Divine Inspiration

by Jane Langton

  “I don’t suppose the panties would still be there in the laundry?” suggested Mary.

  “Oh, no, I’m sure they’ve been thoroughly scrubbed in scented soap by now.”

  “Look,” said Mary, “don’t bother with Homer. This is right up my alley. Benny spent a lot of time with us, and I was the one who handled the problem of his excitable urinary tract. Let me handle it.”

  “Wonderful,” said Martin. “I feel better already. Mrs. Kelly, I put my entire future in your hands, like a holy chalice. Speaking of chalices—” He held out his glass.

  CHAPTER 55

  This affair will not have an end, if it be of God, until all my friends desert me … and truth be left alone.

  Martin Luther

  Edith Frederick heard the whispered stories with disbelief and shock. It was true that everything in her background should have condemned the man who could generate such rumors. But Edith was not altogether a conventional woman. In dress she was conservative, in musical judgment ignorant, in social intercourse old-fashioned, in action timid. But the changes of the last thirty years in the city of Boston had administered innumerable small jolts, painful but instructive. And the changing nature of the congregation of the Church of the Commonwealth was an education in itself.

  No longer was it made up of her own dear friends. It was a cross-section of a larger world. And the sermons of Martin Kraeger had chivvied her, nudged her farther and farther from the preconceptions with which she had been nourished. His beneficent ranting from the pulpit and his courtesy to her as a colleague had made of Edith Frederick a devoted advocate, anxious for his welfare.

  She came to him at once. “Is Mr. Kraeger in?” she asked Loretta Fawcett, who was typing at her desk.

  “Oh, he’s in,” said Loretta. Her eyes opened wide. Leaning over her desk, she whispered, “Did you hear—?”

  Edith cut her off. “I don’t believe it for an instant.” She knocked on Martin’s door, he called, “Come in,” and Loretta was deprived of her sensational revelation.

  For the next twenty minutes the conversation in Martin’s study was conducted in tones too low for Loretta to overhear, although she stopped typing and tried to listen. When Edith came out, Martin came with her. Edith’s soft old face was damp, and his was turned down to her with solicitude.

  Loretta watched them walk together to the stairs. When Martin came back he smiled at Loretta, but she only stared blankly back at the monster who had molested his own little daughter.

  He went into his office and shut the door. It was clear to him that Loretta’s response was a sample of what the entire congregation must be feeling. This morning Ken Possett had told him frankly that he had joined the opposition. Martin was grateful to Edith for remaining loyal, but she was only one old woman, even more fragile than she had seemed last week. Holbein’s bony skeleton was clinging to her more closely than ever, its grisly skull nudging her hollow cheek, its loving arm gripping her shoulder.

  Martin could not help comparing her brittle old age with the plump good health of Kenneth Possett. Her elderly goodwill could never outbalance the strength of Ken’s hostility.

  CHAPTER 56

  Ah! how bitter an enemy is the devil.

  Martin Luther

  Next day Mary Kelly took up the crusade, the question of Pansy Kraeger’s problematical panties. She began with the daycare centers. The women in charge would be surely be experts in the toilet training of small children.

  Pansy had been enrolled in a couple of different places, the center at the church and another one called Mother Goose Land on Hereford Street. And Martin thought there had been another before that.

  Mary began with the church. But Ruth Raymond was too busy to talk. She was trying to handle a group of fifteen small tots with the help of only one other woman. “Cecily, stop talking. Scott, put that down. Karen, leave Becky alone.” In answer to Mary’s question about Pansy Kraeger, she said, “Oh, isn’t it dreadful? How could he? We’re all so upset.”

  Mary suppressed a sharp retort and said blandly, “Well, some of us think the charge isn’t true.” Folding herself double, she sat down on a tiny chair.

  Ruth wasn’t listening. Darting forward, she helped a small girl clamber to the top of a pint-sized jungle gym and climb down again. “Oh, we made such an awful mistake last month,” she said, plopping down beside Mary in another small chair. “I don’t know how long I can stand it. Cecily, stop that noise!”

  “An awful mistake?”

  “We took in eight more children, all at once, just like that.”

  “Eight more, in the middle of the year?”

  “Well, we had extra help then. But Marcia resigned because she was getting married, and then Joanie got mono, and Ann and I—well, we had a fight, we were both so tired, and I said something I shouldn’t have said, and she left, so here I am. Sometimes I can get a mother to help, like today—thank God for Mrs. Benjamin—but most of the mothers are working. I mean, that’s why the kids are here, so their mothers can work. I’m only barely legal. Some days I’m not even that, like today.”

  “But why were there suddenly eight more children?”

  “Oh, the other daycare center in this neighborhood, Kiddy Kamp, closed down. The kids had to go somewhere, and we thought we could handle them—we were glad of the extra money, so we took them.” Ruth lowered her voice and whispered in Mary’s ear, “Mrs. Benjamin had her little boy there. See, there he is, climbing into her lap. I asked her what the trouble was. I mean, I heard there was some sort of scandal, but she buttoned her lip and wouldn’t tell me. Cecily, I don’t want to speak to you again!”

  Mary had another question, but it was interrupted by a noisy argument over a tricycle. It took both Mrs. Benjamin and Ruth Raymond to handle it. Then a small moppet bashed another one with a tin pan from the toy stove. Ruth darted away to comfort the victim.

  Mary went to Mrs. Benjamin and sat down beside her, folding her long legs once again. “Oh, Mrs. Benjamin, I understand there was some sort of trouble at Kiddy Kamp. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Mrs. Benjamin was a black woman with a smooth kindly face. She looked at Mary and shook her head, but Cecily piped up brightly. “It was Pansy. Pansy went to the bathroom in her—”

  “Ssshhh, Cecily.” Mrs. Benjamin touched Mary’s arm. “Talk to Millie Weideman. It was her daycare center. She’ll tell you all about it.” Mrs. Benjamin opened a book and held it up for the children to see. “Now look, everybody, who’s that?”

  “HORTON THE ELEPHANT,” shouted all the children, crowding close to her knees, eager to climb the first rung of the ladder of education.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Benjamin. Thank you, Mrs. Raymond.” Mary left the daycare center and found her way to the public phone in the vestibule of the church. She was pleased to find Kiddy Kamp in the phone book, even though it was defunct. “Is this Millie Weideman?”

  “Speaking.”

  “My name’s Mary Kelly. My husband and I are friends of Martin Kraeger, the minister of the Church of the Commonwealth. I understand his daughter Pansy was enrolled in your daycare center. Might I come to see you and talk about Pansy?”

  “Talk about Pansy?” Millie Weideman made a sound that was half laugh, half snort. “Why not? Come right over. I’d be delighted to talk about Pansy Kraeger.”

  It was only five blocks up Clarendon Street to Millie Weideman’s apartment. The day was mild. Mary swung along, enjoying the way the mirrored surface of the Hancock Tower reflected the blue sky and Trinity Church and the pedestrians on the sidewalk. She crossed St. James Avenue toward her own wobbly reflection, then broke into a run.

  Millie Weideman’s building was one of a row of town houses that were downmarket versions of the grand dwellings on Commonwealth Avenue. Her apartment was small, crowded with paraphernalia from the discontinued daycare center.

  “Don’t trip over the cats,” said Millie, leading the way to a couple of chairs laden with toys and blocks. “Here, I’ll just
shove all this stuff aside.” She picked up a plastic egg box filled with tiny plants growing in eggshells. “Look at that. What am I supposed to do with all these little clovers? The kids planted them. I suppose I should take them over to Commonwealth, but I don’t want to set eyes on Pansy Kraeger ever again.”

  Mary made her way past a guinea pig in a cage full of shavings and a gerbil whirling on his exercise wheel. Picking up a Raggedy Ann she smoothed its apron and sat down. Four half-grown kittens tumbled over each other on the floor. “Tell me, what is it about Pansy that’s so disturbing?”

  “Oh, Lord, it wasn’t Pansy, it was her mother.” Millie put her head in her hands. “Where to begin?”

  “Can you tell me why you had to close down?”

  “Mrs. Kraeger accused one of our mother-helpers of molesting one of the children. White child, black mother-helper. Pain.”

  “Well, was the accusation true?”

  “Of course it wasn’t true. The little kid couldn’t control her bladder. We had to keep changing her pants. We told her mother we couldn’t keep her because our kids had to be toilet-trained. I mean, we had a long list of children waiting for an opening. Their mothers needed to be working. They really needed a good daycare center. And we were good. Damn!”

  “But why would Mrs. Kraeger make such an accusation?”

  “Oh, she was insulted. She refused to believe her perfect little four-year-old needed her pants changed all the time. She accused us of—you know—wanting to handle her genitals or something.”

  “But couldn’t you fight back?”

  “Oh, God, we tried. We called in her complaint to Social Services immediately—you have to do that—and sent in a report, and then an inspector came and talked to everyone on the staff, and they exonerated us. But it didn’t make a hell of a bit of difference. That slimy woman called all the other mothers and got them excited too, and they all snatched their children out of Kiddy Kamp, so we had to close down. And now I’ve got this crazy thing on my record as a daycare administrator. I’m so mad I could spit.”

  “So it was all Kay Kraeger’s doing,” murmured Mary, getting up to go.

  “Kay Kraeger,” agreed Millie Weideman. “I hope she fries in hell.”

  PALM SUNDAY

  “Alle Menschen müssen sterben”

  Chorale harmonized by J. S. Bach

  Everyone on earth must perish

  All our flesh must fade as grass.

  Only through Death’s solemn portal

  To a better life we pass.

  CHAPTER 57

  The Lord drags me, and not unwillingly do I follow.

  Martin Luther

  Alan’s bank account was shrivelling. He was paying two separate monthly rents, one for his room on Russell Street, the other for Rosie Hall’s apartment. The fact that Harold Oates was sharing the apartment didn’t seem to give him any qualms of conscience about helping with the expense, even though his concerts were bringing in substantial sums of money. Well, the hell with it. Grudgingly Alan told himself that the greatest organist in the world had a right to float on his greatness.

  Mrs. Garboyle took Alan’s rent checks graciously and set them aside. She promised to turn the money over to the executors whenever the house made its way through probate—to the executors or to anybody else who was concerned with the matter out there in the dry stretches of barren desert where courts convened and judges ruled and estate attorneys earned large fees.

  Oates was completely at home in Rosie’s apartment. He deposited cigarette ashes everywhere, complained about Alan’s cooking, splashed in the bathtub and played the harpsichord. Alan was bewitched by his harpsichord technique. His fingers were as precise and delicate on the plucked notes of the keyboard as they were powerful on the keys of the tracker organ, where two coupled manuals called for strength of hand and arm.

  Alan listened with pleasure, but at night he insisted on sleeping on the sofa, while Oates took the bedroom. It wasn’t generosity, it was harpsichord protection.

  But there was no way to protect Rosie’s drawers and closets from the inquisitiveness of Harold Oates. He pried and poked, examining prescription medicines, fingering her underwear, reading letters, uncovering a bedside book on female hygiene. Alan couldn’t blame him, because he himself had examined everything in the house, but he was infuriated just the same. And what about Rosie’s notebook? How could he protect it from the meddling fingers of Harold Oates?

  Alan wandered around the house looking for a hiding place, then slipped it among the cookbooks in the kitchen. Oates was no cook. He wouldn’t be consulting Julia Child or studying One Hundred Ways to Cook Zucchini.

  On Palm Sunday Alan came home from an exhausting service at the Church of the Commonwealth to find Oates rewinding a tape on one of Rosie’s old-fashioned tape recorders. He was fuming. “Horrible low-tech. A recording of a recording. Wrong registration. And the repeat is a mess. Background noise. Disgusting.”

  Alan felt resentful for Rosie’s sake. “What’s that, ‘Wachet Auf’? I thought she played it very well.”

  “Who, your fried girlfriend? Oh, her technique’s okay, but, shit, the registration. She should have come on strong with a gutsy reed in the cantus firmus.” He looked at Alan and jerked his head toward the bedroom door. “Hey, somebody opened the safe while you were gone.”

  “What?” Alan ran into the bedroom and stared at the wall where the little woven fabric from Guatemala had covered the small safe. Now it was hanging cockeyed. The door of the safe was open.

  “Empty,” said Oates, trailing after him. “I thought they might have left a stray thousand-dollar bill. No such luck.”

  Alan turned on him. “Where were you while this was happening?”

  Oates plopped down on the unmade bed and closed his eyes. “Visiting old pals on Kansas Street. Where do you think?”

  And Dora O’Doyle, no doubt. Alan didn’t care. He went to the kitchen and phoned Homer. “It had to be Rosie,” he said eagerly. “Who else would know the combination?”

  “Good,” said Homer. “Is anything else missing?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll look around and call you back.”

  At once Alan turned to the shelf of cookbooks. He ran his fingers over the books, and pulled out the zucchini book and The Joy of Cooking. Surely he had put Rosie’s notebook between them? It wasn’t there.

  The notebook was gone, and so were a number of other things. Alan made a list and reported it to Homer. “Charley’s blanket, his spoon, his ball, his vitamins, his xylophone. Whoever took him from Debbie Buffington’s place must have come here, opened the safe, and taken stuff for the baby. It had to be Rosie.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Homer.

  Alan went back to the church and spent the afternoon voicing the eight-foot Octave. Only the thirty-two-foot Contra Bombarde remained in the Marblehead shop.

  Returning to the apartment late in the afternoon he found himself alone. Oates was somewhere else. Once again Alan ransacked the cookbook shelf. The notebook was nowhere to be found. Perhaps Rosie was flipping through its pages right now, reading his notes on Charley’s progress and the letters he had written to her in his sentimental folly. Alan winced as he thought of the dumb things he had said. He tried to picture her walking away down Commonwealth Avenue carrying a bag of Charley’s things and turning over the pages of the notebook.

  The picture refused to materialize. Rosie was absent. Until now she had been a presence lurking just around the corner somewhere, if he could only find the right corner. Now she seemed remote, removed to the farthest star, as though she did not exist in Boston at all, or in New York City, or Pittsburgh, or Santa Fe, or Milwaukee, or San Francisco, or Detroit.

  She was more gone than she had ever been before.

  “They’re gone? Oh, thank the Lord!”

  “I dropped them at Lufthansa in plenty of time. Helen, for Christ’s sake, don’t cry. You know they had to go.”

  “Here, Sonny, your coffee’s
hot. Pay no attention to Helen. Her mind’s going. I’ve noticed it a lot lately. Yesterday she forgot to take her medicine, didn’t you, Helen? Oh, God, stop that whining!”

  “Christ, Mother, will you kindly shut up?”

  “Oh, that’s right, Sonny, blame me, when I’m only telling the truth. Oh, Sonny, look out, you broke the cup! Oh, God, Sonny, what happened?”

  “Nothing. For Christ’s sake, let me alone. Nothing happened.”

  “But you dropped the cup! Your hands are shaking! Sonny, Sonny, tell Mother, are you all right? Oh, Helen, shut up! Do you hear me? Just shut up!”

  CHAPTER 58

  The ungodly have great power, riches, and respect … we … have but only one poor, silly, and contemned Christ.

  Martin Luther

  The Monday before Easter was freakishly hot. Homer took off his jacket as he walked past the Church of the Commonwealth. He nodded at Donald Woody, who was removing a dead pigeon from his lush garden of daffodils, and Woody said, “Hi, there, nice day.” Across the street a beach umbrella had blossomed on a sunny rooftop. Joggers were out in force.

  Homer had an appointment at 115 Commonwealth Avenue. It wasn’t with Alan Starr, it was with Mrs. Garboyle. Homer had turned over the matter of Pansy Kraeger’s panties to his wife. His own concern this morning was with the whereabouts of Rosie Hall, who was now fully alive in his mind. Somewhere the woman was living and breathing, with warm blood pulsing in her veins. She might be as lovable as Starr thought her, or she might be an awful person, but she had certainly not been burned up in that flaming automobile. Where was she?

  Mrs. Garboyle’s apartment was on the third floor. On the way up the stairs Homer passed a couple of girls on the way down, plump young students in curly permanents. They were laughing at some joke, their arms full of books. Exams must be in the offing.

  Mrs. Garboyle opened her door at once, and beamed at him. “Oh, come in, Mr. Kelly. Isn’t it a lovely day!”