The Name in the Thursday Paper

Sunday

I almost did not go to church that Sunday. I was eight days out and still sore, and Josh said nobody would think twice. But Wyatt had not been to church yet, and I wanted him to hear the organ, and I am a stubborn person from a long line of stubborn people.

We go to the Lutheran church on the north side of the square, the red brick one with the bell they still ring by hand. Pastor Lund has been there eleven years. He wears his reading glasses on a cord and he is kind to everybody, even the Methodists.

Every Sunday, during the prayers, he reads the names from the prayer list. People call the church office during the week, and Darla in the office types the names on a half sheet, and Pastor reads them out: the sick, the traveling, the grieving, the new babies.

We sat in our usual pew, the fourth on the left, Josh on the aisle. Sharon sat where she always sits, the third pew on the right, the seat on the end where Harold used to sit before she slid over into it.

When it came time for the prayers, Pastor Lund read the list in his slow, careful voice. Arlene Voss, recovering from her hip. The Schroeder family, on the birth of their daughter, Emma. And then he said it.

“For Josh and Kelsey Brandt, and for Sharon, on the birth of little Harold.”

I felt the whole church turn its eyes to the baby in my arms. Not in a bad way. They were smiling. They were happy for us. That was the worst part, how happy they were.

Josh’s hand found my knee and stayed there.

Afterward in the fellowship hall, three different women came up to me by the coffee urn and told me Harold was a fine strong name. One of them was Bev Hartley, who taught Josh in fourth grade. She touched Wyatt’s foot through the blanket.

“Harold would be so proud,” she said. “He’d have had him on the tractor by Easter.”

“He would have,” I said, because that part was true.

Sharon was across the hall by the bars and the cookies, taking the congratulations one at a time like a receiving line. She looked lighter than I had seen her look in a long time. I noticed that, even then. I filed it away.

When she came over to see the baby, I let her take him. She held him the way women who have held a lot of babies hold them, low and sure, his head in the crook of her elbow.

“Everybody’s so happy,” she said.

“They are,” I said. “Sharon, I know what you did, and I know why you think you did it.”

She looked at me over the top of Wyatt’s head.

I had a speech. I had worked on it in the shower. It had words in it like disrespect and our son and how dare you. I could have said all of it right there, by the coffee urn, in front of Bev Hartley and half the altar guild.

But I thought about what happens after a speech like that. A fight in the fellowship hall does not change what is printed in two thousand newspapers. It just gives the town a second thing to talk about, and Wyatt’s grandma becomes the woman who got told off in church.

So I said the only true thing I could say that was not a weapon.

“Thank you for wanting him remembered, Sharon,” I said. “I mean that.”

Then I held out my arms, and she gave him back.

That was all I said. She stood there a second like she was waiting for the rest, and when there was no rest, she went to help Darla wash cups.