“I guess so.”
“Truth is, I always wanted to be a scientist. If I could do anything in the world, I’d be a lepidopterist. I’d study moths and butterflies.” Nils is quiet for a moment, gazing at the beautiful creature. Then he turns resolutely toward me. “But that’s just a passion, of course, and passion won’t put a roof over your head.” He shrugs. “We do what we have to, right? And when we can, if we can, we find ways to do what we want.”
Nils reminds me of Dad, and Mother, too, working so hard to get ahead, stay afloat, survive. And Nils reminds me of myself as well, doing what I have to, not what I want.
Nils might be able to spend the rest of his life like this. But can I?
TEN
Last night’s Scripture reading has influenced Andreas’s message this morning.
“John the Baptist might seek refuge at the Pacific Garden Mission today. Then again, Jesus might be found there, too.”
A framed painted portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall behind the pulpit where Andreas stands. This Jesus has long, radiant hair and a serene, sad expression. His fair skin is smooth and clean. He doesn’t look at all like the type who’d wind up at a mission.
Andreas’s suggestion makes me a little uncomfortable, truth be told. I’d venture to say that more than a few other members of the congregation feel the same. Nils, for instance, sitting with his parents across the aisle from me. What strange specimen is this? Nils seems to wonder, leaning forward, scrutinizing my brother.
If Andreas senses the scrutiny, he ignores it. He says that we live in fear of the John the Baptists in our midst, the John the Baptist in ourselves. “We must cast aside our fear as Jesus cast out demons,” Andreas says.
Something tickles my back, startling me. Thank goodness Mother is holding Sophy today, or I would have jostled her mightily. I turn around. Rob stands behind me, impishly grinning, wiggling his fingers near my throat now. And who but Dolores Pine stands by Rob’s side. Dolores is dressed in a prim blue cotton dress that’s stiff with starch. A long black coat drapes her shoulders. A dusty black hat with the wide brim that was so popular balances precariously on her head. Dolores must not go to church much, if at all, if she thinks she has to dress like someone’s grandmother in order to be welcome here. I hold out my hand to her, and she grabs it like a lifeline, clutching my fingers so tightly that my knuckles grind together. Her mouth twitches in a nervous smile. She wears no makeup, and her freckles seem to float on the milky surface of her pale skin.
Andreas says, “Maybe it’s time we examine our fears, so we can prepare the way for Jesus.”
“Time you examined your fears, Laerke,” Rob whispers in my ear.
Dolores lets go of my hand and slides into the pew beside me; Rob follows her. Mother nods hello. Sophy cranes her neck to see what’s happening. Spittle has collected at the corners of Sophy’s mouth, but Dolores doesn’t seem to be put off. She gives Sophy a little wave as I clean her mouth with a handkerchief. Sophy blinks hard at Dolores, her way of waving back.
“ ‘Like a voice crying in the wilderness’—a John the Baptist voice. This is the voice for which we need to listen. We need to stop running away from the blessed voices in the wilderness all around us.”
Dolores fishes a pencil from her pocketbook. She scribbles on her bulletin, shows it to me.
Your brother?
I nod.
She scribbles some more.
Rob said he was a wonderful preacher.
I nod again. She scribbles again.
I’ve never been to a Protestant church. (Raised Catholic.) Glad I came.
I take the pencil and the bulletin and, careful not to bump Sophy, I surreptitiously tuck the bulletin down on the pew between Dolores and me. I write in tiny, cramped letters so Mother can’t see: How did you get here?
Dolores’s turn.
Rob invited me. He took your advice on Tuesday night and had a little nap in the car. I must have dozed off, too. Whoops! Our woozy ride home turned into breakfast at a diner. Drank lots of coffee. Talked lots. Subject of church came up. Rob’s no saint, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t concerned for sinners like me.
Dolores smiles drolly, then sits back against the pew and listens to the rest of Andreas’s sermon. Soon she’s as caught up in what my brother is saying as the rest of us. When Andreas says, “Amen,” Dolores chimes in immediately and loudly, “Amen!” She blushes prettily as she realizes we are not that kind of church. But Andreas nods in her direction.
“ ‘A voice in the wilderness,’ ” Andreas says. “It startles us, shakes us up, wakes us up. Just like this young lady’s ‘Amen.’ ” Dolores stares at him, her eyes widening as he raises his hands. “Let’s try it, brothers and sisters. Try it with me. Echo that life-changing voice. Lift up your amen!”
A few of us, Dolores and myself included, haltingly lift up our amens. Rob turns and gives Dolores a smirk, but she doesn’t see. Amen said, she is absorbed in the work of her hands now. Her fingers are quivering as if her nervousness hasn’t abated in the least, but still she manages to fold a delicate paper bird out of a page from the bulletin. Leaning across me, she flutters the bird before Sophy’s eyes. When Sophy smiles, Dolores perches the bird on Sophy’s lap. The folds of Sophy’s dress make a nest for the little paper thing, and Sophy kisses the air.
It is the offertory now, and though I have been fretting all morning, still unsure of my song, I know in this moment exactly what I’m going to sing.
I take one last look at the little paper bird in the nest of Sophy’s dress, walk to the front of the sanctuary, stand before the congregation, and close my eyes.
Come Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all Thy quickening powers,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.
At coffee hour, Mother, Sophy, and Andreas talk with Rob and Dolores in one corner of the church basement while Nils guides me to another. “Wonderful singing,” he says. “You’re by far my favorite soloist.”
I’m about to murmur my thanks, but he’s caught my hands in his. “Guess what?” he exclaims. And then he’s telling me about a phone call he received early this morning from the train yards. An engineer found a tarantula even bigger than the one Nils has in his collection. “Mammoth” is how Nils describes the spider. He’s going down to the yards today to collect it.
“You want to come along for the ride?” Nils asks. “I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Lunch sounds nice. A ride, too. But do I have to touch the thing?”
“Wouldn’t let it near you.”
I laugh. “Are you protecting me from it or it from me?”
“What do you think?” Nils flicks his eyebrows, teasing as he used to when we were kids.
“That’s not a proper answer!”
Before Nils can supply one, Rob strides up to us. Rob is wearing his nice suit again, and the gray-green tie that matches his eyes. He’d look quite dandy, except that a shirt button has popped open at his belly. I reach out to button it, but Rob bats my hands away, and sheepishly does it himself.
“Wonder how long it’s been like that.” He snaps his jacket into place. “Better?”
I nod.
“Good.” Rob glances over his shoulder at Dolores, who is talking quietly with Andreas now. When Rob turns back to me, there’s the sheen of perspiration on his upper lip. He likes Dolores, I realize. I’m glad there’s someone new in his life that he seems to really care about. It may mean his grief is lessening, and if his grief lessens, he may stop drinking so much.
“Listen, Rose,” Rob says quietly, “Dolores and I are coming over to your place for lunch. Your mom just invited us. But Dolores will feel uncomfortable without you, she says. In fact, she’s asked that I take her home if you’re not there.” Rob grasps my hands in passionate appeal. “Please, Rose, don’t tell Dolores I told you this, but something about Andreas really makes her skittish, and Andreas will be at lunch, too.” Rob lowers his v
oice and leans close so only I can hear. “I think my mom will like her, Rose. And if my dad were here, I think he’d approve, too. She’s a little wild, sure, but she doesn’t want to stay that way. We’ve got that in common, and a lot more.”
I can’t imagine Rob’s parents would approve of a girl he met at a bar—a Catholic girl, at that. But Rob seems so smitten that I don’t say this.
“I’m sorry, but Nils just invited me to lunch,” I say instead. When Rob frowns, I explain more about Nils’s invitation, hoping that a trip to the train yards will appeal to Rob’s sense of adventure. But at the word “tarantula,” Rob rolls his eyes.
“Please. A spider?”
“Tarantula,” Nils says.
Rob gives an exasperated sigh. “There will be other spiders, Rose. Nils, take a rain check, will you? Please? Just this once?”
“Well. If it’s that important.” Nils gives me a long look. “I guess it would be pretty unfair if I had you all to myself two times in twenty-four hours.” He casts Rob a sideways glance. “And, yes, there will be other spiders.”
Rob slaps Nils hard on the back. “Thank you! Knew I could count on you, buddy.”
Nils shakes his head. “Rose is the person you really should thank, Rob.”
I could just about hug Nils for saying that, but of course we’re surrounded by other members of the Danish Baptist Church. So I ask him to call when he can and tell me about his new specimen instead.
On the way home, Mother tells me that we are going to be busy next weekend, helping with Zane Nygaard’s birthday celebration. We’ll spend much of Friday and Saturday in Hyde Park, cleaning the Nygaards’ house, and serving at the party as well. Mother studies her swollen knuckles. She picks at the raw skin around her cracked nails. Her long, lost hope, never realized, was to be a name on the Nygaards’ guest list. She probably never dreamed she’d be cleaning and serving for their guests instead. “Oh, well,” Mother says, tucking her hands into her coat sleeves. “We’ll have our own little celebration today.”
Lunch proves delicious—farsbrød, with a dill sauce ladled over the meat loaf. Nils, Mother tells me on the sly, was generous again last time she went shopping, this time tucking a package of dried dill into her bag. She asked him to come to lunch today, too, but he already had other plans. A date with a tarantula, I think, smiling.
The meal tastes almost like old times, and the conversation is almost like old times, too, with all of us chiming in, sharing stories. All of us except Dad and Andreas, that is. As usual, Dad is solely focused on his food and his thoughts. Andreas is silent, too, closely watching Dolores, probably assessing her potential for evangelism.
The conversation takes a new turn when Dolores asks about our neighborhood. Dad glowers at his food. Andreas assesses. Mother stays quiet, too. (If you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.) It’s up to Rob and me to find something nice to say. We describe the beauty of Garfield Park. “We must go there!” Rob says, and Dolores says she’d like that—perhaps some Saturday when she’s not working. She’s working a lot these days, she explains. As a new nurse, she has to take the shifts nobody wants, and cover for other nurses when they’re home sick or taking a holiday. She’s working a lot of overtime, too, just to scrape together a little extra change.
“What about your family?” Andreas asks abruptly.
Dolores pushes a potato around on her plate. When she finally looks up at Andreas, she is as sober as I’ve ever seen her. “My mother is dead. My father is a drunk. My brother is off I don’t know where. I’m on my own. I rent a room at the YWCA. I pay my own way in life, thank you very much.”
Andreas is the first one to break the quiet. “Sounds hard. And lonely.” His voice is low and compassionate, and to my surprise, tears brim in Dolores’s eyes.
“It is.”
“But you make the best of it, don’t you?” Rob says brightly. Dolores blinks away her tears, and then falteringly agrees that she does.
“And with all the hours I’m working, I’m finally able to get a thing or two I’ve needed for a very long time.” She smiles shyly. “I’d been wearing the same gloves for so many years, there were holes in nearly every finger. Just last week I went to Field’s and bought myself a new pair. They were a floor sample, a little the worse for wear. But with that and the sale, I got them nearly for free.”
Mother sighs. “I’ve not been to Field’s in so long. Is it still the same?”
To Mother’s delight, Dolores describes recent renovations to the store.
Mother chimes in then, talking about the frequent trips we used to make there. “I loved to look at all the beautiful things—the displays, the Tiffany glass ceiling. And lunches in the Walnut Room with Rose and Sophy. Those were some of my favorite times.” Mother’s face brightens with a new memory. “And speaking of gloves—one particular day, I was wandering through Accessories, and I was smitten with a pair of lace gloves from Belgium. They were as delicate and dainty as anything I’d ever seen. I asked if I could try them on, and the clerk couldn’t hide her disdain. ‘But, my dear,’ the clerk said, ‘those gloves are imported.’ Well, I didn’t miss a beat. ‘But, my dear,’ I said, ‘so am I.’ I didn’t even bother to try on the gloves then. I simply bought them. I could do that kind of thing then.” Mother gives a pained laugh. “I’ve still got those gloves tucked away somewhere. I’m saving them for something special someday, for myself or Rose or Sophy.”
For a moment no one says a word, then Dad roughly pushes back his chair. “Enough of this talk,” he says, and mutters something about second helpings.
So second helpings work their way around the table. We eat and chat about other things, until finally everyone’s napkins are folded and laid carefully beside their plates. We are evaluating the cleanup when Andreas suddenly leans forward.
“You haven’t told us yet, Dolores. How did you meet Rob?”
“And Rose!” Dolores says. “She was there, too!”
I go stone still. Rob levels Dolores a look. Dolores snaps her mouth shut. Her eyes dart from Rob to me, then back to Rob. He must have warned her not to breathe a word about Calliope’s in my family’s presence.
“You tell, Rob.” Dolores sounds panic-stricken. Andreas gives her a close look, as does Dad. “I’d love to hear your version, Dolores,” Mother says quietly.
Dolores stares at Rob, her eyes wide with appeal. “Go on, Rob.”
I feel sick. All this delicious food is going to come right back up again. I take a sip of water. Barely able to swallow, I give an audible gulp.
“Well, let’s see.” Rob runs his thumbs between his plump stomach and his straining belt. His lips are drawn into a thin, tight line. I remind myself that Rob loves a challenge, especially if there’s risk involved. He takes pleasure in convincing people that he’s right. No wonder he wants to be a lawyer. Oh, please let him present a convincing case now.
“How can I say this?” Rob clears his throat. “I guess I’ll just say it. Rose and I met Dolores under questionable circumstances.”
“Pardon?” Mother says.
Dolores sinks down in her chair. I clutch my stomach.
“Tell!” Sophy says.
“Patience.” Rob gives Sophy the gentlest of reprimanding looks. “Rose and I went out to a jazz club, truth be told. That’s where we met Dolores.”
Dad stands abruptly, knocking over his chair. I hear my voice as if from a great distance, saying Rob’s name as a question. And then: “What are you saying?”
Ignoring me, Rob gives my parents his most charming smile. “I haven’t always been the most convicted of Christians, I know. Not like Andreas here. But Rose and I were talking, and we both felt like we needed to see how sinners live, what their temptations are, in order to better share the Gospel. So we went to a club. We learned a lot.”
At this point, good manners are the least of my worries. I rest my elbows on the table, hide my face behind my hands. My forehead is slick with cold sweat. For a
moment, no one says a word. The only sound is my stomach churning.
Rob clears his throat. “Andreas, you were talking about this to me just the other day—the fact that our methods of evangelism often fall flat because we don’t really understand how others live, their loves and habits. In fact, you were saying something like that in today’s sermon, weren’t you? All that about John the Baptist at the Pacific Garden Mission. And Jesus, too. Isn’t that what you were saying, Andreas?”
Before Andreas can deny or confirm anything, Dad says, “That’s a bunch of hogwash.”
Dolores gives a high, nervous laugh. “It worked, though, Mr. Sorensen. I’m Exhibit A. If Rob and Rose hadn’t come to the club, I never would have come to church, heard Andreas preach, and shared in this delicious meal.” She leaps to her feet. “Now let me do something for you. I’ll clean up the kitchen.”
“Sit down.” This is not a polite invitation from Dad. This is an order.
Dolores sits down.
Dad stands up. His hand is on my arm, near my wrist. I can’t think of the last time he touched me. I try to remember. Which is why it takes me a moment to realize that he’s holding on too tight. I look up at him. His eyes are dark with rage.
“Dad,” Andreas says.
“Jacob,” Mother says.
“Uncle Jacob.” That’s Rob.
Sophy hisses no.
Dad doesn’t look at anybody but me. “You should know better.”
Someone says something I can’t make out. I think it’s Rob, but I don’t know for sure, because the room has tunneled to the darkness of Dad’s eyes.
“Men sow their wild oats,” Dad says, in answer to whatever someone—Rob?—just said. “Women become tramps.”
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