A Common Life (5 page)

(He’d hardly known what to do about the Anglicans from Wesley, who offered to throw in a handbell choir.)

Had he agreed to Mike Stovall’s ridiculous offer? He didn’t think so. He might have mumbled something like “Great idea,” which it was, but would Mike take that to mean he’d accepted? Thirty-seven people in the choir would barely leave room for the bride and groom to squeeze to the altar.

His head was swimming, his stomach was churning, his palms were sweating, he felt like . . . a rock star. That heady notion was soon squelched, however, when he was forced to dash to the toilet at the church office and throw up. He flushed three times, trying to disguise the wretched indignity of the whole appalling act.

“Something I ate,” he said to Emma, who knew a lame excuse when she heard one. He snatched a book off the shelf and sat with his back to her, numb as a pickled herring.

“I’m sorry,” he told Cynthia one evening at the rectory.

“Whatever for?”

“For . . . you know . . . the ruckus, the . . . the
tumult
!”

“But dearest, I love this! There’s never been such ado over any of my personal decisions. It’s wonderful to me!”

“It is?”

“And can’t you see how happy this is making everyone? Sometimes I think it really isn’t for us, it’s for them!”

“Wrong,” he said, taking her hand in his. “It’s for us.”

“Then please relax and enjoy it, darling. Can’t you?”

She looked at him so searchingly, with such a poignant hope, that he was weak with a mixture of shame for his current dilapidation and love for her bright spirit.

“Of course. You’re right. I’ll try. I promise.”

“Please. You see, this will only happen to us once.”

There! She’d nailed it. What made him uneasy was that it was happening
to
them; he preferred having some say-so, some . . .
control
.

“Let God be in control,” she said, smiling. He was unfailingly astonished that she could read his mind. “After all, He’s done a wonderful job so far.”

The tension flowed out of him like air from a tire.

“Ahhhh,” he said, sitting back on the sofa and unsnapping his collar.

The bishop rang him shortly after dawn.

“Timothy! I know you’re an early riser. . . .”

“If I wasn’t, I am now.”

“Martha and I want the two of you to use our old family camp in Maine, it’s on a lake, has a boathouse and two canoes, and an absolutely glorious view! We’re thrilled about all this, you must say yes, we’ll call at once and make sure it’s set aside. . . .”

His bishop was gushing like a schoolgirl.

“And wait ’til you hear the loons, Timothy! Mesmerizing! Magical! Our family has gathered at this house for nearly fifty years, it might have been the set of
On Golden Pond
! Trust me, you’ll be thrilled, you’ll think you’ve expired and shot straight up!”

“Thanks, Stuart, let me get back to you on that, we haven’t really discussed what we’re going to do.”

“Don’t even think about Cancún, Timothy!”

He hadn’t once thought of Cancún.

“And get any notion of southern France out of your head . . .”

He hadn’t had any such notion in his head.

“. . . it’s all the rage, southern France, but you’ll like Maine far better! It’s where Martha and I spent
our
honeymoon, you know.”

He hardly knew what to say to all the offers pouring in; Ron Malcolm had offered the services of a limousine following the wedding, but he’d declined. Why would they need a limo when they were only going a block and a half to spend their wedding night?

Esther Bolick sat in the den that opened off her kitchen and stared blankly at
Wheel of Fortune;
it was nothing more than flickering images, she didn’t give a katy what a five-word definition for
show biz
might be.

She glanced irritably at Gene, who was snoring in his recliner after a supper of fresh lima beans, new potatoes, fried squash, coleslaw, and skillet cornbread. They’d also had green onions the size of her fist, which Gene took a fit over. “Sweet as sugar!” he declared. She had never trusted a man who wouldn’t eat onions.

She was thinking that she was happy for Father Kavanagh, happy as can be. But it had been
days
since she heard the good news and not
one word
had anybody said to her about baking the wedding cake. She knew Cynthia was very talented; she could do anything in the world except cross-stitch, so she could probably bake her own cake.

Well, then, that was it, she thought with relief. That was why nobody had said doodley-squat about her famous orange marmalade being the center of attraction at one of the most important weddings in Mitford in . . . maybe
decades.

On the other hand, why would anybody in their right mind take time to bake their own wedding cake when all they had to do was dial Esther Bolick at 8705?

She had designed that cake over and over in her mind. Considering that the color of the icing was white, she might crown the top with calla lilies. Jena Ivey at Mitford Blossoms could order off for callas in a heartbeat. She’d even thought of scattering edible pearls around on the icing; she’d never used edible pearls before, and hoped people’s fillings wouldn’t crack out and roll around on the parish hall floor.

She also considered wreathing the base of the cake with real cream-colored roses, plus she’d have icing roses tumbling down the sides—after all, she’d seen a few magazines in her time, she was no hick, she knew what was what in today’s cake world. And would she dun the father for all that work? Of course not! Not a red cent, though Lord only knows, what they charged for ingredients these days made highway robbery look law-abiding.

Esther pursed her lips and stared, unseeing, at a spot on the wall.

The thing was, it didn’t make a bit of sense for somebody to bake their own wedding cake . . .

. . . so, maybe somebody else had been asked to bake the cake.

The thought made her supper turn to a rock in her digestive system. She balled up her fist and rubbed the place between her ribs, feeling the pain all the way to her heart.

How could they ask anybody else to bake the father’s wedding cake? He had raved about her orange marmalade for years, had personally told her it was the best cake he had ever put in his mouth, bar none.
Bar none!
So what if two pieces of it had nearly killed him? It was his own blamed fault for stuffing himself!

And how many orange marmalades had she carried to the doors of the downtrodden, the sick, the elderly, and the flat broke? And how many hundreds of miles had she walked from fridge to oven to sink, getting varicose veins and bad knees, not to mention bunions? Well, then—
how many
?

She remembered the rueful time she baked marmalades the livelong day and finally dragged herself to her electric-powered recliner, where she pressed the button on her remote and tilted back to what Gene called “full sprawl.” All she lacked of being dead was the news getting out, when,
blam!
the most violent and sudden storm you’d ever want to see hit square over their house and the power went out. There she was, trapped in that plug-in recliner, clutching a dead remote—with no way to haul herself up and Gene Bolick out to a meeting at the Legion hut.

She recalled the shame of having to pitch herself over the side like a sailor jumping ship; landing on the floor had caused her right leg to turn blue as blazes, then black, then brown, not to mention her hip, which, as she’d told the doctor, had given her sporadical pain ever since. And all that for what? For four orange marmalades to help raise money for a new toilet at the library!

Trembling slightly, Esther picked up the TV remote and surfed to a commercial with a talking dog. She and Gene had never had a dog and never would, they were too much trouble, but she liked dogs. She tried to occupy her mind with dogs so she wouldn’t think about a shocking idea that suddenly occurred to her. Her attention wandered, however, and there it was, the bald truth, staring her in the face:

Winnie Ivey was exactly who they’d turned to for this special, once-in-a-lifetime deal—Winnie Ivey, who was a
commercial
baker; Winnie Ivey, who’d never made just
one
of anything in her life!

She sat bolt upright and tried to get her breath. Commercial flour! Commercial butter! And, for all she knew, powdered eggs.

Her blood ran cold.

“Of all th’ dadblame things to do!” she said, kicking one of her shoes across the room.

“What?” Gene raised his head and looked around. “Was that you, dollface?”

“Do you know who they’ve asked to bake the weddin’ cake?”

“What weddin’ cake?”

“Why, the father’s, of course!”

“Who?” asked Gene, genuinely interested.

“Winnie Ivey.”

Gene burped happily. “Well, I’ll say.”

“You’ll say what?” she demanded.

When his wife stood up and leaned over his recliner as she was now doing, he thought she looked ten feet tall. “I’ll say that was a dirty, low-down trick not to ask you to bake it!”

There. Gene Bolick knew what side his bread was buttered on.

She was stomping into the kitchen, mad as a hornet, when the phone rang.

“Hallo!”
she shouted, ready to knock somebody’s head off.

“Esther? This is Cynthia Coppersmith, I’m so glad you’re home, I thought you and Gene might have gone bowling tonight. Timothy and I agree we’d like nothing better than to have one of your fabulous three-layer marmalades as our wedding cake. We hope you’ll be able to do it, Timothy said we’ll pay top dollar!”

Cynthia was astounded to hear Esther Bolick burst into tears, followed by a pause in which there was considerable murmuring and shuffling about.

“Hello!” Gene bawled into the phone. “Esther said tell you she’d love to bake your weddin’ cake! And no charge, you tell th’ father no charge!”

Now his choir was upset because the crowd from down the street had horned in.

Had he actually agreed to such a plan? He remembered only that Mike had brought it up, nothing more. He called Mike Stovall.

“I believe we talked about your choir joining our choir for—”

“Right! And everything’s going great, just great! We’ve got a couple of ideas for the music—”

“The music, of course, is entirely Richard’s domain, Richard’s and Cynthia’s, so—”

“Well!” Mike Stovall sounded annoyed.

“In any case, given the small quarters of our nave and chancel, I think it might be best to—”

“Oh, we’ve thought that through, Father, here’s the deal. Your choir in the chancel, ours in the rear, what do you think?”

He couldn’t think. He needed a job foreman, somebody in a hard hat. . . .