Sufficient Grace; A Novel

by Darnell Arnoult

• ISBN13: 9780743284479
• ISBN10: 074328447X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-30
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

One quiet spring day, Gracie Hollaman hears voices in her head that tell her to get in her car and leave her entire life behind -- her home, her husband, her daughter, her very identity. Gracie's subsequent journey releases her genius for painting and eff

Table of Contents

INVITATION	1	(56)
OFFERTORY	57	(28)
PASSION	85	(50)
COMMITMENT	135	(56)
SUFFICIENT GRACE	191	(58)
SECOND OFFERING	249	(32)
BENEDICTION	281	(20)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	301

Excerpts

Chapter One Gracie found the church fans in Martelli's Trash and Treasure on Manchester Boulevard. They stuck up out of a brass spittoon like a clutch of flowers.Take up the fan,a voice whispered. She turned around, but no one was there.Take up the fan,the voice said again, this time a little louder. At first she was uneasy. She listened for a full minute and heard nothing. She touched an edge of one of the dusty cardboard pictures.Take the lot of them,the voice said.We can use them all.She brought the fans home and hid them in the top of the coat closet and waited. She waited for over a month and a half. When the voice spoke again she was relieved.Draw the body of Jesus,the voice said.Draw the body of Jesus,it insisted.Draw it larger than life.The voice has since become a comfort.Gracie stands on a step stool, a broad plastic rectangle of cream-colored Rubbermaid plastic. Her copper-red hair is twirled and knotted at the nape of her neck, the way she always wears it when she is working. She is still a slight woman at middle age, still has elegant limbs, radiant skin, but now her body carries the artful curves that so often come with menopause. What was once hard muscle is now fleshy solidness.In her left hand Gracie holds a Wilcox Funeral Home fan with Jesus printed on it. Jesus wears white and red robes and his hands are extended, as if offering sanctuary. In her right hand Gracie holds a newly sharpened standard yellow number-two pencil with an unused eraser at the top.She stretches her arm as far as she can toward the crown molding and draws the first light strokes of hair. With those first feathery lines she begins what will become a larger-than-life-size Jesus on the bedroom wall, the wall at the foot of the bed. Ed can see it every morning when he wakes up and every night before he pulls the chain to turn out the lamp. Jesus will have to watch over Ed because she won't be there to do it. As she stands on the stool softly striking the pencil lead against the freshly dried white latex paint, Gracie asks Jesus to look after her, too, to give her the gift of art so that she might do Him justice. She will take the fans with her. Leave the big Jesuses for Ed.Ed needs volume. You need portability,says a voice.She sketches Jesus' jaw line, then begins the eyes. Their intensity, the way they first pierced her with their compassion, is hard to translate onto the Sheetrock wall, but then she feels a tremble go through her body, that jellylike shock that happens when you touch something electrical and ungrounded. Gracie jerks slightly to the left, catches her balance with her pencil hand extended. The eyes improve with a few short strokes of the pencil and take on a vision of their own. Gracie knows the unfinished Jesus is watching her.The top and sides of His hair take shape. Gracie draws His beard and His mouth. The upper lip is almost invisible. The rounded bottom lip curls out as if to speak. She listens. Nothing. She draws His nose, His cheekbones, the lobe of each ear. She moves as she draws. A line here, smudge there. High. Low. The image pulses forth with her heartbeat. Locks of His long hair fall to His shoulders and keep her from having to draw the ears in their entirety -- a blessing. Ears are the hardest things to draw next to hands and feet.A breeze blows through the open window and Gracie glances out to see the daffodils in bloom along the driveway. Their heads already bend toward the ground. The bright flowers have burst forth in an unseasonably warm February; now, so close to Easter, they will soon be spent. Dashes of yellow fleck the bare woods and leaf-covered ground up to twenty or so yards from the driveway, then raggedly trail off into a buffer of trees between the house and a small city park. The sky is overcast. The gray light makes the waning daffodils appear translucent. Gracie decides to