Bodies and Souls by Nancy Thayer Page A

would be taken off the market. No one else in the world knew that she indulged in her helpful little habits, andshe looked upon the drugs with gratitude. They helped her make her life pretty, and what could possibly be wrong with that? Life was difficult; life was hard; the world needed people like Judy to move through it with serenity and generosity and grace. Actually, she could think of any number of people in this very church who would do well to start improving their lives by taking nature into their own hands.
    If she turned her head ever so slightly to the left or right, she could see someone who was anxious, disorganized, not pretty, someone whose spirit was cramped by the hardships of life; it showed in the person’s face. Such a person would be much better off for the use of drugs, and would certainly be more presentable.
    For example, Leigh Findly. Sometimes it wrenched Judy’s heart to see Leigh come into the church with her daughter. Judy felt no special sympathy for Leigh—as far as Judy could see, Leigh was a silly woman who had managed to get herself divorced from a charming and intelligent man. But Leigh considered herself an artist, or so the story went, or as much of the story as Judy had been told by mutual acquaintances. Leigh considered herself an artist, and her husband had been too demanding, expecting her to do such monumental tasks as cooking regular meals and doing the laundry, so she had asked him to share the housework, and naturally he had gotten a divorce. After all, he worked at a real job and brought home the money and while some people might call the pots Leigh made valuable, they didn’t, as far as Judy knew, bring in real money. Judy felt sorry for the husband—or had felt sorry for him; it had all happened years ago. He had quickly remarried and moved away. She felt even sorrier for the child, an eighteen-year-old girl named Mandy.
    In the first place, Mandy —what a name! Judy had read in the church directory that Mandy’s real name was Amanda, and she wondered why on earth Leigh didn’t call her daughter that instead of using such a tacky nickname which conjured up images of servant girls. Mandy was a pretty girl, with long, thick blond hair that Judy would have loved to see put up in a classy French twist. But from the looks of it, Leigh Findly never reminded her daughter to put her hair up, or even to comb it. How many times they had come rushing into the church at the last minute, their clothes aflutter, Leigh’s face uncomposed, her eyes darting here and there, looking for a place to sit, and then breaking into a grin when an usher approached to seat them. What a way to enter church! Then Leigh and Mandy would sit, whispering and grinning and shuffling, taking off their coats or sweaters and turning to the right page in the hymnal, or looking for a tissue in Leigh’spurse—whatever they were doing, they did it in such an obvious way, as if they were a pair of birds settling into a nest. Judy always studied Mandy and owned that the girl did not look unhappy. But she did look unkempt, and that was never necessary. Perhaps Leigh thought that wearing such shabby clothes gave her an artistic air, but that was no reason to let her daughter dress that way. Sometimes when Mandy entered the church in sneakers of all things, or a sweater that was missing a button, Judy wanted to rush to the girl, snatch her from her mother’s side, close Mandy up in a protective embrace, and say, “It’s all right. I’ll take care of you. I know how you’re suffering!” For if Judy could know anything, it was how a teenage girl could suffer.
    But this line of thinking was courting disaster, and Judy looked away from Leigh Findly’s obvious fluffy head. It would not do to think of mothers and daughters today. She needed the tranquilizing sight of familiar, like-minded people whose lives reaffirmed her own.
    Discreetly, so that she would not insult Reynolds by not appearing to attend to his