Out Of The Deep I Cry

Chapter 25

Sunday, March 26, the Third Sunday in Lent

And in the prayers of the people, we continue to pray for the recovery of Lauraine Johnson after her recent surgery; for Roger Andernach, who has been admitted to a nursing home; for David Reid and Beth Reid, on bed rest with twins; for Renee Rouse and for Dr. Allan Rouse, still missing; for Russ Van Alstyne, recovering from a broken leg. Please add your own prayers and petitions.” Nathan Andernach, St. Alban’s deacon, paused. There were some semiaudible mumblings from the congregation. Names. The suggestion of a petition. Someone said firmly, “For all the men and women serving in our country’s armed forces.”

Clare smiled to herself, but her mind was on Allan Rouse. He had been missing for nine days now. There had been an initial flurry of articles in the Post-Star, short because of the lack of information, and getting shorter each succeeding day until they had disappeared. The consensus at Thursday’s Stewardship Committee meeting was that he had, as Dr. Anne baldly stated, “snuffed it.” “It just builds on you over the years,” she had told the rest of the committee members, who had left the capital campaign prospectuses unread on the table in favor of dissecting the town’s most newsworthy event. “Especially solo practitioners. There’s no one to confer with, no one to help you. Every bad decision, every shortcut you’ve taken, every patient you sent away, wondering if you’ve done any good-it can just drag you under sometimes. Some doctors get hooked on their own prescription pads. Some of ’em retire to fish in Florida. And some of ’em…” She had drawn a finger across her throat.

“Lord, let your loving kindness be upon them,” Nathan said.

“Who put their trust in you,” the congregation answered.

“We pray to you also for the forgiveness of our sins,” Nathan said. He bowed his head and stepped away from the lectern.

Clare flew back into the present moment, her hands resting on the smooth white linen of the altar cloth, the sound-rumbling, creaking, sighing-as a hundred people got to their knees. “Have mercy on us, most merciful Father,” they began. The corporate confession of sin went on, smooth and untroubled, not like the halting sentences and tearful interruptions she heard in the privacy of her office, when people wrestled one at a time with failings, with ugliness and nasty truths inside them.

There was an “Amen,” and the church fell silent. Heads bowed or faces covered with a splayed hand or tilted up, eyes closed. Waiting for her to forgive their sins. She reached for the cord of compassion inside her, plucked it, let it resonate until she felt herself a small reflection of the Great Compassion. “May our God who always tempers justice with mercy pour out forgiveness over you,” she said, “washing clean all your sins, strengthening you to do all good things, bringing you day by day and hour by hour into eternal life.” She held back the long, loose sleeve of her alb so that it couldn’t knock over the elements on the altar before her, and sketched a huge cross in the air. “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer, amen.”

“Amen,” they replied. The sound of a hundred people getting to their feet before the Peace and the announcements-parents hissing, bulletins flapping open, hymnals thumping to the floor-was louder than any other part of the service.

“The peace of the Lord be always with you,” Clare said cheerfully, but as she turned to embrace Nathan her eyes fell on Mrs. Marshall, collected and composed in her usual place, and Clare’s mind flashed to what she had found out about Jonathon Ketchem. And suddenly she didn’t feel so peaceful.

After the service, after the coffee hour, after speaking with a hundred people, making appointments, promising phone calls, asking after ailments, sharing news from the committee meetings, commiserating about troubles and laughing at jokes, after all that, Clare liked to take a turn around the church alone.

She didn’t have to. All that needed to be done after everyone had finally left was to lock and bolt the great outer doors. Up the main aisle, down the aisle, three minutes, tops. The rest of the locking up-the parish hall and kitchen doors, setting the alarm-all of that happened outside the sanctuary. She always flew through those steps, eager to get out of the place by then, to get back home and change out of her cassock into jeans and a sweater, ready for the rest of Sunday afternoon. She frequently had an invitation to one of her parishioners’ houses, or she would go running, or curl up with the Sunday paper and then try out a new recipe for dinner. She looked forward to her afternoon away from the church. But before she left, she visited her sanctuary. Alone.

She locked the doors and closed the inner narthex doors behind her. The church was darkened. The sun was bright outside, but the light shafting through the stained-glass windows was filtered, softened, different from workaday light meant to illuminate. This light was meant to teach, and as she walked toward Jane Ketchem’s window, she was ready to learn.

Mr. Hadley had been mopping down this area regularly, but the slowly warming temperatures continued to send water streaming and dribbling around the casement and splattering against the glass. The shield-bearing angels appeared to be wading through water toward her, presenting to her their message of cool comfort. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

She had always registered the figures climbing into the radiant light as a group of children, but now she saw they were two girls and two boys. Peter. Lucy. Jack. Mary. Mrs. Marshall had said her mother never spoke of them. Clare wondered if, as a girl, their surviving sister had ever gone to their graves. With her grandmother, perhaps. Their short lives and long deaths had cast a shadow over so many people. If they had lived, Mrs. Marshall might now have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren filling up her life, instead of an empty, outdated house and vestry meetings. There would be no Jonathon Ketchem Clinic, because his memorial would be a stone in the town cemetery, next to his wife’s. Allan Rouse would have found some other way to pay for medical school, and settled far from Millers Kill. Clare would be looking at a far different window. She glanced up to where the roofers were disassembling the ceiling to expose the rotten beams. And she would be going from door to door with her begging bowl, looking for enough money to cover the bare minimum of the repair.

All that because four children weren’t inoculated with the diphtheria vaccine. No wonder Dr. Rouse had taken Debba Clow out there. The thought of Debba turned her away from the window. Whatever Allan Rouse had told her that night, it hadn’t persuaded her to go ahead and have her little girl vaccinated. If, as everyone assumed, Dr. Rouse had committed suicide, Debba would be off the hook as far as police suspicions of her involvement went. But she would still be facing a custody battle with her ex and, more significantly, an ongoing struggle with her children’s father about what was best for them. Clare couldn’t do anything to budge Debba off Russ Van Alstyne’s very short list of suspects in Rouse’s disappearance, but she could give the artist the support she needed to help make decent decisions about the future. And the first step, Clare decided, would be to find out more about the past.

Hi, Mrs. Marshall,” Clare said as the older woman opened her front door. Mrs. Marshall rearranged her look of obvious surprise into a more polite welcoming smile. “Can I come in for a sec?” Clare stepped into the foyer. “I’m sorry I didn’t call first, this idea popped into my head and I-oh! Hello, Mr. Madsen.” Norm Madsen smiled from the door to the dining room. We don’t invite ourselves over to other people’s houses, young lady, her grandmother Fergusson said. “Oh.” Clare could feel her cheeks pinking. “I’m afraid I’m intruding.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Marshall said. “We’ve just finished lunch. You can join us for coffee. Did you get your furnace repaired? You were having a problem with it earlier this week, weren’t you? You know, you should save your bill and bring it to the vestry. We would recompense you.”

If they ever want to raise money, I can take it off their hands and get a sweet price for it! “It didn’t cost enough to make it worthwhile getting the vestry involved,” Clare lied. “Hi, Mr. Madsen.”

“Great sermon this morning,” Mr. Madsen said, walking her to the round-edged table. “Lacey and I were just talking about it. We agreed you hit it spot on when you said that thing about abundance and scarcity.”

“How difficult it is to make a meaningful sacrifice when you have everything in abundance,” Mrs. Marshall clarified. The luncheon plates had been cleared away, and a tray holding a coffee service was stationed next to Mrs. Marshall’s seat. It was silver, the pieces buffed and curved like the fenders on a ’50 Cadillac. Wedding present, Clare thought. Mrs. Marshall gestured to a chair across the table from her. “Please, sit down. Coffee?”

For a moment, Clare was tempted to ask if she had any leftovers. The smell of pot roast emanating from the kitchen was making her mouth water. “Yes, please,” she said, thereby proving that there were still meaningful sacrifices to be made.

“It was a different world when we were growing up,” Mr. Madsen said, holding out his cup to be filled. “I remember when Christmas meant three toys-one from my parents and one from each set of grandparents. Plus socks or mittens and some candy.”

“And you were one of the rich kids in town,” Mrs. Marshall said. “Milk?” She passed him the pitcher.

“I guess I was, at that.” He poured a generous amount into his coffee. “The point is, when I had to give something up, it hurt. And when I got something, I really appreciated it. Every one of my toys fit into a box the size of a small suitcase when I was a boy. You should see my great-grandchildren’s rooms. They look like FAO Schwarz.”

“Milk?” Mrs. Marshall asked Clare.

“No thanks,” she said, reaching for the sugar bowl. She looked across the table to Mrs. Marshall, who was pouring her own cup. “It’s funny you should have been talking about your childhoods, because I have a question for you. If you don’t mind.”

“What is it?”

It felt wrong to start by firing a salvo into a sensitive subject, so Clare said, “I’m doing some counseling work with a woman who has doubts about vaccinating her youngest child. I wanted a better feel for what might go into that decision, and I was hoping, I wondered…”

“Whether I could tell you more about my parents’ decision?” Mrs. Marshall said.

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I just don’t know if I have any useful information. My grandma Ketchem told me back then, they didn’t get children immunized ahead of time. If you fell sick, you’d get the serum. You have to remember, it was brand-new. Antidiphtheria serum wasn’t even available in this country when my brother Peter and sister Lucy were born.”

“People were slower to run to the doctor then, I think,” Mr. Madsen said. “Nowadays, we’re at the doctor’s office every time we feel a twinge. Back in those days, you had to be some hurting for your parents to get the doctor out to the house.”

“That’s true,” Mrs. Marshall said. “I hadn’t really thought about that. There was no telephone out at the old farm. No electricity. My parents didn’t own a car until 1929.” My father would have had to drive his buggy into town and find Still-man any time they needed any medical treatment.”

Clare lowered her coffee cup. “I just met a Dr. Stillman at the Washington County Hospital. He said he was the third generation of his family to practice medicine here in Millers Kill. He’s an orthopedic surgeon.”

Mr. Madsen snorted. “Well, the old Dr. Stillman was a country doctor. Which meant he did everything from setting bones to delivering babies to performing surgery-”

“-on kitchen tables. With the patients’ butter knives.” Mrs. Marshall arched an almost invisible eyebrow at her old friend. “You think everything was better back then.”

“Maybe the old Dr. Stillman didn’t push the vaccine back then,” Clare said. “Since it was so new.”

Mrs. Marshall tilted her head for a moment. “No, I don’t think that was the case. As I remember him, Dr. Stillman was always after you with a needle.”

“You were immunized?”

Mrs. Marshall smiled a humorless smile. “Against everything.”

“Me, too,” Mr. Madsen said, apparently oblivious of the expression on his hostess’s face. “I think you’re right. I think he was a bug about inoculations. No pun intended.”

“Would your parents have gone to Dr. Stillman for their other children?”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Marshall said.

“Dr. Rouse was your mother’s physician in her last years, right?”

Mrs. Marshall smiled wryly. “Allan Rouse was my mother’s physician from the moment he proposed serving in the clinic in exchange for the money for his medical degree. Not that he treated her. That didn’t come about until she was in her seventies. But he was hers. As much her creation as the clinic itself.”

“Do you know if she ever spoke to him about what happened to your older brothers and sisters?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Marshall sipped her coffee. “She so rarely spoke of anything to do with those times. If it weren’t for my own memories of the farm and my father, I might believe that my life started at age six, in the little house on Ferry Street.” She replaced the cup precisely on its saucer. She left a faint imprint of today’s lipstick on the rim. Scarlet. “I must have been a poor substitute for what she had lost, one child instead of four. And, of course, I was alive, and so could make mistakes and speak rudely and come home with disappointing grades and smoke cigarettes behind the garage. It must have been too painful to compare me to those perfect, dead children.”

“Perfect?” Clare said.

“Haven’t you noticed? Every dead thing is perfect.” She glanced at Mr. Madsen, who was gawking at her over the rim of his cup. “Like Norm’s yesterdays. Unchangeable, and so unable to disillusion you.”

Clare looked into her coffee. “Have you considered that maybe your mother didn’t bring up your brothers and sisters because she didn’t want you to feel as if you had to live their lives for them?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s easy, when you’re the surviving child, to feel as if you have to carry all the expectations your parents had for your dead sibling.” She was speaking from raw personal experience at this point, with knowledge gained from countless conversations when her mother would sigh over her sister Grace’s name or point out when friends’ daughters joined Junior League or got married or had babies. All the things Grace was supposed to have done. “Maybe your mother wanted you to know that she loved you for who you were, complete. That you didn’t have to try to be Peter or Jack or Lucy or Mary. That they were her past, but you were her future.”

“You know, she may have something there.” Norm Madsen reached across the corner of the table and patted Mrs. Marshall’s delicate arm. “That would certainly jibe with the name she gave you.”

Clare raised her eyebrows. “Your name?”

Mrs. Marshall smiled, the first wholehearted smile she had given Clare since they began their conversation. “You don’t know my Christian name, do you?”

“I’ve heard Mr. Madsen and Sterling Sumner call you Lacey.”

“That’s my nickname. My pet name, I suppose you’d call it.” Her smile wisped away into something softer and sadder. “I don’t think there’s anyone left alive who calls me by my real name.”

Clare opened her hands in question.

“Solace. That’s what my mother named me. Her Solace.”