The day of Ruth’s funeral George awoke as he did every morning, a sudden arrival at consciousness, renewed, alert to the feel of the sheet against his cheek and the pillow bunched under his head. But also with a vague disquiet, something forgotten, misplaced somewhere beyond memory’s reach. He pushed it away and, as he always did, threw off the covers with a sweep, as though he were scattering seeds or ashes.
     In the narrow, mint-colored bathroom that smelled of talc and damp plaster he performed what he thought of as his ablutions, contemplating briefly his oneness with all the thousands, millions of others going through their homely personal rituals at the exact same moment. Like George Granger – late middle age, comfortable, content, a man of pleasantly ordinary looks yet not without presence – and unlike him in all their measureless permutations. He held the soft white towel to his face and whispered his first prayer of the day. Grant us, in our separateness,  the grace to see you in each other.
     Still in his tick-striped pajamas, he went down the cramped staircase, anticipating each creak of the treads. The morning music of his little parsonage, thunderous in the stillness. In the kitchen, mostly unchanged since the sixties, even before his time, a white plastic placemat made to look like lace defined his place at the green-chip formica-topped table. Every night before he went to bed he set out the placemat, folded a white paper napkin beside it and put a small plate for his toast precisely in the center.
     “Table for one?” he always said, his round and resonant preacher’s voice filling the little room. He made coffee in one of his few indulgences, a boxy black German appliance that also made cappuccino. While the coffee brewed he placed a piece of wholegrain bread in the toaster and took a nearly-empty jar of black raspberry preserves from the mustard-colored refrigerator. Harvest Gold, the retiring minister’s wife had told him, and he had nodded approvingly, though he couldn’t imagine why it mattered. Did it keep the milk cold? Waiting for the toast to pop, he got the newspaper from the front porch and unfolded it to scan the headlines.
     So much like yesterday’s headlines. Car accident on 110, two teenagers critical; a fire at a farmhouse in the southern end of the county, another in a row house in town; an outbreak of chicken pox at Ryder Elementary and of course the war, the damn war.
     His eye fell on the date and he thought, The twentieth. Ruth at eleven. Written in his desk calendar next door in Marie’s careful hand. 11:00 – Ruth Munson funeral.
     He imagined that most of his congregation, if they thought of him at all, assumed he read the Bible as he ate his toast and jam and drank his coffee. But he unashamedly read The Poolesville Beacon, a middling good paper for a small town, with help from the AP and even The New York Times. He felt his world expand and contract as he paged through it, from the terrible sinkhole of Iraq to the hand-wringing of Europe, the machinations of China, the ungovernable mess of L.A., the natural cruelties of the Midwest – drought, floods, tornadoes – and back again to Poolesville, a floundering place of bygone pride surrounded by growing suburbs and shrinking farms.
     When he finished the paper he always said a short prayer for the accident victims, the fire victims, the war victims, the children with spina bifida or ADHD or whatever other affliction was covered in the Local Living section. Then he rinsed his plate and mug and swished some soapy water around in the coffee pot. He wiped off the counter with his crumpled napkin and put the placemat away in the drawer.
     Upstairs he noticed a pale brown stain on his pajama shirt and was embarrassed to think it might have been there since yesterday. As he dropped it into the hamper he wished he could have gotten another night out of it.
     He shaved carefully, thinking of Ruth, pulling together the thoughts and anecdotes to slip into her eulogy. People expected to be entertained now at funerals, they wanted to hear funny stories about the deceased, even mocking ones. Sloppily-dressed grandchildren who tearfully recalled “Pop-Pop’s Thanksgiving belch” or “Nana’s ten-year stash of toilet paper from Wal Mart.” Casually cruel sons and daughters who told of inedible meals, erratic driving and cluttered attics. Why did people mouth “death with dignity” while a person clung to life but righteously humiliate them after they died? It was worse than unfair, George thought, it was treachery. Just last week, he who had never slapped anyone in his life, had felt a sudden urge to smack a sleazy little granddaughter whimpering at the lectern in a skimpy red sweater and something metal protruding from her nose.
     He pressed a little too firmly with the razor and a thin line of blood appeared under his chin. He thought the word “damn” and imagined blood on his collar at Ruth’s service. He’d have to keep checking it. Maybe he’d ask Marie to let him know if she saw any blood but the notion of her squinting up under his chin was unnerving. He’d bring another collar over to the church just in case. He let the water run cold, soaked his facecloth and held it against his neck. The cut burned, which was okay, an opportunity to understand pain.
     He pulled a comb through his thinning, graying hair. It seemed a bit long. If the funeral were next week instead he’d have had his regular haircut and be looking better-groomed. Instead Ruth, of all people, was getting a pastor with ragged hair and a bloody chin. You look about due for a haircut, Pastor George. Is that something he could work into the eulogy? People would laugh but not meanly. They would hear Ruth’s wry, raspy voice and know it was an observation, not a criticism. But this was Ruth’s funeral, not his, not the time to draw attention to himself.
     He dressed quickly – there were no decisions to be made about shirt and tie color. He tried to look under his chin without stretching his neck. The razor cut was barely visible.
     Wind pushed against the window then pulled it back again. The leaden sky said snow.

     At 8:32 George walked next door to St. Mark’s. The wind blustered, pulling his hair, hurting the inside of his nose, making his eyes tear behind his glasses. The side door was unlocked. Marie would be there, someplace, and perhaps some of the altar guild ladies getting ready for the post-funeral lunch. His harem. The idea still smacked a fist against his gut. One of them, not Ruth, but another, Esther, if he remembered correctly (already gone three months now), had said it once as he paid the restaurant bill. We’re Pastor George’s harem. The preoccupied young waitress had instinctively wrinkled her nose and then tried to repair the damage. That’s nice, she’d said, and hurried away with his cash.
     The others, the five or six that were with him that day, had laughed together, bent fingers to pale lips, heads tossed back or forward depending on their habit. His face had flamed like a match head. I’ll never do this again flashed through his brain so quickly he was hardly aware of it. But of course he did do it again, once a month, year on year, the faces morphing slowly one into another as the altar guild ladies moved away to distant children or nursing homes or death and new ones took their places. New being a relative term.
     Oddly, although they were older than he, some even older than his mother if she’d still been alive, he thought of them more as children than women, not so much in a patronizing way but as people to be protected, rewarded, nurtured. Thus the harem notion was doubly frightening.
     The heat from the old radiator, hissing like a snake, made his small, cluttered office smell musty, a smell George found comforting, old books, dust and ink. Marie had been there. His desk calendar was open to today’s page, his red mug beside it, a black Uni-ball pen and a sharpened number two pencil lined up next to the mug. Everything was normal. In a few minutes Marie would come in, softly say Good morning, take his mug and then return it filled with black coffee, instant, made from water on a hot plate in her office down the hall. Marie drank tea.
     He picked up the pencil, liking the clean, symmetrical look of the point. Homely things that fulfilled their function pleased him. He put it down. He had the sense that he was waiting for something.

     The men from Marten’s Funeral Home had Ruth all set up in the church parlor by nine-fifteen. Her family – two preoccupied, paunchy sons and a thin, oddly-cheerful daughter in an old-fashioned navy dress and too-red lipstick, shook George’s hand and nodded perfunctorily to his condolences.
     “Your mother was a charming woman,” he said, and was startled to see their disbelief. Didn’t they know their own mother? He looked again at the small wrinkled woman in the casket. Yes. Ruth. “She really was,” he said firmly. Two silent spouses, a man and a woman, stood one step removed. He recalled Ruth mentioning a divorce for her oldest.
     “Yes, well, she certainly had her opinions,” the daughter said, still smiling. “I mean she – we weren’t able to get here this Christmas. She said you took her out to dinner. That was nice.”
     George’s lips pulled up together. Nice. That horrible, meaningless word. It would have been nicer if you’d done it. And then immediately, Forgive me for judging. Please. “Please. On the phone you said some family members might speak. What have you decided?”
     “Uh, no. We won’t be doing that. Just whatever you – ”  Still smiling.
     “All right then. I’ll be in my office if you need me before the service. You’ve met Marie, she can help if you need anything.”
     He stepped close to the casket. He knew he should be thinking something, praying something, feeling something. But these detached, tearless people who clearly wanted to be somewhere else confounded him. He touched Ruth’s cold hand and then backed away.

     “Oh excuse me, we were told we could put our coats in here.”
     Two women and a man stood in his office door. The woman who’d spoken seemed startled to see him huddled behind his desk. His first thought was that she was very pretty, very fresh, with dark reddish hair and summer skin. So out of place in this dry, overheated cell in the middle of a northern winter.
     “Sure, the closet’s right there, not very big, it takes the overflow from the coat racks.” Dopey thing to say. She didn’t need an explanation, just a hanger.
     The woman shrugged out of her long black coat, revealing a suit in what George always thought of as his favorite color, the blue of the evening sky, past sunset, deep, lightless, eternal. The man, middle-aged, middle-sized, with an air of command and impatience, hung up her coat and then placed his own over it. “I’ll keep mine,” said the other woman, grazing her cheek lovingly against the high fox collar. As they turned to leave the woman in blue looked back at him and smiled, a small, sweet smile tinged with melancholy. For Ruth? For some reason he thought it might be for him.
     Her scent lingered, roses, lilies, mixed with the sharp, clean breath of the outside air.

     By ten to eleven the small church was nearly filled. At the back George closed his eyes and heard the rustling, the muttering, the soft creak of haunches sliding across the pews to make room for one or two more. Waiting. He sensed Ruth’s coffin resting a few inches in front of him. Waiting. The scents of white roses and carnations fought with each other in the spray atop the coffin. Not all roses, George had noticed. He tried to recapture the woman’s perfume, the peace and sorrow of it, and then the organist struck the processional chord and George gripped the crosier and started down the aisle behind the coffin, the choir at his heels, singing a fraction of a second after him.
     It took only one verse of He Who Would Valiant Be to reach the altar but of course they all soldiered on through all the verses. The last line of the first verse stayed with him. To be a pilgrim. That was going to be his theme today. Ruth, as he had known her, had been a pilgrim, making her way on increasingly unsteady feet through loss (her youngest, most cherished son in Vietnam, her much-loved husband to a heart attack), illness (breast cancer some years ago, pneumonia the winter before last, arthritis), but always looking for God’s message and comfort.
     A good and confident preacher, George spoke without notes, looking out at the congregation, side to side, back to front. Straight ahead of him, several rows back, was the woman in blue, eyes fixed on him, and he found himself, just for a minute – no, less, thirty seconds – talking just to her. What was he even saying just then? Ruth’s gift for friendship, her instinct for sensing when someone needed a hand, a shoulder, or just a touch. Almost imperceptibly the woman leaned forward. George’s voice stumbled and he looked away, to his left, then back, front, right again. The woman was still sitting the same way, her body slanted forward, towards him, her lips slightly parted, about to speak…
     And his eulogy was finished. He moved from the pulpit to the altar and prepared the Communion elements, took them himself, brought them to the choir, the organist, then faced the congregation and invited them forward. They came, row by row, taking, dipping, consuming. He watched as he always did, with a mixture of approval and detachment. After all, this was between them and God, he was of no more importance at this moment than a hat rack.
     And suddenly the woman in blue was in front of him, right there, roses, lilies, night sky, taking a wafer with a graceful, manicured hand, dipping delicately into the chalice and then. She looked into George’s face and whispered Thank you, then placed the wafer on her tongue and moved on.
     His hand trembled and a drop of wine splashed onto his thumb. He had to force himself not to lick it off as the rest of the communicants filed past him. As he stored the wafers, drained and wiped the chalice, he felt feverish.
     The final prayer, the dismissal, the first chord of the recessional and he grabbed onto the crosier and led the choir back down the aisle and into the narthex. Marie was waiting, holding his cape coat – gray herringbone, heavy and warm as a yak around his shoulders. He took up the crosier again as one of the funeral director’s men held open the door. He strode through it into the cold wind, feeling it lift his hair and dry the sweat on his forehead. He stood in front of Ruth’s casket as the congregation, buttoning coats, raising collars, tying scarves, pulling on gloves, straggled up behind it. And then he was off, holding the crosier high, follow me pilgrims, Christian soldiers, as he led them along the crumbling path to the graveyard behind the church. The wind wanted to rip the crosier out of his hands, it pulled at the draping sleeves of his coat, filled his eyes with tears, but he marched on, knowing they were all behind him, feeling the presence of the woman in blue and her two companions. He wanted to sing aloud but knew he couldn’t so he hummed to himself Luther’s glorious hymn. A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing…
     At the gravesite, the damp rectangular hole surrounded by a tattered carpet of fuzzy green plastic, he motioned everyone to come close. The wind pushed and pulled them into a huddle and flung his words beyond hearing. Across the hole the woman, arm in arm with her companions, watched him as he said the committal prayers.
     Walking back to the church he thought he’d speak to her, maybe thank her for thanking him. How stupid. But she’d been so attentive. Did she need something? And just who was she anyway? Was the man her husband? Her brother?
     In the church basement he said grace and took the plate someone gave him and looked around for her. He saw her at a corner table surrounded by people who seemed to know her. They were all talking with that expression of liveliness and relief people had after funerals, as though they’d just woken up from a mournful but mercifully unreal dream.
     “Coffee, Pastor George?” Marie was holding out a paper cup. He thanked her and took it, then made his way to a table where two of the deacons had saved a place for him. He ate the food on his plate – chicken salad, potato salad, lime Jello with shredded cabbage and peaches, pickles and a Parker House roll – in a state of suspended animation, talking, answering, nodding, but thinking all the time of the table in the corner.
     And when he finished and turned around, the corner table was empty. He looked quickly around the room. Gone.

     He thought about her off and on through the afternoon, as his office radiator hissed and the wind kept knocking on his window. God telling him to get back to work? He went to Marie’s office. She looked up from the old computer she’d brought from home and smiled in that way she had, tender and expectant at the same time. She was tender, worried about people, animals, the planet, but what was she expectant about?
     He asked if the guest book from the funeral was still there.
     “No, Mr. Marten’s people took it. Was there something…?”  Expectant.
     “No,” George said, shaking his head. “No.”

     Pretty quiet in that house all by yourself.
     Every once in awhile someone would say that to him, men sounding envious or even suspicious, women hinting that maybe he should do something about it before it was too late.
     “That house talks to me,” George always said. “From the groan the front door makes to the floor boards to the little clinking noise from the heating system. The refrigerator hums the Doxology, swear it does, and you can hear the mantel clock all over the house.”
     Didn’t he at least want a dog? Cats? Someone was always trying to talk him into a cat. But animals seemed wary of George, not hostile, just cautious, as though they weren’t sure exactly what he was up to. Him! Who was never up to anything!
     But that evening the house was silent. The door opened without a sound. He swung it twice to make sure. Nothing. He moved soundlessly across the floor. Eerie. Was he levitating? He passed the reproduction of Durer’s portrait of Luther which usually seemed so reassuring, Luther’s dogged Teutonic strength like a clap on his shoulder. But tonight Luther just looked dour, maybe even a little cruel.
     George checked the clock. He stood there, watching till it clicked from one minute to the next. He couldn’t hear it. The wind? Was it drowning out everything?
     In the kitchen the refrigerator refused to sing. George pulled open the door and the light came on. He touched the mayo jar, the milk – plastic, you couldn’t tell much from plastic – but it felt cold enough.
     He closed the door and gave the refrigerator a little push, not from pique but the way one tries to wake a friend, to make sure they’re still alive. Soundless. He turned on the radio but all he could get was savage static, the sound of some angry beast threatening him in a monstrous preverbal language. He turned it off and saw his hand was shaking. He felt sweaty again. He must be coming down with something.
     He opened a cupboard and took out a nearly full bottle of bourbon. Couldn’t even remember how long he’d had it. He half-filled a tumbler, then heated some water and filled up the glass. He could feel the first sip trail all the way down to his stomach.
     He took the glass into the living room and sat in his reading chair. Why did the room look so shabby tonight, so gloomy? He loved this room, it had his favorite books, this chair, which normally hugged him like a lover but tonight seemed totally indifferent, stiff and stale-smelling. He should get up and make himself some dinner but he wasn’t really hungry. Maybe some soup…later…
     He forced the chair to accept him, took a long swallow of the toddy. It was really very soothing. Once in awhile on a cold night like this…He’d have to be careful not to depend on it…He had a sudden image of the woman in blue mixing him a drink, holding it out to him, toasting him with her own raised glass, smiling, he was smiling too, they were friends now, she said something he couldn’t quite hear…
     When he awoke it took him a minute to figure out where he was and what he was doing sitting in the dark. He switched on the light beside his chair and flinched. Was he drunk?  No, there was still a third of a glass of the toddy beside him.
     But the clock said eleven-thirty. That means he’d slept for six hours! He felt like Scrooge, trying to make the timing work out. Was it tonight? Tomorrow?
     He pushed up out of the chair, went into the kitchen, poured the rest of the liquor into the sink. He couldn’t believe it but he felt exhausted – six hours, and all he wanted was to go to bed.
     He pulled open the drawer, took out the white plastic placemat made to look like lace, a knife, a paper napkin from the wooden holder at one end of the table. He felt like he was moving through water, dragging his arms against their will. What was wrong with him?  Something in his eyes, he could hardly see. Blindly he grabbed the placemat, the knife, the napkin, and shoved them into the drawer. He switched off the light and made his way down the hall in the dark, searching for the stairs.