Made Holy

Abstract

Made Holy Michael Downs (bio) St. James Infirmary After Jim died, his house fell into the custody of a violinist who drove a small hatchback that looked like a black soybean, if a soybean were decorated with affirming bumper stickers. Jim had been a choir director for a Lutheran church, and the violinist was a friend. She hired contractors to reclaim the basement that Jim had left flooded knee-high and to dispose of the packaged underwear he’d bought in bulk rather than do laundry in the flooded basement. Then came a family with boxes to live in Jim’s house, to eat at his table, to stretch out on his mattresses, to sit on his chesterfield sofa. This was late summer. The oldest of the two daughters practiced clarinet, and through open windows her notes came innocent and bright. A yellow bus arrived each day to pick her up for school; she, the only passenger. Sheri and Michael, who lived two doors away, said they’d heard that this service meant the family had been homeless. Why that would be so, Michael and Sheri didn’t understand, though who but a homeless family would seek shelter among the furnishings of a dead man? Robert, the husband in that family, repeated over and over for neighbors, us, his sad tale. He explained to Joyce as they stood in the street and then again across her fence, to Bert from his driveway, to Michael as he walked [End Page 19] with the dogs, to Sylvia in her backyard. Big and unshaven, Robert spoke of his tenure as an Episcopal priest, of the parish he’d recently lost. He detailed for all the unholy conspiracies and politics, the enemies who hid behind brocaded curtains, the vague betrayals, and incomprehensible motivations. Neighbors would nod along, confused by his homilies, then turn to a chore that required their attention. But not Sylvia, who in her seventies and with no hobbies enjoyed a wide-open schedule. At a small table shaded by her patio awning from the July sun, she offered a glass of chilled white wine, and Robert accepted. This was at noon. He’d talk. Then he’d pour himself another. Then another. She’d find an uncorked bottle. Then it was four o’clock. “He never leaves!” she later brayed to Michael. “He won’t go home.” Each weekday, Robert’s wife drove to a job. On the weekends, she mowed the yard. She never visited with neighbors. She worked and mowed and worked and mowed until the day she packed their car with boxes and with the daughters, then drove away from Jim’s house forever. For a time, through the windows, neighbors glimpsed Robert lumbering from room to room. But no garbage can appeared at the curb on collection days. And he did not come outdoors to bring details of this fresh sad tale. Then, one afternoon when leaves fell, the violinist arrived in her tiny car. Robert had slipped away, she told neighbors. No one on Sefton Avenue had noticed. Let them go, let them go, God bless them, wherever they may be. Bible Study Today’s lesson: that number who have his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads and so have places reserved in heaven. “Like a restaurant,” says Sister Dorothea. “There are only so many tables. You can’t seat everyone. You can’t even seat all the ones you’d like. But it’s not true that He lets the others go hungry. Because to be in the sight of God is to be fed with His love.” Joyce sets her rock-solid bohunk jaw. A devoted twice-each-year-Lutheran, she’s thankful that Sister Dorothea visits, bringing God and the Bible each Thursday at ten a.m.—to the porch on pleasant days like today, into the house when it’s cold or hot. But this? Only 144,000 pass through Heaven’s gate? And most have already arrived? [End Page 20] “According to Scripture,” says Sister Dorothea, and she nods. She points her wrinkled finger to a page in The Watchtower and to another in her Bible...