“It’s dark in here even with the door open,” Sylvie said. “If we were to hold a service now we’d have to use oil lamps, or candles.”
“This wasn’t meant to be anything but another storage room. And a windbreak.”
“What do you think we should do?”
He didn’t know, but he felt as though he suddenly did care, if only because she was here, away from everyone else, within his reach.
She said, still holding her brush, “How much paint do you have?”
“There’s plenty. But it’s all that same color.”
She looked about for a moment, then took some broad swipes at the wall, down and then up. She stepped back. “You know, I think that will be fine.”
“It’s going to look like a concrete box in here.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “We’ll see. But do you mind? It’s a lot more work for you. I can help, if you like. In fact I should, since I’m putting you up to it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You can do what you want.”
“Then I’ll help,” she said brightly. They were standing near where the altar would be. Painted or not, this would be like no other house of God he’d ever seen. Above them there was no ceiling, and the bare rafters were strung with cobwebs and pocked by old hornet’s nests. It was quite warm inside and though they were both marked with the pungent oil paint he could still glean faint notes of her, her sweet sweat, the soft, palmy oil of her hair. He could smell himself, too, and it was not good, this dried animal reek, this lower-order tone, but she didn’t seem to mind being this close to him. He had the strange compulsion of wanting to pick her up, to see her high in the cathedral; maybe he was a Catholic after all. But the little light there was flickered and the lanky silhouette of Reverend Tanner appeared in the frame of the main doorway.
“There you are,” Tanner pronounced, though not quite sounding as if he was surprised. “I saw the benches out by the storeroom.”
“Don’t they look good to you?” Sylvie asked.
“Indeed, they do,” Tanner said. He cuffed her waist and leaned to kiss her but she warded him off by flaring her brush, her paintsplotched hands.
“We’ve decided we’ll be painting in here, too.”
“Is that right?” he answered her, though he was looking at Hector.
“Yes,” she said. “We think the same color as the benches.”
“Well, I’m sure that will be fine,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll lend a hand as well.”
“Yes,” Sylvie added enthusiastically. “We can all work together.”
“Listen,” Hector said. “I really don’t need any help.”
“It’s a lot more than painting a few benches,” Tanner said.
“It’s still not a big job.”
“Don’t be silly,” Sylvie said. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”
“I’m not being silly,” he told her, with an edge that seemed to deflate her. “It’s not a big job, and if you want me to do it, I will. Look, I better get a second coat on those now.” He held out his hand to Sylvie and she handed him the brush. Outside, the benches were dry and he pried open a fresh can of paint and stirred it and began applying a second coat, not looking up. He didn’t see when the Tanners left the vestibule. It bothered him that her enthusiasm didn’t seem to wane when her husband appeared. But who was he, to care about such a thing? He was being a child. As he painted he was surprised at how tense his hands were, not realizing until it was too late how fiercely he was pushing the brush against the surface, enough so that he marred the first coat beneath. He had ruined all of the first pew, and a good part of the second, before painting the others properly. He had to wait until the first two were completely dried before stripping them down and starting all over again.
FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS he tried to steer clear of her. It was easy to avoid Tanner, who was busy giving sermons and teaching history and math and regularly leaving on day trips to tour and inspect other orphanages. Sylvie was busy herself, teaching English and sewing and sometimes helping the aunties with the cooking. She worked along with the children in the large gardens of the orphanage, harvesting the last of the summer peppers and tomatoes and preparing the plots for lettuces and cabbage. But she would appear in the most casual of manners, coming around to where he was working bearing a glass of iced barley tea or skillet corn bread, invite him to come down from the searing rooftop and try what she’d made. He hadn’t yet started painting the chapel. Or at dusk, if he had forgotten because of working straight since dawn, she might knock on his door with a supper tray. She never came to him alone, for June accompanied her now almost everywhere. He’d hardly meet Sylvie’s eyes and nod and take the tray inside. She’d go away with the girl’s hand in her own, arms swinging easefully as if they were sisters.
Sylvie had originally taken her up because June could not play with the other children without a resulting argument or fight, her counterpart invariably ending up the more injured party. June was moody and aggressive and when she wished could be unrelentingly cruel, as harsh to the youngest ones as she was to those nearer her age. Her main chore at the orphanage was to help the aunties with the laundry, and she once made a boy who chronically wet himself take off his underpants after an accident and wear them on his head. She would often bully other girls when she found them too girlish or weak, especially when it came to standing up to the boys. Hector himself had broken up several of her fights-the last one found her crouched in the middle of a gang of the oldest boys, who were taking turns punching and kicking her, shouting at her to go away, that she was ruining the orphanage. She was trouble enough that Reverend Hong had quietly attempted to place her in another orphanage, or in a job-training program. And yet because he knew there was only misery and degradation in store for most family-less girls, he had at last decided he must try to keep her on even after she turned sixteen, to delay her entry back into the world for as long as possible.
But after Sylvie took an interest in her, she visibly softened; before, she was always quiet and kept to herself when not fighting, but now she sometimes helped the smaller girls carry the clean folded laundry back to the dormitories, or worked extra hours in the garden, and was particularly helpful in translating for Sylvie and the students during English classes, where she was easily the best speaker. Soon she was working a couple of hours each day in the Tanners’ quarters, sweeping and dusting and making the beds. There was always some group of children naturally clinging about Sylvie, but in the off-hours, well after supper or very early in the morning, when only Hector might catch sight of them, it was always just June who was with her, the two of them sitting on the stoop gently brushing each other’s hair, or else coolly whispering to each other like a pair of thieves.
One afternoon he saw Sylvie reading a book while he was clearing the underbrush as preparation to trench the new sewage pipe. She sat on a large rock that overlooked the lowland where he would install the septic piping and field. June was not with her. Reverend Tanner and the aunties had taken most all of the children, including June, on a trip to a waterfall and swimming hole. They had been gone all morning. When Sylvie saw him pause in his work she quickly waved to him, but then returned to her reading. He had no pretext for doing so and didn’t know what he would say, but he dropped the machete and hiked up to her. When he said hello she stood up and simply replied, “Hello there,” and to his relief didn’t ask what he wanted. She simply shut her book without marking the page and put it down on the rock. It was a slim blue volume that he’d seen her often reading and not always sequentially, as though she had read it many times over and could pick it up anywhere.