The Last Suppers (2 page)

Lucille groaned at my lack of information and told me to put on my beige wedding shoes. I did; they were even more uncomfortable than I remembered. Then, dutifully, I followed Lucille’s dumpling-shaped body as it swiftly marched back across the ice- and mud-crusted walkway between the old office and the contemporary-style St. Luke’s building. The air was cold; thin sheets of cloud filmed the sky overhead. Rising haze from melting snow formed a pale curtain between the soaring A-shape of the church roof and the ridge of distant mountains. I dodged across the flagstones to avoid the mud. Flickers flitted between the lodgepole pines and the construction trenches of the incomplete St. Luke’s columbarium near the parking lot. Farther down, chickadees twittered and dove between the bare-branched aspens and the banks of icy, swollen Cottonwood Creek.

The high, dramatic strains of the trumpet voluntary reached my ears.
This is it; everything’s going to be okay.
At that moment, in spite of the awful shoes, the locked Hymnal House, and the too-typical lateness of both priest and groom, excitement zinged up my spine.
I’m getting married.
Our wedding was going to happen despite the threat of April snow here at eight thousand feet above sea level. Despite the fact that it was a Saturday in Lent, when Father Olson said weddings were not traditionally performed. On that subject, Olson had laughingly informed me, the Altar Guild was having a fit about the luxuriant flower arrangements I’d ordered for the altar during this traditionally penitential season. Unfortunately for church procedure, the last Saturday in Lent was the only time Tom Schulz and I could fit getting married into our zany work schedules. We both had to be back in Aspen Meadow by Tuesday so Tom could testify in court and I could cater a three-day meeting of the diocesan Board of Theological Examiners, a church committee to which I’d recently been appointed. Our three-day honeymoon at the Beaver Creek
Lodge would be short, sweet, and unencumbered by telephones and food processors.

I hopped gracelessly across the last mud puddle and onto the sidewalk. Actually, the most astonishing fact was that I was getting married at all.
In spite of everything.
For seven years I had been the wife of an abusive doctor. I’d left the disastrous marriage with a wonderful son, Arch, now twelve; the ability to cook; and an emotional scar the size of Pike’s Peak. I had thrown myself into developing a catering business and sworn off marriage forever and ever. But then Investigator Tom Schulz had appeared and refused to leave. Tom had convinced me of his kindness and durability, even if we had argued last night. About the afterlife, of all things. Facing marriage for a lifetime, I’d asked at our last premarital counseling session, who cared about Pie in the Sky By-and-By? At the mention of the hereafter, Father Olson had rolled his eyes and murmured, “Ah, eschatology,” as if it were a truffle. My stint as a third-grade Sunday School teacher hadn’t covered “‘til death do us part.” Father Olson had said we would have a
very
long time to discuss it.

“Hurry along now,” chided Lucille as she pulled open the side door to St. Luke’s. From inside the church, the high peals of organ music mingled with the buzz and shuffling of arriving guests. She shooed me into the sacristy, the tiny room adjoining the sanctuary where the priest and acolytes put on their vestments before each service. On the counter next to the parish register lay two bouquets of the same type as the disputed altar flowers: luscious spills of creamy white stock and fragrant freesia, tiny pink carnations and white and pink sweetheart roses. There was one for me and one for Marla, who in addition to being best friend and matron of honor, was the other ex-wife of my first husband. Lucille informed me Marla was out in the narthex, “giggling wildly with that jewelry raffle committee, but what else would you expect?” She would send her back. Lucille’s tone signaled her opinion of both the raffle committee and Marla, its chairwoman. Giving me another of her razor-edged glances, she commanded me to stay put.

Arch craned his neck around the door to the sacristy. He pushed his glasses up his freckled nose and said, “I know. You’re nervous, right?”

“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 harassment 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—”