Bodies and Souls Read Online Free PDF Page A

provided by a flaky, divorced, absentminded, fornicating mother? Yet Mandy was a lovely and well-adjusted girl. Peter did not know her well, but it was obvious to him that the young woman liked herself—and that she liked her mother.
    How had Leigh managed this conjuring trick? Peter wondered. Was it sheer luck or force of personality? How had she managed to have her daughter standing next to her,happily sharing a hymnal, when Peter’s son was standing at the back of the church, making no pretense of singing, undoubtedly snapping his gum in irritation and boredom?
    Which made the better minister, Peter sometimes wondered: the solitary priest who had no children of his own to pull his affections and attentions from the congregation and who thus could work undistracted by personal hopes and worries, or the minister who learned only too well from having his own family just what a frightful obstacle course life was, and thus was able to understand and help his congregation, because their fears and needs were his own? There could probably be no one certain answer to this question, but the very presence of the question gave Peter comfort when he found himself neglecting his congregation in his thoughts because of personal worries.
    He thought, for example, as he surveyed those gathered before him this morning, that he could sympathize more completely with a woman like Suzanna Blair than he could have had he been childless. His glance rested on her again and again, because of all the people standing before him, Suzanna Blair seemed the most troubled. Yet this was only a hunch on his part, only a guess; she had never come to confide in him, had never asked for his help. Still, there were moments when he caught her looking down at her two small children with such sorrow on her face that he longed to interrupt the service, to call out to her, to ask what was wrong and whether he could somehow help.
    He knew very little about Suzanna. He had first met her when she was still married, about three years ago, at a cocktail party at the Moyers’. Actually it was her husband that he remembered meeting. Tom Blair considered himself a memorable personage, and he was one of those characters who manage to seem just a little bit bigger than life. That year he had chosen to attire himself and his life as a college professor in a lumberjack-naturalist style. He wore plaid wool shirts and tweed jackets and leather boots which came up over his jeans to his knees. He smoked a pipe and was hearty, and if it was with an air of self-congratulatory heartiness that he moved through the world, as if announcing, “Look at me! Aren’t I a big, powerful, Hemingwayesque fellow, and isn’t it amazing that I can teach Milton’s poetry and split my own firewood!”—still he was a likable enough man. Of Suzanna at that particular party, Peter remembered only that she had been so gentle-looking that he had been surprised to discover from her conversation that she had a quick and witty turn of mind.
    From time to time afterward he had come across the Blairs, and they seemed another normal, agreeable young couple. When he heard about their divorce, he wassurprised: Why? he had asked, and no one seemed to know. Many divorces in the community took place with the elaborateness of a full-scale movie production, complete with a cast of hundreds and a script full of tears and ravings that would have driven a soap opera director to fits of envy. But the Blairs, as far as Peter could tell, had just sort of slid into divorce. One day they were, at least superficially, happily married, and the next Tom Blair was showing up at parties with various adoring young women at his side. After a while, Tom moved away, and a few months later Suzanna began attending Peter’s church with her two young children. The first Sunday Peter had noticed her sitting there, he had felt expansive with anticipation; perhaps soon he would know something more about her.
    But as the months