EPILOGUE

We are not surprised that the young pastor soon found among the fair daughters of the parish one who became a true helpmeet.

Reverend Edward G. Porter, 1899
on the marriage of Lincoln’s first minister,
William Lawrence, to Love Addams, 1750

Perhaps it is sad when a bereaved husband puts aside his grief and observes that there are other women alive in the world. In Joe Bold’s case the discovery’ was slow. The convergence of Joseph Bold and Joan Sawyer was like the approach of shy elephants, weaving and turning aside, slowly waving their trunks and shifting their huge feet.

The courtship, such as it was, went forward by widely separated leaps and plunges. There was the morning in church when a random streak of sunlight turned Joan into a Roman candle. And the day, months later, when Joe was fascinated at a Parish Committee meeting by the spiral whorls of her left ear. Half a year after that he was charmed at the County Hospital, where Joan was now working as an occupational therapist, by the nimble way she caught a ball tossed by Mr. O’Doyle. From then on, the small jolts of tender noticing happened more frequently, until at last Joe could think of nothing else.

Matters came to a head at another meeting of the Parish Committee. Joan was holding the floor that evening, explaining the problem of the overflowing septic tank and the need for another bathroom in the parish house.

“You mean we need another septic tank as well as another bathroom?” said Lorraine Bell, who was running the meeting. “How much would it cost?”

Joan explained. Lorraine listened, and soon it occurred to her that something other than sewage was brimming under the surface of the discussion, a substance more ethereal than the noisome contents of the septic tank. But Lorraine kept her eyes on her notes and jotted down lists of figures.

“What is the precise location of the present septic system?” said Joe ardently, his long hands rapidly shuffling his budget sheets.

Joan looked carefully at her diagrams and told him that the septic tank was buried at the curve of the driveway behind the parish house near the maple tree. Diligently, Joe scribbled the word tree on his budget sheet, then tumbled his papers wildly once again.

Lorraine decided sensibly that it was time to end the meeting. Sweeping her notes together, she called for a vote to adjourn.

“But we haven’t decided what to do about the toilets,” said Fred Harris, looking at her in astonishment.

“Sorry,” said Lorraine. “Next time.” Rapidly she led the way out, hauling on her parka, clearing the room of all the extraneous members of the committee.

Joe Bold and Joan Sawyer were left alone. Joan fumbled for her notebook, her rolled-up diagrams of the parish house, her handbag, scarf, coat, and mittens.

Joe bent over to pull on his rubbers. “May I walk you to your car?” he said in a muffled voice.

“Why, certainly,” said Joan, fumbling the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I’m parked way down by the church.”

Blindly they made their way down the hill, trying to avoid drains and other large invisible obstructions that might have erupted out of the pavement during the meeting.

“May I?” whispered Joe, enfolding her large mitten in his glove.

“What an impertinent clergyman,” murmured Joan.

“No, no, it’s not impertinence,” exclaimed Joe, wrapping a second glove around the first. “It has a teleological significance, you see. A purpose above and beyond itself, an ultimate design.”

“Well, I’m glad to know,” babbled Joan, “that it’s a rational act”—she flourished her notebook with her free hand—“founded on fundamental axioms.” All the pages fluttered out of the notebook and flew away in the dark like pigeons. “Oh, dear, look at them go.”

“Oh, Joan,” said Joe in a strangled voice, gathering into one armful notebook, floor plans, coat, scarf, mittens, handbag, and woman.

Next morning when Parker and Libby Upshaw drove up Farrar Road, Parker was offended by the litter of paper blowing across the lawn of the public library and flapping in the oak tree beside the parish house and spilling out of the bushes in front of the church. “Look at that,” he said disdainfully. “People are so thoughtless. They drive out from the slums of Boston and throw trash out of their cars.”

But it wasn’t trash. It was Joan Sawyer’s precise notes on the required alterations to the plumbing system of the parish house, with exact specifications for lengths of copper pipe and new fixtures. Joan had to take her tape measure back to the basement of the building and figure out the whole thing all over again from scratch.

As it turned out, Joan’s love affair was not the only romance in the congregation of Old West Church that spring. Maud Starr’s was another. When the house next door to Maud’s was put on the market, who should buy it but Pulsifer Rexpole? Rexpole was a famous Harvard professor, a poet, a recipient of the Nobel Prize. Peeking out at him through her windows as he strode in and out of his house after the moving men, carrying cartons of his possessions—light fixtures, spare tires, broken chairs—Maud could almost see the laurel wreath on his head, its ribbons streaming behind him. She was thrilled.

Famous and talented Rexpole might be—he was also ugly, crafty, unprincipled, and thrice divorced, a bird of prey of fiercer visage and sharper beak than Maud herself. He was also a slob. His front yard was soon a dump.

Maud didn’t care. Into her life her new neighbor brought instantaneous excitement, bliss, trouble, disaster, and final utter catastrophe. What more could an adventurous woman ask of almighty God?

Lord dismiss us with thy blessing;
Fill our hearts with joy and peace;
Let us each, thy love possessing,
Triumph in redeeming grace:
Oh, refresh us, oh, refresh us,
Traveling through this wilderness.

—Pilgrim Hymnal