Winifred frowned at her, and Lorna flushed. She should keep her opinions to herself. Her sisters were justifiably proud of Alasdair. Who wouldn’t be? He had taken the medium-sized congregation his father had passed down to him and turned it into a nationwide organization of daily radio broadcasts, a monthly magazine, conferences, seminars, and books on every subject in Christendom. He was even editing his own study Bible. She was proud of him, too, she told herself, as if someone had argued the point. Still, the nagging awareness returned that there was something out of place. Something not as it should be.
His sermons were still well researched and interesting, dynamically delivered, though perhaps a shade intense. Angry was the word she wanted to use, but then again she had always been overly sensitive. She smiled gently, remembering the early days of Alasdair’s ministry. Having been accustomed to her father’s rather remote style, the congregation had drunk in Alasdair’s personal care. He had preached with passion and gentleness, sat at many a deathbed and sickbed, comforting, counseling, praying.
But then some board member had had the bright idea of beginning a radio broadcast. One thing had led to another, and soon Alasdair was a speaker in great demand. Eventually his days on the circuit outnumbered his days at home. That was when Bill Wright had moved into the gap. She felt a rush of affection as the earnest, homely face of their former associate pastor appeared in her mind. When someone’s child was in the hospital, it was Bill who had gone and prayed with them. When a marriage was falling apart, it was Bill who had helped mend the pieces. She recalled tearful hours she had spent in that process herself, Bill’s kind and steady voice like a line tossed across the frothing waves toward her outstretched hand.
For the first time she wondered if the heavy burden of ministry was what had driven Bill away. The longer she considered it, the more probable it seemed. There was no way the church could hire a third pastor to help the assistant. At Bill’s new church, he would have the same duties, but with an associate to help him. She felt a twist of regret that he’d been so unappreciated, and a twinge of worry when she thought of what might happen now that he was gone.
“This morning I heard someone say that Alasdair’s healing process would be complete when he married again.” Fiona’s voice brought Lorna out of her reverie.
Winifred snorted. “I’m sure there would be plenty of applicants for that position.”
“I suppose,” Fiona said, smiling. Almost at once, though, her pretty face clouded. “By the way, I heard a rumor that disturbed me.”
“What was it?” Winifred demanded.
“That there’s a movement afoot.”
“What kind of movement?” Winifred asked, seeming only slightly interested.
Lorna understood why word of rumors didn’t bring an immediate panic. The three of them were veterans of their father’s years of ministry. These so-called movements could be motivated by the slightest of disturbances, from unhappiness with the color of the carpeting in the Sunday school rooms to major doctrinal concerns. They could be anything from a quick shower to a devastating hurricane. She waited for Fiona to elaborate, the clenching of her stomach her only premonition.
“A movement to have Alasdair replaced.”
Her stomach twisted. This was a gale force wind.
“Piffle,” Winifred dismissed. “Who told you that?”
“Ruth Anderson said she heard it from Edgar Willis.”
Winifred frowned, and with reason. Edgar Willis was one of the ruling elders, the senior ruling elder, as a matter of fact. “If it’s true, I lay it at Bill Wright’s feet. He should never have left.”
Lorna thought perhaps they should be grateful Bill had stayed as long as he had, picking up pieces and smoothing the path for Alasdair.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to it, though,” Winifred dismissed. “Just the usual gossip.”
Fiona didn’t answer, just lifted one of her exquisitely shaped eyebrows.
Lorna took a deep breath and tried to ignore her feeling of foreboding. She closed the refrigerator door and went to the sink to perform her final ritual. Neither of her sisters ever scrubbed it, and the food scraps in the drainer and yellow stains on the porcelain made the kitchen look even more grim and neglected than usual. She emptied the drain trap into the garbage, then shook the green cleanser and watched the granules turn dark as they hit the wet sink. She felt a frustration she couldn’t name, and suddenly she was angry with Winifred and Fiona. And she was angry with Alasdair as well, she realized with a shock.
“What were you two arguing about?” Alasdair’s voice behind Lorna startled her, and oddly, instead of banishing her thoughts, the little surge of adrenaline from his appearance only increased their force. Her brother picked up the empty coffeepot and reached around her to fill it at the faucet.
Winifred looked stricken, probably wondering how long he had been listening and trying to remember what she’d said. Alasdair didn’t even look at her. He reached up to get the filter and coffee from the cupboard.
“I can’t remember,” Fiona said, laughing. “You know us.”
Suddenly Lorna was hot, as if someone had lit a little fire in her chest. Why did no one in this family ever tell the truth?
“They were arguing about how long it’s been since Anna died,” she blurted out. “How long has it been, Alasdair? Surely you know.”
Winifred’s jaw dropped. Fiona’s eyes widened. Even Lorna was shocked, though the words had come from her own mouth. Alasdair stopped his coffee preparations and looked at her. For just a moment his eyes seemed unveiled, and she glimpsed the churning froth behind them.
“I don’t remember exactly.” He turned away.
“Really, Lorna,” Winifred reproached under her breath. Fiona said nothing, just became very interested in the contents of her purse. Alasdair went back to his coffee preparations. He did not look up again. Lorna began scrubbing and rinsing the sink with hot energy, and when she was finished, she turned her irritation toward the countertops, cluttered with a week’s worth of debris.
There were phone messages, a schoolbook of Samantha’s, a clean, empty baby bottle, two dirty spoons, a yellow writing tablet, a cracked mug full of pens and pencils, two letters addressed to the Reverend Alasdair MacPherson, John Knox Presbyterian Church, 922 Fairfax Street, Alexandria, Virginia, one from B. Henry, 33 Harrison Street, Richmond, Virginia, another with the Old English Italic letterhead of the United Presbyterian Church denomination headquarters in the same city, both neatly sliced open along their folds. One small glove, looking lost without its mate.
The entire house needed a good going-over. She should take down the curtains over the sink and give them a wash. They were awful—gold things with brown rickrack and a fringe of little orange balls around the bottom. In fact, everything was awful. The wallpaper was dark—a pattern of orange and brown mushrooms against a green background. The cupboards were dark and outdated. The paneling on the bottom half of the walls was dark. All in all, the room gave the effect of moldering decay and depression. And Lorna had to admit it had been that way even when Anna was alive.
“I’m going to finish reviewing tonight’s sermon.” Alasdair flipped the switch on the coffeemaker and it began to gurgle. He looked each of them in the eye. “As always, I thank you for all your help.” His face was once again wiped smooth of any expression.
Lorna shook her head and felt frustration mixed with a searing sadness as she thought of her sister-in-law’s legacy: a small brass marker in the churchyard next door, a perpetual collection of brown-tipped potted plants with limp ribbons at the bank of the Potomac beneath the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, three motherless children, and a husband who became more untouchable each day. Her mouth opened, once again without her conscious intention, and she spoke, the words fueled by this unfamiliar emotion.
“Anna died October fifteenth, two years ago. This is the twenty-fourth of October. That makes it two years, one week, and two days.”
No one spoke. Alasdair
turned back and stared at her for a moment. She was half afraid of his anger, half hoping for it, but when he spoke his voice was steady, his face expressionless except for those desolate eyes. “Well, then. There you have it. Argument settled.” He turned and left the room.
Fiona and Winifred gave her disapproving looks behind his back. She started to call out, hesitated, then followed him. She reached the hallway as he came to the stairs. She opened her mouth to speak, to apologize, but something stopped her.
Alasdair had stopped at the bottom step, his hand on the banister, head bowed. His shoulders were rounded and she wasn’t sure if he was praying, weeping, or simply gathering strength. She felt a strong whip of shame at her cruelty. She opened her mouth again, but once more something stopped her.
No, a still, small voice corrected. Leave him.
She nodded, blinking back tears. Alasdair raised his head. His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. He climbed the stairs. She watched until he disappeared from sight, then returned to the kitchen where her sisters awaited.
“What in the world was that about?” Winifred demanded, furious.
“Really, Lorna. I should think you’d want him to put it behind him,” Fiona added gently.
Lorna had no answer. She felt very ashamed of herself. Her anger had fizzled out like a wet sparkler. What had she been thinking? What was she trying to prove?
Her sisters shunned further conversation with her, turned as if by mutual agreement, and began to gather up their coats and purses. An old method of controlling her and as effective as always.
“I’ll stay until evening service,” Lorna said, feeling miserable and guilty.
“I’ve got to arrange for the nursery,” Winifred protested, as if Lorna had shamed her. Her sister hated being bested in the competition of who could help the most.
“That’s fine. You go,” Lorna soothed. “I’ll just be here when the babies wake, and I’ll keep an eye on Samantha.”
“That sounds fine.” Fiona checked her watch and pulled her coat closed, buttoned it with a firm hand that allowed no slipping and sliding. “Come along, Winifred. I’ve papers to grade.”
Winifred reluctantly agreed, the two sisters made their exit, and Lorna felt the flood of relief that she always did when they left her. There was something about their mere presence that made her feel ignorant and inept. She poured Alasdair’s coffee into the carafe, put the teakettle on for herself, then went upstairs to check on Samantha.
Her door was open a crack, and a thin slice of light shone along the dark hall carpet. Lorna pushed it open quietly so as not to disturb her niece at her studies, but Samantha wasn’t at her desk. Her schoolbooks looked untouched, still in a pristine stack. She pushed the door open all the way. Samantha wasn’t there at all. She must have slipped out again.
Lorna sighed and wondered if she should alert Alasdair. She looked around at the room before closing the door. There were new posters on the wall—of rock bands—some of them ominous-looking. The vanity was covered with lipstick and eye makeup, the sparkly kind that sold for a dollar in the pharmacy. She’d noticed Samantha’s attempts in that direction lately and wished she could help. She was such a pretty child. Brown hair, pink cheeks, and those fine, even features she’d gotten from her mother. Lorna wished she felt more capable of helping her niece with the practical matters of womanhood, but her own adolescence seemd light-years away. Besides, Samantha didn’t seem to be listening to anyone’s advice these days. It was as if the sweet child who had been her niece was gone. Lorna felt the loss as sharply as another death. The strangeness of her role with these children assaulted her again. She lived in that gray region between mother and aunt. For the first year of the twins’ lives, she had been the one who cared for them. She had stayed at night for a while and then begun arriving before they arose each morning. They were her treasures, especially the babies. They were like her own. In fact, she often imagined they were. She rocked them, fed them, worried over them. The cruelty of her situation cut her again. Michael’s unfaithfulness and financial debacle had rocked more then her little world. Her small share of the debts not discharged in bankruptcy had put an end to her surrogate mothering. Now she spent days at one job and nights at another instead of being here, caring for the children who felt so much like her own. She took a moment to release her anger, to forgive him again.
Lorna closed Samantha’s door, then paused outside the twins’ room. She didn’t hear a sound. She crept back down the stairs, not really breathing again until she reached the kitchen, and just caught the kettle before it began to whistle.
She took down the teapot, ran the water until it was finally hot, then filled it and took out the tin of tea. She emptied the pot, added the tea, and poured the boiling water over the leaves. While she waited for it to brew, she made the usual telephone calls. She located Samantha on the second one—the home of that poor boy with all the earrings who never looked anyone in the eye. What kind of radar did these unhappy children have that allowed them to find each other?
“Come home, please,” she said pleasantly, but was rewarded by a sullen reply. “Shall I call your father to the telephone?” she was forced to threaten. This time the line disconnected. She sighed, replaced the telephone, and made another halfhearted stab at cleaning off the counter.
She picked up the empty bottle and started to put it away, then reconsidered and took out another. She filled both with milk and set them in the door of the refrigerator, ready to warm when the babies woke. They were two years old and really should be weaned and potty trained. But there were only so many hours in the day, and for her, eight of them were spent at the secretary’s desk at John Knox School and four nights a week processing film at the Kodak plant. She had bills to pay. She half smiled at the irony of the understatement, then checked her watch. She was due there at three o’clock in the morning, as a matter of fact, and really should go home and get some sleep.
She went back to her tidying. She put the yellow pad in the drawer under the telephone and gathered up the scattered messages, glancing at them briefly to see if any were urgent or hadn’t been answered. There were six from various committee members and parishioners regarding classes needing teachers, families needing counseling, people with questions only Alasdair could answer.
And one from Mrs. Tronsett at Knox School. Lorna frowned. Mrs. Tronsett was the principal. The message had been received late Friday. Please call regarding Samantha was all it said in the sitter’s loopy handwriting. That brought on another spasm of worry, and Lorna spent a few moments thinking about Samantha’s problems.
She sighed and picked up the last piece of debris—yet another telephone message. This one from someone named Bob Henry with a long-distance number. She frowned and remembered why the name sounded familiar. B. Henry had been the name on the letter she’d seen earlier.
Lorna retrieved it, along with the one from denomination headquarters. She turned them over and inspected the backs of the envelopes, then placed them both down on the counter very gently, as if they contained explosives that might go off in her hand.
She took the glove and added it to the load of dirty clothes in the washer and started them washing, took Samantha’s schoolbook upstairs and set it on her desk, returned to the kitchen and washed the two spoons, dried them and put them away, all the while taking sidelong glances at the two letters. Then for the third time that day she did something for which she had no explanation. Certainly no justification. She picked up the first one—the one with the United Presbyterian Church logo. She unfolded it and began to read. She wasn’t halfway through before her puzzlement turned to apprehension.
Dear Reverend MacPherson,
Even though I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you, I greet you as the apostle John greeted the church at Thyatira in Revelation, chapter two, verse nineteen. “I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience.” You, like they, have poured out your life in service to the Gospel, and your ster
ling reputation is known to all.
It has not escaped my attention that it has been just over two years since your wife, Anne, passed on to her eternal reward.
Lorna shook her head. The least he could do was get Anna’s name right.
I am aware that a grief of such magnitude extends its shadow to the farthest reaches of one’s soul and circle of influence. And though we are exhorted to run with diligence the race marked out for us, there may come times when rest is called for.
This was ominous. Her stomach clutched, but she read on quickly.
Though you have carried out your responsibilities with the strength only Christ can provide, the cost of doing so may be great, not only to you, but to your family and congregation as well.
Lorna frowned as she deciphered the roundabout phrasing, and her pulse picked up as the message became clear.
As overseer, not only of the sheep, but of those who shepherd them, I would appreciate an opportunity to dialogue with you regarding your needs and those of your congregation. It is no shame to allow oneself a temporary respite, and I must confess my motives are not entirely unselfish. The services of a man of your singular talents would be coveted by many here at denominational headquarters.
Sincerely,
Your co-laborer in the harvest,
Gerald Whiteman,
President
Lorna sank into a chair and dropped the hand that held the letter onto the table. Her brother was being summoned. There was no other interpretation. She’d known the situation was bad, but not this bad. She took three or four deep breaths and finally calmed herself enough to think. Determined to hear all the bad news at once, she took the second letter out and read it as well. It was dated the same day as Gerald Whiteman’s.
Al,
I can’t believe you’ve let the inmates take over the asylum. Gerry got a letter from a few strays from your flock, bleating that you’ve lost your zip. Maybe it’s not too late to sidetrack him, but we need to make a plan. Call me.
Not a Sparrow Falls Page 5
