by Jane Langton
“Sunday afternpons? Carl Bucky? You bet your boots he didn’t. Sunday afternoon was floor-washing time. He had to move all the furniture and scrub all the floors in the house, every single Sunday. You don’t think he was going to get out of this house on a Sunday afternoon? No, ma’am, not my Carl!”
Driving away from Betsy Bucky’s house, Flo calculated the totals in her head. The Sunday-afternoon meetings at Ed Bell’s house had grown in importance as the day went on, only to let her down in the end. Perhaps they weren’t the common thread after all. Bill Molyneux had attended the meetings, and so had Phil Shooky and George Tarkington and Agatha Palmer and Percy Donlevy. But Carl Bucky and Arlene Pott had not. Of course Arlene Pott didn’t count. What about the others? There was no way of knowing about Eloise Baxter and Rosemary Hill and Thad Boland, because they didn’t have mates to pass on the news.
Yet it was terribly interesting, Flo decided, that the people who did attend the Sunday-afternoon meetings explained the purpose of the meetings in such different ways. They had been an occasion for spiritual retreat, Percy Donlevy had told his wife. A time to discuss the goals of the church, George Tarkington had explained to Hilary. Bible study, the Epistles of Paul, said Phil Shooky. An examination of church charities, said Bill Molyneux.
Clearly they had lied to their wives. They were getting together for some other purpose. What could it have been?
It was the kind of question Homer Kelly was most afraid of. But at the moment Homer was engaged in another kind of investigation. “What do you suggest, woman?” he asked his wife, his face distorted in anguish. “What should I do? I mean, modern science must have come up with some sort of remedy, after all these centuries of human physiological malfunction. You must know of some kind of internal explosive material? Something to loosen up the system?”
“Bran flakes,” suggested Mary Kelly. “Water. Lots of water.”
“Oh, ugh,” said Homer, wincing and holding his stomach.
“Prunes!” said Mary, brightening. “Nature’s remedy for constipation. Stewed prunes!”
“Stewed prunes, good God,” said Homer, closing his eyes in tragic self-pity.
36
You, my dear brother, will mourn, for you must; we censure not your grief.
Reverend Charles Steams
Lincoln, 1812
The next day was misty. Evaporating snow stood in the air in milky clouds. But the thermometer was sinking. Hiking down Farrar Road past Quarry Pond, Joe Bold saw crystals of ice fingering out in all directions from the floating skim that lay on the surface of the water like a plate. On the way home he chastised himself for his increasing sense of guilt. It was absurd, and he knew it, but somehow he had begun to feel obscurely responsible for the mortal shrinkage of his parish. Perhaps if he had not brought his trouble into the congregation in the first place, all those people might still be alive. It was as though he had opened his hand and cast down from the pulpit the seeds of disease and death.
When he got back home, he found Ed Bell on his doorstep. Gratefully, Joe invited him in. It was curious how Ed seemed to know when cheerful companionship was useful and when it was not.
But the truth was, even Ed Bell was sometimes driven to his limit. Only Ed’s wife, Lorraine, knew the effort behind his continual good humor. Looking at her husband’s haggard face as he sank into a kitchen chair after walking back from Joe’s house, Lorraine asked a sympathetic question, “How long do you think it will be before he recovers?”
Ed shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe never.”
“Oh, Ed, we’ve got to give him time. It’s only been three weeks since Claire died. Wait till Christmas is over. You know how shattering the Christmas season can be. Surely he’ll be better in the new year.”
“It’s not just that he’s mourning,” said Ed. “He’s not just grieving for Claire. He wonders how he can have the gall to get up in the pulpit on Sunday mornings, he feels so futile and feeble. He tried to give me back his salary check just now. When I wouldn’t take it, he tore it up. Now Felicia has to send him another one. He’s going through a fragile time. On the one hand, he’s teetering on the brink of resigning, and on the other, Parker Upshaw is whipping up feeling against him. Parker was going around town yesterday afternoon, did you know that? Collecting signatures.”
Then Lorraine began mumbling about redemption. She had been brought up to believe in it. “Christ died for our sins, that’s what people thought. They were saved by his blood, and they could be born again into a new life.” Lorraine gazed thoughtfully out the window at the clearing sky. “Why couldn’t it happen to Joe?”
Ed got up and put his coat back on and said something that surprised his wife by its cynicism. “Well, at least redemption would be free of charge. You wouldn’t have to pay a psychiatrist a hundred dollars an hour to tell you something equally bizarre.”
Lorraine was dismayed to see her exhausted husband heading for the door. “Good heavens, Ed, dear, where are you going now?”
“County Hospital. I just came home to get the car. I’m going to pick Joe up and take him over to see Howie Sawyer. I promised Joan we’d be there today.”
“Howie Sawyer?” Lorraine shook her head in disapproval. “Don’t you think the County Hospital will plunge poor Joe still further into despair?”
“Oh, no,” said Ed airily. “I don’t think so.”
Lorraine watched her husband trudge down the back steps to his car. She was feeling conscience-stricken because she hadn’t told him about the phone call. Lorraine was terribly frightened about the phone call. Peter Terry, the chief of the Nashoba police department, had phoned while Ed was out, asking for him.
“I’ll tell him you called,” Lorraine had said. “May I ask what it’s about?”
“Oh, nothing special.” Pete had sounded embarrassed. “It’s just that my wife gets all upset. You know Flo. She gets these bees in her bonnet.”
“Well, I’ll certainly have him call you,” said Lorraine again, gripped with terror. Flo Terry was a woman of keen mind and unyielding perseverance. The chief of the Nashoba police department might be no threat at all, but his wife was a different kettle of fish altogether.
“Oh, there you are, Mr. Bell,” said the head nurse on Howie Sawyer’s ward, grinning at him, hurrying up to shake hands with the Reverend Bold. Mary Kelly was there too, and so was Joan Sawyer. Joan smiled at them and said hello, and all the patients lifted their drooping heads. Mrs. Beddoes clapped her hands gaily. Miss Stein opened her eyes. Mr. O’Doyle fired his ball at Joe, hitting him in the solar plexus. Joe gasped, clutching the ball to his stomach, then timidly threw it back. Mr. Keizer and Mr. Canopus and Howie Sawyer crowded around Ed, grabbing at his sleeves, his coattails, his pantlegs. Joe Bold stood aside and watched as Ed swept them all into the corner beside the battered piano.
The piano was new. It had been discovered by Ed in the basement and hauled up to Howie’s floor, where its little wheels had gouged channels in the asphalt tile. Joan was the pianist. Under her clumsy fingers the piano tinkled and thumped, crazily out of tune. Some of the notes didn’t play, but nobody cared. Nor did it matter that everyone sang on a different pitch, or that the words were mixed up, or that Miss Stein was singing the wrong song. Howie Sawyer made up for everybody else. He had the tune right, and all the words. He sang at the top of his lungs.
Joe opened his mouth to sing too, but nothing came out. He tried again and got a croaking tenor, “Dashing through the snow.”
Afterward Joan and the head nurse and the social worker thanked them for coming, and Joan said something impulsive. “A Christmas pageant, we could have a pageant. Mrs. Beddoes could be Mary. Miss Stein could be a shepherd. Howie could be Joseph. Mr. Keizer and Mr. O’Doyle and Mr. Canopus could be the three kings.”
“Mr. Keizer is Jewish,” said the nurse, “but who cares? We’ll celebrate Hanukkah too.”
“I’ll bring my menorah,” said the social worker.
“I’ll find some costu
mes,” said Mary Kelly.
“I’ll get Augusta Gill to help out,” said Ed eagerly, “if she can spare the time.”
Of course Augusta couldn’t spare the time. Christmas? Did Ed know what her schedule was like at Christmas? But she came anyway and helped out. Augusta was a specialist in baroque music, she had conducted festivals of sacred song and written a thesis on Scarlatti, but now she was perfectly willing to play “Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” on the beaten-up piano in Howie Sawyer’s ward. Tirelessly, Howie’s ex-wife, Joan, rehearsed the actors over and over. Mary Kelly collected costumes, lengths of blue flannel for Mrs. Beddoes, striped curtains for the kings, a doll for the baby Jesus. Ed manufactured a manger in his basement workshop, although it wasn’t an easy task because most of his tools were scattered around Bo Harris’s car in the garage.
The performance was a success. All the relatives came, and a bunch of people from Old West Church. At the piano Augusta provided musical continuity, running along from one tune to the next, while Miss Stein held her toy lamb and pointed excitedly at the cardboard star and knelt beside the doll in the manger. As one of the three kings, Mr. O’Doyle tossed his ball and caught it, and tossed it again and caught it. Mr. Keizer lit the menorah with extreme care. Mrs. Beddoes was a lovely Mary, rocking the doll in her arms. In the middle of the performance there was a crisis when the Virgin suddenly stood up in a panic and dropped the doll on its head and flapped her hands.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Beddoes,” cried the social worker, rushing her out of the room, and in a minute Mrs. Beddoes was back, kneeling in the straw, holding the doll, looking tender and holy.
The real star of the show was Howie Sawyer. Howie was amazing. He leaned over Mrs. Beddoes with husbandly pride and gazed at the baby and clasped his hands in rapture and condescended grandly to the three kings in the person of Mr. O’Doyle and, to the astonishment of all, burst out at the end in an appropriate song, “Away in a Manger.” He was lost in his role, he carried the conviction of a professional performer.
The pageant was over. The visitors clapped and clapped. The relatives were pleased. Joan passed a plate of cakes. There was a distribution of presents.
“They’ll feel let down tomorrow,” said the head nurse. “I hope you won’t forget us.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” promised Ed.
“So will I,” said Mary.
“Well, I will too,” said Joe Bold, to his own surprise, not sure whether he had been cornered or whether, perhaps, he had actually volunteered:
“Listen, we could have another pageant,” said Augusta enthusiastically, wondering if she had gone clean out of her mind. “You know, Santa Claus at the North Pole, with cotton batting and paper snowflakes. Howie could be Santa. I mean, I haven’t got time for this, but it’s okay. The other stuff can wait.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” shouted Howie, falling in with the idea right away.
37
Oh that I had a complete control over my feelings! Then would my face always be clothed in smiles.
James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849
The shrill sound of the doorbell frightened Police Chief Peter Terry on the porch of the Bells’ house as much as it did Ed and Lorraine Bell upstairs in bed. It was the Sunday after New Year’s Day, very early in the morning. “You’ve got to get over there before church,” Flo Terry had said to her husband. “Otherwise they’ll be out all day, doing one thing or another.”
So here he was, in person, being ushered into the living room by Ed, who was tying the string of his bathrobe and waving him into a chair beside the Christmas tree.
Pete looked sheepishly at the tree, which was glowing with funny lights that bubbled up from the bottom to the top. “It’s just that Flo thinks there was something queer about the way a bunch of those people from Old West Church who died this fall always came to a meeting at your house on Sunday afternoons.”
“Coffee?” said Lorraine, suddenly appearing in front of Pete in a rumpled nightgown and bed jacket, her hair on end.
“Coffee?” Pete looked up in surprise. “Oh, no, thank you. Well, maybe. Well, yes, I guess so. But not if it’s any trouble.”
“Coffee, Ed?” said Lorraine, looking at her husband fiercely, her eyes brilliant with unspoken messages.
“Why, yes, dear,” said Ed mildly.
“So, ha-ha, she thought maybe the meeting had something to do with the fact that they all died.” Pete flapped his hand to dismiss the ridiculous notion. “Maybe she thinks Lorraine was, ha-ha, feeding them poisoned cookies or something.”
“You hear that, dear?” said Ed, calling to his wife, who was grimly slamming pots around in the kitchen.
“Anyway, Flo just wanted me to ask you what the meetings were for. She says Judy Molyneux said they were charitable, and Maureen Donlevy thought they were some kind of retreat, and somebody else thought you were all getting together to study the Bible. I mean, everybody thought they were for something different.”
“They were right,” said Ed. “All of them were right. It was all of those things at once, you see.”
“Oh, no kidding!” Pete slapped his knee. “Oh, I get it. That explains it. Well, so that’s it. Well, well. Okay, I see. Oh, sure. Well, never mind. Say, never mind about the coffee. Hey, Lorraine! Never mind about the coffee! I won’t stay for coffee. I’ll just be on my way. Hey, I’m sorry to have bothered you, ha-ha, so early Sunday morning. Hey, you people, Happy New Year!”
Peter Terry was a willow reed, thought Lorraine, looking out of the kitchen as the front door slammed. He would bend with every wind. But his wife was still a menacing threat. Flo Terry was a rod of iron.
The Gibbys had sold their house. They were walking around it for the last time, their footsteps noisy in the empty rooms. The kids were already in Cambridge at Imogene’s mother’s house in Porter Square. Imogene was trying not to cry. She stroked the trash compacter and ran her fingers down the frame of the bay window in the family room.
“Oh, Imogene,” said Jerry, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” said Imogene. “Someday we’ll have a place like this again. You’ll see.”
“Are you sure you want to go to church?”
“Oh, yes.” Imogene dabbed at her eyes at the kitchen sink. “I’m okay now.”
Parker Upshaw was in church that morning, just as usual. Parker never missed a Sunday, because he was keeping tabs on Joe Bold. Sitting with folded arms, he took mental notes, listening for hesitations and falterings, grading the sermons on a scale of one to ten, recording the evidence in a folder on his desk at home. He was preparing for another approach to the Parish Committee, making a case for the dismissal of the Reverend Joseph Bold. His wife, Libby, looked at him sideways when he whipped out his pencil during the final hymn to make a note on his order of service. “It’s like the Spanish Inquisition,” she whispered. “You’d think the man was a heretic.”
“I suspect the Inquisition had a bad press,” murmured Parker smugly, pleased with himself, reflecting that the Spanish inquisitors had probably been a bunch of good hard-nosed guys who made tough decisions in a time of crisis. They had probably saved the church in the long run. If it hadn’t been for them, the whole Catholic Church might not have survived. The Pope would be digging potatoes in Poland. The Vatican would be a collection of high-priced condominiums.
Parker bowed his head for the final blessing, then walked to the door with Libby, suffused with self-righteousness, vowing to run uphill to the car to improve the shining hour. But outside he came face-to-face with Jerry Gibby. In Upshaw’s state of exaltation, Jerry was little more than a blip on the screen of his own self-satisfaction. Looking right through him, Parker shouldered past Jerry and descended the steps, buttoning his coat.
But Jerry Gibby was not a stream of electrons in a cathode-ray tube. He was an overweight mass of suffering flesh, racked with rage and frustration, encased in a too small suit. Superimposed on Upshaw’s arrogant face
Jerry could see Imogene’s plump hand stroking the frame of the window. Maddened by vexation and resentment, he struck at his tormentor, hitting him clumsily in the right shoulder. Then, screwing up his face and shutting his eyes, he pushed Upshaw down the steps and punched the top button of his coat.
Imogene screamed. Ed Bell and Homer Kelly pulled Jerry away from Upshaw, who was bending over, holding his middle, his face contorted. “Don’t think I won’t do something about this, Gibby,” he gasped angrily. “Unprovoked assault and battery. You’ll hear from me.”
And, of course, Jerry did. Next day the doorbell rang loudly in Imogene’s mother’s house in Porter Square. The man at the door was wearing a blue uniform. He was an old friend of Jerry’s from high school. A sob rose in Jerry’s throat when he saw the big envelope in his friend’s hand.
“Sorry, Jerry,” said the officer, handing him the summons.
“Gee, thanks,” said Jerry bitterly.
38
Oh lovely woman! Truly thou art a helper!
James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849
Flo Terry was, naturally, entirely dissatisfied with her husband’s Sunday-morning attempt to solicit information from Ed Bell, and she told him so in no uncertain terms.
“Look, Flo,” said Pete helplessly, “I admit I’m no detective. Why don’t you talk to Homer Kelly? He used to do that kind of thing for a living.”
“I’ve already tried Homer,” said Flo. “But, all right, I’ll try again.”
So the next time Homer ventured into the Nashoba public library, Flo was waiting for him at her desk in a shadowy nook overhung with carved mottoes of an inspirational nature. Rearing up from the desk, Flo stalked over to confront him as he sat down and opened his notebook. “Move over, Homer,” she commanded, and then she sat beside him and grilled him on the subject of the Sunday-afternoon meetings at Ed Bell’s house.
But Homer seemed distracted and inattentive, as if he were in some kind of pain. “Meetings?” he said. His face twitched. He was holding himself around the middle. “At Ed Bell’s? Sunday afternoons?”