Free The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner Page B

tyrant. She tried to pursue the matter with Boyle, but it was useless. At last she said, “Well do sit down. It’s so seldom we get visitors here.” She inched over to a chair herself and lowered herself cautiously, then laid the two canes in her lap. Clumly nodded toward the settee and handed Boyle the flower box, to be rid of the embarrassment of carrying it himself. Boyle went over to the settee while Clumly seated himself tentatively on a high-backed rocker. It must be after five, he thought, but he could not risk the rudeness of a glance at his watch. The rocker was leather, as cold and smooth as the dirt inside a cave.
    “We used to have visitors,” Miss Octave said. “But the new Baptist minister doesn’t make calls, you know. Isn’t it criminal?” She dabbed at the side of her mouth with a Kleenex.
    “What’s this country coming to?” Clumly said.
    “That’s just what I tell Editha,” she said. “Poor old Mrs. Maxwell has arthritis so bad she can never leave her bed. Mine’s only in my fingers, you know, though it’s torment enough.” She held out her hands to him. The index fingers were like knotty pieces of wood, and the hands shook. She pressed on, though the hoarse croaking was such an effort it made her eyes bulge. “Well someone said to the minister he ought to go see her, and he went over and she said, ‘Pastor, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.’ ‘Well don’t expect to see me again,’ he says, ‘I don’t make calls.’ Now what do you think of that! He’s on the City Planning Commission or whatever they call it. That’s all he cares about, don’t you know. He’s got them to put up one of those highrise apartments—horrible!—and all that urban renewal, tearing down beautiful old buildings like the Jefferson Hotel, where President Cleveland stayed, and making everything into parking lots and I don’t know what. Now he’s got the congregation to agree to tearing down half of that beautiful old church of ours, going to put up an education building with a cloistered walk leading out from the church—we saw the pictures, didn’t we Editha?—flimsy little thing, it makes you sick at heart! Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars it will cost, a thousand dollars from every member of the congregation! Well they won’t be getting any thousand dollars from the Woodworths, we told them—I’ve got cataracts, don’t you know, and I don’t need to tell you how expensive that is.”
    “It’s criminal,” Clumly said.
    “Worse than that,” she said. She leaned toward him. “It’s heretic!” She spoke the word with such feeling that one saw, all at once, the Baptist minister in his coat and vest and spectacles, being burnt alive at the stake. “All to get new members, that’s all they care about.” She dabbed at her mouth again. “That beautiful old church means nothing to them, just new members, new members. The minister says, ‘We need a new plant if we’re going to appeal to new members.’ A plant. Imagine! I said, ‘A plant! Why, Sylvania’s got a plant, if that’s what we need. Why don’t we just go borrow theirs, and we can pay the people a dollar an hour to come worship.’” Her eyes shone like needles. “Imagine,” she said. “But there are all those younger people, don’t you know; church architecture hasn’t any meaning for them. Too dark and gloomy, they say, and smells like a wellhouse. Well we don’t feel that way, do we Editha. I always try to keep Editha involved in things, don’t you know. But of course she doesn’t listen. Sometimes she’ll just sit that way for days and I think she’s dead.”
    “Stupid babbler,” Editha said. Then, calling upstairs, it seemed: “Agnes!”
    They listened a moment, but the dead Agnes said nothing.
    “She’ll bury us all,” Octave said. “She has a strong constitution, like all the Woodworths. Good stock.” She sighed, a sound like sandpaper. “Well, the younger ones don’t care.