The Church Ladies

by Lisa Samson

  Now that sure was a pretty sight.

  I waved a hand. “Then you just leave everything to me, Miss Bercie.”

  “Now, I usually take the bread out to thaw during Sunday school, then I go down just before the sermon’s over and put it in the plate, and then take it up through the side door near the organ during the prayer at the end of the message.”

  “Really? I never noticed you doing that!”

  Bercie winked. “You must actually keep your eyes closed during prayer.”

  “It’s one of the few moments of peace and quiet I get all week!”

  “That’s motherhood for you. And it gears you up for all the greetings afterwards, too, I’ll bet.”

  “That, too.”

  “You sure you don’t mind doing this?”

  “Not at all; you just have a good time with Elder Barnhouse.”

  Then Bercie scooted off with a thanks and a wave, and she rejoined a group of native Mount Oakers, the tennis crowd at the local country club. I sighed, remembering those days and how easy life had been. What Jesus said about the broad gate and the narrow gate? Well, it must be so.

  Chris floated around the grounds with a tea pitcher and a genuine smile. The perfect pastor’s wife. Really. Not just an act. She loved this life so much.

  I heard the steeple clock at St. Edmund’s Episcopal chime eight times. Time to go. Angus’s new “Only Mommy can put me to bed” phase drove Duncan crazy. I’d be nice so he wouldn’t have to go through another difficult bedtime.

  As I left, I pulled Jason Harkens aside. “Now don’t you let anything happen to my favorite cousin, you hear?”

  He scratched his blond hair, the bulk of it pulled back into a short ponytail. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Fraser.”

  “Seriously, bud. I was in a sorority. Try to keep him from too much drinking. You know how it is.”

  “I do. Don’t worry; I’ll watch him like a hawk.”

  “And don’t you dare tell him I had this conversation with you.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry about that either. I’ve never seen Josh drink, so I don’t think you have much to worry about, and I’m not a drinker either. Can’t hold it well at all. Not worth it.”

  “But you’re a big guy.”

  He shrugged. “That’s the way it is. And to be honest I’m not at all sorry about it. When the other guys are passed out, I’m talking to the ladies and showing them how a gentleman acts.”

  “The coherent ones, anyway.”

  “The self-respecting kind, I would say.”

  Smart kid. Now if he was for real and not being an Eddie Haskell, well, only time would tell for sure.

  When I climbed in bed that night I asked Duncan about it. “Do you think that’s what’s wrong with kids today? That they’re not self-respecting?”

  “Oh, sure. Remember when we were teenagers and everything was about freedom of expression, sexuality, and everything else?”

  “Uh-huh.” I began my nightly ritual of cracking my knuckles.

  “Well, now they have so much freedom to say yes that they don’t know that no is really an option anymore.”

  “You right-wing freak.”

  He kissed me softly on the cheek. “That’s freakazoid, thank you very much. Have to keep up with the times, you know, if you want to be effective in the ministry.”

  “Well, goodnight, Pastor Freakazoid.”

  “Goodnight, Mrs. Freakazoid.”

  The darkness thickened with sooncoming sleep, and I laid a hand on his arm.

  “What is it, sweetie?” he asked.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “I actually said the words ‘what’s wrong with kids these days?’ ”

  He chuckled. “You old thing you.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “Not if you’re right.”

  I kissed him on the cheek.

  “We’re doing all right, Poppy, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”

  I sat cross-legged on the floor by the carving of the sparrows, and I drew an outline of the birds, capturing their expressions perfectly on the block of watercolor paper I’d bought just for the drawing because I realized I had to place my own hands around this. I had to create this for myself at my own easel, with my own tools, so that with each stroke I might yearn for what I would never have again, what I never, in truth, possessed at all. For Duncan would have never even thought to carve a pair of sparrows even if he’d had the wherewithal to do it. So I painted the birds, my heart crying silently out to my husband, knowing that even now, even with so much fantasy and emotion invested, Duncan could really save me if he wanted to. But it had to be something he did on his own, not of my own machination, or it wouldn’t mean a thing.

  Seven

  I decided the three-mile walk to Chris’s house would be a morally responsible decision. Better than getting into that van with a cracked dashboard, cracked vinyl upholstery, and cracked inside walls. The whole thing reminded me of a suspicious egg one is not sure whether or not to replace before moving on to the yogurt section at the grocery store, the kind of egg with the spidery fissures shadowed beneath the main shell that might spell out e. coli. Better to walk and get some exercise than be mad at Duncan the entire way over.

  I could stop by Java Jane’s on my way back home for my morning cup of coffee, good to the last eavesdrop. That settled the matter. Maybe more episodes of Green-Akers had been scheduled.

  The 4 A.M. misty morning possessed that close smell of a barely decaying summer. A few leaves had started to yellow and corkscrew down, pasted onto the wet black roadway Honking Vs began arrowing farther south now. The air breathed differently, too. I proclaimed it autumn because September had come.

  One less autumn after this one’s over.

  I didn’t take much notice of the lack of activity around Lake Coventry this morning. The time had arrived to think about mortality. Again. And I wondered why I had been cursed with a very loud life-clock ticking inside. All right, so I’m forty-five now, which means if I double that it makes ninety. Since there’s longevity on my side of the family, I just might make it to that age, which means I still have as many autumns left as I’ve already lived.

  Next year the count would be up to ninety-two. I hate the fact that for every one year you live, the mortality scale ups you by two. Death looming, plans need to be made and shoved aside.

  In autumn I lean toward cremation. In fact, in most seasons I want to be cremated. Ashes scattered into the Chesapeake Bay, and that would be that. Some people hate the fact that after a couple of generations we are remembered no more. I take a great deal of comfort from it.

  I navigated the dark roads. A few lamplights cast halos, and when I pulled my glasses away from my field of vision down onto the lower portion of my nose, they looked like small, smoky eclipses lining the street. Too early for contacts this morning. An especially heavy patch of fog blanketed the Mount Oak town square as I hurried toward it. I replayed my favorite memories of the boy I was helping to send off to college. I love Josh almost as much as I love Robbie. I feel that turgid blood tie between us, that bond of countless family gatherings, lots of movies viewed together, and shared glasses of warm soda in plastic cups.

  Joshua Reynolds Knight. We called him Reynolds Wrap for the first month of his life because he liked to be cocooned tightly in his receiving blanket. Then we switched to Wrappy until he turned one, at which time Gary forced us to go with just Josh. “Just Josh” he called himself until he reached three.

  And now Johns Hopkins University waited for him, back in Baltimore, back near Charles Village and Roland Park and all those apartment buildings like the ones into which my folks had eventually retired.

  I thought of the way Josh worshiped Robbie for years and closed my eyes briefly against the memory of Robbie spurning him when he turned twelve and Josh was only ten. Before then, the two boys had played together all the time. But Josh was small and had to
wait for puberty longer than most kids. Robbie had practically been born with a deep voice, started shaving by thirteen, in fact. Josh had been an innocent. Still was in many ways. I felt my heart fold painfully around the recollection of the day Robbie walked away from a teary-eyed Josh, who couldn’t understand why Robbie didn’t want to play G.I. Joes with him anymore. Sure, even Josh himself had been too old to play with dolls, but Robbie didn’t have to call him a stupid baby.

  Of course, Chris forgave Robbie when I made him go back and apologize, and she never blamed anybody for the incident and never brought it up again. In fact, Chris probably forgot all about it. But I never did. And at that moment, as I passed the churches of Mount Oak, their contentious signs and banners shrouded in the dark morning fog, I felt glad Josh was going to be the doctor. Let him show Robbie up for once.

  Gary slammed the hatchback of the station wagon as I walked up the driveway of the small stone rancher. A Softball jersey hung from a hanger hooked over his fingers.

  “Gary!” My loud voice echoed in the still of morning.

  He turned and I waved. Gary’s Irishness, inherited from his father, the relative I don’t share, never wanes in its overall impact: that red hair, those freckles, those short, yet powerful soccer player legs. The only thing that stands between him and a perfect impersonation of the Lucky Charms guy is the accent. Strictly Baltimore. “Heya, Popp!”

  “Hey, Gare. You going to play softball up there today?”

  “You know me, hon. Can’t stand a warm day without pitching at least one game.” He snapped the handle of the hanger onto the hook inside the back passenger side door. “Actually, I’ve got one final game this evening after we get back. There won’t be time to get back here to change.”

  Church league stuff. “The finals?”

  “Yeah. We’re gonna cream those Pentecostals.”

  “I see the boys of summer in their ruin.” Thank you, Dylan Thomas. I don’t know why the churches don’t get together and build a sandlot and thereby completely resurrect the feeling for which they are searching.

  Thankfully, Chris emerged from the house. “Nothing like a little friendly competition,” she said beneath a Kleenex, blowing away her morning allergies. She set a bag of snacks on the front seat.

  I reached in and grabbed a handful of corn pops.

  Gary remained cheerful. “Be thankful that it gets us outta you guys’ hair for three hours a week.”

  I followed Chris back into the house. “There is that.”

  “You said it.” Chris walked back to the kitchen. “I’ve got coffee. It’s not Java Jane’s, but it’s got caffeine.”

  “Lead the way, lady.”

  The kitchen was a mess. Chris’s kitchen is always a mess. It is so famous for its messiness that whenever the Fraser kitchen gets out of hand we call it a “Knight Kitchen.” The sink burgeoned with dirty dishes; the counters buckled beneath pots, muffin tins, and thirteen-by-nine-inch baking pans begging for a bath. Piles of mail, packages of napkins, rotting bananas, a huge crate of zucchini and tomatoes, which I knew would get thrown out eventually, hid the sparkly sixties countertop. Open drawers grinned with an underbite; the dishwasher was clean but unemptied. And talk about crumbs!

  So much for Java Jane’s, I decided, pouring a cup of coffee. I knew I wouldn’t step foot on the road back home until I had cleaned my friend’s kitchen. No one should have to come home to this after taking their only son off to college. I started picking up items that could go directly into the trash can. Besides, Gary would appreciate it, too, and I owe him a lot. He’d always been there for me when we were growing up as some sort of payment since he’d lucked out and got Lucy Palmer as a mother and not Fidge Palmer. Lucy was the cool one. The older one. The one who let us have picnics up on her king-sized bed while we watched Hogan’s Heroes.

  “Don’t even think about it, Aunt Popp.”

  Up from his room in the little rancher’s basement stood the child we literally prayed into existence. I viewed him afresh. Oh, man! Who had set our clocks years ahead of where they should have been? Who had taken this small, redheaded boy and stretched him to five foot eight? Who had snatched the G.I. Joe doll out of his hands, and where had that boomerang he had been trying to learn to throw for years suddenly gone? And those big feet! Where did they come from? “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Josh.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re going to stay behind and clean the kitchen. The question is”—he pulled me into a gentle embrace—“why couldn’t you have done it two days ago so my last days at home would have been less cluttered?”

  I hugged him to me hard. “You ready?” I pulled away, patting his shoulders.

  “Ready for anything, I think. Mom’s worried, though.”

  Chris stepped into the kitchen, arms full of towels with the tags still on. “I’m worried! So what? You know what that kind of life is like, Popp. Am I being paranoid?”

  I held up my hands. “You sure you want me to answer, blood being thicker than water and all?”

  “Okay, just forget I said anything then.”

  Josh put an arm around his mother. They stood eye to eye. He looked so much like his dad it threw me back to the past, remembering how proud Gary had been the day this guy arrived via the miracles of reproductive medicine. It looked like Gary standing next to his wife, a Gary that had day-tripped to the fountain of youth and all Chris got was a stupid T-shirt.

  “I’ll be fine, Mom. You’ll be glad to be rid of me!”

  Chris turned him around toward the door. “Get out of this house and get on your way.”

  We walked to the car, the air inside the vehicle swarming with Gary’s muttered complaints about all of his son’s paraphernalia. “How much stuff does one kid need anyway?” His grumblings, a time honored tradition of fathers with college-bound children everywhere, reminded me of my own father when I left home, a, well as Duncan when we all bid adieu to Paisley with a guilty sigh of relief.

  “What kind of doctor do you want to be anyway, Josh?”

  “A gerontologist,” he said with a wide grin. “That way I can take care of you right away, Aunt Popp.”

  Chris said from her seat in the car, “He’s got plenty of time to decide.”

  I kissed Josh good-bye, hugging him again. “Love you, Reynolds Wrap,” I whispered.

  “I love you, too, Aunt Popp.” He kissed my cheek, got in the station wagon, and shut the door as Gary started the engine.

  All three of them waved as Gary backed out onto the street.

  The window rolled down, and the college-bound boy stuck out his face. “And it’s just Josh!”

  I waved them out of sight.

  And the black drive stood empty, the moist street lay still, and the clouded sky had begun to thin. A nice little family was taking their only child off to college.

  I waved again to no one, forced back the tears I felt gathering inside of me, and shuffled inside to clean up the kitchen. Clean up the mess, Poppy. Just clean up the mess and go home.

  Eight

  Normalcy returned as autumn spread its warm rainbow across the broadleaf trees. And even as the foliage raged then died, the programs at Highland renewed themselves with a springtime vigor. Ladies Bible study one morning a week. Workplace Women every Thursday night. Duncan resumed the men’s prayer breakfast at Bill D’s restaurant on Tuesday mornings at seven. We’d even experienced an influx of families with children which called for the planning of Harvest Night at the end of October. Thanksgiving brought Josh home … yes … and our two families celebrated together with Gary and Duncan doing the turkey breasts on the grill. Chrissy and I stayed inside and made oyster dressing, sweet potato casserole, and that soupy, green bean casserole Gary insisted on having.

  December saw the annual church bazaar and pancake breakfast, the culminations of four Saturdays of making crafts. And then we decorated the sanctuary for Christmas. Now, I have to admit, Highland Kirk knows how to decorate. Williamsburg has nothing on these ladi
es. Garlands, swags, and wreaths filled the sanctuary with the smell of greens and citrus fruits. Real candles burned at the Christmas Eve service. Afterwards, Josh joined the Frasers for our yearly ritual beginning with sliding on a new pair of pajamas and congregating around the tree to open one-gift.

  Christmas Eve and midnight had just chimed its way to December 25. But it still felt like Christmas Eve, stars crisply silver in an ink blue sky and air so thin and clear it almost hurt to breathe. Walking home from the ten o’clock service, I’d bundled Angus inside of my coat. We kept each other warm and hummed “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

  “A silent star goes by.”

  Isn’t that one of the loveliest phrases ever written? I love the variety of God: heavenly hosts scaring shepherds, a silent star shining on the babe, swaddling clothes, kings in purple on a journey. Finery made more so by nearby rudeness. Rudeness made breathlessly simple by nearby finery. It’s easy to think of Jesus as the babe of Christmas.

  What does He look like now? How does that hair as white as wool really appear from His seat at the right side of the Father? When I’m sad, I think of the shepherd Jesus. But when I’m angry at injustice and cruelty, I remember the way Jesus is now.

  Even so, come quickly. Make this the best Christmas ever, Lord.

  Wait. Find Paisley first, okay?

  “Oh, man, Aunt Popp, this is the coolest!” Josh jumped to his feet from his seat on our living room floor, his present hanging from his fingers. “Thanks!”

  All I can say is, the boy knows how to give a hug.

  Robbie, wearing a tattered Santa hat, let out a laugh and clapped. “Superman!”

  “Shhh! Angus is asleep!” I scolded.

  Josh flung the new cape around his shoulders. “Here I go!” Josh ran for the narrow flight of steps that joined the attic to the rest of the house.

  I laughed, remembering the day I bought it at one of those temporary Halloween stores with cheap costumes and fake everythings. Chris and I tried on masks and wigs, laughing so hard we wore ourselves out. A trip to The Sweet Stop remedied that, however.