3.

‘Si vous avez des questions, demandez-moi en français,’ she tells the class when they ask about her black eye, and she smiles at the ducking of heads, the fluttering of dictionaries. Last period of the week doesn’t mean a free pass, and they know her well enough to know this, that they’re expected to keep translating and conjugating until the final bell. She looks out the window at the milky sky and thinks of the small stretch of hours between now and total darkness.

A girl raises her hand: red-faced, white-blond, non-Temple. It’s not Evelyn’s custom to have favorites, and if the handful of Temple kids she teaches get better grades — the Luce boys; the Bellows girls; Su-mi Jones, Jim’s adopted Korean daughter — it’s because Temple kids work harder. ‘Oui, Jill.’ Evelyn folds her arms as the girl stammers something about Madame Lynden and her œil de beurre noir. She is still Madame Lynden. She still wears the ring Lenny Lynden gave her. No need to draw attention. Evelyn turns to the class and answers Jill’s question matter-of-factly:

‘Je me suis pris la portière de la voiture.’

To demonstrate, she mimes opening a car door, hitting it against her face, and reeling back. The kids look suitably wide-eyed, and she has a reckless urge to toy with them further. ‘C’est ce qui arrive quand je ne bois pas mon café le matin.’ There are more blank stares as they try to figure out her joke, if it even is a joke, and she allows herself a brisk laugh before taking out her chalk and breaking the sentence down: C’est. Ce. Qui. Arrive. This is what happens when I don’t drink my morning coffee. I hit my face on the car door. Do you believe me? How would you express this sentence with ‘Madame Lynden’ as the subject …?

At the end of the hour, Evelyn hangs back at her desk, chiming out the occasional, ‘Au revoir,’ and, ‘Bon week-end.’ She is well liked by her students; they don’t leave in a rush, and many glance back at her before filing out the door. It’s only once she’s alone that Evelyn finds herself clutching her desk like a life raft, dizzied by a sudden wave of exhaustion. But the wave breaks, and a moment later she has gathered up her papers and slung her purse; she is twenty-three years old, able-bodied and in love, and these things are stronger than fatigue.

There have been changes in Evelyn’s life since Lenny stopped being part of it, some of which she dwells on, and some of which she doesn’t. She doesn’t dwell on her diminished sleep. She doesn’t dwell on the way Su-mi Jones ignores her wave from across the parking lot. She doesn’t dwell on her inferior car: an ugly little red Volvo, purchased second-hand from Sister Diane. She does dwell on Jim’s generosity in facilitating the purchase of the Volvo; on the beauty of a relationship grounded in generosity, but not indulgence. As she drives toward the Temple’s rectangular form, she dwells on its beauty; a beauty that’s entirely secular to her eyes, despite the cross on the roof, the sign proclaiming:

PEOPLES TEMPLE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

The first thing she sees when she brings the Volvo around the back of the redwood and plate-glass building is Jim’s blue Pontiac, trunk aloft. The next is a tall yet feeble female figure toiling over it. In the pale sunlight, the woman’s upswept hair is more gold than ginger, fraying slightly at the seams, but Evelyn would know that hair anywhere, the dip of shame and fizzing of defiance that comes from looking at it.

‘Oh, Rosaline.’ Evelyn hears her own voice ring out, clear and innocuous, as she cuts the engine and steps onto the gravel. ‘You look like you’re struggling there.’

Maybe the older woman flinches. Maybe it’s only a trick of the light. Either way, Evelyn doesn’t let it stop her from bustling over to the trunk and placing her hands just above Rosaline’s, on the corners of the box she’s straining to lift. Rosaline looks up in a daze, her face mere inches from Evelyn’s, and her wide eyes seem to widen further, her thin lips to disappear into the general whiteness of her face. ‘Oh,’ Rosaline gasps soundlessly, blinking fast like she’s trying to erase some painful vision, and it dawns on Evelyn that perhaps her own face is the painful thing, Jim’s mark beneath her eye. Hurt me. Yet within seconds Rosaline has looked down and drawn herself up, and in a steady voice she concedes, ‘Thank you, Eve.’

‘Evelyn.’

‘Evelyn. I’m sorry.’ And Rosaline does sound so apologetic that Evelyn immediately feels like a bitch. ‘If you can just a grip on that side? Oof. Who’da figured dolls and teddy bears could be so heavy—’

‘For the orphans,’ Evelyn doesn’t ask so much as purr.

‘The Health Department people, they surprised me with a whole ’nother collection. Really I wasn’t expect—’ Rosaline halts as they push through the glass doors and Evelyn steals a glance at her face: ghost-pale, careworn, twitchy as a mouse. There’ve been days when she has looked at Jim’s wife with envy — her silky-bright kaftan dresses, her flower-stalk neck, her lacquered beehive in profile giving her the appearance of a blond Queen Nefertiti — but today isn’t one of them. ‘— Expecting such generosity.’

‘Of course, you have a lot of influence over there.’ Evelyn intends the words to be complimentary, yet they fall as flat as a bad joke.

They don’t speak as they inch past the glass cabinets and through the light-filled sanctuary with its covered swimming pool and many echoes. Soft voices and clangs can be heard from the kitchen, but it’s a slow time of day: too late for lunchtime traffic, too early for the after-work rush. When at last they reach the storeroom, Rosaline is blotch-cheeked and shaky. Evelyn looks away as Rosaline catches her breath and rubs her back; embarrassed for her and also, to her own shame, faintly smug.

‘This is impressive,’ Evelyn enthuses, crouching down to peek in the box. She frowns at a crude black woolen doll with clown lips and a minstrel’s outfit. ‘Well … Maybe not this.’

‘Oh.’ Rosaline frowns too, still clutching her back. ‘I used to have one of those as a girl.’ She shakes her head. ‘A long time ago.’

‘Why don’t I get the next box,’ Evelyn suggests, in her best attempt at a deferential tone. ‘You can hold the door or something.’

Rosaline doesn’t dignify this with an answer, just flaps her hands and marches on out. Evelyn slinks behind; if Rosaline wants to play the martyr, that’s fine with her. Jim has told her about Rosaline’s bad back — one of the many reasons they have ceased marital relations — yet she thinks better of mentioning this as they heft the next box from the trunk. ‘I’ll ask the youth choir to sort through these tonight. There’s no reason they should go to the Gift Wrapping Committee any later than Monday.’

‘Ohh, noo,’ Rosaline protests, her vowels comically rounded. ‘I’ll ask the boys.’

Evelyn feels a flash of anxiety at this reference to Jim’s sons, sensitive-eyed coltish pre-teens as unknown to her as creatures in a paddock seen through the window of a speeding car. Perhaps Rosaline feels anxious, too, since everything about her face seems to either twitch or droop before she starts laboring with renewed vigor.

A copper-brown coupé turns in to the parking lot. Both women look up to watch Jim hunch out with two non-Temple men. Evelyn flicks through her mental log of appointments: The Prosperity Gazette, Friday 4pm.

‘… A place all people can call their own.’ Jim is gesturing at the building. ‘I mean that, all. Shelter for the cold, food for the hungry, employment for the unemployed. Proselytizing, that’s not important to me. I’m very down-to-earth. I plan to feed hundreds this Christmas and make sure no child, county-over, goes without a gift.’

‘And your services? Is it true that you claim to heal cancer, blindness …?’

‘Healing, that’s just a small part of what we do.’ Gentle as Jim’s voice is, Evelyn can tell he doesn’t like the question — that miniscule sharp note only a lover could perceive, or perhaps a wife. ‘Every Sunday, we discuss current affairs. We got individuals testifying. Activities for the young people, music … Children’s choir, they’ll be here in a little whiles, rehearsing for the Christmas show. Cutest thing you’ll ever see,’ he says mildly. ‘I don’t like to talk about healings too much. Gives the impression, for some, we don’t believe in medical science. Fact is, we got a wonderful system of care homes. Drug rehabilitation program. My wife, Rosaline, she works for the State Health Department inspecting — well, she can probably tell you better herself.’

Jim shines a smile in Rosaline’s direction, a smile that includes Evelyn, but impersonally, like a Labrador dropping a tennis ball at the feet of a stranger. Evelyn sees Rosaline’s face become smooth and serene, the face of the woman who stands onstage with Jim on Sunday mornings. ‘That’s Mrs. Jones?’ The reporter tilts his head at Rosaline, and there’s no sign he’s even seen Evelyn. ‘Say, Reverend … could we get a picture of you two together?’

Jim smile twists. ‘Sure, Burt. If Rosaline don’t mind.’

Rosaline demurs, ‘Oh. Well. Y’know, a picture of Jim and the boys’d be nicer. They’ll be back from school any min—’

‘We’d love a shot of just the two of you first, Mrs. Jones.’

Rosaline blushes at her feet, pats her beehive, shakes her head; accepts. Evelyn feels her insides ripple like silk, watching Rosaline creep toward the men, the way she allows herself to be directed, shoulder encircled by Jim. The way her pink-and-white coloring contrasts with Jim’s tan and blue-black; her doe-eyes with his Asiatic squint; her close-lipped smile with his wide grin. Evelyn thinks what a pity it is that the photographs won’t be in color. She thinks of getting some copies made for sale after Sunday services. Thinks of everything, except what she would look like, standing in Rosaline’s place.