Miss Julia Meets Her Match (5 page)

“I don’t know about that, pastor,” I said, feeling a thrill of pleasure to be able to turn the tables on him. “I admit that I think they’re biting off more than they can chew, but you can hardly fault them for wanting to set up an area for people to Walk Where Jesus Walked. I mean, it’s not exactly a unique idea. You know about that evangelical group that asks What Would Jesus Drive, which I’m here to tell you offends any number of pickup truck owners. Even Sam Murdoch has talked about buying a Dodge Ram, and he says he thinks Jesus would too if he was still in the carpentry business. And then there’s that youth campaign that asks What Would Jesus Do, which sells bracelets and necklaces and bumper stickers and I don’t know what all. Seems to me that Mr. Dooley is just jumping on the bandwagon.”

Pastor Ledbetter shot me a dark look. We both knew that he’d been on the same bandwagon with that WWJD business, urging the young people in the church to ask that every time they turned around and before they did anything.

“The What Would Jesus Do movement is an entirely different matter,” he said in a way that admitted no doubt in his mind. “Mr. Dooley may be setting up a money-making scheme to bilk naive Christians, while the WWJD movement aims to help young people find their way through worldly distractions, not to relieve them of their money.”

“It sure does offer a lot for sale.”

Pastor Ledbetter appeared not to have heard me, for his attention was now focused on the pencil which he was running up and down through his fingers. I’d had about enough of the conversation. There had been nothing of a private nature discussed, certainly nothing that required my coming out on a rainy day to listen to.

I pulled my coat closer and prepared to take my leave. “Well, if that’s it, pastor, I’ll be going now. I wouldn’t be surprised if I came down with some kind of foreign flu after this little expedition, so I need to be on my way.”

He straightened up then, put down the pencil and looked directly at me. “That’s not all I wanted to talk about,” he said, then bowed his head.

I determined right then that, if he intended to take off in a long-winded prayer, I intended to stop it in its tracks. I buttoned my coat and stood up.

“Miss Julia,” he said, wiping his hand across his brow, his eyes fixed on the top of his desk. “Please don’t go. I know you and I have had our ups and downs, but I’m at my wit’s end. I need some help and advice.”

From
me?
I couldn’t believe it. The man must’ve been in a sorry state to be willing to admit to me, his most adversarial member, that he needed help. I unbuttoned my coat and settled back to await whatever was forthcoming.

“I’ll be glad to help any way I can,” I said, my nerves zinging inside of me. Which would it be? Norma or Emma Sue? And what was I going to say about either one? Far be it from me to carry tales, even if half the town thought they were both carrying on extracurricular activities.

“This is difficult for me to talk about,” he said, his shoulders slumping heavily.

“It’s Emma Sue,” he moaned, covering his face with his hands. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her. I can’t talk to her anymore. She doesn’t listen to anything I say, and she refuses to realize the consequences of her actions. I’m so worried about her, I don’t know what to do. I thought, if you pointed out the error of her ways, she might listen. She thinks so much of you, you know.”

That was news to me, but I nodded encouragingly.

“As you know,” he went on, “Satan has many faces and exhibits himself in many ways. I fear for Emma Sue, but she’s put up a stubborn wall between us. It would be a great blessing if you would find out what’s going on and help me to help her. I’m afraid she’s having some sort of spiritual breakdown, and I need to intervene before it’s too late.”

I twisted my hands together in my lap, knowing this had to be handled very carefully. “Just what are her symptoms, pastor?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed some of them,” he said, giving me a quick look. “That motorcycle Poker Run last fall, for one thing. That was the first time in all our years together that she outright defied me and went against my wishes. It was a burden to my soul to see her flaunt herself in such a public way.”

I pursed my mouth, waiting for what I was sure would come next, which was that he blamed me for getting her involved in that motorcycle fundraiser. But he surprised me by not mentioning my baleful influence at all.

“After that,” he went on, “it was one thing after another. She decided to go into a bridal consulting business with LuAnne Conover, and you and I both know there’s not a lick of business sense between the two of them. Now they’ve spent I don’t know how much money on business cards, stationery, and office equipment. And, Miss Julia, they don’t even have an office, much less any clients. They’re using one of our bedrooms, fiddling around for hours every day, making plans, deciding on color schemes and fixing up portfolios to show to prospective brides.”

“Well,” I said, “all that seems to be the way to proceed. I’m not sure that indicates any serious problem. I’d think you’d be proud of her for putting her talent to use.”

“Her
talent!
She doesn’t have any talent!” He ran his hand through his hair in his agitation. “The only thing she can do is make clothes on that expensive sewing machine nothing would do but I had to buy her. Now, she says she’s moved past homemade clothes.”

I, for one, was glad to hear it. Whatever Emma Sue’s talent was, it certainly did not lie in fashion.

“One’s interests do change over the years, pastor. I expect that’s all that’s going on with Emma Sue, and I don’t see that it’s anything that should worry you.”

“You haven’t heard the worst of it,” he said. The man was slumped so far over, I feared he was going to put his head on the desk and begin sobbing, the thought of which almost unnerved me.

“Well, let’s hear it. What’s the worst?”

“She’s . . .” He stopped, swallowed hard and finally managed to say, “she’s dyed her hair. And painted her face and shortened her skirts and bought spike-heeled shoes and tells me I need to smarten up.” He rubbed his hand across his face again. “When she came home from that appointment last night, looking like a . . . a streetwalker, I had to get down on my knees and pray for her. But this morning, even after all my praying, she put it all on again!”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but his anguish was so obvious that I made the effort to control myself. I let the silence lengthen as I sought for something reassuring to say. As for my own thoughts, I thought it was high time that Emma Sue tried to beautify herself. All that naturalness she was so committed to needed more help than it’d been getting.

But according to the pastor, she had made some major changes. I couldn’t wait to see her.

“It may not be so bad, pastor,” I said. “Most women like to look their best, and maybe that’s all Emma Sue’s doing. Trying to be fashionable doesn’t necessarily mean she’s on the road to wrack and ruin.”

He rested both elbows on the desk and propped his forehead on the heels of his hands. “I don’t want her to be fashionable. I want my wife back the way she was, not tarted up like a, like a
tart.
” He raised his head, seemingly stricken with his own choice of words. “Forgive me, Miss Julia. I got carried away, but I’m so frustrated I don’t know what to do. Emma Sue’s gotten herself up to look like the wife of a television evangelist. Every time I look at her, it unsettles me something awful, and I’m her
husband
. We all know that it’s incumbent upon every Christian woman to avoid circumstances that tempt men to sin. I ask you, Miss Julia, what if she stirs the loins of every man who sees her?”

My word, I thought with a jolt, is he saying that she stirs
his
loins, too? I fought back a mental picture of a commotion in Pastor Ledbetter’s nether regions. But if that was his problem, what was wrong with being stirred, since their union was both legal and church sanctioned?

As I kept my silence, mainly because I didn’t know what to say and was afraid I’d laugh if I opened my mouth, he straightened in his chair and said, “It makes me cringe to look at her and know what people must be thinking.”

“Seems to me you’d be better off knowing what Emma Sue’s thinking,” I said with some asperity. “I wouldn’t worry about other people.”

“I have to,” he moaned. “In my position, I have to worry about what people think.”

I bit my lip before voicing my next thought, aware that I might be telling him more than he wanted to know. I went ahead and did it anyway. “Maybe Emma Sue’s trying to get your attention. Have you thought about that?”

“She
has
my attention,” he said. “She’s my wife. What more could she want?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said, since being his wife would be the last thing I’d want. “Well, pastor, I’m not sure what I can do, but I’ll try my best. Although I must admit that a woman’s judicious use of cosmetics does not automatically send me into a tailspin. But since you feel so strongly about it, I would recommend that you pray about it. As you’ve told me so many times, prayer is our only recourse. Let go and let God, I believe is the way you put it.”

He didn’t look as if he believed me or appreciated my turning back on him the stock answer he’d always had to my problems.

I took my leave then, assuring him that I would exert every effort to reform Emma Sue and put her back on her former track. As I went through the outer office and past Norma, who was just too engrossed in paperwork to speak, I couldn’t resist shaking her up a little.

“I expect you already know this, Norma,” I said, knowing full well that she did not. “But the pastor is deeply concerned about the worrisome activities of somebody very close to him. I hope you’ll put him on your prayer list as he wrestles with the problem.”

A flash of fear blazed in her eyes as she glanced up at me, and I felt a flash of shame for what I’d said. But then, her mouth tightened and her eyes got hard. “There’re a lot of people on my prayer list,” she said, “because
some
more than others really need it.”

I felt my own mouth tighten. “Well, Norma, for once we’re in agreement.” I pulled my coat together and sailed out of there.

I went flying into the house, slamming the front door behind me. “Hazel Marie! Where are you?”

“In here,” she called. “In the kitchen with Lillian.”

I hurried that way, flinging off my coat as I went. Hazel Marie was sitting at the table, working on a piece of cross-stitch that she’d been struggling with for weeks. Home Is Where the Heart Is was the slogan on it, and she aimed to have it framed for Mr. Pickens if she ever finished it.

I’d told her that if she was going to spend that amount of time on stitchery, she’d do better to work in needlepoint, which would last ever so much longer. But she’d never been able to get the hang of the basketweave stitch.

“Wait till I tell you what the pastor wants me to do,” I said, collapsing into a chair and patting my breast. I had a tiny tug of conscience about revealing what he’d called a matter of privacy. But then, he’d never said it was a matter of confidence. Besides, I was going to need help in deciding if Emma Sue really was headed for hell in a handbasket, painted face and all. Or if, as I suspected, the pastor himself was way off base.

So I decided to drag out the telling by starting out the way he had. “First thing he said,” I said, “was to warn me off any involvement with that theme park it looks like we’re getting. He thinks they may be fly-by-nights, and I totally agreed with him. Which was a wonderment in itself.”

“Theme park!” Hazel Marie almost came out of her chair. “We’re getting a theme park here? Oh, that’s wonderful. I love those things, but I haven’t been to one in years. Are they going to have big-name stars? Oh, I hope so.” She grabbed Lillian’s arm in her excitement. “Maybe Tim McGraw or, oh, maybe Kenny Chesney! I love that song about his tractor. He can sing the dog out of that one.”

“Hazel Marie,” I said, “it’s not that kind of theme park. The only stars they’ll have are amateur actors playing Lazarus and the Samaritan woman. I don’t believe they’ll have any singing at all, much less any guitar playing. But listen, the theme park wasn’t the main thing Pastor Ledbetter wanted to talk about.”

Then, paying little mind to Hazel Marie’s disappointment over no star billing at the theme park, I went on to tell her and Lillian what had really been on the pastor’s mind and what he wanted me to do. “Now,” I ended up, “how am I going to encourage Emma Sue to go back to being his meek little shadow, when I am absolutely delighted that she’s making something of herself at last?”

“Did you tell him that?” Hazel Marie asked, putting aside her needlework.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that. The man was so upset and under so much strain, I wouldn’t have attempted such a thing.”

“And ’sides,” Lillian said, “the preacher might be right. Don’t nobody know but him how bad off Miz Ledbetter be.”

“Well,” I said, struck by Lillian’s observation. “There’s the voice of reason right there. I’ve been assuming that Pastor Ledbetter just feared losing his control over her but, for all we know, Emma Sue could be making herself over to look like the town harlot. Maybe we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“Yessum,” Lillian said. “I think that be best.”

I shot her a quick glare, then turned to Hazel Marie. “What do you think?”

“I think we should invite Emma Sue out to lunch. That way, we can see how she fixes herself up to be in public. The Main Street Tea Shoppe’s under new management, you know, and we can tell her we want to try it out.”

“Good thinking, Hazel Marie. I’ll call her right now and see if she can meet us tomorrow.”

I noticed Lillian’s look of disappointment, so I said, “We’ll invite her back here after lunch. To see your cross-stitch, Hazel Marie. Maybe you’ll have a question for her on how to frame it or something. She won’t suspect a thing, and Lillian will be able to give us her opinion, too.”