Though it had been years since I had set foot in a church, Grandma had been a devoted front-row worshipper all of her life. Because of that, I too had spent my years under her roof frequenting the local Presbyterian church three, sometimes four days a week. It had been nothing but boring, stuffy Bible studies and luncheons and church services to me, and I had never understand the draw it held for Grandma. Most of the members of the church were detestable: liars, thieves, adulterers, cheats. All but a few of the women were malicious gossips. It seemed to me such a hotbed of hypocrites that once I left the nest for Wisconsin, I had no desire to continue any semblance of a devotion to organized religion. I taught my children about God and Jesus; we said our prayers before bed; Lily and Aiden had never set foot in a sanctuary before.

So when Mama Loula came to visit Saturday night and broached the idea of me and the kids joining her for church the next morning, I was adamantly against it.

“But Jemmalyn, why ever not?” Mama Loula demanded, perched on the chair beside Grandma’s bed. She stiffened her shoulders and gave me a chastising look. “You don’t mean to tell me you’ve abandoned the Lord since you left Hideaway.”

“Not the Lord,” I assured her, though frowning at how phony the words felt in my mouth. “Just his body of hypocritical say-good do-bad politicians.”

“Why lands alive, do you hear this, Merle? Your little Jemmalyn thinks she’s done outgrown us and doesn’t need to attend church anymore,” Mama Loula declared with utter disbelief, reaching out to grab Grandma’s arm as though she needed something to steady herself. I shook my head at the teasing, not fooled by the slight grin on Mama Loula’s face. She was the first to offer complaint about all the corruption of that small town church, often at the criticism of its snootier members --always had been.

Grandma had not been lucid for the majority of the conversation. She stared vacantly out the window most of the time, occasionally nodding in response to nothing we had said, or else asking a question to interrupt us. However, when Mama Loula shared this bit of information, she glanced only briefly at Mama Loula’s hand before turning her stern glare to me.

“You’ll go to church in the morning.”

And that was that. My arguing with Grandma had accomplished very little as a twelve-year-old, and it accomplished even less now. She refused to say anything else on the subject, and only reminded Connie later that night as we tucked her down for the night to make sure I was up for church in the morning. For some reason, Connie slipped under the radar and Grandma didn’t seem to care in the least that she wasn’t going. Perhaps she had long ago decided Connie was a lost cause. I sure had.

Well if I was going to suffer through Sunday morning service, you can be sure Lily and Aiden were going to join me. So the next morning, instead of weeding through photo albums as had been my original plan, I shoved two wriggling little kids into the nicest clothes I had brought for them, pulled my hair up off my neck, and together we waited on the porch for Mama Loula to come strolling up the sidewalk.

“Well, don’t you three make a handsome family,” she greeted us with an inordinate amount of cheer for so early an outing.

Lily scrunched her face up and insisted, “I’m not handsome! I’m pretty!”

“That you are, my little cupcake,” Mama Loula agreed, tapping her on the nose. Lily made a face and shared a giggle with me, amused by the odd assortment of pet names Mama Loula had taken to showering her and Aiden with. “Now Jemmalyn, dear, you’ll have to drive slowly because you’re still a new driver in my heart. . .” I took it slowly for her old heart, but her gnarled hand still gripped the armrest the entire ride, as though I were tearing through the grey streets of Hideaway at a cool ninety miles an hour.

First United Presbyterian of Hideaway was a small, old church –and I don’t just mean the building was old, though it dated back to the 1940s. The average age of members was somewhere around sixty-seven, and the preacher himself looked like he might just know first hand what he was talking about when he rose behind the pulpit to preach about the life of Jesus Christ.

There were three other children under the age of ten present when I dropped Lily and Aiden off in the room designated for children. Just one room –that was it– and all five children together. Large posters with poorly illustrated scenes from the Old Testament were hung on the walls above wooden shelves of brightly colored buckets of toys. My two made a beeline for these toys and the Old Testament-era woman running the nursery made no move to stop them, not even rising from her rocking chair near the window where she bounced on her lap the fattest baby I had ever seen. It didn’t look like Lily and Aiden were going to get much instruction from her, but I won’t say I cared much.

Unfortunately, my own Bible study class was not so relaxed. Because there wasn’t any class for twenty-somethings, I was forced along to Mama Loula’s class where we sat in a circle with seven other widows. The singles’ department: go figure. I glanced around at the sad assortment of grandmothers and grandfathers and felt . . . sorry for them, to be honest. Here they were, whittling away their last Sunday mornings in this shitty little fishing town at this dying little church, the highlight of their lives being those Sunday mornings when they got to duke out their sins in a twenty-by-eighteen room.

Oh, and duke it out they did.

At the beginning of the class, Mama Loula proudly announced, standing and dragging me up alongside her, “Everyone. Everyone!” When the chatter failed to die down, she barked, “Well for goodness’ sake, will you hush up, Eva?” I’m not sure why Eva in particular out of everynone needed to hush up, but everyone fell mostly silent. “This is Jemmalyn. I’m sure you all remember her.”

It was obvious from the blank stares that they did not.

“Well Louisa, I can hardly remember my own name half the time and you want me to remember this young thing?” another elderly woman retorted, narrowing her eyes and tilting her chin up to stare at me through bifocals.

“It’s Merle’s granddaughter,” Mama Loula replied with a shake of her old head, as though disgusted they shouldn’t remember me. The small yellow flowers around the brim of her floppy hat bounced with the motion. “She lived here for a long time. Remember, she–“

”Oh, were you one of them kids that drove that car right through my shed that Tuesday night?” some old man suddenly asked, sitting up straighter. I didn’t recognize him by anything save the instance; it had to be Mr. Rinefeld.

Well yes, I was. Technically, I hadn’t been the one driving, but I had been the one egging Zane on, telling him to go faster. Did I mention we were horribly drunk and/or high at the time of said incident? I bit my lip and didn’t share this with Mr. Rinefeld. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to remember the time we drove the car through his front flower beds, recently planted. I had been the one driving that time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t claim to have been drunk. I was just a bad driver and when Zane tried to slip his hand up my skirt, I hit the gas instead of the break. I had then shoved Zane out of the car, half annoyed, half really angry, and left him sprawled out on the sidewalk in front of Mr. Rinefeld’s house to wander home once he had sobered up a bit.

Mama Loula, instead of giving credence to any of this, continued as though she hadn’t heard him, “Well I just want all y’all to make her feel at home. She’s visiting with us for–“

”Is Merle dead?” another tiny woman piped up. She glanced around with saucer eyes, confused as hell. She didn’t seem to recognize anyone.

I sat down and didn’t say another word for the rest of the study. Fortunately, Mama Loula did plenty of talking for the both of us, quickly speaking up when one woman announced that both abortion and birth control were sins,

“Well how do you know, Vera? You’re one to talk. What, seventy-four and still a virgin, aren’t you?”

“Just because I have no children does not mean my husband and I never . . . ahem,” Vera insisted indignantly, crossing her arms.

Another woman rolled her eyes, “Please, Vera. You never once even slept in the same room.”

“Yes, well we all can’t be quite so loose as some,” Vera retorted again. She didn’t seem embarrassed at all by talk of her sex life, only unhappy that she was labeled a virgin. Or perhaps, if she really was a virgin, she was simply sexually frustrated and tired of being reminded of it.

An elderly man spoke up, “Well I think the Lord frowns upon anyone who should judge another by their bedroom behavior. Howeva,” he drawled. “Howeva, I do think that when the good Lord told us to go forth and multiply, He meant without the use of fertility drugs.”

“Do you mean herbal fertility treatments or drugs drugs?” one petite woman asked.

“All of it,” the man insisted. “What the good Lord deems good, He will provide.”

“Well than I do believe, Howard, that all three of your children are sin through and through,” Mama Loula snorted, sharing a look with me.

A second man announced in a loud bellow, not quite understanding what we were talking about, “Sin! I’m a sinner! The Lord can’t forgive us until we agree we are all sinners!”

“That’s right, Dwayne. Amen!”

“Well all I’m saying,” Vera piped up again, “is that it’s better to never sleep with your husband than to sleep with one that isn’t your husband.”

“Is Merle coming to tea?” the same confused woman from earlier piped up.

“Amen!” the off-key man announced.

Mama Loula snorted, “Vera may not care she’s never had any sex, but I bet her husband would have been less of a grumpy old man, bless his heart.”

A woman who had yet to speak asked softly, quite possibly asking a question she didn’t mean to, “What’s wrong with sleeping with a man that’s not your husband?”

“Amen!”

I closed my eyes and pretended I was anywhere but discussing sex with a room of geezers and geezettes.

Sunday school dragged on, but finally Lily and Aiden were holding my hands, telling me all about the cool toys in their classroom and how one of the older kids had taught them to burp (why thank you so much) as we trudged into the sanctuary.

Though I would have been quite happy to sit in the backmost row, and possibly slip out when no one noticed, Mama Loula marched us right to the third row, explaining, “This is my pew. I’ve sat in this same pew for a good thirty years now and I don’t plan on changing any time soon. Now where’s Alex? I’ll tan that boy’s hide if he skips today. Being out late is no excuse . . .”

She slipped that last bit out so casually that I almost didn’t notice at all. As soon as his name sunk in, though, I paled and asked warily, “He’s coming?”

“Well he’d better if he knows what’s good for him!”

I slid into the pew after Lily and Aiden, and Mama Loula seemed oblivious to my furrowed brow as she trapped me in the pew, still rambling on about how she had never joined the choir, even though she loved to sing, because they had to watch the preacher’s back for the entire sermon. If she was going to be chastised for bad behavior, she at least wanted it said to her face.

The entire congregation, choir included, amounted to maybe forty people. Our motley, liver-spotted crew warbled out several off-key hymns from crumbling hymnals, recited the Lord’s prayer in halting unison, and shared prayer requests for hemorrhoids, rain, and painless voyages “home” for the frailest and oldest members. Through it all, I glanced continuously over my shoulder to the doors at the back of the sanctuary, terrified of Alex sneaking up. I wasn’t sure what I expected him to do, but the very threat of his presence made my palms sweat.

He wasn’t present for the singing, the prayers, or the requests. Just when I thought I was safe, though, I heard the doors creak open and I knew. We always know things, and then we are either proven right and can brag about how we knew, or else are proven wrong and are embarrassed about being so paranoid. Unfortunately, I can brag about knowing. Seconds later, Alex slipped into the pew on Mama Loula’s far side.

“It’s about time,” she whispered, reaching out and taking his hand. I wasn’t sure if he said anything back. I had trained my eyes on the preacher as he took his position behind the pulpit and refused to tear my eyes away, working with every muscle in my body to focus on his sermon.

Lily and Aiden were surprisingly well behaved for having to sit still through such a boring service. By halfway through they began to grow fidgety enough that I worried they would be a disruption, but perhaps no one around us had enough hearing left to notice their muffled giggles and childish whispers as they doodled on church bulletins. By the end, Lily had stretched out with her head on my lap and was almost asleep, and Aiden was ready to erupt like a rocket out of the church as soon as we finished praying.

My focus on them helped me forget Alex sitting just one person away . . . but then nothing could make me forget entirely. Every time anyone cleared their throat, I jumped. I tried not to let my eyes wander to his knees or his hands clasped in his lap, the only parts of him I could see without leaning forward or back. At one point, he bounced his leg with pent-up energy, and I almost smiled. It was a very old-Alex thing to do. Mama Loula clamped her hand down on his knee and put an end to that.

The moment to end all moments almost came . . but not quite. The preacher, Dr. Somethingorother, said the final prayer, the organist –who would be a rich man if they paid him for every wrong note– began his unidentifiable benediction, and Alex was gone before I had even stood up, pulling Lily onto my hip so she could continue sleeping with her head on my shoulder.

“Well that little rascal,” Mama Loula huffed, glancing after the trail of smoke Alex had left with the speed at which he fled the church. “And here I was going to ask if he wanted to join us for lunch.”

I felt my shoulders relax with relief as I insisted, “It’s all right. Will you come to the house, though? I know Grandma would love if you ate with us.”

“There’s always a luncheon following service on Sundays,” she explained, motioning to the members making their way toward the Fellowship hall with all the urgency of a frozen river of molasses. “Lots of over-salted casseroles and under-salted potato salads.”

I made a face, hesitated, then offered, “Well, you know, Lily’s tired and Aiden’s wired and Grandma probably misses me and Connie doesn’t know how to feed herself, so . . .”

Mama Loula laughed and waved her hand in the air, “All right, go. I’ll attend the luncheon alone. I guess it was enough of a step for one day getting you here. We’ll work on the luncheon next week.”

“Right,” I returned, though we both laughed because we both knew that wasn’t happening. “Come on, Aiden. Let’s go.”

“I’m hungry,” he insisted, as though expecting me to produce lunch right then and there.

“The faster you come on, the faster we can eat.”

“Okay!” He took off and was at the back doors before I’d even blinked. I gave Mama Loula a quick hug, pulled my purse up, and scurried after him, barking for him to slow down and wait for me. I didn’t miss Mama Loula sighing to herself, though, “These kids. All grown up and still always in such a hurry . . .”

“Game of volleyball, anyone?” Alex proposed, pulling the ball up from beside the girls and attempting to twirl it on his finger. It repeatedly fell off until he gave up and tucked it beneath his arm.

Zane nodded, “Totally, dude. I’ve still got to kick your ass back after last time.”

“Tim?”

Timothy sighed. He hated playing any sport in general, though volleyball wasn’t as bad at other sports. He really hated when they played football; he just wasn’t as speedy as the other boys, and flushed red every time Jemmalyn tried to be nice and praise him for his skill on defense. At least with volleyball he could stand in one place near the net, though, and spike the ball to the ground with more force than Cat had ever been able to block.

“Fine, I’m in,” he nodded, capping his diet Pepsi and tossing it dejectedly onto the towel beneath him.

Michael grinned and sat up from his position stretched out on a towel where he was doing his best to erase his soccer tan. Jemmalyn teasing him so much about it had made him vain and paranoid.

“Girls?” he pressed, pushing his sunglasses up onto his spiked hair. Due to Cat misreading the directions on the dye, it was now an almost white blonde, but the color actually worked for him. It matched his icy blue eyes.

Jemmalyn and Cat had both just finished painting their nails matching shades of orange, the newest bottle Cat had picked up from the drugstore. This fascination with her appearance was a recently developed thing, but Jemmalyn appreciated that at Cat’s inspiration, her toes and fingers had looked the best they ever had all summer so far. She didn’t like the orange color much, though. It didn’t match her skin tone and made her toes look like she had dipped them in ear wax.

Cat shook her head, “Nah, our toes are wet. You boys go and we’re going to sunbathe.”

“What? Come on,” Alex whined.

Zane took a different approach, kicking sand all over Cat’s freshly painted toes.

Cat just stared, then demanded with pure outrage, “What the hell was that for?”

“Wanna kick my ass?”

“Yeah!”

“Your serve first!” he laughed, jumping up and dashing off for the court just one step ahead of a furious Cat. Alex pelted her with the ball from behind; Jemmalyn yanked the ball up; the game was on.

Later, long after they were exhausted from body-boarding and volleyball games, long after the last of their fire-roasted hot dogs and S’mores had disappeared, Jemmalyn settled down with her head in Zane’s lap to listen as Michael launched into one of the scariest of his ghost stories, one she had heard many times but that always gave her goosebumps. She didn’t notice until the next morning when they rose to head home that Alex had tied her ankles together with a washed up piece of twine and no one could get it undone so that Zane had to carry her home, much to her delight.

Not once did drugs or alcohol or cigarettes or sex come up the entire day or night. Not once did Alex look at Jemmalyn funny or Zane look at Cat funny. It was one of, if not the best day of Jemmalyn’s summer.

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