Saying Grace

by Beth Gutcheon

  Both Henry and Emily were very quiet, Rue thought. She talked mostly to Cynda Goldring, who was concerned at the news that Rue was still getting phone calls from the silent breather.

  “Henry never gets them. He gets hang-ups once in a while, but whoever it is is after me. When I answer, he stays on the line, breathing.”

  Cynda shivered. “Frightening.”

  Rue nodded. She did find it frightening, though she preferred not to admit it.

  “Have you called the police? Can they trace the calls?”

  “Henry did. This is not a high-tech crime-fighting force. They said they could call in Santa Barbara if the calls got threatening.”

  “Great.”

  “I stand there listening to this breathing, trying to figure it out…does he want to say something he can’t say? Does he want me to say something? Does he think I can read his mind?”

  “Have you tried asking who it is?”

  “The police say, Never say anything. If you say anything it makes it fun for him, and he’ll keep it up.”

  “Do you think it’s Kenny?”

  “Not really. After all, I didn’t kick him out. I’d think of Glenn Malko, or even Terry, except the calls started before Glenn was expelled.”

  “What about Jerry Lozzato?”

  “That a-hole, pardon my French. It could be. I just hope he doesn’t pop out from behind a bush one day and shoot me. On the whole I prefer to think it’s one of the Miss Plums.”

  “God, that’s it,” said Cynda. “It’s Carla Plum, running the school from beyond the grave.”

  “I think it is. I feel that they’re like my parents, hating rock music, sloppy grammar, and unable to program their VCR—I think they’re counting on me to hold back the tide.”

  They were warming to this theory and would have enjoyed going on with it, except that lunch was nearly over and had been accompanied by a good deal of wine and beer. Just at that moment, Pat Moredock was hurrying to join the group to whom Bonnie would toss the bridal cabbage, when she tripped over an exposed root and fell heavily, breaking her arm.

  Henry examined Pat and announced he would drive her to the hospital. Emily asked if she should go too—would Pat want a woman with her?

  “Henry’s a very comforting person, even if he is a man,” said Rue. “She’ll be all right. Anyway, you should go try to catch the bouquet.”

  “Am I allowed? I’m still married.”

  “Of course you’re allowed.”

  Emily went to join Lisa Stevens, Rosemary Fitch, Catherine Trainer, Bethany Loeb, Kendra Flower, Mike’s calicoed daughters, and Malone. Bonnie, giggling helplessly, stood with her back to the group and then heaved the cabbage over her shoulder. Kendra made a heroic leap for it, but missed, and it was Emily, blushing, who caught it. Everyone applauded. “You’re next,” everyone said to her. Emily looked confused and pretty, with her cheeks flaming. Henry’s car was disappearing down the lane.

  Next the groom hoisted the buckskin dress, to the accompaniment of much hooting and whistling, and slid an electric blue garter over Bonnie’s slim knee and down her leg, where it got tangled up in her white sandal. Mike was blushing furiously. At last he freed it and winged it over the knot of male guests jostling each other in the sun. Blair Kunzelman knocked Lloyd Merton aside and caught it, which caused a roar of laughter and cries of “foul,” and a lot of teasing of his wife, Alma. “Meet my first wife,” he kept shouting, with the garter around his arm, and the arm around the long-suffering Alma. Then the bride and groom climbed into a gleaming Model T Ford decked with flowers, lent to the pair by the TerWilliamses. As Carl TerWilliams turned the crank in front of the car and the engine roared to life, Blair tied a string of tin cans to the back bumper. Then they were off with a roar and a clatter amid much laughter.

  Lynn Ketchum took over the Kurzweil and began to play a mean “Black Top Boogie.” The guests, left behind, danced on the grass. Mike’s daughters danced with each other in a ring, Lloyd Merton danced with Emily, the handsome minister danced very beautifully with Catherine Trainer, and Blair Kunzelman danced with four or five women at once. Finally, sun and the effects of unaccustomed wine wore them out, and Lisa took over the keyboard to play some of her favorite Barry Manilow tunes. Everyone else began to pack away the remains of the cake and the bottles and dishes. Henry drove up, without Pat.

  “I took her home,” he said. “She seemed in need of a nap.”

  “I don’t wonder,” said Rue. “How bad is it?”

  “A hairline fracture. It will heal fine if she doesn’t reinjure it. She’s in one of those Velcro casts.”

  “Does she have much pain?” asked Emily.

  “Not at the moment, if you take my meaning,” said Henry. “But they gave her some Percodan for later.”

  “What if she takes that stuff and drinks too?”

  Malone and David Dahl had seen the preparations for going and arrived to try to hurry their mother along.

  “She could make herself pretty sick.”

  “But could she wake up dead?”

  “Who, Mom?” asked Malone.

  “A friend of ours,” said Emily.

  “Mrs. Moredock?”

  Rue looked at Henry.

  Later, when they were alone at home, she said, “I’m going to have to organize an intervention. If the kids have all figured it out.”

  Henry said he guessed so. Then he said, “I’m going to take my car to Liu’s and have the oil changed.”

  “Do you want to do that now? You can drop it off on the way to church in the morning.”

  “He said this afternoon would be better.”

  “Do you want me to follow you?”

  “No, I’ll just wait. I’ve got a good book.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Do you want anything at Tagliarini’s?”

  “Could you get some two-percent milk?”

  “Sure.”

  Rue settled down to pay her bills, but she had trouble concentrating. She missed having Henry to think out loud with, and now she missed Mike as well. Normally, he would have been the first she would have talked with, but he and Bonnie were on their way to some secret romantic spot, there to do she couldn’t imagine what. Deepen an already loving friendship, she guessed. Finally she gave up and went to call Emily. She wanted to know what more Malone had said and exactly how much the kids had figured out about Mrs. Moredock’s drinking.

  To her surprise, the phone was answered by Patty Kramer, a buxom blond eighth grader who was babysitting.

  “I think she was going to the Price Club,” said Patty. “She said she’d only be an hour or so.”

  “Oh,” said Rue. “Well, it’s nice of you to help out on short notice, Patty.”

  “It wasn’t short notice. She told me she’d be calling, she just didn’t know exactly what time.”

  “Oh. Then it’s nice of you to be so flexible.”

  “No problem. I’m saving for a CD player.”

  “Have you heard of the Red Hot Chili Peppers?”

  “Not rilly.”

  “What do you listen to?”

  “The Association,” said Patty.

  Henry was home an hour later. He apologized for forgetting the milk.

  It was on the Thursday morning a week after the wedding that Rue arrived to the news that she would have to teach fifth grade. Catherine Trainer’s car had broken down halfway to school, and she was waiting for a tow truck. Mike couldn’t take the class; he was already teaching junior kindergarten for Helen Yeats, who had had a dental emergency.

  “Did Catherine say if she left a lesson plan?”

  Mike gave her a look. “Dream on, honey,” he said.

  Things were at a dull roar when she reached Mrs. Trainer’s classroom. Her entry was greeted with pleasure and curiosity. Where was Mrs. Trainer? Was Mrs. Shaw going to teach them all day? Was Mrs. Trainer sick? Could they have a Free? Rue searched the drawers for a lesson book. She didn’t f
ind one, but she did find a stack of stories written by the children, ungraded, and dated December 16.

  She quieted the class, then wrote on the board, “A Conscience Is Worth a Thousand Witnesses.” “This is a maxim,” she said. “Who can tell me what a maxim is? Carly?”

  “A wise saying.”

  “Good. Who can tell me what this one means?”

  There was a silence. It lengthened.

  “All right, who can tell me what a witness is?”

  Hands shot up. “Someone who saw you do something? Like if there’s a murder, but somebody saw who did it?”

  “Good. Now who can tell me what a conscience is.”

  No hands were raised.

  “What about Jiminy Cricket singing, ‘Let your conscience be your guide’?” Silence. “Nobody’s heard of Jiminy Cricket?” No one had. Good grief, thought Rue, I never thought I’d be wishing for the return of the Mickey Mouse Club.

  “Your conscience,” said Rue, “is the voice inside you that tells you when something is right or wrong.” They all nodded their heads. Oh yeah, conscience. Oh yeah.

  “Now, who can tell me what this maxim means?”

  Again, there was silence. “Kim,” said Rue to Kim Fat Snyder, “if you’re alone in a room, and you’re tempted to do something, how do you know if it’s a right or wrong thing to do?”

  “If you might get caught,” said Kim Fat.

  “Say you know you won’t get caught. How do you know if it’s right or wrong?”

  This seemed a hard question. She looked around the room, and the faces looked back. She began to wonder if they were putting her on.

  “Okay, I’m alone in this room. Got it? You’re not here.” The class nodded.

  Rue looked around, making sure she was alone in the room. Then she sidled toward the back of the room, where a desk was empty, its owner absent. She silently opened the desk top. She studied the mess of notebooks, workbooks, pencils, erasers, barrettes, and hair elastics. She shifted some loose papers, and came up with a calculator.

  She held it up. She examined it silently. She looked around furtively, to be sure she was unobserved. Then she slipped the calculator into her skirt pocket, closed the desk softly, and returned to the front of the room.

  “Now,” she said. “What’s wrong with what I just did? Harry?”

  “You took something that isn’t worth anything.”

  Rue expected the class to laugh, but the children seemed to think this a serious answer. Rue was beginning to feel incredulous.

  “I’m not sure I understand you.”

  “You risked getting caught and punished for something that wasn’t worth it.”

  “I told you I’m not going to get caught. What’s wrong with what I did?”

  Some of the children looked at each other. Rue wasn’t sure what to do next.

  “Whose desk is this?” she asked, hoping to awaken in them sympathy for their absent friend.

  “Bharatee’s,” they answered, and Rue saw part of her problem. Bharatee was a rather fat, very bright Pakistani girl whose distress they would welcome.

  “Okay, let’s say this calculator once belonged to Michael Jackson. Let’s say it’s Bharatee’s prized possession, and it’s worth a million dollars.”

  “If Michael Jackson owned it, you still wouldn’t be able to sell it because everyone would know where you got it.”

  “Cut,” said Rue. “Time out. Stop. What I did was wrong because I took something that didn’t belong to me. It was stealing, and stealing is wrong whether you get caught or not. I didn’t have to get punished to know it was wrong. I have a conscience to tell me it was wrong. Now how does my conscience know?”

  They all stared at her.

  “Did I take a course that taught me right and wrong?”

  They nodded. That must be it. It must be a class they hadn’t had yet.

  “Who thinks that’s right?”

  They all raised their hands. Rue thought, I wish I were running a church school. I think I’ll quit and become a nun.

  “I didn’t take a course. I know a simple rule, and so do you. I know that what I did was wrong because I wouldn’t like someone to do it to me. That’s called the Golden Rule.” On the blackboard she wrote “Golden Rule: Treat Others as You Would Have Them Treat You.”

  “Please take out your pencils and journals, and write at least a page on what you have just learned.”

  They took out their notebooks and their pencils. There was silence and not much writing. After a while, Nicolette asked, “Mrs. Shaw? What if you really needed a calculator, and you know Bharatee has another one?”

  “That’s a good question. Why don’t you write about it?”

  Kim Fat’s hand went up. “Mrs. Shaw? What if you knew for a fact that Bharatee would just think she had lost it?”

  At ten o’clock Rue walked back into the office and said to Emily, “I’ve just spent the most depressing hour of my life.”

  “What happened?”

  “You won’t believe it; I’ll tell you at lunch.”

  Emily didn’t react to the tale of the maxim as Rue expected. She seemed instead distracted and upset. Mike claimed he didn’t feel an iota of surprise and suggested they have the school renamed Go For Yourself Academy.

  As Rue was walking up the hill toward Home after lunch, she saw Kim Fat Snyder hanging around the water fountain.

  “Hello, Kim,” she called. “Are you boycotting recess?”

  “Mrs. Shaw, could I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Of course.”

  “You know that maxim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, remember when someone stole Bharatee’s locket?”

  “Remind me.”

  “It was right before Christmas? She took it off for PE and left it on a shelf in her locker, and when she came back it was gone. She told Miss Flower, and we all looked for it.”

  Rue realized she had heard this much, but that nothing had been resolved.

  “We played basketball that day, A’s against B’s. Lyndie Sale went back to the locker room in the middle—she was the only one who did.”

  “Go on.”

  “Bharatee was so upset…it was a present from her grandmother. So after everyone left, I went back and looked in Lyndie’s locker. I thought if it was there, I’d say I found it on the ground, and give it back to Bharatee.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “Not the locket, but the chain was on the shelf in Lyndie’s locker. It was all in pieces. It was all broken.”

  “Boy. You’d have to be strong to do that.”

  Kim nodded. Clearly the whole episode had disturbed her deeply.

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Bharatee wouldn’t want it back like that. And I didn’t want to be a narc. But when you told us the maxim, I thought maybe you knew.”

  “No, I didn’t know, Kim. But I’m glad you told me….”

  She was interrupted by the shriek of a siren. She turned to see an entire hook and ladder, with five firepersons dressed in rubber coats with long-handled axes dangling from their belts, steaming up the drive past Home, heading for the Primary building.

  Rue said, “Excuse me” and ran. Meanwhile, the firefighters all leaped off the truck and rushed toward the Primary playground, where the second grade stood watching as if gods had swarmed down from Mt. Olympus.

  “What happened?” Mike asked, arriving on the run at the same time as Rue.

  “Courtney Leavitt got her finger stuck in a Barbie doll,” said Charla Percy, staring at the fire truck. “She was very upset so we called nine-one-one.”

  Some of the boys, excited by the sight of the dangling axes, believed the firemen would cut off Courtney’s hand.

  Courtney, who seemed to fear the same thing, was trying to hide behind Charla’s leg. With a professional air, a large fireman knelt to examine the hand Courtney held out, its index finger vanished into the hole where the doll’s left arm used t
o be.

  “Is this your doll?” he asked. She nodded.

  “Did you pull its arms off?”

  Courtney nodded. Shannon Korfus, agitated, explained, “Well, she…she…well, it’s an old one so she pulled one and I pulled the other.”

  “What happens if we pull now?” asked the fireman. Courtney gave a cry and snatched her hand back. “Hurts, huh? You already tried that?” Courtney nodded. A second fireman produced from his tool belt a needle-nosed wire cutter. The first one looked at the tool and nodded.

  “Can you hold real still?” he asked Courtney. She wasn’t sure, but it had been a rhetorical question.

  The fireman began to cut across the doll’s chest from the other armhole. Clearly Courtney thought he would come to her finger and snip right through it. But instead he deftly cut the finger free.

  Courtney hopped up and down, half laughing, half crying, and holding the freed hand with her other. The fireman insisted on examining it to see that it wasn’t permanently injured. The class crowded around wanting to see the finger.

  “Thank you so much…” said Mrs. Percy, greatly relieved.

  “You’re welcome,” said the fireman. “But technically, it was a Ken doll.”

  The day concluded with Hughie Bache’s mother in the office, completely hysterical, talking on Emily’s phone to Poison Control.

  The day Pat Moredock broke her arm the hospital told her to make an ice pack of one-third rubbing alcohol and two-thirds water and apply it for fifteen minutes every hour. This she had done. She had one ice pack at home and another she’d been keeping in a baggie in the school kitchen’s freezer. Between classes and at lunch break she would come get it and apply it to her wrist for ten minutes, then put it back. Hughie Bache, quite illegally, had gone into the kitchen to steal a soft drink. Since none were cold, he had filled a cup with slush from Pat’s ice pack. That was easier than breaking out an ice tray. He poured a Seven-Up over the slush, and downed the whole thing.