The Church Ladies

by Lisa Samson

  “Just a plain old decaf for me, Paise,” Chris said. “Small.”

  And that said it all, didn’t it? Just a plain old decaf for Chrissy, while the Huebner women had to have mocha and special coffee. And the biggest size, too.

  Man.

  “Just black, too,” Chris said.

  “I remember,” Paisley said. “Let’s go, Gus.”

  He squeezed his arms tightly around her neck, and she pretended to choke. “You’re funny, Paisley.”

  Paisley rolled her eyes and backed out of the kitchen. I heard keys clinking as she grabbed them off the console near the front door.

  Why is it we’d give anything for upstarts to be subdued, and then when they become subdued we feel so sad? Failure isn’t a bad thing, really, I reminded myself, remembering that verse in the Bible about gaining the whole world but losing your own soul.

  “Do you know how long she was struggling with her classes?” I asked my mother.

  “Pretty much from the start,” she said, and both of us Heubner women sat down at the kitchen table. “But she’s a strong one, Penelope. You’ve got to at least give her credit for that.”

  I chose to ignore that “at least” and said, “I’ve never accused her of being weak, that’s for sure.”

  “She tried her hardest, probably all the more difficult to take.”

  Chris sat down at the table with us.

  “I’ve got to talk with her about it, but I’m not sure what to say,” I said.

  “We never are sure,” Mother said.

  “I can’t believe she never called. Does Duncan know?”

  Mother nodded. “She made him promise not to tell you.”

  “Oh, man.”

  Chris shook her head. “I’ll be praying for you, Poppy.”

  And Mother grew just a tad uncomfortable, but she hid it well, like she usually did by getting up and plucking a Kleenex from the phone table. She blew her nose, which was perfectly dry, as she sat back down.

  “So did you get season tickets to Center Stage this year?” I asked, taking the cue.

  “No. Last season they put on such an offensive play, and we had guests with us. It was embarrassing to say the least. This man grilling burgers, worried about all his possessions while his family was falling apart around him. And the language! Not just colorful, but tasteless. And you should see the painting exhibition we saw last month! It’s dreadfully sad, in my opinion, what the arts have come to.”

  I bristled.

  And then Chris said, “I agree. You can get offended for free just by turning on the TV.” And then I sincerely agreed with Chris right away. When did shock replace beauty?

  A self-epiphanous moment had erupted which meant I couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t walk away, not if I wasn’t completely a lost cause, and I didn’t think of myself as hopeless yet.

  No matter what Mother says I assume she’s wrong. I’m no different than my daughter.

  Oh, this was just great. Not only was I responsible for my horrible relationship with my daughter, I was also responsible for my horrible relationship with my mother. Fabulous. What a revelatory day this was turning out to be. Poppy Fraser is the tick of the itch, the fly in the ointment, the ant at the picnic, the cricket in the corner, the bee on the clover patch.

  I am the bug.

  “Maybe I should go in for some kind of counseling,” I muttered out loud, for my own benefit, really, because if you actually said the words, blew them out of your mouth however quietly, they counted more. The others weren’t meant to hear. But they did, of course.

  Both my mother and my closest friend in the world heard me. The one who bore me to the world and the one who bore me through the world. And they said absolutely nothing. Just looked at me with round eyes.

  I stood to my feet.

  Then I realized I had no planned course of action. So I sat back down.

  “Have I ever been an easy person to get along with?”

  “When you let yourself be,” Mother said.

  I turned and looked at Chris. “Well?”

  “You really want the truth?”

  “No. But I’m thinking this kind of opportunity only comes up once in a while.”

  “I’ve gotten used to you, Popp. As far as your mom goes, though, you can be a little defensive. With Duncan, too.”

  “And Paisley?” I asked.

  The other two nodded.

  “Oh, man.”

  Mother patted my hand. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Everyone else had gone to bed. Chris snored loudly on the sleep sofa in the living room. And Angus had snuggled up in-between Mother and Daddy.

  I stood at my parents’ bedroom door and watched them. Old people sleeping possess a certain poignancy, especially since my father only slept in pajama bottoms, and my mother still wore sleeveless, youthful, two-piece numbers. All that skin, sagging and soft, made them vulnerable in a way as they lay there, the light down comforter tucked around their waists. And there lolled Angus, a pale little peanut with speckled, papery arms draped all over him.

  They’d left the light on in the bathroom and cracked the door.

  Mother moved suddenly, opened her eyes and turned them toward me. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Goodnight, Penelope, dear. Have a nice sleep.”

  “ ’Night, Mother.”

  I turned around. Incandescent light still splayed across the hallway floor from underneath the door of Paisley’s room. I tapped on the smooth surface.

  Paisley said, “Come in, Mother.”

  Well, at least she’d known I would show up.

  So I opened the door and went into the guest room. Some boxes filled with Paisley’s stuff towered in the corner. But the room still possessed that guest room ambiance with its dark plaid bedspread, tan walls, and duck pictures.

  Paisley reclined on the bed with a pair of my old slippers on her feet. Remembering the Christmas my mother had given me those fuzzy, purple life rafts, I chuckled, grabbed a slipper, and shook my daughter’s foot slightly. “I haven’t thought about those things in ages. They’re back in now, aren’t they?”

  Paisley smiled just a little. “You know what they say.”

  “Yeah. Were those in the closet?”

  “Uh-huh. Grammie said she put them in there so she could think of this as your room.”

  Wow.

  “Can I sit with you for a while?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  Paisley had been flipping through one of my old Artists magazines.

  “Paise, do you want to talk about it to me?”

  Paisley shook her head. “I can’t, Mom. I don’t know if I’ll ever even want to.”

  “Can I just say one thing?”

  Paisley’s eyes hardened, just briefly, but she nodded. “I can’t stop you.”

  “You can.”

  “Really?” She flipped a page of the magazine.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then. I don’t want to hear it.”

  I bit my lip. “How’s Sylvan?”

  “I’ve only been there a few days. It’s temporary.”

  “Do you want to go back to grad school? Try again down here maybe?”

  “Not yet. I may take a teaching job or something. I really like Angus’s age, you know?”

  “Yeah. So, teach first grade or something?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, the school year is almost over. Maybe you can get in someplace for the fall.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.” She flipped another page.

  “You’d be a good teacher.”

  Paisley looked up. “You think so?”

  “I do. You’d want them to do well.”

  I wanted to tell her that someday she would look back on all this and it wouldn’t seem so bad. She’d see it for the intersection it was. She’d see how she’d been given the chance to take a different road, one that had turned out to be rewarding and fruitful. But to trivi
alize this now, well, I had enough foresight to know it would be just what Paisley expected of me.

  Paisley looked at the clock. “I’m going to turn in, Mom. I’ve got to be at work by eight tomorrow morning.”

  “You need a ride? I’ll take you in the new car.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll just take the bus down there.”

  I touched the slipper again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  I stood to my feet. It wasn’t an earth shattering conversation at all. But no one had become angry.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, Paise.”

  “I give you permission.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me what you were going to say a minute ago.”

  Oh, my gosh.

  “I just was going to say that I’m proud of you.”

  “I tried so hard, Mom. I always thought I was so smart.”

  “You are, sweetie.”

  Paisley looked at me, almost said something else, then scratched her cheek. “See you in the morning.”

  “Okay.” I started to shut the door, then I popped my head back into Paisley’s room. “Where does Grammie keep the Starbuck’s?”

  “In the freezer.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  Twenty-five

  George Parkes was a wealthy man. I figured he sponsored one of the poorer, more promising lads of Zeta Chi. Of course, he might have been a sponsored boy “back in the day,” as Miss Mildred would have said. Yeah, back in the day. Back in my day. I still didn’t feel old enough to have grown kids.

  The Parkes lived on a farm in Harford County. Nothing ostentatious about Harford County, for pity’s sake.

  “I’m glad they live out here,” Chris said.

  I just said, “Me, too,” to be agreeable.

  “It’s friendlier out here.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The driveway led us way off the road. I couldn’t see the house for about half a mile, and then there it stood, in a copse of oak trees with some Dutch elms to the east and west of the sheltering grove.

  In pristine condition, the original turn of the century farmhouse had clearly grown over the years. Large, quirky, and solid, it didn’t appear to be some grand monument to success. Just a nice old house that someone cared about.

  We pulled up, and immediately the front door opened. George Parkes dashed off the porch.

  “Hello,” I said right away, because I was the only one here who didn’t have to be unsure. “Mr. Parkes?”

  “Yes.”

  We shook hands, and Chris climbed out.

  “I’m Poppy Fraser,” I said so there’d be no confusion. “I called you back in Mount Oak and again this morning to get directions.”

  He hurried over to Chris. “You must be Josh’s mom.” His slender face deepened to a dark red, contrasting with his hay-colored hair. “I’m so sorry.”

  Chris looked first at me, and I nodded to encourage her.

  “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

  “Of course. Would you like to come inside?”

  “All right,” Chris said. “Is Ron home?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your wife?”

  “She died when Ron was five.”

  Well, that changed things a bit.

  He showed us into the entry hall and led us back to the family room. Furnished comfortably, yet with masculine overtones, the space spoke sports with a wide screen TV, a bucket of golf balls, and some clubs leaning in the corner near the patio door. “You’ll have to excuse this place. We moved here a couple of years ago, and, well, we saw no reason to decorate frillylike for Ron and me.”

  Chris looked down. “May I use your powder room?”

  “Of course. It’s down the hall on your right.”

  Chris grabbed my hand and pulled me with her.

  “I can’t do this,” she whispered passionately once we stood in the large bathroom/laundry room near the kitchen. She leaned against the folding table that supported several stacks of neatly folded whites.

  “You can’t do what?”

  “Make a big stink. I came up to Baltimore to make a big stink.”

  “I thought you just came up to find out more.”

  “No. I came up to make a stink, Poppy!”

  “What kind of a stink?”

  “A lawyer stink, maybe. I don’t know. At least throw a bomb at the fraternity.”

  A stink bomb apparently. Oh, Chrissy. “But you’ve never made a stink in your life.”

  “I thought maybe Ron was protecting the fraternity. But the boy lost his mother, Poppy.”

  I purposely failed to bring up the painful irony of the situation. “Poor guy.”

  Chris focused on the large bottle of bleach. “So what do I do now? I can’t just do nothing. That’s not fair to Josh.”

  “You’ve got to talk to them now that you’re here. He seems like a nice enough guy.”

  When we walked back into the parlor a sun-burned Ron had joined his father. Not really good looking, featurewise, he possessed light brown hair in abundance and wore his clothing well. Probably an Abercrombie and Fitch junkie. Not the preppie-at-all-costs type, though, judging by his Doc Martin sandals.

  He stood to his feet immediately, displaying a great length of leg. “Mrs. Knight.”

  Chris’s maternal instincts must have automatically kicked in. “Hello, Ron.”

  He shook our hands as his dad made introductions then seated us, Chrissy next to Ron on the couch and me in a plaid chair opposite his own.

  Ron sat back down, low into the moss-colored sofa, knees sticking way up.

  “I’m not sure where to begin,” George Parkes said. “Maybe you could tell us the reason you wanted us to get together.”

  “I wanted to find out what really happened,” Chris said. “I’ve only read police reports, but they couldn’t possibly say everything, right?”

  “Do you want Ron to tell you what happened that night?” George asked.

  Chris nodded.

  George nodded at his son. “It’s okay, bud. Go ahead.”

  Ron sat up some and focused on his left hand, the one resting on the knee nearest the arm of the couch. “Well, we had gone through hell night. It wasn’t really too bad. A little embarrassing, but nothing major. But we drank a lot. Some of us did, anyway. But not Josh!” he hastened to say. “He only drank a little.”

  And he went on from there, telling about how three of them had sat around in the basement of the frat house, how a lot of the others were “pretty much passed out” all around them.

  “So Ed—he grew up near TV Hill—says we had to go climb the tower. Like it was the final phase of hell night. He said it was punishment for not getting as drunk as the rest.”

  Mr. Parkes cleared his throat. “Eddie? He was there?”

  “He was, Dad.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You know how Ed is. But I can’t keep this inside any longer. I don’t care what he does.”

  “Was he the other climber?” I asked.

  “No, that was Dell Markham,” Ron said.

  “I never heard about another guy being there,” Chris said.

  “It’s the first I’ve heard.” George threw a perplexed look at his son.

  My skin began to tingle.

  “I didn’t want to tell anyone,” Ron said.

  “Well, what did Josh say about Ed’s suggestion?” Chris asked.

  “He acted like he was all for it. He already had a reputation for being a brave kind of guy. Like, don’t dare Josh on a bet or you’ll lose, especially on physical stuff.”

  “What do you mean?” George asked.

  “I don’t know. When we’d play Frisbee and stuff, he always made these flying leaps and could fall, dropping his shoulder and rolling. And he was a great lacrosse player. He didn’t flinch or balk at stuff, you know?”

  Chris folded her hands in her lap. “Yeah, he was
like that, even though he wasn’t a big guy.”

  “We all went down to the Inner Harbor last fall. We parked in the garage by the Hyatt, and Josh walked on top of the wall around the top level.”

  Chris sucked in her breath. I took her hand.

  “So you all climbed the tower?” George asked. “Ed, too?”

  “The three of us freshmen did, just Josh and Dell and me.”

  Just Josh.

  “Ed stayed put on the ground.” Ron looked down at his hands.

  “So this was an official fraternity activity then?” Chris asked. “Were you covering up for them by not telling about Ed?”

  “No. The fraternity had nothing to do with it. That much is true. But we all thought it was real!” Ron said. “When we were starting up, Josh whispered that he was scared, and I said I was, too, and then he said something about not wanting to look like a chicken and really wanting to go far in Zeta Chi and all so he could get a sponsor, and he started up ahead of me.”

  “Were you scared, too?” I asked.

  “Oh, man! If he’d have backed out, I’d have backed him up. Ed or not!” His words were passionately spoken, as if they were seeking some time machine to take them back to the moment when they would have meant something. “Dell would have, too!”

  Ron looked right at Chris, his face stained a deep red like his dad’s, his eyes like glass. “He just slipped, Mrs. Knight. It was cold, and he didn’t wear gloves. I am so sorry.”

  No legal stink to make now. Not against Zeta Chi, anyway. Poor Chrissy.

  “I climbed down as fast as I could,” Ron continued, his voice vibrating with emotion. “But he was dead when I got to him.” He leaned forward and dropped his head, inhaling deeply. “I go to bed each night thinking, ‘If only I had said something!’ And each morning I get up, and the first thing I think about is that I didn’t.”

  “It’s a heavy load he carries now,” George said.

  Chris reached out and placed a hand on Ron’s knee.

  “Where was this Ed guy?” I asked.

  Ron sat up straight, and so did Chris. “He’d already left. He was gone by the time I got down. But he must have called 911 because the ambulance came not long after.”

  So it really was an accident. Just like they’d said. A big, cruel accident.