All Saints by K.D. Miller Page B

might call to suggest an early film. In each case, just as she was reaching for the phone, she remembered them telling her about a visit from their grandchildren that weekend, or a trip to the cottage.
    She felt the start of an old melancholy—one that afflicts her most often in the summer. She dreads it more than the humidity touching her everywhere like small sticky hands, more than the odour coming from her discarded clothing at the end of the day despite its having been freshly laundered and herself freshly bathed that morning. It can come over her at any time. She will be making up a grocery list. Writing the word milk on a slip of paper. All at once she will be convinced that when she has bought the milk and brought the milk home and poured the last of the milk over her cereal in the morning or into her tea in the evening, there will be nothing. Nothing for her to do. No means of passing the time. She breathes deeply during such moments and tells herself sternly, It will be all right, Julia! It will be all right.
    There was a moment, toward the end of her youth, when she realized that none of the expected things were going to happen to her. She had had a fragile, morning glory prettiness, but it had closed in on itself before anyone noticed. Now, no one was going to look up and suddenly see her. Find her remarkable. Think twice about her. Her mind had recoiled from the long, shapeless span she imagined her life might become.
    But that had not happened. She had not allowed it to happen. She taught herself to give shape to time, to let not a moment go by without marking it for some purpose and eking from it some use. It was her only talent. She became a woman who volunteers, who lends support, who is always there. She adopted a slogan— I did not take unto me a husband. She liked to think the phrase take unto me gave her an ironic edge, and did not made her solitary state look like a choice. Almost a religious vocation.
    Religion. Church. Yes. That was how she would make the time pass this evening. She pulled on fresh stockings, stepped into her better shoes, and, though she had attended matins that morning, went back to All Saints for evensong.
    The priest’s face glowed like candle wax in the dim chancel light. He skipped the homily and went straight to the Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace , as if afraid he might melt under his robes if he didn’t speed things up. Still, Julia managed to derive some satisfaction from the service. She is fond of evensong, largely because modern liturgists have yet to tamper with it. In recent years, she has been disturbed by mention of sex and the Internet creeping into church services. She prefers her religion distant and monumental, like the language of The Book of Common Prayer . We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.
    As a young woman, Julia might have listed the things she had either done or neglected to do, thereby compromising her spiritual health. She might have questioned whether the entreaties, O God make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us were indeed cries from her heart, the prescribed kneeling a sincere gesture of humility, the getting to her feet at the mention of the Trinity a true show of respect. She may even have entertained some doubts as to the very existence of the Trinity, of a God who hears and answers prayer, of much that she continues to sing and chant and murmur in the church she has attended all her life. She never voiced those doubts and barely remembers them now. What she has come to believe in is the singing and the chanting and the murmuring. Religion itself. Its habits and rituals. Habits and rituals are what give shape and structure to the otherwise characterless day. What she fears, as others might fear God, is the immense shapelessness of time. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall