Meg and Avis,

not praying,
November 1998

a short story
by Janet Ference
 Meg and Avis,
not praying,
November 1998

excerpt from the novel-in-progress

Flying Through The Air With No Particular Ease
by Janet Ference

the author wishes to offer

many thanks to Eliza, for courage and calm

Copyright © 2011 Janet Ference

www.janetference.com
www.bluefernpress.com
www.twitter.com/bluefernpress
www.scribd.com/bluefernpress/shelf

Blue Fern Press

San Francisco, California
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“When was the last time you did anything like pray?” It was a belligerent question.

Avis could hear the punch in her own voice. It wasn’t a question at all. She’d flown in on a

red-eye. That was her excuse.

“God, I don’t know,” Meg said.

Avis had left her cameras in the rental car. She needed one right now.

“June said pray.” Meg emphasized each word with a hammered nod of her head.

“You pray.” Avis wanted to go for the door, but she didn’t. She walked to a corner

instead and leaned into the wood paneling.

They’d been in the hospital chapel about half an hour. In that time, she’d missed

shots of two arresting subjects. When they first entered the room, there had been an elderly

gentleman in the front row. He was wearing an old brown pin-stripe suit that must have fit

him once before he’d become so gaunt. His long wisps of white hair were perfectly parted

and combed. He was praying with his eyes closed, so deep in repose he might have been

asleep, but his back and neck were erect, and his chin was tipped up toward his Maker. He

wouldn’t have noticed her capturing his image. It would have been a striking photograph.

The other soul would have been more difficult to steal. A woman had opened the door,

almost let it shush shut without entering, but then caught it and slipped past it into the

room. She did one complete circuit of the perimeter of the place, as though she was looking

for something or someone. Her eyes traveled up and down the walls, across the empty seats,

lit briefly on the elderly man, swept past Avis and Meg, and stared long at the square little

podium. She looked to the ceiling. She examined the floor. Having completed her slow

Page 1
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

circle, the woman stopped and pulled a rosary from her pocket, kissed it with open eyes and

square shoulders, hooked it on the back of a chair near the door, and then she left. When

she did, Avis noticed the crucifix on that rosary was the only cross in the room. It would

have taken several shots in succession to get a clear picture of the woman’s mystery, but the

keeper of the whole bunch would have been the image of her light brown hand, just as it

lifted from the red rosary on the polished blond wood of the chair. Even a photo of the

rosary itself, mutely hanging there, whether abandoned or placed wasn’t clear, would have

been a provocative piece.

Now they were alone. The man had left not long after the woman. When he did, all

the light had followed him out the door. Avis had spent a moment looking for a switch, until

her eyes adjusted.

“You reckon they’ll get it all?” Meg said, breaking the long silence.

No. Avis reckoned no such thing. It was aggressive Stage IV metastatic breast cancer,

and it had spread to June’s lung, and that meant it was in her bloodstream and who knows

where all else.

“Sure,” Avis said. “Sure.”

“You should have been here to hear that doctor go on about it.”

Avis walked over, intending to sit by her sister. “You know I would have been if I

could have been.”

“Aggressive,” said Meg, her teeth biting the word.

Avis stopped short and sat two seats away from her.

“I got the first flight I could.”

Page 2
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“You did not. You waited till you talked to the man yourself.”

It was true. Meg had called Avis at nearly midnight Wednesday night, and she

sounded crazy. First off, she had said June had cancer. The next thing she said was they had

to go and see on Thursday. She couldn’t be sure. Then she went on about a pot of soup

falling off the railing and how it must have made an awful mess on the walkway below and

how she hadn’t even thought to go down and clean that up and how the people down there

were going to wake up and go out the door and step in it and how she just couldn’t deal with

that right then. Meg had refused to put June on the phone that night, even though Avis had

insisted. Avis was sure that June would have made more sense than Meg did, and maybe then

she would have understood.

As it was, Avis had bided her time overnight and into the next day, waiting for news,

certain Meg was just in one of her panics and things would be okay. When Meg had finally

called Avis again about mid-day on Thursday, she was in a fine state.

Meg had said it was true. June had cancer, and it was bad. She said the doctor was

going to operate immediately. Avis had been unable to comprehend that. Meg’s words had

hit her ear like no more than the whorl of a screech owl hooting up a tree.

“You told me to call him. You said I’d better hear it for myself,” Avis said. Meg had

said exactly that. Avis was sure of that part.

It was impossible that was just yesterday.

“June didn’t sleep all night. That man said, surgery, and she said, now, and he said,

tomorrow, and I said, no. June just nodded her head. She nodded her head the rest of the

day and half the night. Like a bobble-head doll. I wanted to slap her silly.”

Page 3
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“I’m sure he’s a very good surgeon,” Avis said. If his scalpel cut like his tongue, it

would be clean and precise and thorough. When he had said his piece, surgery, maybe

radiation, probably chemotherapy down the road, he had repeated, Stage IV, and he had said,

do you understand, and Avis had said, yes. At the time, she was sitting on the tile floor of

her little kitchen in Soho, with the cat crawling over her ankles, and a cup of coffee out of

reach on the counter, and she was nodding her head, just like June. She clearly remembered

nodding her head, now that Meg said June did.

Avis didn’t understand, though, not even now in this god-awful hospital chapel. She

knew what Stage IV meant. She got ‘metastatic,’ ‘aggressive,’ ‘lung.’ It was the how of it that

was beyond her. She knew cancer could move quickly. She’d heard women talk. Sometimes it

was like this. What was not possible was that it was June.

It had never occurred to Avis that June might be able to die.

“Okay, now.” Meg was knitting her hands together so tightly the knuckles were bared

like teeth. “We got to pray.”

“I need another cup of coffee.” Avis was on her feet, turning toward the door.

“You sit yourself down, Avis Bigsby.” It was their Mama’s voice Meg used.

Avis sat down and let her eyes lose focus. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ sing-songed

itself in the hollow of her throat where unspoken words are formed.

“Dear God.” Meg said it like that was it.

There was a long silence. In a silence that long in a place like this, six people could

have died.

Page 4
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“We should go check in again,” Avis said. Not daring to turn away from her sister, she

closed her eyes to picture the door behind her. In the darkroom of her mind, she saw the

rosary on the back of the chair instead, its red glass beads and its dying Jesus hanging there.

She opened her eyes at once.

Meg said, “They know where to find us. They said it would be hours. They got us on

their list. I told the lady. Chapel.”

A social worker had been attending to people in the family waiting room for surgery.

When Meg had said ‘chapel,’ the silly woman had bowed her own damn head for a moment.

Then she scribbled not ‘Chapel,’ but ‘Chaplain,’ next to their names. ‘June Blackstone, breast

and lung, sisters Meg and Avis: Chaplain 8:10am.’

It occurred to Avis that a chaplain might indeed appear at any moment. It seemed

unlikely in this most secular of settings, but the very possibility made her legs squirm. “I

don’t know how to pray, Meg.”

“Sit still,” and again it was their Mama’s voice.

Avis wasn’t having it this time. What good had prayers ever done their Mama? Avis

stood up and looked down at her big sister. “You want to say some kind of prayer, go ahead

and say one.”

Meg looked up, and her eyes were damp, and Avis tried, but she couldn’t look away.

“Do you believe in God?” Meg asked. It was a genuine question. Avis could tell.

“Oh, god damn it, Meg, I don’t know.”

“I do. And he’s no friend of mine. I think God hates us Bigsby girls.”

Avis sat down, not knowing what else to do.

Page 5
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“Maybe not June,” Meg said.

“What kind of a prayer would they say in her church?” Avis asked. June went to some

kind of ordinary church, maybe a Methodist one.

“I suppose we could say The Lord’s Prayer.”

“Okay. Our Father who art in heaven,” Avis started. Avis was sure their father was

not in heaven, but what the hell.

Meg said, “I hadn’t been to no kind of church in the longest kind of time. June goes

every Sunday. Don’t seem right she’s the one to go and get so sick.”

Avis knew Meg had dabbled in one and another kinds of churches over the years,

when her believer boyfriends could get her to go, and of course Meg had long followed all

that twelve-step higher power business, even when she wasn’t on the wagon.

“You don’t never set foot in one, do you?” Meg said.

“No,” said Avis, and there was nothing more to say about that.

“You remember that grand old Presbyterian church up here to Greenville, the one

where Mama took us when we weren’t but little things?” Meg asked.

Avis remembered long dusty drives, sitting still in the back seat of Mr. Clark’s 1940

royal blue 4-door Ford with its round lines and white wall tires, each in their Sunday-best

Easter dresses, June in the middle to put a stop to the least hint of a squabble, the back of

the front seat so high they couldn’t even see their Mama driving, the windows shut against

the dust of the back roads, and the air in the car so thick she’d have to pretend she was

underwater and hold her breath the whole way there. It gave her a headache every Sunday.

Page 6
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“How on earth did Mama ever get Mr. Clark to loan her that car? It was a beauty. I

always wondered. I think I’ve got pictures of that car somewhere,” Avis said.

“You didn’t know? She cleaned his house every Sunday, before dawn. She’d be back

by seven in the morning.”

“What?” said Avis.

“Yeah,” said Meg.

“Daddy?” asked Avis.

“Oh, he didn’t know. Dead drunk. Never missed her. Till Mr. Clark’s sister came

visiting from Pensacola, walked in on Mama scrubbing the tub, so the story goes. Didn’t take

but a minute before all of Hickok was up in arms. Way people talk, you know. You

remember. Daddy put Mama in the hospital that time, broken collar bone, busted spleen, her

nose was never right again.”

“Oh, my God,” said Avis.

“Damn right,” said Meg.

“Do you think?”

“Don’t know. Cleaning is all I heard. But Mr. Clark was a widow man, and he had him

a little money from the gas station. Who knows?”

“Mama?”

Meg looked at Avis like she was still four years old. “You think she was a saint?”

“Why did she need to carry us clear to Greenville, anyway?” Avis asked. Avis could

still see that highfalutin Presbyterian church with its tall white pillars like a movie mansion

and its pecan trees shading the parking lot. Mama would drive to the edge of the lot every

Page 7
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

time to park almost out of sight, and the car would come to a stop to the cracking of

pecans. After church the car would be surrounded by squirrels and bold black and blue birds,

and Mama would wave her arms as she strode into them, sending them flocking into the

trees.

On the inside, that huge church had stained glass windows as tall as the pillars out

front. They filled the walls on both sides, and from where her family sat in the last pew, Avis

could stare at those pictures, and the hard candy colors of arced light they shone on the

white ceiling, all throughout the service.

“You really don’t know? You must know. Don’t be stupid. June’s in a bad way. Don’t

act the fool,” Meg said. “We got to say a prayer. What did they used to say there?”

Avis thought of all those well-heeled people who didn’t speak to their Mama, and the

sermons about how they ought to be helping the poor. “I don’t remember any prayers in that

place. Did those stuck-up people actually pray?”

“You were so little. You really don’t know.”

Avis stood up and she would have slapped Meg, but Meg had her face in both her

hands, her arms pressed tight to her chest. She was a fortress.

“Don’t know what, for God’s sake?” Avis said.

“It was their church. Her people. The Prescotts.”

Avis tried to comprehend that. They had never been welcome there. Even at four, she

knew that. Were there cousins there, aunts and uncles? What was the matter with them? It

was a church, for Christ’s sake. She didn’t say all that. Meg was crying.

Page 8
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“That was her Mama and Daddy. In the front pew. The ones who tried to pretend

they weren’t staring at us when they filed out the door. June told me. Can you imagine?”

No, Avis could not imagine. She was trying. She knew who Meg meant. They were

the bosses of the church or something. They acted like they owned the place. They always

stared at Avis and her sisters, and it made Avis feel like a bug. “The lady in the little white

crown-like hats with the bit of veil over her eyes all the time?”

“Wasn’t she just like a queen? I touched her hand once when she went by. I thought

she’d faint. The old man swept her up and helped her out the door.”

“Meg, you’ve taken leave of your senses. Mama’s parents were dead. Before we were

even born. She didn’t have any people. We were her people. We were all she had.” Avis

wasn’t sure of many things in this world, but she was sure of this. Her Mama had been an

orphan.

“No. They disowned her. When she married Daddy. She was pregnant with June. It

was during the war.”

“That just can’t be,” said Avis.

“It’s true. June overheard the preacher once, take Mama aside, tell her to stop

torturing herself. June told me exactly what he said. ‘Your parents don’t want you here, Mrs.

Bigsby.’ Plain as that. And he nodded his head at that dragon lady. Mama didn’t stop, though.

We went the next Sunday, same as always. Mama told that preacher that Jesus wanted her

there.”

“Lord have mercy,” Avis said. It was something her Mama would say.

“Lord have mercy,” Meg said, and again it was Mama’s voice.

Page 9
Meg and Avis, not praying, November 1998 Janet Ference

“That was my grandmother in that hat,” said Avis.

Meg was standing, wobbling like she was drunk. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Avis said, almost clapping. She meant it as a joke.

Meg slowly turned and stared at her. “Lord have mercy,” she said again. Then she

held out her hand.

Avis gave her a hand, an arm, and a shoulder, and they headed for the door, hobbling

like sisters in a three-legged race at the fair.

As they went past it, Avis glanced at the rosary again. Meg followed her eye and

reached out and took it, snatching it like a kid stealing candy. She did the oddest thing then.

She pulled her collar out and dropped the rosary into her bra. Avis hadn’t seen anybody do

that in forever. Meg didn’t have a bit of cleavage, so the damn thing showed, poking through

her sweater like a third tit.

When Avis slipped out behind her sister, the door swung shut on her ass, spanking

her into the glare of the hospital hallway like a newborn.

“God,” she said.

“Jesus,” said her sister.

June would have said, ‘Hush,’ if she was there.

Page 10