“Are you going to tell him?”
She looked at me for a long moment over the top of her glasses.
“No,” she said.
“Mom—”
“It’s not mine to tell. It’s his grandmother’s. And if he doesn’t remember, then telling him would only make him feel foolish. I’m not going to do that to a young man in his first church.”
“He’s firing you.”
“He’s asking me to step aside. Those aren’t the same thing. Pastors get to choose their music. That’s always been so.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
She stacked the notebooks back into their bundles, one at a time, and snapped the rubber bands around them.
“I’m going to play on Sunday,” she said again. “And I’m going to play the best I know how. And whatever happens after that is up to the Lord and the congregation. Not me.”
I drove home and lay awake most of the night.
The thing I kept thinking was that my mother had not been angry. Not once. Not in the pastor’s office, not in the car, not at the dining room table. I had been furious enough for both of us, and she had sat there sorting her notebooks like she was getting ready for a recital.
I didn’t understand it. I think part of me thought she’d given up.
I was wrong. But I didn’t know that until Sunday.
Here’s what I didn’t count on.
My mother didn’t tell anyone. I know that for a fact. She is the most private person I have ever known, and she would sooner have died than call around town complaining.
But I did tell my daughter Hannah, who is twenty-four and lives in Cedar Rapids. And Hannah told her best friend from high school, whose mother is Darlene Ferris. And Darlene is the daughter-in-law of old Lois Ferris, who is ninety years old and has sat in the third pew at First Methodist since before my mother ever touched the organ.
And Lois Ferris has a telephone.
By Friday, I was getting calls.
“Karen, is it true about your mother?”
“Karen, they’re letting Ruth go? After fifty years?”
“Karen, I heard the new pastor wants drums. Drums.”
I didn’t confirm anything. I didn’t deny anything. I told everyone the same thing. “She’s playing on Sunday. That’s all I know.”
Friday night, Mom called me.
“Somebody’s been talking,” she said.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I told Hannah, and—”
“I’m not upset. I’m only saying. Lois Ferris called me this afternoon and asked what I was going to play, and I didn’t tell her. And then the Larsons called. And then Jim Kowalski came by with a pie, which he has never once done in his life.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I was playing Sunday and I’d be glad to see them there.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all there is to say, Karen.”
There was a pause on the line.
“What kind of pie?” I asked.
“Rhubarb,” she said. “Out of season. He must’ve had it in the freezer.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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