3

Gambrell Hall

Ravinia Carey sat with her arms folded, shaking her head. “That’s it? They just ‘felt it was time’?”

“Well,” her mother said, “maybe it was time. We’d been there nearly four years, and perhaps your father had done all he could.”

“I didn’t do it alone, Grace. You worked as hard as I did.”

“They didn’t use the old ready-for-a-younger-man line?”

Thomas had always found his daughter’s direct stare disconcerting. He shrugged. “Actually they did.”

She huffed and looked away.

“Well, attendance was down a bit.”

Grace jumped in. “But that was as much because of the plant closing and several families having to leave.”

Ravinia waved her off. “Just tell me they did right by you, other than kicking you to the curb.”

“I got severance, yes.”

“How much?”

“Well, that’s confidential, Rav. I felt it was fair. . . .”

“It’s not confidential from your own daughter! Tell me they gave you a month for every year you served.”

“Oh,” Grace said, “they wouldn’t have been able to afford that. With core families leaving—”

“How much, Dad?”

“A week for each year.”

“Unbelievable.”

“But you know they had provided a parsonage at no cost,” Grace said.

“Like you would have been able to afford rent on that salary. And I’m sure it was a castle. Anyway, all that means is that you have zero equity. Honestly, Dad.”

“Rav, listen to me,” he said. “I don’t know what the future holds, but—”

“Please don’t tell me you know who holds the future!”

“—but I know this: I made a commitment a long time ago, and I’m not about to stray from it now. I told the Lord I would obey Him and follow wherever He leads.”

Ravinia looked away. “I’m trying to find something in that to admire. You’re consistent; I’ll give you that. But how long will you keep banging your head against a wall?”

“Oh, honey,” Grace said, “we’re happy to serve. You know that.”

“But why isn’t anyone else happy with it? You wonder why I’ve ‘lost the blessing,’ as you’ve always so eloquently put it? I know you’re not in this for personal gain, but do you think this is fair? You devote your entire lives to the church, and what do you have to show for it?”

Ravinia looked past Thomas and broke into a beatific smile. “Dirk!” she said, rising.

Thomas turned and stood as a tall, bald young man embraced his daughter. “Excuse me,” Dirk said, shaking first Grace’s hand, then Thomas’s. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Dirk said he and Ravinia had to hurry to the cafeteria and insisted her parents join them. “My treat,” he said.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Thomas said.

“Sure I do! Come on.”

The Darby Trailer

“You and Petey clear your own table, don’t you?” Aunt Lois said.

“We hardly ever eat at the table,” Brady said.

“Honestly. . . . Well, at my house, everybody buses his own dishes.”

“What’s that mean?” Peter said.

“Clear your place and at least put the dishes in the sink. I’ll wash ’em tonight. And we’ll flip to see who dries.”

“Let Petey dry.”

“Hey!”

“I got a job,” Brady said. “I don’t need to be doin’ housework, too.”

“What’s your job?” Aunt Lois said as they maneuvered around each other in the tiny kitchen.

“When the park Laundromat closes each night, I go clean it. Dust the machines, mop the floor, fill the detergent dispensers, collect the money from the coin boxes.”

“How long’s that take?”

“About an hour, but it’s every night, so I make a few bucks a week. That’s how I pay for my movies and could afford the fees for football. Ma sure wasn’t gonna spring for it.”

“And now you’ve quit? What kind of sense does that make?”

“I wanna do something else, that’s all.”

“Can I play my video game until it’s time to dry?” Peter said.

“You got homework, young man?”

Peter laughed. “In third grade?”

“Go on, then,” she said.

Brady sat back down as his aunt did the dishes.

“You know what I got to ask you, don’t you?” she said.

He shrugged. Of course he knew.

“She touch him again since you threatened her?”

“You kiddin’? I told her I’d kill her, and I meant it.”

“You wouldn’t kill your own mama.”

Brady swore. “You know I would.”

“Don’t talk like that. You know better. And you know it’s the booze that makes Erlene—”

“It’s more than booze now, ma’am. I don’t know what else she’s doing, but trust me, when she’s not drunk, she’s high.”

Cafeteria | Emory University

It didn’t take long for Thomas to determine that Dirk Blanc’s budget was hardly stretched by paying for a couple of visitors’ meals. It turned out he was the offspring of two lawyers and worked at the library only because he felt it was the right thing to do.

“Dad and Mom do a lot of pro bono work, so it didn’t seem fair to make them foot the whole bill for my degree.”

“They sound wonderful,” Grace said. “Are you people of faith?”

Thomas noticed Ravinia blink slowly as if mortified, but Dirk didn’t miss a beat. “Not really, no. But we certainly admire religious people and applaud what you do. Don’t misunderstand. We’re not atheists by any means. I’d say we’re more spiritual than religious.”

“‘Religious’ doesn’t really describe us, either,” Grace said, but Thomas surreptitiously pressed his knee against hers and she fell silent. This wasn’t the time or place. If Ravinia was as enamored of this man as she seemed, there would be more opportunities to get into this.

Dirk shot Grace a double take and smiled pleasantly. “Not religious? A pastor and a pastor’s wife?”

Ravinia rose. “Let’s get some dessert.”

The Darby Trailer

Aunt Lois looked at her watch. “What time’s your mama get off work?”

“Hours ago.”

“But she parties?”

Brady snorted. “That’s one way to say it. I think sometimes she and her boss party alone.”

“Is she often this late? What time do you have to clean up the Laundromat?”

“Half hour or so. It closes at ten.”

“And you leave Petey here alone?”

“Have to. Can’t wake him up and drag him along.”

“You poor boys.”

“Don’t worry about us. Worry about him when I finally get out of here. I wish you’d take him.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But she’d never stand for it.”

“What does she care? He’s just in her way.”

“But she’d at least see him as personal property, and no way she’d let me raise him.”

“You might be surprised,” Brady said.

“I should have started home an hour ago. I told Carl I’d be back by midnight.”

“No way now. You wanna go with me when I go to work?”

“I’m not leaving your brother alone, even if you think you have to. But you hurry back. Your mama’s gonna demand to know why I’m here, and I want to tell you all together.”

“Even Petey?”

“’Fraid so.”

“So it’s about Daddy, eh?”

“Hush.”

The Emory Inn

Thomas knelt by the bed next to Grace, as he had done every night since their wedding.

“Rav’s in love,” she said. “We either need to get that boy saved or pray it doesn’t work out. The last thing I want is to see her unequally yoked.”

“Hmm.”

“What are you thinking, Thomas?”

“I don’t know. Just that I’m not so sure they’d be unequally yoked.”

She turned to face him, and he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. “What are you saying? I led that girl to Jesus myself.”

“Well, it’s clear she’s left Him somewhere along the way, wouldn’t you say? How old was she, Grace?”

“Very young, of course, but so were you and I when we came to faith. I believe she meant it and knew what she was doing.”

Thomas felt himself welling up, and he did not want to break down in front of Grace. She had always been so strong for him, through every struggling pastorate and every dismissal.

“I’m praying Rav was sincere, honey,” he said. “But do you realize how long it’s been since she even pretended to be a believer?”

Grace lowered her forehead to the mattress. “I know I wouldn’t want to relive her teen years for anything.”

Touhy Trailer Park

As Brady finished tidying the Laundromat, he wished his mother would stay out all night, forcing Aunt Lois to wait. It was nice to have her there. But of course he was curious, too. What had his father gotten himself into now?

Brady used a special key to open the coin boxes and dumped all the change into a bucket he took into a back room to sort. Besides the envelope of cash the owner tucked into a ceiling joist for him each week, Brady also absconded with the equivalent of three washes and three dries from each of the ten washers and ten dryers. Truth was, he made more skimming than he did in pay. That was something he would not tell his aunt. She was already praying overtime to keep him out of hell, he knew.

Another benefit of Brady’s job was getting his choice of the magazines stocked for people waiting for their wash and dry cycles. He believed his lifting of his favorites was less obvious because he made sure to leave Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and of course all the women’s magazines. He waited until the new People and Movie News and Entertainment Weekly came in, then took the previous week’s editions.

If his aunt asked about the magazines, he would tell her the boss had said he could have them. He would not be able to explain his jacket pockets bulging with quarters, so he would just move slowly and find a reason to head back to his and Peter’s bedroom, where he could unload.

But as he came within sight of their trailer, he saw his mother’s rattletrap car parked next to Aunt Lois’s.