Chapter 2 - The Sunday School Whispers
The sanctuary of Grace Baptist Church smelled of damp wool coats, floor wax, and the carnations left over from the Easter morning altar displays.
At 9:15 on Sunday morning, seven days after I walked out of the Windham Crest dining room with my coconut cake, I sat in my customary third-row pew on the left side of the aisle. I had attended Grace Baptist since 1982. My husband had served as a deacon here; our son had been baptized in the copper-lined tank behind the choir loft when he was eleven years old, his damp hair sticking to his forehead while the congregation sang Softly and Tenderly.
As the organist began the prelude, Clara Vance slipped into the pew beside me. Clara had lived two doors down from me on Sycamore Street for twenty-five years. Her husband ran the hardware store on the square, and Clara possessed an internal radar for county gossip that rivaled the National Weather Service.
She leaned in, her floral perfume mingling with the smell of the hymnal.
“Pauline,” she whispered, adjusting her silk scarf. “Are you all right?”
I kept my hands resting calmly on the leather binding of my Bible. “I’m very well, Clara. Thank you.”
Clara gave me that narrow, sideways squint women use when they are trying to determine whether a wall has a door in it. “I ran into Susan Miller at the beauty parlor yesterday. Her daughter-in-law is in that young mothers’ circle with Brianna.”
“Is she?”
“Susan told me Brianna had to cancel her hair appointment on Friday because her card was flagged for unusual activity,” Clara murmured, leaning closer still. “And then Susan said Brianna was telling anyone who would listen in the waiting area that you’d had some kind of... well, some kind of emotional breakdown on Easter Sunday and stormed out over a seating mix-up.”
I turned my head slowly and looked Clara directly in the pupils.
“Did Susan happen to mention what Brianna did before I left?”
“Well, no,” Clara admitted, her eyes widening slightly. “She just said you took your cake and went home without saying goodbye to her parents.”
“Brianna took the chair out from beneath my hand, moved it to the wall, and informed twelve guests that I did not belong at their table,” I said, keeping my voice at the exact volume of a librarian directing an inquisitive patron to the microfiche cabinet. “My son watched her do it and looked at his roast lamb. So I took my cake, returned to my home, and canceled the credit card Brianna was using to pay for that hair appointment.”
Clara’s mouth opened slightly. The gold chain on her spectacles caught the morning light from the stained-glass window.
“She... she took your chair?”
“She did.”
“And you were paying for her hair?”
“Among other things, Clara.”
Clara sat back against the oak pew. Her spine straightened, and the gossiping gleam in her eye shifted instantly into the cold, protective solidarity of an older woman who had raised three boys of her own on a hardware-store margin.
“Well,” Clara muttered, reaching for a hymnal. “The little heifer.”
“The service is starting, Clara,” I said softly.
After the benediction, I walked into the fellowship hall for coffee. I noticed three distinct groups of women from the senior ladies’ class watching me from beside the punch bowl. News travels fast in a town of forty thousand people, but the truth travels with a peculiar, heavy momentum of its own. When people know you have lived thirty years without a single public drama, they tend to believe the wall, not the person who tried to paint graffiti on it.
I poured black coffee into a paper cup, took half a lemon scone, and stood by the memorial display case.
My phone vibrated in my leather handbag.
I set my coffee on the folding table, unzipped the bag, and checked the screen. It was not Derek. It was Brianna’s mother, Cynthia Vance.
Cynthia was a retired pharmaceutical sales representative who wore heavy turquoise jewelry and referred to Derek’s neighborhood as “an executive community.”
The text read:
Pauline, I am writing this as one mother to another. What happened on Easter was a playful misunderstanding that has been blown entirely out of proportion. Brianna is under an immense amount of stress with Derek’s travel schedule, and your sudden, punitive financial actions are causing real strain on their young family. We are all adults here. I suggest we meet at the club for lunch on Tuesday so you can apologize to Brianna and restore the family accounts before Derek’s credit is permanently impacted.
I read the message twice.
The audacity was almost artistic. She had used the word apologize with the total, unblinking confidence of a woman who believed that elderly schoolteachers were soft, easily confused creatures who would rather pay four figures than endure a frosty glance across a dessert tray.
I tapped the screen with my thumb.
Cynthia, I typed. The accounts are settled. If Derek’s credit is impacted, it will be due to the choices he makes as a grown man. I will not be at the club on Tuesday. Please address any further concerns regarding their household budget directly to your son-in-law.
I hit send, tucked the phone back into my bag, and took a bite of my scone.
May you like
As I chewed, I looked through the fellowship hall windows at the greening dogwood trees on the church lawn. For years, I had believed that harmony was something you bought with silence. If you let people have their way, they would love you for your grace.
What I had forgotten—or perhaps never learned until sixty-three—was that people do not respect a doormat because it happens to be made of expensive wool. They simply wipe their boots harder before they step into the dry room.