Walter & Grace
If they thought about him at all, most folks considered Walter a taciturn man. Hard to tell what he was thinking. His mouth rarely shifted from a thin horizontal line. Not grim, but not familiar with the curve of a smile. For a good long while, Walter had ignored his emotions. Like laundry forgotten on the line, they’d become washed out, sun-bleached, colours unrecognizable. He wasn’t unhappy or happy. He just was. He had enough awareness to realize that he ‘should’ get out more. It wasn’t that he cared too much, one way or the other. Only that some part of him, his long-dead mother perhaps, insisted. “Walter, get out there and play with the other kids. Do you want them to think something’s wrong with you?”.
For a long time, Walter had wondered if there was something ‘wrong’ with him. He’d covertly watched his classmates at school. He noted how easily they gathered, like iron filings to a magnet. He supposed something was missing in him, some internal organ perhaps. Walter had had a dog once born with only three legs. He wasn’t crippled in the way you’d expect. He kept up gamely, barely even a hobble. It was reassuring. Walter decided he’d take a lesson from that hound, refuse to submit to inadequacy.
He’s managed his day with routines, he woke early did the myriad chores required of him unbegrudgingly, ate three square meals, and went to bed early. He listened to the radio occasionally and didn’t own a t.v. He couldn’t see the point. None of it was real. He did have a computer, though other than the banking, it too seemed useless.
Walter did go to church though. Something about the horizontal pews was a comfort to him, long benches, plenty of room for anyone. It was a place where a person could just be. Folks would acknowledge him with a slight nod, and he’d nod back. It seems expected, was something he could manage.
One unseasonably warm Sunday in June, Walter stepped into the church, noting the familiar creak of the scuffed floorboards, the mildew smell of windows inadequately sealed against the spring rains, and the compressed smell of bodies, of woman’s lotions and potions. He also noted the gabbling. Usually, before the service started, there was a murmuring not unlike chickens, unalarmed clucking, and fussing. This was different. It was loud, excited. Walter slid into the pew, shifting the flyer giving the rundown of the service. Walter didn’t know why they bothered. Seemed a waste of paper. The sermons were all variations of the same theme. The pastor, while adequate, was hardly a holy roller. Margaret Mackenzie puffed her way down the aisle, squeezing her considerable bulk in beside him. She was an overdone woman, not much older than Walter, maybe fifty though Walter considered her ‘old’. Maybe it was the too-tight polyester dress, straining at the buttons, or the way she wore pantyhose that collected around her ankles like worn-out skin. Or maybe it was the way her blue eye shadow thickly creased on her small brown eyes. Walter thought Margaret flighty, a source of continuous nervous chatter. He hoped the pastor would appear soon to stopper the flow. Margaret turned to him, placing a warm meaty hand on his shoulder. He almost jumped.
“Margaret”, he said by way of acknowledgment and to cover his surprise. “Walter, haven’t you been listening? Next Sunday is a big picnic, several congregations are gathering. Can you imagine? Walter could, though he didn’t want to. Such a fuss.
“They’re bussing them in. It’s going to be quite the shin-ding. I think I’ll make my raspberry tarts.” She leaned in conspiratorially, “I’ve won first place three years running, so that ought to suffice”. Margaret nodded to herself as if he’d spoken praise. All that information in one breathless phrase. Walter was mildly astonished. Margaret paused to shove her smeared glasses back up to the bridge of her nose. She looked like she expected something of him. “You’ll be there then”, she nodded satisfied, though he hadn’t responded. “Good for you Walter, you’ll see, it will be fun”. Margaret was the kind of person you didn’t need to speak to at all to keep up your end of the conversation.
The service passed in a blur of thumbed hymnals, off-key warbling, bible verses intoned and the well-trod admonishment to treat your brother as you would expect to be treated. Walter mused he didn’t expect much, which was a sure way to avoid disappointment and obligation. He figured he could write his own self-help books. Better than the drivel his sister Sarah was always pressing into his hands whenever she and her puffed up husband visited. Uncharacteristically, Walter would bait her whenever they spoke on the phone by pretending to misremember her husband’s name.
“How’s Dirk?” “Walter, heavens, I’ve told you a thousand times, it’s Derek”.
Sarah was well-meaning, but righteous, a combination that was sorely trying. Four years Walter’s junior, you’d think she’d invented parenthood the way she mothered him. Walter wondered why she’d decided not to have kids. He doubted very much it was her idea. He suspected Derek was such a baby he wouldn’t tolerate competition from a real toddler. It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed though.
“Walter, Derek and I have talked about this, and we just think you should get out more. It’s for your own good. How do you expect to ever meet someone when you’re holed up the way you are”. Although Walter was pretty certain Derek never ‘discussed’ him, other than to nod occasionally when Sarah started up, the very idea of her bringing up family business rankled fiercely. Walter could barely tolerate the idea of Derek being part of the family, claiming him as his ‘brother’ as he had done in a drunken, reeling ‘hug’ right after wedding his sister. Right before he puked all over Sarah’s embroidered silk heels. Classy.
Derek was a big guy, everything about him loud, his voice, the way he chewed his food, the way he steamrolled over every dinner conversation Walter had been forced to attend.
“Come on Walter, we’re the only family you’ve got”, Sarah would plead, like it really mattered. Walter reluctantly appeared on time and left as early as politely possible. His jaw would ache from the tension of biting back the words he wished to fling at Derek.
As Walter filed out of the church, still fuming from the imagined conversations he would never have with Derek, Margaret called out. “You hoo, Walter, hold up”.
Walter wondered briefly if he could just keep walking, pretend he hadn’t heard but rejected the idea as too obvious.
“Margaret”, he said it the way most people said goodbye to the dentist.
“Walter, in case you needed more encouragement to attend next Sunday, I was speaking to your sister. I’ve convinced her to come too! It will be such a gathering.”
Walter was taken aback. Sarah? At church? Sarah hadn’t attended church since their father died twenty years ago. His death was awful, coming as it did slowly, torturously. Sarah’s rage was uncompromising. Despite her mother’s appeal, she would not attend the church service, though she did appear at his grave, pale and furious towards a God whose cruelty was unbound. “Margaret. I know you mean well”, although Walter suspected Margaret only cared for the furor it would create. Now he’d have to attend damn it. Margaret looked at him appraisingly.
“Don’t thank me Walter. I did for Sarah”.
