Irises (16 page)

Her words rattled Mr. Lucas. “Look,” he said, “if you want to know the truth, the council has been considering letting your father go for a number of years now.” Mr. Acevedo elbowed Mr. Lucas, but he went on. “We weren't attracting any young members, members with children. And then there was the matter of your father not having a car. How can you be an effective minister unless you can drive to visit people?”

She bit her lip. There was no way she was going to let these men see her cry. All these years, Papa was consuming himself slowly for the church, and this is what people were thinking
of him
.

“All that doesn't really matter,” Mr. Acevedo said. “We're very sorry about your father and we want what is best for you. We'll do everything to help you. We'll help you move to wherever you go. Most of all, we hope you can stay and be part of the church.”

Mary stood up as soon as he finished speaking. Everything he said seemed like an insult, as if he'd spat in her face and then said he did it to wipe a speck of dirt off her cheek. The men stood as well, looking confused. She walked to the door and opened it. They moved toward her, guilt on their faces. As soon as she opened the door, she saw Simon's car stop in front of the house.

“So can we count on you to leave by the end of May?” Mr. Lucas asked as he passed Mary.

She imagined what would happen if they didn't leave. Would a group of people from the church come and throw them out? They would lift Mama up and dump her in the back of a truck.

“I'll need to talk to Kate,” she said. Kate was out of the car by now and looking at Mr. Lucas and Mr. Acevedo with curiosity. “Or you can talk to her yourself. Here she is.”

“That's all right,” said Mr. Acevedo. “You can convey to her what we said.” He seemed afraid of Kate. They probably thought they got off easy when they found out they only had to talk to Mary.

They all walked past one another on the path to the house. Mary stayed in front of the door, watching the pair of men leave.

“What did they want?” Kate asked.

“They came to tell us we have to move by the end of May.”

“What?” Kate almost yelled. Mr. Acevedo and Mr. Lucas were still within hearing distance. They picked up their pace.

“Reverend Soto needs the house by then.”

“That's ridiculous,” Kate said. Mary saw her breath quicken and her fists tighten. She opened the door and touched Kate's back, gently pushing her inside.

“We knew it would happen,” Mary said once the door was closed again.

“Did you tell them it was impossible? We can't leave by then! We're in April. We'll barely be out of school by then. Did you ask for more time?”

At that moment, Mary didn't remember exactly what she had said to Mr. Lucas and Mr. Acevedo. “I let them know it wasn't right.”

Kate looked at her like she didn't believe her. “I wish I'd been here,” she said.

“I wish you had been here too. Where were you?”

“I went with Simon to get an ice-cream cone.” Kate looked sheepish for a second or two. “What else did they say?”

They sat down on the edge of the sofa facing each other, and Mary recounted the conversation as best as she could. She started with the part about the money the church was giving them and slowly worked her way to how the church had wanted to fire Papa for a long time. Kate listened in silence, her face turning pale and red in turn. When Mary told her about Reverend Soto and how he thought it would be best for them if they left by June first, Kate sprang up from the sofa and headed for the door. “I'll be back,” she said.

“Where are you going?”

“To talk to the mighty reverend,” she said.

 

K
ate almost ran to the church. She didn't truly believe that Reverend Soto would still be there, but she needed to search for him anyway, as if the act itself would vent her feelings. She'd go to church, not find him, and somehow she would feel better returning home. And if he was there, that was all right too. She'd tell him — what? What a jerk he was? He couldn't possibly be the one pushing the June first move, not with the way he spoke that morning about love. And why would he want to meet with her if he was the one who was kicking them out? Wouldn't he want to avoid her at all costs? Most likely it was Mr. Lucas and Mr. Acevedo and all the rest of them, the church council and the deacons. They were blaming it on Reverend Soto because they were cowards. How she wished she had been there when they came over.

Going to get an ice-cream cone with Simon had been a big mistake. They had sat stiffly in the car, each waiting for the other to say something about the proposal, neither one of them brave enough to bring up the subject. Nor did she tell him about Stanford, although it was the perfect opportunity. Now all that had been unsaid was weighing on her, a load too heavy to carry anymore. She needed to let things out, and Reverend Soto might be just the right person to receive all her pent-up frustration.

She slowed down as she approached the church. If Reverend Soto was there, she didn't want to be all sweaty and out of breath. She wanted to be able to reason. She wouldn't beg; she would reason. Would it be begging to tell him about Stanford
and how they needed time to find the right place for Mary and
Mother? Would that be playing on his feelings? Well, he was a minister, a man of God; shouldn't his feelings be attuned to the hardship of others?

She stopped for a few moments when she saw the church. There were people lingering in front who had probably stayed behind to talk to Reverend Soto. She didn't want to be seen by them. It felt almost as if she were doing something shameful, as if her meeting with Reverend Soto needed to be kept secret. But there was nothing shameful in standing up against unfairness. He needed to see whom he was up against.

The two ladies in the front of the church finally went their separate ways, and Kate headed through the children's playground to the back door of the church. The minister's office was located on the bottom floor near the back entrance. She entered the building and saw the office door standing open. She hesitated for another moment, realizing she was afraid
after all. She felt sorry for accusing Mary of not pushing back
.

Kate stepped forward into the doorway. Reverend Soto was putting books into a box. She waited for him to lift his head and notice her. Finally, he did.

“Hello,” he said, jumping back. “I wasn't expecting to see
you
.” She had surprised him, and that made her less nervous. He smiled. “Come in, come in.”

He offered her a chair and then closed the door. She sat down, and he pulled the chair from the desk and sat in front of her. She noticed the pile of books on the floor and recognized them as her father's. He was replacing her father's books with his.

He followed her gaze. “I was going to take these to you.”

“We don't need them,” she said. “They can stay here.”

“All right. I'm sure we can find a place for them here, in one of the classrooms perhaps. Books like your father's will always come in handy.” He sounded eager to please.

“Reverend, I wanted
—”

“Please. Stop right there. If we're going to talk, you have to call me Andy.”

She looked at him quizzically.

“My real name is Andrés Soto, but some people call m
e Andy
.”

She noticed he didn't say that people called him Andy. He said that
some
people called him Andy. Was she being singled out? She tried the name to see how it sounded. “Andy.” She blushed. She was not used to blushing.

“What?”

“It feels strange to call you that.”

“I know, I know. It's this.” He touched the white collar around his neck. “I can take it off if it'll make you more comfortable.”

“That's all right,” she said quickly.

“Okay, I'll leave it on. But please call me Andy.”

She was aware that he was looking at her with the same intensity she had felt when she shook his hand in the greeting line. He seemed to be probing inside of her, looking for an answer to a question. Did he look at everyone that way, or was it just her? “I wanted to talk to you,” she said softly, her eyes lowered. She caught herself immediately and raised her eyes to meet his. “About the time that the church is giving us to move out of the parsonage.”

“Ahh. I see the deacons paid their visit. I wasn't expecting them to talk to you until later this week. I wanted to talk to you first.”

So he
was
the one pushing this. “That's why you wanted to come on Wednesday? You wanted to give us the good news yourself.” It felt good to be sarcastic.

“I thought I could probably put the request in a, how shall I say it, a more spiritual context.”

Kate didn't mean to laugh. It was a short little laugh that almost sounded like a snort. When she was a believer, “spiritual” to her meant believing in things that couldn't be seen. But booting them out was something you could see and hear and feel and touch. There was nothing spiritual about that.

“Surely you knew it would happen, sooner or later,” he said quietly, gently, as if he was trying to console her.

“Not
that
soon.” She expected to see some recognition of how ridiculous that deadline was, but his face was blank. “We'll be barely out of school.”

He shifted in his chair. “The church plans to do everything it can to help you.”

“Help us do what?”

He didn't answer, perhaps because the answer was too obvious. The church was going to do everything it could to get rid of them by June first. She remembered suddenly that the deadline for responding to Stanford was May first. She felt her stomach turn. She was being eaten away by deadlines.

“Will you let me tell you something?” He moved his chair closer to her, their knees almost touching. She pulled in her legs. “It's what I wanted to tell you before the deacons came to see you, before you formed an idea of me as some kind of monster. But they beat me to it, and now you probably think I'm unfeeling.”

“This is the spiritual part.” Kate grinned bitterly.

“Believe it or not, it is. There are good reasons for having you move by that deadline, which I know is short. Yes, they are spiritual reasons.” She had noticed before the spark in his eyes, a spark he could dim or brighten at will. Now the spark was dimmed, the voice shifted down into an intimate tone. “I confess that when I saw you in church this morning, and as
I t
alk to you face-to-face, talking about the deadline is harder than I imagined.”

He leaned back in the chair and made himself comfortable, as if he were preparing to tell a story. “A couple of years ago, my
abuelita
fell and broke her hip. She was eighty-five and lived by herself. She lived in the same home she'd lived in all her life and never wanted to move anyplace else. My mother and the grandchildren paid for someone to come in every day to take care of her. We knew that even with this arrangement, she was too old to live in her house by herself, but we didn't want to accept the fact that she needed to be placed in a nursing home. Probably we also felt guilty that neither Mom nor the grandchildren wanted to take her into their homes. Among other things,
Abuelita
was a very difficult woman to get along with. She really was not the sweet Mexican grandmother we all imagine when we hear the word
abuelita
.

“Anyway, when she broke her hip and she was in the hospital, there was this Indian doctor who was treating her. They had put restraints on
Abuelita
because she wanted to yank her IV out and go back home. So this doctor, he took me aside and very harshly asked me what our plans for her were. ‘What
arrangements have you made for her?' he said. At first I thought
he was talking about the arrangements we'd made in case she died, but then I realized he was talking about
Abuelita's
future living situation. I stuttered something about how we hadn't made any arrangements yet. So he yelled at me, ‘She's out of here in two days. You need to have arrangements made by then.' Then he walked off, leaving me stunned there in the hallway.”