The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [60]
“Iona, what do you say?” Marie hugs herself into the spiffy tweed blazer she hasn’t buttoned because it wouldn’t be stylish. “How can it hurt to come? If there’s a God and He’s listening, praying for Paisley might do some good. If not, what have you lost? Half an hour?”
“Who knows, Marie, I swear.”
Marie regards her coolly, as if she’s committed some sin by using the word swear. “If you say no, you’ll be the only one, Iona. Most people are actually nice.”
“Nice? People are cruel. People are selfish. People are thrill seekers. Even Dean, your own husband—didn’t you tell me Dean goes to NASCAR races?”
“He went once, Iona. I think it was a fund-raiser for the college. What does NASCAR have to do with this?”
“You know why people go to those things? To see the crashes. They go hoping they’ll see some driver be crumpled inside his metal cage and burn.”
“You don’t fool me for a minute with your cynicism, Iona. Not for a minute.”
“Oh, yes, there’s a delicious horror about watching some daredevil crash. Don’t tell me there isn’t. Remember when the Crocodile Hunter was killed? Didn’t you wish they’d release the film of that stingray plunging its barb into his heart?”
“Of course not! I prayed for his wife and those two little children!”
The truth is, Marie probably did. The truth is, some people are nice, Marie among them. Iona would like nothing better than to send her away, but some vestige of Catholic guilt rises up like a traffic cop’s hand to stop her. After all, she and Marie have such a difficult relationship already, why make it worse? A couple of years ago, after Marie adopted “have a blessed day” as her standard sign-off, Iona grew so annoyed that she finally snapped, “You know what, Marie? I think the last time I had a blessed day was in 1985.” Marie had actually recoiled, as if Iona had slapped her. Iona can never tell if Marie is going to argue with her or simply back off, but she had not expected that. As far as Iona can tell, Marie has never told anyone to have a blessed day again. This is certainly an improvement. Yet Iona can’t escape her awareness of Marie’s delicate nature, or her responsibility for upsetting it that day, and probably so many other days she can no longer remember. Much as it maddens her to deal with someone so out of touch with reality, even so, she counts Marie as a friend. And the woman has a point. A prayer meeting might be useless, but after all, what’s half an hour?
“Oh, all right. I’ll be there. For Christ’s sake!”
“Well, yes. For Christ’s sake. Yes.”
Touché, Iona thinks. This is the place in the script where Marie is supposed to march off. But Marie stays put. “I know you don’t believe in divine intervention,” she says. “But I do. I believe the more people who gather together to pray for something, the more good it does. So I appreciate your saying you’ll come. It means a lot to me. Thank you.”
Iona nods because what the hell else is she supposed to do? Why couldn’t Marie have the good grace not to thank her?
The whole tawdry business makes her decide to go visit Paisley. Good deed for the day. Iona hasn’t seen Paisley since the afternoon Mason wheeled her through the neighborhood in the wheelchair two weeks ago. If she doesn’t go this minute, she won’t. She grabs a pot of chrysanthemums off the kitchen table, the ones she bought for herself in the grocery store because they were such an unusual shade of orange fading to bronze. She hates to part with them, but oh well. Stuffing her cell phone in her pocket, she heads up the hill.