by Jane Langton
She was glad when all conversation was interrupted by Ed Bell. Strolling out on the platform that stretched across one end of the room, he called for quiet. Ed was inaugurating the annual church canvass. As usual, he was the chairman of the money-raising committee, because nobody else could bring in pledges the way Ed could. Ed had a way of teasing people into emptying their pockets. He cajoled them, he inspired them, he pestered them into it; he didn’t let them go. And nobody minded, because Ed Bell, after all, was Ed Bell.
This time he had made up a song, “A tisket, a tasket, put your money in the basket. ” It was a terrible song, but it brought down the house, as Ed pretended to tap-dance, shuffling his feet and flourishing a cane and waving a straw hat. He kept tipping the hat and putting it on and taking it off and waggling it comically in his hand while everybody shrieked with rapture. Then Ed called for his canvass captains, Charlie Fenster and Julie Smith and Hilary Tarkington. He made them line up in a row and do the same kind of buck-and-wing, right there in front of everybody, without any practice. Charlie and Julie and Hilary were good sports, and did their best, and they were even funnier than Ed.
The entertainment was over. It was time for dessert. “Weren’t they a scream?” said Betsy Bucky, cutting a huge slab of her own butterscotch pie for her husband, Carl.
Carl couldn’t reply. He was choking. A crumb of sausage fritter was stuck in his throat. Struggling to his feet, trying to breathe, he tipped the table up on two legs. Homer Kelly’s plate slid into his lap. Dr. Spinney raced across the room, took hold of Carl from the rear, and jerked until the crumb came up. Carl sagged, coughing, breathing again. The table joggled back into place. Mopping his chin, his face blazing red, Carl sat down, rescued his plate, then pushed it away.
In the kitchen, Dr. Spinney took Betsy aside and lectured her about her husband. Homer Kelly was collecting dirty dishes, carrying them to the kitchen, and he heard every word. “See here, Betsy, don’t you think Carl should be watching his weight a little more carefully? What about feeding him less starch and fat and sugar and more in the way of vegetables and low-fat protein? You know the sort of thing, fish and chicken, rice and beans, fresh fruit? And go easy on desserts?”
Betsy laughed merrily. “Who, my Carl go on a diet? You think I haven’t tried?”
“Well, see what you can do,” warned Dr. Spinney. “I mean it, Betsy. A man in his condition needs to put less strain on his heart.”
Betsy chuckled and nodded as if she understood, but a moment later Dr. Spinney was horrified to see her plop a huge piece of butterscotch pie in front of her husband and spoon over it a mound of whipped cream. Fascinated, he watched from across the room as she hovered over Carl, unscrewing a thermos, pouring him a cup of dark brown liquid. Well, that was better. At least she was making sure he got decafFeinated coffee instead of the strong brewed stuff from the church kitchen.
Carl drank his coffee, then offered the thermos around the table as Homer sat down again to eat a piece of Betsy’s pie. “Anybody want some of my decaf?” said Carl. “Here, try some. It’s really good.”
“Why, thank you,” said Homer, holding out his cup. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Carl poured it out, and Homer lifted the cup to his lips, then gasped. The black stuff in his cup was the strongest, bitterest brew he had ever tasted.
“Good, right?” said Carl.
“Oh, right,” said Homer, putting down the cup.
Betsy was back, pinching Carl’s arm. “Come on, honeybun, time to go.”
“Oh, okay, ooof,” said Carl, struggling up from his chair.
“But first you’ve got to take the tables down cellar.”
“Oh, no, Betsy, my God. I can’t do it. I ate too much.”
“Carl Bucky,” said Betsy, shocked and sorrowful, “whose fault, may I ask, is that?”
The nooning was over. Homer and Mary Kelly went home. Mary had things to do. She got out her oil paints and began painting a map of the river on the wall of the front room. But Homer was restless. He couldn’t settle down to anything. He couldn’t get Carl Bucky out of his mind.
“That poor man, Carl Bucky,” he said. “His wife is a scheming woman. She’s destroying him. She’s feeding him to death.”
Mary dipped her brush in black paint and began painting a row of turtles on a log. She laughed. “Well, Betsy’s not alone. I imagine a lot of wives are doing the same thing. Me, too. I mean, we can’t help it. We were brought up to cook like that. Our own mothers taught us to make all those rich delicious things. Cooking delicious things was the way to win your family’s affection. Then when the health-food people came along and told us not to do it, it was too late. It was ingrained in our whole pattern of married life. Betsy’s not the only one.”
“Maybe not, but she’s worse. Homicidally worse. There was something really menacing about the way she shoved the stuff at Carl, the way she stood over him while he lugged all those heavy tables and wouldn’t let me lend a hand. Did you see her come after me when I tried to help him? We had quite a little tussle there in the middle of the floor. I thought she was going to put my eye out. And the coffee—did I tell you about the coffee?” Homer turned and put his hand decisively on the knob of the front door. “Listen, remember those sausage thingummies of hers? You want the recipe, right?”
“The recipe?” Mary made a smudge with her brush, and looked at Homer in surprise. “I want the recipe?”
“I’m going over there right now and get the recipe. I want to see that poor guy at home. I want to tell him. I want to warn him. I want to save his life.”
“Oh, I see. The recipe is just an excuse. Well, listen, Homer, here’s what I really want from Betsy Bucky.” Mary looked at her husband slyly. “I want to know how she gets her layer cake to come out horizontal like that. I mean, mine always slopes downhill. And her pie dough, does she chill it first? I mean, us murdering wives, we need to share our little secrets. See here, dear, what do you want for supper?”
Homer clutched his stomach. “Oh, Lord, as a matter of fact, I don’t think I’m going to be especially hungry for supper.”
“Well, I may not be here anyway when you get back. I promised Joe I’d spend some time with Claire.”
When Homer pulled into the Buckys’ driveway, he saw at once that Carl was still in mortal trouble. He was mowing the sloping lawn, lunging after the huge lawnmower, heaving it around at the end of each swath, panting after it. The machine made an enormous racket.
As Homer strode long-legged up the hill, Carl paused, turned down the throttle, and leaned against the shuddering control bar. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He was beet-red. The lawnmower trembled and backfired.
“Listen, Carl,” said Homer, “why don’t you wait till the sun moves to the west a little? An hour from now this whole hillside will be in shadow.”
Carl shook his head. “Betsy’s in a hurry. She’s got these girls coming over, wants everything spruced up.”
“Well, let’s sit down a while anyway,” said Homer, setting a good example, lowering himself to the grass.
“Sure, why not?” sighed Carl. Turning off the lawnmower, he sank down and lay back with his arms over his face, panting, his big stomach rising and falling.
But it was no use. Betsy heard the silence. She shrieked from the doorway, “Carl? They’ll be here any minute. Can’t you finish the front lawn? Homer Kelly, is that you? Come on up here and have a glass of iced tea.”
Homer and Carl stood up slowly. Carl put his foot on the lawnmower and grasped the starter rope.
“Don’t do it, Carl,” said Homer. “You shouldn’t be pushing that big machine. Honest to God, you look terrible.”
“Carl?” cried Betsy. “How about it, honeybun?”
Carl shrugged at Homer and jerked on the rope. It didn’t catch. Walking reluctantly up to the house, Homer heard the gasoline engine sputter and die, sputter and die, sputter and die. He looked over his shoulder as it caught at last, and watched Carl guide the thund
ering machine across the slope. It kept tugging at him, trying to run downhill. Carl had to keep hauling at it, pushing down on the handle to aim it uphill again.
“Say, Betsy,” said Homer, “do you really think Carl ought to be out there working so hard in the hot sun?”
“Who, Carl?” Betsy tittered. “Oh, Carl’s all right. He’s just fine. He just loves working outdoors. And it’s good for him to get a little exercise.” With a bright wink, Betsy patted her skinny midriff. “Good for that big belly of his.” And then Betsy laughed merrily as if Homer’s cautionary remark were the funniest thing she had ever heard.
17
Have attended church today and listened to two discourses from Mr. Jackson—one from the text “Be not high minded” and the other I cannot now recall to mind.
James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1848
The church services followed one another relentlessly, Sunday after Sunday. Somehow Joseph Bold managed to find an hour or two every week when he could separate himself from his wife’s calamity long enough to scratch together a sermon. Some of his efforts were less adequate than others. The congregation listened calmly and made no public complaint.
But Parker Upshaw protested privately to his wife. “This sort of thing, any kid fresh out of seminary could do it. We don’t have to pay an experienced minister to deliver a sermon like that. Oh, granted, the poor guy is going through a hard time, but lots of us go through hard times and still manage to do our job. Is this what we were looking for when we traveled around the country, all last year, a minister like this? That sermon this morning was terrible.”
“Oh, Parker,” said Libby, “be charitable. You know he’s just upset right now. And anyway I didn’t think it was so bad.”
Every six weeks the service included communion, a custom handed down from the Congregational side of Old West Church. As a former Catholic, Jerry Gibby was astonished when one of the deacons handed him a tiny glass of purple liquid and a basket containing a loaf of bread. Awkwardly he tore off a morsel of the bread and swallowed the liquid. The bread went down his gullet easily, but when he tasted what was in the glass, he spluttered and almost laughed aloud. It wasn’t wine, it was grape juice. Imogene glanced at him and made a soft shushing expression with her mouth.
For Joe Bold, too, the communion service was a new experience. Like Jerry, he wondered why this freethinking community celebrated it at all. Somehow it seemed strange that all these computer engineers, Wellesley graduates, building contractors, supermarket owners, middle-management men, doctors and lawyers, librarians and teachers, mathematicians and bankers should sit together dwelling on the mystery of the transformation of King Arthur flour and Welch’s grape juice into the body and blood of a young Hebrew prophet who had wandered around Palestine two thousand years ago. Of course nobody pretended there was any actual miraculous transubstantiation, hot in this Protestant church. Nor did the partakers come forward to kneel and take the sacrament from the hands of their pastor. Instead the deacons passed the bread and the gleaming silver trays of little glasses, and the parishioners sat firmly on the red cushions in the pews and chewed the bread and swallowed the grape juice, then set their glasses in the hymnbook racks, in the round holes especially drilled for them by George Tarkington. In this case, thought Joe, communion was a metaphor for self-sacrifice and spiritual dedication, that was all, just as so much else in the service was a metaphor. Swallowing his grape juice, feeling it trickle down his throat, Joe sat with bowed head, reflecting that the church itself had almost become a figure of speech. He forced himself to concentrate on the teachings of Jesus that had always moved him most profoundly, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these ye have done it unto me. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Then Joe thought of the parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price, and at once the other metaphors faded and only the fact remained that his treasure was being taken away from him, his precious pearl.
Grimly he stood up and brought the service to a close, and everyone drifted out of the building, except for Barbara Fenster, who folded the white tablecloth so that she could take it home to be laundered, and the head deacon, Bob Ott, who collected all the little glasses from the pews, and Julie Smith and Geneva Jones, who washed and dried them in the church kitchen.
Metaphor or no metaphor, the communion service was a lot of work.
18
… the invalid … hopes to be better in a short time … to hope at all is to show the frailty of the human mind.
James Lorin Chapin
Private Joumal, Lincoln, 1849
Claire’s spoon rattled, on the hospital tray. “I know I should try,” she said to Mary Kelly, “but I just can’t.”
“Well, never mind.” Mary picked up the new Travis McGee novel and began reading aloud where she had left off. Every now and then she dipped Claire’s spoon into the applesauce, then slipped it into Claire’s mouth as if another spoonful were part of the story, as if building up Claire’s strength were not a matter of supreme importance.
Out in the corridor, Joe Bold was persuading the surgeon to make one final try. “I don’t know,” said the surgeon, shaking his head. “If it were my. wife, I don’t think—”
“It’s not your wife,” said Joe, choking. “It’s mine.”
The surgeon said nothing. For a moment they both stood staring out the window at the river winding in the direction of Fairhaven Bay. Below them a crow ended its swooping flight on the top of a white pine tree, and the branch dipped under its weight. From far away they could see its beak open, they could hear the faint squawk. The surgeon rubbed his tired face, and Joe couldn’t help perceiving that the gold hairs on the backs of the surgeon’s hands were arranged in spiral patterns. To Joe it seemed a bitter fact that while his nightmare blundered on from one dread event to another, the figures it cast upon his senses were still majestic with color and light.
At the County Hospital, Joan Sawyer continued to visit Howie every day. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered to be so diligent. Howie rarely seemed to notice her. If she didn’t come, he wouldn’t miss her. She was only trying to impress the head nurse, decided Joan cynically, by demonstrating her wifely loyalty. But the head nurse must guess her true feelings. The head nurse was no. fool.
The other regular visitor to Howie in the County Hospital was Ed Bell. Joan knew about Ed’s visits and she often thanked him for them, although she had never happened to be in Howie’s ward when Ed was there. But one Saturday afternoon their visits coincided. As Joan approached the locked door, she could hear singing on the other side.
The head nurse let her in, her face wreathed in smiles, and tipped her head in the direction of the bizarre barbershop quartet at the other end of the ward. Ed Bell, Rosemary Hill, Howie Sawyer, and Mr. Canopus were standing arm in arm, their heads thrown back, singing “Jingle Bells.” Mr. Canopus wasn’t actually singing, but he had a clutch on Ed, and his head was nodding, his mouth was working. Howie was lost in the song, carried away. He had the words just right. In front of them Mr. O’Doyle tossed his ball excitedly, and caught it, and tossed it again.
Even Mrs. Beddoes was singing, sitting in her chair. Mrs. Beddoes was a sweet-looking old woman who had been reduced by senile dementia to the level of a two-year-old child. One afternoon Joan had met Mr. Beddoes sitting beside his wife, holding her hand: “You’d never think it to look at her now,” he told Joan, “but Franny used to be in charge of a whole office. I mean, she had forty people under her.” He shook his head sadly, then jumped up as his wife rose in her chair and began to cry wildly, “I got to go, I got to go.” “Okay, honey,” Mr. Beddoes said, releasing her to the head nurse. “Come on, dear,” said the nurse, bustling away with Mrs. Beddoes.
Now Mrs. Beddoes was si
nging softly, “Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.” Even in her shattered memory the familiar tune brought the words along with it.
“Jingle Bells” was over. Ed winked at Joan and started a new song, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It, too, was a big success. The head nurse plucked Joan’s arm and nodded again, this time at Miss Stein. “She’s smiling,” whispered the head nurse.
It was true. Crouched in her chair with her eyes shut, little Miss Stein was smiling. Her eyes had been shut ever since Joan had first brought Howie into the ward. Now Joan could see that the thousand wrinkles around her mouth and eyes had been made in the first place by smiling. For once, her face looked right. Miss Stein had been a biologist, a teacher, a specialist in tidal life, until something terrible had happened to her. Now she kept her eyes tightly shut, and whispered the fragments of her dreams. The tide washed in and out, and in and out, and Miss Stein remained asleep.
The singing was finished. Rosemary Hill picked up her purse, shook hands with Howie and Ed, and came over to say hello and goodbye to Joan.
Rosemary felt terrible about Miss Stein. “It’s so sad. You can see what she was before, somebody really admirable.”
“I know,” said Joan.
“It would have been better if she had died,” said Rosemary, looking directly at Joan.
“Yes,” agreed Joan, and she knew Rosemary meant it for Howie too. It would have been better, far better, if Howie had died.
“And what about Claire Bold?” said Rosemary fearlessly. “I understand she may have to undergo more surgery. I just wonder if it might not be better if they just let nature take—”
“I know,” said Joan again, nodding and nodding. “I know.”
Rosemary went home and went to work once again in her attic. She spent the afternoon working on financial records, old canceled checks from ten years back, tax receipts and dusty bank statements. There was no earthly use in cluttering up the children’s lives with this kind of thing. Ruthlessly, Rosemary chucked them out.
