Authors: Nancy Thayer
The church was full today. He was glad to see that the wealthy Vandersons, who were always off vacationing in some exotic place, were here today; but he was equally glad to see Norma and Wilbur Wilson in their usual place at the back of the church. The Wilsons were an older couple, neither wealthy nor sophisticated, but they had their own special prestige: they were
old
Londontoners. Their parents had been born here, and their parents before them, and Norma and Wilbur had lived in this town for over sixty-five years; they had been married in this church by another minister long ago. When Peter had moved to Londonton to take the position as pastor of this church several years back, he had been acutely aware of the Wilsons’ quiet skepticism, and it was a point of pride to him that they had retained their membership in the church and continued to attend faithfully—even though Wilbur’s frosty eyebrows raised defiantly now and then when Peter’s liberal political beliefs showed up too blatantly in his sermons.
Well, the Wilsons were here today, and the Moyers, and the Bennetts, and all the rest of the regulars. Peter sometimes thought this was the best moment of the Sunday morning. Everything seemed fresh and new, ready to begin: his congregation gathered
hopefully before him, not yet restless from sitting. His flock. Perhaps, after all, he could do them good. Hadn’t they gone to the trouble this crisp October morning to climb out of their beds, dress, and come to church, when they could be doing any number of other things—staying by the first fire of fall, sipping hot coffee and reading
The New York Times
? Or they could be out raking leaves, or stacking wood, or hiking through the mountains—they were by and large athletic and energetic people. But here they were, like children, offering their faces up to him, willing him to say the words that would change their lives, if only by bringing a few minutes of peace into the flurry of their days. He wanted to comfort them, enlighten them, uplift them, and perhaps even bring them closer somehow to God.
Peter had become a minister in part because of his secret belief that he might be the only happy man on earth. He had been raised on a large farm in Vermont which had been handed down by three generations of Taylors to his father, John, and which was in turn handed on to Peter’s older brother, John, Jr. The farm was mostly given over to apple orchards, and the beauty of those orchards in all seasons had filled Peter with a durable joy. His parents were both gone now; they had died within ten months of each other, but while they lived they had cared for each other with such steadfast affection that Peter grew up completely assured that such a thing as love existed on the earth. Against the horrors of the outside world he could hold up the example of their personal goodness, and this made it possible for him to be an optimist. He had not married until he was thirty, but he had married happily, and loved his wife not only with an enduring fondness but with an enduring lust. He was a fortunate man, and he believed in God, in the innate order and goodness which he thought must surely operate at the core of the universe, and in the ultimate perfectibility of human beings and the world they made. He really did have faith, and his congregation was able to sense that in him. They trusted him, as one who has been blessed, to pass blessings on.
Because he was an intelligent man, he also had his share of doubts about the messages he preached. But his greatest fear was not that he was all wrong and there was no God; he was not afraid of dying into oblivion. His greatest fear was that if there really was an afterlife, and if there really was a God, at the ultimate confrontation God would accuse him of failure. He could imagine God’s wrath, God’s words: “You fool! I gave you everything, and you did nothing of any real value! You were no help at all!” What would Peter do then?
Peter thought ministers were, even more than average professional men, prey to crises of confidence, of faith. It wasn’t a purely personal problem, either. Much of it had to do with changing standards and beliefs, which in turn altered the very foundation of the Church, and the way the Bible was interpreted. Peter was now forty-eight. Things had changed drastically since he was a small boy trembling on the edge of a pew as the pastor of the North Alton, Vermont, Methodist Church threatened him with hellfire and damnation. The idea of Hell was unpopular these days, and ministers were called upon to talk about charity more than righteousness. It was an attitude Peter felt quite comfortable with, given his temperament: he would always much rather forgive than castigate. Anyway, he had been so lucky, who was he to condemn anyone else? He would prefer to bring God into his parishioners’ lives through the doors of hope and wonder rather than through the doors of fear. But what if he were getting it all wrong? What if he were misinterpreting everything? What if, by his tolerance, he was committing sins of omission—and making it possible for his congregation to slip into Sin? It was passé now, he knew, the idea of Sin, yet it all the same existed, as alluring as a cool blue lake on a hot summer’s day. He felt as though he were leading his flock near that lake, when he should perhaps be angrily shooing them away; that he was consciously turning his back while certain of his congregation dabbled their toes or waded in, or even went for long swims.
Liza Howard, for example. Now Peter really did worry about the state of her soul. There she sat, just three rows from the front, wrapped in her mink coat. She was one of the wealthiest members of the congregation, and one of the worst. It was not just that she gave so little of her wealth to the church—although of course that irked Peter greatly. His poor church needed so many things and Liza Howard gave so little. Also, he secretly felt that her lack of generosity was a reflection on his preaching. If someone better were in the pulpit, surely Liza would give more? But money was not the main issue. He was not angry with her or worried about her simply because of selfish reasons. He was worried for Liza herself. In his most extreme moments, he believed that if there were a Hell after death, it was to be her inescapable destiny. More often and more rationally, he simply thought that anyone as dreadful as she was must secretly be miserable.
She did not seem miserable, however. She seemed well fed, well read, highly intelligent, critical, capable, and utterly self-satisfied. And no wonder: she possessed a ripe, complete beauty of face and body unlike anything he had ever seen before, a mythic
beauty. If Renoir had painted Mae West in modern dress, perhaps the result would have resembled Liza Howard: she was a blue-eyed blonde with an hourglass figure, a blooming summer garden of a woman. She usually wore her thick honey-colored hair pulled off her face and piled in soft convolutions at the back of her head, the better to display the emeralds or pearls in her ears. But the very way she restrained her hair indicated how long and wavy it would be when she released it. Everything about the woman was undulant, the gentle turn of her arms or legs, her full pink lips, her high, pillowy breasts. She was a tall, long-waisted, long-legged woman, perfectly proportioned: the sort of woman who made slimmer women look angular and ropy and tough. She was a woman of luxurious flesh.
But she was also a woman of licentious flesh. She counted on the lust of men to keep her entertained and she did more than her share of coveting neighbors’ husbands and committing adultery.
Peter knew certain things from gossip, and others from occasional confessions from outwardly proper but inwardly wretched men. Still, she was going too far with her attempts to seduce Peter himself.
Peter knew he was a handsome man and that this helped him in his ministry. Other women had had crushes on him and expressed this in a number of charming, embarrassed ways: serving diligently on committees, giving him chaste, handmade presents, even asking him to help them deal with the burden of their feelings, because they knew he was a married man.
But Liza displayed no such delicacy. Once or twice he had asked her to help him with some church task, in the hopes that over the casual friendly ease of an afternoon’s work, she might drop her guard and let him see the frightened child within. For there was surely a frightened child within us all, wasn’t there? Peter thought so. Liza
did
attend church, and she was intelligent—she must know that she was greedy, adulterous, uncharitable, and vain. Peter believed that in her heart of hearts Liza mourned for herself, for what she had become.
Just last weekend he had asked Liza to join him in visiting three very old couples who lived on farms in the mountains around Londonton, thinking that as they drove from farm to farm Liza would reflect on the difference between her state and that of other parishioners, who were at this point all too old or crippled to make the journey into church most Sundays. He thought the sight of their withered bodies and humble homes
would fill Liza with pity; she would see how lucky she was to be so wealthy and beautiful. The last old couple they visited had a nice home filled with drying apples and obliging dogs and cats. Peter expected Liza to say
something
—how she admired the old couple, how she envied them their quiet going on with life, how she was aware in the middle of dark nights that in spite of the superficial beauty of her life she was in truth more lonely and miserable than the old couples they saw who had so few material goods. Liza at thirty-five was a widow; Peter wondered if she had played a role, if only indirectly, in helping her aging husband to a heart attack.
But as Peter and Liza had ridden together through the brilliant New England day, Liza had not opened her heart to Peter. And so, finally, Peter had made a great attempt: he had reached his hand across the seat to place it gently over Liza’s elegant smooth hand, which fairly blossomed with rings. Liza had not withdrawn her hand, and so for a moment they had gone along that way, hands clasped in friendship.
“You know,” Peter had said, “it is what is in one’s heart that really matters.”
“Do you want to sleep with me?” Liza had asked in reply.
He had dropped Liza’s hand and nearly run off the road in horror. That she would invite him, suspect him! The entire afternoon, the old people—none of it had meant anything to Liza. She was too self-occupied.
“Liza,” he had said after a moment, “I love you in the way I love all the members of my church. And you are a lovely woman, which I’m sure you know without my saying. But I’m a married man, and a minister. I don’t lust after you. I’d like to be your friend. I’d like to help you.” Surely, he thought, he could not be any plainer than that.
Liza had studied Peter for one long moment with her gambler’s eyes—Peter had felt the gaze upon him, and had concentrated fiercely on the winding road. Then she had looked away again. “Of course,” she said.
When Peter glanced over at her again, he saw that she had rearranged herself seductively, so that ostensibly she was looking out the window, but with her body positioned in such a way that her skirt, which was one of those incredible new things with a slit up the side, exposed almost the entire length of one long, sleek, expensively stockinged leg. And she had placed her arm on the armrest of the car door in such a way that her blouse curved open, exposing a touch of creamy lace and of even creamier, curving breast. Again he nearly ran off the road. He was offended, and deeply disappointed. He had attempted to minister to her, and had been affronted. Churlishly he
thought: the hell with it then, there is nothing more I can do. He had to drive a good five miles before he could forgive her or himself for his anger.
They had parted pleasantly enough, as if nothing had happened, and Liza had continued to attend church, and Peter had said nothing more to her. But he was despondent at the thought of his failure, at his inability to reach her, to let her know that she was God’s child and owed something both to God and to herself. How could he ever reach her? At this very moment, she was staring at him directly, with a frank come-hither look on her face, and Peter thought that if he were a different kind of minister in a different kind of church, he might stop the hymn and openly chastise her.
Of course he would never do that. It was not his style. And it wasn’t done, not here in this great New England pocket of reserve and propriety. He would never be able openly to confront Liza with her wickedness; and so he would never be able to help her. Every time she came to church she stood there in front of him as a blatant sign of his inability to be a true minister. But the most he could do at the moment was to try to turn wrath away from his heart.
No. He could do more than that. While the ushers seated latecomers and the organ music carried them through the final verses of the hymn, he could use these few moments to admit the truth to himself. It was not wrath he was trying to turn away from his heart, but lust; and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to turn away the lust, either. It was such a pleasurable sensation.
If he were honest with himself, he would admit that he liked having Liza in his church, that he enjoyed her presence and looked forward to it—wasn’t she the first person in the congregation that his eyes went to every time? She was a beautiful, sexy young woman, and his feelings about her were complicated. When he had invited her to help him with certain church tasks, had he not been secretly hoping for something more reasonable than a religious conversion? He had been hoping that she would find him desirable, and would express that desire in some definite way. When they were riding together in his car and he reached out to touch her hand, he had done so only partly from genuine human concern: he had also quite simply wanted to touch her. It was too bad that she had been so blatant and definite in her response; if only she had been subtle and shy. Then he could have had the joy of knowing they were physically attracted to each other without the attending responsibility and moral concerns. But no, she had immediately asked him if he wanted to sleep with her, and what could he do but reply as he had? He
was a minister, a married man.
But what if he had said, “Yes?” What if she had replied, “Good, because I want to sleep with you, too?” What if they had agreed to make love just that one time, and to never touch each other or speak of the occasion again? It had been a beautiful, warm October day, and the country roads had been full of isolated driveways where a car could shelter behind shrubs and trees. It would have taken only minutes for him to convert the backseat of the station wagon into a large flat surface that would serve as a bed—not a very comfortable bed, but serviceable all the same. What would it have been like to stand in the hushed and dappled sunlight of the woods carefully removing the lacy coverings from Liza Howard’s body? It would have been so quiet—no ticking of clocks or muffled domestic rattlings behind doors—only the sound of their quickened breath, their exhalations as they moved against each other, their bare feet rustling in the high grass, the slippery sigh of branches rubbing together above them. They would have taken their time; they would have goaded each other into leisure; he would have stood naked, a light breeze playing over his skin, and he would have seen her standing nude in the open air, the sunlight exposing the white bulbs of her breasts, the ferny growth between her legs … they would have been back in the Garden of Eden.