Out Of The Deep I Cry

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Here.” Lois slid a folder across her desk. “Don’t wait too long on Hugh. Sooner or later, you, like the roof, will start sagging and leaking. You have to nail a man down before then, if you want one.”

  “What a charming image. I’ll be sure to think of you when I’m picking out my support bra and Depends.” Clare tucked the folder under her arm and crossed to the door.

  “If you were married to Hugh Parteger, you could afford to have them sent over by your personal shopper,” Lois called after her.

  In the church, Clare could see the vestry members gathered around what she now thought of as the Crisis Zone, a series of plastic buckets and basins set on the windowsill and spread over the floor. In the pale winter light shafting from the stained-glass window, the vestry members looked like a Vermeer painting, all well-dressed concern and solemn experience. Until she heard Robert Corlew say, “If you had just listened to me when I proposed an affordable way to fix the damn thing, we wouldn’t be looking at this now!”

  “Your way, which was, as I recall, to staple tarp and asphalt shingles on our historic roof!” Sterling Sumner shot back.

  “Our historic wreck!”

  “Hi, everyone,” Clare said. “Have I missed anything important?”

  There was a general chorus of greeting, and Corlew and Sumner sank back into their respective stances, glaring at each other. The former was a small-scale developer whose latest project was a drive-through mini-strip mall. The latter taught architecture at Skidmore after having retired from a firm specializing in high-end, unique houses. They were the cobra and the mongoose of her vestry.

  “Sorry I’m late. Why don’t we all take a seat and get started?” Clare plopped into the pew across the aisle from the Zone. She waited until all six vestry members had seated themselves near the tarp-covered pews bracketing the water-damaged space and then she said, “Let us pray.

  “Heavenly Father, you have blessed us with many riches and given us stewardship over them. A beautiful house of worship, a close-knit community, and a measure of prosperity. You have raised up intelligent, passionately committed people to lead our congregation. You ask in return, Lord, that we use our resources wisely and always remember that what we do here is not to satisfy our own egos, but for the glory of your name. Amen.”

  There was an answering mutter of “Amen”s.

  “Okay,” she said, “I see everyone has gotten a clear look at the problem.” There was a sound, a kind of collective unwilling groan, from the others. “I know the question of what to do about the roof has been discussed”-she paused, trying to think of a tactful way to put it-“extensively before. Gentlemen and lady”-she nodded at silver-haired Mrs. Marshall, the only woman on the board-“the time to discuss is over. We have to act on this now before the whole aisle roof caves in on us.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Robert Corlew said.

  “I think we can all agree that preserving the historic nature of St. Alban’s is a priority,” she continued. Sterling Sumner beamed at her and tightened his English school scarf-a year-round affectation-in a way that suggested a rude gesture to Corlew. Clare soldiered on. “With the extent of the damage we can see, we’re not talking about simply fixing the roof anymore. I’m sure Robert and Sterling have a much better understanding of these things than I do, but it looks as if we’re going to have to replace and repair some of the interior woodwork. Lord only knows what has to be done to the window embrasure in order to make sure the stained-glass panel remains secure. Historical accuracy, in this context, is going to mean high-level finish carpentry, a window-restoration specialist, and hand-cut Vermont slate shingles for the roof.”

  “It’s going to be pricey. Very, very pricey.” Terence McKellan patted his expansive belly as if looking for spare change. The vice president for commercial loans at AllBanc, Terry was St. Alban’s financial officer.

  “We have a responsibility to the future generations to preserve St. Alban’s heritage,” Mrs. Marshall said.

  “We also have a responsibility to safeguard what money we have,” Robert Corlew said. He moved his hand as if he were about to jam it into his improbably thick hair, but stopped himself. Clare, who had been trying for a year to discern whether he wore a rug or not, filed the gesture away in a mental folder marked EVIDENCE FOR TOUPEE.

  Norm Madsen’s faded blue eyes looked thoughtfully into the middle distance. “Maybe we could knock up something quick and cheap to fix the immediate problem, and then work on raising money for the fancier roof.”

  “Norm, with a leak this extensive, there is no quick and cheap fix,” Terry said.

  Clare stood up. “Folks, this is rapidly becoming a replay of every discussion we’ve had about the roof since I came to this parish. I’m calling for a vote.”

  “A vote?” several voices echoed.

  “A vote, straight up or down. Big, honkingly, expensive, historically correct blowout, or affordable ticky-tack housing stock.”

  “You make the alternatives sound so attractive,” Sterling said.

  “I vote for expensive and accurate,” Clare said. “Robert Corlew.”

  “Affordable. And I know-”

  “Just the vote, please. Mrs. Marshall.”

  “Historically accurate.”

  “Thank you. Terry McKellan.”

  He sighed. “I have to go with the cheaper alternative.”

  “Sterling Sumner.”

  “Historical accuracy at any cost!”

  “Thank you, Sterling. Norm Madsen.”

  The elderly lawyer’s face sank into thought. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Finally, “The least expensive alternative. Sorry, Lacey.” He smiled apologetically at Mrs. Marshall.

  She leaned over the pew and rested her thin, blue-veined hand over his. “You have to vote your conscience, Norm.”

  Clare propped her hands on her hips. “Not too surprisingly, it’s three for and three against. So… it looks like the tiebreaker will be our brand-new junior warden.” Everyone looked toward the sixth vestry member, elected at the congregation’s annual meeting only two Sundays ago.

  The man of the moment nodded. “I agree with the legacy thing. I feel like I have a duty to shepherd this church, so that when my little boy is my age, he’ll be able to look around him and be proud of everything we did. So I vote the full slate.” Geoffrey Burns crossed his arms over his camel-hair topcoat and grinned like a lawyer tossing a winning piece of evidence in front of opposing counsel.

  “Now, wait just a minute,” Robert Corlew began, pointing a blunt finger at the younger man.

  “No.” Clare held up her hand. “Robert, I empathize with your concerns about cost. And heaven knows, as the only contractor among us, you have the best sense of what the bottom line will be. But we can’t keep going round and round on this thing. If the whole board can’t agree to accept the vote and move onward, I’m going to throw the question open to a vote by the congregation.”

  Mrs. Marshall pursed her lips. “If we present the congregation a divided face, we’ll have considerably more trouble getting one hundred percent participation when it comes time to raise the money. If they think some of us don’t want the project to go ahead, it will encourage those who feel wishy-washy about it to sit on their wallets.”

  “And while we’re talking about fund-raising,” Geoff Burns said, “let’s consider the selling angle.” He held up his hands to make a frame. “Donate generously so that American artisans can handcraft a living legacy for your grandchildren’s children.” He shifted in his pew and made another frame. “Or, donate generously so that Baines Roofing and Plumbing can stop the leak in the roof.”

  “He’s got a point, Rob,” Terry said. “Everybody loves giving money for a new gym. Nobody wants to pay for a boiler.”

  “Maybe we could have donors’ names etched into the slate,” Norm Madsen mused.

  “Hey, I like that,” Geoff agreed.

  Clare was watching Corlew’s face during the conversation.
He looked flushed and clammy, as if he might either explode or have a coronary episode any moment. She laid her hand on his arm. “Robert,” she said, her voice pitched low, “we need you on this.” She dropped into the pew next to him. The others were caught up in the excitement of brainstorming suggestions for spurring on donations. “This isn’t a zero-sum game, where you lose and Sterling wins. We all want the same outcome.” Corlew looked up to where the water had stained the elegantly lapped pine. “Nobody else brings your kind of experience to this. You’re the person we’ll need to help vet the bids and the specialists. You’re the one who can tell us if their costs are fair, or if they’re padding the bills. And most important”-she leaned forward so he couldn’t avoid looking her straight in the eye-“you’re a man whose opinions and leadership are well respected in our community.”

  He grunted. “I’m not doing this in order to put Sterling’s nose out of joint.” He spoke in the same low tones as she had. “I really don’t think we’re in any position to take on new debt. Or to hit up the congregation for extra money when we ought to be focusing on getting more people into the pews.”

  “I know.” She didn’t argue or try to refute him. She just waited.

  His broad shoulders sagged a little. “Okay. I’m in.”

  She squeezed his arm hard. “Good.”

  He squared himself up again. “But I’m going to be keeping an eye on every nail, every two-by-four, every bucket of caulk.”

  She grinned. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.” She rose. “Come on, everybody, let’s adjourn to the meeting room. If we’re going to talk money, we may as well make ourselves more comfortable.”

  Chapter 6

  NOW

  While they decamped to the meeting room, and people helped themselves to Lois’s bad coffee and they settled around the massive black oak table, she congratulated herself on decisively taking the field. The glow lasted right up until Terry McKellan told her there weren’t going to be any loans to actually get the work done.

  “What?” she said, looking at the copy of their financial statement he had sent sailing across the table. “We have to get loans. That’s the way you do it, right?” She stopped. She sounded more like a high school girl running a student council meeting than a Leader of Men. And women. She tried for a more decisive tone. “That is, my experience has been”-watching her mother run a capital campaign for their home parish near Norfolk and a single workshop on fund-raising at Virginia Episcopal Seminary, but they didn’t have to know all the details, did they?-“that necessary improvements on the physical plant are started by loans from the diocese or the bank, and the capital campaign is designed to supplement them and pay them off.”

  “That’s a good way to do it,” McKellan agreed.

  “So what’s the catch?”

  McKellan’s luxurious brown mustache quirked up at each end. “You have looked at the financial statements over the past year, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Did you notice the outstanding loan from the diocese? We took it out three years ago to pay for the organ restoration and the parking lot repairs.”

  “Sure. But we’ve been making regular payments on it.”

  His eyes flicked toward the others seated around the table. “And you noticed the monthly mortgage payment we’re making?”

  “Sure. The parish hall burned down nearly to the ground in ’93 and the vestry took out a mortgage to cover the cost of repairs. I’ve looked over the records. We’ve never had a late payment, not once.” She looked around the table. “St. Alban’s must have good credit.”

  McKellan’s mustache broadened. He was looking at her in a distinctly paternal way. She didn’t like it. “Clare,” he said, “have you ever taken out a loan?”

  “I had a student loan. In college. I paid it off.”

  “I mean, a loan requiring collateral. Income flow. A debt-to-asset ratio. A mortgage. A car loan. A business loan.”

  “Um.” She had gone from her parents’ house to school and then straight into the army, which for ten years had told her where to go and given her a place to live when she got there. Then it was a group house at seminary, located for her by the housing office, and now the St. Alban’s rectory. Clare realized that not only had she never purchased a house, she had never even chosen her own place to live.

  The vestry members, most of whom were old enough to have paid off their mortgages when she was in diapers, were looking at her. “I, um, I’ve always paid cash for my cars,” she said.

  McKellan nodded. “We have too much debt in proportion to our income.”

  “Which has been falling over the past ten years,” Sterling Sumner pointed out.

  “You work for AllBanc,” she said. “Couldn’t you…?”

  “AllBanc holds the current mortgage.” McKellan opened his hands. “If we were still doing business the old way, it wouldn’t be a problem. Every officer at the bank knows this church and knows we’re good for the money. But we’re part of a conglomerate now. We can’t make loans based on a handshake and a reputation anymore.”

  Clare pulled her shoulder-length hair back and twisted it. From the corner of the room, the Civil War-era grandfather clock ticked away the time. She wondered, for a moment, how much they could get for it at auction.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re going to need a sizable chunk of change to get repairs started while we’re getting a capital campaign off the ground.” She thought about the annual budget they had hashed out last month. She couldn’t imagine squeezing anything else out of that stone. “Suggestions?”

  “Get rid of the outreach programs,” Sterling said. “If it’s really important, people will take up the gap by donating their time and money.”

  “No!”

  Clare erupted from her chair, setting it rocking unsteadily on the Persian carpet.

  Sterling tugged on his scarf. “It’s not as if the soup kitchen will fold without us. And I’m sure the unwed teenage mothers will continue to have babies whether we’re here to ‘mentor’ them or not.”

  “Sterling,” Mrs. Marshall said warningly.

  “Well, they’re not providing much benefit to the members of the congregation,” he pointed out.

  Clare braced her hands flat on the table. “Ministering to the poor, the sick, and the friendless is pretty much the whole point behind the Christianity thing, Sterling.” She caught the wicked gleam in his eye and knew she had risen to his bait. “And you are being deliberately provocative.” She sat down. “Next suggestion.”

  People looked up, down, across the room, as if thousands of dollars might materialize from the air.

  “What about investments?” Geoff Burns said. “Are there any underperformers in the church’s portfolio we could sell?”

  McKellan shook his head. “Not without gutting our already-modest endowment.”

  “Ah.” Burns sank back into his seat. Clare considered the leather-and-oak chair, one of twelve in the room. Maybe they wouldn’t have to send anything out to auction. They could do it all on eBay. Mrs. DeWitt, St. Alban’s seventy-something volunteer webmaster, had her own e-store.

  “There is the possibility…” Mrs. Marshall’s voice faded away. Clare sat up straighter. The elderly woman tended to be one of the quieter members at their meetings, but when she spoke up, she always did so strongly. Clare had never heard her sound uncertain before.

  Mrs. Marshall looked down at the financial statement in front of her. “I suppose I could liquidate the Ketchem Trust.”

  Norm Madsen shook his head. “No, no, no no no. Out of the question.”

  Such clear-cut decisiveness was out of character for Mr. Madsen, the vestry’s Great Equivocator. “What’s the Ketchem Trust?” Clare asked. “I don’t recall seeing that name in our financial statement.”

  “That’s because it doesn’t belong to St. Alban’s,” Mr. Madsen replied.

  “But it could,” Mrs. Marshall said.

  “Isn’t this the m
oney-,” Sterling Sumner began.

  Mr. Madsen cut him off. “There’s been no qualifying event to disburse the trust.”

  “I’m the one who decides what qualifies.” Mrs. Marshall was sounding more like herself now, but Clare had never seen the elderly lawyer so worked up. She glanced around the table. Terry McKellan and Robert Corlew were following the exchange with baffled expressions. Geoff Burns jotted notes in his Palm Pilot, evidently keeping busy until someone filled him in. So it wasn’t one of those pieces of information that everyone on the vestry knew and had forgotten to tell her.

  Sterling was advising Mrs. Marshall to think of herself, and Mr. Madsen was saying something incomprehensible about “devolving” and “beneficiaries.” Robert Corlew had leaned over and was whispering to Terry McKellan.

  “Excuse me,” Clare said. “Folks?” She might as well have been talking to herself. Geoff Burns rolled his eyes in her direction. She leaned forward. “Excuse. Me,” she said, in a voice pitched to carry across the noise of helicopter rotors.

  The room fell silent. “Thank you. Mrs. Marshall, some of us here need an explanation. What’s the Ketchem Trust?”

  Norm Madsen opened his mouth, but Mrs. Marshall said, “Let me tell it, Norm.” She turned toward Clare. “It’s a trust left by my mother at her death. I’m the sole trustee, and I have the power to decide if the trust ought to be ended and the principal handed over to the beneficiary.”

  “Who is…?” Clare had a feeling where this was going.

  “If-when-the trust is broken, the money goes to me, to be used entirely at my discretion. I must say, I never thought the trust would last forever, but it feels very strange now, contemplating ending it. I always thought I would leave it to St. Alban’s in my will. Under the circumstances, I believe I’d better push my timetable forward.” She wore coral lipstick that matched the coral scarf around her throat, and when she smiled, she looked like a banner flying in the face of defeat. “After all, I’ve already invested in the window. I may as well pay for the roof and the wall.”

  “The window? You donated that?”