I sat on the bed, too tired to unpack, yet not so exhausted that I did not wonder where Charlie was, what he might be doing at that hour, when I might hear from him.
“Come on, new girl,” Lizzie said, reappearing in my doorway. “Reverend Mother is gone, let’s go get a hot dinner and a cold beer.”
“I don’t know,” I said, standing. “She didn’t seem so terrible.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Kid, you have a lot to learn.”
August morning in New Mexico is sweet as berries. Lizzie was a contrast, storming into the kitchen with a hunk of bread in her mouth, but putting on the brakes when she saw me deep in the news. “What in the world are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“What possible good can come of reading a newspaper?”
“Are you serious?” I spread the pages. “Your husband is a medic in the Pacific, right? With this, you can guess at what he’s doing, or how the war is going in a place he might be sent. Today for example.” I turned the front page toward her. “We sank the Tamatsu Mara, four thousand four hundred Japanese dead. I think Charlie is involved in submarine warfare.”
“Sub work in the desert? You’re loco, kid.”
“What better way to conceal it?” I went back to my newspaper.
But Lizzie snatched it away, tossing her bread end on my plate. “Come with me.”
I followed her out to the porch, where she hiked her skirt above her knees, and dropped to all fours. “We don’t need to know what our men are doing,” she said. “Our job is to be ready when they come home.”
With that, Lizzie straightened her back like a plank and began doing push-ups. “One. Two. Three.” So that was where the arm muscles came from. “A man needs a woman strong enough to hold him tight, and to bear his babies. Nine. Ten. Eleven.”
Her back flexed with each push, her arms pumped like pistons. Every inch of her was firm, and I felt a flush of envy. “You want to land this Charlie guy, I suggest you get going. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.”
“You are insane,” I said, laughing.
She concentrated harder, face reddening but her breath steady as she lowered and rose. “Nineteen. Twenty.” She popped up. “There. I do them twice a day. And when Timothy comes home, I am going to squeeze him till he feels every one.”
“Instead of reading the newspaper, you want me to do push-ups?”
“It’s a free country,” Lizzie said. “But if you’re serious about Charlie, take my advice.” She tidied her dress. “I’m late for work. Stay cool.”
After breakfast I put the paper back where the reverend had left it—he’d gone to visit parishioners in the hospital before I came down—then climbed the stairs to finish unpacking. Where was Charlie? Why hadn’t he answered my letter?
When I was small, five or six, I loved to hide in doorways and startle Frank as he passed by. A little sister’s way of being annoying, but I adored how he would jump and shout, and then clench me and say, “Got me again.” That’s how those questions about Charlie were: waiting patiently for me to pass, so they could ambush me. The worst one: what if I’d traveled all this way, and Charlie never wrote me back, never came to see me?
My room was cool in the morning, shaded at the back of the house. No one was around, but I closed the door anyway. In barely enough space, I stretched out with a straight back, legs stiff, hands under my shoulders, and lowered my chest to the floor.
When I pushed up, first I felt the burden of my own weight. Exhaling hard, I pressed down with my hands and watched my arms wobble as my body rose. I had to bow my head, grimacing and straining, to make it all the way up.
“One.” I sat back on my haunches.
“Miss Dubie,” I heard a call from below. “Ready to see our church?”
“Be right there, Mrs. Morris.” I snatched up the wide straw hat Lizzie had loaned me, and trotted down the stairs. The second push-up would have to wait.
Outside, the church presented quite a contrast with the spired steeples of Hyde Park. This house of worship was smooth adobe. Inside its wide wooden doors the place was echoey and cool. Colored light spilled through stained glass onto the stone floor. Mrs. Morris charged up the center aisle trailing lily of the valley perfume, her heels banging the floor like a mallet. I heard people speaking in front, and a man and woman emerged from the office area.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Sanchez,” the man was saying, at high volume.
“We pray for your family, senor,” the woman answered in a Spanish accent.
“I can rely on you to keep this matter private, I hope.”
The woman did not answer, but bowed repeatedly as she backed away.
“Very kind of you to come see me,” he said, again too loudly.
Mrs. Sanchez hurried past, eyes down. But then Reverend Morris was shaking my hand, welcoming me, pointing at this and that feature of the church.
“A revitalized music program will strengthen our worship,” he boomed. The man was stiff-necked, and he had a nervous tic: angling his chin forward, as if to stretch the muscles in his throat. “Another form of devotion.”
“I’m delighted to be here,” I said. “What became of your last organist?”
I’d asked in an offhand way, making conversation. But it must have contained blasphemy of some kind, because the reverend and his wife both froze solid.
“I’m sorry,” I backpedaled. “I can tell I’ve misspoken.”
“It was me,” Mrs. Morris said. “I’ve been the music director everywhere my husband has been a preacher. But here, some circumstances arose—”
“Outside circumstances,” the minister interjected. “And we agreed that someone new, with musical skill and a prayerful spirit, would be good for our congregation.”
“As I wrote to you,” I said, beginning a speech I’d rehearsed on the train, “I am not a deeply churched person. But I can promise you a strong music program and dependable choir conducting.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Reverend Morris said, overloud again. After which we all had a nice long awkward moment in the nave of the church. I was already planning my interrogation of Lizzie Hinks. She would know what these “circumstances” were.
“May I see the organ?” I said at last, sighs of relief all around.
“Of course,” Reverend Morris foghorned. “This way.”
The organ bench and choir loft stood in front, to one side, instead of in the balcony over the entry. That was helpful, because I preferred to see what was going on directly, rather than reversed in a mirror as a balcony required. However, it meant I had a better view of the pulpit than of the choir, which would make conducting a challenge.
While the Morrises stood shoulder to shoulder, I slid onto the bench. It was a decent organ: three manuals of sixty-one keys, stops for flute, reed, trumpet—plus a swell division, which promised good volume. The console, though not ornate, was warm, reddish cherry. I slipped off my shoes and admired the two octaves of pedals.
“Pretty instrument.” I switched the organ on. “With a nice array of stops.”
They nodded enthusiastically, but oddly, without saying anything. I saw Mrs. Morris wringing her hands. And then a note began to play, ghostly, all on its own.