Dancing with Gravity Read online

  A short hallway to the right of the living room led to his bedroom and bath. Their doors were ajar, but the rooms were unlit and denied his view. The apartment was absolutely silent. Whiting stared at the telephone on his kitchen wall and considered calling his mother. No, I’ll see her tomorrow evening—that’s soon enough.

  It was only seven o’clock, but he was so tired he was dizzy. A nap. That’s what I need. I’ll nap for half an hour, then get up and work on my files. He turned off the kitchen light and headed toward the bedroom. He undressed in the darkness. “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” He crossed himself as he stood before his bed, then leaned forward and placed his hands on his mattress. Instead of kneeling to say his evening office, he lay down on the bedspread and gathered the corner of it around his shoulder. He fought the idea of making himself too comfortable, but the room was cool. His breathing slowed and deepened. Its rhythm soothed him. Minutes later, he was asleep.

  Twelve miles to the east, in a small and erratically furnished ground floor apartment on the city’s south side, Lillian Whiting dragged a chrome kitchen chair—with great difficulty—across the linoleum floor of her bedroom. She positioned the chair beside her bed, next to a tall brown paper bag. A pale, bluish ring circled her mouth as she struggled to regain her breath.

  “Come here Taffy. Come here baby.” She sat on the edge of her bed and patted the chair’s vinyl seat to summon her apricot poodle. “Come on, baby. You want to look pretty for Sammy, don’t you?” She patted the chair again. “Come on. Be a good girl. Just a little trim. And maybe five minutes of brushing. I promise.”

  The poodle jumped onto the chair and gave Lillian its paw. “That’s my good girl. That’s my Taffy.” Lillian bent down and kissed the dog’s head, then picked up her scissors and got to work.

  On the second floor of St. Benedict House, Father Jerome Stemple lay on the black and white tile of his bathroom floor. He knew he should go back to bed, but the tile was cool and soothing against his cheek. The worst was over. He tried to rise, but it was only an idea—his arms and shoulders did not move. Five more minutes, he decided. His eyes fluttered. His lids closed.

  Their supper finished, the Missionary Sisters assembled in the chapel of the motherhouse for the evening rosary. Mother Frances led the prayers from the front pew.

  “The second joyful mystery—the visitation.” She cleared her throat. “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out in a loud voice: ‘Blest are you among women, and blest is the fruit of your womb.’”

  The sisters joined their voices to hers as they recited the prayers that followed. “Our Father Who art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ….”

  Mother Frances struggled to concentrate as she began the decade of Hail Marys. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

  Sarah James walked slowly from her living room to her bedroom carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses. A succession of votive candles offered the only light in her apartment. As she passed each candle, she bent to extinguish its light. When the last candle had gone out, she lingered a moment at the doorway to her bedroom, then stepped inside. A second shape, nearly indistinguishable in the darkness, followed her into the room and closed the door behind them.

  Whiting awoke with a start. His back and neck were soaked with sweat. He threw off the covers and tried to orient himself to time and place. As the information slowly came to him, he was overcome with almost unbearable sadness. He struggled to recall the events of the evening—especially whether or not he had had anything to drink. He knew from experience that liquor almost always made him melancholy—the more he drank, the darker his mood. As the events of his evening came back to him, he was relieved to remember that he hadn’t had any alcohol. But his relief was fleeting. As he recounted his day, his heart grew heavier, as though each bit of memory carried a tangible weight. He closed his eyes as a wave of deep and familiar sorrow swept over him, then opened them slowly. He wondered why the difficult events of his life presented themselves in such linked succession, like buckets in a fire brigade. Was this nature, or the nurture of humanity? Was he unusual, or did countless others awaken to sadness and anxiety in the night?

  He turned toward his clock radio. Three o’clock. His sense of gloom deepened. When sadness woke him, as it had tonight, it was always at three in the morning—the time so precise that his alarm may as well have sounded. It wasn’t the wakefulness he dreaded as much as the sense of hopelessness that pressed in on him and made it hard to breathe. Sometimes, the feelings would subside and he could drift back to sleep. Other nights, his emotions forced him from his bed, and he would make his way to the living room in the darkness. There, on his knees, with waves of anxiety and sadness crashing over him, he prayed ceaselessly, in silence or aloud, until dawn. With the first light, his gloom would recede. Exhausted but relieved, he would shower, dress, and begin his day.

  Still other nights he could not bear the darkened apartment. He would rise, nauseous from too little sleep, and switch on every light. His mind wandered so relentlessly that he could not even pray. His eyes ached under the too-bright light—the light that told anyone who might pass on the street below that something was wrong … someone worried … some terrible news. Calamity hung from the lamps as he paced from room to room.

  As he lay in bed now, he struggled to remain calm. His therapist had taught him that instead of becoming anxious when sadness overtook him, he should try to understand what had triggered his feelings. He began a mental inventory of the events of the day.

  “Jerry.” Whiting’s voice was thick from sleep and its strangeness startled him. “Our meeting wasn’t good.” As he thought about the way that he and Stemple had parted, he grimaced in the darkness and slipped deeper into despair. “Think about something else. Think something happy.”

  He thought about the coming day at work. I have no special appointments, nothing to look forward to, but nothing that might upset me either. His anxiety seemed to lessen. He was feeling better. But then another wave of sorrow washed over him. I have to get up.

  Whiting sat on the edge of his bed. The cool air on his damp skin chilled him. He pulled on his robe and went to the kitchen. When he switched on the wall lamp, the warm pool of light spread across his kitchen table and comforted him. He poured a glass of water and took a seat. He thought about his upcoming visit with his mother. It will be nice to have dinner together. He took a deep breath. It seemed that his mood might be lifting.

  “Thank you, dear God.” Whiting crossed himself and recited the Our Father. “… Lead us not into temptation ….” He hesitated, considering the strangeness of those lines and the kind of God they suggested. “But deliver us from evil ….” He crossed himself again at the prayer’s end. When he opened his eyes, he felt better.

  He went back to his bedroom and returned to the kitchen carrying a yellow paper bag sealed with cellophane tape. He took out a steak knife, cut through the seal on the package and removed five small bundles, which he unwrapped in turn. The first bundle held a white porcelain cherub, just over four inches high. Its arms were raised above its head. Whiting placed it on the table before him and then unwrapped a second cherub, bent forward with arms extended as if at the start of a handstand. He unwrapped the other bundles, each an angel in a different pose. When he had finished, brown crepe paper covered the tabletop. He cleared a path so that he could study the figures more closely. When he had seen them in the gift shop atop St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, they had been arranged to recreate a line of tumbling angels. But seeing them now, he found them disturbing. He struggled to recall how they had been
placed in the display case. He arranged and rearranged the figurines. At last the angels appeared to be in the proper order. He sat back and smiled. His mother would be pleased with this gift.

  Father Whiting had already been awake for hours when he pulled open the heavy wooden door of St. Margaret’s Catholic Church for 6:15 Mass. Although he sometimes said Mass in the chapel at St. Theresa’s, he preferred this early morning service in the church near his apartment. In winter, when he arrived and left in darkness, he found an intimacy in its sights and smells that gave him an inexpressible comfort. When summer brought early sunrise, the play of light through the stained glass windows always filled him with hope. This earliest Mass of the day was also a favorite of the oldest parishioners who, Whiting suspected, had begun their schedule years before. He imagined them attending services and then traveling by bus to jobs downtown. The habit, he decided, had been so ingrained that they stayed with the early Mass years into their retirements.

  The Mass would not start for another fifteen minutes, and the church was still dark. Candles flickered along a far wall before statues of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph. The scent from melting wax reassured. Even at this early hour, a handful of men and women were already scattered among the pews, sitting alone or in pairs. Some held rosaries and prayed silently as they knelt—the almost indiscernible movement of their lips and the subtle progression of the beads through their fingertips offering the only outward sign of their prayers.

  Six elderly people, four women and two men, sat in the third pew. Whiting had named them The Charismatic Six because they always held hands during the Lord’s Prayer and hugged and kissed one another with great enthusiasm during the Sign of Peace. He watched for their display at every Mass but sat at a distance to avoid them. The Charismatic Six were not the only ones he avoided. He made every effort to sit within arm’s reach of only one or two other parishioners—in the hope that greetings during the Sign of Peace would be over as quickly possible. He had many times admonished himself for his reserve, but to do anything else felt forced and insincere.

  Whiting knelt, blessed himself, and bowed his head to pray. A long day lay ahead of him. His shoulders sagged as he thought of his visit to his mother. He struggled to regain focus, to prepare himself for the celebration of the Mass. Rosary beads clicked in regular rhythms against a pew to his left. He shifted his weight on the kneeler and leaned forward. He raised his eyes and studied the face of the white-robed Christ looking down on him from the stained glass window behind the sanctuary. A golden halo ringed Christ’s head. It was the image of his childhood, a face of infinite mercy and peace, the loving and patient Christ that had drawn him to life in the church. Whiting turned his gaze to the wooden crucifix suspended above the altar. A very different Christ, near death and in greatest agony, hung above the white marble. He thought about the mystery of Christ’s love, and tried to focus all his thoughts on this idea and where it might lead. He closed his eyes to gather his attention.

  A clot of elderly parishioners shuffled down the aisle to his right. Their clumsy movements distracted him as they dropped kneelers and positioned coats and handbags in their pew. He turned and took a quick count of the grey and white heads that surrounded him. Eighteen. And I know I’m at least twenty years younger than any of them.

  He turned back toward the Charismatic Six. They, and others like them, confused him. Who were they? How had they come to their present circumstances? He studied the tilt of their heads as they spoke to one another. How had they come from pre-Vatican II—a time when the priest kept his back to the parishioners and conducted the Mass in Latin—to all this handholding, hugging, and uplifted arms during prayer?

  Whiting closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his lids. He wanted to feel the mystery of Christ, but he couldn’t concentrate. His muscles were stiff after his hours of wakefulness. He rose from his kneeler with a sigh and seated himself heavily in the pew.

  “We’ll begin with hymn number three eighty-nine.” Father Burke approached the altar briskly and launched into an a cappella tenor of the hymn, which seemed to catch many of the parishioners off guard. They rose quickly and awkwardly, then thumbed through the green cloth hymnals as they found their places and raised their voices to match the priest’s. As the last words vibrated through the air, Father Burke set the hymnal aside and faced the parishioners with tight-lipped authority.

  “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The old priest crossed himself quickly.

  “Amen.” rushed the parishioners.

  “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The priest began this sentence before the last “amen” sounded.

  “And also with you,” came the response.

  Like some early Motown review, the Charismatic Six extended their right hands in a unified, sweeping gesture toward the old priest. Father Burke’s pale cheeks quivered his disapproval. He was a priest of the old school, a reedy Irishman who could abide nothing but the most conservative and solemn response to the Mass.

  “My brothers and sisters, to prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins.”

  Whiting bowed his head. The muscles at the back of his neck pulled and burned. The parishioners recited the penitential rite.

  “May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.”

  “Amen.”

  Whiting recited the introductory rites automatically. When he sat for the liturgy of the word, he could hardly contain his agitation. The Mass is passing too quickly. I’m not able to feel its message. He examined the faces of the people who sat nearby. What are they thinking? What do they believe? The mere fact of their presence irritated him. He tried to keep pace with what the priest was saying from the altar, but his words offered neither peace nor comfort. I need time to think. He wanted to be truly awake, or at least in the moment. But if this weren’t possible, he wanted Father Burke to offer the final blessing so he could leave. I wish I were on my way to St. Theresa’s. He closed his eyes. His lids were sore and swollen. I wish I was at my mother’s house … or … no … I wish our visit was over and I was back home. More than anything, Whiting wanted the peace of a good night’s sleep.

  Lillian Whiting lived in a four-family flat on Livingston Avenue, half a mile from the Mound City Brewery, at the southernmost edge of the city. It was a neighborhood of red brick buildings, flat tar roofs, and treeless yards. Brewery workers—many of them German immigrants—had once inhabited most of the two and four-family flats in the area. While the men had gone to work, their wives passed their days raising families or doing housework. Each Monday that the weather permitted, the women scrubbed their white granite steps on hands and knees. Other days, they tended their tiny, fenced yards and pruned their rose of sharon, hydrangea, and irises. Every Saturday, the men forced push-mowers over thick carpets of zoysia grass, which their wives then edged by hand.

  In the nineteen sixties, many of the Germans moved further south, into St. Louis County, to ranch-style homes on rolling, unfenced lawns. Those who stayed—the widows and widowers—believed they had no better options. Poor people from the Missouri Bootheel moved in. They made their way as unskilled laborers in seasonal or part-time jobs. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians followed. Some turned to small-time drug dealing or relied on welfare. They hung plastic curtains or bedspreads over once sparkling windows and watched America’s Funniest Home Videos or America’s Most Wanted. Disillusionment set in, and with it, a kind of meanness.

  The neighborhood changed, and the stores changed with it. Hudson’s Furniture went from new to used items and then closed. Melvin’s Family Clothing became an adult bookstore, then a video rental, and then went vacant. Whiskey-a-Go-Go replaced Bill’s Aquarium. The bar, known for its frequent bloody brawls, closed too, following a spectacular double murder. Two large and dusty pieces of bleached coral in the plate glass win
dow offered the only reminders of the original shop, its dark, humid interiors, bubbling filters, and exotic fish. The Sears store became a Goodwill outlet. Danny’s Donuts became a C-rated greasy spoon, renamed Diamond’s, where young hustlers mumbled offers of tinny yellow watches to anyone who would listen. The postage-stamp yards no longer fronted onto bustling neighborhood scenes, but instead bore witness to old women who carried broom handles when they walked overweight dogs—dogs that never looked up and seemed past all point of caring. A neighborhood in which the clanging bell of the sno-cone man was replaced by trucks with electric loudspeakers hawking rock-hard bombpops that smelled of gasoline. Finally even these had gone, taking their paper-encrusted cargo with them.

  This was the place where Lillian had come at last. The final city on a journey that had taken her from New York to Los Angeles a dozen times over. She’d lived her whole life this way, as far back as she cared to remember—first as a model, then as an actress, then a dog trainer. Through childhood, to marriage, motherhood, and divorce. St. Louis had been the place where she retreated when even her trained poodles were no longer wanted. She had come to the city by default and had stayed to be near her only child: a son—a priest—a man who chose obedience to a church she had long ago left behind.

  She stayed even though, secretly, she longed to go. Far away—to L.A. again, or Reno. Where the people were, she believed, a different sort. Used to a good time. Open, friendly, not ground down like the old ones on her street. All she saw around her now were people with no imagination. People who had never lived. She promised herself that, no matter what, she wouldn’t end up like them. “Won’t watch the clock and wait to die,” she often said. “Not like them. Never like them. Ever.”