A Stillness in Bethlehem(76)

“He’s gone,” she told him, with a kind of wonder. “Off with Father Cooney and happy as a clam. I can’t believe it.”

“Is that Tibor’s friend?” Gregor asked. “Father Cooney?”

“Father Martin Cooney,” Bennis told him, “and don’t ask me how they met because I don’t know. Maybe they were both buying food. It’s been the most extraordinary morning. Do you know what’s gotten into him?”

“Mmm,” Gregor said.

Bennis shook her head. “I was sitting in my room, minding my own business, reading a book and he comes jumping in on me with—this is after the cookies, Gregor, this is impossible—anyway, he comes jumping in on me with Slim Jims. I haven’t eaten Slim Jims since I was ten years old. And he’s got this whole pile of them, dozens and dozens, and he throws them on my lap, and then when I wouldn’t eat them he gave me a lecture about how I seem to have forgotten that my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. I didn’t know what to do.”

“What were you reading?”

“What? Oh. The Chocolate Addict’s Never Say Never Diet. Donna Moradanyan gave it to me. Isn’t that Franklin Morrison?”

It was indeed Franklin Morrison, unwinding himself from the front seat of a bright yellow Ford Taurus right in front of the Green Mountain Inn’s front doors. Gregor thought about telling Bennis how much easier a time she would have with Tibor if she just stopped reading diet books, but he couldn’t figure out how to put it. He’d probably have to ask a lot of questions he didn’t want to hear the answers to. He’d probably have to have a discussion about emotions, maybe even his own. He couldn’t think about a less-appetizing prospect. He got out of his seat and motioned Bennis toward the doorway, keeping a firm grip on his newspaper-covered legal pad all the while. His grip must have been very firm. Bennis didn’t notice that he had anything inside the paper. She only noticed the paper. She tapped the oversized picture of him right on the nose and said, “Tibor brought me a copy of that with the Slim Jims. Your life’s going to be a living hell around here from now on, if you ask me.”

Gregor had not asked her. He pointed firmly at the arched doorway with its drooping leaves, and Bennis went.





2


Franklin Morrison had fought in the Second World War, and because of that—as he told Gregor and Bennis half a dozen times before he even got the car away from the curb—he didn’t like foreign cars and he didn’t like automatic transmissions. Gregor understood the part about the foreign cars. Franklin didn’t want to hand his money to the same people who had blown up his brother at Pearl Harbor. That was fine. Gregor did not understand the part about the automatic transmission, which he was sure had not been invented by the Japanese. Franklin Morrison could have used an automatic transmission. He didn’t seem to know how to drive a standard one. The car bucked and shook and shuddered. The car made strange noises and seemed to sway from side to side. For reasons of space and size, Bennis was in the back while Gregor was in the front next to Franklin. Gregor could just feel Bennis back there, itching to get her hands on the wheel. Bennis was like that. She preferred to drive and hated being driven. Gregor was usually willing to do almost anything to keep Bennis from getting in control of a car, except drive himself. She was a maniac. In this case, he sympathized. Franklin’s incompetence was making him grind his teeth.

They finally got out on the road, and past Bethlehem’s three in-town intersections, and out on the Delaford Road. The car was moving more smoothly simply because there was less for Franklin to do. Gregor’s nerves were working more smoothly because the landscape was such a natural tranquilizer. They were still more or less in town—the turnoff to the Ketchum place was technically within the town limits—but it was a part of town without the hyperactive peppiness of the Celebration-soaked center. Gregor watched as they passed small white houses with front doors strung around with Christmas lights and snow-laden evergreens decked out in satin balls and sparkly ribbons. Smoke rose from chimneys. Front walks were shoveled clear and driveways neatly plowed. It was as if they had stepped off the set of some Swedish director’s absurdist movie and into the real Vermont. Gregor came out and said so, as soon as he thought Franklin Morrison could be safely distracted from the death-grip of concentration he was directing at the cleared but winding road.

He heard what Gregor had to say and shook his head.

“You can’t do it like that anymore,” Franklin told them. “It’s not the same. Vermont isn’t about Vermont these days.”