by Jan Karon
It had been years since Elliott walked out—the divorce papers arrived by certified mail the following day—and in those years, not one soul had made her mouth go dry as cotton and her knees turn to water. Oh, how she had despised the torment of loving like a girl instead of like . . . like a sophisticated woman, whatever that might be.
That early, awkward time had also been irresistibly sweet. But now this—confusion and distress and alarm, and yes, the oddly scary thoughts of the women of Lord’s Chapel who for years had stood around him like a hedge of thorns, protecting him as their very own; keeping him, they liked to believe, from foolish stumbles; feeding him meringues and layer cake at every turn; mothering and sistering him as if this were their life’s calling. She saw, now, something she’d only glimpsed before, and that was the way an unmarried priest is thought to belong to the matrons of the church, lock, stock, and barrel.
More than once she’d waited at his side, feeling gauche and adolescent, as they clucked over him—inquiring after his blood sugar, flicking an imaginary hair from his lapel, ordering him to take a week off, and coyly insisting he never stray beyond the town limits. They were perfectly harmless, every one, and she despised herself for such cheap and petty thoughts, but they were real thoughts, and now that the word was out, she felt his flock sizing her up in a fresh, even severe way.
Yet, for all their maternal indulgence of their priest, she knew they underestimated him most awfully. She had heard a member of the Altar Guild wondering how anyone “so youthful and sure of herself” could be attracted to their “dear old priest who is going bald as a hen egg and diabetic to boot.”
Indeed, he wasn’t merely the mild and agreeable man they perceived him to be; he was instead a man of the richest reserves of strength and poise, of the deepest tenderness and most enormous wit and gallantry.
From the beginning, she found him to possess an ardor for his calling that spoke to her heart and mind and soul in such a deep and familiar way, she felt as if he were long-lost kin, returned at last from a distant shore. He had felt this, too, this connection of some vital force in himself with her own vitality, and he had been knocked back, literally, as if by the thunder-striking power of a summer storm.
She had known she would never again be given such a connection, and she had moved bravely toward it, toward its heat, toward its center, while he had drawn back, shaken.
“‘Love bade me welcome,’” he had once quoted from George Herbert, “‘but my soul drew back.’” She found a delicate irony in the fact that George Herbert had been a clergyman.
She looked at the handwritten sheet pinned above her drawing board, something she had copied at the Mitford library from an old book by Elizabeth Goudge:She had long accepted the fact that happiness is like swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it. When you expect to be happy you are not, when you don’t expect to be happy there is suddenly Easter in your soul, though it be midwinter. Something, you do not know what, has broken the seal upon that door in the depth of your being that opens upon eternity.
Eternity!
She moved from the window and walked quickly to the kitchen. She would do something that, if only for the briefest hour, had the power to solve everything, to offer certain and absolute consolation.
She would cook.
She removed the chicken from the refrigerator, already rubbed with olive oil and crushed garlic, with half a lemon tucked into its cavity. She misted olive oil into her ancient iron skillet, placed the bird on its back, and ground pepper and sea salt onto its plump flesh. From a glass of water on the windowsill she removed a pungent stalk of fresh rosemary and stuck it under the breast skin. The top of the green stalk waved forth like a feather from a hat band.
She turned the stove dial to 450, where it would remain for thirty minutes before being set at 350 for an hour, and slid the raw feast onto the middle rack.
The wrenching thing, she knew in her heart, was having no one to talk with about it all, and whose fault was that but her own? Had she not worked like a common stevedore since coming to Mitford, making a way for her work instead of making friends? Oh, yes, she was liked well enough, she really was, but there was no trusted friend to whom she might pour her heart out. There was no one, not a soul.
Except . . . she smiled at the thought . . . the priest himself. Her heart warmed suddenly, and lifted up. Hadn’t she confessed something to him only yesterday?
“They don’t like me,” she had said, despising the whine she heard in her voice. “They did, of course, until they learned you were actually going to marry me, but now . . .”
“Nonsense!” he’d said with feeling. “They think the world of you!”
That was apparently the most profound compliment a Southerner could pay, to insist that one was thought the “world” of!
She realized she wouldn’t finish the illustration as she’d promised her editor; she would finish it tomorrow, instead. She, who was ever loath to break a promise, would break this one.
“Timothy?” she said when he answered the phone. “Can you come over?” Her heart was pounding, and there was a distinct quaver in her voice; she was warbling like a canary.
“I’m scared, dearest, scared to death.”
She loved the way he sat with her, not saying anything in particular, not probing, not pushing her, just sitting on her love seat. Perhaps what she liked best was that he always looked comfortable wherever he was, appearing glad to live within his skin and not always jumping out of it like some men, like James, her editor, who was everlastingly clever and eloquent and ablaze with wild ideas that succeeded greatly for him, while with Timothy the thing that succeeded was quietude, something rich and deep and . . . nourishing, a kind of spiritual chicken soup simmering in some far reach of the soul.
“Tell me,” he said at last. “Tell me everything. I’m your priest, after all.” She thought his smile dazzling, a dazzling thing to come out of quietude. She had pulled a footstool to the love seat and sat close to him.
“I’m terribly afraid I can’t make you happy,” she said.
“But that was my fear! I finally kicked it out the back door and now it’s run over here.”
“It’s not funny, Timothy.”
“I’m not laughing.”
He took her hands in his and lightly kissed the tips of her fingers and she caught the scent of him, the innocence of him, and her spirit mounted up again.
“Why don’t we pray together?” he said. “Just let our hearts speak to His. . . .”
Sitting at his feet, she bowed her head and closed her eyes and he stroked her shoulder. Though the clock ticked in the hallway, she supposed that time was standing still, and that she might sit with him in this holy reverie, forever.
“Lord,” he said, simply, “here we are.”
“Yes, Lord, here we are.”
They drew in their breath as one, and let it out in a long sigh, and she realized for a moment how the very act of breathing in His presence was balm.
“Dear God,” he said, “deliver Your cherished one from feeling helpless to receive the love You give so freely, so kindly, from the depths of Your being. Help us to be as large as the love You’ve given us, sometimes it’s too great for us, Lord, even painful in its power. Tear away the old fears, the old boundaries that no longer contain anything of worth or importance, and by Your grace, make Cynthia able to seize this bold, fresh freedom. . . .”
“Yes, Lord,” she prayed, “the freedom I’ve never really known before, but which You’ve faithfully shown me in glimmers, in epiphanies, in wisps as fragile as . . . light from Your new moon!”
He pressed her hand, feeling in it the beating of her pulse.
“Father, deliver me from the fear to love wholly and completely, I who chided this good man for his own fears, his own weakness, while posing, without knowing it a pose, as confident and bold. You’ve seen through that, Lord, You’ve . . . You’ve found me out for what I
am . . .”
There was a long silence, filled by the ticking of the clock.
“. . . a frightened seven-year-old who stands at the door looking for a father and mother who . . . do not come home.
“Even after years of knowing You as a Father who is always home, I sometimes feel—I feel a prisoner of old and wrenching fears, and I’m ashamed of my fear, and the darkness that prevents me from stepping into the light. . . .”
“You tell us in Your Word,” he prayed, “that You do not give us the spirit of fear—”
“But of power and of love and a sound mind!” she whispered, completing the verse from the second letter to Timothy.
“And so, Lord, I rebuke the Enemy who would employ every strategy to deny Your children the blessing of Your grace.”
“Yes, Lord!”
“Help us to receive Your peace and courage, Your confidence and power,” he said.
“Yes, Lord!”
“Thank you for being with us now, and in the coming weeks and coming years.”
“And Father,” she said, “please give me the grace to love Dooley as You love him, and the patience to encourage and support and understand him, for I wish with all my heart that we might grow together in harmony, as a true family.” She took a deep and satisfying breath. “And now, Lord . . .”
As the prayer neared its end, they spoke in unison as they had recently begun to do in their evening prayers.
“. . . create in us a clean heart . . . renew a right spirit within us . . . and fill us with Your Holy Spirit . . . through Christ our Lord . . . amen.”
He helped her from the footstool and she sat beside him on the love seat and breathed the peace that settled over them like a shawl.
“There will be many times when fear breaks in,” he said, holding her close. “We can never be taken prisoner if we greet it with prayer.”
“Yes!” she whispered, feeling a weight rolled away like the stone from the sepulcher.
“I smelled the chicken as I came through the hedge.”
“Dinner in twenty minutes?” she murmured.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Preamble
On the morning of September seventh, in the upstairs guest room of the rectory, Bishop Stuart Cullen checked his vestments for any signs of wrinkles or unwanted creases, found none, then took his miter from the box and set it on the bureau, mindful that his crozier was in the trunk of the car, as were his black, polished shoes and an umbrella in case of rain.
Rummaging about the room in a pair of magenta boxer shorts given him by his suffragan, he hummed snatches of a Johnny Cash tune as Martha Cullen sat up in bed and read an issue of Country Life magazine that Puny had placed on the night table three years ago and faithfully dusted ever since. Studying a feature on knot gardens, she was utterly unmindful of the bishop’s rendition of “Ring of Fire” as he enjoyed a long, steaming shower that caused water in the shower across the hall to trickle upon the rector’s head in a feeble stream.
Under the miserly drizzle, the rector counted his blessings that the bishop would be preaching this morning and he celebrating, a veritable holiday in the Caymans, as far as he was concerned. In truth, he feared that if he opened his mouth to deliver wisdom of any sort, it would pour forth as some uncertified language, resulting not from the baptism of the Holy Spirit but of something akin to panic, or worse. He despaired that the custard had vanished in the night, and fear and trembling had jumped into its place with both feet.
In his room across the hall, Dooley sat on the side of his bed and felt the creeping, lopsided nausea that came with the aroma of baking ham as it rose from the kitchen. He said three four-letter words in a row, and was disappointed when his stomach still felt sick.
He hoped his voice wouldn’t crack during the hymn. Though he’d agreed to sing a cappella, he didn’t trust a cappella. If you hit a wrong note, there was nothing to cover you. He wished there were trumpets or something really loud behind him, but no, Cynthia wanted “Dooley’s pure voice.” Gag.
“God,” he said aloud, “don’t let me sound weird. Amen.” He had no idea that God would really hear him or prevent him from sounding weird, but he thought it was a good idea to ask.
He guessed he was feeling better about stuff. Yesterday, Father Tim spent the whole day taking him places, plus they’d run two miles with Barnabas and gone to Sweet Stuff after. Then, Cynthia had given him a hug that nearly squeezed his guts out. “Dooley,” she said, “I really care about you.”
When he heard that, he felt his face getting hard. He didn’t want it to, but it was trained that way. He could tell she really meant it, but she’d have to prove she meant it before he would smile at her; he knew she wanted him to smile. Maybe he would someday, but not now. Now he was trying to keep from puking up his gizzard because he had to sing a song he didn’t even like, at a wedding he still wasn’t sure of.
In the kitchen of the little yellow house beyond the hedge, Cynthia Coppersmith stood barefoot in her aging chenile robe, her hair in pink foam curlers, eating half a hotdog from the refrigerator and drinking coffee so strong it possessed the consistency of tapioca.
On arriving home last night from the country club dinner party where, out of courtesy, she’d picked at a salad, she had boiled a hotdog and eaten the first half of it in a bun with what she thought was mustard but was, in fact, horseradish, loosely the age of her expiring Boston fern. It was the first true nourishment she’d recently been able to take, except for a rock shrimp and three cherry tomatoes at Friday’s bridal luncheon. She ate the remains of the hotdog in two bites and, feeling her lagging appetite suddenly stimulated, foraged in the refrigerator until she found a piece of Wednesday’s broiled flounder, which she spritzed with the juice of a geriatric lemon and, standing at the sink, consumed with gusto.
Two blocks south, Esther Bolick peered out her kitchen window as a straggle of rain clouds parted to reveal the sun. “Happy is th’ bride th’ sun shines on!” she announced with relief.
Going briskly to the oven, she removed three pans of scratch cake layers to a cooling rack, and stood with her hands on her hips in a baby doll nightgown and bedroom shoes with the faces of bunnies. She gazed with satisfaction at the trio of perfect yellow moons, then trotted across the kitchen for another cup of decaf, the black pupils of the bunnies’ plastic eyes rolling and clicking like dice.
She would go to Sunday School and the eleven o’clock, then come home and ice the cake and let it sit’til she carried it to church at four. She and Gene would do what they usually did when hauling around a three-layer—put newspaper on the floor of the cargo area, and while Gene drove, she would sit back there on a stool and hold the cake to keep it from sliding around in its cardboard box. Without a van, there was no way on God’s green earth to follow her calling unless you were making sheet cakes, which she utterly despised and would not be caught dead doing. The icing would go on at home, but she’d put the pearls and lilies on at church in one of the Sunday School rooms. Then she’d take the shelves out of the church fridge and pop the whole thing in ’til just before the thundering horde hit the reception.
She removed the hair net from her head and stuck it in the knife drawer.
Four blocks north, Uncle Billy Watson took the wire hanger from the nail on the wall and squinted at the black wool suit, inherited from his long-dead brother-in-law. Its heaviness had bowed down the arms of the coat hanger, giving the whole thing a dejected appearance.
“Dadgummit,” he said under his breath. There was a spot on the right lapel as big as a silver dollar; it looked like paint—or was it vanilla pudding? In his pajamas, he shuffled to the kitchen, where he could see in a better light.
Miss Rose was sitting in her chair by the refrigerator, peeling potatoes with a knife too dull to cut butter. “What are you doing, Bill Watson?”
“Cleanin’ my coat.”
“You’ll not be getting my goat!” she sa
id, indignant.
His wife was going deaf as a doorknob, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. She wouldn’t even discuss hearing aids, let alone ask the county to buy her a pair.
“What are you wearin’ to the weddin’?” he shouted.
“What wedding?”
“Th’ preacher’s weddin’ this evenin’ at five o’clock!”
“Five o’clock!” she squawked. “That’s suppertime!”
“Well, I cain’t help if it is, hit’s th’ preacher’s weddin’ an’ we’re a-goin’.” Hadn’t he talked about this wedding ’til he was blue in the face, even picked out three dresses she had bitterly rejected? And now this.
He wagged his head and sighed. “Lord have mercy.”
“What about Percy?” she demanded.
The old man scrubbed at the lapel with a wet dishrag. Some days he could put on a smiley face and go about his business just fine, some days Rose Watson tested his faith, yes, she did. He’d have to trot to church this morning and sit there asking forgiveness for what he was thinking. He’d also be thanking the Lord for the joke. Don’t tell him that God Almighty didn’t answer foolish prayers!
Four blocks northwest, Hessie Mayhew lay snoring in her double bed with the faded flannel sheets and vintage Sears mattress. She had taken two Benadryl caps last night to dry up her sinuses after a day of messing with lady’s-mantle and hydrangeas. Hydrangeas always did something to her sinuses, they had drained like a tap as she plowed through people’s yards, taking what she wanted without asking. She’d even ducked behind the Methodist chapel, where a thick hedge of hydrangeas flowered magnificently every year, and took her pick of the huge blooms.