Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

The artist herself stopped halfway to the next corner. “Hey, what’s your name?” she yelled.

“Clare Fergusson,” Clare said loudly. Might as well come clean. She unzipped her parka so that her collar was clearly visible. “Rector of St. Alban’s Church.”

Debba Clow grinned and pumped her arm. “Hot diggity,” she yelled. “I knew God was on my side!”

Unlike the clinic, the historical society’s ornate brick Italianate building had no visible concessions to the twenty-first century. “I know,” Director Roxanne Lunt said, when Clare asked her about it. “We’re totally out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. We’re trying to get grant money for historically sensitive handicapped access. God help us if we’re forced into installing some monstrosity like they have next door. We’re keeping a low profile and praying we don’t get sued.”

Roxanne Lunt was a sleek, well-fed woman whose streaky ash-blond hair was a testament to her colorist’s art. She had been excited to meet Clare, and ecstatic when Clare had committed to volunteering every Saturday afternoon through Lent. Clare was flattered to the point of embarrassment by Roxanne’s enthusiasm, until Clare had a chance to observe her on their tour of the historic house, and discovered Roxanne was excited about everything. Her high heels tap-tap-tapped through the public rooms with restless energy as she spoke passionately about grant writing, cataloging, preservation, architecture, and interior design. And that was just the parlor, drawing room, and kitchen.

“I’m the only paid staff,” Roxanne said as they climbed the three flights of stairs to the collection storage rooms. “That’s why we so desperately need volunteers such as yourself.”

“Are you full time?” Clare asked, her daydreams of solitary, monastic-like cataloging shredding before the raw energy of Hurricane Roxanne.

“Oh, no, no, no, they can’t afford me full time. If I actually had to live on what they pay me, I’d be destitute. I work twenty hours a week here, that’s for love, and the rest of the time, I’m a Realtor, for the money.” She stopped on the landing in front of an oil of a dyspeptic-looking gentleman in black judge’s robes. “Jacob De-Weese. This was his house. His daughter bequeathed it to the historical society.” She tickled a mauve-lacquered fingernail beneath his painted chin. “They called him ‘the Hanging Judge.’ ”

“He looks the part.”

“It always surprises people when they hear what I do,” Roxanne went on, mounting the stairs. “I’m so passionate about preservation, they can’t believe I sell houses to keep body and soul together.”

“I can believe it,” Clare said.

Roxanne pinched a business card from her skirt pocket and gave it to Clare. This must be her day for collecting phone numbers. “Of course, you don’t need my services, with that delicious Dutch revival you have. That belongs to your church, right?”

Clare nodded.

“Well, tell them if they ever want to raise money, I can take it off their hands and get a sweet price for it. I could find a nice little condo for you, not too far out of town. And it’d be a lot easier on your budget than running that big house.”

Clare pictured St. Alban’s leaking roof, which might as well be plugged with twenty-dollar bills for what it was going to cost to repair, and resolved to never, ever bring up to the vestry Roxanne Lunt’s name or the possibility of selling the rectory.

“Here we are,” Roxanne caroled, turning the handle on a paneled oak door at least twice the thickness of its modern counterpart. She pressed a button in a brass light-plate, and three sets of frosted-glass globes sprang to life, illuminating dozens upon dozens of what looked like banker’s boxes stacked along the walls, butting up against a beautifully carved mantelpiece, half obscuring three tall windows running along the far wall. Clare could read descriptions in confident black marker on some of the nearest: LADIES VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION, 1916-1936 and LANGWORTHY FAMILY W/CIVIL WAR.

“This was originally the nursery,” Roxanne said. “From back in the days when children were seen, not heard.” She led Clare through the maze of boxes toward the back of the room, where a wooden table was pushed up to a fourth window. It held a computer, a lamp, several heaps of old books, and a plastic caddy stuffed with office supplies.

Clare leaned against the long refectory-style table to look out the windows. The ice-shrouded garden stretched out below, culminating in a green-roofed carriage house opening onto the back alley. She could see part of the clinic next door as well, shotgunning toward an identical carriage house in a series of additions that ate up any garden they might once have had.

“What you’re going to do is very simple. You open a box, tag everything inside, and enter the descriptions into our electronic catalog,” Roxanne said, booting up the computer. “Nothing in this room’s been done. So feel free to read the notes on the outside of the boxes and start anywhere you like,” she explained, pulling up a padded folding chair and seating herself in front of the monitor. “We’ve tried to keep donations from families or institutions physically together, although we’ve taken them out of whatever god-awful decaying chests and albums they came to us in and stuck them in archival boxes. When possible, we’ve interleaved ephemera with acid-free tissue paper.”

“Ephemera?”

“Papers, letters, photos, that sort of thing. We’ve got three-hundred-year-old handbills touting the southern Adirondacks as the place for hardworking Scotsmen to get rich, we’ve got canal-era advertising calendars, we’ve got playbills for the Millers Kill opera house-”

“Millers Kill had an opera house?” Clare couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice.

Roxanne laughed. “This was a very lively town before the mills closed down. We had touring grand opera in the nineteenth century. We had a luxury hotel near the train station for people traveling up to the park for the summer, quite elegant. In the twenties and thirties, after the Sacandaga was dammed and the lakes were created, we had our own airport with floatplanes. And, of course, during Prohibition this whole strip along Route 9 was known as ‘Bootleggers Alley,’ with rumrunners dashing between Canada and New York City and supplying speakeasies. We have a small collection of fabulous jazz recordings made in Millers Kill clubs where you had to knock three times and whisper ‘Joe sent me’ to get in.” Roxanne’s cheeks glowed with enthusiasm. “Of course, that was then, as they say. I’m afraid our big draw nowadays is peace, quiet, and affordable housing prices.”

Clare thought of the confrontation between the doctor and Debba Clow. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think it’s still a very lively town. You just have to know where to look.”

Friday, March 10

Clare’s 10:30 counseling session with the Garrettsons was running over. Liz Garrettson’s mother, a source of frequent conflict in the Garrettson home, had deteriorated to the point where she was going to have to be institutionalized or move in with her daughter and son-in-law. Liz and Tim circled around Liz’s anger and his impatience, two people punching at a sandbag filled with guilt. It was exhausting just being in the same room with them, and Clare couldn’t help glancing at her Apache helicopter clock as the minutes ticked past noon. The only thing worse than being late to a vestry meeting was being late to an emergency meeting she had scheduled herself.

Finally ushering them out of her office with a promise to put them in touch with Paul Foubert, the Infirmary’s director, Clare cocked an ear for any sounds of conversation or argument drifting down the hall. Nothing. She opened the meeting-room door and stepped into the underheated splendor of a wood-paneled, Persian-carpeted gallery that appeared to have been assumed bodily from Oxford. No one was there.