Marcia Talley: Dead Man Dancing

‘Done.’

After hanging up the phone, I checked my watch. Two hours and twenty minutes to go. Two hours to stew about whatever was troubling Pastor Eva, and twenty minutes to get some laundry done, so I trotted upstairs for the laundry basket, and hauled it down to the basement.

Mother always claimed that sorting the white clothes from the dark calmed her nerves. Doesn’t work for me. Chocolate does. I stood in my laundry room with a heap of Paul’s undershirts and Y-fronts on my left, and a meager pile of colored Ts and turtlenecks on my right. So, what the hell, I tossed them all in the washer together, turned the dial to cold, added liquid Tide, and trotted upstairs to make myself a cup of hot cocoa. If Paul ended up with pink underwear, I’d worry about it in the morning.

I arrived at Regina’s ten minutes early and Eva wasn’t there, so I popped into Absolutely Fabulous, the consignment shop next door. Since Daddy had downsized, my sisters and I had more hand-me-down furniture than we could possibly use, so I breezed by the dressers, bookshelves and end tables that jumbled up the shop. I still had walls and surfaces that were bare enough to collect dust, however, so some of the art work and bric-a-brac looked tempting. Exhibit A: a forty-eight-piece service of blue and white china similar to my mother’s wedding china. I’d lived without fine china for most of my life, so what made me think I couldn’t live without it now? Feeling reckless, I wrote out a check for eighty dollars, and asked the proprietor to pack up the dishes while I ate.

An early Christmas gift. From me to me.

I was back at Regina’s sitting at a table squeezing lemon into my iced tea, when Eva opened the door. Her dark bangs were longer than when I’d last seen her, caught back behind one ear, and streaked with gray. But even if she’d been bald as an egg I’d have recognized Eva by her smile, a 1000-watt grin that started at her lips, spread to her dimples, and ended up crinkling the corners of her sea-green eyes.

‘Hannah!’ Eva lunged and hugged me so hard that I feared for my ribs.

‘Eva, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,’ I said, hugging her back.

Eva shrugged off her coat and draped it over the back of her chair, while I waved for the waitress who appeared almost immediately to take our order for two crab melts with French fries.

‘You’ve let your hair grow, Eva,’ I said, handing my menu back to the waitress.

‘And you haven’t.’ Eva grinned. ‘Honestly, Hannah, you look terrific.’

I patted my curls. ‘Direct your comments to Wally at Bellissima,’ I said, referring to the resident hair stylist at Paradiso, the luxury spa that my daughter and her husband had opened out Bay Ridge way last summer. ‘Wally’s kinda weird, but a genius with color.’

‘I stopped coloring my hair,’ Eva said. ‘Seemed an unnecessary expense with just the wolves, elk and squirrels around to appreciate the effort. And as for styling, what do you think about this?’ She turned in her chair so I could see the back of her head. Eva had twisted her longer hair into an untidy rope and secured it to the crown of her head with a tortoiseshell claw clip. A far cry from the neat page boy she used to wear at St Cat’s.

‘If you ever get tired…’ I paused, searching for the appropriate word. ‘Of the elegant simplicity of that hairdo, Wally will take good care of you.’

‘Is that your roundabout way of suggesting that I need a “professional haircut”?’

‘Guilty!’

‘Point taken.’ Eva slipped her napkin out from under the silverware, unfolded it and spread it out on her lap. ‘How’s the spa doing, then?’

‘Amazingly well. Dante’s taking on staff, and they may be putting in tennis courts come spring.’

‘And Emily?’

‘I’m happy to report that she changed her mind about home-schooling the kids, and she’s back running Puddle Ducks. You remember, the day care center at Paradiso?’

‘I do. And that’s excellent news.’

I had to agree. Emily could be intense. Cooped up with their mother all day, who knew how the kids would turn out. Paul and I had been taking bets: Nobel prize-winning physicists, or ax murderers. Fortunately, after two months’ experimentation, Jake and Chloe were back in the capable hands of St Anne’s Church School and the Anne Arundel County school system, respectively, working out any renegade personality quirks by participating in dance (Chloe) and the after school soccer program (Jake). As far as I knew, there were no soccer programs for two-year-olds, but even if there had been, Emily would have kept Timmy at Puddle Ducks.

‘After the kidnapping, I bet Emily doesn’t let Timmy out of her sight.’ Eva was always good at reading my mind.

‘Never, ever. She even set up an intercom so she can monitor the little guy while he’s sleeping.’

Just then, the waitress made a timely appearance with Eva’s Diet Coke, giving us an excuse to leave that painful topic.

‘So, how are you, Hannah?’ Eva asked as she slipped the paper off a straw and plunked it into her glass.

With friends like Eva, who knew my medical history, the usual response – ‘fine, fine’ – wouldn’t cut it. ‘Just had my annual check-up,’ I told her truthfully. ‘No lumps or bumps. Mammogram A-OK. CA-125 numbers steady. I’m good to go for another year.’

‘Thank God.’

‘Amen to that.’ Now that I’d caught Eva up on news from the Ives household, I stared hard at my friend, wondering where to begin with the long list of questions I had for her.

‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’ Eva again, reading my mind.

‘That’s an understatement.’

‘And why I consulted Hutch.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘It’s complicated.’ Eva paused, twirled her straw. ‘Let me start at the beginning.’

‘Please!’

‘I have a stalker.’

I coughed. I spluttered. Drops of iced tea decorated my placemat. ‘What?’

Eva leaned over, lifted her purse off the floor, and pulled several sheets of paper from an outside pocket. ‘Email can be a blessing, or a curse.’ She thumbed through the pages, and handed me one of them. ‘This is his first message.’

My eyes skimmed quickly over the usual To, From and Subject lines to get to the nitty-gritty of the printout in my hand.

Pastor Eva:

I know you will forgive me for intruding on your leave of absence. I’m a fellow Annapolitan and I had the PLEASURE of attending one of your services back in April last year and was I was ‘MOVED’ by your prophetic witness!!!! I knew the LORD was calling me to join St Catherines. I once doubted the wisdom of LADIES in orders, but GOD has shown me that I was wrong. Also, you all are easier on the EYE than old Rector BOB (*wink*). Anyway, I was moved in my SOUL about your troubles and was CALLED TO let you hear from a parishoner that you are LOVED and MISSED. God doesn’t want you to be in EXILE forever.

HE hates waste.

Yours in Christ,

Jeremy Dunstan

1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4given

I gazed across the table at Eva who was munching calmly on a French fry she’d taken from a platter the waitress must have snuck on to the table while I was busy reading Jeremy Dunstan’s email. ‘Who the heck is Jeremy Dunstan?’

‘As he says, a parishioner. Not that he can spell the word.’

I handed the printout back. ‘His email is a bit creepy – what’s with all those capital letters, for heaven’s sake? – but it doesn’t strike me as anything to worry about.’

Eva grimaced. ‘It didn’t to me, either, not at first. So I actually responded to the guy, in a pastoral manner, of course.’

She handed me a second printout. ‘I was seduced by his turnabout on the place of women in the priesthood, I suppose.’ She scowled. ‘Over the next month, we exchanged a half-dozen emails, and then this popped into my mailbox.’