The Kolaches That Sold Out Before Hers

“That boy’s all right,” Agnes told me. “For a Novak.”

All that year, I still saw Rose every Sunday.

The Novaks had dinner at Pat’s house after the ten o’clock Mass, and Rose sat at the head of the table in her cardigan with a kerchief tied over her white hair, and she was perfectly nice to me.

She asked about my work. She asked when we were going to give her a great-grandbaby.

I never once said a word to Rose about the church kitchen. Neither did Adam. And I will say this for the ladies of St.

Wenceslaus: they can keep a secret when they decide to. Rose went to that same church every Sunday of her life, and somehow, for almost a whole year, not one of them told her.

I asked Agnes about it once. Why nobody had said anything.

“It’s not ours to tell,” Agnes said. “It’s yours.”

In July, Father Jim stood up at the end of Mass and announced that the roof fund was still about eleven thousand dollars short, and the bishop’s office had said the slate on the north side would not make it through another winter.

He asked everyone to think about what they could give at the fall festival.

After Mass, Agnes caught my sleeve on the church steps.

“You’re going to have a table,” she said.

“A table,” I said.

“At the festival. Kolaches. For the roof.” She said it like she was telling me what time it was.

“Agnes, Rose has the kolache table,” I said. “Rose has always had the kolache table.”

“Rose sells for the Altar Society, too,” she said. “Every dollar goes to the same roof. Nobody says there can only be one table. There’s two beer stands.”

“She’ll think I’m doing it to show her up,” I said.

Agnes looked at me over her glasses for a long time.

“Are you?” she asked.

I thought about it. I made myself think about it honestly, standing there on the church steps with the sun on my face. Was I?

A little bit, maybe, deep down, a year ago. That little stone in my chest from the wedding supper had not completely gone away.

But mostly what I felt, by then, was something else. I had spent a year of Saturdays with those women. I wanted people to taste what they had taught me.

I wanted that roof fixed. And I wanted Agnes, with her bad hands and her wax mitts, to see her kolaches go out the door one more time.

“No,” I said. “Not really. Not anymore.”

“Then have a table,” Agnes said, and went down the steps holding the rail.

We decided on forty dozen. That was Kathy’s number. She ran the figures on the back of a bulletin: forty dozen at twelve dollars a dozen came to four hundred eighty dollars, plus whatever people bought one at a time.

The ladies thought that was ambitious. Agnes thought it was about right.

We started on Thursday. I came off a twelve-hour shift that morning, slept until two, and was in that basement by four in the afternoon. Agnes was already there. Of course she was.

Dorothy and Jean came at five with the fillings already cooked in their own kitchens, in coffee cans with foil over the top. Marlene brought a pound of butter for every pan of posypka.

Father Jim came down at eight o’clock Thursday night to ask why his milk had been moved.