At Home in Mitford

by Jan Karon

  He liked that—taken to its limits so its limits can expand. Yes!

  “If it doesn’t get exercised,” she said thoughtfully, “it becomes like a weak muscle that fails us when we need it.”

  He felt himself smiling foolishly, though his question was serious. “Would you agree that we must be willing to thank God for every trial of our faith, no matter how severe, for the greater strength it produces?”

  “I’m perfectly willing to say it, but I’m continually unable to do it.”

  “There’s the rub!”

  When he went to the kitchen to make a second pot of tea, he was astounded to find that it was eleven o’clock. That hardly anyone in Mitford stayed up until eleven o’clock was common knowledge.

  At noon, he walked briskly from the church office to Lord’s Chapel, with Barnabas on his red leash.

  He had a pile of correspondence to tend to and another visit to make to the hospital in the afternoon. That’s why he’d brought a sandwich made from last night’s chicken, which he’d put in the parish hall refrigerator early this morning.

  The sky was darkly overcast, but he hardly noticed the weather. He was thinking of last night’s unexpected caller and the visit that ensued.

  He turned the key in the lock and went in the side door of the old parish hall. Though it was barely large enough for a party of fifty, they often squeezed in seventy-five or more for coffee after the late service.

  Three walls displayed a collection of framed needlepoint that had been worked by parishioners since 1896 and included embellished crosses, a view from the ruined church on the hill (the first Lord’s Chapel), a crown of thorns, and his personal favorite: a mass of roses framing the Scripture from Psalm 68: “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits.”

  The fourth wall contained a series of mullioned windows that looked out to the finest of the Lord’s Chapel gardens. As he passed the windows, he saw the rain begin.

  He opened the refrigerator but didn’t see his lunch bag. “Odd,” he said aloud to Barnabas, “I put it right here with the wine.” With some bewilderment, he noted that the sacramental wine was also missing, a fact that was easy to establish since there was nothing in the refrigerator but two containers of half-and-half, and a jar of Sunday school apple juice.

  “Did I dream we walked over here this morning and left that sandwich?” Barnabas yawned hugely and lay down by the kitchen worktable. “That’s the darndest thing. What in the world . . .”

  Perhaps the Altar Guild had come in and cleaned out the refrigerator. But it was already clean. Feeling stupid, he looked in the broom closet and inspected the contents of the drawers. After all, he had once put a package of butter in the oven while wrestling with the idea of a sermon on greed.

  The lunch bag was nowhere to be found. “Well, then,” he said, irritated. “We’ll give our business to Percy.”

  As he locked the door, he thought he heard the barest whisper of singing, a mere wisp of last Sunday’s anthem. He listened but heard nothing more.

  “Angels!” he said, as they set out in a light autumn rain.

  “I’ve found out all about your neighbor,” Emma announced.

  “Really?”

  “She’s an artist and a writer. Paints watercolors for th’ children’s books she writes. That white cat she has? That’s the star of her Violet books. Violet Comes to Stay, Violet Grows Up, Violet Has Kittens, Violet Goes to England. You name it, that cat has done it.” She paused, hoping for some response, but got none.

  She selected another choice piece of information, as one might poke through the caramels to find a chocolate. “She used to be married to somebody important.”

  “Is that right?”

  “A senator,” she said grandly.

  “Aha.”

  “Her uncle gave ’er that little house. Remember him? The old scrooge!”

  He remembered well enough. He’d tried to be friendly and had even regularly prayed for his unkind neighbor, seeing that he needed it. Nothing he’d done, including the delivery of an apple pie, had softened the old man’s heart toward him. Then, two years ago, his neighbor had died, leaving the little house empty and unkempt.

  “It wasn’t actually the uncle who gave it to her,” said Emma. “It was her uncle’s daughter. Called her up, said she didn’t want it, thought Cynthia should have it. Said Cynthia was the only one her old daddy ever liked.”

  “Um,” he said, looking through his phone messages.

  “Never had any kids. Kind of adopted her husband’s nephew.”

  She waited, having gone nearly to the bottom of her information barrel. “Drives a Mazda!” she said at last.

  “With such vast reportorial skills, you might talk to J.C. Hogan about working at the Muse.”

  “That’s more than you’d ever find out in a hundred years!”

  “You’re right, as usual,” he said, drily. “I think it’s especially fascinating to know what kind of car she drives.”

  Emma pursed her lips. Down deep, she could tell he was thrilled she’d found out all this stuff.

  He finished putting his phone messages in order. “And how did you learn all this, exactly?”

  “I did what anybody would do. I asked her!”

  He queried the sexton when he came by to collect his check. “Russell, did you go in the church yesterday?”

  “Nossir, Father, I didn’t. I was goin’ to heat up some soup in th’ kitchen, but th’ rain looked like it was settin’ in for th’ day, so I went home and fried me some livermush. Dooley come home on th’ bus.”

  “The Altar Guild wasn’t in there, either. It’s a mystery, all right.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Yesterday morning, I put a sandwich in the refrigerator, and when I went to look for it, it was gone, along with a bottle of sacramental wine.”

  Russell scratched his head. “I was in th’ churchyard ’til around noon or so, when I seen you leave out to Main Street. I didn’t lay eyes on another soul.”

  The rector shook his head. “Ah, well! Do you think you can get to those broken flagstones before winter?”

  “I’m workin’ on it, Father,” he said, as the phone rang.

  “Father,” said Olivia Davenport, “Pearly McGee just died.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  As he hung up the phone, it rang again.

  Marge Owen had delivered a healthy baby girl. Seven pounds, eight ounces. Rebecca Jane!

  Sorrow and joy, he thought, so inextricably entwined that he could scarcely tell where one left off and the other began.

  He had taken particular pains about dressing for the art show at the Oxford. For one thing, he felt it would demonstrate respect for Uncle Billy. Here he was, dressed in his second new jacket purchase of the year, a circumstance he found just short of miraculous. If there had ever been a year in which he’d bought two jackets, he couldn’t remember it.

  Of course, there was no way he could have resisted this particular jacket. Not only was it a color that Emma told him would be flattering, but it was comfortable, fit perfectly, would go with everything, and was on sale. So, what was he to do?

  “English Copper!” the Collar Button owner said, grandly describing the color. “It will look stunning with your black clericals.”

  Stunning? He wasn’t at all certain that this was how he wanted to look.

  The Oxford was wearing its signature fragrance of floor wax, lemon oil, old wood, and worn leather. Andrew had even gone to some pains to buy flowers at Mitford Blossoms and arrange them himself in an ancient silver wine bucket, which he placed on a hunt table newly arrived from Cumbria.

  Fortunately, there was one thing a host could count on in Mitford. Villagers arrived early or on time, and everyone, to a person, left at a decent hour.

  When he appeared at five minutes after the specified four o’clock, the tea table was already surrounded.

  He greeted Esther Cunningham, who was enjoying a large slice
of Brie, and shook hands with her husband, Ray. Then, as he turned to look at the drawings, he observed quite another show. It was Miss Rose Watson, dressed to the tee in a green taffeta evening gown, a moth-eaten plaid velvet cummerbund, elbow-length satin gloves, a World War II officer’s cape, and saddle oxfords without laces.

  She held several tea sandwiches in one gloved hand, while graciously extending the other. “How do you do,” she said to the rector, who no longer felt conspicuous in his new jacket, much less overdressed.

  The beautifully framed drawings hung in a long, chronological line along the left wall, beginning with Uncle Billy’s rendering of three deer in a copse of spruce, drinking from the basin of a waterfall. Seeing them framed and hanging was unexpectedly impressive.

  “Eloquent, aren’t they?”

  Cynthia Coppersmith was standing by his side, dressed in a sweater and skirt the color of periwinkles, and holding a cracker on a napkin.

  “Indeed!” he said. “I knew they were well done, but this, well this is . . .”

  “Extraordinary!” she said helpfully.

  “Emma tells me you’re an artist and writer.”

  “I earn part of my way with a brush, yes. But I don’t call myself a true artist. I can’t draw people, you see. I’m best at animals, and especially cats.”

  Someone slapped him on the back so hard, he nearly went reeling into a drawing of a quail on her nest.

  “I see you’re learnin’ to love your neighbor as yourself!” said Harry Nelson. “This is the last I’ll be seein’ of you. Shirley and I have the car packed, and we’re headed out behind the movin’ van.”

  “Don’t take any wooden Vermeers,” said Mule Skinner, who had joined the group.

  Uncle Billy was seated in a Chippendale wing chair, balancing a plate of cheese and grapes on his lap, with a paper napkin stuck into his shirt collar.

  J.C. Hogan was writing in a notebook with his left hand and mopping his forehead with his right. “When did you say you started drawin’?”

  “Oh, when I was about ten or twelve, m’ uncle was a railroad man and ever’ time he come through the valley, he’d blow th’ whistle startin’ up around Elk Grove, and by th’ time he got over t’ Isinglass, don’t you know, I was standin’ by the track, and he’d th’ow somethin’ out t’ me.

  “Sometimes, it was a sack of licorice candy, or horehound, and one time it was a little ol’ pack of pencils, real wide pencils with a soft lead, don’t you know. My daddy said that was a foolish thing to give a boy who couldn’t write, so I took to drawin’.”

  “Did you ever use ink?” J.C. asked.

  “Well, sir, I used it some, but I eat up a jar of pickle relish Rose said was hers, and she burned th’ whole stack of m’ ink pictures.”

  “No!” exclaimed Winnie Ivey, nearly moved to tears.

  “I’d a clapped ’er upside th’ head,” said Percy Mosely, with feeling.

  Miss Rose rustled by in her taffeta gown. “Don’t be tellin’ that ol’ tacky story, Bill Watson! I’ve heard it a hundred times, and it’s a lie.”

  “No, it ain’t,” said Uncle Billy, grinning.

  “It most certainly is. It was not pickle relish. It was chow chow.” As she turned on her heel and walked away, the rector couldn’t help but notice the Ritz cracker that fell out of her cummerbund and rolled under a chair.

  “I hear you’ve quit drawin’,” said J.C. “Why’s that?”

  “Arthur,” said Uncle Billy.

  “Arthur who?”

  “Arthur-itis. But that ain’t hurt my joke tellin’ any. Let me give y’ one t’ go in th’ paper.”

  “We don’t print jokes in the Muse,” J.C. snapped.

  “If that ain’t a lie!” said Percy Mosely, who was thoroughly dissatisfied with a recent editorial.

  At the food table, he visited with Rodney Underwood, who was Mitford’s young new police chief and a deacon at First Baptist.

  “My granddaddy and my daddy both were police chiefs in this town. An’ bad as I always wanted to work at th’ post office, I couldn’t do it. No way. After four years of bein’ a deputy over in Wesley, I give up an’ let th’ town council hog-tie me.”

  “Well, I imagine it’s a good life. I hardly ever see any crime reported in the Muse.”

  “It’s around, though, don’t kid yourself. You don’t know what goes on behind these rose arbors . . .”

  No, indeed, he thought, moving away. And I don’t want to know, either.

  “Hello again, Father,” said Cynthia, holding what appeared to be the same cracker on the same napkin. “I’ve been meaning to say you look stunning in that copper-colored jacket.”

  He felt the color rise to his face. Stunning! He knew he should have bought the navy blue.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Andrew Gregory sat on one of the Queen Anne dining chairs that someone had placed in a neat circle around Uncle Billy.

  “A smashing success!” said the rector. “Undeniably! How many have we sold?”

  Andrew’s pleasure was visible. “Twenty-seven!”

  He saw Hoppy Harper come through the door with Olivia Davenport. There was a flush in her cheeks, and her violet eyes sparkled. From what he could see, Hoppy looked more rested than he’d looked in months. Green jelly beans! he thought. That’ll do it every time.

  “Well, I must be off,” said Andrew. “Miss Rose and the mayor have eaten all the Brie, and I have to dash to The Local and replace it with cheddar!”

  Cynthia Coppersmith sat down where Andrew had gotten up. “This is my first social occasion in the village. Except, of course, for visits to the rectory.”

  He could not think of one word to say.

  “Violet ran away today,” Cynthia said matter-of-factly.

  “She did?”

  “But she came back.”

  “Good! I hear you write and illustrate books about your cat.”

  “Yes. Violet Comes to Stay, Violet Goes to the Country . . . oh, and Violet Has Kittens, of course. To name only a few!”

  “What a full life! How old is Violet, anyway?”

  “Just two.”

  “Two! And she’s done all that?”

  “Well, you see, this is Violet Number Three. I have to keep replacing my Violets. The original Violet was seven when I got her, and I painted her for two years before she died of a liver infection.

  “Then there was a very haughty Violet, which I found through an ad. Oh, she was lovely to look at, but unaccountably demanding. There were three books with that Violet, before she took off with a yellow tom.”

  “Aha.”

  “I was sent scurrying, as you can imagine. A contract for a seventh book, and no model!”

  “Couldn’t you use a cat of another color, and just, ah, paint it white in your illustrations?”

  “No, no. I really must have a Violet to do the job. And not every white cat is one, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, we were all looking for another Violet, and the newspaper got wind of it and the first thing you know, fifty-seven white cats turned up.”

  He had a vision of Barnabas set free in the midst of fifty-seven white cats.

  “Then, the eighth Violet story won a book award—the Davant Medal. It’s the most coveted award in children’s literature, and the whole thing absolutely took my breath away! Suddenly, all the books started selling like . . .”

  “Pancakes?” he asked. Blast! He’d meant to say hotcakes.

  “Yes! And now I have my own true home after years of apartments, and a bit of money, too. It’s a miracle!” she said in the earnest way that made her eyes seem bluer still. “But I must admit I’m weary of Violet books. Perhaps next time, I’ll do something with . . . oh, maybe with moles!”

  His worst enemy! Why, every blessed spring in Mitford, a man could step into a hole up to his knee. If there were any more detestable creatures in the animal kingdom, he could not think what they might be.

  “If it’
s moles you’re after, you can find all you’ll ever want right next door. In my lawn.”

  “You’re fun when you laugh,” she said, smiling frankly.

  “Thank you. I’ll have to laugh more often.”

  “You’ve been so kind to me, I was hoping you might be able to come for dinner next week. I think I’ll be settled by then.”

  He stood up. “Well . . .”

  “Good!” she said. “I’ll let you know more.”

  Andrew Gregory approached, buttoning the cashmere jacket across his trim midsection and looking even more tanned and vigorous than he had an hour ago.

  “Twenty-nine!” he said expansively to Father Tim, and then turned to Cynthia. “If you’re ready, I’d like you to see the books Miss Potter is said to have made notes in.”

  As they walked away, the rector suddenly felt short, pale, overweight, and oddly suspicious that his jacket contained more polyester than wool.

  “Why haven’t you told me about this woman?” Hoppy wanted to know, as they stood outside Andrew’s rear office and waited for the restroom.

  “What was there to tell?”

  “That she’s lovely, new in town, goes to Lord’s Chapel, I don’t know. I’m walking down the hall last week, and I see this angel sitting by Pearly’s bed, reading from the Psalms. I’ll never forget it. ‘Thou art my hiding place and my shield. I hope in thy word,’ she said. It struck me to the very marrow.”

  And no wonder, thought the rector, whose own marrow had been struck by the depth of her feeling.

  “I’ve been away from church so long . . . so long away from . . . believing.” Hoppy leaned against the wall, avoiding the rector’s gaze. “I’ve been very angry with God.”

  “I understand.”

  “He operated without anesthetic.”

  He looked at the man who had lost his wife of sixteen years, and saw the sure mark that bitterness and overwork had left. Yet, something tonight was easier in him.

  Percy Mosely came out of the restroom. “You better watch it,” he said, “there’s a real loud odor in that pink soap.”

  He insisted that Hoppy go ahead of him and wandered into Andrew’s comfortably untidy office. He sat in a wingback chair next to Andrew’s desk and looked at the collection of paintings on the walls, at the jumble of books and magazines spilling from baskets and shelves. He idly turned his attention to a fragment of newspaper, protruding from beneath a leather blotter on the desk.