”
“Remind me,” I said.
“I just did.” He looked over at the fireplace and then down at his shoe. “You wanted to make sure that it wasn’t only until death do us part. You wanted to make sure that it was longer than that.”
And then I did remember. I said, “I guess I’m afraid of death.”
“I don’t think so,” William said. “I think you just really loved me and wanted it to go on forever.” He said then, “I think it’s the opposite of being afraid of death. I think you just don’t believe in death.”
“Of course I do,” I said.
“Oh, I know in the real sense, but you— Oh, never mind,” he said, as though suddenly exhausted. But then he said, waving a hand laconically, “You’re a spirit, Lucy. You know things. I’ve told you that before. There is no one else out there like you.”
* * *
—
I thought: He is wrong, I am scared of death. And I do not know anything.
iv
Protesters still went out into the streets every night and I still worried about their health, but the violence seemed to be over. When I asked the girls they said there had never been violence at the vigils or protests they attended in New Haven.
I listened carefully to people on the news, people of color, who said that every day they had to worry when they got into their cars that they could be stopped, or when they walked down the sidewalks in their neighborhoods that they could be stopped. How they were conscious every single minute of being in real danger.
And it reminded me of how, many years earlier, after I had left William, I went to a writers’ conference in Alabama, and there was a woman there, a poet, and she was Black, and she had driven down from Indiana alone to attend this conference, and she had gotten lost and it was nighttime before she found where we were to stay at the college. And what I suddenly remembered was her fear that night. She had said to me, “You don’t want to be a Black woman alone on some desolate road down here.”
I thought about that for a long time.
* * *
It was not long after this that my sister, Vicky, called me. I was surprised when I saw her number show up on my phone; she never called me but always waited for me to call her, which I did once a week, as I have said.
Vicky said to me, “Lucy, I’ve joined a church.”
I said, “You have?”
And she said, Yes, she had joined—and I cannot remember the name of it, but I recognized right away that it was a Christian fundamentalist church—and she said it had changed her life.
“In what way?” I asked her.
And Vicky said, “I know you’ll be snotty about this, Lucy. But when you really pray—and when you pray with other people—the spirit of the Lord can honest and truly come to you.”
So I said, “You mean you’ve seen the light?”
And Vicky said, “I knew you’d be sarcastic, I knew you would. I don’t know why I even told you.”
“I’m not being sarcastic!” I said. I was sitting on the lumpy red couch and I stood up as I said this. I walked around the room as she talked. She said she had joined two months ago, that she had never been in the presence of people so kind, and so I made another mistake and I said, “You’re attending services with people? Vicky, there’s a pandemic.”
And Vicky said, “The Lord will protect me.”
“But are you wearing masks?” I asked.
“We don’t wear masks at church, Lucy. I have to wear one when I work, but at church we do not wear them. It’s the government trying to force us to do that, Lucy. And I know you think differently, but you are being fooled.”
I closed my eyes for a second and said, “Where are you getting your news from?”
She paused and then said, “Lucy, I have watched you on so many TV shows over the years, all those morning shows. And I believed them. I believed what I saw, but now I don’t anymore. It’s all baloney.”
This startled me, because—in a way—she was right. I had been struck by that increasingly over the years: that when I did a television show, how there was always something slightly false about it, the perkiness of the newscasters, the setting, the whole thing. And the fact that the station was always looking for what was called “a hook.”
Vicky went on. “I don’t watch television anymore. I don’t believe they are telling us the truth. They are telling us their truth to try and sway us in the wrong direction. I’m not going to tell you where I get my news, but that’s how I feel.”
I waited a moment and then I asked, “You joined this church two months ago, and you’re only now telling me?”
She said, “You’re wondering why I didn’t tell you? Honestly, Lucy, look at your response.”
I was suddenly tired, and I sat down again. “I didn’t mean to be rude,” I told her.
“Well, you were rude,” Vicky said. “But I forgive you.”
I asked if her husband and daughter Lila had joined the church as well. “They have,” Vicky said. “And it has made a lot of difference in our lives, I will tell you that. We used to not even eat together, but now we do every night, and we say grace, and it becomes a whole different experience.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “I’m glad to hear that you’re all eating together.”
Right before Vicky hung up, she said, “I’m praying for you, Lucy.”
“Thank you,” I said.
* * *
—
When I told William he just shrugged and said, “I hope it makes her happy.”
* * *