The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,56
“Things are looking up. The surgeries were successful, and we’ve had some luck.”
Eileen almost starts laughing, or maybe she is just trying to catch her breath. She looks up, smiling, and claps her hands twice.
The doctor has wrinkles on his forehead, two small L’s facing outward, and I can see how he got them, his forehead pushed down with concentration as he looks at the notes on his clipboard, reading the numbers on the machine with the blinking red light. “But he’s a very sick baby, even for a preemie. I’m still worried about a hemorrhage in the brain. And his kidneys. And his eyes. He’ll need more surgery, and even then…”
But Eileen is already crying again, her hands folded, head bowed. “Thank you,” she says. “Oh thank you.” She looks up again, and I can see her crooked smile surprises the doctor, who was not smiling, and is not, still.
The following Sunday, my mother still in the hospital, Eileen takes me to church. I understand that she is taking advantage of my mother’s absence, doing something that my mother, if she were at home, would not allow.
“There’s no need to say anything to her about it,” Eileen says. “She’s got enough on her mind. But we’re helping her, really. More than she knows.”
Eileen’s pastor in Wichita has recommended a church for us in Kerrville, the Church of the Second Ark, which, it turns out, isn’t really in a church at all, but in a roller-skating rink rented out Sunday mornings, the disco ball still hanging from the ceiling, folding chairs lined up along the glossy white floor. Eileen says she would rather come here, and be with real Christians, than have to go someplace where the Scripture has been watered down and as good as thrown out the window, just so she can look at a steeple and a bunch of stained glass.
“If you’re going to follow the Bible, you have to follow the Bible,” she says. “There’s no point in going halfway. Especially when you’ve got a sick baby.”
When we walk in, a man in a light blue suit—jacket, pants, vest, tie, everything light blue—is standing in the middle of the rink playing an accordion. I can’t tell what song he’s playing. Sometimes he stretches the accordion out and it sounds like the legs of a table being pushed across a floor.
“That’s Pastor Dave,” Eileen whispers. “He’s the one I talked to. I like him a lot.” She squeezes my hand. “He knows his stuff.”
He nods at Eileen when he sees her, but does not put the accordion down.
“Morning, Pastor,” she says, walking toward him, her shoes slipping a little on the smooth floor. “I’m Eileen Bucknow. We spoke on the phone.”
“Yes, Eileen.” He lets go of the accordion with one hand, holding it out to her. There is a strap around his neck that holds it up. “I’m so glad you could come!”
“This is my granddaughter, Evelyn, the one I was telling you about.”
“Evelyn!” He smiles at me, taking my hand. He is younger than my mother, with straight blond hair and blue eyes and pinkish skin, not sunburned, but just naturally pink, the way other people look when they’re embarrassed. His face is smooth, unwrinkled, but he has a mustache, thick and darker than his hair. It looks like it may not even be his, but something you could buy in a store and paste on, a mustache another man grew for him. “So glad you’re here with us today,” he says. “And the baby?”
“Doing better, praise Jesus.” Eileen closes her eyes while she says this. “He’s out of the woods.”
Pastor Dave tilts his head back and pushes the accordion in and out. I am mesmerized by the accordion, all the buttons, the different sounds it can make, the way it moves in and out, folding up and out again like a chest, someone breathing. “I have to say, I’m not surprised,” he says. “Not surprised at all. You-all be sure to sit in the front row,” he says, pointing to the folding chairs. “You’re our VIPs.”
There is already a large man in a flannel shirt sitting in the front row, and Eileen makes it so I have to sit right by him. He turns and holds out his hand. “You-all new?”
Eileen explains she is from Wichita, and that I am her granddaughter, and that she is just in town visiting because my mother is in the hospital with a new baby.