How few will ever know besides myself, or even get a peek at, what in God's great earth went on in that house. Praise Jesus. Give us all the strength to love what we cannot understand.
In the rectory, where I live as envoy minister (which I will explain), I have a picture book of the Ivy League Colleges. The widow Bruner's house looks exactly like those photographs: as though it could be dragged down to Hell by those vines. As long as I can remember, though I've only been in town for seven years, the Bruner house has been a shrouded hall of learning. My fascination with the widow began with the sight of this house, and this story is how I learned of the bridge between fantasy and affection.Within the house, as everyone in town knew, Mrs. Bruner wrote, laid out, and published her independent bi-monthly The Town Cryer. This was something of a dark joke to the community, the case being that the old woman's articles on anything from town politics to transcendentalism bordered on such self-pitying drivel that you could actually picture her crying as she wrote. But the fruit of her literary labors was marked by an undeniable erudition that nearly excused her misery. Her mansion house was a sad academy.
I myself am a man of the Spirit, not of the intellect, but I admit a slight fetish for the Ivy League world within my picture book, a world I would have joined had I not decided to become ordained. Higher learning and Faith can go hand in hand, I am convinced, when science is viewed in the light of God's many wonders. What brought me to the mysterious house of Mrs. Bruner, however, was an article of noted intellectual language which assaulted more than the Faith.
Don't think that I'm the variety of minister who harasses atheists and agnostics out of twisted duty. In truth I am as committed to the 1st Amendment as I am to the Faith. As I would be committed to a wife, if I had one.
I became involved because Mrs. Bruner had the propensity to name individuals in the Cryer. I was visiting the house on behalf of two sisters who attended my services, and who had been insulted in print by Mrs. Bruner. They were, of course, far too afraid of the old dwelling, and the old widow, to call on her themselves. They had both imagined Miss Havisham in a wedding dress lurking somewhere behind all those vines.
Their vision, it turns out, couldn't have been further from reality. First of all, it was understood that Mrs. Bruner and her late husband had shared four decades of relatively contented marriage. They were known to take summers in upstate New York. They were even social. The oddity of Mrs. Bruner's publishing efforts, however, and her mental decline into hermitage sparked the town to fabricate gothic stories of her secret life. The only person whom she ever visited was the pharmacist, Mr. Leer, who doubled as a "medical therapist" for many in town who desired his mood elevators. He required half-hour "therapy sessions" in order for a customer to receive his wares. It had to do with his certification somehow, a formality.
People often asked him about Mrs. Bruner.
"Doctor-patient relationship," he would say, honoring his contract with lip-service, but then screwing his finger around on his temple as if to add, "Loony as a jaybird."
The drivel Mrs. Bruner had published in the Cryer about the two sisters I reluctantly represented accused them of being religious zealots. You could imagine Mrs. Bruner weeping as she lamented the horrible rumors the "prudes" had been spreading about her. Undoubtedly she was right, as the sisters were known as gossips. But they weren't gossips in print, as Mrs. Bruner had the power to be, and by evoking such smoky curiosity the widow certainly got the whole town to read her paper every two months.
And she had torn the sisters to shreds.
From the article: "The Age of Reason, I had previously taken comfort in assuming, had precluded the existence of such people who fantasized on the lives of others and believed their fantasies. But to these credulous prudes I suppose any conjuration is believable."
Which, I knew, was a veiled criticism of my ministry. I was (and am) an "envoy minister" because my predecessor left town under questionable circumstances. I was sent as a replacement with my lingering "envoy" title to assure my salary wouldn't grow. The connection between Mrs. Bruner and my predecessor is perhaps the highlight of town gossip about the widow. The theories are many, and mostly sordid, but nobody knows for sure. The only thing that's sure is that impending scandal drove the minister from his post, and abruptly. Mrs. Bruner has scorned me since the day I arrived, sometimes in the Cryer.
All these thoughts were my companions
as I stood on the doorstep of Mrs. Bruner's residence. The doorknocker
was perfect; it reminded me of one I saw on a monastery door during a retreat.
Behind this doorknocker was organ music, I was sure. I had no organ music
at my services, but a small folk choir, two guitars, and a tambourine.
I knocked.
Mrs.
Bruner was not happy to see me. The feeling was mutual, but I was taken
aback by her youthful appearance. She was, in fact, a striking woman
the likes of which normally wouldn't see fit to hide herself indefinitely
behind closed doors. But I had come to express the thoughts of others
and truly had no personal issue. The widow, despite her printed attacks,
was a curiosity to me and I was frankly grateful for the interest that her
presence gave the town. And I respected her. She lived in a hall
of learning.
She just
stood at the door.
"About
the sisters?" she asked.
"Yes."
Perhaps
she knew there would be repercussions from her article. I hadn't thought
she would have cared.
"Come
in," she said.
This,
of course, was the coveted invitation that everyone in town had dreamt of,
feared, and never, ever, expected. I certainly hadn't anticipated actually
getting to see her living space. Nobody ever had, since I had come to
town. My obsession with the widow may have been in empathy for her isolation,
or a response to my own.
So details
competed for my attention in a fierce Olympics of discovery. I admit
to being a bit sheltered as an envoy minister in a small town, but I had neglected
to admit to myself how eager I was to unearth the fact or fiction of the gossipers'
tales. The details flooded in, however, with the same lack of explanations
of a rain storm.
A portrait,
presumably of her late husband, large, in the living room. Oriental
rugs, also very big. Candle holders. That gothic smell fostered
by some of my contemporaries in the clergy, who never air out their rooms
for fear their faith will blow out the window. No organ music, though.
Against one wall, in the "study" I suppose it was where she led me, in relief
against all that antiquity, sat the computer from where she published the
Cryer.
And next
to that, a box of tissues. So that much was true.
"I expected
you might call," she said, "but on the phone."
She seated
herself with much groaning ado, and that was when I understood how old she
was. In years, maybe sixty or sixty-five, but in aesthetics she was
forty-something.. It was there my pity turned for the first time to
admiration: this woman was an enticing outer triumph over the human condition,
at least. I was also surprised she had a phone; who she spoke to I knew
not.
"I didn't
know the best way to handle this," I told her, "I am here under obligation,
as you know."
"Oh,
I know. You've been putting it off."
Odd; the
article I had come there about was only then a few days old. The response
from the sisters was instant. I made her understand that I did not understand.
"There's a lot
of history between us. You could have contacted me much earlier.
I'm surprised you didn't," she said.
"You've never
been to services," I said, trying to erase any tone of accusation.
"There's
reasons for that," she laughed, and coughed, and coughed for awhile, and made
me feel the pity again.
She recovered
from her coughing spell and squinted her eyes at me as she detected my confusions.
"My husband's
been gone for a long, long time," she said, "He was a genius. A person
gets lonely after an intelligent person decides it's time to die and leave
you." This was some sort of explanation.
"Surely it
wasn't his choice to pass away," I said.
"Oh, no.
Nothing like that. He loved life."
"And you
loved him very much."
"More than
I remember," she said, "I moved on out of necessity, and that is all.
I never wanted-"
She
reached into the big desk her computer rested on, and I again thought "how
odd" about the computer and the phone. She was a modern widow, a woman
with the air of Victorian England who lived behind bricks and ivy, typing
away on a word processor.
This would
disappoint the people in town, if I ever told them.
From the
desk she pulled a purple sash, of all things, inscribed with the monograph
L.L.W. in yellow. I didn't think it then, but these were the initials
of my predecessor. Lawrence Langley Welsch was his name. The town
knew him as "Langley" in the parlors of gossip where he now existed exclusively.
Who knows where he is now.
"Langley
is in Washington State. He has a new ministry," she revealed as she
handed me the sash. "He wanted you to have this."
To me this
was high intrigue. A man I had never met intended a gift for me, a man
of my own order who was somehow defamed and then decided to flee. What
did he know of me?
"He pities
you," she said, slouching. But slouching almost sexily, I thought.
What was going through my mind?
"Why?" I
had to ask.
She straightened
up for this proclamation: "Out with the Old, in with the New. That's
the way it goes. I'm sure you have heard that Langley loved me very
much.
She then
crossed her legs in the most dainty fashion. Completely prudish, but
completely not.
"He said
I was the only woman in town a minister could ever love."
