TUESDAY, AUGUST 22, PRESENT DAY
“Hello? Reverend Fergusson?” The mellow voice came from outside the sacristy, where Clare was stowing the altar cloth and silver from this morning’s seven-thirty service. She had had ten communicants, a bumper number for a weekday at any time of the year, but especially in August. Tourists all, up for the river and the hiking and the amusement parks that stretched farther and farther south from Lake George every year. She wondered if, by the time Ethan was a man grown, there’d be nothing to Millers Kill but vacationers and those who served them.
She gave herself a twitch. “In here.”
“Your secretary told me I could find you here.” The woman who entered the sacristy was handsome rather than pretty, tall, with an enviably thick fall of dark red hair. “Oh, wow. This is just lovely.” She gestured to the well-waxed mahogany cupboards and marble counters running along two sides of the small room. Diamond-paned windows, opened in the vain hope of catching a breeze, allowed natural light to gleam along the brass candlesticks and reflect through a row of crystal vases awaiting the flower guild.
“It is, isn’t it?” Clare couldn’t keep from smiling. “I have no cause to take such pride of place in St. Alban’s, but I do. Can you open that armoire for me?”
The woman did, and Clare stepped past her to slide the long muslin-wrapped cylinder of altar cloth in its place. Clare turned, still smiling. The woman was even taller than she had thought, broad shouldered and boyishly slim. Boyishly. The penny dropped. Clare kept smiling. “You must be Ms. Langevoort. Welcome to St. Alban’s.” She extended her hand.
“Thank you. It’s Joni.”
“And I’m Clare.” Joni shook—Clare tried not to think like a man—and grinned with visible relief. “And thank you for taking me on. It’s been … difficult, finding a place in the diocese.”
“Mmm. Let’s grab some coffee and sit down—do you like coffee?”
“I live on it.”
“Good! I like you already. Let’s sit down and talk about your internship and what you and St. Alban’s can do for one another.”
They spent a few hours talking and filling out paperwork for Joni’s home church, seminary, and the diocese, so it wasn’t until Clare asked Joni to run to Corsetti’s and pick up the lunch platter for the noon vestry meeting that she had enough privacy to call Willard Aberforth.
“You told me Joni Langevoort was a guy,” she began.
“And hello to you, too, Ms. Fergusson. Yes, I did.”
“She’s not a man. She’s a transgender woman. You could at least have given me a heads-up. No wonder no one else would take her.” Not every congregation or even diocese was open to transgender clergy. Certainly not Albany, which would probably get around to it at the same time they gave the thumbs-up to gay marriage, i.e., the twelfth of Never.
“I assure you, if you look under his skirts, you’ll find he’s still all male.”
“That is, bar none, the most revolting thing you’ve ever said to me.” She forced herself to breathe in deeply. Calm mind. Quiet mind. “For God’s sake, Father, gender isn’t a matter of what’s between your legs. It’s what’s between your ears.”
“As comfortably smug and modern as I expected. Good. I take it you’ll keep him?”
“Her. She’s a her. And yes, I will.”
“I’ll notify Union Seminary. You’ll be getting some paperwork from them. Try not to encourage him, will you? I received the strong impression his father is hoping this is just a phase.”
Clare pressed two fingers against her lips and reminded herself that Aberforth was a seventy-five-year-old ex-marine who still hadn’t recovered from Yale going coed. “I’m surprised you’ve gone out of your way to find her an internship. I would have thought you’d be opposed to her ordination.”
“We are not ordaining him, New York is. And my dear Ms. Fergusson, if you read your scripture, you’ll notice God has called all sorts of confused people to His service.” Like you went unsaid. “If the Almighty wants young Langevoort, who am I to stand in the way?”
Clare decided she might as well beard all her lions in one den and introduce her new intern to the vestry at the beginning of the monthly meeting.
Despite the widespread Episcopalian stance that God would understand missing church during the summer, some groups and committees continued on through the hot months. Altar guild and flower guild, whose weekly work, like Clare’s, went on year-round. The grounds committee, for whom summer was the busy season. And the vestry, the governing body of St. Alban’s, which gathered for lunch every month in the meeting room, with its linen-fold paneling and ornate plaster ceiling, its wheezing, inadequate radiator and sluggish summertime fans. Clare was grateful to them all, and she tried very hard to love each member of the vestry. Sometimes she succeeded.
“Everyone, I’d like you to meet Joni Langevoort. Joni is a divinity student at Union Theological Seminary and a candidate for ordination in her home diocese of New York. She’s going to be interning with us this fall.”
Clare thought she could hear the crickets chirping outside. She smiled brightly. “Joni, this is our senior warden, Robert Corlew.” The real estate developer paused a moment before nodding his almost-certainly-toupee-covered head. “Our junior warden, Geoff Burns.” The lawyer’s eyes lit with an unholy glee as he reached across the antique black oak table to shake Joni’s hand. “Terry McKellan, vice president of AllBanc and our finance chair.” Terry assumed a genial expression—with his round face and walrus mustache, he did it well—and murmured a polite greeting.
“This is Sterling Sumner, our distinguished professor emeritus and architect.” It never hurt to butter Sterling up. He sniffed at Joni, which was his usual greeting to anyone he didn’t know. “And Mrs. Henry Marshall and her very good friend, Norm Madsen.”
The elderly lawyer gallantly rose and pulled out the empty high-backed chair next to him. “Why don’t you sit right here, young lady.”
The rest of the men stared at him. Mrs. Marshall gave them all a quelling look. Joni made her last how do you do and the group began to work their way through the agenda.
The meeting went surprisingly quickly. With a stranger sitting in, the usual bickering, in-jokes, and long, rambling digressions were absent. Clare ticked item after item off her sheet, until they came to the last.
“A voters’ meeting.” Robert Corlew peered at her over his reading glasses. “Here. At the church.”
“In the parish hall,” Clare said. “I realize no one’s going to think I’m an objective party—”
Sterling snorted.
“—but the question of defunding the police department is the biggest issue to come before the town since the Algonquin Waters was permitted.”
“Very true,” Mrs. Marshall said.
Terry McKellan looked at Clare. “What were you thinking of? Having Chief Van Alstyne come in and speak to the congregation?”
She shook her head. “It needs to be open to the public. Like when we have a guest speaker or a concert. And I thought we should invite someone from both sides to present. Otherwise, we’d be promoting a political viewpoint.”
“We may be doing that anyway.” Geoff Burns templed his fingers. “If we sponsor the program, as we do with a guest speaker or a concert, we’re engaged in obvious political speech. We don’t even have the fig leaf of you preaching in the pulpit.” Clare opened her mouth to object. Geoff went on, “If we don’t sponsor the program, we’re making our parish hall a public accommodation, which leaves us open to a suit if, say, the Christian Dominionists and the U.S. Communist Party want to hold a debate here.”
“That would at least have the virtue of being interesting,” Sterling said under his breath.
Clare knuckled her eyes. “Is there some way we can get this to work, Geoff? There are ten people employed by the police department, one of whom is a member of our congregation—I mean Hadley Knox and her kids, Sterling, not Russ—and if the ballot question passes, every one of those people will be thrown out of work.”
“Including your husband,” Robert said.
“Including my husband. We can handle it financially, but others, including Hadley, won’t be able to. I’m not saying we ought to go out and knock on doors, but I do think an open forum to educate people is entirely appropriate.”
“Let me do some research and get back to you.” Geoff gestured toward his fellow vestry members. “If there’s no legal impediment, will anyone here object to such a meeting?”
“I guess not,” Corlew said. “I’m pushing for them to keep the department.” At Clare’s obvious surprise, he continued, “I’m selling homes. Mostly to folks who want to get away from the big, bad city. Safety’s a big selling point.”
“If both sides of the question are weighted equally.” Sterling Sumner looked suspiciously at Clare and Corlew. “I’d want there to be a fair and equal hearing of the budget-minded point of view.”
Mrs. Marshall shook her head. “I’m sure everything will be on the up-and-up, Sterling. I think a voters’ forum is an excellent idea.”
“Okay, are we good? Great.” Clare bowed her head and said the shortest prayer she could manage before anyone else decided to object. The echo of Amen still hung in the air when she said, “Meeting adjourned. Terry, we’re going to go over the loan payouts in my office?”
“Let me visit the little boys’ room and make a few calls and I’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks, Terry. Thanks, everybody,” Clare called to the departing vestry members. She turned to Mrs. Marshall. “And thank you.”
Mrs. Marshall patted her hand. “The more voters know about the issues, the better.” She turned to Joni. “I wanted to ask you, are you related to the Kent Langevoorts?”
“I am, yes. My parents.”
“I’ve met them several times at fundraisers for Senator Gillebrand. It’s nice to see summer people who care about the local government.”
Joni smiled a bit. “My parents are nothing if not political.”
“I approve.”
Clare cut in. “Mrs. Marshall is the former president of the League of Women Voters.”
“Since you raised the issue, Clare, I have to tell you the pro–police department side needs some sort of decent, easy-to-remember name, like the Committee for Public Safety.”
Joni touched her neck as if feeling for the guillotine cut. Clare refused to smile.
“Also, we need to start gathering opinion makers and money. I think the Langevoorts would be the perfect people to host a campaign opener.”
“We?”
“My parents?” Joni and Clare spoke at the same time. Clare recovered first. “Mrs. Marshall, it’s not electing a congressperson. It’s a town referendum. I’m sure Russ and his men can represent their side more than any opinion makers.” She hoped. She had told the truth when she said she and Russ weren’t under financial pressure. What she was afraid of was more subtle—what if Russ got another job in another town, and she had to choose between following him and leaving St. Alban’s?
“It’s been—” Joni paused as if searching for the least harmful word. “—difficult for my parents these past months. I’ve only been living as a woman since last Christmas.”
The interruption of her education at the end of the year suddenly made sense. Clare was pretty sure many doctors treating transgender patients wanted a year’s wait before committing to gender reassignment surgery.
Mrs. Marshall tilted her head to look up at the seminarian. “What better than a project they can throw themselves into as a distraction, then?”
Joni looked helplessly at Clare.
“Mrs. Marshall, Joni’s been an intern here for”—Clare checked her watch—“three and a half hours. We don’t want to impose on the Langevoorts. Besides, what do we need money for?”
Mrs. Marshall shook her head in a way that reminded Clare of her mother-in-law, who also thought the younger generation hopelessly naïve when it came to politicking. “For TV and radio ads. For voter education handouts.” She frowned at a speck of dust floating in the air. “I wonder if there’s time to get something over to the League of Women Voters’ booth at the county fair. They always get big numbers the final weekend.”
“You really think we need TV and radio ads for a town referendum? Russ and Deputy Chief MacAuley have been speaking with groups of voters when they can.” She realized she had been concerned before, but not really afraid the ballot question would pass. But Mrs. Marshall and Margy were right, she was a political neophyte. What if it was going to be more difficult to reach the public than she had assumed? There had been no surveying, no opinion polls—she had no idea what the people of the three towns actually thought of the referendum.
“The combined population of Millers Kill, Cossayuharie, and Fort Henry is over eight thousand. You can’t reach them all face-to-face, not in the next twelve weeks. Not to mention an ever-increasing number of vacation home owners, who have as much to lose as the regular residents. After all, I don’t think the state police are going to be making snowbird visits to houses shuttered over the winter.”
“That’s a good point,” Joni said. Clare wasn’t sure if she realized she was nodding along. “Okay, what if the Reverend Fergusson—”
“Clare.”
“Clare and I meet with my parents.” She turned to Clare. “They’ll be relieved to see I’ve landed a good internship. We could have you over to dinner. And your husband, of course.”
“Umm … okay?”
“With conviction, Clare.” Mrs. Marshall pierced her with a birdlike eye. “Politics are like pregnancies. You can’t go in halfway.”
“Oh, I believe that.” Clare picked her agenda off the black oak table. “It’s just that I’m learning the pregnancy isn’t the hard part. It’s how to deal with the actual, individual child taking over your life that’s difficult.”