A Good Friday

She knew it was time to leave for good, but she went to church one last time. To keep up appearances, as she'd always done.

She hurried down the aisle and took her seat, alone, first pew, its wood worked to a shine by use. In somber attire, the crowd was already seated, waiting in silence. She felt their eyes on her, her clothes, her hair, her glasses mended with scotch tape. She stood and sat and bowed in unison with them as had been her practice, fingering the crimson welts on her arm, unworried now that they would see.

An empty cross floated, suspended on wires, spectral, above the altar. No bloody Jesus, no nails. It must be nice to be unseen, she thought. There but not, here but not. Was nothing something that mattered, she wondered as the pastor ascended up into the unadorned pulpit. He wore the black robe and white tippet she’d ironed that morning like armor.

The words of the gospel flowed from his mouth, his tone solemn, his eyes fierce.

“And it was about the sixth hour,” he said reading from the Gospel of Luke, “and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.”

She sat erect as a pencil, her gaze never leaving him. Both hands brushing the soft, cool cotton of her new dress, she thought of what was to come and bit back a smile.

He continued, “and when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” As he spoke she felt a shiver run down her spine.

Behind her, she knew they were stealing sideways glances at each other to see who kept their eyes open during prayer, who flubbed the words of the Apostles’ Creed, who was wearing red.

He stepped down from the pulpit and spread his arms in benediction. “Upon you was laid the grief of us all. It is finished. God of endings, God of darkness, God of the tomb, God of dark days and great loss, be with us now as we wait with Jesus.” She felt the sadness would last forever, its black stamp as indelible as stigmata.

She waited in line with others to touch his sleeve and say what a wonderful sermon it had been to which he offered no reply. He’d already moved on to clasp the hands of the parishioner behind her and then the next, assuring them all that the words he’d shared were not his, but those of The Lord and all power be to him.

Outside, she reveled in a deep breath of fresh air. She walked down the rickety wooden stairs in front of the white clapboard church, her eyes downcast. No obligatory hellos today, although she’d known each and every congregant most of her life. At least since her sixteenth birthday, when he’d driven her to Middle City from the orphanage in El Paso, a place “corrupted by man, then forsaken by God” he’d said.

Before church, she’d told him she had an errand to run afterwards. Yes, she knew it was the holiest of days, but she needed to refill her pills. "You know how I get if I don't take them," she'd said, “but I’ll be home to put lunch on the table on time at one.” It was to be his favorite, of course, pot roast, potatoes, and peas and carrots followed by apple pie, “no ice cream this time,” she’d said. He'd frowned at that, so she'd been quick to add "remember what the doctor said about your high cholesterol dear." Aware his flock would keep the fast that day, he hushed her and pushed her aside, the rough fabric of the sleeve of his robe scraping her cheek.

She’d parked her car behind the church, where a pumpjack sputtered and creaked, draining whatever oil remained entombed below. She saw a storm moving in the east, blackening stratus clouds strafing the sky, but she would go west. It took three tries to goad the engine to life and once it did turn over, she swore not to turn it off until she got to Las Vegas.

***

The first day she got as far as Fort Bliss on I-10. The landscape of cotton fields and tumbleweeds was monotonous which further sapped her will. She pulled into a rest stop, but kept the engine running. Night was coming fast and she watched as long haul truckers readied rigs for sleep and families walked dogs, and even one cat, before getting back into minivans to go places she’d never been, never go.

She opened the glove box and pulled out an amber colored pill bottle, the prescription she’d refilled days before. The label said “limit 2 per day.” She twirled the bottle as she had a mason jar of M&Ms at the county fair in El Paso and tried to count how many were inside, but she knew. She picked at the flaking scabs on her neck. She put the bottle back in the glove box and smiled at the sight of daylight creeping along the horizon.

On the second day, she had to get gas in El Paso, at a truck stop that offered “clean showers 24/7.” She prayed the car would restart, and when it did she swallowed one of the pills to celebrate getting closer to her destination. She’d forgone prayers by the time she reached Phoenix, opting instead for two pills when the car restarted in the city whose temperature, she’d wager, would fry its namesake, not free it.

On the third day, the lights of Vegas erupted out of the bowels of the desert. The metropolis outlined in neon pierced the onyx, starless sky. She imagined a dome over Vegas, a toy town inside a snow globe, but with sand, like the one her father had given her for Christmas before he disappeared. “Sin City” he’d called it, and she’d wondered if it was full of devils.

She liked the name, The Shalimar Motel, so she got a room just for her. Paid cash. The manager didn’t ask her name, where she was from, nothing, so she didn’t have to lie. Her room was on the second floor. Double bed, rusty microwave, lamp with a burned out bulb, and a TV with rabbit ears antennae. Smelled musty.

Sitting on the lumpy bed, she tipped the pills out of the bottle and ran her fingers over their velvety surface. She closed her eyes and pretended she was floating in the pool across the parking lot, its water azure like the pills. He’d said women in bikinis were floozies. She needed to buy a swimming suit and maybe a cap with rubber flowers like the old movie stars wore. She put the pills back in the bottle and the bottle in the nightstand drawer.

The night felt like a warm shawl wrapping around her body as she walked The Strip. Woman in bustiers and men wearing only body paint strolled with ease among tourists who were snapping shots of volcanic fountains and the Eiffel Tower. No one said anything to or at her but for the woman who sold her her first pair of blue jeans who said, “those look great on you” and she felt a balloon open in her chest. She left her dress in the changing room and wore the jeans out of the store along with a blue T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a flying red horse that he would have said should have been worn by a gas station attendant.

She paused at a storefront selling frozen daiquiris. She liked pink so she got strawberry. It made her brain freeze and her heart dance although she never had. She watched the crowd leaning on the bar, laughing, sipping from foot long straws. She peered through portholes that looked like smiley faces as the gleaming metal machines turned water into rainbow ice.

She was drawn to a silver needle piercing the night sky in the distance, its apex ablaze with lights the color of Dorothy’s ruby slippers. The sign outside said “Stratosphere.” The elevator delivered her to the top in less time than she used to take to say her bedtime prayers. “Now I lay me down to sleep...”

She chose the front car on X-Scream, a roller coaster that had been suspended over the side of the tower by men she imagined must have had faith. As the coaster rocketed around and around, the world below became a blurry kaleidoscope of light and she thought about the rickety wooden coaster at the Middle City fair that had burned to the ground the Sunday he’d preached that not keeping the sabbath holy was a mortal sin.

Her head still spinning from the ride, she walked back towards The Shalimar Motel. Next to a building shaped like a circus tent, light flooded through an open door. She stopped and gazed up at a mural of a guardian angel painted on the facade of the pyramid shaped structure. She ascended the steps and peeked inside. A huge crucifix hung over the altar, another mural of a guardian angel looked down upon Jesus nailed to the cross. She shivered, but before she could step back outside, a steady voice spoke from behind.

“Good evening Miss. Welcome to Guardian Angel Chapel. May I help you?”

She turned and saw a priest standing in the doorway of the sanctuary. She said nothing. The priest, a hand light on her shoulder, guided her inside leading her to the front pew.

“You may pray here if you wish,” he said before kneeling on the ground beside where she stood.

She looked down at him, his black cassock in soft folds. She knelt beside him and looked up at Jesus. After a while, the priest rose and offered his hand so that she might rise too.

“Happy Easter,” he said before walking down the aisle and out into the night.

***

She rose and washed her face and feet. She noticed the scars on her arms were gone. She went to the nightstand and took out the pill bottle. It was cool to the touch. She unscrewed the lid and shook all of the pills out into her shaking hand letting the bottle and lid drop to the floor. The room was bathed in first light coming through the open blinds, rays brighter than she had ever known. She flushed the pills, one by one, down the toilet.