True Believers(45)

She went through the front doors and into the church’s vestibule. She went through the vestibule and into the church itself. Chickie was up near the front, fussing with what seemed to be a bouquet of flowers too large for the vase he had put it in. Gladiolas, Mary thought irrelevantly. Then she went up to the front.

“Chickie?”

Chickie turned around. When he wasn’t pulling his fullblast act, he was an incredibly handsome man, slight and straight, with a face that looked as if God had revised it over and over again until it had reached perfection. Sometimes Mary wanted to grab him and say: see what you are? see what you are? don’t playact the way you do. But of course it was impossible. As soon as he knew she was looking at him, he took it all back on again, the swish, the exaggeration. Mary sighed a little.

“Duckie,” he said. “How are you? I’m having the most awful time with these flowers.”

“They’re beautiful. I think you need a bigger vase.”

“I may need one, duckie, but I’m not going to get one. These were given by Mrs. Van De Kamp. It’s her vase. And you know nobody around this place is ever going to offend Mrs. Van De Kamp.”

“Maybe you could take out a couple and put them to the side or something.”

“Maybe I could. Although I wouldn’t put it past the old cow to come and sit in a front pew and count the things. What’s up with you, duckie? You look absolutely miserable.”

“I am absolutely miserable. Don’t ask me for real reasons, though. I don’t have any. I just seem to be in a worse and worse mood lately.”

“Is it all that fuss across the street?”

“With Marty and Bernadette? That didn’t help, I suppose. But no. Not really. I’m just—out of sorts, I guess. Not satisfied with anything.”

“Maybe it’s time for your fifteen minutes of fame.”

“I’ll skip that, if you don’t mind. I can’t think of anything I’d like less than being famous. That will stand up on its own now if you’ll let it.”

Chickie stepped away from the vase. It stood up on its own. “I suppose I shouldn’t tamper with it. It isn’t up to my usual standard, though. Gladiolas are such a perfect flower. Do you know they come in autumn orange with black streaks, like tigers? Why do people like Mrs. Van De Kamp always have to buy pink?”

“Maybe she likes pink.”

“All her taste is in her mouth, duckie, and she hasn’t got much there. Last potluck, she brought a green bean casserole made with cream of mushroom soup. I nearly died.”

“Don’t die. Make me some coffee and help me feel like there’s some point in going to class this afternoon.”

Chickie walked around the flowers one more time, sighed, and stepped back again. “I suppose there’s nothing else to do here. It’s a shame, though. The people who have money never seem to have the faintest idea what to do with it.”

The was a small door at the back of the church that opened onto the courtyard. The rectory was just across the miniature quadrangle, and made of stone just like the church was. St. Stephen’s always reminded Mary of a college, one of those ritzy little places the children of rich people went if they didn’t want to enter the fray at Harvard. She let Chickie lead her through the passageways in the rectory to his office and settle her in a big wing chair. Then she settled back and watched him get her coffee. Chickie always made real coffee. He did not use instant, or freeze-dried, or even those little coffee bags they sometimes gave out at the university cafeteria. He had a grinder right there next to his desk, and four different kinds of roast in bags beside it, and a real percolator with a glass bubble on top so that you would know when the coffee started to bubble.

“So,” he said, “I hope this isn’t about what’s-his-name, the boyfriend.”

“Ned.”

“Ned. What a name. Ned. I hope you’ve been listening to your Uncle Chickie, though, and not letting yourself get talked into anything you don’t want to do. You have, haven’t you? Because it’s like I told you, I’ve let myself get talked into enough sex I wasn’t interested in having to know by now that—”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”

“He hasn’t been—pressing?”

“Well,” Mary said, “he’s always pressing, to one degree or another. But nothing unusual. No, it’s not that. I’m just all messed up lately, that’s all. I don’t seem to be satisfied with anything. And then there’s something going on over at the church. My church. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it in the air. Do you know how that goes?”