Her voice was very much as I imagined—almost startlingly deep but thoroughly feminine, with just the barest trace of a Delta accent.
The Reverend beamed. “I heard something about the paper this morning, but I didn’t pay it no mind. I understand that you have a long and personal history with this fine church, and I surely hope I can convince you to stay on with us.”
“I think you’ll find that it isn’t me who has the long history with the church, Reverend. That would be my mother. And, until he dropped off the face of the planet, my brother.”
“Speaking of your mother . . . I’ve heard so much about her. Is she with you?”
“Mother stayed at home tonight. The night air plays havoc on her bones. She sends her regards, though. She told me to tell you that she’ll meet you this Sunday . . . God willing, to use her own words.”
“Well, I sure am looking forward to it.”
“Thank you, Reverend Childe. That’s very kind of you.”
It could’ve been my imagination, but I thought I saw something interesting then. The Reverend had been putting on his charm to the hilt, that magnetic quality of his that seemed to affect everyone. But it didn’t seem as if Elise Garrity was biting. She looked at him politely when he talked, she allowed him to take her hand in greeting. But there wasn’t even an iota of sexual charge between them, and the Reverend actually blushed under her frank disinterest in him.
For some reason, I really enjoyed that.
Oldfield stood back, listening to their exchange, nodding his head gravely. He patted the Reverend on the shoulder, muttered something affirmative. I cleared my throat. The Reverend jumped as if he hadn’t noticed me before, then took my arm happily and said, “Charlie! Where you been hiding? Miss Garrity, this here’s Charlie Wesley, my assistant.”
She gave me her hand, said, “Mr. Wesley.”
“Good to meet you, Miss Garrity. Please call me Charlie.”
She smiled strangely, almost as if she could read my not-so-innocent thoughts. After what seemed a long moment of silence, Officer Oldfield jumped in and said, “Mr. Wesley and the Reverend are staying upstairs.”
“Is that right?” she said with polite interest. “Is it comfortable?”
The question was addressed to me, but the Reverend answered. “Very cozy indeed, Miss Garrity. I like it being so close to my work. I can go downstairs any time, night or day, to tend to anything needs tending to.”
“Yes. My brother used to like it for the same reason. He lived here alone for the longest time, and we never could get him to come back out to the old house.”
I said, “What old house is that?”
Oldfield jumped in again, “The Garrity family home, out on Swan Road. Been a landmark in Cuba Landing for a couple hundred years now, ain’t that right, Miss Garrity?”
Elise didn’t answer, just smiled at no one in particular.
After another moment of silence, the Reverend finally said, “Well, Miss Garrity, I surely am looking forward to seeing you again, and meeting your mother. I reckon the Ladies Club wants to talk to me about presenting the key to the church now, but I plan on having my first sermon here on Wednesday night. Do you think either of you can attend?”
“I’ll mention it to Mother,” Elise said, in a tone that made me think she might or might not. They shook hands again, and the Reverend ambled off to deal with the Ladies Club.
At first I was pleased that he had other business to attend to, but it only took a moment to realize that he’d been holding the conversation together. Elise Garrity and I stared at each other. Oldfield hung around as well, like somebody’s annoying kid brother.
The lingering silence didn’t seem to bother Elise Garrity. While Oldfield and I sweated it out, she let it nestle heavily. Finally she said, “How long have you been with Reverend Childe now, Mr. Wesley?”
She didn’t look at me when she spoke, only let her eyes wander coolly over the other people.
I said, “Uh . . . for quite some time now.”
“Quite some time?” she said. “What would that be? Years? Months? Days?”
Sweat burned under my arms and I felt a slight flush in my face. I looked at Oldfield, but he seemed unaware of the sudden intensity.
“Exactly,” I said, forcing an easy smile on my face.
My answer was meant to move the conversation along to another topic, with a minimum of fuss, and it only sort of worked. Elise raised an eyebrow, looked at me full on, the half-smile growing into the full model. Even Oldfield looked puzzled by my vagueness.
“Ah,” Elise said. “A secret. I adore secrets.”
“There’s no secret,” I said, knowing I’d already done the damage. “I’m just trying to be clever. Never fails . . . the harder I try, the less I succeed. I’ve actually been with Reverend Childe for a, uh, a number of years now.”
Christ, I thought. Even I wouldn’t believe me. Horrible.
Elise made an intrigued humming sound, then, without looking away from me, she said, “Ernie, forgive me, but I think I need to talk to Mr. Wesley alone for a moment. Do you mind?”
Surprised and embarrassed, Oldfield said, “Oh. Uh, right. Church stuff, huh?”
“Yes. Church stuff.”
“Oh, sure, okay. Uh, well then . . .” He hem-hawed for a moment, not sure how to proceed, then said, “All-righty, then. I reckon I’ll catch up to ya later.”
He stumbled away, trying to look as if he hadn’t just been given the brush-off.
When he was out of earshot, I said, “Well, poor Ernie. Dismissed with the wave of a feminine hand.”
“He’ll get over it. In a few minutes, he’ll have convinced himself that we really do have church business to discuss.”
“Don’t we?”
“Not exactly,” Elise said.
“I see. Then this was just a ruse to get me alone?”
“You presume a great deal, don’t you, Charlie Wesley?” Then, “Is there anything to drink?”
“Coffee,” I said. “And a wide variety of sodas. Nothing with any kick, though.”
“Kick? As in, alcohol kick? Mr. Wesley, you’re speaking to the sister of this church’s former minister. The daughter of this church’s most long-standing member. Do you honestly think I would ever touch the demon whiskey?”
In truth, I would have bet my life on it. I said, “Coffee, then. A more socially acceptable drug. And call me Charlie.”
“Okay then, Charlie. Black, please. Two sugars.”
No question in her eyes that I would run and fetch, and I could find no benefit in being rebellious about it. I left her and made my way back to the coffee table.
But I’d be damned if I’d pour her sugar for her. Nobody’s fool, me.
Mrs. Edels gave me the kind of foul look that only an older woman could give, the kind that takes many years of disapproval to perfect, when I asked for two Styrofoam cups. I grinned at her goofily and she looked away from me and I made my way back to Elise, precariously balancing the steaming coffee.
She didn’t bother with thanks. Taking hers, she said, “So, Charlie Wesley. Why are you lying? Are you just a big fraud, or what?”
“Lying? About what?”
She eyed me cynically, took a sip of her coffee. “You forgot the sugar.”
I started to hand her two packets, and she said, “Would you be so kind? It’s hard to open them with one hand, and I don’t know where to set my coffee.”
I opened the packets, poured them into her cup. So, okay, I was a fool. But not a total fool—I handed her the little plastic stirrer to do herself.
After a moment, she said, “About how long you’ve been with Reverend Childe. Why did you lie?”
“Why are so interested in how long I’ve been with the Reverend?”
She cocked her head. “Well, I wasn’t. Not until you lied about it.”
“Uh-huh. And now you see a little mystery that keeps nagging at you, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe something like that.”
“I would tell you,” I said, “except for the fact that mystery is all I have going for me. If I spilled my guts, where could we possibly go from there?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what the solution to the mystery is.”
I took another sip of coffee, more to hide the fact that I couldn’t think of anything devastatingly clever just then.
After a moment, she said, “Well? What’s your story, Mr. Charlie Wesley?”
The way she kept saying my name, first and last, was starting to get to me. I said, “No story, really. The Reverend and I just met a few days ago, in Memphis.”
“Why would you lie about that?”
I had to admit, I didn’t know. She looked slightly disappointed, and I said, “See? The solution to the mystery is pretty mundane, and now I’ve lost a point.”
“A point?” she said. “Are we playing a game?”
“That seems to be the case.”
“It does, doesn’t it? That’s funny, I don’t normally enjoy games.”
“But you’re enjoying this one.”
Finally, something like a laugh came out of her. She said, “Wow. You’re a bit presumptuous, aren’t you?”
“Not usually,” I said. “But you seem like the sort who appreciates honesty.”
She said, “Honesty? The first thing you said to me was a complete lie, Charlie Wesley.”
We let that one stand out in the open for a while, puffing out its chest, until it got self-conscious and slipped off into a dark corner. She watched me the whole time, her eyes amused needles slowly letting the air out of my confidence. Then I decided to try her own approach on her.
“You’re a bit of a mystery yourself, aren’t you, Miss Garrity?”
“You can call me Elise. And no, I don’t think so. I’m an entirely open book.”
I shook my head. “There’s no such thing as a woman who’s an open book.”
“What an amazingly sexist thing to say.”
“I mean it as a compliment to women. They’re far more complex than men. And I get the feeling that your mysteries run far deeper than mine do.”
“And just what would I have to be mysterious about, Charlie Wesley?”
“I could only guess,” I said. “You just have that look, like you know some great secret the rest of the world doesn’t know about.”
She allowed herself a laugh, and for a moment dropped all pretenses of coolness. “Now you’re trying to appeal to my vanity. Does that trick always work for you?”
“Not always,” I said.
Really, what the hell was I doing here? Was I trying to put the moves on Elise Garrity? Right there in the church, in full view of everybody? Potentially damaging to the set-up the Reverend worked on in Cuba Landing.
But I didn’t care, not right then.
“Often enough, I bet,” she said. “This whole conversation, you’ve been trying to find the right angle, haven’t you? Turn the spotlight away from yourself by flattering me.”
“You give me far too much credit for intelligence.”
“No, not really. Intelligence-wise, you’re probably about average. But you’re well spoken, anyway. Maybe that’s more important.”
“Maybe. It depends on what one’s objective is.”
“And just what is your objective, Mr. Charlie Wesley?”
She volleyed it right back to me again. What the hell. I couldn’t win with this woman.
Mrs. Hatley happened to stroll by just then. She glanced at us, hostility etched into her wrinkled face. When she spoke, the words came just under her breath but still loud enough for us to hear—just the way the old bat intended, I’m sure—“Shameful,” she said. “Indecent.”
The words took a minute chunk out of Elise’s armor, obvious only in a fleeting look on her face. She recovered her poise quickly, but the damage was done. The fun was over.
She stiffened and I stepped back from lecher pose and we both wound up back at square one, do not pass go, do not collect one fucking dollar.
• • •
The Reverend accepted the key to the church from the Ladies Club with much pomp and fanfare. Everyone applauded and he made a short speech about the importance of God and faith in any community and how he aimed to renew everyone’s reliance on the Lord Jesus and how he planned to bring all the lost sheep into the fold. He ended by saying, “But that’s enough of that. Plenty a’ time for preaching on Wednesday night, if all you folks would be kind enough to come. I promise we’ll make it worth your time. Now, go on and have yourself some of Mrs. Edels’s chicken and dumplings before I eat it all up myself!”
Easy laughter all around, and he stepped down to fill his plate.
Elise Garrity and I continued our conversation on a more somber note after that. Several people approached us, tried to butt into the conversation, but a connection had been made and no one else really fit into it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I amused her, or because I wasn’t from Cuba Landing and therefore wasn’t a piece of the subtle machine that had been running so smoothly over her. Or maybe it was just because I was so goddamn charming. At the time I didn’t question it—I just talked to her, enjoyed the rich earthy sound of her voice and the seductive charge of her proximity to me.
“The general opinion,” she said, “is that Jathed is dead. Of course, it wasn’t like him to just disappear like that. We know he went up to Memphis on business, a Baptist convention, and the last anyone saw of him he was leaving Crump Hall. After a couple of months, the Memphis police broke it to Mother. The odds of finding him alive, knowing what was known about him, were slim.”
“It must have been hell on your mother.”
“To say the least,” she said. “He was the apple of her cataracted old eye. This whole town loved Jathed, not just the church-members. He was what you’d call a real pillar of the community and all that. We had a funeral for him, just two months ago, and the whole damn town turned out for it.”
She told the story in a matter-of-fact, unsentimental way. I had to ask.
“Elise . . . if Jathed was so well-loved, why does there seem to be so much . . . so much hostility directed at you?”
She looked at me. “Mother and I live well, and we’ve continued to live well even with Jathed gone. That sticks in the craw of many people who think that the kind of loss we’ve suffered should bring us down. And since Mother is old and sick, they can’t in good conscience wish ill upon her. So it’s come down to me. I’m the one who has to carry all the grief they feel over Jathed. They won’t be happy any other way.”
“They hold it against you that you haven’t moved into a nunnery.”
She allowed herself a slight smile. “Yes. Something like that. They want my grief to be on display for their amusement. And, since I refuse to play their sick little game, they attach all sorts of ideas to me. I’m an evil little femme fatale now, someone Jathed would have disapproved of.”
I said, “The whole town feels that way? Isn’t there anyone at all who stood by you? Any friends?”
She shrugged. “I had friends. That’s the worst part, really. All the talk about me. And all those friends, or people I thought were friends, pretty much abandoned me.” She laughed harshly, under her breath. “The husbands are more interested in me now.” And, looking at me: “Amazing what a little perceived danger can do to stimulate a man, isn’t it?”
“It’s the male condition, I’m afraid.”
She said, “Well . . . maybe. Women like danger too, you know. We can appreciate that. What’s so annoying about it is that there really isn’t any danger. These husbands who think that when they talk to me they’re teetering dashingly on the brink of disaster just seem like . . . I don’t know. Like apes showing off on a branch three feet off the ground. Just ridiculous.”
I said, “Does anyone come to see you now? I mean, do you have anyone to talk to?”
“I have Mother. And I have a maid and a butler,” she said, in a comically inflated voice, kind of like Elmer Fudd when he says, “I have a mansion and a yacht,” but not quite. It was the voice of someone self-conscious of her wealth, someone who enjoyed it but didn’t want to seem highfalutin.