All Saints Read Online Free PDF Page A

imagines Kelly nodding and saying, Okay. You turned off your cell phone. Then what happened?
    â€œI took a nap.” He always comes round to that, too.
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    â€œAll Saints is my first incumbency, Kelly.” And it will be my last.
    He had watched her putting the pieces together. She had asked him about his previous churches, and he had listed them for her—curate at St. Philip’s-On-the-Hill, then associate priest at St. Paul’s, then associate at St. Tim’s and lately associate at St. Mark’s. She had scribbled it all down then flushed slightly, looking at her notes. Obviously wondering how to frame the next question. Or whether to ask it at all.
    â€œMost first-time rectors are a lot younger than fifty-eight,” he said, smiling as she visibly relaxed. “But I’ve no regrets. My talents and inclinations were always more pastoral than administrative. And I’ve worked with some wonderful clergy around the city. But I guess if you hang in long enough, eventually you get kicked upstairs.”
    That was the official story. That, and his alleged lack of ambition. The truth of the matter, which everyone knew and no one spoke, was that if you were going to run a church, you’d better have the right kind of partner. A sturdy, reliable helpmeet. Who would neither chatter a mile a minute at parish events while people exchanged looks, nor slump in a chair, vacant-eyed and all but drooling, stoned on her latest medication.
    The only one who ever wanted to talk about it, and once actually tried to talk about it, was Ruth. It was during one of her sweet, short respites from highs and lows. She sat him down. Calmly and gracefully, she started to apologize to him for wrecking his career. He cut her off. Would not hear what she was saying. Repeated the cant about his pastoral skills. His lack of ambition. Blamed himself for being timid. Lazy. Stupid. Lacking the balls for the job. After a while, she bent her head and stopped trying to protest. And she never brought the subject up again.
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    Turning off his cell phone. Lying down on the hotel bed for a quick nap before the evening reception. Not crimes. Not sins. But what he keeps coming back to. Probably because they are neither crimes nor sins.
    â€œI left her alone?” he suggests to Kelly’s sweater. “I cut myself off from her?” No. A step. Furthest he’s gotten so far. But still not the essence. “I shouldn’t have believed her? When she said she’d be all right? I should have insisted she come with me?”
    The sweater still waits. He can see the pattern in the knitting round the collar now. And on the far wall, above the bookcase, the shape of Ruth’s junk sculpture cross is dimly visible.
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    He went away for a weekend. One of those increasingly common—and increasingly desperate—“Whither the Church” conferences that are scheduled into the gap between Christmas and Lent. As a career associate, he was always the one who had to go to these things and take notes, sparing the rector to stay behind and do the real work. So, as he always did, he asked Ruth if she wanted to come. Preserving that courtesy between them—the illusion that her staying home alone was a real option.
    For once, she said no. Stood her ground when he tried to argue with her. Insisted that he go without her. That she would be fine by herself for two nights and a day.
    She was on new medication. It seemed to be working, but without the zombie side effects. She was as stable as she had been in years. Maybe because she was past the worst of menopause. They’d been told things might settle down once she was in her late forties, her early fifties. (They’d spent so much of their marriage sitting side by side on hard chairs in doctors’ offices, being told what they could or could not expect, could or could not hope for.)
    It was a long drive to the conference centre. The cold was so sharp he