Starting from Scratch by Susan Gilbert-Collins

Author:Susan Gilbert-Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

Olivia slept in the big room that night. It had a deserted air since David and Janet had left; the bed wasn’t made, and half a glass of water sat on one of the windowsills. Olivia thought once more about changing the sheets but then crawled into bed without bothering.

The next morning she got up as soon as she heard Father moving around in his closet next door. She went down the hall and knocked on Ruby’s door gently, opened it a crack. Ruby was rolled in a sheet, her back to the door. Her tangled dark hair was splayed across the white pillow. Even from the back she was beautiful, the line of her neck curving into her shoulder, the sharp, perfect wing of a shoulder blade. Olivia’s throat constricted with envy and awe.

She said finally, “You need a wake-up call?”

There was a groan. “You two go without me.”

“I don’t usually go these days,” Olivia said. “The hymns set me off, and I don’t want to deal with all those people noticing I’m still home.”

Ruby rolled over onto her back and viewed Olivia through half-closed eyes. “Father has to tell all those same people David got married. You can’t make him go alone.”

“Annie will probably be there,” Olivia said, but she felt guilty enough about last night that she went. Anyway, no one would ask why Olivia was still home when they heard the story of David and Janet.

As it was, she barely had any contact with anyone; she and Father arrived just a few minutes before the service and sat in the back. They used to sit far to the front on the piano side because Vivian had played whatever hymns the organ didn’t. Back here, Olivia felt like a visitor. She studied the backs of everyone’s heads. Mrs. Bruinsma in the next row had gotten a perm. The Spoelhofs two rows ahead allowed their four-year-old to fidget, and Maureen, sitting with Lennie farther down the Spoelhofs’s row, sent several severe looks their way. Mr. Hegg several rows up had a small round Band-Aid in the exact middle of his round bald spot.

With such observations as these she got through the opening hymns, the call to confession, one of Mrs. Leuwen’s characteristically painful children’s sermons (“How Is This New Pencil Like a Christian?”), a much better sermon on Psalm 137 (“Singing in Babylon”), the offertory, and a congregational prayer in which David’s marriage was lifted up, and during which Olivia squeezed Father’s arm to show support. Then she saw what the last hymn was, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” a particular favorite of Vivian’s, and whispered to Father, “I’m walking home.”

She slipped out as soon as everyone stood to sing, slipped into the foyer and through the doors and across the parking lot of pink gravel. As soon as she gained the far sidewalk she took off her sandals, which were pinching her feet, and went barefoot.

It was a nice enough day for a walk. She wondered the whole way home if Ruby would still be there or if she’d have gone back to Sioux Falls by now.

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