The Last Suppers (28 page)

“I still don’t see why you went out to Olson’s before the sun was even up,” Marla said with an exasperated laugh. “I have plenty of pearls if you need to borrow some.”

“I keep telling you not to start, but you just keep doing it.”

Julian and Arch insisted on knowing everything that had happened. I gave a few brief details and concluded with the fact that I had not found Tom Schulz. Also, I’d been slightly hurt in the process. Marla settled me in a chair—I refused to go to bed—with an electric heating pad wedged against my back and a fresh mug of cappuccino. She took down the newly donated afghan while I dutifully took a pain pill with a glass of water. It was a mild muscle relaxant that I knew would still allow me to function, especially after the double dose of caffeine Marla had just given me.

She said, “I’m taking Julian back out to get the Rover so the guys can go to school. Can I trust you?” Her eyes challenged me to protest. I wasn’t sure I had the strength.

“I’ll stay with her,” Arch piped up. “I learned CPR in Scouts.” He gave me one of his goggle-eyed looks and a full, beneficent grin. Marla laughed while Julian, mute and anxious, stared at me as if I were an apparition. He could not seem to believe I was alive. I knew better than to try to explain my motivations to him in his present emotional condition.

“What’s the deal with that knitted thing on the porch?” he demanded. “I think it’s pretty weird that someone keeps leaving stuff for you, and you don’t even know who it is.”

“Someone at the church,” I said casually. I brightened. “I probably won’t get up when you get back. Hope your classes go well today.” And then I remembered again the
importance of this week to Julian. Would the college admissions or rejections come this day? I’d become so preoccupied with my own crises that I hadn’t been very sympathetic. “Good luck,” I added lamely.

“Don’t worry about me,” he ordered impatiently, then hustled off with Marla. “We’ll be back for you in forty minutes,” he warned over his shoulder to Arch.

Arch did not move from the kitchen table. “You just got one call this morning,” he announced to me, as if anticipating my first question. “They want you to set up at the church around eleven-thirty. Should I phone and say you can’t come?”

“No, I have to go. Maybe you could put some water on to boil the pasta. Then if you don’t mind, you can scoop out the cookies. I made two kinds. They are recipes of Tom’s.”

He gave me a solicitous look, then retrieved my pasta pot. “So, out at Father Olson’s,” he said conversationally, “was it really scary? I wish I knew who clobbered you. That is so gross.”

“It went too fast for me to be scared. But I was wondering if you’d hand me that pile of exams over there, please.” I readjusted the heating pad and felt the medication kick in. My head felt light, and the sharp pains in my back ebbed to a dull ache as I started flipping through the pages the diocesan office had sent me to read.

“Did the robber-guy take much?” Arch asked as water gushed into the pan. He heaved it over to the stove with a minimum of sloshing.

“Hold on.” I ripped open the envelope containing the candidates’ names coded to their exam numbers. As I suspected, candidate 92-492 was identified on the master sheet as Mitchell Hartley. I put in a call to Boyd’s voice mail; after the fiascos at Brio Barn and Zelda’s, the last thing I was going to do was have the cops go scoop Hartley up. Besides, the police already had checked the conference center, where Hartley was staying, for Tom. When I got off the phone, Arch was looking at me quizzically.

“What was your question, Arch? Oh. What did the robber
steal. Some church vessels. But not a whole lot more that I could tell. For a reason I can’t figure out, the robber or somebody dug up the area around where Olson’s body had been, and put a cross there.”

“Really? Wow. I’ve heard about that kind of thing on
Stories of the Weird.”

“What kind of thing?” Normally, the fact that Arch had a fascination with the
Weird
meant that he knew statistics on UFOs, extraterrestrial explanations of Stonehenge, and metaphysical theories on Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance that were nothing the FBI would investigate. And of course, Chimayó. I said, “You heard about robbers digging up dirt?”

“Oh, no,” he replied in his you-are-so-unsophisticated tone. “Okay, look. If the blood of a martyr falls to the ground in a certain place, people believe you have to dig up the bloody dirt … sorry, Mom,” he added when he saw my expression. He gestured broadly. “Then they pour holy water, or just plain water maybe, over the dirt, and the dirty, bloody water that comes out has magical healing properties.”

“Oh, please—”

“I’m just telling you.”

“Thanks. The cookie batters are in two covered bowls in the walk-in. Next to the shrimp.”

He frowned at my incredulity and emerged from the walk-in refrigerator balancing the butcher paper-wrapped shrimp on top of one of the bowls. I bargained with myself: I would stay seated and try to work. If the back pain became unbearable, I’d send the food over to the church and go to bed.

With infinite care, I leaned over to preheat Tom’s oven. An arrow of pain shot up my spine: I decided I could live with it. Arch took out measuring spoons and the two of us scooped mounds of luscious-looking dough onto the buttered cookie sheets. Working with Arch in this way reminded me of the last time we’d cooked together, when Tom, Julian, Arch, and I had laughingly patted out silky
discs of
focaccia
with garlic and pine nuts. Don’t think about it, I ordered myself.

Arch placed the sheets in Tom’s oven and drained the pasta wheels. Soon the kitchen was wrapped in a scent as rich and sweet as any country inn. I breathed the heavenly aroma in deeply: it was another gift from Tom, his memory, his recipe. Tom’s cookies emerged as golden, moist rounds delicately fringed with brown; Arch and I each took one. As before, buttery lemon flavor melted over the crunch of almonds. They were out of this world.

“Those churchwomen are so lucky,” Arch said with undisguised envy. Outside, the whine of Marla’s and Julian’s vehicles announced their return.

“Try a Canterbury Jumble.”

He palmed one and patted me on the shoulder, then picked up his bookbag and trundled out. I glanced at the clock: 8:50. The boys wouldn’t be too late for school. When I was going through the divorce from The Jerk, a therapist had told me that during a time of crisis, staying on schedule with a child’s normal events was essential. Missing school, delaying mealtimes, getting to bed too late, would all say to Arch that his world was falling apart. The last thing I wanted was for my son to feel that chaos was taking over. Even if it seemed that way to me.

Marla traipsed in, took one look at my anguished expression, and popped a warm cookie in her mouth. I did the same, and tasted the warm chocolate oozing around the rich crunch of macadamia nuts and sweet, chewy raisins and coconut. Marla raised one eyebrow at the assembled ingredients on the counter. “Tell me how to fix this shrimp,” she said dejectedly, trying without success to conceal her distaste for cooking. It wasn’t the first time I had been reminded what a good friend she was, but tears smarted in my eyes as I set about instructing her in boiling the prawns.

An hour and a half later, and with periodic pauses in her clumsy culinary activity to massage my back, Marla had finished putting together the women’s luncheon food. The medley of succulent shrimp, sweet peas, and tender pasta
lay under a blanket of wine-and-cheese sauce, awaiting only heating in one of my large chafing dishes, the kind used by caterers: a hotel pan. An inviting bowl of purple radicchio, dark green oak leaf lettuce, pale nests of chicory and baby romaine leaves glistened under plastic wrap next to a jar of freshly made balsamic vinaigrette. The cookies lay in alternating rows on a silver platter. To go with the main dish, Marla had thawed homemade Italian breadsticks taken from my freezer. When she had laboriously transported everything out to the van, she nipped over to her Jaguar and brought out a garment bag. Within ten minutes, she emerged from my bedroom, wearing a lovely wool dress the color my mother called dusty rose. With a monumental sigh, she collapsed on one of the kitchen chairs.

“Damn! Catering’s hard work!”

I said, “Let’s get going. I’m just fine.” I leaned over and gave her an awkward hug. “This luncheon wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for you.”

“Don’t get sentimental on me,” she said as she unplugged the heating pad. I shambled into the bathroom and changed into the front-buttoning black dress Marla had picked out. The pain in my back was noticeable but not unbearable. Standing hurt more than walking. When I arrived back in the kitchen, Marla was already wearing a
Goldilocks’ Catering
apron; she slipped one on me and tied it in the back.

“Seriously, Goldy, this work is too hard. I hope you’re putting some money away in a retirement fund. If not, I need to get you together with my investment guy.”

It hurt when I laughed. “To be perfectly honest, I haven’t thought about retirement lately. If you’re talking about a major life change, at this point, I’d rather get married.”

She had finished tying my apron and I turned around. Dear cheerful Marla, my best friend, who sashayed through difficulty with flippancy and aplomb, had a look of such sadness and disappointment on her face that I knew it could mean only one thing, a thing she would never say. She thought Tom Schulz was dead.

W
e drove to the church in silence. The air was still cold, and gray lamb’s tails of cloud wafted just above the rim of the mountains. Several older women had already arrived in the church parking lot. They watched Marla’s and my arrival with hungry interest. When I tried to help Marla unload the boxes, a razorlike pain screamed across my back. Marla saw my wince: she promptly ordered me into the church.

“Besides,” she announced, “here comes Bob Preston, and I just know he’s desperate to help me unload.”

Preston, who had clearly driven up in his just-waxed gold Audi only to leave Agatha off, submitted to Marla’s orders after she rapped loudly on his car window with her ringed fingers and hollered at him through the glass. Sheepishly, he untangled himself from the gleaming car and picked up two boxes from the back of the van. I prayed that he would not have a hernia while carrying in a box and sue
Goldilocks’ Catering.
But for Bob, a macho display was more desirable than being embarrassed in front of a gaggle of churchwomen.

Inside the church, Zelda Preston was already at work. Her wiry body and intent face were bent over a long table covered with a floral-print tablecloth. Her strong hands expertly set each place with the church’s beautiful matched silverplate, Inlaid Rose.
When I arrest the wrong guy,
Schulz had told me once cheerfully, I
do my best to he real nice to
him the next time I see him.
I hobbled over to Zelda, knew better than to give her a hug, so merely picked up forks and started putting them around the table.

“Eight,” was her laconic greeting. Well, at least she didn’t ignore me. I guess I was forgiven. On the other hand, maybe she was embarrassed that I knew she’d interviewed for the organist’s position with the Catholics, the same Catholics she’d deemed unworthy of receiving my unused wedding flowers.

Unused wedding flowers.
I looked up at the altar and the diamond-shaped window. I had imagined the ceremony so many times that just being in the church again with food and women bustling around made the welt on my back throb. The pain pill was wearing off. When I finished setting the table with Zelda, I walked out to the kitchen and downed another one. Might as well pretend I was an angel and float through the prayer meeting.

By 11:35, eight women had assembled in the tiny church library that doubled as a meeting room for small groups. Marla announced it would make her nervous if I watched her fill the chafing dish with boiling water. That made two of us. I plugged in the electric heating pad I’d brought with me beside one of the library bookshelves, settled into a high-backed chair, and prepared to pray.