Good-bye and Amen (21 page)

 

Margaret Sector
Remember the time that young man in the mirrored sunglasses was arrested in the middle of the Easter Eucharist?

 

Calvin Sector
At Good Shepherd?

 

Margaret Sector
Doug something. He used to come to the coffee hour and chat up the single ladies? And once he came up to the house and tried to sell you insurance, remember?

 

Calvin Sector
I've forgotten.

 

Margaret Sector
You'll have to forgive my husband. He can't remember anything unpleasant about anybody. It's the way his brain is made, you tell him something ugly and it rolls right into a chute and out the back of his head.

Don't you remember, they led him out the side door in handcuffs?

 

Calvin Sector
How could they do that? Isn't the church a sanctuary?

 

Margaret Sector
That's exactly what you said at the time! At least you're consistent.

 

Calvin Sector
Anyway. The coffee hour was pretty lively that morning, and it was Norman at his best. People were crowding around him. I even saw Lindsay Tautsch give him a hug. The Unholy Trinity appeared briefly, but they caught the sense of the meeting and slunk away.

The vestry went into session right after the Fellowship Hour. Coffee and sandwiches provided by the tireless Bertha Manly, but we hardly needed them. I had not committed an agenda to paper; it seemed to me that it would be
better if there were no record that this meeting ever happened, if it went the way I thought it would, and it did.

The charges were produced. I left that to Frank Heroy, since he's the treasurer. Rather large withdrawals from the building fund seemed irregular, and a couple from the fund to replace the organ, and the fact that the discretionary fund appeared to have been emptied early in the year, with no receipts or records.

Norman was absolutely unruffled. He apologized for worrying us. He said he was guilty of being behind on his housekeeping chores, but that his records for the discretionary fund would be up-to-date by Wednesday. He had no idea about the building fund but was perfectly sure nothing was amiss. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “You have nothing at all to fear here. Your trust in me is not misplaced. Be at peace about this.” I watched him as he looked from one of us to the next.

One on one, we had his word.

I said, “That's good enough for me, Norman. Any discussion?”

There was none. The meeting was adjourned twenty minutes after it started. We all took our sandwiches and went home.

 

Letter to Monica Faithful from Rebecca Vogelsang:

October 10

Dear Monica,

First, I want to tell you how much I have admired and respected you, ever since we first came to Sweetwater. You
have in no way deserved what has happened. If I could change it, I swear I would.

Monica, I know now that I have been in the grip of something much stronger than I am, that I could not change without a tremendous amount of help that I was ashamed to ask for. I am blessed beyond blessed to have been given that help anyway, by my loving family and so many others. But I have a long hard road ahead of me, and I won't get far if I can't admit my manifold faults and try in any way I can to make amends. I can imagine how hurt you are, and it hurts me terribly to think about it. Norman is hurting too, I know, but that was never my affair. What is between husband and wife is for them to take to their Lord. I thank God every hour that I draw breath that my Clark has been willing to stand by me, and I see now that there is still a very powerful bond between you and Norman in spite of everything. I thank God for that too.

I can't undo what has been done, Monica. But I hope you will accept this apology. It comes from the bottom of my heart. I don't ask you to forgive me, but I have a hope that someday you will allow me to embrace you as a sister. And though I have no right to, I do hope that you will be able to forgive Norman. He may have sinned, but it came from a place of goodness. He was trying to help me.

Ever your friend,

Rebecca Vogelsang

 

Monica Faithful
Well, how do you
think
I felt?

All right. Sorry. All right.

The letter arrived on a Thursday. I got home from school about three, put the groceries away, and went out to the hall to sort the mail. When I saw the envelope, I thought, how nice. You hardly ever get a handwritten letter any more.

Well, it came at me in waves. At first I think I shut down. I stared at the letter, seething in my hand, but my brain was scrambling the images.

Then I began to be able to read again. I read it over and over. The way she kept using my name made me want to kill her with my bare hands.

I stayed alone with it for about an hour. I had to adjust. First, to what it meant, and second, to the fact that she clearly thought I already knew. Just assumed, I wonder, dumb as a box of rocks as she is, or had Norman told her he'd confessed?

Norman. Norman Faithful. What on earth had possessed his father to choose a name like that? A little hubris there, don't we think?

Norman. For the previous three weeks, famous Norman Faithful had been in a state, I mean a state, about the accusations against him by Lindsay Tautsch. He wasn't sleeping much, he talked on about how
pilloried
he felt. He had the gall to talk about Christ's suffering, as proof that the Lord would understand and comfort the afflicted, meaning
him
. The vestry had hired an independent auditor to Clear Norman's Good Name, but that didn't seem enough for him. I was surprised he hadn't developed stigmata. And now it all made sense. He was guilty as hell, he'd just been charged with the wrong thing. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In school when a child has a tantrum and can't pull out
of it, we tell him to go sit down with his back to the room, take deep breaths, and count to a hundred. Did I do that?

Hell
no.

 

Rosella Cherry
It was late on a Thursday afternoon. Mr. Sector was in with Father Norman. Preparing for the vestry meeting on Sunday, I think. The auditors were giving their final report the next day. Monica Faithful marched into the office and barely said hello to me. I started to say he was in a meeting, but she went right by me into the rector's office.

 

Calvin Sector
The door banged open. I thought the church must be on fire. But it was Monica Faithful. She looked from one of us to the other, and I must say, she appeared…What's the word I want?
Distrait?

She didn't say a thing. She took a couple of sheets of pink letter paper out of her jacket pocket, unfolded them, and handed them to Norman. He read. Then he put his head in his hands.

Monica picked up the letter and shoved it at me.

 

Monica Faithful
I don't know how I got through the next few days.

I moved into the guest room that night and stayed there. I'd have left town, but I had a job to go to. It wasn't the school's fault I married an asshole. But staying was like rubbernecking at a car wreck, when it's you in the crumpled heap upside down on the guard rail.

I was so angry at Rebecca Vogelsang, I could barely function. What did she mean, “…still a bond between you
in spite of everything
”?

In spite of
what
?

What exactly did he tell her about us? How am
I
supposed to have failed
him
?

And now that we've got this vat of horseradish open, how many have there been?

Can it have started in Oregon? As early as that? There was a particular yummy mummy having a crisis of faith at odd hours, I remember. Certainly in Colorado, there were the adoring Marys and Marthas. And I don't even need to be told who it was in New York. Nor did the awful Bella McChesney.

In seminary, we talked all the time about pastors who use the pulpit as a sexual aid.

So how
could
he?

 

Norman Faithful
I could have explained. I know I could have. I never meant to hurt her. I never meant to hurt anyone. I must have gone to the guest room door four times, five times, in the course of the evening, begging her to come out, just to listen. But she was obdurate. Hard as stone. Even now, I find it hard to forgive her for that.

 

Margaret Sector
Calvin came home with the letter from Beccy Vogelsang. He was shocked that I wasn't shocked.

I was sorry Calvin was head of the vestry. Again. He's seventy-four years old. He doesn't have that many healthy years in front of him. Why does he need this? To have his faith in a friend shattered, to feel that it's
his
fault that Norman Faithful can't keep his pants zipped, or his wallet, that people will blame him, that he blames himself…what kind
of toll would this take on him? How about on his faith? I'm sick of all of them, Norman, Beccy, Monica, Little Miss Tautsch, all of them.

 

Calvin Sector
What I can't forgive is that he looked us in the eye and lied to us. The whole vestry, one after the other. We were on the line ourselves. I was going around giving people my personal word that the charges were untrue. My personal word.

 

Margaret Sector
My opinion? I don't think he knew he was lying. I think he's one of those people who believes whatever comes out of his own mouth. Think of all the years of standing up above a sea of trusting faces, dressed in shining robes and posing as God's mouthpiece. I've often wondered if Norman believes in anything, except Norman.

 

Calvin Sector
My wife is forgetting how she felt before this broke. They've been dear friends. He's a wonderful preacher.

 

Margaret Sector
I'm not forgetting anything. They've been friends, I've enjoyed their company, and Norman is a wonderful preacher. He's done a lot of socially useful things in his life. But he's got an ego as big as the Ritz, and I never thought he believed in anything. He just went into the family business.

 

What moral stage is Norman?

Ah, well, yes. That is the question, isn't it?

 

Calvin Sector's letter to the congregation of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church:

Dear Fellow Parishioners:

It is with deep regret that we report that the vestry has today accepted Father Faithful's resignation, effective immediately. The Reverend Lindsay Tautsch has agreed to act as interim rector, and we trust that you all will welcome her in her new post, and give her whatever support she needs as she leads us forward at this difficult time.

As some of you know, we have had an outside auditor at work on our books, and her report, which was given to the vestry yesterday morning, will be available in the church office for interested members. Ms. Tautsch will be working with the finance committee to create a new budget for the coming church year and will report to you on the shape of things to come as soon as possible.

We will begin our search for a permanent rector after Christmas. If you know of likely candidates, please communicate with the Search Committee when the time comes; we welcome your input. Until then, be assured that Good Shepherd is strong in trust and love. If you have questions, feel free to be in touch with me, or any member of the vestry.

Yours sincerely,

Calvin Sector, Senior Warden

 

Lindsay Tautsch
You want numbers? Over nine years, just shy of two hundred thousand. Want to know what he did with it? So do we.

Hotels, I'm guessing, with his lady friends. Bespoke clothes he couldn't afford. The Rolex watch, the Italian shoes. Club memberships, his mother's fancy nursing home. He's an awful social climber.

 

Calvin Sector
I don't understand this. It's not even that much money. If he needed it, why didn't he come to me?

 

Bobby Applegate
So that's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.

 

Calvin Sector
He must have been terrified all this time, knowing he'd be found out. It must have been a nightmare for him.

 

Margaret Sector
Oh, Calvin. For heaven's sake.

 

Monica Faithful
The church told me I could stay in the rectory for as long as I needed to after Norman left town, but they were being polite. Norman went off to the dry-out place, the same one Beccy went to, and he had a wonderful time. To this day I don't believe he's an alcoholic, he just needed something to blame besides himself. It was a whole new conversation for him, Norman the fallen, Norman the sinner, whose position is that in Christ, we're all forgiven in advance. He wasn't responsible for anything, it was the
addiction,
the
sickness,
that had screwed all those women and robbed his own church. You know how they say that at AA meetings everyone is laughing and down the hall at the Al Anon meetings, their wives and children are in tears? It's true, and it's not funny.

Oh wait, this part
is
funny. When he decided to go to the dry-out bin, he asked me to pay for it.

By Christmas I had moved into a little apartment down near the river. Near the train tracks, but on the right side of them. (That's a joke.) It was tiny and shoddily built, but clean and fairly new. I hadn't lived alone since the year in Cambridge when Norman was waiting for his divorce. Oh God—Rachel. Would she talk to me now?