Chapter 7: Tale of the Tamrins

While the rest of the country is enduring bitter winds and harsh weather conditions, we in Southern California are on fire watch. Yes, by mid-morning it's a sunny 75* here. We are so spoiled. I guess it's Fate's way of easing the blow of our Charger's loss to the Broncos this weekend. But, as has become the mantra of Charger fans, we stand comforted by the fact that there's always next year.

Alright, now, you're not seeing double - last week's entry and this week's entry are indeed entitled the same. Chapter 7 was a smidge on the long side, so I divided it to keep the read to the intended 10 minutes as opposed to something that takes more time away from your grind of 9 to 5, not that I encourage people to take a break from work to read my blogs or anything... ;)

If you can, sit back, relax and enjoy this week's segment of Providence: The Tale of the Tamrins!

PS - Parents, keep in mind the power of pre-reading if your youngin's are reading along.

Chapter 7 ~ Part 2: Visits

In the floor above the hat shop Ms. Grace gathered with three of the four of her very best friends. The fourth was off wildly establishing her independence from Providence in some unknown remote corner of the world. This was the women’s Saturday afternoon routine to meet for a couple of rounds of cards in the privacy of one of their homes. Tonight’s game was extra-special because their host for this game, Mrs. Elderbe, recently returned from her travels with her husband to visit his family in Viramont. The women all entered the building with the full realization that surely this day was to be filled with wonderful stories and uncontrollable throngs of laughter.

The woman with whom the reverend saw with Ms. Grace was a young lady named Ms. Julia Joyce. The pair entered the hat shop belonging to Mrs. Victoria Elderbe’s husband. Mrs. Callaghan arrived only a couple of minutes after Ms. Joyce and Ms. Grace. The social standards of Providence that required formal recognition of last names had been adapted by this group of gals long ago. The nicknames were adaptations of their maiden names, which suited their purposes of friendship like a glove.

“Do you need us to read your cards for you, Gracie?” Mrs. Callaghan teased, using the teacher’s nickname. All her friends knew that her sight was less than perfect even though she would never outright come to admit such a fault.

“No,” she succinctly, sharply barked. She could see the colors and the pictures fine. Ignoring the comment completely, Ms. Grace asked Mrs. Elderbe how her recent trip to Viramont had been as they all settled around the table in the second story of the hat shop.

After opening the window to let a breeze into the room, Mrs. Elderbe brushed a braid of her black hair from her face to answer, “You would not believe what madness happens there.”

“What do you mean?” Ms. Joyce asked as she started to shuffle the deck of cards. “It’s only a couple of miles north of us.”

“Yes, but the capitol of Viramont is insane! You don’t even know how huge it is!” Mrs. Elderbe excitedly shared. “There are so many people there. There was one point when my husband and I just looked at each other and said, ‘alright, that’s good enough for us,’ and then we came back. It was too much, I could not handle its size.”

“You’re the only person from Providence to make it to the Viramont capitol and back and that’s all you have to say about the place, and the whole country you went through to get there?” Ms. Joyce asked, pouring wine from the bottle she brought into glasses for her friends.

“I brought my own, thanks,” Mrs. Callaghan denied a glass from Ms. Joyce, flashing from her pocket a small water bladder her husband (the barkeep in the neighboring town of Dansend) had given her. The message of using it for water had been lost to her higher tastes.

The women chuckled and rolled their eyes at Mrs. Callaghan, dismissing her antics on account that they had been exposed to her eccentricities for years.

“I guess I do have one story, it’s really involved, but it’s the only one worth telling,” Mrs. Elderbe admitted as she accepted a glass from Ms. Joyce.

Scooting her chair closer to the table, Ms. Grace encouraged, “Oh, please do tell.”

With little more convincing to Mrs. Elderbe the most involved, incredible, and the most hilarious story was told. At several intervals throughout the tale, the listeners would beg for the teller to stop so that they could have a chance to recover from their laughter. Ms. Joyce lost the ability to breathe once or twice and Ms. Grace fell out of her chair from the provocation of utmost incredulous laughing. By the end of the story, Mrs. Callaghan’s forehead was deemed to be permanently made red from when she knocked her head on the table as she was bent over from stitches.

“What did I say? I told you, you wouldn’t believe it!” Mrs. Elderbe mockingly accosted.

The women continued to talk for some time and to play their cards after their hooplah settled. 

They all quickly found that their sides and stomachs were sore from their roaring, but it was routine for such aches to accompany these card games. Many more howls were made at Mrs. Callaghan’s capers along with pokes at Ms. Grace’s lack of proper vision. However, those jests at Ms. Grace’s sight were a great relief to her because the general topic of marriage, which she dreaded most was being almost entirely avoided. But of course, it always did come up.

“Tell us, J.J., are you ready to become Mrs. Vega at the fall festival?” Mrs. Callaghan asked of Julia Joyce while shimmying her shoulders at the queue of saying ‘Vega’ as she always did when the man’s name surfaced.

The pale skinned Ms. Joyce went stark pink. She pursed her lips, pinched the cards in her hand to her chin, and said excitedly while kicking her feet below the table, “I can’t wait!”

“Oh, marriage,” Mrs. Elderbe sighed despondently. “Can’t wait for the fights and the frustrations, I’m sure.”

“Who cares about that when there’s the sex,” Mrs. Callaghan bluntly said.

All of her card playing comrades stared at her in dubious shock. None could believe that she actually said that word even though Ms. Callaghan was the most indiscrete of them all. Talking of such things was more of a taboo than talking about the vampires.

“Why are you all looking at me like that?” Mrs. Callaghan asked with her deceptively innocent voice. Her question filled eyes looked at them curiously over her poor hand of cards. Mrs. Callaghan combed her long-dirty-blond bangs from her face as she added, “It’s not like you all don’t know what I’m talking about, well, maybe you two don’t,” she pointed her cards at Ms. Grace and Ms. Joyce, “but you will soon and then you’ll understand.”

Ms. Joyce and Ms. Grace continued their stares, but Mrs. Elderbe actually nodded her head in approval, “I’ll give her that.”

“Thanks for that truly enlightening conversation, Hewie,” Ms. Grace sarcastically said, addressing Mrs. Callaghan by her nickname that was based on her maiden name, Hewlett.

“What? Do you want details, Gracie?” Mrs. Callaghan asked, but mostly proposed, “’Cause I can give you details.”

“I’m sure you could,” Ms. Grace said with a chuckle as the image of Mr. Callaghan’s incredibly gorgeous figure and form flashed into her mind.

“Oh, don’t!” Ms. Joyce bashfully protested. “I’d much prefer to find out for myself, thanks.”

Tapping her fingers to the table, Mrs. Elderbe asked Ms. Joyce, “So, who is this man that you are marrying anyway? I’ve been in and out of town so often that I don’t even know who one of my best friends is marrying. Is this man alright?”

“Oh, he’s alright, alright,” Mrs. Callaghan answered suggestively for Ms. Joyce. “Mr. Vega’s the exotic type,” she added with another shimmy of her shoulders. “And he’s a wizard too if you can believe that, which makes him even more exotic.”

“No, no he’s not exotic!” Ms. Joyce vehemently protested to defend her shyness once more. (Ms. Grace and Mrs. Callaghan were struggling to not burst out with laughter because the two of them had this conversation among themselves already – the consensus between them was that Mr. Vega could properly be categorized as ‘exotic’). “Stop,” Mrs. Joyce demanded from her friends who were pink with laughter.

Mrs. Elderbe shifted her eyes from one friend to the next as even she began to chuckle from the general contagion of their laughing. Mrs. Joyce glared at her friends as she answered, “His parents are immigrants, but he was born here. He has a light accent, but he speaks perfect common tongue just like any of us.”

Throughout this conversation Ms. Grace had become very quiet. There was little toward it that she could contribute, especially because of whom it was her heart desired. However, Mrs. 

Callaghan was not about to let her friend go unnoticed at this card game. “How do you think Mr. Higley will be?” Mrs. Callaghan directly asked Ms. Grace.

Ms. Grace nearly spat out the drink she was attempting to swallow. Choking down her mouth-full of wine Ms. Grace quickly said, “None of us are of any authority to speak so inappropriately about anyone, especially him!”

“Oh, come off it, you will be someday,” Mrs. Callaghan said under her breath. “Who else in Providence could you marry, Gracie?” she added with more panache. “How many single young bachelors are there here?”

“She could look in neighboring towns like I did,” Ms. Joyce suggested looking to Ms. Grace with utmost sympathy. “It’s rough out there; the only single men here are Mr. Higley…um…”

“Grissom Honer,” Mrs. Elderbe added. “Oh, and the Witten brothers.”

“Ewe,” the other women all omitted their disgusted thoughts to that last suggestion.

Shaking her head adamantly Ms. Joyce protested, “No. Gracie deserves way better than either of the Witten boys.”

“Thank you,” Ms. Grace said although she did not care for this conversation to continue a word farther. She pretended to be interested in rubbing the top of her hand where there was a scar from childhood on her skin. “I teach those boys in my adult class with the reverend. They are vial. If I had to choose between either of them and Mr. Higley I would remain a spinster.”

“That wasn’t an option,” Mrs. Callaghan corrected with a chuckle.

Without making any sort of response Ms. Grace placed down two cards, which earned her several points in their card game. Her comrades made disgruntled noises of defeat. They all had fallen behind in their rankings with this move.

The women played in a remarkably lengthy silence. It was a full five minutes of silent card playing before Mrs. Elderbe asked, “Wait, what do you mean the reverend and you are teaching together? When did that happen?”

“It’s been about three weeks now,” Ms. Grace answered. “We’ve only added curriculum to my continuing education class.”

With a sigh Mrs. Elderbe said despondently, “No one tells me anything anymore.”

“That’s because you removed yourself from the Providence gossip-loop for several weeks,” Ms. Joyce said smartly. “Had you been here last month you would have heard repeatedly from Mrs. Winford about the ‘union of Providence’s greatest teachers’ or something like that.”

“No, that is how she was selling the class,” Mrs. Callaghan confirmed. “I live in the next town over and I heard it from her like that.” She shuffled the deck of cards. In the duration of the ruffling sound, Mrs. Callaghan thought of something rather odd, but something so plain that she could not believe it took her and many others so long to perceive. Smacking her palm to her forehead, Mrs. Callaghan said, “Oh! There is another man we’ve all forgotten!” The ladies looked at Mrs. Callaghan as they awaited an answer which she eventually exclaimed, “The reverend!”

Ms. Grace nearly fell out of her chair.

“The reverend?! What? Come on, really, Hewie?” Mrs. Elderbe asked in total shock. “I don’t know. That’s odd. Wouldn’t he be a little old for Gracie?”

“Why is it odd? And I don’t think he’s that old. He doesn’t look it at least.” Mrs. Callaghan pursued. (Gracie was clinging to her hand of cards like a vice.) “Think about it before you judge so fast: Mr. Tamrin would be faithful and certainly honorable and forgiving by default. Why not? He sounds like the perfect husband if you ask me.”

“But what about that other thing we were just talking about,” Mrs. Elderbe muttered as though afraid to be overheard. “Do you think he’d be…I don’t know…would he even know how?”

Ms. Grace was absolutely tepid and her knuckles were white with anxiety. Ms. Joyce was too appalled to even say anything aside from, “I can’t believe you two are even talking about this – this has to constitute a sin.”

Mrs. Callaghan rolled her eyes as though indeed this subject was nothing out of the ordinary. “I’m sure he would know how, for goodness sakes. A man’s a man regardless of his profession; it’s in his instincts. And what would be absolutely one-hundred percent the best part about marrying the reverend, Gracie? It is guaranteed that he would be a virgin just like you!”

~*~*~

“Don’t pay them any heed, Gracie,” Ms. Joyce consoled her dear friend as they slowly walked through Providence together. “Hewie was just joking about the reverend, you know how she is,” Ms. Joyce continued, giving Ms. Grace’s arm that she held onto for congenial support a little squeeze.

Ms. Grace was grateful that Providence was covered in a blanket of twilight – the dim yet beautiful light masked the red that flared on her face. “I can’t believe we were talking about him like that, so openly, the poor man,” Ms. Grace said after a while.

Mrs. Joyce nodded as they slowly neared the western part of town where she lived with her parents. “It was really odd, I’m not sure if any of us will be able to make it through church tomorrow and look him in the eye. Ugh, and he is so good with making eye contact with us during his sermons.”

Ms. Grace made an unenthusiastic note. “I’m sure he’ll be able to see our very thoughts.”

The women both sighed. They had reached the end of town where the reverend’s house lay directly across the road from the house of the Joyces.

“How are your parents, J.J.?” Ms. Grace asked quietly as they lingered outside the house.

“They’re getting nervous about the wedding,” she answered after a reflective thought. “True as it is that they’ve still another daughter to marry off, but I think they are going to have a hard time giving me away next week.”

“I would imagine so,” Ms. Grace said quietly. Her peripheral vision was locked on the reverend’s home. “You are the favorite, after all,” she added with a wink.

“Oh, I know,” Ms. Joyce said proudly, holding onto the hope that the statement was true even though she was the middle child of three daughters. “Well, I’d better get going; I’ll probably have to get up extra early tomorrow to go to confession to purge my soul of guilt.”

“So, you’re going to go to the reverend and confess to him that we spent an hour debating if he was actually a virgin or not?” Ms. Grace asked sardonically. “But I still stand by what I said: probably most men here are until they marry.”

Ms. Joyce planted her hands on her hips and gave Ms. Grace an angry, yet delighted smile. “Stop talking about it.” She shook her finger at Ms. Grace then turned around on her heels and skipped off to her front door. “G’ night, Gracie!”

Shaking her head at the queer delightful silliness of her friends, Ms. Grace chuckled a goodnight as well.

The school teacher began to walk away with the heavy thought that her days were filled with people, sometimes more so than she could endure, while her nights empty and lonely. She locked her sight onto the reverend’s house, which was without light. Ms. Grace wondered if the good man had already adjourned to bed for the night at such an early hour. For the briefest of moments she considered entering his home and confessing her love to him so that they could marry right away. She was very curious as to what his reaction would be, but she was not that foolish or that bold. As close as she was to her friends, she dreaded ever telling them about her attraction to him, that is, unless he confessed his love to her at which she would shout it from the rooftops.

Ms. Grace took the time to wonder if the reverend was lonely and her heart felt heavy from the thought. With yet another sigh, Ms. Grace began to walk back towards her home, but a bright light and a sweet voice coming out from inside Mrs. Keithly’s house distracted her from her course. Ms. Grace’s heart swelled again. Through the window of Mrs. Keithly’s home Ms. Grace could see the reverend (though not clearly) visiting with the darling widow. Mr. Tamrin seemed to be telling the older woman a story of some sort, for his features were animated with excitement. It looked as though he was acting something out as he was speaking.

Ms. Grace smiled. She immediately deemed that surely Mr. Tamrin would make an exquisite father for their children someday. She blushed at the thought and recommenced her journey home. She knew that she would sleep well tonight, for even though he was not with her she knew where her heart was and she knew that at least he was not alone. 

~*~*~

In regards to the Golden Globes the other night, I cannot agree with this post more:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/emma-thompson-was-secretly-but-not-so-secretly-the-best-part

Emma, if you're reading - you are, without doubt, one of the greatest people around!

Your humble author,
S. Faxon