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“YOU’RE STILL IN BED?”
She glanced at the clock before looking at her husband. Almost nine. Orchard Grove Bible could never run a business meeting in less than two and a half hours.
She sat up and adjusted the blankets around her. “How did everything go?”
“Oh, fine,” Greg huffed and loosened his collar.
“Anything important come up?” she asked out of habit, certain she didn’t want to know.
“Everything’s important at those meetings. You know how riled up people get.”
She searched his face for signs of strain. Was she making him even more stressed out? When they were engaged, she pictured herself creating a calm, peaceful home where he could relax after work. She imagined long talks far into the night. Drives through apple country. Leisurely walks around the neighborhood.
Her mom was right about one thing. Katrina had no idea what she was getting into when she and Greg said I do.
“How was your night here?”
Katrina searched his voice for that familiar accusatory tone. The same tone he’d use after he’d emerge from his office at the church, glance at the messy dishes, the loads of laundry dumped on the couch and ask, “What was your day like?” A question which could be so innocuous if it weren’t for that particular upturn of his eyebrows. The tell-tale tilt of his head.
She couldn’t figure him out sometimes. “I’m all right,” she answered.
“Yeah? How are those cramps?”
“Better.”
She used to love watching him perform the most mundane tasks. Slipping out of his work clothes. Stretching his muscles before climbing into bed beside her.
“Oh, we talked about the pageant tonight. I guess Mrs. Porter mentioned it to you today in the nursery?”
They were both lying on their backs. Katrina stared at the ceiling, at the tiny cottage-cheese bumps that made constellations overhead. “Yeah.” She was only paying half attention. In those intricate snowflake-like designs above her were notes. Music she could play if only she could hear it a little more clearly. Music she could touch if she could quiet her soul long enough. She pressed her fingers into her palm, playing on an imaginary fingerboard.
“If you want, I can see about finding a teen or two to help out at rehearsals.”
She didn’t want to talk about that. Didn’t want to focus on anything but the sound she was making in her mind. Before she married Greg, she had been so free with her music. She could make her violin mimic her emotions with the draw of a bow. She could put fire and longing into her instrument and then turn around and perform the exact same strain with a haunting sadness that could leave her listeners chilled.
Now her music was chaotic. Disorganized. Even when she played at church before the miscarriage, the notes had been rote. Scripted for her by someone else’s hand. Would she ever play like herself again?
She had only practiced five or ten minutes tonight. Her side still smarted.
She tightened the blankets around her. Shut her eyes. Imagined how Dmitry felt inside his weather-proof, velvet-lined case. Did he enjoy the solitude? Did his strings still echo with the last refrains she played?
Greg was saying something about budget cuts for the holiday dinners the church passed out each year. She was glad he didn’t mention the icy sidewalks or the neglected light downstairs. Before long he was mumbling. She couldn’t imagine putting her voice through what he did every Sunday. She couldn’t imagine speaking in public either, so it was a good thing she was just the pastor’s wife.
Pastor’s wife. The title had sounded so important. Glamorous even as she had prepared to marry the pastor-elect of Orchard Grove Bible Church. Nobody had warned her about the endless calls to nursery volunteers, the lunch and dinner guests once or twice a week who seemed eager to comment on Katrina’s obvious lack of experience in the kitchen, the impossible expectations of Mrs. Porter and the entire Women’s Missionary League.
“... will both be out of town, so we’ll need someone to help lead worship the Sunday before Christmas. I said between the two of us we’d work it out.”
She stopped fingering along with her imaginary music. “What?”
“Well, I figured with my guitar and your violin, we could pull something together.”
“You told them that?” Her pitch rose against her will. That was another mistake she had made during her engagement. She assumed pastors’ wives didn’t raise their voices.
He was staring at the ceiling too. Was he watching the patterns? Listening for their song?
She twisted her ring around her finger. “You know I can’t sing.”
“Nobody’s asking you to. Just play along with me while everyone else sings. No big deal.”
Her heart raced higher into her chest until she feared it might leap into her throat and gag her. Her ribcage squeezed in to about half its usual size. She couldn’t take in a deep breath. “I can’t believe you told them I’d play.”
“You used to play every Sunday.”
“That was for accompaniment. What do you think I can do, just plunk out the melody while everyone sings along?”
He inhaled deeply. She envied his lungs. “I hadn’t thought that far, to be honest. All I thought was I’m married to a first-class violinist, she’s agreed to play in church before, this time we’ll just be short a few singers. No big deal.”
Her mind threw out so many counter arguments she didn’t know which to scream at him first. She lay still, frozen in her fortress of blankets. There were no musical patterns in the ceiling now, only a storm, a blizzard.
Greg rolled onto his side to face her. “Talk to me, Mouse. What are you thinking?”
Where should she start? She was thinking about how the last time she had played her violin — really played it, not tinkered around for a few minutes — her child had died. She was thinking about how many times during the interview process both she and Greg had informed everyone that she was not a worship leader. She was thinking about why Greg would volunteer her when he knew how traumatic it was for her to have to play any time she felt pressured into it.
What was she thinking? There were too many ways to answer the question, all of them resulting in more arguments. “Nothing,” she answered.
“So you’ll do it?”
Why was he pushing?
“Fine.” Isn’t that what a pastor’s wife was supposed to say? Support her husband in his ministry. Put his needs before her own. Even the church’s needs if it came to it. But that was the thing. He didn’t need her. Couldn’t he get up and strum his guitar and lead worship on his own? What purpose would it serve having her up there unless it was to appease those meddling members of the Women’s Missionary League who were just dying to hear her play again? Isn’t that what this really came down to? She envisioned events as they must have unfolded at the business meeting. The two other vocalists mentioned they’d be out of town a particular Sunday. Greg said he could lead with his guitar. And then someone, Mrs. Porter or one of her many busybody clones, would have said something like, “Oh, and you should ask Katrina to lead worship with you. You know, we’ve missed her violin so much since she quit playing all of a sudden.”
Katrina had been to enough of those monthly business meetings to picture everything, right down to the nods of the less vocal members of the League who might not have voiced the same suggestion but supported it all the same.
This is what she got from Greg. Her husband. The man who was supposed to know her better than anyone else in the world. The man who was supposed to protect her. Love her sacrificially. Not use her like some pulpit prop to make his own preaching career more successful.
“You shaking, Mouse?”
“It’s just cold in here.” She knew better than to expect him to offer to turn up the thermostat.
“You ready for me to turn off the light?”
She rolled over and faced the wall. “Yeah.”
“Good night.”
No, it wasn’t a good night. But it could have been worse. She let out a choppy breath, glad her lungs had decided to function a little better than before. Greg’s phone beeped, and she wondered for a fleeting moment who would be texting him after nine. His phone’s glow cast a blue light on the wall as he checked his message.
“Good night,” she whispered, doubting he even heard.