Pearce Porter took a look around the tackle shop and wondered where to begin. With poles, he guessed. He needed a fishing pole if he was going to be in White Pines Junction for the year.
His life travels told him that locals were naturally suspicious of outsiders, so he had to become one of them as quickly as he could. These people, locals and tourists and seasonal residents all, fished. So if he was to minister to their souls the way God and his church agreed he was to do, he had to become one of them.
So he’d start with a fishing pole.
He picked one out of the rack and admired it, then quickly put it back when he saw the price tag.
“Muskie rod,” someone behind him said, and Pearce turned to find a barrel-chested, gray-haired man in khakis and a blue polo shirt. “They’re expensive, but they’re sturdy. You fishing for muskie?”
Pearce held out his hand and introduced himself, then admitted he didn’t know what a muskie was.
The man with the big face, twinkly eyes and glossy teeth picked out a much smaller pole. “Game fish,” he said. “Predator. Chances are, you’re looking for something more like panfish,” he said. “Crappie, perch, maybe a small walleye or two.”
“Fine,” Pearce said as he looked at the price tag on the smaller pole. That was far more reasonable, especially since it already had a reel attached.
“Need more?”
“Everything, I’m afraid.”
The man picked up a tackle box, opened it and started plucking things off their pegs and dropping them into the box.
The bell on the door dinged, but neither man looked up.
“And finally,” Doc said, for Pearce had learned that this gentle, man in his late fifties owned the tackle shop and went by the name of Doc, “line.” He dropped a spool in. “Got a fishing license?”
“Nope.”
“Come on, then, we’ll fix you up.”
Pearce followed Doc to the checkout counter, between the rows of mysterious things hanging on hooks, past the live wells of minnows and leeches and suckers, to the front of the store where a giant toothed fish grinned down on them from the wall overhead.
“My wife, Sadie Katherine, takes people out as a panfish guide,” Doc said as he copied information from Pearce’s driver’s license onto the fishing license form. “She can teach you how to use all that gear to bring dinner home to your family.”
Somebody dropped a whole box of something noisy in the back of the store. Pearce looked around, but couldn’t see anyone.
Doc tallied the bill and Pearce pulled out his wallet. As he did, the front door opened again, and four bearded men wearing baseball caps came in, laughing with the camaraderie Pearce hoped to be sharing with them soon. Doc greeted each, then made change for Pearce.
He wanted to stay to meet the men, his new neighbors. He wanted to talk and joke, but he didn’t know the lingo, didn’t know the area, and until he knew what questions to ask, he felt like too much of an outsider.
He made an appointment to meet up with Sadie Katherine, and then left, brand-new gear in hand, as the other guys took his place at the counter, leaning with elbows, hips and familiarity, and envy gripped Pearce’s heart.
Maybe it was time he insisted on his own church, settled down in one community and made it home. This was too hard every couple of years, moving to a whole new culture. Hard on him, hard on Regina.
He threw his purchases into the trunk then, unwilling to leave town with the taste of envy in his mouth, slammed the trunk and eyed the small dress shop across the street. He could go over and introduce himself as the new pastor, something he hadn’t been able to do at the tackle shop for some reason, though Doc gave no indication that he was anything but a fine Christian man.
White Pines Junction was as pretty a little town as he’d ever seen, Pearce thought as he looked up and down the small street. Tidy little storefronts, just like he imagined a little Bavarian ski resort would look like. Or something. He didn’t really know. It had a little grocery, the tackle shop, a real-estate office and a couple of other shops. The diner, at the end of the block, seemed to anchor the place. Across the street was the little dress shop, the boat dealer, a gas station, the post office, and a couple of little shops, with the lake at the other end of it. All around were tidy little houses with tidy little yards. He and Regina had been given a nice little parsonage on the grounds of the church, and it all looked like something out of a fairy tale.
He started across the street when he heard the tinkle of the tackle shop bell, but didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see those four men pile into one truck together, laughter on their tongues, tackle shop bags in their hands.
A lovely young woman greeted him in the dress shop, introducing herself, and when Pearce told her who he was, her smile slipped a fraction and her hand slid from his handshake. She looked out to the front window and said, “Is that your wife?”
“No,” Pearce started to say, because he left Regina at home with her monthly migraine, but sure enough, she was standing by the car, hands on hips, looking at the dress shop. “Why yes, I see that it is,” he said. “Has she been in to meet you?”
“Sort of,” the young woman said.
“Well, I’ll be taking over the Sunday services beginning this Sunday at ten o’clock, and I would be delighted to see you and your family in church.”
“No family,” the girl said, peering out the window. “She’s gone now.”
Pearce looked outside and could see no evidence of his wife. Rats, he thought to himself, it’s starting again.
“Sometimes,” he said, “people get attached to a pastor and have a difficult time with his replacement, but I hope you’ll give me a chance.”
“Might as well,” the girl said.
They shook hands again, Pearce reluctant to ask her name again. Was it Kimberly? He should have remembered it when she told him the first time.
He left the dress shop feeling like he did a pretty poor job of salesmanship, and was resentful that selling had to be part of his job.
Maybe White Pines Junction had a hospital. He could go there and meet a few people who would then feel obligated to come on Sunday. He wanted to give a good sermon, and he was always better in front of a full house.
But there was plenty of time for that. This was only Tuesday. Now he had to go home, find Regina and nip this behavior in the bud before it got out of hand like last time. If she didn’t start acting like a pastor’s wife, he’d never get a permanent church.
She was home in bed by the time he got there, telltale redness in her cheeks and perspiration on her forehead, her yellow dress tossed over the arm of the chair.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I think I better go to the doctor in the morning,” she said weakly.
So she’d been in the tackle shop and heard his fishing arrangements with Sadie Katherine.
“I’m going fishing in the morning,” he said, “as if you didn’t know.”
She turned on her side away from him.
“You have to stop following me, Regina. Already the folks in town have noticed.”
“I’m not,” she said petulantly.
“I saw you,” he said. “You’re stalking me.”
Her silence made him want to slap her, but of course he never would. She was sick, and he needed to get her some help. He sighed. They’d been down that road a few times before, too.
He stood up and went into the kitchen to fix dinner, worry heavy in his heart. Regina usually didn’t start this jealousy thing or whatever it was for a good six to eight months into a new assignment. He’d put up with it for four to six months and the church would move them to a fresh location.
But this time. . . . They’d not been here a whole month yet and already it had started.
A bad omen for certain.
~~~
Pearce got the hang of fishing fast under the private tutelage of Sadie Katherine, a wily, gray-haired woman with a peculiar face and a quick smile. They met at five a.m. and had a full bucket of fish by eight. Pearce learned enough about his gear to rig it himself and catch his own from then on out, as long as the ice stayed off the lake.
He caught a glimpse of pink in the forest along the bank of the lake as Sadie Katherine motored them back to the dock.
And another flash of pink behind a tree as she showed him how to clean his catch in the little hut built for exactly that purpose.
Pearce paid her, thanked her, invited her and Doc to church on Sunday, then took his catch home.
He was rebagging it for the freezer when Regina came in, legs scratched and bleeding, twigs in her hair, frost on the ends of her hair. She’d been crying.
“I saw you kissing her,” she said.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I told her husband.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did and he’s coming to kill you. With a big gun.”
Pearce finished what he was doing, washed and dried his hands and then went to her and held her.
She clung to him, sobbing.
He didn’t know what to do. “C’mon, let’s see to these scratches,” he said, and she followed dutifully to the bathroom where he washed off all the blood, kissed each scratch and put ointment on it. “If you do this in the summer, you’ll be sick with poison ivy,” he said.
She nodded like she understood, but he knew she didn’t.
When she was all cleaned up, he washed her face and then took off her torn and stained pink dress and put her to bed. He took off his clothes, got in next to her and held her close.
Her hands began to rub him in a most pleasant manner, and he let her do that for a while, as he puzzled yet again over her situation and what to do about it.
And then it came to him. She wasn’t cut out to be a pastor’s wife. She didn’t like doing all those pastor’s-wife social things. Regina had a style of her own and he’d been trying to stuff her into a mold that didn’t fit. The answer was obvious.
“Honey?” he said.
She stopped what she was doing. “What?”
“I think you should get a job.”
“No,” she said, “a baby.”
“No baby,” Pearce said.
“Please? I’ll be a good mommy, Pearce, you don’t know what a good mommy I can be. Please? Pretty please?”
It wasn’t as if this was a brand-new topic of conversation, but this time Pearce thought he ought to consider it. If she had a baby to obsess over, maybe she’d leave him alone. “Okay,” he said, but cringed as he did so, as if he were sentencing his poor, unborn and as-yet unconceived child to a dreadful life.
Regina caught her breath in disbelief. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Right now,” she said, and climbed on top of him. As demanding as she was, he found that strangely stimulating and he responded in spite of himself. When he cried out, “Oh God,” at the critical moment, he meant it.
The next moment, to his surprise, she got up, showered, fixed herself up a little bit, then sat, prim and proper at the breakfast table. She took small bites of the omelet he made, ate her toast dry, drank a big glass of water, and wiped her mouth daintily on a paper napkin, which she then folded and laid next to her plate.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said. “I need to go shopping.”
Pearce extracted a twenty from his wallet and gave it to her, and she jumped up and hugged him with childlike enthusiasm. Then she smoothed her dress, tucked the twenty into her little purse, and sat down to wait for the stores to open. Strangely pleased, Pearce went into his study and began to prepare Sunday’s sermon.
He heard her leave, and he enjoyed the silence. Regina was accustomed to leaving him to himself when he was in his study, but it had taken him many years to train her to leave him alone, and, while she finally agreed, she never understood. He always felt her hurt feelings seeping through the cracks around the door. But when she was out of the house, he felt truly free. In fact, he resented having to spend this time working. He could watch television, or read a book in the living room, or just be alone in the house, without her jumping into his lap or trying to attract his attention in a million different ways.
She was a joy, she was his joy, but she was also a burden.
He worked in peace, and about the time he stretched and was beginning to consider making a pot of coffee, he heard the front door slam. A moment later, she threw open the door to his den and stood at the threshold, staring at him with an accusatory glare made up of pain and hurt and wildfire.
“Honey?”
“I hate you,” she said, turned on her heel and a moment later, he heard the bedroom door slam.
Oh lord.
He counted to one hundred very slowly, then got up and went to the bedroom. Instead of the soggy, sopping, sobbing mess he expected to find on the bed, she was sitting on the edge, her knees together, her hands folded in her lap. Her face was tear stained, but composed.
“Hi,” he said.
“I can’t hate you,” she said. “It’s not good for the baby.”
“Why would you hate me?”
“For bringing me here. For letting me think I could have a baby.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know what goes on here. You know about the babies disappearing. You never wanted to have any kids, and your way of getting around that was by bringing me here so I could have babies and they’d disappear so that you wouldn’t have to have them around. It wouldn’t be your fault.” She hiccupped, but kept her actions under control.
“Honey, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. We’re going to have a baby, I said so. If it didn’t work last night, we’ll try again tonight. Don’t worry.”
“They disappear, Pearce, the babies in this place disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“Magic. Evil magic. Witch stuff. That’s why the church sent us here, don’t you know? They want us to kill the evil here.”
“Did you have lunch?” he asked. “Let’s go wash your face, have a little something to eat, then we’ll investigate this thing about the babies.” He sat down on the bed next to her. “Nothing’s going to happen to our baby, Regina. I love you and I love that baby, and we’re going to be a nice little family, the three of us.”
She looked up at him with trusting, childlike eyes, and he nodded. A big tear tripped over the lower lid, skidded down her cheek and fell on the back of his hand. “C’mon now,” he said. “Let me cook a nice dinner for you and that baby in there.”
“Okay,” she said, and sniffed.
“If you’re going to have a baby, you’ve got to let me take care of you,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll take good care,” he said, and opened his arms. She fell into them and began to sob all over again. He just held her tight.
“I want to be a good mom,” she choked out.
“You will be,” Pearce said and rocked her back and forth. “You will be.”
~~~
The next day, when Pearce came home from his daily search for people to minister to, he found the kitchen filled with empty grocery bags, the hallway full of aluminum foil boxes and the spare room covered in foil—walls, ceiling, windows. Regina started when she heard him at the door, and looked up from where she was affixing the last bit of foil to the wall with a strip of duct tape and said, “What do we do about the floor?”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to sleep in here from now on. And the baby will have to stay in here until he’s twelve.”
Pearce looked at the room, which gave him a headache, and his wife kneeling on the floor, which gave him indigestion, and turned away. He went to the kitchen and began folding up the paper sacks. They came, he noted, from all three of the stores in White Pines Junction. She must have bought them all out of foil.
Bags stowed, he put water on to boil and began to mix up a tuna casserole. Why couldn’t she fixate on prenatal nutrition, or learning nursery rhymes, or finding the best school in the neighborhood? Instead, she’ll be going to UFO conventions before long. She’d be speaking at them. She’d dedicate their child to them. She’d be marshalling the U.S. Army against them, for god’s sake.
The whole thing gave Pearce a headache. And a heartache. And it made him nervous about his career. Eventually, he’d like to settle down with a church and a congregation of his own, live in the parsonage and raise a whole bagful of kids, but how was that to be done if Regina wasn’t going to let their firstborn out of his mirrored room until he was twelve?
She was troubled, and it was becoming time for him to take some action. They could move from Vargas County, but he didn’t think that would solve the problem. It would take care of the current paranoia, but something else would surface.
No, it was up to Pearce to take the situation in hand and deal with his wife. Firmly, but gently. The way Jesus would.
“Honey?” he called. “Do you want garlic cheesebread with your tuna noodle casserole?”
She was by his side in an instant. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll slice the bread and you sprinkle the cheese.”
She got the canister down from the shelf and stood next to him, waiting for him to make the first slice so she could sprinkle.
“Regina, have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”
“Why?”
“I was just wondering. If we’re going to have a baby, we ought to know when, so we can prepare.”
“Nine months,” she said.
“I think we should take a test.”
“No tests. The aliens could go through the garbage and see it. Then they’d know where to come.” She buttered the bread, then sprinkled the garlic cheese, careful to get both even, all the way to the edges. “Let’s name him Spartacus.”
“Who?”
“Our baby.”
“What if it’s a girl?”
Regina silently buttered and sprinkled. “Let’s eat these now,” she said, and looked up at him with the trusting eyes of a child. “And then let’s have ice cream.”
Pearce looked into those eyes and remembered why he’d married her. She had been so youthful, so fun, so sweet, and she looked to be the model of a perfect clergy wife-in-making. But this disease, or whatever it was that had sprouted in her mind, was growing more prevalent and turning her maturity clock backwards. He was afraid for her. “Okay,” he said, and put the bread in with the casserole. When it came out, they sat down and ate all the toasted bread and let the casserole bake. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow we’ll eat that casserole and then we’ll go to a doctor.
But the next morning, she threw up. Pearce sat on the floor and held her head while she puked into the toilet, and his spirits took a serious tumble, along with the realization that with the morning sickness would surely come a baby. She still needed some kind of help, although Prozac or something of its ilk was clearly out of the question now that she was carrying a child.
Regina grew ever more beautiful in the following days, while Pearce’s sleep was disturbed by visions of childproofing their home, and not only for the baby.
He knew she was sick, and would need some type of treatment, but, for the time being, he could handle it. He just had to monitor her progress, make sure she ate properly, saw to her personal hygiene, kept her safe and made certain that she wasn’t left alone.
As he was fairly new in the community, he wasn’t much missed. He still found time to prepare sermons, and preached them to a thin audience on Sunday mornings, Regina prettied up and sitting in the front pew. Eventually, her condition became obvious, and she was the first one to poke her belly around at people so they’d notice. They began to get congratulatory handshakes and a few invitations to dinner and such, which he discreetly declined.
Things work out somehow, he thought, and was glad that they were new enough in the community to be fairly invisible. They’d be moving on, according to the church, not long after the baby was born, and that too, was good. They didn’t need to make any lasting impressions or relationships here. The fewer questions about the new pastor and his strange wife the better. One day at a time, he coped increasingly competently as what amounted to being the single parent of his pregnant wife.
By the time Month Nine rolled around, Regina was wearing aluminum foil helmets around the house and Pearce had to keep her inside. She had her moments of lucidity, but they were fleeting. He worried about the fact that he hadn’t taken her for prenatal medical help, but she was young and healthy—in body if not in mind—and he made sure she ate well and got enough sleep. But what he really worried about was the genetic significance of what was happening to her, and the chemical imbalance it surely caused in her system and how it would affect the baby.
Oh well. Nothing to be done about it yet.
But when the pains of childbirth began, Regina was not to be controlled.
She had spent the day singing at the top of her lungs, and marching around the house with a wooden spoon, the tinfoil hat tattered and bent, but securely on her head, while Pearce was trying his hardest to concentrate on the sermon he was writing.
“Ow,” Regina said.
Pearce jumped up to see what she’d done to hurt herself, but what he saw chilled him. She was standing in the middle of the living room, wooden spoon at her feet, and she had her hands around the swollen lump of a belly. Her time had come and he was unprepared. In fact, he had worried over the course of action, knowing that this day would come, but having never made a decision about anything, he was totally and completely unprepared. Now he had to consciously calm himself before he panicked and scared Regina.
“What’s happening, pumpkin?”
“It hurts me.”
“The baby’s coming,” he said, his mind racing. If they got in the car right now, he could get her to a hospital in the next town where nobody knew them. He could make up a doctor’s name, and say they were just passing through, and the baby was early. . . .
“Ow!” She hit her stomach with her fists. “Make it stop.”
Oh man, Pearce thought, she hasn’t seen anything yet. She’ll need drugs. “C’mon, let’s go to the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Yep. That’s where they get the baby out of your tummy without it hurting.”
“Then we’ll bring it home?”
“Yes.” He moved to hug her, but she dodged him.
“No. The baby belongs in here.” She opened the door to the tinfoiled room, where every possible surface, including the crib mattress, had been covered with foil.
“Why?”
A puzzled look came across her face, and Pearce was happy that whatever had happened to her brain had progressed to the point where she forgot all about the UFO stuff. “C’mon, Regina, let’s go get that baby out of your tummy, and then we’ll bring him home.”
“Okay,” she said, but then a pain gripped her and like a little wild animal, she started to scream, then slammed out the front door and ran through the snow, screaming, toward town.
Pearce chased her, and caught her a block away, her tinfoil hat askew and caught in her hair. She was out of breath and pain and fear showed feral in her eyes. “Honey? Honey, settle down, now listen to me. I can make the pain stop, but we’ve got to get into the car to do it.”
“No!” she started to yell and beat her fists against him.
He held her tighter, trying to control her, but her legs buckled the same time as she bit his arm, and he let go.
Pearce looked at her on the ground, in the snow, her little yellow cotton dress up over her skinny knees, tears running down the sides of her face as she looked up at him, and he didn’t know what to do.
Then Jimbo’s truck pulled over, and he jumped out with his cell phone to his ear. He said, “Are you all right, Pastor?”
It was all Pearce could do to keep from crying. “She’s in labor.”
“Can you come over here, honey?” Jimbo said into the phone, then he folded it and put it in his pocket. He squatted down next to Regina, who shrank from him and turned to hug her husband’s legs. “Hi, Mrs. Porter,” Jimbo said. “So you’re about to have that baby, are you? Bet you’re excited.”
Regina sat up and started to bawl.
“Margie’s on her way over. You know she’s had two sons, and she’ll help you, because she knows what to do.”
A contraction gripped Regina, and her face went red. When it was over, she just said, “Get it out of me. Get it away from me!”
“We need to go to the hospital, honey,” Pearce said, and gave Jimbo a look he hoped would translate into taking his side.
“That’s right, Mrs. Porter,” Jimbo said. “Babies come out in hospitals.”
Margie came running across the street, shrugging into her parka, and gasped when she saw Regina in her little cotton dress on the ground in the freezing snow. “What’s going on?”
“Mrs. Porter’s going to have her baby,” Jimbo said, “and she’s not quite up to it.”
“Give her your coat,” Margie demanded, then sat down on the ground with Regina while Jimbo put his sheepskin Levi’s jacket around her shoulders.
“Time for the hospital?” she asked.
“Don’t want to go,” Regina whined.
“They’ll stop it from hurting,” Margie said, and Pearce was amazed at how easily everyone fell into communicating at Regina’s level. Apparently he wasn’t as secretive with her condition as he thought he’d been.
“Okay,” Regina said, then began to stand up. Margie put one arm around her, and Pearce got on the other side of her, and Regina began to shiver with the cold as they walked slowly back to the house, toward the car. Pearce was just about to ask Margie to go along for the ride, when Regina stopped, dead in her tracks.
“Oh, no,” she said softly, and liquid trickled out from between her legs into the snow.
“It’s okay,” Margie said, but Regina wasn’t hearing her.
“Something’s happening,” she said, and, for a moment, Pearce looked into her eyes and saw the woman he had married.
“Let’s hurry,” he said to her, and she nodded. They picked up the pace, and while Margie got Regina settled in the front seat, Pearce grabbed the keys and his wallet.
“Can you go with us?” he asked her under his breath.
“Can’t,” she said apologetically. “Diner. But it’s not far. Take County Road M east four miles, turn north. There’s a sign. It’s another ten miles. You’ll be there in no time.”
“Thanks,” he said, then got in the car with his silent wife, who was disentangling the foil from her hair. He started the car and sprayed gravel as he fishtailed around and out onto the county road, not even using his turn signal.
Four miles. He punched the trip meter so he’d know, although he was certain he’d seen the blue marker sign. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer. Pearce took a deep breath and looked at her. She was calmly sitting, her backrest reclined a little bit.
“Honey?”
“They’re coming for us,” she said, her voice rising with hysteria.
There it was, the blue sign with the H for Hospital. He turned, and stepped on the accelerator. The air seemed to thin out and he took deep breaths to compensate.
“Oh, no,” she said. “No, no! Oh Pearce, do you hear them? Oh my god, it’s so sad.”
Pearce slammed on the brakes and the car slid to a stop on the shoulder of the road, just in time to watch Regina’s belly deflate like a punctured basketball. “Honey?”
“Oh,” she said as if she were as mystified and amazed as he at the sinking of her abdomen. It was the sighing “oh” of an epiphany, of a disappointment, of an acceptance.
“Honey?”
She turned to look at him with eyes that were as old as his, and no longer held childlike merriment. She took a great, heaving breath, almost a sob, and let it out slowly.
“Are you okay?”
She caught another ragged breath, then said, “Perhaps.”
“Do you need anything? I mean, what happened?” He put his hand lightly on her stomach and felt only soft, giving flesh whereas only a moment ago, it was hard and ripe. He felt panic rising, but tempered it in the face of her unearthly calm. Was the baby on the floor of the car? “Should we go to the hospital?”
“That might be prudent,” she said, “although I doubt that there is a real need.” She picked up the battered piece of a tinfoil hat and began to unfold it and flatten it out on her knee.
“Honey?” Pearce turned off the engine.
“Yes?”
“The baby?”
“Gone.” Another sobbing sigh, and this time a few tears came with it. “Gone to be with the rest of them. And they took something of me with it.”
No kidding, Pearce thought. What happened to the child-woman he’d been dealing with for the past year?
Kidnapped, he thought. Snatched. Mother and child together. Exactly what Regina had been afraid would happen.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
Or not, he thought. The disappointment Pearce felt surpassed anything he had ever encountered. He wanted that baby, he looked forward to having that baby in the house. We could just start this car and keep on driving, he thought, because we don’t have anything here, we don’t have any roots, we don’t have any furniture, we don’t have any friends. We have Jimbo’s jacket, but we can send that to him. Or keep it. We could just keep going away from this damned place, and find ourselves a decent place, a place where children don’t disappear and take their child-like mothers with them. Let’s just keep going, he wanted to say to her, let’s just be irresponsible for once and get out of here. To hell with the church, to hell with White Pines Junction, to hell with the dreams of home and family and a parish of our own. Let’s just run and keep running until we fall down.
Or until we can find a place where we can realize our dreams.
But instead, he started the car and turned it back toward home. “We’ll have explaining to do,” he said.
“There is nothing to explain,” Regina said. “There is no explanation.” She folded the aluminum foil into a tiny square and set it on the dashboard. “I’m sure I ought to take a day or two to rest, but then I’ll have to make a casserole for Sunday’s potluck.”
Pearce had no answer for that. He not only missed his baby, but he missed his wife. This sensible creature next to him reminded him of the woman he had married, but not the woman he had come to love. He pulled back into the driveway, ran around the car to open the door and help her out. She took off the soiled cotton dress and put on a sensible flannel nightie that had languished in the bottom drawer of her dresser for over a year. Then she got into bed and asked for a cup of hot tea.
When Pearce brought it to her, she took his hand and kissed it. “Perhaps you ought to go fishing one of these days,” she said. “Make a few friends in this community.”
With those few words, Pearce’s shattered dreams began to reassemble. He remembered what it was like to have friends, buddies, a congregation, the hope for his own church. A proper clergy wife. Solid standing in the community. The family part could wait for the next assignment. One of these days the church would give them their own parish. Maybe the next one would be the permanent one.
Whatever had just happened was not necessarily a tragedy, he decided. Life is long enough for each of us to achieve our dreams in time, isn’t it?
“Good idea,” he said. “Now you rest, and I’ll check in on you a little later.” He kissed her cheek, then closed the door quietly behind him. As he passed the tinfoiled room, he wondered if she had been right about that, too.
Well, he’d get his parish now that he had a normal wife. And life would be simpler, and much more normal.
But that didn’t exactly mean better, did it?
A good topic for next Sunday’s sermon.