“A few phone calls were made between members of the vestry. The situation was discussed. Some concerns were expressed.”
The passive voice was used. Clare rolled her eyes. “I’m curious. Was Sterling Sumner included in these discussions?”
“I didn’t happen to speak with him.”
“Ha.”
“What do you mean, ‘ha’?”
“I mean, ha, he’s the only gay member of the vestry.”
“Sterling is not gay! He’s just artistic!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Robert. Do you think he wears that scarf year-round because he’s cold?”
The developer, who was a good twenty-five years her senior and probably did think the flamboyant Sumner had an ‘artistic’ temperament, sputtered over the phone.
“Look,” she went on, “I had been concerned about the issues raised by the assaults on Dr. Dvorak and Todd MacPherson. But to tell the truth, I’ve been so swept away by events that I hadn’t been thinking about anything in any coherent fashion. Now I will.”
Corlew started to speak, but she steamed forward. “We’ll have a meeting. We haven’t gotten the whole vestry together since May. We’ll talk about what it means to live in a community where homophobia rises to the point of violent hate crimes and what we, as Christians, ought to do about it.”
“There’s no way you’re going to get everybody together at the church in July. Lacey Marshall and Sterling are both ensconced in their camps at Lake George, and I can guarantee you they won’t leave before September. Norm Madsen is off on one of those Elderhostel trips, picking up old pottery shards in Greece.”
“You and Terry are in town, aren’t you?”
“We hardly comprise the whole vestry. And Terry’s actually on vacation from the bank this week. I was going to take him sailing—”
“Okay, let’s do that. Where is it you sail?”
“What? Where? Lake George, of course. But—”
“Great. Let’s all meet at the lake and have our discussion there. We can do it before you and Terry go out, at either Mrs. Marshall’s or Sumner’s summer house, or—how big is your boat?”
“Forty-two feet. Are you proposing a floating vestry meeting?”
“Sure! That way, no one has to be dragged away from their summer fun.”
There was a dead silence for a moment. Then he said, “That’s a joke, right?”
“No, the transgendered liberation parade was a joke. This is a proposal. The alternative is that we drag everybody in here for a nice long un-air-conditioned meeting. I don’t want to discuss this over the phone, one person at a time. We’ll never get anywhere. And the issue needs addressing now, not in September. When were you going to meet Terry?”
“Friday,” he said.
“Great! Friday would work well for me. I’ve got home visits in the morning and then the noontime Eucharist, but I’m free the rest of the afternoon. Look, I’m going to pass you back to Lois. You let her know where and when to meet at your boat, and she’ll notify everyone else. I’m glad you called and brought this up, Robert. This will really help clarify where we, as a church, stand.”
“Reverend Clare…” She could hear grinding noises from the other end.
“Yes, Robert?”
There were some more noises. Finally, he managed to say, “I’ll see you on Friday.”
“See you then. Bye.” She pressed the transfer button before he could reply. She was getting a handle on the different personalities on her vestry. Robert Corlew was a well-intentioned bully, a man who knew he was right in most everything he held an opinion on and who didn’t hesitate to wield his big voice and brusque manner like a blunt instrument. She thought of Msgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright, her survival school instructor at Egeland Air Force Base. He had been big on turning other people’s weapons against them.
She punched the main office button. “Lois? Mr. Corlew is holding. We’re having an impromptu vestry meeting on his boat Friday. You get the time and place to meet and notify everyone who isn’t out of the country. He may want to wiggle out of it. Don’t let him put you off.”
“As if,” the secretary said. Clare hung up and looked at the window in front of her desk with an expression of smug satisfaction. Now. If she could deal with one old fossil stuck in his tracks, she could surely deal with another.
That afternoon was her weekly hospital visit, but she would have gone anyway, to look in on Todd MacPherson. She sat and visited a while with Mr. Ellis, who was in for his second hip replacement, and with Mrs. Johnson, who was getting a biopsy after she had started bleeding from her uterus. The seventy-year-old already had diabetes, a pacemaker, and high blood pressure, and her surgeon, a sympathetic woman Clare’s age, was cheerfully upbeat in front of her patient and considerably more cautious when speaking to Clare. The unvarnished truth about Mrs. Johnson’s chances put Clare in a somber mood as she entered Todd MacPherson’s private room.
She had expected to see family—and there was, his sister Trish—and perhaps someone from the police department—there wasn’t—but she was surprised to see two men whose expensive clothing firmly stamped them as not from Millers Kill, as well as a photographer carrying fifty pounds of cameras and light meters around his neck.
Trish, sitting in a corner chair, noticed her first and waved her in.
