Good Heavens (27 page)

Well, I stumbled around trying to convince her, but I didn't get anywhere. What troubled me was that all the other girls were listening, real interested in the give-and-take of this thing. They deserved better answers than I could give. I felt bad about it, but I had to drop the subject and just go on leading Praise and Prayer.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Linda tormenting Portia by holding two fingers before her face and mouthing, “Two strikes.” More and more I did believe that girl was the devil's secret agent in Priscilla Home. One thing was sure, the devil was the father of all her lies.

When Praise and Prayer was over, Portia asked if she could look at my Bible, so I handed it to her. I figured she had run out of cigarettes because she didn't go outside with the others to grab a smoke before work duty. But it wasn't the first time she had borrowed my Bible and curled up in the corner of the couch to thumb through it and read all the keepsakes I had got between the pages. A slip of paper fell out, and I picked it up and glanced at it. “I always meant to frame this,” I said and handed it to her. It was the poem about us having only one life.

I left Portia and went to find Dora. Already she was gathering up tools from the garage. I asked her if she would take care of supervising the planting while I
checked to see if I could do anything to help Mr. Ringstaff. She said she would.

Lenora had followed me out to the garage to find out what her work assignment was, and I told her she could clean the parlor. “We won't run the vacuum right away, not while Mr. Ringstaff is working on the piano,” I told her as we were coming back to the house. “Maybe you could straighten out those bookshelves and water the plants.”

I looked around trying to find Evelyn but didn't see her. “Lenora, do you know where Evelyn is?”

“She was in the bathroom.”

“Throwing up?”

“I think so.”

Well, I didn't have time to deal with that. “When you see her, ask her to start folding the laundry, if she feels up to it.” I was thinking I could slip in there and have a good talk with Evelyn in the laundry room.

In the parlor, Ringstaff had his head inside the open piano, examining the works.

“How you coming?” I asked.

He raised his head and smiled. “As I expected, we need to replace strings, and it looks like we may have some trouble with the hammer shanks.” He sat on the piano bench and touched one of the keys. “Strings vibrate with measurable cycles,” he explained. “The pitch of a concert grand is usually such that the middle A string vibrates at 440 cycles per second.”

I didn't understand anything he was saying, but it's a good sign a man is an expert when he enjoys talking about his work.

“Mr. Ringstaff, would you like some coffee?”

He smiled. “Only if you call me by my name.”

It was hard for me to do that, even though he insisted, so I laughed and asked Lenora, “Do you call this man by his first name?”

Rearranging the books, she did not so much as turn away from the shelves. “That all depends,” she said.

I laughed. “That goes for me, too,” I said and went to fix the coffee.

In the dining room there was a cabinet with china in it that was used only for company. Surely, serving this gentleman who knew maestros and such called for putting on the ritz. As well as taking out cups and saucers, I got plates for serving my fried apple pies. There was a silver tray in there that someone must have donated, and in a drawer were linen napkins. I warmed the pie, filled a cream pitcher with milk, and found a matching sugar bowl to serve the sugar in. I tell you, after I got that tray fixed, room service at the Waldorf couldn't look any swankier.

When I brought in the tray, Mr. Ringstaff was bent over the piano works, his long, slim fingers poking around in there. “Ah!” he said and straightened up.

I made sure he was comfortable on the couch before I went back to the kitchen to get coffee for Lenora and me. There were a couple more pies left over from breakfast. I figured it would help Lenora's figure to eat another one and that I might as well keep her company. After all, a body that carries as much lard as mine can easy handle another pound.

It was a wonderful morning. Mr. Ringstaff couldn't
get over raving about my fried apple pie. He even asked me to let him know the next time I made them. He was such a good talker. I was enjoying his stories about big shots with foreign names who play the piano, and was really sorry when he turned the conversation to Priscilla Home. He wanted to hear all about its history, and when I was done telling him that, he asked about our program, our schedule, and our plans for the garden.

After I was talked out, to my surprise, he was able to draw Lenora into the conversation. “Lenora, when last I heard, you were becoming quite a recording artist.”

“Oh, Al—Mr. Ringstaff, that was a long time ago.”

“Albert. My name is Albert, remember? We miss you on the concert stage.”

“I guess you heard?”

He nodded. “Yours is a common experience among artists. Hours of rehearsal, the pressure of performing, the endless traveling. And, I suppose worst of all, after the applause one goes back to an empty hotel room.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice so low, so full of misery I could hardly hear her. “That was the worst of it. After a concert, after the aficionados, the parties . . . all the falderal, one goes back to a hotel room in a foreign city alone.” She put the cup back on the tray and got up to go back to the shelves.

“Please, don't go,” he begged.

“Lenora, those books can wait!” I added.

Reluctantly, she sat down again, and Ringstaff spoke to her very softly. “I know of no career as demanding as that of a concert pianist, but Lenora, you have given the world great pleasure—lasting pleasure. You communi
cate music in a marvelous way. I shall never forget your triumph at the Mozart Festival in Vienna. That was a joyous occasion. Do you remember how many encores?”

“The audience was very kind,” she said, “but that's all behind me now.” She sighed. “Right now, Albert,” she said, her voice shaking, “all I want is a drink.”

He didn't say anything.

“Let's have some more coffee,” I said and picked up the tray.

Back in the kitchen, I had to heat the coffee, and while I waited, I was replaying all that conversation. I told myself I should have guessed that Lenora was more than some honky-tonk piano player.
I wonder if Ursula knows she was a concert pianist?
I didn't believe she did because she usually told me things like that.

When I came back in the parlor, Ringstaff was asking Lenora, “They tell me you've been playing in New York supper clubs. Is that right?”

“Yes, supper clubs,” she said, as if she despised it. “When I could no longer be counted on to show up for concert engagements, my agent quit. Nobody else would represent me. I came back to New York, and the only work I could find was in supper clubs.”

“I'm sorry,” he said softly.

“They put up with drunks in places like that . . . but they do have their requirements. They would have me play nothing but the old standards . . . I had none of them in my repertoire.”

“Could you not play adaptations of the classics by moderns? Rachmaninoff?”

She shook her head. “They would have nothing but
the standards. I now have a repertoire of two thousand or more. Oh, Albert, it was wretched. That music does nothing but entertain.”

“True, it entertains, but it doesn't satisfy, does it? . . . Yet, Lenora, as you said before, even classical music that does satisfy doesn't give one a life. It's life you want, isn't it, Lenora?”

“It's too late for me now.”

“It's never too late to have life—a complete life.”

“Please, Albert, I know what you mean. You're a spiritual man. I envy you for that. I haven't forgotten that you were intrigued with the Bible and spoke in churches, all of that. I tried to find spirituality. I tried Eastern mystics, other religions, but they did nothing for me . . .”

I knew I should excuse myself and give them privacy, but I couldn't very well do that without being rude.

“May I tell you something?” she was saying. “When I failed at taking my own life, I remembered you and I decided to try one more religion. I looked for a Christian place, hoping I would find here at Priscilla Home the kind of life you have.”

That stabbed a knife in my heart because I didn't much think she had found what she was looking for at Priscilla Home. Lenora probably sensed my embarrassment because she added, “We enjoy our Praise and Prayer sessions. There is one young lady here who asks provocative questions.”

“You mean Linda?” I asked.

“Yes, Linda.”

“Oh, she does. She has stumped me with questions about the Trinity, the Bible, you know—why it's the
Word of God. And who knows what she'll come up with next.”

“Miss E., that was an interesting question she asked this morning. Tell Albert.”

I put down my cup and tried to repeat the question as best I could. “Linda asked me why couldn't God forgive us without Jesus having to die on the cross. Wasn't that what she meant, Lenora? Why couldn't God just forgive us when we ask him to? Well, Mr. Ringstaff, I mean, Albert, I done my best to answer, telling her about the sacrifices and everything, but that didn't satisfy her.”

“I see. Well, the answer isn't as complicated as it may seem. Let's see if this will help. What if you were murdered, and the murderer was convicted for killing you. Would a judge be just if he acquitted that criminal? Could he take the liberty of saying to the murderer, ‘I forgive you; you may go free'?”

“No. Of course, not,” Lenora said.

“Neither can God arbitrarily forgive us our wrongdoing. If he did, he would not be the just God we know him to be.”

“But Albert, God is a God of love, or so they say. If Jesus was his Son, how could he allow him to suffer such ignominy?”

Albert removed his glasses and cleaned them with his handkerchief. “Lenora, if you or Esmeralda . . . if one of you slapped me and I forgave you, it would mean that I would not hold you responsible for what you've done to me. But at the same time, I would have to suffer the insult of being slapped as well as suffer the smarting of my cheek.” He folded his handkerchief, put it back in
his pocket, and adjusted his glasses. “When we sin, we sin against God. We insult and injure him.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Well, Lenora, unlike the wrong we do to each other with finite results, sin against God is infinite. Nothing finite can make things right between ourselves and God. No finite redress is sufficient. It takes an infinite sacrifice to atone for sin.”

That dear man leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and said in the simplest, sweetest way ever a man spoke, “Lenora, Jesus, being eternal, is our infinite sacrifice for sin. By being executed, the Son of God bore the insult and the injury of all our sins against himself. Justice has been served; the righteous Judge can acquit us.”

I just sat there with my mouth open. I had never heard it explained as good as that. Sitting there with the sun streaming through the windows, I knew I would never forget that morning in the parlor with Albert Ringstaff.

“Thank you, Albert,” Lenora said and started collecting the cups. “I really must get back to work.”

“And I as well,” he said.

Can you guess the thought that came to me? Albert Ringstaff might well be the Bible teacher I'd been praying for.

18

In the next few weeks, things were working out very well. I had suggested to Ursula that we ask Mr. Ringstaff if he would be our Bible teacher, and she said we must get board approval before we asked him. Roger Elmwood, the president, true to his stuffed-shirt self, didn't think it was a good idea, especially since Ringstaff was a Presbyterian. I said, “Good heavens, what's that got to do with it? The man loves the Lord!”

Elmwood was a peacock who liked to show his feathers, and he was about as narrow-minded as they come. Like Splurgeon says, “He that is full of himself is very empty.” So I suggested something to Ursula. “Dr. Elsie knows Mr. Ringstaff—he lives up there near her place. She's the board secretary, why don't you call and ask her what she thinks?”

Ursula jumped on the phone and asked Elmwood to put in a conference call to Dr. Elsie, who was still in Vermont.

Dr. Elsie must have give Elmwood an earful! Ursula
said she lit right in, telling him how during the Cold War Ringstaff got Bibles into the Soviet Union and how he took every opportunity to speak about the Lord to concert piano players and other famous people. But despite all that, Elmwood said, “Well, we'll take him on a trial basis and see how he does.” When he said that, Dr. Elsie must have blew her stack! Ursula repeated what she said to him. “Esmeralda, Dr. Elsie told him, ‘Roger Elmwood, it's no favor to Albert Ringstaff to ask him to teach for us. If he accepts the invitation it's you who should get down on your knees and thank him!'”