Waldo cupped his hand to his ear. “He climbed the Martian Crescent?”
Ted raised his voice a couple of notches. “He’s Italian!”
Waldo frowned. “I don’t know about that. My brother’s wife was Eye-talian. Nice girl, but too fertile. They had nine kids. Drove my brother to the poorhouse.”
Squinting his birdlike eyes, Waldo addressed the group. “We just spent good money repainting the parsonage. If some family with a buncha kids moves in there, we’ll have to redo the whole job. Is this fella married? How many children they got?”
“Four,” Ted admitted. “With another due to arrive in April.”
There was a murmuring among the group.
“Moving on,” Ted said wearily. “Philip A. Clarkson also graduated from seminary in the spring. He is forty and unmarried.”
Abigail kicked me under the table. “Unmarried,” she mouthed.
“Stop it,” I mouthed back, just as clearly.
“In addition to a Divinity degree,” Ted continued, “Reverend Clarkson has a Master of Social Work. He spent sixteen years working in the field, first in a home for senior citizens, then a rural hospital, and finally in a large metropolitan high school.”
“Philip A. Clarkson,” Deirdre mused. “He wouldn’t happen to be related to Philip R. Clarkson, would he? My sister is a member of his congregation in Boston, one of the largest churches in the denomination. He’s a wonderful speaker!”
Ted beamed. “Yes, I believe this is his son. My phone connection to Reverend Oswald was poor, but before we were cut off he said this is Reverend Clarkson’s only child. If he’s half the orator his father is, we’d be very fortunate to hire him.”
There were murmurs of approval as the board took in this information.
“It’s too bad we don’t have time to bring him in for an interview,” Miranda said. “But imagine! Having the son of such a famous pastor here in New Bern! I think Ted did an amazing job, finding such a well-qualified candidate in less than a day.”
Adam Kingsbury, who is in his fourth year of what was to be a two-year term as church treasurer, no one else being willing to take on the job, was chewing nervously on his thumbnail.
“Ted, we haven’t discussed finances. How are we going to get money to pay an additional salary? What about insurance?”
Ted held up his hands. “It’s all going to work out. We’ll be able to put our new pastor on the Conference’s insurance plan. As far as his salary,” Ted drew his bushy gray eyebrows together, “I think we’re going to have to put off plans for a new furnace.”
“Oh, no!”
“Not again! We barely got through last winter.”
“I know, but I don’t see another alternative. Do you?” Ted let his gaze rest on Abigail, who ignored him.
“That’s it, then. We’ll just have to make do with the old furnace and pray that God makes it last another year. Now,” he said, clasping his hands together, “it sounds like we’ve settled on our candidate. We just need someone to make a motion. Margot?”
I looked around at the others, surprised that Ted would call on me to make the motion and more than a little annoyed to see the wide smile on Abigail’s face. I knew what she was thinking, and I was having none of it. Single I am and single I will remain. I have accepted this, so why can’t everybody else?
I felt a kick under the table and jumped. Abigail, still smiling that irritating smile, tipped her head to one side, urging me to get on with it.
“I move that we call the Reverend Philip A. Clarkson as interim pastor of the New Bern Community Church.”
“Second!” Abigail chirped so loudly that she startled the again-dozing Waldo, who jerked his head up and shouted, “Aye!”
4
Margot
Abigail flipped down the visor and peered intently into the narrow mirror while she applied her lipstick. “Watch out for potholes, Margot. You’re making me smear it.”
I kept driving, keeping the wheel exactly where it was, saying nothing.
“I don’t see what you’re so upset about,” she said, running her fingernail around the edge of her lips. “All I did was suggest that you’d be the perfect person to welcome Reverend Clarkson. You’re so hospitable. Everyone knows that. Besides, you were the natural choice. Everyone else has families. They’re all busy getting ready for the holidays.”
“And I suppose I’m not!”
Abigail jerked in her seat, surprised by my outburst.
“Just because I’m single doesn’t mean I have nothing to do! And I do have a family! They’re all coming for Christmas! So I’ve got plenty of things on my plate already—especially since I’m single! I don’t have a husband to help me with the preparations. And I don’t have time to be a one-woman welcome wagon! And even if I did, you only volunteered me because you’re trying to set me up with the new minister.”
Abigail was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Margot. That was insensitive of me. You’re just as busy as the rest of us; I know that. Being single has nothing to do with it. It just seemed to me that … well, your faith is so important to you. I thought a nice, unmarried man of the cloth might be the perfect match for you. I was only trying to help.”
“I don’t want that kind of help. I’m perfectly happy being single.”
Abigail put the cap back on her tube of lipstick and closed the visor. “Of course,” she said flatly. “Anyone can see that. You positively radiate joy and contentment.”
“I’m fine. I have a nice home, a good job, and most of my friends are lovely people. Let’s just leave well enough alone, all right?”
Abigail looked shocked. “Why? I’ve never left well enough alone. Not when I saw the possibility of getting something better. And I want something better for you, not me. What’s so terrible about that?”
“Nothing,” I said, feeling guilty for snapping at her. Abigail really does mean well, but she’s so … insistent. “But I believe I’ll be a lot happier if I just embrace myself and my life as it is and get over the idea that I need a man to be complete as a woman.”
“Well, of course you don’t! What a silly idea. Is that how you’ve felt? Truly?”
I nodded sheepishly as I turned my car onto Commerce Street.
“Really,” Abigail said, in a slightly disbelieving tone. “Well, then I applaud your enlightenment—however recent it may be. That whole ‘you complete me’ bunk is just that, a lot of sentimental hoo-hah invented in Hollywood. Or some such place.
“If a man alone can make you happy, then my first marriage should have made me the happiest woman on earth. Woolley Wynne was handsome, very rich, and very
