Year of Lesser by David Bergen Page A

forget, overruling her frugality.
    It is her headache that brings her home, back to her long driveway and the bare rowed trees lining the road, and the green and white house with the old kitchen lino. The lights are on; Johnny is home. Charlene finds him in the kitchen, reading the Bible. His hair is neatly combed, he’s wearing a suit, his face glows. He does not ask where she’s been, his focus is elsewhere.
    “It was great,” he says. His fingers splay on the table. The tips of his thumbs are bitten and ragged.
    “What?” Charlene says. She has no idea what he’s talking about. He looks as if he’s about to jump across the table and devour her. His eyes swim. He may cry, she thinks.
    “I’m sorry, Charlene,” he says.
    “What, what is it?”
    “I love you,” he says. “You’re beautiful.” Charlene stands and holds the back of a chair.
    “I was baptized tonight,” Johnny says. “Remember?”
    Charlene senses that she may never rise above the man across from her. He’s eating, pushing bread and cheese and jam into his mouth. His eyes shine. Charlene thinks she should sit on his face, erase the glow of God from his countenance. She circles the table, wraps her arms around his neck, and talks into his collar. “You smell like water,” she says.
    Johnny doesn’t answer, he keeps eating.
    “Who was there?” Charlene asks.
    “Phil, a brother-in-law of his, Melissa Emery.”
    “That’s it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did Melissa speak in tongues? She does that, doesn’t she?” Charlene kisses Johnny’s ear. She’s surprising herself, her bum itches and she wants Johnny to touch her, drag those mangled thumbs along her skin. She does not care about him, she wants only the knowledge of her own body.
    “I don’t know,” Johnny says. “I thought she was speaking in tongues but I couldn’t be sure. My head was underwater.”
    Charlene laughs. He takes her questions so seriously.
    “Actually,” Johnny says, “she’s amazing. No other person in this town can ascend to delirium at the push of a button like Melissa Emery.” Johnny shakes his head, reaches up to take Charlene’s hand.
    “Maybe she’s unhappy,” Charlene says. Then, she says quietly, past Johnny’s ear, “I was thinking about the other night. Remember? On the rug, desperate, like we were two animals and that’s all. I figure I don’twant to be just an animal, Johnny. I’d like to think there was more to me than just the odour and look of an animal.” She takes the heel of her hand and pushes it against Johnny’s mouth. “Bite,” she says.
    He doesn’t. He holds her wrist and manoeuvres it gently, hangs on to it as if it were delicate and easily breakable. Then he settles Charlene onto his lap and pulls her head to his chest as if she were a small child.
    “You were gone,” he says.
    “Hmmm,” she responds.
    “Where?” he asks.
    “Just gone.”
    And in bed later they are both naked, and she lets him hold her because she needs to feel something. But he is chaste, still elevated by this goodness he sees in himself. His hands, his voice, his whole body is tender and full of love and for a moment Charlene believes that Christianity is the best thing for Johnny. When he’s mucking about with redemption, he exudes compassion, not love necessarily, but pity and mercy. And she’ll take it.
    Just before they sleep, Johnny says, his voice full of singsong, “Phil Barkman’s got this tiny penis, hooded and blue. I saw it.”
    “Did you?” Charlene asks. Her eyes are closed. She reaches behind her and finds Johnny’s rear, his legs; she slides her hand between and grabs hold. “Hooded and blue,” she says. She’s holding Johnny, not moving and he’s curled into her, already sleeping. “That’s nice,” she says.
    It could work. Monday morning Johnny and Charlene are rosy and giggly, poking at each other in the bathroom. Johnny farts and blames it on Charlene. She slaps at him as he shaves, and later she sees the mark on