ROY
September 6, 2008
On moving day, Ms. B. met Roy and Rose at the front of the rectory with the keys to his new home and a warm loaf of banana bread. It was all he could do to keep Rose from dancing as Ms. B. led them from room to room in the enormous three-story rectory that sat on the corner of Meeting Street and St. Michael’s Alley.
“It’s okay,” Ms. B. said after he told Rose to settle down. “I’d be twirling too if I were her.” Ms. B. took Rose’s hand and swung it back and forth. “Tell your daddy it’s time to celebrate.”
Rose smiled at the impeccably dressed older lady in her pale yellow pantsuit and double-strand pearls with a gold hummingbird brooch on the top of her left shoulder. The bird’s wings were spread wide, and Roy imagined the creature taking flight, buzzing around his new home in search of a flower.
Before long the moving van arrived, with Mama, Donny, and Chick less than twenty minutes behind it. When Mama stepped one foot onto the piazza, her jaw dropped so low you could see the three fillings on her bottom molars. Then she started asking Ms. B. a gazillion questions.
“How old is this place?”
“It was built in 1785.”
“How high are the ceilings?”
“Ten feet.”
“On each floor?”
“Yes, I believe so.” Ms. B. looked to Roy and smiled as his mama stepped closer, pinched her elbow. “Tell me what else I should know about it, darlin’.”
Ms. B. pointed to the piazza entry that led to Meeting Street. “This neoclassical screen door is of particular note.” She pointed toward the back where the white clapboard became brick but not like any brick his mama had ever seen. “And so is the line of original brick outbuildings. They are connected to the house now via the butler’s pantry, but they used to be a separate building which included the kitchen, laundry, stables, and slave quarters.”
“Look, Granny! Horses!” Rose took her grandmother’s hand and they ran out onto Meeting Street. Roy chuckled as Mama pinched off the large pink hair doohickey she had clipped to her jean miniskirt. She quickly twisted her long frosted hair and clipped it on the top of her head. Then she waved along with Rose as the carriage driver pointed out the rectory.
“We live here!” Rose hollered, and the group of tourists smiled and nodded. Mama smoothed out the wrinkles in her jean skirt and nodded. “That’s right, folks!”
Ms. B. turned to Roy. “Such enthusiasm!”
He rotated his bum shoulder forward and looked down at her. “You can say that again.”
Pretty soon the men got to work unloading boxes and hanging pictures, and Mama sat with Ms. B. in the kitchen looking at swatches of paint for the formal living room.
“I’m fond of this lavender here,” Mama said. “How’bout you, Ms. B.?”
Ms. B. raised her eyebrows. “Well, since this is the gathering spot for many a meeting and even a tea or party, it might be best to go with something neutral.”
“Mama?” Roy called over his shoulder as he held up his picture of the Clemson End Zone over the fireplace in the den right off of the kitchen. “We’ve got eight rooms upstairs. You can pick one just for yourself and paint it any color you like.”
“Oh, my!” Mama pointed to the swatches. “Can I keep that lavender one, Ms. B.?”
“Why yes, of course.” Ms. B. carefully pulled the swatch out and handed it over to Mama who leaned in and said, “I saw this black-and-white-striped bedspread the other day at Marshall’s, and I’m going to buy that thing and fix me up a nice guest room for me and Donny.”
“That sounds lovely,” said Ms. B.
Then Roy could hear Mama whispering. “’Course, the truth is, Rose and I are hoping Roy will meet someone down here and get back going on that big family he always wanted.” He turned and watched her squeeze Ms. B.’s hand. “Will you be on the lookout for someone to introduce him to, Ms. B?”
Ms. B. looked back and saw Roy shaking his head in disbelief. “If it pleases Father Summerall, I will keep my eyes open.”
“Oh, thank you.” Mama clicked her silver nails together. “You’re as lovely as Roy said.”
By nightfall, he and Rose had placed some plastic lawn furniture on the upstairs piazza, and they feasted with Chick and Mama and Donny on one of the umpteen casseroles Ms. B. had stacked in the freezer. As the sun set over the picturesque rooftops, a flock of pelicans flew right by them at eye level on their way to roost.
“Good gracious, those birds are big, Daddy!” Rose said.
“They are, sugar,” he said with a nod. He was seeing everything through her eyes and was not surprised when she climbed into his lap and said, “Don’t you feel like this is a dream?”
He pulled her close as Mama looked on grinning. “Maybe so, Rosebud.”
When Roy arrived at work the next day, he found a stack of resignation letters on his desk from the staff of St. Michael’s, including the assistant rector, the youth minister, the children’s education director, the bookkeeper, the organist and choirmaster, the office manager, the sexton, the housekeeper, and the receptionist. (Back at Good Shepherd, it had just been Roy and Skeeter and a whole lot of volunteer parishioners, and he had spent many a day scrubbing toilets and sweeping floors.). He had heard this was the protocol when a new rector took over a church, but he had no intention of getting rid of anyone unless, after getting to know them well, he realized they directly opposed his vision for the place.
He called them all together in his office, took a seat on his desk, and tugged at the collar encircling his wide neck. Then he held up the stack of resignation letters and smiled at this group of well-dressed, bright-eyed strangers, his staff. “I’m not accepting any of these right now.” He looked to each of them. “Let’s get to know one another. My hope is that we can be a team.” He glanced out at the nine a.m. hustle and bustle of Broad Street before pulling out the well-worn Bible Miss Ruby gave him after his confirmation.
“Let’s start with a little Scripture and prayer. We can do this every morning if you’d like. And we can pray for each other. You know, let each other know what’s going on in our work lives and home lives so we can look after each other.”
“Wow,” the youth minister said. He was a clean-cut young fellow with the exception of his tattered sandals and the tiny silver dot on the side of his nostril. Is that an earring? Roy wondered. The youth minister nodded his head with confidence. “I like what you’re saying, Father Roy.” He reached out his hand. “By the way, I’m Keith Norris.”
“Me too,” a woman piped up, her eyes brimming with tears.
Roy leaned toward her. “You’re Keith Norris?”
“No.” She shook her head and chuckled as she brushed away a tear. “I’m Trish Dickerson, the office manager, and I like what you said about praying for each other.”
Roy put down his Bible gently on his desk. “Well, we can start right now, Trish.” He saw a box of Kleenex on a bookshelf and held it out to her. “If there’s something you want to share.”
She nodded and reached for the box. “I’m just so relieved you’re keeping us on.” She looked out of the window. “My husband is in real estate, and he hasn’t had a sale in almost a year.” She looked around the room at the staff, and Roy wondered how well they knew one another. “And my mama broke her hip and needs to move in with us.” Trish’s shoulders began to shudder as she silently held back her weeping. “And I tell you the truth, she’s not the easiest person to live with.”
Roy walked over and patted Trish’s shoulder. Then he motioned for them all to come together and pray for her on the spot.
When they were finished, she blew her nose and nodded her head. “Thank you,” she said as she looked around the room. “Thank you so much.”
Then Roy opened his Bible right in the center and read aloud the first full psalm he could find. It was Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
The Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Roy could feel a kind of peace taking root in his own heart as he read the words. God was watching over all of them, even him. And when he looked up at this staff he hadn’t known yesterday, he saw them as he thought they really were—people longing for mercy and love, and he knew that ministering to them and having them minister to one another was one of the things he was brought here to do.
By the end of the week, he’d met with the vestry, though Heyward Rutledge, the senior warden, was a surprising no show. Roy tried all the numbers for him listed in the church directory, but the junior warden, Commander Carleton with the eye patch, recommended they proceed without him. Roy made his pitch to start up the Alpha Course in mid-October (which he all but insisted the leadership and the staff should take), and the vestry approved the small budget for this endeavor and seemed willing, if half-heartedly, to participate.
Roy also met with Ms. B. twice that week (at her strong suggestion) to plan his installation, which sounded like a whole lot more hoopla that he was hoping for, with an engraved invitation to all the clergy in the diocese, a trumpeter, a bagpiper, a quarter peal of the church bells, and a reception for three hundred in the Parish Hall.
“Is all this necessary?” he said to Ms. B., who stood in his door asking for the proper names and addresses of the folks from Ellijay he wanted to invite. “I mean, I’m a little uncomfortable with all of the expense, and I don’t want too much of a to-do.”
Ms. B. clucked. “It’s quite necessary, Father Summerall. You’re the fifteenth rector who has taken the helm of this church in over two hundred and fifty years, and it’s cause for a celebration.”
On Friday, Roy walked down to Waterfront Park to write his sermon. He was a little fretful since it was his first one to this congregation, and the Gospel from the lectionary was a spiky one: Matthew 18:15–20, where Christ tells his followers how to treat a brother who sins against them. He could bypass the spikes for this time and head straight to the last verse, where Christ promises believers that if two or more are gathered together in his name, he will be there in the midst of them. That was an uplifting one, and he really wanted to start on a high note. The verse meant Christ would be there at that moment even as Roy preached. But as he started to write the sermon, he kept going back to Matthew 18:18. It was a verse that both haunted and perplexed him as Christ said, “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
As far as Roy could tell, it meant that the stuff we do in the here and now has an eternal ripple. That was pretty frightening if you stopped to think about it. And yet, as he stared at the words, this came to his mind. What we do here counts. And we often get sidetracked, even with the best of intentions, and before long we are building our lives on a foundation that might not be what we were made for. He realized as he wrote that this was a perfect invitation to Alpha. He would put forth these questions:
Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? For anyone who thinks there might be more to life than meets the eye right now, for anyone who has questions about life or God, no matter how simple or even hostile, you need to come have dinner with us in the Parish Hall every week for ten weeks starting on Tuesday, October 19. And bring that friend or neighbor who has these questions too.
The next day was Saturday and he was getting a little antsy about how his first Sunday would unfold. It was just him and Rose in the big, rambling house now. They spent the morning riding bikes around the peninsula, and in the afternoon he put on his old Clemson jersey and she put on the orange cheerleading uniform he bought during his last trip to a game, and they spent the afternoon watching the Tigers pummel The Citadel with a final score of 45-17. Around four, he heard someone ringing up the one-ton tenor bell in the steeple tower, and he remembered that there was a wedding in the church that a priest from Columbia was officiating.
Rose ran out to the piazza and called him. “Daddy, come quick!” When he ambled out, his knees aching too much for a thirty-five-year-old man, he saw her pointing toward the street where the tall, redheaded woman was walking toward the steps that led to the bell tower.
Roy looked at the striking woman he’d spotted the day he came for his interview and then down at Rose who was watching him. “Do you think that’s an angel?” the little girl said. “Like Mr. Jackson told us about?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But my guess is she’s a bell ringer. A really tall one.”
Rose cocked her head. “Can we see the bells? You haven’t shown me yet.”
He looked down at her. She was so eager that she was bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“I tell you what.” He gently rubbed her little back. “There’s a TV in the narthex where you can watch the bell ringers ringing. We’ll head over there and take a quick look at the end of the wedding.”
“Yippee!” Rose said. She pulled her plastic chair up to the edge of the second-floor piazza. “Now I’m just gonna sit here and watch.”
“Okay,” he said. He went and got her some lemonade and sat beside her as the groomsmen and bridesmaids lined up outside the sanctuary, and then came the lovely young bride on the arm of her father.
“That might be you one day,” Roy said.
She smiled and took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
As the bells sounded at the end of the ceremony, they ran to the narthex and Roy flipped on the television. The eight ringers were standing in a circle facing one another as they took turns pulling on the long ropes of the pulleys that rung the enormous bells two floors above them. It was the most jubilant sound Roy could imagine, and just as he was about to tell Rose the long story of the bells, the priest from Columbia grabbed his arm and introduced himself.
The priest, a fellow by the name of Mike Dunlap, bent Roy’s ear for nearly twenty minutes about national church politics as the last guests filed out and the bells stopped ringing. Just as the priest’s wife tugged on his arm, Rose hollered, “Daddy!” She was pointing at the television. “Look!”
Roy peered at the screen and saw the tall, redheaded woman in the empty tower. She was on the resting bench, in her white vestments, weeping.
“How do you get up there?” Rose asked.
“There’s the stairs on the other side.”
Before he could stop her, Rose bolted toward the steps. He followed her up two flights and around the narrow, winding stairwell to the bell tower, where she pushed open the door to the room before he could grab her little arm.
“What’s the matter?” Rose asked as she stood in front of the woman. The afternoon sunlight flooded the room and he could see Rose’s shadow, long and narrow against the unfinished hardwood floors, her little pleated cheerleading skirt swaying from side to side like a bell itself.
The woman sat up straight and wiped her bright green eyes with her wrists. She was speechless and she shook her head, her long, wavy hair moving back and forth across her shoulders.
Rose turned quickly to Roy. “I think she is one,” she whispered. “I don’t even think she speaks this language.”
Roy stood behind his child and put both hands on her shoulder as if to steady her.
“We’re sorry to barge in on you, ma’am.” He reached out his wide hand. “I’m Roy and this is Rose, and we were just—”
“We were watching the TV downstairs.” Rose looked the woman head-on as if she was a school-yard friend who had just fallen off of a swing.
The woman furrowed her lovely red eyebrows. “They don’t turn that on for weddings.”
He took back his hand once he realized she was not reaching out to shake it. He squeezed his daughter’s little shoulders. “No. I just turned it on to show Rose. I’m the new rector, and we’re still sort of getting to know the place. I’m sorry if we did something we shouldn’t have.” He wondered if she even believed him. He didn’t look like a priest at the moment in his old football jersey (which was getting a little tight) and his well-worn blue jeans.
“Yeah, and we saw you crying on the TV.” Rose nodded. “I thought you might be an angel because, well, you’re so tall.” She leaned slightly toward the woman. “Are you?”
“No.” The woman smiled through her tears. “I’m just a bell ringer. One who’s having a hard day.” She reached out her long, delicate hand. “I’m Anne Brumley.”
Instantly he recognized her from childhood. She had grown up with two other girls down the street from his Aunt Elfrieda, and he had seen them walking along the High Battery and down at the East Bay Playground. They were all way too pretty for him or Chick to get the nerve up to ask for a dance.
“My daddy can help you.” Rose grabbed Anne’s hand and squeezed it. “He’s real good at that.”
He rubbed the back of his wide neck and smiled.
“Okay,” she said more to Rose than to him. She looked up to meet his eye and smiled. “I could use a little guidance.”
When they entered the piazza of the rectory, he motioned toward the white wicker chairs Ms. B. had someone deliver yesterday, and she took a seat. She had taken off her vestments, and she was in a lovely dusty-green sundress with the smallest white flowers embroidered around the edge of her skirt.
“I’m going to go get you some iced tea,” Rose said. “My granny made it, and it always makes me feel better.”
“All right,” Anne said. “That sounds wonderful.”
She sat back in her chair and twisted her hair into a knot. “She’s precious.”
“Thanks.” Roy shook his head. He had not noticed a woman in a long time and he could feel his face redden. It wasn’t anything puritanical, his unawareness of physical beauty. It was just God’s way of binding up his heart since losing Jean Lee, and Roy wondered when God would unwrap it and proclaim it healed.
“Here you go.” Rose brought out the tea with a paper towel and an orange coaster with a tiger paw. She turned to Roy. “I’m going to go unpack my Barbies upstairs.”
“Okay, Rosebud.” He watched Anne take a big sip of tea as Rose’s feet padded up the stairs to the second floor. She recrossed her legs and put her hands on her narrow, freckled knee.
Doggone, this woman was pretty. If she needed ongoing counsel or prayer, he was going to have to turn her over to the assistant rector.
He smiled at her, and before he could ask she spoke. “I guess maybe I’m having a crisis of faith.” She put the tea down and then picked it up for another sip. “That is good,” she said.
“Tell me what you mean by crisis?” He prayed, Lord show me how to help this woman.
She straightened out her sundress and spoke to the ground. “I thought God spoke to me. A few years ago about something specific.” She shook her head and looked up at him. “Anyway, I’ve been waiting and waiting and nothing has happened.”
He nodded.
Anne chuckled. “My cousin and sister don’t believe me, I think. Anyway, they encouraged me to move on, and I think that’s what I’m going to do.” She tilted her head and looked at him. “Only, what if I’m wrong? What if I miss what I was supposed to be waiting for?”
Funny how God worked. He spoke to some people very clearly and then it took a long time to materialize. Then he didn’t speak to Roy at all about Charleston and embarking on this new ministry and—bam! He was blindsided by it. Tackled before he had a chance to run.
“You know, there are some stories in the Bible about promises that take a long time for our human eyes to see. There’s Abraham and Sarah, for one.”
“Yeah, I thought about that one,” she said. “And Sarah took matters into her own hands and ended up with some trouble.”
“Absolutely.” He could hear Rose singing upstairs. She always had this little music routine she did with her Barbies. “And there’s the forty years in the desert and then Zechariah at the temple . . .”
She bit her lip until it turned white. “Those people were really important, though.”
“We’re all important, Anne.”
She met his eyes, and he didn’t look away.
He rotated his bum shoulder and, out of habit, leaned forward. “Look, waiting is hard. Maybe even harder than the surprises.”
“But what if I was wrong? What if I didn’t hear it right?”
“Well,” he said. “I don’t think it would be too bad to ask for a little encouragement, do you?”
She took another sip of tea and a strand of wavy hair fell out of her twist. It covered her eye for a moment before she tucked it behind her ear. “Okay.”
Then he bowed his head and prayed for her to receive some sort of tangible encouragement.
“Thank you so much.” She stood and shook his hand. “And thank Rose for me too.”
“I will,” he said. “I hope to see you around the church.”
Then she walked out of the piazza door onto the street, and he couldn’t help but watch her as she walked down Meeting Street, the sun on her back, her pale green dress billowing out.
When a little plastic Barbie shoe fluttered down to his feet, he looked up to the second-floor piazza where Rose was watching too.
“Well, she wasn’t an angel, Daddy,” she said as the woman rounded the corner where Meeting met Broad, “but she was really nice.” Rose licked her little red lips. “And pretty.”
He looked up at her and shook his head. She was a little Granny in the making.
She raised her dark eyebrows. “I’m just saying . . .”
“Get on down here,” he said. “Let’s have supper.”
When she came down, she grabbed his hand. “Daddy, I don’t think I can eat another casserole.”
“I agree,” he said. “What do you say we hop on our bikes and find a pizza joint?”
“Hooray!” She made her hands into fists and cheered. “Only cheese on my half—”
“I know, I know,” he said.