When We Were Saints (20 page)

"What I'm telling you, Francis, is that it's right for me. I belong here. I belong in the Middle Ages. I am a child of the twelfth century, not the twenty-first. If I return, my mother will put me back in the hospital, and I can never let that happen." Clare shook her head and blinked several times, as though blinking back tears, then added, "I will never never go back to that hospital."

"You won't have to," Archie said, placing his hand on Clare's shoulder to calm her down. "I'll be with you. I'll help you. I'll make sure she doesn't put you in the hospital, and so will your daddy, but listen, Clare, we've got to go back. See, I should have told you sooner but this whole saint thing hasn't been working for me lately." Archie swallowed, expecting Clare to object, but she just stood, waiting for him to continue.

"I—I'm not Francis; I'm Archibald, and I don't feel God's presence in me anymore. All I feel is a dark, evil presence, if I feel anything at all. Most of the time I just feel empty. I'm not like you. I'm not good like you. I don't have what it takes."

Clare touched Archie's face. "You have been
called,
Francis. You're just being tested. Don't turn away from God."

"Clare, it's no good," Archie said, much louder than he'd meant. The students turned to look at them.

"Let's go outside," Clare said, taking his hand and waving again to Nancy. She led him to a courtyard with grass and flowers and a marble fountain that reminded Archie of the one in the unicorn tapestry. They sat down on the pink-marble wall between some pillars and talked.

"Francis," Clare said smiling, her eyes sparkling in the sunlight, "you're still learning. God has so much to show you; don't give up. You're just being tested to strengthen your faith."

"But you've never been tested like this. You said so yourself. God has always been present."

"I have been tested in other ways. My mother has been a test. The psych unit has been a test. There are always tests. Even here there will be tests for me. Our faith is tested daily. It was tested in the woods that day you decided to rescue me, and even yesterday when we arrived and needed food and a place to stay. Every day I have to renew my faith and give my life to God and serve God by loving others. That is my calling, and it's your calling, too. It's everyone's calling, really."

"Then why won't you go back home?" Archie asked, feeling the roughness of the wall with his hands. "Isn't that a test? Don't you need to learn how to live with your mother?"

"No. God has shown me that here is where I belong. I know this more than anything."

"But you can't
live
at the Cloisters. It's a museum, not a real cloister:"

"I will live in the tower. I have to. I have to live here."

"'The tower'? See, that sounds crazy, Clare, because you can't. Not really."

Clare stood up and faced Archie. "I will live here. God has shown me that this is what I must do. My life, my mission, is here, and so is yours. You must stay here, too, Francis. You
must
live here with me."

C
LARE ADVISED
A
RCHIE THAT
they should pray about their situation, and she led him to the Fuentidueña Chapel, a room with a large wooden crucifix hanging above the altar and a fresco of the Virgin and child surrounded by angels high up in the domed ceiling. There was no place to sit, so they stood, staring up at the crucifix and praying, while people moved in and out of the room.

Archie knew that had he been up on his mountain, back where he'd first felt such a strong sense of God's presence, he would be able to stay still and pray for hours without thought of food or sleep and without tiring. This time was different, though. He felt stirred by the art and the architecture of the room, but Clare's story had upset him and he felt confused, too. He tried praying to God and asking for help. He told God he wanted to go home and said that he was afraid for Clare. He felt ashamed of himself for doubting her and therefore doubting God, but he had the feeling that Clare almost believed she was the real Saint Clare, who had lived back during the Middle Ages. He worried that maybe she
was
a little crazy. He tried to erase the thought and to remember his own experiences with God. His grandmother must have thought he was crazy, talking to trees and stones and rejecting meat, and in a way he felt like he was, but it seemed right and good, and it really didn't matter if he was crazy or not—what mattered was God.

What had happened? How long would this test, as Clare called it, last? How was he supposed to pass it? What was he supposed to do? Pray and keep on praying? Have faith, like Clare? He wanted to have her kind of faith and devotion, but it had become so hard. Before when he'd prayed he never seemed to get hungry or tired, but there in New York he was both most of the time. The days of fasting and going without sleep had caught up with him. He even thought of eating a thick, juicy hamburger; for a moment he was tempted by the thought, but then he felt the old familiar pressure in his stomach and the desire disappeared.

What was it God or his grandfather wanted of him? He just wanted to be left alone. His life had been so much simpler before his grandfather died and he met Clare. Now everything seemed hard and confusing. He wanted to go home. He didn't want to live in some great stone tower and wander starving through the rooms of the Cloisters every day, like a ghost haunting the place. No, he wanted to go home. If they had no money for gas, he would hitchhike home. Whatever it took to get there, he was leaving.

Archie looked at Clare standing beside him and staring up at Jesus on the cross, her eyes full of adoration, just like figures in some of the paintings he had seen in the book about saints back at the library.
She really is a saint,
he thought. He felt sorry that he would be letting her down, but he knew that at least for the time being his life and his mission were not there in New York.

Archie's feet hurt from his standing so long beneath the crucifix. He wanted to sit down and he wanted to eat something. He tapped Clare's shoulder. "I'm ready to leave," he said.

Clare turned to face him. "But we've only just begun to pray, Francis. You must pray and pray. That is the only way back to God. Have faith that God is with you even if you can't feel God's presence."

"I'm sorry, but I'm hungry. I'm just so hungry. I want to leave."

"But you've hardly seen anything."

Archie thought of the Virgin that Clare had seen crying. He wanted to see that. Maybe seeing her would change everything. Maybe that's all he needed. If he could believe and have faith in a statue crying real tears, then maybe all was not lost. He told Clare that.

"We must see that later when fewer people are around. It's the only way," Clare said.

Archie sighed and gave in. He told Clare he would wait for her out in the garden, and he left her standing beneath the crucifix. He waited in the garden a long time. He thought about going in search of the crying Virgin on his own, but he didn't think he'd know her if he saw her and he didn't want to hurt Clare. So he waited, sitting on the marble wall and trying again and again to pray, repeating the words "
Be still and know that I am God.
" He leaned sideways against a pillar and closed his eyes. Soon he fell asleep with the prayer on his lips.

It was late in the afternoon by the time Clare came out to get him. By then Archie had moved to the grass, where he lay asleep on the ground and hidden from view by a fat bush. He had been dreaming about dragons and lions biting him on the back and about blood running from the wounds the way he had seen the blood running from the unicorn in the tapestries. He told Clare about his dream, and she said that some scholars believed that it wasn't blood but pomegranate juice on the unicorn in some of the tapestries. Archie told her it was blood in his dream, and the dream was scary. When, he wondered, would he have good dreams again?

Clare told Archie it was time to go to the Langon Chapel to see the Virgin, and Archie cheered. "All right!" he said, brushing the dirt off his jeans. "I'm ready."

He wanted to run to the chapel, but he didn't know which way to go, so he walked beside Clare, forcing her to keep pace by picking up his own and holding her hand. Clare laughed and seemed as excited as he was to get to the chapel. He realized it must have been just as hard for her to wait all day.

Archie paid no attention to the great entryway they passed through, with its sculptures of two kings, one on the left, one on the right, and angels in flight above the tympanum where Christ crowns the Virgin. His mind and his aim were focused on one thing: seeing the crying Virgin. They entered the room and Clare pointed to the altar before them. It was just as she had said; a canopy of stone stood above the altar and in the center of the altar was a wooden sculpture of the Virgin with Jesus on her lap, and Jesus was missing his head.

Archie looked at Clare, not bothering to hide his disappointment. "That's it?" he asked. "It's so small. I thought it would be much, much bigger. This—she's—it's so insignificant." He looked around the spare room and saw another Virgin and child, one with all of Jesus intact. "Ah," he said, seeing what he thought was a more pleasing sculpture. "You were kidding me. This is the sculpture, right?"

Clare moved to the altar. "See her crown? See the crack running through her eye?"

Archie came forward to join Clare. "She looks hunched over to me, and Jesus looks so flat, never mind that he's headless. No wonder she cries," he said.

A man and woman walked into the room. Clare didn't notice. She was already down on her knees, praying on the bottom step of the altar.

Archie watched the couple reading the information written beside the other sculpture. They murmured to each other but Archie couldn't hear what they were saying. Then they started toward the altar caught sight of Clare, and turned around and left.

Archie looked again at the small sculpture. He sighed and got down on his knees and, like Clare, bowed his head and prayed, asking for forgiveness for making fun of the Virgin sculpture. Then he prayed that his grandmother would be healed and that she would live long enough for him to graduate from college. He peeked up at the Virgin, hoping to see tears, but she was the same as before: a wooden sculpture with cracks and a missing head. He closed his eyes again and listened to Clare humming beside him. He hummed, too, and waited. He didn't know how long they stayed on their knees on the stone step, but it felt like a painfully long time to Archie. His knees hurt, and again he felt hungry and irritable. Every once in a while he peered up at the statue to look for the tears, but he never saw them and he knew it wasn't going to happen for him, not then at least.

He checked on Clare. She had remained in the same kneeling position the whole time. He had never caught her peeking to see if the Virgin was crying. She hummed along with a smile on her face, a look of expectation, her brows raised, her head lifted, and her eyes closed.

A bell rang, and a woman's voice announced five minutes until closing time. Archie jumped to his feet, startled by the voice. Clare didn't stir at all.

Five minutes later the same woman's voice announced that it was closing time, and Clare opened her eyes. She stood up and turned, smiling to Archie.

"No tears," he said.

"Patience, Francis," Clare replied, crossing herself and bowing to the statue.

Archie bowed and crossed himself as well, not sure that he had done it correctly. Then he turned and joined Clare, who had moved toward the exit.

"It's my fault," Archie said when he caught up to her.

Clare raised an eyebrow. "What's your fault?"

"That she didn't cry. I wasn't concentrating enough."

They headed down the steps and left the building through the same door they had entered earlier that afternoon, pausing often to say good-bye to Clare's friends on their way out.

It was cool outside, and the breeze coming off the Hudson River felt refreshing to Archie. He took a deep breath.
"It's almost like a fall evening instead of spring," he said. "I can smell the woodsmoke of someone's stove, can't you?" Archie looked around for a house with a smoking chimney, but all he saw was the Cloisters and a stone wall and the parking lot.

They walked to the truck, and once they'd climbed inside and Archie had started it up and backed out of the parking space, he resumed the conversation. "Clare, the truth is I can't concentrate, and when I try I just get depressed or irritable. I'm hungry all the time. I feel so lost. I knelt in front of that sculpture and I felt nothing at all. Then I looked over at you and you were so rapt. I mean, you—you really are a saint. Really, I see how you are with people, and how you are with me. I..."

Clare patted his shoulder. "Let go of it, Francis," she said. "You're trying too hard. Just let God work in you."

"But how? What should I do?"

"Let go; that's all."

"Easy for you to say," he replied.

Archie drove down Fort Washington Avenue toward Irving's home. A minivan pulled out in front of them, and Archie honked at the
car,
then glanced at Clare. "Just acting like a New Yorker," he said.

A few minutes later they arrived at Irving's apartment. They rang the outside buzzer to be let in, and a woman answered it. She told them to come right up, and she was there waiting for them at the door when they arrived. Two slender brown-haired boys were behind her sliding on the wooden floor in their socks.

Clare greeted the woman with a hug, as if they were old friends, and then introduced her to Archie as Lizzie Alward, the woman she had met with Irving that morning. The two boys giggling behind her were her sons, Jacob and Joel. The boys said hi to Archie and Clare, and then returned to their game of pitching pretzel nuggets into each other's mouth. Every time they missed, they scooped up the fallen nuggets from the floor and called out, "Five-second rule!" before eating them.

Archie and Clare followed Lizzie into the kitchen, where she returned to the counter to stir something in a bowl. They found Irving standing at the stove, delighted to see them. He had so many questions for them: What did they see? What did Archie think of the tapestries and the architecture and the stained-glass windows? And was it all just as Clare had remembered? His voice was animated, and he gestured every now and then with the spatula he held.