[The past summer. Alice’s sister Emma is approached in the fellowship hall by Sarah Maddage, the soon-resigning assistant pastor and owner of the tea shop where Alice is employed.]
To Emma, this woman resembled the hesitant newcomer, the nervous visitor happy to sight someone she actually knew. Ironically, “Reverend” Maddage knew everyone, but one no longer knew her. Not by then, though could one really say why?
She had caught Emma’s eye and hastened toward her, her hand shaking with the cup of scalding water from the cylindrical water carafe.
Emma stood alone for reasons clear enough to herself, being only a casual visitor at St. Matthias’s. She expected no one to have forgotten the recent, hilarious scandal of her exhortative outburst to the ecclesia, prompted by Alice’s dear hand reaching for hers during a solemn hymn. Which is why she’d wrangled her father and brother into a Sunday serving of humanity’s longest-running redemption story.
Setting her coffee on small table of pamphlets and crossing her arms, she listened to Sarah Maddage’s smooth patter but it didn’t fool her. When the lame duck of a minister reached with precision into her purse and brought out a teabag, she said, “Just a sample, dear. Perhaps for later. Or I could dump that for you,” and she put forth a hand for Emma’s own Styrofoam.
Emma shook her head. Everything that merely smelled now stank.
“That’s kind of you, but I wouldn’t want to insult the true Host,” she finished saying, eyes to the woman’s face, and only then picked up her Styro-swill.
Sarah’s grin held for a moment too long, as if memorizing Emma’s face.
She called her tea mugwort, and that would stick: It was the kind of thing Alice might know about, but Emma didn’t trust any brew hawked by a woman with such a pinched, mirthless smile. And she felt something was being hawked, or at least she was being pandered to.
Later, Emma would fish a crumpled teabag out of the trash, its string encircled at the knot with a faint brown ring, and show it to Alice at home.
“Recognize this?”
Alice sniffed and nodded, her chestnut hair giving a little bounce. Had the “grub-girl” showered?
“No tag but it’s mugwort. She sells it at the shop but I blended some last year for cramps.”
“Yeah,” Emma murmured. “That figures. Did you hear she’s stepping down at Matthias’s?”
Maddage wanted to leave her mark on the saints, even with a final Cup.
“Emmalita? Would you come walk me home tomorrow when I get off?”
The assistant pastor’s interest in Alice had rankled Emmalee that day.
“And your sister,” broached the older woman. “I left it to Penelope to interview her for—”
“Ohh, who, Mrs. Collings? Longtime friend of the family!” To think Emma had almost touched the outlandishly spa-tanned arm, proximal to “the hand that held the tea,” in theatrical gratitude. Nearer that sweaty core … it simply wouldn’t do, would it.
Back to Penelope. Emma continued: “But it’s funny—not that I’m one to talk—how I haven’t seen her around church of late. She used to bring young Davey.” Emma glanced around at the church halls, pillars. “You don’t think she acquired an edifice complex, do you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, child,” Sarah Maddage forged on. “I was saying your sister, your … intimate is a formidable presence, even in her absence. I expect you have a clue as to what is meant. But, well … except for the time she bestowed your message in tongues” (and here she whispered conspiratorially that she herself didn’t mind it at all, and approved of spiritual gifts), “I’ve yet to get a read on her interest in things … of the Lord.”
“Oh yes,” replied Emmalee in sing-song, “this is true, but she’s always been on top of her own mysteries.”
That should land. Somewhere.
A blank face.
“You know, teas, et cetera.”
“I see,” said the woman. “And of course the hand-holding—”
“Oh, did that cause a stir?” Emma now swigged her dishwater. “Mmm…”
“Well now, maybe you’re ready to tell me.” Maddage now gulped her potion.
“What do you mean, assistant pasture?” said Emma, enjoying the barbed word. “Alice is not just one thing, let me ‘share’ that—and if that means God Himself will do the sorting, perhaps we’d best leave it to Him … or Her. Or, hah, the holy angels, or … the Virgin! Blessed. Or is that name welcome here?”
Why does this woman seem to be relaxing in my presence?
“Do you know, I think you’re spot-on, er, Miss Truesdale. I myself am … more than what one might see, and I believe there are some around town who eschew the usual gossip, who are quite open-minded—forgiving, even. Yes, a well-placed few.”
“Really! How extraordinary. But do you know, I think I spotted my father back in the vestry just a minute ago, and these minutes can drag on after an unlively, unlovely service, as you know. The cookies were a good way to ruin one’s lunchtime hunger, but I think that’s where we’re headed … if you’ll be among the forgiving just now.”
The steely-faced Sarah, in reality assistant to no one, replied, “Oh, then of course I wouldn’t dream of keeping you, dear. You and Brother Truesdale enjoy what’s left of your appetite. I shall be around a couple more weeks till we go away, the husband and I. Do give Alice my regards; I’ll refrain from nudging her sensibilities any which way, perhaps for all our sake.”
The cryptic nature of these last words clung to Emma like a wet coat until she sniffed the fresh air and met her menfolk at the car. All of 10 minutes became scattered by the sunshine.
