Farrington - The Monk Upstairs

A Novel

for Laurie Fox
beloved comrade

It was seven minutes past the appointed hour, and the

Rebecca had a bad few minutes, thinking she might have

Phoebe had come to see the slowness as a blessing

Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall

It was one of the days when things were not

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.

The world had stopped, and Phoebe waited, because the world

Mike checked the address on the slip of paper, but

Saturday mornings were Mary Marthas soccer games. Mary Martha had

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth

This is my last sunrise, Phoebe thought.

Back at the house, they set Phoebe up in the

The sand at Ocean Beach was warm for once in

By the time they got back, the spiral dance had

I t was seven minutes past the appointed hour, and the bridegroom was nowhere to be found. Everyone was trying to put a good face on it, but a certain tension was inevitable. The organist, an ancient monk with a round pink face like a dried pomegranate, was muscling through another round of On Eagles Wings. Apparently his repertoire was limited; but the music took on an unsettlingly dirgelike quality the second time through. The guests sat quietly, their small talk long since expended, glancing discreetly at their watches, reading through their programs again as if they might have missed something. Chelsea Burkes baby had begun to cry, in one of the back pews, and the noise was approaching crisis proportions. Abbot Hackley, who was to perform the ceremony, stood at the front of the chapel with his hands folded in front of him, his heavy white chasuble trimmed with dazzling gold, a benediction waiting to happen. The look on his face was determinedly serene and seemed to suggest that this was all in Gods plan, but from time to time he would sway a little, as if in a wind. The poor man was in the middle of the third course of some particularly savage clinical trial treatment for colon cancer, and the wedding had been scheduled to avoid the worst of his debilitation post-chemotherapy.

Peering through the crack in the door at the back of the chapel, Rebecca reviewed the major decisions of her life and decided that it had been a bizarre lapse of judgment to get married at all, much less at Mikes old monastery. They should have just eloped if they were going to take this mad leap. She had actually, seriously, truly in her heart wanted to do that, to jump in a car and drive up to Lake Tahoe. They could have gotten the damned thing done in some roadside chapel, had a few margaritas and some Mexican food, and been home before anyone was the wiser. But shed made the mistake of mentioning the plan to her mother, and Phoebe had swung into panicked action and taken charge of constructing a more or less traditional fiasco.

Which was now duly unfolding. Rebecca turned to her mother and said, I told you

Dont even start, Phoebe said. She sat placidly on a folding chair someone had dug up for her, with the walker shed been using during her recovery from the stroke shed had the year before parked beside her. When the time came to process into the church, Phoebe had insisted, she was going to do it without the prop. Rebecca wasnt sure her mother could walk that far unsupported, and the image of Phoebe sprawled halfway up the aisle like a beached fish was not helping her stress level. But there had never been any stopping Phoebe.

Hell show, Bonnie said. She was the maid of honor; it was her duty to be upbeat. And Bonnie could afford to be generous: her own wedding at Grace Cathedral the previous autumn had gone like extravagant clockwork. His watch is probably off. Did you make sure hed reset it at the switch from daylight savings time?

That was weeks ago. Surely wed have known by now if he was running an hour behind the rest of the world. But even as she said it, Rebecca realized that it might not be so. Mike was often enough several hundred years, if not millennia, out of sync with the rest of the world, and he was perfectly capable of losing the stray hour here or there, like a pair of socks kicked under the bed of eternity.

Hes out there praying, or whatever it is he does, Bonnie insisted. Or having a drink for the road.

Hell show, Phoebe seconded. Just relax, sweetheart. The mans a goner.

If he needs to pray or drink at this point, we shouldnt be doing this, Rebecca said, but she was surrounded by resolute Pollyannas, and she took a deep breath. It was, clearly, a moment to simply exercise her inner resources and cultivate serenity. To Zen out, as Phoebe liked to say. Unfortunately, all that came to mind in terms of spiritual substance was the five Kbler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Rebecca had been cruising along in what she thought was acceptance until five minutes ago; but apparently that had just been denial, because she was seething now, in the old familiar way. It felt like she had spent most of her adult life in stage two of grief over her relationships with men.

The back door swung open, and Rebeccas heart leaped instantly into the purest stage five, without transition, but it was her daughter and her ex-husband, who had slipped out to look for Mike. And, it was clear at once, not found him. Mary Martha, looking a bit flushed in her pink flower girl dress with its even pinker ruffled front and puffy sleeves, had an air of uneasy compliance with circumstances beyond her grasp, like a dog on the way to the vets. Rory looked the way he always looked when he had managed to escape a social gathering for a while, like he had just had two hits of something in the bathroom. He was wearing his only suit, the blue off-the-rack thing he kept on a hook for court appearances.

No sign of him, he informed Rebecca, trying to look appropriately downcast and managing to keep it short of gleeful. But she couldnt begrudge him a little legitimate schadenfreude. No one wanted their exs wedding to go perfectly; it was too much to expect of a human being.

Hell show, Phoebe said.

Has anyone tried his cell phone? Mary Martha asked.

Everyone chuckled indulgently, it was so cute and precocious and postmodern, and then they all reached simultaneously for their phones because it was actually a great idea. Mike had resisted getting a phone for quite a while, but the dance of urban coordinations centering on Mary Martha being in first grade had eventually broken him down.

Bonnie, with her phone stashed for instant access in a nifty white satin dress-up purse the length of a tampon and the width of a pack of KitKats, won the race to get the number dialed. They all waited hopefully, but after a moment she shook her head and said, No signal out here.

It made sense, unfortunately. The Bethanite monastery that had been Mikes home for twenty years was so far out in the second-growth redwood forest on the coast of Mendocino County that it always seemed like a surprise that they had running water. They still did the books by hand out here, the nearest paved road was six miles away, and the monks used the places single computer mostly for playing blackjack.