Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

Before each service, Tiffany arranged a clean surplice on the back of a chair and set out the scented powder that kept the pastor’s feet from sweating. “Sealed with a kiss” was always the last thing she said before he walked out into the swoop-ceilinged nave, and thrusting her tongue in his mouth was always the last thing she did. She did it, they both agreed, in order to free his spirit from his body for the task ahead, and it always worked — if he could resist Tiffany, he could resist anything.

“Bless you my child,” he always said when she handed him his prayer book and leaned in for the freeing kiss, careful not to stand where people passing by the door to the sacristy could see them.

“Sealed with a kiss,” she always said, but sometimes instead of kissing him, she just gazed into his eyes as she put his fingers on her breast, right where the nipple poked through the lacy cloth of the undergarments she wore beneath her choir robe. All of that added spice to the weekday humdrum of his job: the marital spats he had to adjudicate, the patient explication of texts to people who wanted to use the Bible to prove this or disprove that, and the more delicate approach he needed when the town scions he depended on for his livelihood sought his support for their favorite political causes.

It was six minutes to ten on a bright spring morning, but now, instead of Tiffany rushing into the sacristy and apologizing for her tardiness, it was August Winslow who filled the doorway. Winslow, who was not only civilian director of the munitions plant and husband to the Woodford oil fields heiress, but also a senior member of the pastoral council, now came charging in demanding to talk about Maggie Rayburn and how a reporter from the Sentinel wanted to write a story about her. “I called the publisher and put a stop to it,” bellowed Winslow. “There’s no sense giving the woman a megaphone. There’s no sense giving all of my other employees ideas.”

“I hope you handled the reporter carefully,” said the pastor. “That kind of thing can backfire.”

“Of course I handled him carefully. It was the publisher’s nephew who apparently had the bright idea for the article, but I have no doubt we can count on the Fitches to do what’s right for the town.”

“I’ve already had a talk with the Rayburn woman,” said the pastor, who had come to rely on what Tiffany called his pre-game routine and who was sweating because things were sliding off track. According to the sunburst-shaped clock on the wall, there were less than five minutes left, and if the pastor was known for anything, it was for exploding through the curtain at exactly ten o’clock on a crescendo from the organ, just when the stage lighting went from an expectant blue to a pulsating blaze of silver magnificence, and once his lighting manager had surprised him with giant sparklers and another time with a crazy purple fog. His entrance was hardly the most important part of the service, but it pleased him when Tiffany said he got a ten for showmanship on top of his ten for execution.

Winslow was saying, “She’s a loose cannon. She worries me, to tell the truth.”

“She’s lost her way, but with a little help and understanding, she’ll be back on track before you know it.”

Back on track is where the pastor wanted to be. Three minutes to showtime, and his body was still fused to his spirit. His feet weren’t the only thing sweating. Even his tongue felt coated and thick.

“Excellent, excellent. But I was hoping you could talk to Fitch.”

Winslow showed no signs of leaving, so the pastor said, “Call me tomorrow. We can talk about it then.” Panic was gathering in his bowels in spite of the fact that another thing he was known for was what Tiffany called his grace under fire.

She must have been detained. The women of the parish were always coming up to her with ideas for the ladies’ outreach, and the men were always coming up to her because even standing next to Tiff was its own reward. With less than sixty seconds left, he’d have to oust all bodily concerns himself. He could do it — Tiffany hadn’t always been there to help him. They hadn’t even celebrated their three-year anniversary.

Winslow finally said, “Okay, okay,” and backed out the door, leaving the pastor with the troublesome notion that his talk with Maggie hadn’t seemed to resolve things. He had forty-five seconds to clear his mind. He closed his eyes. He kept a mental box for occasions like this. In his imagination, the box was made of inlaid precious materials like lapis lazuli and ivory and rare endangered woods from the Brazilian rain forest. Now he put his earthly concerns into the box so he could take them out again later. It was a beautiful box, but strong as steel, and once a worry had been locked inside, nothing could let it out again except the pastor himself. He was ready. The crescendo came. The flash of lights.

He didn’t remember August Winslow or Maggie Rayburn until that evening over hot compote and potpie. “What does it mean,” he asked his wife, “that some of my own parishioners have heard the Truth and rejected it? What does it say about them, but more importantly, what does it say about me?”

“Not everything is about you, baby,” said Tiffany, and she was right. Hubris was an occupational hazard, and the pastor vowed to guard against it. But first, he had to reconnect his body to his spirit, and he needed Tiffany for that.

1.7 Lyle

It was the information age, but Lyle Rayburn had been left behind by it. He had dropped out of school just before his fifteenth birthday, which had left him with deep insecurities about his ability to know or understand.

“I won’t try to convince you,” Maggie told him. “I have my reasons, that’s all.”

Lyle was happy to let silence do the work of words, to stare open-mouthed through the windshield and express his injury by lingering at the Main Street intersection long after the light had changed and the cars behind them had started to honk. It was Will who piped up from where he was pressed against the passenger-side door. “If you really wanted to make a difference, Mom, you’d have to convince other people. That’s what they tell us in church. That we have to witness to other people if we want to be saved.”

“This isn’t about saving myself,” said Maggie. “This is about saving other people. This is about doing the right thing.”

“But what makes you right and everybody else wrong? What if other people know something you don’t?”

“Those are good questions. But if I had to have answers to everything, I’d never even get out of bed.”

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” asked Lyle over the efficient sound of the turn signal and the crunch of gravel under the tires as they made the final turn toward the high school. “We can’t afford to buy another car, and we’ll need one if you’re going off in some completely different direction every day.”

“I have the bicycle, and if I get the job at the prison, I can take the bus.”

“What if it rains?” Lyle wanted to know. And then he added gravely, “What if it snows?”

“I haven’t worked out all the details yet,” said Maggie.

“Well, don’t you think you should?” The closest Lyle ever came to getting angry was to suggest there was something that was not being done. He liked things to be squared away and he counted on Maggie to square them, even though he usually stopped short of assigning actual blame.

Lyle had known Maggie Sterling since before he had dropped out of school. He had been friends with her older brother and had taken to stopping by in the afternoons, not so much on the brother’s account or even on Maggie’s, but because of the rambling house where no shouting was allowed. “My mother is allergic to shouting,” Maggie’s brother told him. “It literally makes her sick.”