Good-bye and Amen Page 6

Monica Faithful Being the rector’s wife is different from being the curate’s. The parish feels entitled to you. They’d invite me to ladies’ lunches and it was all I could do to sit there. There was a group of widows and never-marrieds who ran a Circle Supper we were supposed to attend. Twice I “forgot” to go. Well, truth: once I really forgot and once I couldn’t face it. Norman didn’t mind, he does fine with a bevy of hens all clucking over him, but the circle minded, trust me. But I couldn’t help it. For them, comfort was an evening of chatter; for me it was a silent house and a Trollope novel I hadn’t read before. Then when the circle met at our house I tried to do something fancy out of Julia Child, but I hadn’t thawed the chicken enough first, and it was all bloody; no one could eat it.

  It didn’t help that the previous rector’s wife was a saint, a well-known fact. She had twin daughters who’d grown up in the town, both married now with children. One of the daughters came to worship one Sunday unannounced—she and her husband were driving through and made a point to be in Sand Hills for the eleven o’clock. During the Peace, half the congregation left their seats to go hug and kiss pretty little Nettie and her children. After the coffee hour on Sundays, I led a book club with bag lunch; I’d inherited it from Nettie’s sainted mother. I’d spent that week reading Quo Vadis. Have you read that? It’s 561 pages long. I sat there in the parish hall with my big fat book and my list of discussion points and my tuna fish sandwich in a brown bag and not one person came. Not one. They were all down the street at the Coffee Bean having a high old time with Nettie and her family. Even Norman went!

  Jeannie Israel I didn’t know how depressed Nika was after the miscarriage until she told me on the phone she’d asked her mother to visit her. Sending Sydney to see Monica in a wounded state would have been like asking a tiger to nurse a rabbit with its foot in a trap. Fortunately, Sydney begged off. She must have known she’d be found alone in the house with blood and fur in her whiskers. She did sometimes know her own weaknesses. Not that Monica read it that way.

  Monica Faithful Jeannie came out to spend a week with me. God bless her. All you really need is one friend. I told her I hated Sand Hills and it would never come right. We took long hikes, and we laughed, and she helped me see that I’d lost friends and a baby and that was what was wrong, not the fact that Trinny Biggs played by ear instead of reading the music, so if you tried to read the alto line and sing harmony, you couldn’t. Actually Trinny wasn’t even an organist; it was good of her to fill in. She could play piano, but the only way she could play the organ was if her ex-husband arranged the stops for her.

  Kendra Brayton Nicky Faithful went to work in the elementary school in the fall, and I understand she did better there. She was a sub and a tutor and she made great friends with the fourth-grade teacher, Evan Angle, who I always thought was light in his loafers. They were both lonely and they say there’s a lid for every pot. You’d see them down at the Coffee Bean laughing away many evenings. You might have thought she’d be home cooking her husband’s dinner or starting a family but I suppose she was a women’s libber. I wonder what happened to Evan Angle. After the Faithfuls left he moved away too. Went to San Francisco, probably. Isn’t that where those people go?

  Trinny Biggs Norman was a sweet, sweet man. People went to him for counseling. There was a psychologist in the next town, but people preferred to go to Norman, even some from different churches. He was always willing to get involved. I remember when the Barbers’ baby died of crib death. People always blame the parents in those cases. They should have put the baby on her stomach to sleep, or on her back, or let her sleep in the same bed with them, or something. I remember people talked. But Norman got them through it. He just believed in the goodness of the Lord’s plan for all of us. “He reminded me that God knows what it is to lose a child,” Dodie Barber said to me. I remember that, it gave her such comfort.

  Kendra Brayton I was shocked when they left. We wanted a rector who would put down roots here. We’d made that clear. I suppose it was because the wife wanted something grander. Still, it was a rude surprise that all the time we were getting comfortable with them and making them so welcome, they were entertaining better offers. I don’t think the fellow from Paso Robles would have done that. I even made some inquiries to see if he was still free, but he was settled somewhere in New England. Off the Faithfuls went to Colorado, with the capital campaign for the new carillon just getting started. Instead of finishing that, we had to start a rector search all over again. We got the carillon finally but it left a taste in the mouth, if you know what I mean.

  Trinny Biggs Evan Angle told me that Nicky Faithful’s father was a famous pianist at one time. Longhair music. I suppose that explains something.

  Kendra Brayton Of course, in Colorado their star started rising. We were just a stepping-stone to them. I remember one Sunday morning my little grandson came into the kitchen and told me, “Mopsy, come quick, God’s on television.” I went and there was Norman Faithful in full regalia, preaching at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He had written a book, I guess, and had gone to New York to be a celebrity. Booming away in the pulpit about the power of prayer, which was what his book was about, with this huge sea of dressed-up people sitting below him, gazing up.

  Monica Faithful When Norman told me he’d been called to Denver, but he wasn’t going to uproot me again so soon if I didn’t want him to, I didn’t even answer. I just went up to the attic and brought down the suitcases. I was pregnant with Edith at the time.

  Betty Kersey Denver was a much better place for Norman than Boondocks, Oregon. He’s a political animal. He likes the fray. We never did; that’s why George left the ministry. George says he’s going to write a TV series called Desperate Rectors. In Denver Norman became a media darling. He’d get himself on the Sunday morning programs talking about social issues and pretty soon they gave him a show of his own. Every week after church a camera crew would follow him into the rectory and there would be Monica, in her Sunday best, sitting beside him with her ankles crossed, and when she was old enough, Edie too, blinking in the lights. Norman would do this sort of fireside chat about God in the world that week. Once in a while he’d throw a softball question to Monica to answer. He loved the whole thing. There he was, with his perfect little family, leading a perfect Christian Life for all to see.

  Bud Shatterman I was on the committee that called Norman to St. John’s, and we became great friends. Great friends. He had his strengths, he had his weaknesses, like anybody. But you’ll remember, those were the days when people were saying that God was Dead. Young people were falling away from the church, they were going off to India and chanting in Sanskrit. We had a beautiful old sanctuary built for a more prosperous neighborhood than we were any more. It needed a lot of work, and we needed some warm bodies in the pews, we couldn’t just expect the old families to pay for it all. Norman understood the problem, and he said he could handle it, and by God he was right. That TV show, that was a hell of a thing. I don’t think he prepared for it more than five minutes. He liked the pressure. They just turned the camera on him and he started to talk. It was always a performance. The women were crazy about him.

  Clara Thiele I was on the stewardship committee. Normally people hate Stewardship Sunday, but his first year with us, Norman gave a sermon about prosperity consciousness that I still remember. And when we started the campaign to replace the roof, he was an animal. He loved doing the Ask. Bud and I would prepare the soil, and together we’d decide how much to hit each person up for, then we’d send Norman in there and he’d raise the number and close the deal and leave with a check in his hand. And people thanked him for coming!

  Sandy Thiele My mom is kind of the pope of the congregation. She loved Mrs. Faithful because she’s Danish on her father’s side. Thiele’s a Danish name. There are a number of Danish families in the congregation who came here after the war, and Mrs. Faithful’s aunt was in the Resistance. I used to babysit for Edie, and Mrs. Faithful wou
ld tell me about Denmark. I’ve never been there.

  Bud Shatterman Norman hit it off with the bishop too. The bishop wasn’t happy about all the ashrams and zendos and whatnot springing up everywhere. His daughter had shaved her head and started calling herself Sachidananda. The bishop made the mistake of preaching against “rotting Eastern religions” one time, and his daughter wrote an angry letter to the Rocky Mountain News that they printed. It took a while to calm that down. Norman never had time for meditation or any of that stuff, he was an action guy, an “open your mouth and let God speak through you” guy. Of course sometimes after he’d had a couple of belts he’d open his mouth and say things that were just as silly as the rest of us. But he had such self-confidence, and was always so sure he was forgiven in advance. He charmed you. And all of a sudden, when other churches were floundering, we had a dog in the fight. The Presbyterians and the United Presbys hadn’t spoken to each other in decades; they had to combine congregations and sell off one of the sanctuaries. There are expensive condos in it now; I have to shake my head every time I drive by. Meanwhile, we had a thriving church school, and a new roof, and had started raising money to fix the pipe organ.

  Ted Wineapple When he’d been in Denver for four or five years, I began to understand how ambitious Norman was. It wasn’t just the TV show. He wrote articles for the church papers; he got himself on committees for the national church, he presented at church conferences. I remember a night in Atlanta, after an NNECA convention. He’d gotten a standing ovation. We stayed up into the wee hours with our friend Jack Daniel’s. I hadn’t known him to drink like that when we were at seminary, but some people respond to applause that way; he was wired. At about two in the morning, he said to me, “Ted, do you think I should go back to New York? That’s where the media is. That’s where you can really make your mark.”

  I wondered what kind of mark he meant to make—did he want to be a sportscaster or something? A talk-show host?

  Monica Faithful Edith was in third grade, so we’d been in Colorado almost ten years when Norman began to think about New York. The dean at St. John the Divine was a friend, and he told Norman of a church in the Village whose rector was retiring. It wasn’t a rich parish but old and fairly famous, and it was very beautiful, the church itself very spare and pure, almost like a Congregational. We flew back there to attend a service incognito before he decided to try for it. Well, as incognito as you can be when you’re six five and you never met a camera you didn’t like.

  The church was fine, except the service was lower than we’re used to. Norman must have thought he could change that when he ran the zoo. What I remember was staying with Jeannie, and sitting up half the night talking, manna from heaven. The idea of living close to her again! And of being only a day’s drive from Dundee, and being able to visit my parents or my sister without putting the dog in the kennel and flying for a whole day…

  Norman Faithful The thing that drove that decision was Edie and Nicky. Edie was having trouble at her school in Colorado. There was some sort of click she’d been left out of, one of those things girls go through, but it wasn’t good for her. The New York church had a school attached, a sweet little place, where Edie could go for half tuition. Plus, I was worried about Sam and Sylvie. We’d had them in the summers, but I couldn’t get east for more than two weeks, and they were beginning to feel like strangers to me. So I put my hat in the ring, and went to New York and preached my heart out. It was no cakewalk. New York doesn’t usually take to Westerners. I did have something of a national presence and a strong track record at raising money, which they badly needed. They flew the whole family in twice to look us over.

  In the end, they not only hired me, they hired Nicky to teach second grade. So Edie got to go to the school for free. The rectory was a tiny little shambles of a house but it was delightful. We missed the big backyard and having a separate study for Nicky. But I was ready for a new challenge and I rolled up my sleeves and waded in.

  Sylvia Faithful It’s clique, not click. I tried to tell him that once, but he just looked at me, and then went on talking as if I hadn’t said anything.

  Ted Wineapple I was pleased to have my old friend in the East again. I was in Richmond at the time. And I was very happy for Monica. She was so grateful to be back where she knew the names of the trees and the birds.

  Monica Faithful In the West it takes you a long time to realize that it’s not only that you’re new in town…you will never be walking down the street and run into someone you grew up with or knew from school. You will always feel as if you’re on a tightrope without a net. You’ll make new friends, but you’ll never be as important to them as they are to you. And you’ll never speak that shorthand together that comes from sharing common points of biography.

  Ted Wineapple It was a lesser parish, with many more problems than the one he was leaving. A church with a school attached? You have no idea. Especially a church that’s failing while the school succeeds.

  It was better for Monica. She looked happier than she had in years, still fairly slim, with some gray in her hair, but something lighter and clearer in her eyes. It was better for Edith, much better for Sam and Sylvie. Worse for Bridey, who’d had a big backyard in Colorado, but that wouldn’t have weighed with Norman. I think they still had Bridey then, the border terrier. (The only time I ever personally saw Monica push back against Norman in public was right after Bridey’s mother was hit by a car and killed, and Norman declared that dogs don’t have souls.)

  Anyway, there’s no doubt in my mind that the reason Norman took Holy Innocents was, he thought if he could pull off another coup like his Denver miracle, and in the Big Apple, the next step was the cathedral chair.

  Monica Faithful The rectory was this small little nineteenth-century row house behind the church. Probably worth a fortune now but New York City was pretty rough in those years. Graffiti was everywhere. Our front door got bombed so many times we gave up repainting it. Bombing is what the graffiti kids called it. Bombing. Tagging. And the house was drafty and all out of plumb. If you put a marble down on the parlor floor, it rolled to the other side of the room.

  And, there were mice. It had wide-plank old pine floors with great gaps between them, all full of mouse dirt. We couldn’t have a cat because Norman’s allergic. We couldn’t put down poison for fear Bridey would eat it. We had to trap them. For all that happened to us while we were at Holy Innocents, my clearest association is walking into that cold kitchen in my bathrobe in the mornings, with the wind shaking the windowpanes, listening for the scrabbling sound behind the refrigerator that meant a mouse was in the trap and it wasn’t dead. If you think Norman was going to deal with that sort of thing, good luck to you.

  Edith Faithful I liked Holy Innocents School pretty much. We had smaller classes. There was good art. All the other kids had known each other since they were three, so that was hard for me, and our play yards were tiny and I liked sports. One was a fenced-in lot beside the school and the other was up on the roof. That was for the little kids. It was a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school. After sixth, you went to public middle school, or changed to one of the private schools that went through twelfth. The gym wasn’t very big and it was also used for plays and assembly. I loved being able to go home for lunch. Dad would make me soup and Triscuits, or tomato sandwiches, and we both read at the table while we ate. We weren’t allowed to do that when Mom was there.

  Ted Wineapple Norman hadn’t had a failure since he was five, that I could tell. Oh yes. I guess you could say his marriage to Rachel had failed. Though I’m not sure he saw it that way. When he got to New York, it happened that the senior warden, who’d been there forever, was recovering from surgery. He asked Norman to have the vestry meet at his apartment, instead of in the parish hall, and Norman said, “Of course.” Big mistake.

  Monica Faithful Being in the faculty room, in on the gossip, I understood the parish better than I would have otherwise, and maybe better than Norman did. The pari
sh and the school were at war with each other. Absolute war. The school was coining money. Downtown New York was changing, there were people living in places like SoHo that had never been residential before and there suddenly weren’t enough schools for the downtown kids.

  Holy Innocents School could have been twice as big as it was, but it was bonsaied by the church. Some of the classrooms were actually in the church undercroft and the basement of the parish hall. They had to be completely cleaned up, all the displays and maps and so forth put away every Friday, so the rooms could be used for Sunday school over the weekend. Even when no one came to Sunday school, the vestry made us do that. The rest of the school buildings were this little jumble on church land that had grown up higgledy-piggledy. The school wanted to tear them down and build a suitable building, and take the meditation garden, which nobody used, for more play yards. The vestry was dead set against it.

  The vestry looked at the school as a cash cow, period. If there was a budget shortfall at the church, and there always was, they made the school cover it. It caused havoc with the school budget. And school fund-raising. People didn’t want to give toward a new theater curtain or piano for the music room if the church was just going to come and take the money.

  Norman Faithful I was writing a book about the urban church. I joined a group of prominent clergy marching to protest the blight in the South Bronx. The dean of the cathedral allowed me to preach up there now and then, and I got several op-ed pieces published in the Times. You’d have thought all of that would draw parishioners to Holy Innocents, but it didn’t.