CHAPTER 27

When I preach, I sink myself deep down.

Martin Luther

On the third Sunday in February Homer and Mary Kelly attended the morning service in the Church of the Commonwealth. Actually the important destination on their minds that morning was a remote wrecked-car lot halfway to Cape Cod, but the detour to the Back Bay was part of the plan.

Homer was curious about the church. He hadn’t entered the building since the morning after the conflagration that destroyed the organ and the balcony and killed old Mr. Plummer. Reverend Martin Kraeger, of course, had confessed to starting the fire with his own carelessness, but Homer had his doubts about that. And it was certainly odd that the missing Rosalind Hall had lived next door.

Anyway, this corner of Commonwealth Avenue was afflicted with fire, blood and death, and Homer wanted to get closer to the scene.

They sat in the last pew, a little awed by the lofty space. It made one feel small, and yet at the same time important, a little puffed up. Normally, thought Homer, people lived and worked in rooms only a little higher than their heads. This place was big enough for elephants and giraffes, or for great blue whales, if they should come swimming in to stand on their giant flukes and sing their songs. Of course the sense of sublimity was artificial, a phony spell guaranteed by so many feet of colored glass and so many tons of stone vaulting. If religion meant anything at all, and maybe it didn’t, why did it have to be propped up by so much grandeur?

Not that Homer had anything against churches on the whole. In fact it had become a habit with the Kellys to go to church on Sunday morning. Homer sat grouchily beside his wife, Sunday after Sunday, disagreeing with everything, demurring in hoarse whispers, while she murmured, Homer dear, shut up.

The organ prelude was beginning. Mary looked at her order of service, showed it to Homer, and tapped the name of Alan Starr.

Homer raised his eyebrows and growled in her ear. “Hey, isn’t that the same thing he—”

“Yes,” whispered Mary. “Ssshh.”

It was “Wachet Auf,” Awake, Awake, the chorale prelude performed by Rosie Hall on the cassette in her apartment.

Mary and Homer sat quietly, staring at the packed pews in front of them as the music poured down. The piercing sound of the new organ in the stony chamber fell from the balcony upon the shoulders of the congregation, it rang in their ears, it ricocheted from the great round pillars, rolled along the arched aisles, cascaded in surges along the floor, then bounded in rushes and leaps to the vaulted ceiling. When it was over, the service began. Homer and Mary stood up and sat down with everybody else, bowed their heads, pulled money out of their pockets, sang hymns and listened to the anthem—it was the choir’s first performance under the direction of Barbara Inch.

Then Martin Kraeger began his sermon. Homer remembered the big heavyset clergyman who had repeated so often, It was my fault, on that morning nearly a year ago, after the fire. Today he was a different man. His voice was strong and a little rough. He was speaking without notes.

His subject was repentance, because the season of Lent was about to begin. It was not the kind of repentance urged upon Homer in his Catholic youth. Kraeger began with a remark by Henry Thoreau, If I repent me of anything, it is that I behaved so well.

Homer whispered, “Hey,” and Mary muttered, “Shut up,” and Kraeger went on to demolish all traditional attitudes toward guilt and self-reproach, clawing down the entire history of sin and depravity until the moral law lay in ruins around the pulpit and his audience sat gasping, utterly deprived of ethical standards and the promptings of conscience. Then little by little he built it up again, adding stone after stone until a new morality rose before them like a tower. Kraeger finished with a calm remark about the coffee hour, and they all stood up to sing the last hymn.

Homer was speechless. He hauled on his coat and shuffled after Mary, following Martin Kraeger out into the broad vestibule facing Commonwealth Avenue.

Kraeger stood in the open door shaking hands. It was a thawing day. The light snow that had fallen the day before was exhaling from the ground in a milky mist, blowing off the trees. Sparkling flakes landed on Kraeger’s black gown.

Edith Frederick was first in line. She stood beside Kraeger with the sunlight glittering down on her prim gray hair. Clearly under her delicate makeup Martin could see the fine blades of her skull. Almost as clearly he could imagine at her side the jolly Holbein skeleton, its bony arm hooked tenderly around her little jacket. Swiftly he banished the image and greeted her warmly, then turned to Homer and Mary Kelly.

“Ah,” he said, grasping Mary’s hand, “the Kellys of Concord. I met Homer last year. And I’ve read your book on the British suffragettes, Mrs. Kelly.”

Mary was pleased. “Oh, have you?”

Homer grinned politely, expecting a similar compliment, because he too had taken pen to paper from time to time. Instead Kraeger introduced them to Edith Frederick. And then his attention was distracted by a woman who rushed up the steps from the sidewalk, dragging after her a small child.

“Why, Pansy,” said Kraeger, bending down to the little girl, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

Kay Kraeger was in a hurry. “I couldn’t telephone because I’ve been so rushed.”

“But I’ve got a budget meeting right now. Oh, well, it’s all right. Welcome, Pansy, dear.” Kraeger picked her up and hugged her. “Whoops, I think maybe Pansy had better—” Excusing himself, he pushed through the long line of smiling parishioners, carrying his small daughter.

“Had better what?” cried Kay Kraeger, craning her neck to stare after him. “Pansy had better what?”

But Martin and Pansy were out of sight, hurrying to the bathroom. Pansy was four years old, but she was inclined to postpone important matters far too long.

Mary and Homer walked to their car, avoiding puddles on the sidewalk. “Homer,” said Mary, “I’ve had a revelation.”

“No kidding. It’s amazing what a dose of religion will do to a person.”

“No, no, it’s Mrs. Frederick. Did you see the way she was dressed?”

“Well, no, I guess not.”

“Right. Do you know why you didn’t notice? Because she dresses just like me. Look at me, Homer! My jacket, it’s just like hers, it’s got silver buttons just like hers, my pleated skirt, look, Homer! So ladylike! And the shoes, she had proper little low-heeled shoes with pompoms. Look at mine, they’ve got pompoms, they’re just the same.”

“No, they’re not. Yours are three times as big.”

“Oh, Homer, I’m so ashamed. We’re both so ladylike, so horribly, dreadfully ladylike. Both of us, we’re part of a vast horde of respectable women, all marching timidly through life in identical uniforms. I’m just not going to do it any more. Do you hear me, Homer?”

“Good Lord, my love, of course I can hear you. They can hear you in Copley Square.”

Someone was shouting at them. “Homer? Homer, wait.”

It was Alan Starr, racing after them. “The burned car, Rosie’s car, did you find out where it is?”

“I did indeed. Matter of fact, we’re on our way there right now. Want to come along?”

“Yes, yes.” Impulsively Alan climbed into the back of the Kellys’ car and leaned forward between the front seats as Mary pulled away from the curb. “How did you find out where it is?”

Homer groaned with self-pity. “It’s supposed to take only five phone calls to learn anything, isn’t that right? Well, this took fifteen. Campbell passed me along to Bleach, and Bleach passed me along to McArthur, and McArthur said talk to Smithies, and I forget all the rest. And all the time I could distinctly hear the shuffling of paper going on in the background. You know, slip, slap, slop, and red tape has a special sort of slippery sound when they tie it in bowknots on stacks of flabby interoffice correspondence.”

“Pay no attention to Homer,” said Mary. “The point is, he finally found out. The only question is, does Rosie’s car still exist? Maybe they’ve sent it to Korea by now, mashed into a little cube.”