Free Good-bye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon Page B

didn’t like.
    The church was fine, except the service was lower than we’re used to. Norman must have thought he could change that when he ran the zoo. What I remember was staying with Jeannie, and sitting up half the night talking, manna from heaven. The idea of living close to her again! And of being only a day’s drive from Dundee, and being able to visit my parents or my sister without putting the dog in the kennel and flying for a whole day…
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    Norman Faithful The thing that drove that decision was Edie and Nicky. Edie was having trouble at her school in Colorado. There was some sort of click she’d been left out of, one of those things girls go through, but it wasn’t good for her. The New York church had a school attached, a sweet little place, where Edie could go for half tuition. Plus, I was worried about Sam and Sylvie. We’d had them in the summers, but I couldn’t get east for more than two weeks, and they were beginning to feel like strangers to me. So I put my hat in the ring, and went to New York and preached my heart out. It was no cakewalk. New York doesn’t usually take to Westerners. I did have something of a national presence and a strong track record at raising money, which they badly needed. They flew the whole family in twice to look us over.
    In the end, they not only hired me, they hired Nicky to teach second grade. So Edie got to go to the school for free. The rectory was a tiny little shambles of a house but it was delightful. We missed the big backyard and having a separate study for Nicky. But I was ready for a new challenge and I rolled up my sleeves and waded in.
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    Sylvia Faithful It’s clique, not click. I tried to tell him that once, but he just looked at me, and then went on talking as if I hadn’t said anything.
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    Ted Wineapple I was pleased to have my old friend in the East again. I was in Richmond at the time. And I was very happy for Monica. She was so grateful to be back where she knew the names of the trees and the birds.
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    Monica Faithful In the West it takes you a long time to realize that it’s not only that you’re new in town…you will never be walking down the street and run into someone you grew up with or knew from school. You will always feel as if you’re on a tightrope without a net. You’ll make new friends, but you’ll never be as important to them as they are to you. And you’ll never speak that shorthand together that comes from sharing common points of biography.
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    Ted Wineapple It was a lesser parish, with many more problems than the one he was leaving. A church with a school attached? You have no idea. Especially a church that’s failing while the school succeeds.
    It was better for Monica. She looked happier than she had in years, still fairly slim, with some gray in her hair, but something lighter and clearer in her eyes. It was better for Edith, much better for Sam and Sylvie. Worse for Bridey, who’d had a big backyard in Colorado, but that wouldn’thave weighed with Norman. I think they still had Bridey then, the border terrier. (The only time I ever personally saw Monica push back against Norman in public was right after Bridey’s mother was hit by a car and killed, and Norman declared that dogs don’t have souls.)
    Anyway, there’s no doubt in my mind that the reason Norman took Holy Innocents was, he thought if he could pull off another coup like his Denver miracle, and in the Big Apple, the next step was the cathedral chair.
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    Monica Faithful The rectory was this small little nineteenth-century row house behind the church. Probably worth a fortune now but New York City was pretty rough in those years. Graffiti was everywhere. Our front door got bombed so many times we gave up repainting it. Bombing is what the graffiti kids called it. Bombing. Tagging. And the house was drafty and all out of plumb. If you put a marble down on the parlor