Brother Fred (Whose brother? And don’t Baptists believe in last names for their clergy?) wears a suit rather than a robe; a tie, not a clerical collar. The sermon is thought-provoking—something about not burying a kind of money, called talents, in the ground. However, some of the congregants are huggers, and visitors are asked to stand and announce their names. Why hadn’t Jack warned her?
Sunday afternoon Saffee answers the doorbell and is taken aback to find Brother Fred on the front step. He wears a short-sleeved shirt just like plain folks. Saffee invites him, their first guest, to come into the living room and calls Jack to join them. She doesn’t think to offer any refreshment.
Although the preacher is friendly and nonthreatening, Saffee plunges into nervous chatter. She tells him that she was “saved”—the Baptists seem to like that term—in fourth grade, read Egermeier’s as a child, and in college began a habit of Bible reading. She neglects to mention that the habit had not taken a full hold and has been sorely neglected for some time.
Sounding hopeful, Brother Fred tells her that the church needs help with the fifth-grade Sunday school class. Would Saffee like to “volunteer”? The morning at church had been fairly pleasant—nice people, good sermon, a choir that sang with gusto. But what kind of a church invites perfect strangers to teach their children? Her opinion plummets.
“Me? Well, I’m not sure . . .” She backpedals. “I don’t really know the Bible very well at all,” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to teach it. You wouldn’t ask if you knew how unqualified I am.”
“Wonderful,” Brother Fred says. “This is your opportunity to learn. We have teaching guides for every lesson, and as you prepare by studying the Scripture, just think how much you’ll learn.”
Saffee is speechless. She has never taught anything to anyone in her life. She is shy. She knows little about the ways of children, having had practically nothing to do with them when she was one herself. Why is this “brother,” whom she has just met, smiling at her with an expression that says he knows she will do it?
He tells her that she would not be the lead teacher, rather an assistant to Robert Scott’s wife, Mary. Nice woman. Saffee wouldn’t have to do much teaching the first few weeks until she is comfortable.
She remembers her mother’s lament that the only time anyone from church called her was when they wanted her to do something. In her case, to bake a cake.
On the other hand, hasn’t God said . . .
Saffee hears herself agree to help, at least to try. How much more intimidating will this new life become?
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
GIRL TALK
The open garage door, necessary for ventilation, must look inviting, but Saffee wishes Gail, her bubbly, chatty neighbor, hadn’t popped into the garage unexpectedly. As usual, Saffee prefers to be alone . . .
“Don’t be bringing people into our house. It’s not a good idea . . .”
. . . but she tries to be gracious.
Her college dorm room had seen a parade of girls—drawn into her roommate’s circle of affection, certainly not by Saffee’s aloof manner. She wishes she were warm and welcoming like Gloria, whose influence seems to have only gone so deep, her mother’s much deeper. Can’t Gail see that Saffee is preoccupied with an arduous project? She’s worked four mornings to remove layers of paint from a very small square of surface and her attitude rivals the chemicals for unpleasant.
Saffee suggests that Gail could sit in a lawn chair a couple of feet outside the small garage to distance her pregnant self from noxious fumes. Then she turns down the volume of a favorite string quartet playing on the radio.
Gail launches into a cheery monologue about a recent family wedding. The smitten mother gushes about Jenny Rose scattering rose petals down the aisle, describes in detail what the attendants wore, how she always gets emotional at weddings, and on and on. The neighbor pauses for breath, smoothes her maternity shirt over her prominent belly, and encircles her unborn child with her short arms.
Saffee wishes she knew how to say that she too feels a little emotional at the moment and would like to be alone. But Gail would want to know what is so emotional about stripping paint and she’d never understand. Saffee isn’t sure she understands either.
She tugs another roll to the sleeves of Jack’s old white shirt, too worn at the collar for the office, and wonders what she should say if Gail inquires how the table came to have such inordinate layers of paint. With a quiet sigh, she counsels herself to be polite and scrapes with determination at a patch of glutinous red as Gail recounts more wedding details. They thread Saffee back to her own wedding . . .