The Color of Ordinary Time (6 page)

The altar antependium required no repairs, and, as I started to fold it to fit it on its hanger, I became aware of a figure standing in the doorway, watching me. “Hi, Mrs. Clack. How is Charlene these days?” I asked without really looking up. Mrs. Clack was always ready to talk about Charlene.

“I’m not sure how Charlene is,” said a male voice.

I looked up quickly then and saw the figure was in fact a man, perhaps in his late twenties, in a black clerical shirt and black pants.

“I’m sorry. You must be Pastor Brett,” I said.

“I am. And you must be Keziah Taylor.” He stepped forward with a jerk, and shook my hand. “I was expecting someone, well older.”

I chuckled a little. “It’s the name. I guess it sounds like someone much older. Lots of people tell me that.”

He seemed relived that he had not said the wrong thing, and I understood what John had meant when he called the young pastor “earnest.” He seemed afraid to give offense, but at the same time unable to filter his words. Interesting.

“Mrs. Clack told me you’d be up here working this morning. I understand that you had to be out of town this last weekend on a family emergency. Is everything alright with your father?”

“What did Mrs. Clack tell you about my father?” I countered.

He flustered a bit, and blushed faintly. I didn’t know if it was because he’d been gossiped to, or because he’d listened, or maybe because he just wasn’t used to being questioned by people. “She’s told me he can be difficult,” he said after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“It’s okay. Somebody would have told you about Walton Taylor eventually. Or, worse yet — you would have met him unprepared. He is fine. I bailed him out, and now he’s difficult, but fine.”

“Good,” he said, then fell silent. I moved to the wardrobe, rehung the altar antependium, and drew out the one for the lectern. As I spread it on the table for inspection, he stepped forward and ran a finger over the edge of the fabric nearest to him. “You do beautiful work. Not a common talent anymore.”

I thought about explaining that knowing how to sew had once been necessity for me. I thought about explaining that learning to embroider had been a sin for me. Dory had taught me, when it became clear Ivy had no interest.
Embroidery was vain.
This work joined two things I enjoyed doing, but was also the point where my two lives came together. But I didn’t explain. Instead I said, “Thank you.”

“Can I ask? I don’t want to be nosey. But while all of the paraments are beautiful, I noticed the green set are more elaborate than the rest. I wonder if there is a reason for that.”

“Well they are the set you have to look at the most,” I said, as I looked down at the antependium in front of me. The purple was the most austere of the sets. Simple gold crosses embroidered in the center of each piece. At the time I made them, I considered making them more elaborate. Instead, the thought of penance had led me to simplicity. Plus — you can’t really go wrong with crosses in a church.

“True,” he said.

“Craftsman’s choice. I like the green set best.”

He seemed pleasantly surprised at that answer. “You have a favorite time of the church year?”

“Sort of. I like green. And I like what the Catholics call this time of year. The ‘Weeks after Pentecost’ lacks poetry.”

“Ordinary Time?”

“Exactly. Like that part of the year is for getting up and doing your work, and going about your life. Nothing special. Nothing stressful, or exciting. Routine and peacefulness. Ordinary time.”

He gave me a lopsided half grin. “I suppose it matters not at all to you that we study the miracles of Jesus during this time of year. Hardly ordinary”

“If you are the Son of God, isn’t doing miracles your job?” I asked lightly.

“Maybe,” he said.

I chuckled. From the sanctuary, the heavy tread of Mrs. Clack hurried toward the banner room. She arrived breathless and flushed.

“Come quick, Pastor! Charlene has brought some cupcakes for the bake sale on Sunday. You have to come taste one,” she said from the door.

“But it’s Tuesday,” I said, without thinking. Mrs. Clack shot me a look that left me six inches shorter.

“If they are for the bake sale, perhaps I should leave them
for
the sale,” said Pastor Brett.

“Don’t be silly. They have to have your approval,” said Mrs. Clack, as she grabbed his arm and started to pull him back out, into the sanctuary.

Was it my imagination, or did Pastor Brett roll his eyes as he was drawn away?

My third personal ritual of summer vacations was not something I was proud of. I would break into my father’s house.

The little, whiteish house on Stern street was out on a gravel road on the edge of town. The backyard was large, and unfenced. There was an old metal clothesline near the house that was strung, not with clothes line, but with yellow electrical wire. Why? Because someone had donated wire, and not clothesline. There is a large wood pile behind the garage, with an ax hanging under the eaves.

I parked down the street and made my way down the road, into the back yard. The back door key was under an overturned flower pot that sat on the little square of pavement separating the door from the back yard. I wouldn’t need it. My father rarely bothered to lock the back door. I guess he figured it was hardly worth it. We’d never really had anything worth stealing. As I turned the dark brown knob it squeaked and the glass in the door wobbled eerily. I paused to wave at Mrs. Masters, my father’s neighbor to the left. She was watching me out her kitchen window. When I waved she did not wave back, just let her curtain fall back into place. She was the neighborhood watch. I didn’t know if she reported me to my father or not. I doubted it. They were not friends. She liked to sleep in on Sunday, and all the singing over at my father’s garage woke her often.

As I stepped in, closing the door behind me, a small shiver passed through me. The kitchen had not changed since I had left. Same rusting, retro white and red table. Same meant-to-be-sunny yellow linoleum. Same white cabinets, and white walls. There was a new tile missing from the yellow and white backsplash over the scratched sink. Even the same white dish rack, and glass canisters full of rice, and beans on the white counters. I checked the yellow refrigerator for food. There was a carton of milk, already spoiled, and a loaf of homemade bread already molding. That was it. I closed the fridge, leaving them there, and moved into the living room.

The old wood stove still stood in the corner. The old quilt still lay over the sagging once-blue couch, and my father’s cracked and faded leather armchair still sat in its corner. I didn’t pause in the living room to study anything more closely. I had a goal in mind.

Up the front stairs. I tripped slightly on the hole in the faded runner on the fifth stair, then made it safely to the landing. To the right lay my old room, now stripped of anything that had once been mine. To the left, my father’s room. I paused in the familiar dim hallway to take a deep breath. I carefully entered my father’s room.

Again, I did not pause to look around, but simply knelt before the battered fourth-hand chest of drawers, and opened the bottom drawer. Under the patched, moth-eaten sweaters, tucked away at the back, there was an old, slightly torn manila envelope. In the envelope were three pictures. The first was a tiny young woman standing next to a tall man who looked slightly older than her. She is dressed in a long white wedding dress, he is in a dark blue suite. They look happy. The date on the back is March 1977. The second picture is the same young woman sitting, smiling in a hospital bed. She is holding a baby wrapped in a light blue blanket. She is glowing with joy. The third picture is only half a picture really. The same young woman stands on a front lawn smiling. She looks tired in this one. Like there is effort behind her smile. There is a hand on her shoulder, but it is impossible to tell who the hand belongs to. The rest of the picture had been torn away.

This is Pam. My mother. The sum total of everything I really know about her. Smiling with my father on their wedding day. Standing on a lawn looking tired. Holding a baby. She looks like me. Small, light brown hair, greenish eyes. Not beautiful, but interesting. Her chin is pointier than mine, and the eyes have a slightly different tilt, but we are very alike. No wonder Father Felix and Ruth Ann knew me at once.

For a while I sat cross-legged on the floor, studying the pictures before the open drawer, looking for another clue. I remember the day I found these pictures. I was eight. I’d just been given laundry folding and putting away duty. I knew instantly who these pictures were. I had sat on the floor, looking at them in awe, until I heard my father’s footsteps on the front porch. I was punished that day too, for not having done my work in a timely fashion. I don’t think he ever figured out I had found the pictures.

After a while I turned the picture of her with the baby over and looked at the date. I had always thought that the date on the picture was wrong. That was until I met Ruth Ann and she stumbled into the family history backwards and sideways. I could still hear her words clearly. “He told us you died when Josh passed”. This then was Josh in Pam’s arms. My mother and my brother. I memorized the date. June 16th 1978. Then I put the pictures back in the envelope and tucked them back under the sweaters.

I would have liked to stay longer, assured that my father was far far away. But I had worked until well after lunch at St. Paul’s and I was hungry. Also, I wanted to stop at the store. I felt the need for a well-cooked dinner, and it seemed it was up to me to do the cooking.

As I walked back through the house, I resisted the urged to clean and straighten. I did not take the spoiled food out of the fridge, I did not dust a bookshelf, or stop and mop the kitchen floor. I certainly could have. I doubt he would even notice if I had. All these things, and many more, had once been my responsibility. Now they were not a duty I was willing to take up again. Although my fingers twitched with the effort of ignoring the disorder.

*

When I got back to the Brandt’s farm I carried the grocery bags into the kitchen and started breaking them down. Milk, bacon, eggs in the fridge, veggies cleaned and left on the drain board to wait for my knife, chicken prepped and placed on the grill out on the back deck, just outside the back kitchen door. When the chicken was started, I turned on the radio Dory kept in the kitchen. During happier days she used to dance around the kitchen and sing with us into spoons or spatulas. Now I changed the station from the top 40 station that came on to a classic rock station. 

It was too late in the day to start bread, so I instead made biscuits, and a tossed salad with homemade vinaigrette dressing. I set the table neatly, for seven, hopeful that Dory would come down and join us instead of having her husband bring her a tray after the fact.

Just as I was about to go check on the chicken and take it off the grill, Linus entered the kitchen from outside with a look of hope on his face that crashed immediately when he saw me working in his wife’s domain. I almost apologized for being there. Instead I smiled. “Thought I’d make dinner.”

“Thank you, Kay.”

“Would you check the chicken? It should be about done.”

“Sure,” said Linus, before turning to the sink and washing his hands.

I put the salad on the table, and turned to filling water glasses. Linus took the blue stoneware plate I had set out for the chicken, and went to check the grill. Just as he was out the door, a rumpled and still mutinous Ivy showed up at the kitchen door. “Can I help, too?” 

“Sure! Grab the biscuits out of the oven and pop them in that basket over there.”

She pulled the biscuits out of the oven, setting the tray on the stove top, then grabbed the bread basket. “I’m sorry, you know. It was wrong of me to blame you for what happened with Mom,” she said in a chocked little voice as she moved biscuits into the bread basket. 

“I know.” 

She looked hard at me as she moved from the stove to set the basket on the table. I finished filling the water glasses and met her gaze. 

“So we’re good?”

“We’re good,” I said.

She set the basket on the table, and I set the pitcher down for a quick hug. And we really were good. 

“How was parament duty? Did you meet Pastor Brett?”

“It was fine. Things were in good shape mostly. Pastor Brett seems like a nice guy.”

“We should get out of town tomorrow. We could go shopping, or get at least get some lunch. I hear the art museum has some huge glass installation right now.”

Linus came back in with the chicken and set it on the table. 

“I’ll go get the boys,” said Ivy, disappearing out the back door toward the barn.

“I’ll go get Dory,” said Linus.

I wasn’t alone long in the kitchen. The boys and Ivy came back quickly. They were hungry too. Ivy, Mark, and Lem sat in their usual places at the table, while John helped me gather the condiments and extra napkins. We were all seated when Linus reappeared and seated himself with a shrug. Dory wasn’t coming.

We joined hands and bowed our heads to pray. Linus was just drawing breath to lead off, when the doorbell rang. He quickly led the prayer, then excused himself to answer the door. We started passing around chicken and salad with no curiosity whatsoever about the visitor, as no one was expected. Besides, at this time of day, it was as likely to be someone looking for directions. Anyone who knew where they were would surely be eating supper, too.

Linus’ voice carried a little from the living room, he sounded surprised, but we could not hear, and did not strain to pick up his words. Then he reappeared at the kitchen door with someone following him.

“Keziah, your fiancé is here. So I invited him to join us.”

“What?” I choked slightly on a sip of water I had just taken.

Linus resumed his seat, and there, standing in the kitchen door, in all of his nubby polyester glory was Porter, my father’s protégé. Porter took the empty chair next to me at the foot of the table.

“I’m sorry, Linus, we are not engaged, I barely even know Porter.”

“We are engaged, Keziah. God has spoken. You will be my wife. I know it is a shock, but you must try and bend your will to obedience,” said Porter, helping himself to a chicken breast as if it were completely normal to show up and announce an impending marriage to your flabbergasted, theoretical bride. 

“God has spoken or my father has spoken?”

“God has spoken through the Elder. I am here to finish overseeing the building of the community, and so that we may become better acquainted before the appointed day.”

Around the table all activity had come to a halt. John and Ivy were obviously angry on my behalf, Lem and Mark confused, Linus wary. The looks on their faces alone should have spoiled his food, but Porter started consuming, in neat gulps, what he had apportioned himself.

“And when is this wedding to take place?” I asked. 

“When the Elder and the congregation return at the end of the summer. Ours will be the first wedding in the new church.”

“I will not marry you. Not at the end of the summer. Not ever. You would be wise to learn the difference between God speaking and my father speaking.”

“You will except my leadership in this my dear. God has spoken. It will be. Do you doubt the Word of God?”

“God has spoken? How? Did he send you a candygram?”

John had bristled at the use of the term “my dear”. He rose from his seat threateningly. “Shall I show this person back out, Kay?”

For a second I was torn between taking John up on his offer, and running to hide in Ivy’s room. But I knew only too well that the best defense I had was to stand firm in my own convictions. “No, we should feed him before we persecute him. It’s the only polite thing to do,” I said to John with what I hoped was a dismissive grin. 

“You will all be called to repentance for your doubt,” said Porter as he continued to eat. 

I gave a tiny, and admittedly forced laugh. “You can’t force me into something I don’t want to do.”

John sat back down. After a few moments of chewing and passing food, Ivy tried to start the conversation. “I saw the loveliest green summer-weight sweater over at the co-op and thought of you.”

“Green is a vain color,” Porter intoned. And thus began another largely silent meal at the Brandt’s.