The Church Ladies Read online

  I remember the times of my life when I wanted Jesus to hold off His coming just a little longer. Until the wedding. Until the baby was born. Until the house was finished. But these days, my own existence prompts me to cry out, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” Oh, surely it’s not that I feel I’m ready for His return, that I’ve redeemed my time in these evil days. I just want Him to save me from myself.

  Three

  Whoever crickets brought good luck clearly was not a cricket.

  I forced open my eyes in the 5 A.M. darkness, not quite ready for the search and destroy mission that normally compelled me from the warm nest of our bed. I once heard someone call crickets “nature’s musicians.” Good grief. If Jiminy Cricket scraped his back legs in my corner, I would cheerfully fwapp him with the white plastic sole of my Deerfoams, without a second thought. That little umbrella wouldn’t fool me. A bug is a bug.

  I rolled away the granular buildup from the base of my eyelashes. I never had sleepies until Angus’s pregnancy, a heavyweight occurrence that threw my then forty-year-old body completely over the precipice of middle age, sent my youth flying over the wall of years like a blob of hot, bumpy tar, destined to splatter upon impact and burn out more quickly than its original design had intended. One day I had been a size seven with skinny arms, and the next the tags on my khakis mockingly pronounced me a size fourteen.

  How Duncan can stand to even touch me now mystifies me. But there he stands every Monday night with that silly grin of romantic expectation on his face.

  Settling my contacts over my corneas, I grumbled as I stood up. Like this walk was really going to do any good.

  After tumbling into a pair of khaki shorts and squeezing my short, smashed, dark curls through the neck of a faded, navy blue T-shirt, I laced up my geriatric tan walking shoes and checked to make sure Paisley and Robbie had made it home and Angus still breathed.

  Robbie, the middle child, my twenty-year-old water-skiing champion for two years running at Lake Coventry snored on the couch in the living room. The remote, magically still in hand, pointed toward the color bars on the television screen. He worked a late night. Closing down any fast-food joint isn’t a task to be desired, but scrubbing the grill at Jeanelle’s Juicy Burgers made cleaning out the fry daddy seem like wiping up Kool-Aid.

  P.U., Rob. Couldn’t you have taken a shower before you collapsed?

  I couldn’t help smoothing the light brown curls off of his forehead. So beautiful. Of all three children, Robbie has always understood me the most. And I’ve done my best not to play favorites, but Robbie has always sought out physical affection, hugs and kisses. He had snuggled in our bed in the morning before kindergarten, or woke me up by kissing my arm. Paisley shunned such expression, even as a tot. I should have reached out to her more.

  I stay put here in Mount Oak for Robbie’s sake. Angus’s age, size, and lack of ability to make friends his own age classify him as carry-on luggage. Compact and ready to flee. But Robbie has a real life here. Robbie doesn’t deserve the fallout my desertion would cause.

  He opened his eyes. Though the dark of the room shadowed them, the same light blue as his little brother’s looked up at me. “Off already, Mom?” His deep, sleepy voice muffled the words. “Want some company on your walk?”

  “No, you got in late. Get some sleep.”

  His smooth jaw slackened before I even finished speaking. I kissed his prickly cheek, sighed, and stood up. Red and white uniform clothing trailed from the small bathroom down the hall, and a glass of Coke sat in a giant ring of water on the coffee table.

  Definitely stuff to save for later.

  I began the two-mile walk to the center of town. I do this every morning, bent on claiming first dibs to the only truly decent cup of coffee Mount Oak is capable of providing this early, a little place called Java Jane’s. Stainless steel, hardwoods, and purple leather cover every available surface. Pink velvet frames surrounding caricatures of local politicians add that confusing je ne sais quoi I admire in a town with little moxy.

  I hopped down the stone steps of the house. The quaint bungalow shines with authentic, well-polished woodwork and built-in cabinetry from the arts and crafts movement. The church elder who ushered us on the tour of the house apologized for its old-fashioned ways, but since I was practically born with a paintbrush in my hand and coffee-table books about Degas, Braque, and Frank Lloyd Wright in my crib, I hooted with delight.

  I pronounced it perfect, this little diamond in the woods, snugly set near the platinum waters of Lake Coventry. It filled a longing in my heart I hadn’t previously known existed. Just two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen was all the real space the tiny house afforded, besides a sun porch and the attic that became Robbie’s room. This sweet study of simplicity could have practically fit into the square footage of the family room of my old house by the country club in Maryland, the house I’d literally kissed good-bye when we left for St. Louis and seminary.

  This, however, was simply home. A real home where people made it special, not gold faucets, granite counters, and dental molding on the bulkheads of the kitchen cabinets. A real home where the evidence of past families have been added to the traditions of our own. Angus’s height will be recorded with children named Patty and Laurie and Beth, Heather and Wendy and Billy, children we’d never know but to whom he would compare himself until he either stopped growing or we moved away from the Highland Kirk.

  Sometimes I think the Methodists have the right idea. Five or so years at one place and then, YOU’RE OUTTA THERE!

  The area possesses an interesting history, Elder Barnhouse explained that first day. “Used to be, just ’bout ten years back Tweed Creek ran down the Coventry Valley just ’bout half a mile away. Then the power authority dammed it up near Dickerson’s Pass, and Lake Coventry filled up the valley.”

  “So that’s why the church is located right here by all the hotels and condos? Seemed like an unusual setup.” Duncan’s voice echoed from the glassed-in sunporch on the side of the house, the room I claimed immediately as my painting studio.

  “Prime real estate now. Every square inch of the lot.” Elder Barnhouse beamed like the jack-o-lanterns I imagined sitting on the stone posts at the bottom of the front steps. Do Presbyterians around here trick or treat, I wondered then.

  Living on a lake seems too good to imagine, really—other than the dreadful “finding Angus drowned” factor that I live with every moment he isn’t by my side. Everything is so painfully picturesque. The blues and greens glow so vividly my photos look fake. No one back in Maryland really believes such a place exists. They claim I embellish it all to make them jealous, to convince them I really made out by forsaking the high life, or worse, to entice them to come for a visit.

  Heaven forbid.

  So two hours after Duncan marched across the stage at Covenant Seminary to receive his diploma, we piled in the monstrous van and towed a U-Haul trailer all the way to Mount Oak. Three years ago.

  Hurrying down the slate walk, I promised myself I’d finally dig up those malicious fountains of monkey grass this fall. I’ve hated the pernicious domes since the day we moved in. And they’ve been spreading ever since. My annuals had started to fade, and a month ago I stopped deadheading the red-and-white-striped petunias around the border of my flowerbeds. Poor little things. I know the little brown bungalow deserves perennials, but life isn’t that certain. Not since we moved away from Baltimore. Not since Jody Callahan. Joe now. It was Joe now. And the thought of leaving the plants behind, plants that I had tended so carefully, season after season, year after year, brought on an unacceptable sadness.

  I steer my feet to the gravel at the side of Lake Shore Drive. Not much activity from the vacationers this early. The B&Bs, inns, and motels I pass calmly huddle near the dark water. A few sprinkling systems busy themselves watering the gardens for which Lake Coventry is known. Hanging baskets garnish each doorway and window boxes seethe with white ally-sum and cascading blue lobelia. Bus groups
on their way to D.C., the mountains, or the beach toured the border gardens surrounding most of the establishments.

  I turn down Tweed Street, heading into town. Neon lights and transportable signs with big yellow arrows line this stretch between the wooded shores of the lake and the town square. Here the commercialism runs as thick as the start of the annual Mount Oak five kilometer run, and sprints at a rapid pace all summer long toward the finish line and that most coveted prize—three months in winter with nothing to do but worry about the coming season and complain about the previous one.

  The first sign of life appears in front of Josef’s, the only place offering haute cuisine. Josef himself stands out back watering his herbs. Guess they rise early in the old country. Forty strawberry pots curve their way up the side of his lot. He waves. I wave. And that pretty much is that. Josef knows little English, and I have it on fact that when he uses up the last of his tarragon, he resorts to Knorr’s for his béarnaise sauce. I haven’t found a better one myself.

  I tromp past the neon signs that animate Tweed Street. Barnacle Bill’s—owned by a retired accountant named Charlie Dickens, a member at Highland Kirk—displays a sign with a fish flapping its tail. Jeanelle’s Juicy Burgers—flipped by Jeanelle herself, a New Age, chain smoking local with sun-leathered skin and a brassy blond braid that kisses the back of her thighs—sports a neon burger complete with lit up lettuce, onion, and ketchup. The Colonel’s Kitchen—serving the finest creamed chipped beef and hash browns while the Colonel, a lapsed Catholic, stands guard at the cash register making sure the kids take only one lollipop apiece—has no neon lights. But a huge picture of General MacArthur has been bleaching itself in the front window for as long as I’ve been around. The great general now looks twenty years younger and sports light mocha-colored aviator sunglasses.

  These are the high calorie money makers of Tweed Street.

  But caffeine calls and I look forward to having my first clear thought of the day. Always the first customer of the jaunty little spot right on the town square, I push open the door. A string of tiny, oriental bells tinked against the glass.

  “Good morning!” I peeled a copy of the day’s Washington Post off the counter and sitting down in a club chair the color of crushed plums in the back corner, I flipped on a nearby floor lamp, sunk into the plush upholstery, and set the backs of my shoes onto the hammered stainless steel coffee table. The owners called a, “Good morning back atcha, Poppy,” and resumed their preparations for the day.

  If they had copies of the Baltimore Sun, I’d buy that. Sometimes my parents send me a copy, and I can travel home via newsprint for a bit. But the Post has to do in between times. My early morning ritual doesn’t really have much to do with burning calories or staying healthy. It gives me escape from life down here. Tells me about things with which I am familiar. Eases the homesickness for a time.

  The national news is pretty much the same as the Richmond Times and CNN. More scandal. More politicians unable to keep something shut. No surprise there. But I look at the pictures carefully, trying to see familiar landscape, enjoying the bit of Baltimore news allowed to denigrate Post pages.

  Traffic is always big news. Road construction to help angry people get to jobs they hate sooner. Education is a familiar topic. No money, no learning. And how about them vouchers? Crime. Interesting but depressing. I skim news about the open-air drug market on C Street. How does that happen? Open-air? If the newspapers know about it, why aren’t the metro police doing anything substantial?

  Mount Oak’s obvious advantages come to the fore during issues like this. Another good reason for dropping by.

  Today, however, the conversation of the owners of Java Jane’s proved too interesting, and I pretended to read the paper, a mere foil for eavesdropping on the two women who had been roommates at UNC-Chapel Hill. Ellen, a verbose redhead, speaks in colorful prose and hums like an actress singing at a pianoforte in a screen adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. She wears flowing things to go with her flowing hair and her flowing voice, and lots of embroidered vests and clunky shoes. She possesses a self-proclaimed penchant for handmade earrings that sway in time with her speech.

  Margaret, skinny with bright blue eyes, sports Maria Shriver hair that probably weighs more than she does. She speaks at the front of her mouth and smiles with the point of her tongue between her teeth as if to show her sense of humor goes all the way down to the bottom. The same diamond posts glitter in her earlobes day after day.

  “Sue Green wrote me yesterday.” Margaret opened a large bag of espresso beans and poured them into the funnel-shaped bowl of the grinder. “Remember her?”

  “Oh yes.” Ellen nodded. “The pixielike, pointy-faced girl with the bandana penchant in your accounting class.” She pulled a jug of 2 percent out of the fridge and began to fill the stainless steel carafe for those who like their coffee watered down that way.

  “The one that refused to wear a bra, uh-huh.”

  “Wasn’t she …?” Ellen’s hand flattened out, an airplane dipping its wings quickly from side to side.

  “Apparently not. She was engaged to a man, but now it’s off.”

  Ellen started on the whole milk and shouted, “Why?” as Margaret ground the beans for my Red-Eye.

  “Her fiancé was named Kevin Akers.”

  “So?”

  I perked up. This sounded interesting. I’ve always disliked the name Kevin because I get it mixed up with the name Keith. So, invariably I call Kevins Keith and Keiths Kevin. Let your Kevins be Kevins and your Keiths be Keiths, I say, but my memory doesn’t wish to cooperate.

  “Well, she refused to give up her name or take his, and he insisted that if she loved him, she would at least hyphenate it, but she refused.” Margaret crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. “Sue Green, Brian Akers …”

  Ellen’s nostrils flared as the lightbulb flickered to life. “Oh, that’s fabulous! Absolutely the most fabulous thing I’ve ever heard. Gloria Steinham would have been proud to know that a perfectly wonderful relationship had been sacrificed on the high altar of feminism.”

  Margaret began making two shots of espresso while Ellen pulled out a paper cup and filled it with the day’s dark roast. “I can hear Bella applauding from here.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Not to mention Arnold Ziphal or Mr. Haney.”

  Ellen shook her head, her long, red hair flailing the air. She held out the cup while Margaret dropped the espresso into the brew. “When love and politics collide.”

  “Usually love wins out, but obviously not in this case,” Margaret said. “It always did with me, though. Here you go, Poppy” She placed the coffee on the counter.

  I slapped my shoes onto the floor, walked over, and grabbed the cup.

  Sipping the strong, black liquid, in a whisper I proclaimed, “Perfect.” Worth every step of the walk over.

  “What do you think about that?” I sidled up to the grinder. “About that girl. Would you leave a guy over something like that?”

  Both the women shook their heads. “Negative,” said Ellen.

  “Nah,” Margaret agreed. “What about you, Poppy?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think I’d leave a guy over something like that. Now, if he’d had an affair or something …”

  “Absolutely,” Ellen nodded as she spoke. “I wouldn’t even want him haunting my attic!”

  “I don’t know … there’s something to be said for forgiveness,” Margaret said. “ ‘To err is human—’ ”

  Ellen waved that away. “Don’t get me wrong; you can forgive, but it will never, ever be remotely the same.” Ellen reached under the counter for a tray of fresh bagels and began to arrange them in an artsy willow basket. “It’s like once you’ve eaten bad steak tartar, you never trust raw meat again.”

  “Would you tell?” I asked. “If you’d had an affair? Would you tell your husband?”

  Ellen pursed her lips for several seconds. “Negative. Even though I’ve failed to hitch my wagon to a
reliable paycheck, I can’t ever see myself letting loose a corker like that!”

  “I’d tell.” Margaret arranged blondies on a plate destined to be covered with a glass dome. “I couldn’t live with myself. It would be living a lie.”

  Yes. The Big Lie. The Masquerade.

  Ellen snorted. “Oh, please, Mag. You sound like a soap opera that’s lost its lather. All the psychologists say it’s better not to tell. Once trust is broken it can never truly be made whole.”

  “I probably agree with you, Ellen.” I put a lid on my coffee, checked my wristwatch, and realized the crew would soon be awake back at the bungalow. “Bye, girls. See ya tomorrow.”

  On my way home the delivery trucks had begun warming up, and joggers were doing much the same. I sipped on the coffee and hummed about fresh air, Times Square, and allergic smelling hay.

  New York. Maybe that’s where I’ll go. Start doing abstracts, live in a small loft apartment in Soho, just me and Angus. Fruits and vegetables from the produce stands, bread from Zabar’s, fresh flowers once a week, and a trip to Chinatown the first Wednesday of every month. We’d have to economize due to the high cost of living, but imagine the days we could spend at the museums: the Museum of Modem Art, the Guggenheim, or the Metropolitan. And all the little galleries!

  But what about the roaches? Even worse than crickets. Maybe the roaches would be worth it, though. And Deerfoams worked just as well in New York City.

  Oh no! I completely forgot!

  Ladies Bible study was in three hours, and they’d scheduled me for refreshments. I ran over to the IGA, bought two boxes of lemon bar mix, brownie mix, a cantaloupe, and some grapes.

  Mrs. Jergenson, with hands that live up to her name, leads the study from a book about Bible women that are so bad they make even someone like me think that maybe light will soon start shining at the end of my tunnel.

  Do people suspect I am not all I am supposed to be? Do the members of Highland Kirk see my heart is bound by unwashed sheets, choked by secrets and lies, and aching to be set free?