Divine Inspiration

by Jane Langton

  “Don’t touch,” she warned him, withdrawing a flattened black object. “I got to do all the handling. Like, nobody else is allowed.”

  The pocketbook belonging to Rosie Hall had once been brown, but now it was black. Most of the leather surface had been scorched. The gray woman reached in and drew out the contents, one article at a time. They were blackened but recognizable.

  “May I see what’s in the wallet?”

  The woman shrugged and raised her eyebrows. She pulled open the billfold carefully, displaying scorched twenty-dollar bills, a couple of fused plastic credit cards and a warped driver’s license. The sober face of Rosalind Hall was dimly visible on the license.

  “What’s in the zippered bag?”

  “It’s just cosmetics. I already looked.”

  “Please may I see?”

  The woman was displeased. She tugged back the zipper with a petulant motion and shook out the contents with a violent gesture.

  A fragrance of cheap perfume rose from the heap of cosmetics, mingled with the acrid smell of scorching. Homer was baffled. He could recognize the lipsticks, the melted comb and the cracked mirror, but what were all the other things? There were flat round containers, small square boxes, cylinders and pencils, and a device like an instrument of torture.

  “What’s that?”

  “That? It’s an eyelash curler.”

  “An eyelash curler?” Homer was stunned. “How does it work?”

  The woman came to life. “Wait a sec. There’s one in my bag.” She turned away swiftly, took a shiny pocketbook from the drawer of her desk, reached in, pulled out a nearly identical cosmetic case, and emptied it on the counter next to Exhibit H. Picking up her eyelash curler in one hand and a pocket mirror in the other, she crimped the pale lashes on her upper lids until they stood straight up, kinked at right angles.

  “Good Lord.” Homer waved a hand at all the rest. “Could you demonstrate these too?”

  “Well, okay.” She got to work with a will. The subject of cosmetics was the woman herself. It was something she was interested in. She jabbered, explaining. “First you got your foundation cream—then your powder—your blusher—your eyebrow pencil—your eyeliner—your eye shadow—your mascara. You got two kinds of lipstick, see? Like, you put this one on first, and then you frost it with the other one.”

  Homer watched like a neophyte in a temple to an unknown god. In five minutes the gray woman had transformed herself into a white and pink doll with phosphorescent lips like the mouth of a corpse and eyes like bugs with a thousand legs. She was a work of art.

  Humbly Homer thanked her and went away. Heading for Storrow Drive he pulled over impulsively and parked on Clarendon Street beside the Church of the Commonwealth.

  He found Alan Starr in the vestibule with his nose pressed against the glass doors of the sanctuary. “Baptism,” he explained. “Always some goddamned interruption.”

  Homer looked too. “Ugly little kid,” he said. “Not like our Charley.”

  Alan grinned at him. “Just what I was thinking myself.”

  “Look here,” said Homer, “I’ve just come from the Temple of Cosmetic Craftsmanship, and I want to tell you all about it.”

  “The temple of what?”

  “Evidence Locker, Boston Police Department. Rosalind Hall’s burned pocketbook, I’ve just seen it.” Homer told Alan about the credit cards, the driver’s license, the money, the cosmetic case with its contents—the eyelash curler, the mascara, the eyebrow pencil.

  “But that’s ridiculous,” said Alan. “Rosie would never have used all that stuff.”

  “Ah,” said Homer, looking at him wisely, “I thought you might say that. But you never met the woman. How do you know what she would do?”

  “Well, just look at her photograph,” said Alan angrily. “She’s not wearing a lot of trashy stuff. I can’t believe she wore makeup. Give her credit for some consistency.”

  Yesterday Homer would have agreed with him. But this morning his wife had driven off to Cambridge completely transformed, a new woman. He shook his head doubtfully. “Well, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Oh, Homer, for Christ’s sake, it’s just like the car radio. That didn’t fit Rosie either. She would never have tuned to that station, and she would never have worn all that stuff on her face. And Charley saw her, don’t forget that. She’s still alive, I tell you. Somebody wants us to believe she’s dead.”

  The baptism was over. Martin Kraeger came out into the hall, nodded at Homer, and held the door open for the mother, the father, the baby, the sister, the brother, the grandparents and godparents. Everybody was smiling. Even the ugly infant was smiling, surrounded by a whole population of parents and well-wishers—unlike poor handsome little Charley, bereft of loving relations.

  Homer walked back to his car. Idly he glanced at the excavation across the street from the church. Nothing seemed to be happening down in the hole. The machinery sat motionless.

  The truth was that the hotel project was in serious trouble. Things had gone from bad to worse. The majority stockholder in the realty trust had suffered an apoplectic stroke. All hell had broken loose. The other members of the board were bickering among themselves, unable to make a decision while his life hung in the balance. In the meantime the arrangement with the contractor had been slyly cancelled and a new document signed, awarding the job to the brother of an alderman. There were suits and countersuits, restraining orders, fistfights, court appearances for assault lodged by both sides.

  The job engineer didn’t give a damn. He was busy with another dirty job, way down Route 95, building a slurry wall, only there’d been hell to pay from the beginning. The clamshell bucket busted its teeth on a boulder, and then the concrete refused to sink to the bottom of the slurry and had to be pumped out again, and the pump got choked and jammed, and the whole thing was a bag of shit.

  The buried sump pump under the excavation of Clarendon Street and the switch that had been left on instead of off were the farthest things from his mind.

  CHAPTER 32

  Behold, here is … faith really working by love.

  Martin Luther

  Alan made another entry in his record of Charley’s progress:

  Charley walks like anything now, sort of pitched forward. He falls down, but then he gets up and staggers on. Last Friday he was sick. I don’t think Debbie noticed a thing, but when I got him here he wouldn’t eat and he felt hot, and then he threw up. I bundled him up and took him back to Debbie’s and stayed with him the rest of the day. He seemed a lot better by evening, so I didn’t call a doctor. Next morning I called Debbie, and she was still asleep, so she was really mad, but she took a look at him, and his forehead was cool and he seemed fine, so I stopped worrying. When I saw him at noon he was back to his old self.

  Alan read over what he had written, looked at his watch, slapped the notebook shut, put it back in Rosie’s drawer, lifted Charley out of the playpen, wrestled him into his snowsuit and popped him into the stroller. He had a meeting in an hour with the Music Committee at Commonwealth, and an hour was barely time enough to get Charley home to Bowdoin Street and run back by himself to the church.

  In the back entry he found Mrs. Garboyle lifting a trash bag into one of the plastic barrels. Slapping down the lid, she bent down to coo at Charley.

  “Oh, Mrs. Garboyle,” said Alan, plunging to the point without the usual introductory conversational flourishes, “this is sort of a strange question, I mean, it’s really strange, but did you ever hear Rosie say she wanted to be cremated when she died?”

  “Cremated? Rosie? Good heavens, no.” Mrs. Garboyle poked Charley gently in the stomach, and he laughed.

  Barbara Inch too was on her way to the meeting with the Music Committee. It was her first encounter with the committee, and she was anxious and excited. It was to be in Martin Kraeger’s office. Surely he would be there too.

  She had taken particular trouble with her appearance, but there wasn’t
much she could do beyond washing and brushing her hair and polishing her glasses. She found herself wishing she had the whole spectrum of cosmetics at her command, the ones Alan had told her about, the ones in Rosie’s pocketbook.

  “No, no, of course those weren’t hers,” Barbara had told him. “Rosie never wore anything on her face at all.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought.” Alan had seemed pleased.

  But now Barbara couldn’t help wondering whether some of that stuff might not improve things in her own case—some of Peggy Throstle’s blue eye shadow, for instance, and her black mascara and red lipstick. But probably not. Probably it would just make her look ridiculous.

  Barbara Inch had the poised aplomb granted to some homely girls, a quality growing out of her homeliness. As a small child she had not been aware that she was plain. Her parents had been brisk and kind. Only at school did she discover that something was the matter. Luckily she had been a clever girl and a strong athlete. She sank baskets and played the piano with the same accuracy. In a small way she had become popular, because she didn’t show off, she had learned to be funny, and she won a lot of games for the school. Her success at basketball and field hockey had thrown her with the jocks rather than the pretty feminine girls, and it had led to doubts about which sex she favored.

  She was no longer in doubt. Rounding the corner of Exeter Street, Barbara slapped down her flat shoes and told herself that being in love was better than not being in love, even if the whole thing was impossible. It made the cold sky bluer, the blowing clouds puffier. Perhaps the piece of paper drifting across the street was a precious letter, not just a wrapper from one of those shrimp-salad sandwiches they sold in Copley Square.

  In Martin Kraegers office she greeted Mrs. Frederick and took off her coat and hung it over the finial of one of the colossal chairs around the table.

  Mrs. Frederick looked at her critically. The recommendations on behalf of Barbara Inch had been impressive, and the choir was said to be enthusiastic, but the girl had no style at all. Her features were good, but those thick glasses made her eyes small and she had an awful lot of teeth. And her dress! It was impossible, another shapeless bag.

  Barbara could feel Mrs. Frederick’s eye upon her. Bravely she looked back at her and smiled.

  Martin Kraeger too was looking at Barbara, but with friendly interest. He thought how different she was from his ex-wife, who was all tight curls and crisp cosmetics and sharp elbows and sleek fashions from the right boutiques. “Welcome,” he said, smiling at her, reaching out his hand.

  Barbara took it. It was large and warm.

  They sat around the table between the computer in its shell-topped niche and the fireplace—Alan Starr, Barbara Inch, Dennis Partridge, Martin Kraeger, Dulcie Possett and Edith Frederick. Edith sat at the end of the table opposite the windows, facing the light. Her soft pink blouse ruffled under her chin, her rose-colored jacket was always becoming, the rippling purple pleats of her skirt trailed their knife-sharp creases to the floor. The low winter sunshine slanted in at her, and she could feel her lost beauty reassert itself.

  The table was littered with papers and books and church bulletins and Martin’s crystal ball. He swept everything down to one end except the crystal ball, which he thumped on the table to call the meeting to order. The first subject under discussion was music for Good Friday and Easter.

  At once Barbara got off on the wrong foot. She couldn’t control her swift decisiveness. “My choir is so terrific, I think we could handle one of the Bach Passions. We’d only need to hire a couple of extra soloists. We’ve already got a good bass, Harvey Pound.” Barbara smiled around the table.

  Martin Kraeger glanced at Mrs. Frederick. “What do you think, Edith? It sounds good to me.”

  “Well, that takes care of that,” said Barbara, half rising. “Meeting’s adjourned.” She sat down again, grinning. “But which one? What do you think, Alan?”

  Alan raised his eyebrows at her warningly and said nothing. There was a pause. Barbara had begun her career at Commonwealth with a mistake. She had ignored Edith Frederick.

  Martin Kraeger leaped into the breach. “But perhaps Mrs. Frederick has another idea. Any suggestions, Edith?”

  Edith was confused. She wanted to be consulted, but she didn’t know enough to make another suggestion. “Oh, whatever you people want, it’s all right with me.” Her hurt feelings were manifest.

  Barbara saw her mistake at once. “I was only joking.” It was something she had said a thousand times before. “Do tell us, Mrs. Frederick, what you would like best.”

  “No, no. Carry on. Bach is always an excellent choice.”

  Always in good taste, Barbara wanted to say, but she held her tongue.

  Martin Kraeger pitied Edith Frederick and wanted to comfort her. This afternoon she was looking particularly shriveled and old. Again he could almost see one of Holbein’s skeletons sitting next to her, crowding up against her, its articulated hand patting hers, the shiny plates of its skull close to her head, its arm around her shoulder. “Edith has put her finger on it,” he said. “An excellent choice. I agree.”

  There were murmurs of agreement around the table. Dulcie Possett spoke of a performance of the St. Matthew Passion she had heard in Kansas City. Old Dennis Partridge had sung in the chorus for the St. John, back in the nineteen-fifties.

  They went on to choose between the St. Matthew and the St. John. Alan had long since learned which way the tactful wind blew. “What do you think, Edith? The St. John is shorter, but I guess the St. Matthew’s a little more sublime.”

  “Measuring sublimity on a scale of ten,” joked Barbara. “But with only two months before Good Friday, it had better be the St. John.”

  “Should it be in English or German?” said Kraeger. He looked at Barbara. Something in his manner was a warning, but she was too new and she didn’t catch it.

  “Oh, German of course,” she said, “the way Bach performed it.”

  “Well,” Alan said judiciously, “there are some good English versions.”

  “I think,” said Edith, seeing a chance to oppose the arrogant new choir director, “it’s so much better when people can understand the music, don’t you think so, Martin?”

  “Yes, of course.” Martin looked at Barbara. “Would you mind if the choir sang in English?”

  Barbara wasn’t stupid. “Not at all. By all means, let’s have it in English.”

  Alan cleared his throat. It was time to introduce the subject of Harold Oates. “Edith and I have made a discovery. One of the best organists in the world is right here in Boston. Harold Oates.”

  “Harold Oates?” said Dennis Partridge. “I thought he was dead.”

  Barbara too was astonished. “The great Harold Oates? James Castle’s teacher? But he must be awfully old! At least seventy.” Then Barbara glanced at Mrs. Frederick, who looked eighty, and bit her tongue. Once again she had blundered.

  Deeply offended, Mrs. Frederick turned to Kraeger. “I assure you, Mr. Oates is magnificent. He played for me the other day. Until Alan discovered him, the poor man was living in a shelter for the homeless on Kansas Street. Imagine, a man of his reputation!” She beamed conspiratorially at Alan. “We think he should have a concert right here in this church.”

  “Well, good,” said Martin, “why not?”

  “Hear, hear,” said Dennis Partridge.

  “Great idea,” said Barbara.

  “And there’s another thing,” said Alan, following up on the success of Edith’s suggestion, “why couldn’t he play the organ for the St. John? I’m pretty overwhelmed right now. And Oates could do it with one hand tied behind his back. It’s child’s play.”

  “Well, I’d be honored to have him,” said Barbara. “Do you think he can handle rehearsals?”

  “Absolutely,” declared Alan, sounding more positive than he felt.

  “Talk about resurrection from the dead,” said Kraeger, grinning around the table. He glanced at the crystal ball,
which was reflecting the huge moony glasses of Barbara Inch, and suggested that other churches might sponsor concerts by the rediscovered Oates. “A series, a whole Back Bay series. What would you think, Edith, if I were to speak to my fellow clergy and try to fix it up?”

  Edith clapped her hands. “How marvelous.”

  “Wonderful,” said Barbara.

  “Meeting’s adjourned,” said Kraeger, banging down the crystal ball.

  CHAPTER 33

  The heart of a human creature is like quicksilver, now here, now there.

  Martin Luther

  “Hey, Dick, hey, Harry,” said Tom Duck, reaching into his coat pocket, “looky here, what I got.”

  It was a bottle of cherry brandy, half gone. Tom slapped it down on the table in the kitchen of the house on Kansas Street.

  Dick snickered. “The boss wouldn’t like that. Neither would his wife.”

  “They’re out,” said Tom. “So it’s all right. Let’s just finish it up, okay? In honor of Harry’s being here today, right?”

  “Hold it,” said Dick. “Harry ain’t supposed to have any. He’s got a two-year AA badge, like he’s working up to three.”

  Harold Oates closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the bottle. “What do you think I am, a fool?”

  “Well, okay,” said Tom. “You neither, Dick? Well, all right, but I got something else to show you. Come here.” Tom led the way into the hall and opened the door of the coat closet. It was jammed with clothing donated by charitable organizations and churches.

  “Back here,” said Tom, “see what I got back here.” He held aside the hanging coats and leaned over a box of blankets. “See this here case of beer? Whole case. Stranger brought it to the house. Never saw him before in my life. Gawd! So any time you want a beer, help yourself. Share and share alike, right?” Tom’s happy generosity was his witness to the kindly nature of the whole world.