Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries)

by T'Gracie Reese

  Just as was the spot immediately to the right of Sandra, the place where her husband Tom used to sit.

  No matter if there were a space or two left vacant. The congregation had dwindled, was dwindling slightly through the years, and there was no need, as there had been for Christmas and Easter services two decades ago, to bring in folding chairs and place them in the outer aisles.

  Indeed, there were some Sundays––the summer ones among them––when the early arriving Nina even wondered if she would be the only parishioner in the congregation.

  This never happened of course.

  The Barkleys, Benjamen and Darleen, always arrived early too, sometimes even before the minister.

  Then came dribs and drabs, as Frank would have put it.

  Mudge—Mudge had a last name, but it seemed so prosaic, whatever it was—Mudge, past ninety now, wobbling in and down the stairs that led into the sanctuary from the downtown-side door, helped along as she always was by one or two of the other ladies of the church who took turns giving her a ride.

  The Miller family, all three pre-school children between them, all three stuffed there in the pew and being molested every second or so by first their father, then their mother, who saw Sunday mornings as the opportunity to show first hand to the children what the true wages of sin actually were, these being naturally the human condition of being imprisoned in an eight foot space on a gorgeous seaside summer morning and forced to sit in constant, motionless, silent prayer.

  “Be quiet!”

  “Sit still!”

  “Stop that!”

  “But he––”

  “I don’t want to hear it!”

  “But she––”

  “No!”

  Why not, Nina wondered, just bring them on time? Why bring them early?

  She did not say ‘Why bring them at all?’ even to herself, for she knew that would have been blasphemous.

  Of course you had to bring them.

  “Get out from under that pew!”

  “But I––”

  “Get out from there!”

  Or, maybe not.

  At least they were three pews in front of Nina, except that once the children actually got under the pews and became mobile, they might turn up anywhere.

  Jana Darnell, seventy three now—her birthday had been announced from the pulpit last week, so Jana’s age was fresh in Nina’s mind—radiant and beautiful as she must have been at seventeen, with the same sparkle in her eyes and the same straight bearing and the same immaculate and striking red scarf.

  Leana Douglas; Florence Robinson; Earl and Nora Springer—

  ––dribs and drabs, dribs and drabs—

  After a time the piano began to play, Nina rejoicing that it was, this morning, as it usually was: one of the old ones.

  “Blessed Assurance.”

  Da da da deee deee…

  As the blue robed choir filtered in and the pulpit crew—which she always enjoyed calling them, although they probably would not have appreciated it—prepared to do their respective duties, announcement reading, scripture lesson, song leading, etc.—she prepared herself mentally for the first stages of the service.

  Be prayerful, listen carefully, check your wallet to be sure there’s something to put in the collection plate, and try not to laugh at anything when you were the only one laughing.

  There would be other things to laugh at later on, of course, but they were rigidly controlled episodes of group laughter, and it was just as bad to remain silent within them as it was to guffaw outside of them.

  “Good morning!”

  From a beaming Reverend Daniels.

  “Good morning!”

  From a Summer Sparse but Always Eager in the Will of the Lord congregation.

  And now—begin.

  She listened carefully to the announcements, especially the one she knew without having to hear it, the one pointing out that this Sunday, First Sunday, was Fellowship Sunday, which meant Potluck Lunch.

  There were several ‘ships’ that had to be dealt with in church life, two of the most important being ‘Fellowship,’ and ‘Stewardship.’

  Stewardship meant giving more money than you were used to giving.

  Fellowship meant eating.

  It was much more popular.

  And Nina had, as she always did, prepared for it.

  Tucked away on a vast drain board down below in the equally vast kitchen—for people in 1902 when the red brick church building was erected knew the importance of eating—sat her big bowl of tuna salad. It was surrounded by countless other bowls, all of them single cells in the vast and complex creature that was fellowship.

  Almost invariably Nina brought chicken salad to such events.

  Every now and then deviled eggs.

  But today—perhaps it was the summer gaiety that had descended on Bay St. Lucy with the luscious warmth and the new faces and the stands along the beach and the corn dog smells—whatever it was, it brought to her a sense of madcap revelry of Lord of Misrule, of Do the Unthinkable—

  ––and so she had made tuna salad and not chicken salad.

  So there!

  The announcements plodded along. She listened earnestly to them until they reached the phase that she had begun to dread terribly, and through which she knew that she must force herself to daydream about other things, any other things.

  This phase was The Joys and Concerns.

  She had, in years past, never really minded Joys and Concerns.

  But that was a time of a younger congregation, when there had been approximately as many of the one as of the other.

  Time had gone on, and the balance had shifted mournfully to the concerns.

  Well, that was all right.

  If one had no concerns, then of what use was a church anyway?

  The problem was that the older women of the congregation had begun to enjoy the thing too much.

  They no longer simply said:

  “Marge Riddlemeyer’s brother has gone into the hospital for surgery.”

  No, they had learned to become much more specific about the matter, even much more clinical.

  And they spoke more slowly, enjoying the dramatic pauses surrounding various organs and symptoms.

  “As you know—Harold Witherspoon—was diagnosed—last month––”

  Nods from everyone in the congregation, who were all listening to this broadcast as though it were an episode of The Guiding Light.

  “—with heptomal non-recurring empheriarsis, which began producing malignant tumors on the anterior lobe of both his pineal gland and his lower distending femoral artery.”

  Pause, for a second, then collective:

  “Ooooooooo.”

  Nina had ceased to be certain whether the low collective moan was a sincere expression or grief or a show of respect for the anatomical knowledge of the speaker.

  Another hand in the air; and another, and another:

  “I just felt I—had to tell everyone––”

  Thousand one, thousand two—

  “That Herschell Massey’s friend Richard––”

  Thousand one, thousand two—

  “Has had—a recurrence—of the lymphomatic—cytosis—which seems to have invaded—the non-distillary embolic membranous and subcutaneous––”

  “Who,” Nina whispered to Sandra, “is she even talking about?”

  “Herschell’s friend Richard who lives up in Oregon.”

  “Sandra we don’t even know this man!”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t pray for him.”

  “How can you pray for somebody you don’t even know? Why don’t we just pray for everybody in the world?”

  “Well, we should do that too!”

  But it wasn’t any good. She couldn’t do it. The symptoms, at least those she could understand, sounded too awful. Besides, every time she heard a disease described so graphically she began to think she had it herself. Pancreatic cancer. That was incurable and killed you i
n two weeks.

  Her pancreas began to hurt.

  Which side was it on?

  No. She had to think of something else.

  So she did. She thought of the performance last night. What a fantastic job they had all done! And Margot, wonderful Margot, bringing down the house—which found itself brought down several times, a fitting ‘adieu’ for the old theater—with her “Climb Every Mountain.” Who knew she could sing like that?

  And as for the finale, the last scene––

  She found her eyes to the far side of the congregation.

  There sat John Giusti.

  “Good job, John,” she found herself whispering.

  Like always. In John we trust.

  John had been playing Captain von Trapp for his whole life, when one thought of it.

  Quiet, unassuming, brilliant, athletic—John had been the only football player in Bay St. Lucy’s history to get a Division One scholarship––

  ––and single.

  Always something sad about that.

  “AND NOW FOR JOYS!”

  Thank heaven, thought Nina,

  “I have a joy!”

  She turned.

  And there, her head barely high enough to be seen over the back of the pew, stood Hope Reddington.

  She was farther in the back of the church than usual, and Nina had not even noticed her entrance.

  “Stand up!” exhorted Reverend Daniels.

  This was a joke of course, since Hope already was standing.

  She shook her fist at him a couple of times in mock outrage.

  A collective laugh.

  Finally it died down and the reverend asked:

  “What is your joy, Hope?”

  Silence for a second.

  And then, was Hope looking directly at Nina?

  Perhaps. On the other hand the smile was of such a nature as to make everyone in the building think it directed only at him or her.

  “What is your joy?”

  “My great joy,” replied Hope, “is that my granddaughter—my beloved granddaughter Helen—is coming home.”

  There was a sermon after that but nobody listened to it. They were all thinking of Hope’s announcement and the lovely time they were going to have gossiping about it while eating the potluck lunch.

  This happened at precisely twelve thirty, when the doors to the basement dining hall were opened and the congregation swarmed in.

  There were 53 Methodist women and they had cooked and brought with them 237 bowls or platters of food.

  Which they now tore into while talking only a little about the previous evening’s community theater performance and much more about the history of the Reddington family.

  “Wasn’t Alana Delafosse simply wicked as The Baroness?”

  “Oh I hated her!”

  “It was so funny how the audience all hissed when she came on!”

  “When she said, ‘It might be better for all concerned if the children are—sent away,’ somebody got up and shouted, “Go back to Vienna!”

  “Wasn’t that funny? Now, what is this?”

  “Okra casserole, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s shrimp in it.”

  “How long has Helen been away?”

  “She hasn’t been back here in, oh, it must be five years now. No, no, you take more of it.”

  “I’ve got enough. Cranberry sauce?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “Oh, I got some on your plate.”

  “It’s all right. Where was it she went away to school?”

  “Some art school in Michigan.”

  “Interlochen School of the Arts.”

  “Is that what it was?”

  “I think so. I just know it must have been so hard on Hope. Her husband died of cancer; then a year or so later there was that car wreck, and all she had left was her little granddaughter, Helen. And then about two years after that, there was this great offer to go and study acting. Helen was only seventeen. It was exciting, but it meant Hope would be all alone. Could you just hand me a piece of that chicken?”

  “Here; do you want a slice of ham to go with it?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Oh, go ahead. It’s the Potluck.”

  “All right; just one slice though. Now who did Helen marry?”

  “A big-name New York actor; I don’t know his name. It was in the paper though—it happened last September. Here, I’ll give you a little bit of this dressing, too. Samantha Slaughter made it.”

  “She makes such good dressing.”

  “I know.”

  And so on and so on and so on.

  Nina, her pancreas no longer bothering her, had made her way to a table where John Giusti was seated by himself.

  “May I,” she asked, “sit at the captain’s table?”

  He smiled, rose, smiled more broadly still, and gestured to one of the empty metal chairs:

  “Are you always so much trouble, Fraulein?”

  “Oh much more, Sir!” she said, setting the sixteen inch plate filled with indeterminate and multi-colored foods on the table before her.

  “John,” she said, “you were just wonderful!”

  “Thank you. High praise from a teacher of literature.”

  “No, I don’t have anything to do with it. You were just good. You all were.”

  “It was very moving, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh! That last scene, the last song—everybody in the little theater, singing…of course, we barely could sing, we were all crying so hard.”

  “Me too. I was choked up. I didn’t realize they’d all sing along like that.”

  “Well. Everybody over the age of thirty knows that movie so well. Who in the United States of America doesn’t know “Edelweiss?” It’s like an alternate national anthem.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  She deliberated a while about eating, not knowing whether to begin with the plum pudding, the raisin soufflé, the crab bisque, the green beans with onions, the crawfish etoufee, the sardine vinaigrette, the roast beef with hollandaise sauce, or the foods lying hidden under the ones she could see.

  “Oh by the way, Nina, I meant to ask you today: when am I seeing Furl again?”

  “Do you need to?”

  “I think so; it’s been six months, hasn’t it?”

  “Surely not!”

  “Yep. I was checking my calendar.”

  “How could I have forgotten?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “you had a lot on your plate.”

  “You’re not talking about the Pot Luck––”

  “That too. And in addition to that, there’s the fact that, around the time Furl was getting his last round of vaccinations, you were helping to catch a murderer.”

  “My God, John. It’s true. Just a few weeks before that whole thing happened, we were in your clinic.”

  “How is old Furl, anyway?”

  “Same as always, as far as I can tell. Runs the house.”

  “Nature of cats.”

  “And how have you been, John? Apart from your difficulties with the Third Reich, I mean?”

  “I’ve been well, really well.”

  “Still splitting time between here and Vicksburg?”

  “More here than Vicksburg. I go to the Medical Research facility there once a month, and they let me watch. It’s the technical aspect of veterinary science. I like to fool around with it and they give me gadgets.”

  “I’d ask you to describe them, but I know I wouldn’t be able to understand a word.”

  “It’s not that hard. Mainly they make things to calm animals down. Comes in handy.”

  “Well, it will come in handy. You know how Furl likes shots.”

  “We’ll make him the happiest cat in the world.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it. But anyway, when should we come, John?”

  “What about Tuesday at ten o’clock?”

  “Perfect. We’ll be there.”

 
; Silence for a time.

  Should she bring it up?

  Would it be painful for John?

  Or was he sitting there thinking about it anyway, knowing the question would have to be asked sometime.

  Oh, the hell with it.

  “So John, the news about Helen––”

  He looked over her shoulder, as though seeing something no one else knew was in the hall. Then he shrugged, smiled a smile that was not quite a smile but too resigned to be a frown, and said:

  “That was kind of a shocker, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  More silence.

  She amused herself to think that she was sitting here with Captain von Trapp while, all around them, tinkle tinkle scrape scrape scrape chew chew chew gossip gossip gossip—The Hills Were Alive With The Sound of Eating.

  “You’ve not seen her in a long time, I guess.”

  “No. Not since she left for Interlochen.”

  Something seemed to strike him as funny and he hummed:

  “She was sixteen going on seventeen…”

  “Was she, really?”

  “Yes. Turned seventeen three days after she left.”

  “That has to be right. You had both taken my sophomore world literature class.”

  “Which she aced, I remember. I barely passed.”

  “Barely passed indeed. You got a strong B +.”

  “Although I didn’t deserve it. By the way do you remember all the grades of all the students you ever taught in thirty or forty years here?”

  Yes, she was forced to admit to herself, simultaneously terrified and appalled by the thought.

  “No, of course not.”

  “I think you gave me a gift. I was just not able to get into those plays.”

  “Well, you were always a scientist. You were winning science fairs. When you weren’t making the all regional football team.”

  “Yeah. It seems like a long time ago. Helen and I were–”

  He shook his head, and munched some salad.

  “We were very close. We’d dated for two years. But then that offer came…”

  He shook his head.

  “––and she knew there was a lot more in the world than John Giusti. But still, I remember the last night.”

  He remembers, Nina mused, his last romantic night with the most beautiful woman in the history of Bay St. Lucy. I remember world literature grades.

  How fair is that?

  “I can visualize it,” he continued. “We were out on the rock jetty. It was August, but there was a wind, and spray kept coming up from the rocks. We just sat there, not caring very much how wet we got. She told me very calmly that it was over between us. She was, she knew, never going to come back to Bay St. Lucy. She didn’t want a long distance thing. I pretended to agree, because you didn’t really disagree with Helen.”