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It’s early. His collar is itchy, the heat just makes it worse but he has to do this.
Carl tells himself that every Sunday.
It reminds him of when he was younger. When he started life at five and continued from there. Then he was eight, then nine, then ten, and eleven.
It stops at twelve. Everything stopped when he was twelve.
Now, he’s eighteen, life still hasn’t started and he’s standing outside of the only church in town, in the heat with an itchy collar, a suffocating tie around his neck, and sweaty palms. He doesn’t even know why the tie is choking him since he never learnt to really tie one and it ended up loose on him.
Carl is staring up at the church, at the bell tower with a cross at the top of it. It’s not a really big church, able to hold a couple hundred people. He looks over at the cemetery beside the church. It holds a couple thousand corpses. He makes his way over to one of the benches and sits on it as he looks at a couple of people walking into the church before they stop.
Mass has started. Carl isn’t inside. Instead, he sits beside the cemetery, takes out his pack of cigarettes and takes one out, lighting it and taking a breath in.
It lasts him the entire service.
He watches people in fancy suits and dresses pile outside, some being good samaritans and holding the door for others. Carl sees the Rhee family come out, Maggie thanking the person holding the door while Glenn goes to chat with other churchgoers. Enid on the other hand sees him and she makes her way over to him.
“Didn’t see you in there.” She says.
“It’s because I didn’t go in.”
“Why not?”
That’s the question. Why didn’t he go in and attend church? Carl doesn’t think that the minute he walks through the doors he would burn up in flames, having done too many ‘sinful’ things in his life. Instead, he clams up, his feet are glued to the pavement and he stares up at the cross on the bell tower and he never goes in.
It started when he was twelve. It stayed with him ever since.
“I don’t know.” Carl replies.
Enid stares at him. “There’s always a free seat with us if you ever decide to join.”
Carl nods at her and watches her leave as Maggie and Glenn call out for her to join them so they could leave, waving Carl goodbye in the process. He waves back and gets up from the bench.
He didn’t go in today.
Maybe next week.
“Was it a good service?” Is the first thing his dad asks as he walks back inside his house.
“I didn’t go.” Carl tells him.
Rick hums. “Where did you go then?”
“Just sat at one of the benches in front of the cemetery.” Carl doesn’t include the fact that he had a smoke. He knows his dad will know when he washes the suit he’s wearing and can smell it off of it.
“You ever thought of joining Maggie?”
Carl shrugs, “I saw her today. Glenn and Enid too. Enid said I could sit with them.” He kicks his dress shoes off and unbuttons his jacket. June is not a good month for suits.
“Would be nice.” Rick says.
“Sure.” Carl replied as he walks up the stairs to his room and plops down onto his bed. He didn’t do anything this morning but he’s exhausted. Probably because he woke up so early.
Carl doesn’t know how he used to do this every Sunday when he was younger.
A new Sunday. The same suit with an itchy collar and suffocating tie. Carl is staring at the bell tower again with sweaty palms. He sits on the bench, observing those who are late to the service, and smokes another cigarette that he finishes half way through mass. He takes another one out.
The service is over when he sees people piling outside again. Enid sees him and makes her way over to him again. Carl snuffs out the cigarette.
“They’ll kill you one day.” She tells him.
“What are you, ‘Miss Goody-Two-Shoes’ now?”
Enid shrugs. “Just saying.” They’re quiet and watch the church goers talk with each other, Maggie and Glenn engaged in a conversation with an older couple that Carl doesn’t know the names of. He feels like he should know, given the fact that it’s not the biggest town and anyone who’s everyone know each other. Maybe they’re new.
“Why do you even come here if you won’t go in?” Enid asks him.
Carl glances over to her and fiddles with his thumbs. “Just can’t.”
“You one to believe you’ll burst into flames the second you walk through the doors?”
He laughs, “No, of course not, that’s bullshit.”
“Then why?”
A pause.
“The walls are haunted.”
Enid laughs now. “It’s ‘the house of God’, of course they’re haunted.”
Carl shakes his head. “Not like that.”
“Then how?”
Before he can answer he hears Maggie yell at Enid to come back so they can leave and go about their day. Enid turns back to him.
“Tell me next week?”
Carl nods.
Another cigarette is in his hands on his way back home and it’s gone before he walks through the front door, his dad with Judith in his arms.
“Did you go?” Rick asks him first again.
Carl shakes his head. Rick sighs.
“Either you go or you don't, Carl, not that big of a deal.”
“It’s not like that.” Carl tells him.
“Then tell me how it is.”
Enid asked him the same thing, or at least something similar. He’s not sure what pattern is happening but there is one somewhere.
“I told Enid it’s because the walls are haunted.”
“You’re scared of God?” Rick asks him as he hands Judith off to Carl, his little sister reaching for him the minute he walked through the door. He kisses her head. She’s quiet, knowing her dad and brother are still talking.
“I’m scared of the angels.” Carl replies.
Rick is quiet before patting his back, “You sure are something.” He walks off into the kitchen to make breakfast while Carl takes Judith into his bedroom for them to spend some time together before their dad finishes cooking.
It’s Saturday. Carl isn’t at church and neither is Enid. They both instead find themselves in the park on some swings beside each other, looking at families enjoying a summer day out together. It really is summer when Carl can feel his skin burning from the sun and the heat that no one seems to be able to escape.
“You think it’s this hot in Hell?” Carl asks Enid.
She turns to look at him as he kicks his feet to swing slightly back and forth.
“Some people think Hell is cold actually, not hot.” She tells him.
“Okay but in your belief then, whatever it is, is it hot or cold?”
“Hot. ‘Eternal fires’ and whatnot.”
“So, you think it’s this hot?” Carl asks again.
Enid thinks for a second. “Definitely hotter. Again, there’s fires that never go out, add those with the heat it gives off and it gets pretty hot.”
Carl nods as he looks at the families and other people in the park again. There’s a mom with her daughter playing in the grass. He smiles but feels sick. Then, he feels a kick to his shin. He turns to see Enid looking at him again.
“You ever gonna tell me why the walls are haunted? In church that is.” She adds.
Carl starts swinging. “One day, sure.”
“Cool.” Enid starts swinging on her own swing.
They spend the rest of the day together, Carl stays over at the Rhee’s for dinner.
Before he can reach for his fork Maggie and Glenn link hands, then Enid links her own to Glenn and reaches out for Carl’s hand on his right, Maggie on his left. This isn’t something he did when he was a kid; pray before eating. He feels embarrassed but Enid just gives him an understanding smile. Carl reaches for hers and Maggie’s hand before they bow their heads and Maggie starts praying.
“Dear Lord, we thank you for this food, and for these drinks that you’ve given us from this Earth, and we are thankful for Carl who’s joined us tonight. Amen.”
A chorus of ‘Amen’s’ makes its way around the table before the scraping of forks on plates replace words.
Carl doesn’t think about the prayer. It was a simple one, something he shouldn’t be thinking about while Maggie, Glenn and Enid talk about their day, but he is thinking about it. He tunes back in as Enid starts telling her parents of what they did in the park and anything about their day after that.
Enid drives him back home after.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” She asks him before he steps out of the car.
“You will.” Carl answers as he pulls open the door. He’s stopped when he feels Enid grab at his wrist and he looks back at her.
“Inside?”
Carl breaths.
“I hope.”
Enid doesn’t let go yet, she’s looking at him, scrutinizing him.
“Okay.” She says as she lets go of his wrist.
He walks up his steps, takes the door handle and looks back at the car to wave goodbye at Enid. He sees her do the same thing as she drives away and Carl walks inside to find his dad and Judith watching a movie together. He puts himself on Rick’s left, Judith already cuddled up on his right.
“Hey, good day?”
Carl settles on his dads shoulder. “Yeah, it was good.”
The last thought of the events outside of his house is how Enid’s thumb kept brushing his wrist as they prayed.
The next day, on Sunday, he repeats what he’s been doing for the past couple of weeks.
Carl stands outside of the church, in a suit that suffocates him, the sun shining too bright for the morning, and looks up at the bell tower with the cross on the tip of it.
He doesn’t sit on the bench today. He lets people pass him – ignores the looks they give him – and make their way inside. His fingers twitch for a cigarette he always seems to have in his pocket, he won’t allow himself one today.
Carl feels a hand on his shoulder and turns to see Enid in her usual church clothes. Her hair is done up today. He should start doing that.
“Inside?” She asks him the question from yesterday.
Carl gulps and looks back at the cross.
“Okay.”
Enid smiles as she trails her hand down his arm to grab at his hand and drags him behind her. They join Maggie and Glenn inside on their seats in a middle row. The wood floors creak under his weight and, once sat down, the pews are as hard as he remembers them.
Carl sits on the outside with the Rhee’s to his left. His leg is bouncing, he picks at his pants before picking at his nails and tries not to think about how his breathing is becoming heavier or how it seems like being inside is more suffocating than it is outside. It’s all the people he thinks, too many piled into one small, hot, room.
As the last couple people come into the church and sit at their own pews, Carl looks as the priest and two altar boys stand from their chairs, the rest of the people in the church following behind; he gulps.
Before the priest can say anything Carl is out of his pew and bolts out the doors, not caring if he’d slammed them open too loud. He makes his way to the bench, loosening his tie and taking his pack out with his lighter in the process too, lighting a cigarette up the minute he sits down on the bench. He takes a few deep breaths, he can hear birds and trees, can hear how the tip of the cigarette fizzles with every breath in.
Carl leans forward and runs a hand through his hair and groans.
He feels better later as he leans back on the bench and has another cigarette by the time the service is over. Everyones eyes are on him now, whether they’re side glances or full on judgeful stares everyone is looking.
He feels ashamed. He doesn't think he should feel it but here he is; it gets worse when he looks at Enid make her way over to him just like she’d done the weeks before.
“I tried.” Carl says before she can say anything to him first.
Enid’s arms are crossed but he doesn’t think she’s mad or annoyed. They’re just crossed. She nods her head at him.
“That’s okay.” She starts kicking at his extended feet. “Sorry I pushed you.”
Carl laughs, “You think I’m not capable of making my own choices?”
Enid scoffs and laughs. “No, of course not.”
“Then you didn’t push me.” He assures her.
He walks back home smelling of smoke again.
Rick is in the kitchen with Judith sitting at the island counter.
“Good service?” Rick asks.
“I almost went.”
“You almost went?”
Carl nods. “I was inside, sitting beside Enid. Didn’t make it through the priest's first words.”
Rick nods as he pushes some eggs in a pan. “Why go then? You’re obsessed with this I swear.”
Carl, now sat at the island beside his sister, picks at his nails. “Mom used to go.” He mutters. “We all did.”
Rick stops mixing the eggs, Carl can tell he’s thinking.
“We did, didn’t we? Your mom, you know she never wanted to be the black sheep family of this town.” Carl nods remembering how his dad told him they’d married young because they had him young. They had to put up a good image. “I never was a big believer, but, if i got desperate enough, I’d pray.”
Carl knows that too. Judith was born premature and they weren’t sure if she was going to make it. The last piece of Lori would be gone if Judith decided not to pull through. Carl caught his dad muttering to himself with hands clasped a lot during that time.
“Yeah, I know.” Carl replies.
“Do you believe in it?” Rick asks him. “Do you want to?”
Carl thinks about it, about why he’s always going to church without actually attending the services, how he clammed up when Maggie prayed before eating, how the sight of the priest was the last straw for him today.
“Mom believed in it.”
Rick is silent. Judith is looking at him.
“Yeah, she did.”
“I’m trying to do something with it.”
Rick takes some plates out for the three of them and piles on some eggs on each, placing some pieces of toast for them too.
“Whatever you decide to do with it, it won’t be wrong. There’s no right answer.”
Carl smiles at him.
They’re in the forest that surrounds their town, a river flows in front of them as Carl sits on its shore and Enid knee deep in the water. Carl digs in the sand as Enid looks in the river, looking at some fish and tadpoles swim around.
It’s Saturday.
“Why do you believe in it?” Carl asks her after a while of silence between the two of them. No one knows of this place. If they were to die here no one would find them for a long time. Maybe by that time they’d be buried in the ground. Carl thinks it wouldn’t be that bad until he remembers that he’d leave his dad and Judith behind. He disregards the thought.
“When my parents died, life wasn’t exactly the best.” Enid starts with. “Kept going from one home to the other until I landed with Maggie and Glenn. First time we went to church together there was this verse the priest said. ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ I don’t think I had faith before Maggie and Glenn but there was something about it,” she sighs, “the more we went the better I felt about what happened with my parents. I’m not happy with it, but more at peace.” She walks back to shore and sits down beside him. “Why is it hard for you to go in there?”
Carl sighs. “My mom believed in all of it. It’s how she grew up and then my dad and I just joined her. It was familiar I guess. Wanted to feel like that again.”
“Did you ever believe in it when you were younger?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s fine. Even now.” She tells him as she lays her head onto his shoulder. He leans his head onto hers back.
“I think I did believe in it when I was younger,” Carl tells her. “My mom died and it was harder to believe in someone who had a plan for her which was to die.”
Enid says nothing, instead she just digs her head deeper into the crook of his neck.
Carl thinks this might be the last Sunday. It’s the week his mom died. If he can’t do it now, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to do it.
Enid is standing beside him this time having gone ahead of her parents today. She’d calm, patient. She doesn't guide him like last week. Carl is grateful.
“Today the day?” She asks him.
“Maybe.”
They’re both staring at the bell tower with the cross at the tip of it.
“I told you the walls were haunted once.” Carl says. “It’s not because of God, it’s because of the angels. I’m scared of them.”
Enid looks at him. “I am too.”
He smiles as he takes her hand this time. Neither of them are dragging each other inside, they have the time to go at their own pace. They sit at the same pew they’d sat at last week and wait for the rest of the people to join them, getting out of their seats to let Maggie and Glenn through. Maggie smiles at Carl, he smiles back.
Carl’s foot is still tapping, he’s not picking at anything though, his hand still in Enid’s.
They all look as the priest and altar boys come out and the rest of them stand. Carl doesn’t leave this time.
Enid’s hand is still in his.
“I went in today.”
“Did you stay?” Rick asks.
Carl nods. “I did.”
“How was it?”
“Like before.”
They’re at the river again. It’s Saturday and there is no weight of Sunday on Carl’s shoulders.
Enid is skipping rocks, Carl is looking in the sand for some good ones to give her.
“Your first one, how’d you feel?” He asks her.
“Like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” She laughs. “There I am, in a room with a bunch of strangers who can recite these things word for word because they’ve been doing it since birth and then me who’s stumbling over the words to the point where I just stopped and learnt them as I went.” Enid looks back at Carl as he gives her more rocks. “Same or not?”
“Yeah, I thought I was gonna remember everything as a kid but you saw me.” He laughs and so does she.
“I heard you too.”
Carl takes his shoes off and joins Enid in the water, the two of them walking hand in hand for balance, until they’re knee deep. It’s not as cold as Carl thought it would be.
“Thank you.” He tells her as he does just as she had done last week and placed his head onto hers.
“For?”
“Making me less scared of angels.”
“Thanks to you too then.”
They both huff out a laugh as Carl turns to kiss her head. He does it for Judith all the time because his dad does it to him. It doesn’t feel the same though as Enid slightly looks up at him.
“You’re not one to believe in ‘saving yourself for marriage’ right?” Carl asks her.
Enid laughs and scoffs. “I believe in religion, not old weird ideologies Carl.”
“Okay.” He says as they both lean into each other to bring them into a kiss.
Carl doesn’t know if he’ll go back to church tomorrow. He doesn’t know if he’ll stop clamming up at prayers and talks of God, if the next time he wears a tie it will choke him. His dad told him there is no right answer to it all. He does know that there is one right answer right now and it’s this moment with Enid.
The walls don’t seem as haunted anymore, and his life has started again.