“Anything else you can suggest?”
“Well, I could try to unbolt the other two pews from the floor and drag ’em out of the way.”
“That’s a great idea,” she said, trying to force some enthusiasm into her voice. “I’ll let the vestry and the roofing company know about this latest development. Thanks for getting on it so quickly.”
“You want me to get on the roof, see if I can fix a tarp up there?”
“No! That is, let’s see what the roofing guy says before we start messing around with anything.”
There was a long pause. “Okay.” Another pause. To give her time to change her mind. “Talk to you later.”
He hung up. She sighed. Now she had to think of a way to ease his hurt feelings over not being allowed to clamber all over the ice-covered roof.
She replaced the receiver and considered the tall green thermos of coffee sitting on the pine kitchen table. She always brewed more than she could drink in the morning and carried the rest with her to the office, since Lois evidently put used industrial waste in the church’s Mr. Coffee. She could really, really use another cup right now.
The phone rang. She pulled a teaspoon and a FORT RUCKER-HOME OF ARMY AVIATION mug from the dish drainer and unscrewed the thermos top. The phone rang. She poured the coffee in, breathing in the steam and smell of it. She reached for her oversized sugar bowl and began spooning in sugar. The phone rang. She stirred her sugar into the hot coffee, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. The phone rang. She picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, I’m glad I caught you. Your secretary said you were still at home, but I thought I must have missed you.”
“Russ.” She smiled into her coffee. “What’s up?”
“I have to cancel out on lunch.”
She felt a ridiculous dip in her stomach. “What’s happened? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Lyle MacAuley and Noble Entwhistle have both called in sick. Lyle’s illness might be the dreaded ‘last- chance-to-snowmobile fever,’ but Noble never bags work unless he’s on death’s door. I’m going to have to spend all day in the car. I’m calling from there right now. I’m afraid my lunch’ll have to be a heart attack in a sack.”
“Ah. It’s just as well. I just made a date to sit in with Karen Burns and Debba Clow while they go over Debba’s custody case.”
“You know that woman is a fruitcake, don’t you?”
She grinned. “Now, Russ, I know you don’t like lawyers…”
“I use words other than
“You mean because of her protesting at the clinic?”
“That’s been an issue. But not what I was thinking of. I used to come out to her place when she and her husband were first married. They got rowdy with each other all the time.”
“My God. She was an abused wife?”
She could hear him sigh over the phone. “It’s not always as clear-cut as that. They both used to go at each other. I’d come out there, she’d have a purpling eye and he’d have a busted lip and his forehead cut open. And then neither one of them would press charges. Nowadays, I’d run ’em both in, but this was before we had a mandatory- charge law. So I’d warn them both and hand them the counseling brochure and leave ’em until next time. Things quieted down when they had their first kid. Or maybe they just fought quieter.” He sighed again. “She says she’s an artist. I don’t know if she’s any good, but she sure has the artist’s temperament. Wacky.”
“Thanks for tipping me off.”
He groaned. “I shouldn’t have told you that, should I? It’s like showing a dog raw meat. You’ll take her under your wing, give her anger-management counseling, get up a committee to send her to art school, and do her picketing for her while she’s in class.” She laughed. He went on, his voice more serious. “Just try to cool it a bit and get a sense of what’s going on before you leap into someone else’s life, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay, then.” There was a pause. “I suppose I ought to go.”
She sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and propped her chin in her hand. “I suppose so.”
“You gonna be okay with that idiot car of yours? Your secretary said it wouldn’t start.”
“I’ve got AAA. They’ll be here. Eventually.”
He snorted. “If you had a decent late-model four-wheel drive instead of a thirty-something-year-old sports car that weighs about as much as one of my snow tires-”
“Yeah, but if I got one, you’d just have to find something else to complain about.”
He laughed. She stirred her coffee slowly. The silence stretched out.
“Well, if they don’t show, give the station a call and I’ll drive over and jump you.” There was a sort of strangled non-noise. “Jump your car. Jump-start it. The cruisers have incredible batteries.”
She started laughing. “Is that a Freudian slip, or are you just happy to see me?”
“Oh, Christ. Okay, now that I’ve made a complete ass of myself, I will get rolling.”
She smiled.
“You’re grinning at me, aren’t you? I can tell.”
She laughed. “Go on. Go keep the streets safe from the breakdown of traditional values.” She smiled again, and wondered if he could hear this one, too. “And keep yourself safe, too.”
“Always.” There was a pause, as if he were going to say something more, but then he said, “Bye.”
“Bye.”
She let the receiver slip out of her hand and dangle by its cord. Finally she stood to rehang it. There was a beep from her drive. She opened the kitchen door to see the AAA road-service truck. A skinny young guy bulked up like the Michelin tire man in insulated overalls climbed out of the cab.
“You called, lady?”
“You’re here sooner than I expected,” she said. Her voice carried through the bitter air.
“Yeah, well, the office tried to call you, but your line was busy.”
Allan Rouse, as it happened, lived several blocks down on the same street as Geoff and Karen Burns, in a brick Italianate not much different from theirs. Elm Street had been laid out for lawyers and doctors, mill owners and land speculators, from a time when those worthies had families of a half dozen children, and servants slept in low-eaved fourth-story bedrooms. The land speculators developed vacation condominiums instead of railroads now, and the mill owners had been replaced by two-career couples who commuted down to Albany, but the serenity of place and position remained. Clare was frequently exasperated by people who lived cocooned from the harshness of life in their various Elm Streets, but as she parked her Shelby and walked to the Rouse’s front door, she couldn’t help but admire the beauty of a neighborhood where every window gleamed, every historically accurate piece of door hardware shone, and the potholes were always filled in immediately.
The door opened. “Hello. You must be Reverend Fergusson.” The woman welcoming Clare was somewhere around sixty and holding, her body running to plumpness but not there yet, her hair still a determined glossy brown. “I’m Renee Rouse.”
Clare shook her hand and let the doctor’s wife take her coat. “I was admiring your house,” she said. “It’s lovely.”
“Thanks,” Mrs. Rouse said, opening a hall closet and hanging Clare’s coat inside. “It’s far too big for us now the children are grown, but we love it too much to leave. And the location is great. In nice weather, Allan likes to bike to work.”
He wasn’t biking anywhere today. In fact, when Clare caught sight of him after being ushered into the parlor, she wondered if he was ever biking anywhere again. He was sitting in a well-worn recliner that looked as if it had been his favorite chair for the past three decades. His whole body was clenched, furling in on itself, like that of an animal trying to enfold its soft underbelly within its tough outer hide.
Mrs. Marshall was perched on the edge of a sofa, leaning forward slightly. She glanced up when Renee Rouse led Clare into the living room, her relief and discomfort plain on her face.
“Oh, here you are, here’s Clare now, Allan.” Mrs. Marshall’s tone was the same one used by relatives at the bedside of a dying person-a kind of forced obliviousness to the graying reality beside them.
Mrs. Rouse crossed the plush carpet and knelt down by her husband’s side. “Sweetie?” she said. “Can I get you
