Thirty One Days in the Church Basement

Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving in that basement. Twenty-two people at the fellowship tables pushed together. Turkey, two hams, green bean casserole, and paper plates with orange leaves printed around the edges.

Pastor Dan said grace. He thanked God for the food, the hands that made it, and “the Moe family, who have reminded this church what a basement is for.” I had to look down at my plate for a minute after that.

Travis got home for it. He had arranged his loads to deadhead home Wednesday night, which cost him money he did not have. He carved the turkey. Harold carved the ham. They argued about the right way to do it the whole time.

My mother came too. Mom is seventy and lives in a one-bedroom senior apartment by the clinic. She has bad hips now. Harold’s men carried her chair down the stairs with her in it, which she complained about and loved.

Halfway through supper, Mom leaned over to me.

“Where’s Jessica?” she said.

Everybody at our end of the table got a little quiet.

“She’s busy, Mom,” I said.

Mom looked at me a long time. She had raised two girls on plywood floors. She knew what busy meant.

What I Didn’t Say

I want to be honest about something.

I never told anybody what Jessica said on the phone. Not Ann. Not Pastor Dan. Not the women’s circle. When people asked why we weren’t staying with my sister, I said, “It just didn’t work out,” and I changed the subject.

I did not do it to be noble. I did it because I knew if I said it out loud, I would never be able to take it back. Our town is small. A sentence like that would follow Jessica to the grocery store for the rest of her life.

But a town of 1,400 can count bedrooms.

Everybody knew Jessica’s house. Everybody knew her boys were grown. And everybody knew where the Moe kids were sleeping. Nobody had to be told anything. They just did the arithmetic.

I heard later that the second Sunday after the fire, Jessica sat in her regular pew, and the two women who always sat beside her moved to the other side of the aisle. Nobody said a word. They just moved.

The third Sunday, she did not come.

Kenzie stopped asking about her aunt somewhere in there. That was worse than the questions. One night at supper, Cole said something about Aunt Jessica’s big TV, and Kenzie said, “We don’t go there,” flat, like she was reading it off a sign.

I put my fork down. That one hurt worse than the fire. The fire took a house. This was taking something I could not rebuild with an insurance check.

Rick

Rick came by the church on a Wednesday afternoon in early December. Jessica’s husband. He came down the stairs with his work coat still on, smelling like the plant.

He brought a box of groceries. Milk, cereal, peanut butter, the good bread. He set it on the kitchen counter and stood there with his hands in his pockets.

“Heather,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Rick.”

“I was on nights that week,” he said. “I didn’t know she’d said it until Friday. When I found out, I told her she had to call you. She said you’d never forgive her. I said that wasn’t up to her.”

He looked over at the row of cots, the quilts, Lily’s purple hat on her pillow.

“She hasn’t slept,” he said. “I mean that. She gets up at two in the morning and goes and sits in the living room. On the carpet. Just sits there.”

“Is she okay?”

He laughed a little, not a happy laugh. “No,” he said. “But I think she’s getting there. I just wanted you to know she’s not, you know. She’s not all right with it.”

I walked him up the stairs. At the top he turned around.

“She was going to come down here twice,” he said. “She got as far as the parking lot both times.”