The Last Suppers

CHAPTER 1-2

“Remember your first day of seventh grade?”

“I’d rather not.” He scooted through the door and closed it softly behind him. “Hate to tell you, Mom, but your hat’s on crooked.”

I smiled. Thin-shouldered and narrow-chested, Arch had clearly taken great pains with his own scrubbed and buttoned-up appearance. But the kid-size tuxedo only emphasized all the growing up he’d had to do in the last five years. First he had escaped into fantasy role-playing games. Then he’d endured harrassment at a new school. Only in the last few months had Arch found a sense of family support from two people—Julian Teller, our nineteen-year-old live-in boarder, and of course, Tom Schulz. For the first time in years, my son seemed genuinely, if precariously, happy.

Reluctantly, I turned to look at the crooked headgear in the long mirror behind the sacristy door. As I feared, the glass reflected a short, thirty-one-year-old female with blond corkscrews of hair protruding from a cockeyed hat that looked too sophisticated for her slightly rounded, slightly freckled face. I removed the odious beige silk thing, reseated it, and stabbed ferociously with the hat pin. I loathe hats. Even when catering the most elegant dinners, I never wear a chef’s cap. But Father Olson had suggested my wearing a hat would appease the Altar Guild, whose many rules I was shattering by getting married in Lent, for the second time, with lots of flowers. Arch, on tiptoe behind me, frowned as he adjusted his black-and-silver-striped cravat. The tuxedo was a little big. Nevertheless, he looked absolutely dashing. I turned and gave him an impulsive hug.

“You know, Mom, it’s not as if you haven’t done this before.” He pulled away from me and reddened to the roots of his straw-brown hair. “I mean, not just when you married Dad. But all those wedding receptions you’ve catered. They came out okay, even when things went wrong.”

“I know, I know.” I glanced at the empty ring finger of my left hand. Fifteen minutes. “Arch. You don’t know if they got into Hymnal House, do you?”

He grinned gleefully. “Julian broke a window.”

“Oh, please.”

“It doesn’t look that bad! Julian and the helpers swept up the glass. Now they’re setting up the tables and chafing dishes and everything. He said to tell you.”

“They haven’t started transporting the vegetable terrines, have they?” I asked desperately. “Did Julian drive over with the cake or is he going to try to wheel it across the parking lot? He’ll have to avoid the construction … and did the oven in Hymnal House work?” Under my barrage of questions, Arch shrugged and fiddled with matches for the candle lighters. “Arch,” I pleaded, “could you go ask Marla to come back? I’m sorry, I’m just nervous about getting started.” I strained to hear. “How’re the musicians holding up?”

“Handel’s Water Music is next,” he announced. “I have the whole program memorized. I like the Jeremiah Clarke, because they play it before that TV show, Stories of the Weird.” When I sighed, he touched his cravat and added hastily, “You know that lady who dresses like an Indian? Agatha Preston? Anyway, she got out the terrines. The other women haven’t moved them yet. I don’t know about the cake or the construction or the oven. I’ll get Marla, but then one of the church ladies or Father Olson is supposed to tell me when to bring Grandma down the aisle.” He opened the door of the sacristy and peered out. “Man, it looks like a priest convention out there. Did you invite that whole committee you’re on?”

“Honey, I had to. And all the parishioners, too. I’ve been in this church since before you were born. I had to invite everybody or risk offending someone. But I can’t look, it’s bad luck. Is he here yet?”

Arch torqued his head back. “Who?”

“Tom Schulz, silly. Please come back in here.” I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror. My hat was undeniably still crooked.

“All I can see is some guys Tom introduced me to from the SWAT team,” Arch answered. “And back in the open area where you first come into the church? What did you say that was, the columbarium? I think it’s going to be on my confirmation test.”

“Arch, please. A columbarium is a place where they put the ashes of cremated dead people. We’re building one next to St. Luke’s now. The open area in the back of the church is called the narthex. Confuse them and you will have a mess on your hands, not to mention probably flunk the confirmation test.”

“Yeah, okay, well, back in the narthex, Marla and her friends are yakking away. And there are thousands of guests, it looks like. Uh-oh, here comes that mean lady from that committee that takes care of the altar linens and money and bread and wine and stuff.”

“The Altar Guild? Who is it?”

He quickly slunk out the door without answering. I wanted to tell him that someone should load the cake in the van and drive it over to Hymnal House. Filled with resolve to check on doings in the kitchen, I reseated the hat, stalked after Arch, and promptly collided with Lucille Boatwright.

She glared up at me. “Goldy! Where do you think you’re going? Your hat isn’t even on straight. And your hair is a disaster.”

“I’m going to check on the cake and—”

“You are doing nothing of the sort—” The pealing of the church phone cut short her scolding. “Oh, why hasn’t someone turned on that fool answering machine? Contraptions! Father Pinckney never even would have allowed …” Lucille stormed off, muttering.

I nipped down the hall, past the Sunday School rooms and the oil portrait of the greatly missed former rector, and finally slipped into the kitchen. Any haven in a storm. Besides, if the churchwomen dropped the hotel pans of pasta or scorched the beef, they’d have to wait until the Apocalypse before I catered another of their luncheon meetings.

Happily, the volunteer servers were doing a superb job. Two women pushed carefully out the kitchen’s side door carrying bacon-wrapped, brown sugar–crusted artichoke hearts. Another team picked up the pans of creamy Parmesan-sauced fusilli and flaky phyllo-wrapped spinach turnovers. Crystal bowls brimming with jewellike slices of kiwi, fat strawberries, and thick bunches of black grapes would be next. The smooth, layered terrines, all six of them, were snuggled into coolers and set on wheeled tables next to the juicy tenderloin and sherry-soaked Portobello mushrooms.

Come to think of it, I was kind of hungry. No time for breakfast, so much to do, and … where was the cake? It was supposed to be set up on a special wheeled table already.…

“What are you doing here?” gasped a shocked voice. Arch was right: Agatha Preston did look like an Episcopal Pocahantas. Her beaded, sheath-style salmon-colored dress boasted a foot of knotted fringe at the hem, and she wore a needlepointed blue-and-coral headband horizontally across her forehead. Her long braided hair had been dyed into unattractive streaks. At the moment, Agatha’s pretty face had the hidden, sour look of someone who had been passed over for a prize. Perhaps she didn’t enjoy being one of Lucille’s henchwomen. The volunteers whisked platters around us out the kitchen door and gave our little confrontation sidelong glances. Stuttering, I backed up into the refrigerator.

“Checking on the cake,” I said lamely, then whirled to open the refrigerator door before Agatha could question me further. And there it was—the shimmering four-layer creation of ultra-cool, ultra-talented Julian Teller. Julian, in addition to boarding with us and helping with Arch, was an apprentice caterer and ace pastry chef, despite the fact that he was still a senior in high school. When I had told him the traditional wedding cake was white on white, but confessed I was partial to chocolate with mint, he’d run his hands through his bleached, rooster-style haircut and said, “Hey man, it’s your wedding,” then proceeded to concoct a dark fudge cake with white peppermint frosting. When I’d vetoed the traditional topping of bride and groom plastic statuettes—my first wedding cake had had them, and what good had they done me?—Julian had smilingly flourished his frosting gun and created row upon row of abstract curlicues, swaying rosettes, stiff leaves, and curling swags. The flower-mobbed cake resembled a frenzied rock concert.

“Excuse me, Goldy,” said Agatha, less timid this time.

I turned. Agatha’s dress barely concealed a scarecrow figure. She dispelled her unhappy look with a faint smile, and I remembered the last time we’d talked, at a barbecue I’d catered for her husband’s hunting buddies. She’d been wearing a beaded sundress of the same fish-flesh hue, and given me the identical wan smile. Now she made an uncertain shake of the streaked braids.

“Goldy, if you don’t go back to the sacristy, Lucille is going to be extremely upset.”

“Yes, but the cake should be out by now—”

“Please. Hymnal House is almost set up. It’s all going to be fine. You don’t know Lucille when she gets upset.”

Lucky me. I started back down the hall. Unfortunately, that narrow space was filling up with people depositing their it’s-April-in-Colorado-and-might-snow coats in the Sunday School rooms. When they spotted me, Old Home Week officially began. The first to leap in my direction was Father Doug Ramsey, Olson’s tall, gangly new assistant, who was also a member of the diocesan Board of Theological Examiners.

“The star of the show!” he cried, causing heads to turn. Doug Ramsey had a delicate, triangular face and long, loopy ringlets of black hair that made him look closer to eighteen than twenty-eight. His compensation for looking too young was talking too much. “The whole committee’s here,” he gushed, “which is quite a compliment to you. Of course, I don’t suppose the candidates are here, but then again, they’re probably studying for the tests we mean old examiners are dreaming up for them next week.… You know, I’ll don a stern expression and ask about the Archbishops of Canterbury, and then Canon Montgomery will ask about the history of the Eucharist.” He stopped talking briefly to flutter his knobby fingers dramatically on his chest. “And no matter what the question is, that awful Mitchell Hartley will probably flunk again—”

I said desperately, “Doug, please. Have you seen Father Olson? He seems to have forgotten today’s the day. In a pinch, could you do a wedding?”

Father Doug Ramsey’s face turned floury-white above his spotless clerical collar. A long, greased comma of black hair quivered over his forehead. Arrested in midspeech, his mouth remained open.

I felt a pang of regret. “I’m kidding, Doug. I just don’t want to be delayed.”

“Oh, no,” he said tersely, then added with characteristic self-absorption, “then you’d never be back in time to do the candidates’ examinations. But … a wedding … I don’t know what I’d preach on. Love, I suppose, or maybe the trinity …”

This uneasy speculation was interrupted by a series of unearthly groans. I peered through the crowd in the hall and saw Lucille Boatwright sagging against one of the priests. She was moaning loudly. Remembering Agatha’s warning, I guessed I was seeing Lucille Boatwright very upset.

“I’m coming!” I cried. “Just wait a sec!”

I shouldered my way through the folks in the hall, all of whom wanted to touch me or ask questions. Where’s Schulz? asked one of the policemen, whose face I vaguely recognized. Where’s Arch? asked a Sunday School teacher. I was in traction and haven’t seen him since I was healed … A long-ago church friend’s voice: Goldy, what a stunning suit! So much better than that froufrou gown you wore last time, dear. As politely as possible, I brushed the well-intentioned questions and fingers aside. Now my hair, my suit, everything was going to be a mess, I thought uncharitably. Why weren’t these people out in the pews listening to the organist make approved music? Reaching the end of the hall, I saw a priest and a female parishioner ministering to Lucille Boatwright, who had slumped to the floor. Clearly she took the customary procedures more seriously than I ever imagined.

I said, “I was only in the kitchen—”

“We’re going to have to call an ambulance,” said the woman. “I think she’s having a heart attack.”

“But I just stepped down the hall for a moment—”

The cleric looked up at me. His face was very flushed. “I think your fiancé is on the phone,” he said. “There’s some kind of problem—”

I rushed past them into the choir room. The white telephone wire lay coiled on the floor. Bewildered and slightly panicked, I snatched up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” said Tom Schulz. His voice sounded flat, infinitely dejected. In the background I could hear a faint tinkling, like windchimes.

“Sorry about what? Where are you?”

“Just a sec.” The phone clacked down on something hard. He came back to the line after a moment. “Miss G.” He sighed deeply. “Tell everybody to go home.”

“What?” This wasn’t happening. “Why? Tom, what’s wrong?”

“I’m out at Olson’s house. He called with car trouble, asked me to come get him. And I found him.”

“You—?”

My fiancé’s voice cracked. “Goldy, he’s dead.”