A Mother's Trial (11 page)

Steve peered up into the overcast night and thought he saw the red and green wing lights flashing not too far above. He watched as the plane circled and landed. The plane sported a big painted smile and Steve grinned back suddenly in response.

Beside him the boys wriggled and punched at one another. Priscilla’s face tightened as she searched the incoming passengers. Steve felt his heart jerking in his chest.

“There!” said Priscilla suddenly. She pointed.

“No, that child is too old,” said Steve, studying the child she had indicated.

“You’re right. There’s a blond lady—but I don’t see a baby. Where’s the baby?”

“Which one?”

“That one! The blond lady—the one with the orange comforter over her arm. See, she’s looking around.”

Priscilla rushed up to her, and in a minute was unwrapping the comforter the woman carried.

“Oh, Steve, look! She’s so tiny. She’s so beautiful.”

They crowded around, and Steve looked down at the tiny pale face of the six-month-old child. He felt the breath leave him in a rush. It was just like when Erik and Jason had been born. It took your damned breath away. She looked up at him with big black eyes and he thought he would cry. Priscilla was already crying, and laughing, the baby jiggling in her arms.

Together they brought Tia to the airport nursery and changed her. She had a terrible rash.

“I think it’s more than a diaper rash,” Priscilla said. “Look, she even has blisters on her elbow—and there’s a couple on her thumb.”

“What have we got to feed her?” asked Steve. The blond woman had given them a bottle and some formula in a Korean can but they couldn’t read the directions.

“Oh, I bought some baby formula. Dr. Shimoda told me what to get. Don’t worry, she’ll be all right. Won’t you, little Tia?” She bent over, smiling into the little face and received an answering smile.

“Look, Steve, she smiled at me!  Oh, look, Jason—see how tiny she is, Erik?”

Steve watched as his family closed around Tia. His eyes were full and he raised a hand to them. His family was complete,

4

“Dearly beloved, baptism is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, through which grace we become partakers of life eternal and heirs to God’s righteousness. Those receiving the sacrament are thereby marked as Christian Disciples and initiated into Christ’s holy Church.

“Our Lord has expressly given to the little children a place among the people of God, which privilege must not be denied them. Remember how Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to me. Do not forbid them, for to such belong the kingdom of God.’

“Beloved, do you in presenting this child for baptism confess your faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”

“We do.”

“Do you accept as your duty and privilege to live before this child lives that become the Gospel, to exercise all godly care that she be brought up in the Christian faith, that she learn to give attendance upon the private and the public worship of God, that she be taught the Holy Scriptures?”

“We do.”

“Will you endeavor to keep this child under the ministry and guidance of the Church until she by the power of God shall accept for herself the gift of salvation and be confirmed as a full and responsible member of Christ’s holy Church?”

“We will.”

“What name shall be given to this child?”

“Tia Michelle Phillips.”

“Tia Michelle Phillips, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Reverend Jim Hutchison dipped his finger into the holy water and made the mark of the cross on the baby’s forehead, and she looked up at him peacefully.

Then the thirty-seven-year-old minister with the map-of-Ireland face and the vivid blue, wide-set eyes, returned the baby to Priscilla’s arms, turned toward the congregation, and commended Tia to its care. The ninety-minute Methodist service ended with the Benediction, and at once the congregation separated into little clumps to talk and drink coffee. One large clump surrounded the Phillips family to congratulate them and see the baby.

Many of the parishioners came up to Jim as he walked about outside the church during the little social time he had established after Sunday worship.

“Lovely service, Jim.”

“Thank you, Marj. How are the kids? Are the girls watching the little ones?” He gestured across the way at the room where day care was provided for the children of the congregation who were too young to attend the service.

“Yes,” she answered. They chatted for a minute. Marj Dunlavy was one of Jim’s favorite parishioners—she knew everyone and was comfortable and a little motherly, and Jim liked that. Women had always tended to see him as a little lost boy, and he supposed he had always been looking for a mother. He had lost his when he was only five years old, back when his father and eight older brothers and sisters still lived in Bray, near Dublin.

The Hutchisons had moved shortly after her death to Hillsborough, in County Down, Northern Ireland, where his father took up the produce business in nearby Belfast. His father was a rigid man with a rigid set of beliefs and an iron hand, and he hadn’t had much time for mothering Jim.

Jim moved from group to group, smiling, greeting, hearing the latest gossip. What different sorts of people these Marin County people were from the kind he had grown up with, he thought. Not that his family hadn’t achieved wealth and standing. But growing up in Ireland was a different type of experience because being Irish was different. It was because he was a proper Irish lad, with a typical Celtic wanderlust and spirit of adventure, and because nothing held him closely to home that at the age of fifteen he had done a properly Irish thing and run away.

He had gone to Liverpool, crossing at night on a terrible old ship, he remembered; a week later it had sunk. He often used that story when he counseled runaways. “If you’re going to run away, don’t put it off for a week!” he’d joke gently.

He had met another runaway on the ship, who had taken Jim with him to some friends he knew in Liverpool, and they had stayed a while and then gone down to London and become regular Edwardian teddy boys, living in Chelsea and bumming about. In those days one could sleep all night in Hyde Park and nobody would notice. But he had managed to live in that fashion for quite some time, an outsider. And during all that time, he never gave a thought to religion.

Then one day in 1957, after nearly five years spent aimlessly on the London streets, a woman came up to him as he stood at the window of Selfridge’s Department Store and took him home with her. Jim never knew why she did it. Ethel Allingham was a devout Baptist, though, and somehow she decided to save this nineteen-year-old scruffy Irish boy. She kept him with her for the next four years—a mother to him, never forcing her religious beliefs on him, but quietly introducing him to a field he found that interested him. He became a nurse.

Jim made his way to the little group surrounding the Phillipses. His pearl-gray robe and black stole with its white pennant-and-cross insignia of the Methodist Church flowed loose behind him. The robe was particularly beautiful, more decorative than most, but Jim found no harm in that. It was not the outer trappings that made the man, of course, but lovely things had their place in life. He enjoyed his own extensive collection of Waterford crystal and the Royal Doulton figurines that he displayed at the parsonage—many pieces in the collections were gifts from friends or members of the congregation. People had always liked to bring him things; they knew the pleasure he took in their gifts.

When he had arrived at Aldersgate in 1972, there had been a membership of perhaps thirty families. It was a church in trouble, the bishop had told him, and because Jim had successfully increased church membership in other parishes—a green-thumb pastor he liked to think of it—they’d sent him here to Terra Linda from a congregation in central California. He had spent some money to put in a new sound system, and was working to have a sanctuary—which he thought was very important—and in the past three years he had been able to raise the membership to over three hundred. Now he and the board were trying to conclude an arrangement with Kaiser Hospital, to finance the construction of a new church up on the hill in exchange for the deed to the building the church was currently using. Then they could have their sanctuary and a new church as well.

Jim stopped by the Phillipses.

“Oh, Jim, can we take a picture of you with Tia—for her baby book?” asked Priscilla.

“Of course, Priscilla.” He posed, smiling. “How is she doing, then?” he asked.

“Oh, fine. She’s had a continuous bout of ear infections, just like Jason had when he was young, and then an abscess on her thigh. But everything’s all cleared up—the doctor gave her a clean bill of health on Friday,” said Priscilla.

“She does seem such a serene child, doesn’t she?”

“She is.” Priscilla laughed. “Such a difference from the boys! She’s just a little lady.”

“And do the boys like her? How are they adjusting to a little sister?” Jim worried about this sometimes because he thought the Phillips boys were terribly rough, and that Priscilla and Steve encouraged this. In fact when Priscilla had asked him to write a preadoption reference to Catholic Social Service, he had hesitated to recommend the family for placement of a little girl. After some soul-searching, he had finally written in the reference that he didn’t feel the family was ready for a baby girl—that the boys were still very wild—but that perhaps later things would be calmer around the home. It was the only time he had ever written a negative reference, but it had not been strongly negative, and apparently the adoption agency had decided that the home life was satisfactory because the adoption had gone forward.

“Oh, the boys just love Tia. She’s only been here six weeks, but she is a real member of the family already,” Priscilla said.

“I’m glad, Priscilla.” He patted the little child, smiled at Steve, and moved on. Tia was a pretty girl, he thought, very fragile looking with pale skin and those enormous dark eyes. Priscilla had confided in Jim one of the first times he had stopped to see the baby that she believed Tia might be part Caucasian.

“Maybe that’s why her mother abandoned her,” she had said. “You know, in Korea, mixed-blood babies are just the worst kind of outcasts. I figured it out, and it would just work mathematically: Tia’s mother might have been the daughter of an American GI stationed in Korea during the war. And that would make Tia one-quarter American!”

Perhaps it was true, Jim thought. The idea seemed to please Priscilla. Steve would probably like the possibility that Tia had white blood. Secretly Jim had always been a bit surprised that Steve had agreed to this adoption. He was basically a redneck, Jim thought, with all the accompanying racial prejudices. But Priscilla had been so strong about wanting a little girl, and Steve would come around to whatever she wanted. That seemed to be the pattern in the family.

Those two had an immature sort of relationship—Jim had noticed it the very first time he had met the Phillipses, back in July of 1972, when he had first been assigned to Aldersgate. The Phillipses were already church members, and one of the first things Jim had done upon becoming the new pastor was to visit with the members in their homes. Priscilla and Steve were living on Los Gamos Road in a three-bedroom town house then. Priscilla had seemed much the brighter of the two, the more dominant, Jim remembered. On the other hand, Steve appeared more religious. Both had already been quite active in the church. Priscilla served on the Social Concerns Committee and was a member of the executive board of the United Methodist Women. Steve talked about joining the church board of trustees, which he had later done.

But what Jim most particularly noticed about Steve and Priscilla was their constant competition for his attention. Steve would say something and Priscilla would jump right into the conversation and argue against him. It sometimes seemed that Steve compensated for her dominance with his wild talking. If something crossed his path, he was always going to blow it up or blast it. Then Priscilla would come in and try to draw attention back to herself. Often she’d tell a story about Erik’s or Jason’s latest fearless exploit or horrible accident. It seemed as though something was continually happening to her boys—and she’d always let the church know. Either she’d stand during the service to report the incident or she’d call in and ask for prayers or concern. When anything was called in, it was announced from the pulpit or called around to the congregation.

And of course Jim was especially interested in the accidents or medical problems of his parishioners because of his own medical background, which was quite extensive. He had trained in London and Liverpool, working for several years on the neurological unit at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary after earning his R.N. By then he had had his conversion.

Jim eased himself back through the crowd in front of the low rectangular Eichler-built church and entered the building. It was not an attractive church. Originally it had been a recreation center, and it still resembled one, with the two long sides of the rectangular building constructed entirely of sliding glass, and nearly all the rest of the exterior done out in drab gray cinder block. The interior floor was a honeycomb of speckled gray-on-white linoleum squares found in many institutional buildings. The seats were the cheap metal sort—there were no pews. The altar was the nicest part. There were brass candlesticks and vases of flowers, and both his own chair and the one for the lay reader were lovely polished mahogany. But the large wooden cross on the wall could not disguise the cinder block behind it.

Off to the left of the altar was his own office. There were files spread out on his desk, and several tapes from last month’s services—which he kept for the shut-ins who could not attend—piled loosely on one corner. He took off his robe and stole and carefully hung them up.

He had some counseling to do later—a young couple whose marriage was in trouble. He had had firsthand experience with that problem, as his own marriage had ended seven years before in annulment. The Church of England, of course, did not recognize divorce, so an annulment was necessary. But he strongly believed that his painful experience had made him a better minister and a better counselor. As he said, it was like the cross becoming the resurrection: you utilize the very thing that is painful and difficult. He had majored in Pastoral Psychology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, and he enjoyed counseling. He felt it was an essential part of his purpose.