minute, can we shout for joy? You and Phil will be such wonderful parents.”
“You’re going to make me cry again. I’m doing that a lot lately. Better than throwing up, though.”
Faith decided not to tell her that this would in all likelihood start soon. Hair-trigger emotions first, sore nipples, and then morning sickness, which often stretched into the afternoon in Faith’s case. Plus, it seemed she had just recovered when the infant she’d produced started what the books termed with scientific precision “projectile vomiting.”
“I am happy,” Niki said. “Very, very happy.”
“Me, too.” Faith smiled. “How about we call your business ‘Little Mary Cheesecake’?”
“Don’t push it, boss,” Niki said. “I’m more the Suzy Creamcheese type.”
I t was close to five o’clock by the time Faith got home and she was surprised to see that Tom’s car was gone. Where could her family be? But there were lights on in the parsonage kitchen. It was a mystery.
Faith went in the back door and found her daughter making chocolate chip cookies.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to turn on the oven until you came home, Mom,” Amy said.
Faith gave her conscientious little girl a hug, praying that she stayed that way, especially during her teen years.
“Where is everybody else? Dad’s car is gone.”
“He had to go to some meeting. He left you a note, and Ben’s doing homework in Dad’s study.”
After a series of incidents last fall, Ben’s computer was now out of his room and in a more public part of the house. Faith and Tom had followed the suggestion of many educators that with this simple act, they could control their child’s behavior without constantly looking over his or her shoulder. Just the presence of an adult helped kids think twice—or more—about their conversations in cyberspace, particularly ones about other kids. You might think you’re chatting to one or two others, but in reality it could be one or two billion, a fact few kids absorbed fully.
What kind of meeting could be held on a Saturday night? Faith wondered. That time was sacrosanct for the clergy who were preparing for a Sunday service. Presumably they were getting in an even holier mood than usual, and perhaps adding a comma or two to the following day’s sermon. In reality there might be ministers who wrote their sermons early in the week, but Faith didn’t know any and her husband was definitely not in that club. Most Saturday nights Tom Fairchild was frantically rewriting what he had decided before was just fine.
His note was written on the dry-erase family bulletin board.
“Sherman Munroe has called an emergency meeting of the vestry. No idea why. Back soon, I hope. Love, Tom.”
Sherman—and don’t ever call him “Sherm”—was one of Faith’s least favorite parishioners. He was a relatively new arrival to Aleford. He’d lived in town for only five years, but as he was fond of saying, “My people started the place.” There were some Munroes in the Old Burial Ground, so they had been around at the time of the town’s incorporation, but as for starting anything, if they had, they hadn’t stuck around to finish—the ones aboveground, that is. One and all had absented themselves until Sherman turned up after retiring from, according to him, a highly lucrative manufacturing business in Pennsylvania. Millicent Revere McKinley, whose frontal lobe was a veritable Rolodex of Alefordiana, conceded that he was descended from “those early Munroes,” her tone suggesting that some other Munroes would have been preferable. She had followed it up with a few tart sentences expressing her opinion about locating businesses not simply out of state, but out of Aleford.
By taking on jobs no one else wanted to do, Sherman soon became a player at First Parish and a thorn in Tom’s side. Everything that had occurred before Mr. Munroe’s arrival had been done “bass ackward”—a phrase Faith particularly
“You’re going to make me cry again. I’m doing that a lot lately. Better than throwing up, though.”
Faith decided not to tell her that this would in all likelihood start soon. Hair-trigger emotions first, sore nipples, and then morning sickness, which often stretched into the afternoon in Faith’s case. Plus, it seemed she had just recovered when the infant she’d produced started what the books termed with scientific precision “projectile vomiting.”
“I am happy,” Niki said. “Very, very happy.”
“Me, too.” Faith smiled. “How about we call your business ‘Little Mary Cheesecake’?”
“Don’t push it, boss,” Niki said. “I’m more the Suzy Creamcheese type.”
I t was close to five o’clock by the time Faith got home and she was surprised to see that Tom’s car was gone. Where could her family be? But there were lights on in the parsonage kitchen. It was a mystery.
Faith went in the back door and found her daughter making chocolate chip cookies.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to turn on the oven until you came home, Mom,” Amy said.
Faith gave her conscientious little girl a hug, praying that she stayed that way, especially during her teen years.
“Where is everybody else? Dad’s car is gone.”
“He had to go to some meeting. He left you a note, and Ben’s doing homework in Dad’s study.”
After a series of incidents last fall, Ben’s computer was now out of his room and in a more public part of the house. Faith and Tom had followed the suggestion of many educators that with this simple act, they could control their child’s behavior without constantly looking over his or her shoulder. Just the presence of an adult helped kids think twice—or more—about their conversations in cyberspace, particularly ones about other kids. You might think you’re chatting to one or two others, but in reality it could be one or two billion, a fact few kids absorbed fully.
What kind of meeting could be held on a Saturday night? Faith wondered. That time was sacrosanct for the clergy who were preparing for a Sunday service. Presumably they were getting in an even holier mood than usual, and perhaps adding a comma or two to the following day’s sermon. In reality there might be ministers who wrote their sermons early in the week, but Faith didn’t know any and her husband was definitely not in that club. Most Saturday nights Tom Fairchild was frantically rewriting what he had decided before was just fine.
His note was written on the dry-erase family bulletin board.
“Sherman Munroe has called an emergency meeting of the vestry. No idea why. Back soon, I hope. Love, Tom.”
Sherman—and don’t ever call him “Sherm”—was one of Faith’s least favorite parishioners. He was a relatively new arrival to Aleford. He’d lived in town for only five years, but as he was fond of saying, “My people started the place.” There were some Munroes in the Old Burial Ground, so they had been around at the time of the town’s incorporation, but as for starting anything, if they had, they hadn’t stuck around to finish—the ones aboveground, that is. One and all had absented themselves until Sherman turned up after retiring from, according to him, a highly lucrative manufacturing business in Pennsylvania. Millicent Revere McKinley, whose frontal lobe was a veritable Rolodex of Alefordiana, conceded that he was descended from “those early Munroes,” her tone suggesting that some other Munroes would have been preferable. She had followed it up with a few tart sentences expressing her opinion about locating businesses not simply out of state, but out of Aleford.
By taking on jobs no one else wanted to do, Sherman soon became a player at First Parish and a thorn in Tom’s side. Everything that had occurred before Mr. Munroe’s arrival had been done “bass ackward”—a phrase Faith particularly
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