One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney

Author:Ellen Cooney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

“You have to go to your office.”

“I was just there.”

“Go back. Something’s coming.”

I was texting with my boss, the Head. He was up because the strangeness of this night had reached into other places—but really, two wailing, teething babies were making sure no one in his house stayed asleep.

One of his daughters was the mother of those twins. They were visiting. He was trying to balance being a good dad and grandfather with the part of himself that wanted to urge them to stay in a hotel, or go to a hotel himself.

He’s a Unitarian minister and he came to hospital chaplaincy after years on United Nations missions around the world. His own life had been seriously in danger when he became ill with a virus; the damage will never go fully away. He walks with a cane. He’s in his fifties, but already has the beginnings of an old man’s stoop.

The cuts to our department felt to him like a battle he was responsible for losing. He was still amazed he was a peaceable man talking about our jobs in terms of war.

“I heard about the roof,” he texted. “How are you doing?”

“One D,” I answered, in our shorthand. “Not from the roof. Someone from a nursing home.”

“Rough night.”

“Yeah.”

“I ordered you a pizza.”

“You what?”

“From the all-night place.”

“Well great, thanks, how come?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. But it popped into my head you might be hungry, so go to your office for the delivery.”

“What kind of pizza?”

“Sorry to say, just plain, but extra cheese. They claimed they’re out of toppings. That’s hard to believe, but I didn’t argue. Must go. I promise we’ll start rotating shifts soon. Most grateful to you. B says hi. Over and out!”

B is the Head’s daughter. When she married, it was in the chapel, the first thing to go on when the renovations were done. That had been a good day. I hadn’t minded it when everyone kept telling me, “You’re next.”

No one knew the almost-ness of me, married.

I never had the chance to say these words to anyone: “I’d like you to meet the man I’m in love with.”

Don’t think about that.

But there it was, coming over me, like a sort of attack. The hurt of it, all over again. The surprise of it. The Green Man. His smell. His fingernails, crusted inside with plant dirt.

His body, fitting itself against me.

His laugh. His work boots.

What I almost did. What I still felt so ashamed of.

He moved away somewhere unknown, I now knew.

His spacious, airy, light-filled apartment was at the top of an old stone building, four stories high, converted from a long-ago trade school. The roof was flat. The trapdoor in the ceiling of his bedroom had been sealed, but he worked on it, opened it up, bought a stepladder. I had told him I wanted to be up on the roof with him and look at the sky. I had been happy.

He had almost been taken to meet my family. All of them at once.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.