Lookaway, Lookaway (53 page)

Lately she had been thinking about taking a hiatus from Stallings Presbyterian and going to work for three months with some of the foreign charities in the developing world. She needed another Peace Corps fix. She wanted to dig a well and get the water pump working. She wanted to put a permanent metal roof on the community center where there were now palm fronds. She hungered for it and could talk herself, most days, into thinking this is what God wanted her to do. But then there’d be another young teenager in the church who was cutting herself and told Kate and no one else. A wife who had slipped into an affair with a co-worker and told Kate and no one else. That child in the family just moved here from Maryland, where an uncle had touched her inappropriately and whose parents did not believe her. Was she certain this call to mission work was really what God wanted or wasn’t she where He wanted her, right here, doing what she alone could do at Stallings Presbyterian.

She might have counseled herself to sit still successfully but then the church Monthly Bulletin fell into her lap when Stewart quit. Stewart was a youth counselor and assistant; they shared him with Gold Hill Presbyterian. Stewart was smiley and full of energy and, though thirty, sort of a big kid himself, which maybe meant—Kate was never sure—that he bonded well with the youth group in the church, but she uncharitably distrusted all that bouncy energy and guilelessness, kept waiting to hear he was molesting the girls, suspected him of bad things which she never confided to Bo because it was nothing but un-Christian malice.

But then Stewart quit, getting a full-time youth director job at an uptown Charlotte church.

“Look, I’ll take the kids to Carowinds,” Bo volunteered. “I know you don’t want to do that.”

“Ride roller coasters for Jesus, no, thank you.”

But putting together the Monthly Bulletin was the drawing of a short short straw. She’d never paid much attention to the little magazine, but now that she did, she was appalled. Senior Spotlight. Look, the seniors are going to Concord Mills outdoor mall on a field trip, God be praised. Calling all young adults! Hoops4Him. “Basketball for Jesus, really?”

“That’s an interchurch activity. We’ve been doing Hoops4Him for years.” Bo paused. “You don’t approve?”

“Don’t recall the twelve disciples playing one-on-one.”

The Book Group was reading some piece of Christian fiction with a serial killer in it. The Covenant Class was renting and discussing Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ.
It’s time for the Young Men’s Retreat.
Between bouts of sock wrestling, log throwing, skeet shooting and paintball war, fifteen young men of the faith will grow closer to each other and to God. Participation fee $45.00
.

“I don’t suppose any slight hint of working toward Christ’s kingdom could trickle into our scheduled activities for our congregation.”

“Hey, the church is getting along again. Bonding. All this is good.”

“No, it is not good. What are we? Cruise directors? We’re becoming like that awful Charlottetowne Country Club you used to go to, except for lower-middle-class people.”

Bo sat on the edge of her desk. “I think it’s great that we can get a turnout for these social activities. Not long ago, the church had too many battle lines to do any of these things.”

Kate, silently, continued to typeset the issue left up in the air by Stewart’s departure.

Bo cleared his throat. “Um, you want the Men’s Group to go visit the prisoners in county lockup. You want the Women’s Group to take a shift at the women’s shelter. You want the youngsters not to go to Carowinds but to eat their vegetables.”

Kate wasn’t finding him charming today.
“Choose for yourselves this day,”
she said, while typing,
“whom you will serve…”

“Oh boy. When you start quoting Bible at the preacher, I know it’s time to clear out.”

“…
whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates,
or the god of Carowinds or the Harry Potter movie marathon at seven tonight in the Activity Building or the graven idol the Amorites called Putt-Putt Miniature Golf.
But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord
.”

But dissatisfied as Kate was, that was nothing compared to how she felt when Bo made a unilateral decision for both of them. A complete betrayal—not asking her about it first. Because, of course, he knew what she would say.

So, in divine payback, she would indeed tag along on some mission project or undertake a three-month service contract with one of many developing-world charities that were out there. Médecins Sans Frontières, CARE, Red Cross—heck, Red Crescent. That’d get the old geezers talking. And she would commit herself and present it, as her husband had done his little surprise, as a fait accompli. Odd. She was more nervous about telling Jerene, her mother-in-law, about this detour than she was her husband.

*   *   *

Kate admired Jerene—she really did. She admired her devotion to the Trust, her family, their place in society. She was fascinated by Mrs. Johnston; she was worthy of a sociological treatise, anthropological research, a kind of Southern woman not long for the twenty-first-century world. She also feared Jerene. Bodies were surely buried in her backyard, enemies had no doubt drunk poison from her crystalware.

Maybe Kate could begin her temporary withdrawal from Johnston family life by degrees. The first thing, she figured, as she found a place in the Mint Museum parking lot, miles from the door, was that she should be excused from this committee. Why in God’s Holy Name had she been invited to be a part of the Jarvis Trust for American Art in the first place? Who was less qualified than she? She knew nothing about art, nothing about trusts, had no business at a high-society rich-lady gabfest at some precious overpriced lunch emporium, with Jerene at the end of the table presiding, a queen in her court. (Mind you, the fried oyster salads at Noble’s were out of this world.) Anyway, Kate had never properly understood why the Jarvis Collection even needed trustees—didn’t all actions flow from Jerene, the Maximum Leader? No doubt there was some tax advantage beyond Kate’s comprehension, but it looked for all the world like Jerene had merely selected some girlfriends from school, some Charlotte grandes dames, maybe a rival or two, and positioned them around her for show, to have her own glory reflected back upon her. Payton Disher. Belle Bennette. Kitty King Haywood. God, even the names of the ladies spoke of an old dying matriarchal regime.

Or maybe it was not so vain because it was not so serious. Maybe it was merely how Southern society women did things, an excuse to socialize, meet, play at importance while the men were at the club golfing or out shooting something, away from the little ladies. Kate had decided additionally that she was done—done for the
rest of her life,
mission project or no mission project—with Southern-lady rituals and the sooner she got back to straight lines, plain speech, hard work, the happier she would be.

But as she entered the Mint and was greeted by the longtime docent, Miss Maylee, ghostly frail and in her seventies (if not eighties), she felt a twinge of importance.

“I think, Mrs. Johnston, you are the first to arrive,” said Miss Maylee.

Kate was about to insist upon being called “Kate” but she was brought up short, realizing she did not know Miss Maylee’s name either. Was that a last name or was—as Norma taught her—she a younger sister and was Maylee her first name?

“And how is Reverend Johnston?”

“Bo is fine, thank you for asking,” Kate said, smiling back. Miss Maylee had one of those minds for people and their kin, could connect all the cousins and knew husbands’ and children’s names. Kate did well at church but she could have used a dose of what Miss Maylee had; so many of their congregants were just familiar faces to her, classified in her mind by type of complaint or illness.

“The other Mrs. Johnston hasn’t called to say whether she and Mrs. Baylor want tea. Do you have any idea?”

“I do not. Wait, it’s not all the trustees? Just Jerene—um, Mrs. Johnston and Mrs. Baylor?”

“Yes, that’s what I understand.”

Land o’Goshen. Maybe Kate could disappear before the two titans battled it out. Although … an initial dread soon gave way to curiosity. Having studied and speculated about Jerene as a zoologist would study a rare species, Kate supposed she owed it to her accumulated knowledge to observe what she could.

She strolled around the museum, waiting for the titans. After she quit the Jarvis Trust she may never enter this place again. Once she had imagined Jerene asked her to join the trustees in order to educate her in the ways of women of a certain station, to make Kate a protégée since her daughters had disappointed her in this regard. But that wasn’t it. Jerene never covered up Kate’s dispossessing past or apologized for her rougher edges; no
Pygmalion
-like instruction was ever attempted. Kate even once wondered if this was an unconscious cruelty on Jerene’s part, a way to force Kate to contrast herself with the wellborn others and see how she would never “fit in,” should never have married into Southern society, for that matter. But Jerene wasn’t petty; she didn’t waste time on elaborate insults or passive-aggressive gestures. Jerene was aggressive-aggressive, nothing passive about her.

Kate looked up to see the name
JARVIS
embossed in gold above the door to Jerene’s gallery. She once again walked around the room looking at the collection. The portrait by Cropsey, some grand Tory lady of the late eighteenth century, the landscape by Inness (one of his “storm” series, gray roiling skies over a farmhouse), a Church tropical valley from his mid-nineteenth-century Andes tour, landscapes by Heade and Whittredge.

Kate stared at the misty vale rendered by Frederick Edwin Church, the precipitous slopes of palms and flowering trees, the frothy torrents raging between the peaks, joining in a verdant valley and cascading into a great bottomless seam in the valley’s floor, the mists rising from the falls, joining the morning mists, the mists around the ice-bound Andean peaks … pure fantasy, Kate suspected, an artist finding paradise and then exaggerating it on the canvas to produce an awe equal to his own. Kate hoped a year from now she was in the tropics. There was no returning to the Peace Corps, her happiest time, when her youth and undiluted faith all combined for a full heart, for real joy. Once the heat and humidity kick in, once she is trapped for the night behind mosquito netting, might she even miss the Mint Museum and these genteel afternoons? Kate wondered if she had been too knee-jerk about the Jarvis Trust. The shallow society-woman nonsense was all silly but there was a breath of civility here, refinement, an escape from the muck of ministerial duties. She checked the eyes of Cropsey’s grand colonial lady and found complicity.

Kate heard distant laughter and she walked back to the lobby. It was Liddibelle Baylor sharing pleasantries with Miss Maylee. Kate wagered to herself that when Liddbelle sees Jerene they air-kiss each other’s cheeks, take each other’s hands, lament this unpleasant business that will be over soon … while each woman could, if granted immunity, cut the other one to pieces with a razor. I won’t miss that about High Society either, Kate thought.

And now Jerene appeared. “Liddie…”

“Oh my dear Jerene…”

Yep, thought Kate, with something not quite a smile and not quite disgust on her face, watching these women hug and clasp each other’s hands.

Jerene: “How have you been holding up, my dear? I know you’re not a suing person and this must be distressing for you.”

Liddibelle: “Can you ever forgive me, Jerene? My lawyer’s put me up to it, and the insurance people. I keep being told it’s the way to proceed.”

Jerene: “Well, I’ve secured Darnell McKay—you remember him, all those years ago, after I ceded the field with Becks to you, we double-dated at the Founder’s Cotillion, you and Becks, Darnell and me—”

Liddibelle: “Of course I remember
him
! I was secretly envious of you—he was so handsome, and I thought to myself, now Liddie, you cannot date all of Jerene’s boyfriends when she’s done with them, she’ll come to resent it.”

Jerene: “I could never resent you, Liddie—not even for this! We go back too far, and have come through so much together.” Jerene offered Liddibelle her arm as they strolled toward the conference room where the Trust meetings were held. “Oh hello, Kate. So good of you to make it. And Miss Maylee, lovely to see you. I thought there would be tea made.”

“Tea, why of course,” said Miss Maylee, looking a little confused and abashed.

Jerene had said nothing about tea to this woman, Kate understood, but Miss Maylee laughed lightly and said she must have forgotten, she would see to it right away. So many small sacrifices of justice and surrenders of pride to attain this highest level of Southern manners, Kate thought, knowing her nature had never adapted.

Jerene cried out, “But not another word before you tell me how Skip is.”

“He’s bearing up,” Liddibelle uttered. “He’s never been disabled in any way; the boy never had as much as a cold growing up.”

Kate, following the women into the dark wood-paneled room where the Jarvis Trust met, had heard elsewhere that Skip was up and about, driving his car, out on the town, so the idea of him as some kind of invalid struck her as false as it must have struck Jerene. But Kate sensed Jerene’s sympathy was genuine. “And so he doesn’t know how to recover properly, hm? You have to be willing to let the rehab people and the doctor tell you what to do.”

“He wants to hop out of bed too soon and go jogging or something foolish.”

“Of course he does! And he will be able to, soon, Liddibelle. I pray he’ll be back at it in no time and all this will be just a little blip in his wonderful life.”

“I do hope so,” said his mother, whose eyes seemed to dazzle.

“Now what we have, this lawsuit, this is
business
and it will play out however it plays out, but you must know, Liddibelle—you must know, as long as we have been dear dear friends, that I think the world of Skip. I just love him to death. I wouldn’t see a hair of his head harmed, and nor would Jerilyn, who’s in an awful state.”