arlis & ivy-a short story by john dufresne

When my sister died, I moved the Amana freezer in from the porch and set it in a corner of the kitchen where it belonged. And when I did, the face of Jesus disappeared right off it. I taped up a handy shopping reminder from Saterfiel's Sack N Save on the freezer door-you just put a peg beside bread or milk or Little Debbies or whatever you need. Elvie and I had been together all sixty-six years of my life, all of it in this, our daddy's house. When people die, you begin to notice the space they had taken up with their bodies and voices, with their scent, with the air they displaced with their motion. I'm not proud of what I done, but I could not tolerate solitude, and so I went to the True Vine Powerhouse Church of the Saved but Struggling, not to find Jesus-He has a way of finding me-but to find a widow with the same itch. We married, Ivy and me. I did not impose myself on Ivy in a husbandly way. I started out shy. I ain't much to look on. But I seen worse. Neither of us was very comfortable at first, but we were curious enough and sad enough to get on with it. Ivy felt out of place here, and I told her she ought to make the place hers and she did-moved the freezer out to the porch, and didn't Jesus come back. Looked like he'd aged a bit, but not so much as me. He seemed happy to be back, Ivy said. I got to tell the world. I said, I wish you wouldn't. She said, Arlis, it's a miracle. I said there's miracles everywhere we look, in the bark of trees, in the linoleum, in the bees at their hive. It's a miracle how you run your hand up my arm.

-from Johnny Too Bad