Waiting for the Blind

Heidi walked or really stampeded down the hard uneven pavement in pursuit of peace of mind. Between the houses on stilts, she caught glimpses of the crashing waves and buttoned up her coat to shut out the abrasive wind. The temperature had dropped last night and it was too cold for a beach walk and too depressing what with the foreboding gray clouds. She watched her feet rush forward while she drew back. Her physical body and her mind split in different directions.

She stopped and took a deep breath and then slowly walked on pretending she was a 19th century poet who had strolled across the countryside all day and was in search of an an inn to rest his weary feet. Oh, to be a writer, she sighed. Such purpose. To meditate on long walks and then write prose and verse in the evening, scribbling it down under the light of the inn’s wood stove while shoes wet from walking through the damp forest dried.

Heidi was concentrating on her footsteps, left foot, right foot, when she heard echoing footsteps behind her and looked back over her shoulder. There was no one on the long straight road but her. She turned the corner.

She looked again at her feet that seemed quite indifferent to her aching heart and when she looked up again a ray of sun was making a brief appearance on a white clapboard church. It had been a stack of two by fours among the weeds and brambling bush on their last vacation. It was hard to believe it was real and not a Hollywood-set facade.

There were several signs at its driveway entrance informing the parishioners of the next Sunday service and signs swinging in the brisk wind with names of builders and pavers advertising their services. There weren’t any no-trespassing signs so Heidi walked up the wooden stairs of the simple, unimposing church.

It lacked the steeples of Chartres or the gothic domes of Notre Dame that she had visited or any of the other majestic churches she’d entered looking for relief from the bright sun and crowded streets—the lush shadows of a sanctuary, a fortress against the crowd.

Inside these sanctuaries, she’d wait until her eyes adjusted and then walk softly toward candles flickering under age-old St. Francis of Assisi or dear Mary Magdalene. She avoided the paintings of Christ in agony as she wasn’t seeking salvation or redemption just peace of mind and shelter from the hordes of sightseers outside the church’s thick buttresses.

That’s what she needed today. A sanctuary. With heightened expectations, she walked across the sandy driveway toward the golden doorknob newly installed on a large white door, hoping to find it open so she she could sit down in the peace and solitude within and light candles for her parents, her child, and herself.

Why shouldn’t its doors be open to her? In Europe, church doors were left open so the tired and weary could enter. She imagined herself seated upright on a hard wooden pew, her gaze on the serene stained-glass windows and then her eyes moving up to the chandeliers and lofty ceiling above. With this thought in mind, she put her hand on the doorknob only to drop it when she heard behind her the screech of wheels braking on the dirt path and a door slamming.

When she’d run out of the rental house, she hadn’t thought of what she was wearing, only of her need to escape quickly. From the back of her, the black pants and hoodie over her head might make one suspect her to be a thief or worse someone who intended to cover the pearly white walls with graffiti.

She turned and smiled, waved hello, and stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Heidi.” The tall, gray-haired driver held his stand in the empty parking lot as if deciding whether to be friendly or tell her to get out. She kept smiling until he approached her with his hand out, too. “Hi, I’m Heidi,” she said again. “We’re renters over there.” She pointed behind the church. “I was out walking when I saw this beautiful church and came to take a look. Last time I was here it was in ruins.”

He saw up close that she was a small middle-aged woman and not a juvenile delinquent, and said, “Come on in, I’ll show you around.”

When they entered the portico, a hushed, peaceful silence fell over her. If she’d been alone, she would have walked up the center aisle flanked by pews and sat near the altar, but her guide, the caretaker, wanted to show her around his new church. The modern kitchen with a long picnic table and all new appliances. And everything shiny white. The small square sacristy in the back for private meetings that looked out on her back porch where she sat last night and trailed the moon’s arc while waiting for Mark to come back to say he was sorry for yelling at her.

The caretaker showed her the preschool classroom for the community children who had nowhere else to go. She looked at the child-sized red, green, blue and yellow chairs and imagined how nice it would be for her own child to come here to school.

“Do you have children?” he asked. She shook her head no and walked into the next room where there was an organ. He explained that it had been given to the church by a parishioner. She said she remembered her mother playing the organ in their church when she was young but now she was dead. She had hoped to light a candle for her today but saw no votive rack.

He said they built the church where anyone could be comfortable regardless of their particular faith. She nodded and smiled and thought what a nice man and liking the soft gentleness of his voice encouraged him to tell her more of what he and his community had successfully accomplished. He said they’d had their first service two Sundays ago and seventy-six parishioners showed up, filling over half the pews. He was expecting a larger turn-out this Sunday. She said she was sorry she couldn’t attend but she and her husband were leaving today.

He told her it was the largest church in the area now and pointed behind the altar wall saying they were going to install two giant video screens. “Build it and they will come,” she said. He smiled and nodded in agreement. If Mark had been there he would have been embarrassed at her throwing out an old cliché.

It cost $575,000 to build the church, the caretaker said, and at first no one believed it was possible to raise that kind of money in a small impoverished town. She imagined him holding his palms out and a line of people lining up with stacks of money. If she hadn’t rushed out without her purse she would give him a donation right now. She was relieved when he said they’d raised all the money they needed and still had funds to start the preschool.

She was becoming weary of her guided tour. She wanted to lie down on the new carpet under the yellow and blue stained-glass window and listen to the angels waiting to sing to her from the rafters.

He explained how it had taken two and a half years for them to build again the razed church that had been flooded out by the many storms on Hatteras Island over the past two years. All of the construction and interior had been done by local volunteers and those who couldn’t afford to do it for free were paid. A phoenix rising, she said, glad Mark wasn’t there to hear her use yet another cliché. He was a professor of English literature and had often told her that she had a limited vocabulary.

“Yes, you could say that,” he said, switching on a light and illuminating the church in electric lights. She’d preferred the natural light coming through the stained glass widows, but she was the guest and didn’t want to be rude.

She misunderstood him when he said he was waiting for the blinds. “Besides the ramp for the handicapped and the wide bathroom door and the room for the preschoolers you have classes for the blind?” she asked, amazed. He laughed. He meant that he was there only by chance this morning because the window blinds were being delivered.

They had visited every room and were back in the kitchen where there were no blinds on the windows that looked out across a sandy breach, dried-out bushes, weeds, wilted grasses, and a half-collapsed fence in front of her bedroom. She could also see the kitchen window and thought she saw Mark’s silhouette as he moved about making the pancakes he promised for breakfast.

She told the caretaker she had to go home. Her breakfast would be on the table. She thanked him for showing her the church and headed toward the house. She raised her feet over the broken fence and stepped into the backyard. Mark’s bent head was at the kitchen sink and she caught the homey smell of sizzling bacon. She dropped to her knees and her head bent over she watched her salty tears drip onto the sand and disappear. With an old ragged tissue from her pocket she blew her nose, then straightened up and looked out at the ocean. The fog had cleared and the sun shone down on the cresting waves.

She stood up, took one last look at Mark in the kitchen window and walked away from the pancakes, the sizzling bacon, the heated Vermont maple syrup, the fresh-squeezed orange juice, and Mark who didn’t love her anymore.