Chapter 1

Preparation

In March of ‘83, Jen Saunders dressed and ate breakfast before making her phone call. She wanted her appearance to match her pastoral role even if nobody else could see her.

“Northern Illinois Conference, Aurora District.”

“Reverend Campbell, please. This is Jennifer Saunders calling.”

A moment later Campbell was on the phone. “Yes, Reverend Saunders.”

“I thought I should tell you. I just got engaged.”

“Somebody from around there?” At last, she thought, someone who hadn’t seen it coming before she did.

“Not so’s you’d notice. David Blake, Professor Blake. He teaches at Garrett.”

“Well, Jen,” Campbell said, “I congratulate you. Have you told your staff-parish committee?”

“Saturday night, right after my mother. And we announced it in church yesterday morning.”

“I’d like to have a talk with both of you.”

“Fine. Why don’t you arrange a time and place with David? My schedule is the most flexible of our three.” Not that she’d cry if she had to miss a committee meeting. She gave him David’s home number. “You already have the number for Garrett?”

“I’m sure Mrs. Kristensen has it in her Rolodex.”

David called her later in the day. “Is Wednesday at four possible? Campbell is on his way back from Chicago then.”

“You couldn’t schedule it during one of my committee meetings?” she asked. “Meeting the DS is church business, after all.”

“Sorry. Besides, Campbell might see this as your personal time. The DS is your pastor as well as your immediate superior.”

“And who isn’t my immediate superior?” she asked. “There’s Pastor-Parish, the Administrative Board, and the Council of Ministries.” The latter two had precisely the same membership at Independence, if two different chairmen. “That’s beside the Trustees.”

“You forget the Worship Committee. And the Board of Trustees is your landlord, not your boss.”

“We’re too small to have a worship committee. But we do have the United Methodist Women, active in the cold months.” Although the latter were a bunch of dears. They were happy to see a woman pastor.

“And they all expect the pastor to do just what they say, even if they say different things.”

“Not in Independence,” she said. “They’ve all lived in each other’s laps so long that they agree on almost everything. If they don’t, they know who’s on which side. Wednesday at four is great.”

“Lovely,” David said. “I said the parsonage. This is personal business, after all. If you want it in the church, I’ll call him back.”

“No reason. After I spoke with him, I was afraid you were going to have to drive to his office.”

“Look, think about this. He might well want to perform the wedding.”

She’d thought about that, decided about that -- subject to David’s opinion of course. Two of them were going to have to live through this wedding. “Seems reasonable to me.”

“If you want to say ‘yes,’ do so,” David said. “If you want to say ‘no,’ don’t say anything. Tell me later, and I’ll say the ‘no.’”

“There is so much we have to decide.” Suddenly, the task looked overwhelming.

“And not just about the wedding,” he had to remind her.

“Are you making a list of things we have to decide about the marriage?” He’d said he would.

“Started it. Have you?”

“Only mentally.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too,” she said. She did; it was the only thing that made all this hassle worthwhile. The other side of the counseling looked so much easier just then. “And the next time I’ll see you is with my DS watching.”

“Well, I’ll be there; he’ll be there. I’m sure he’ll have an appointment afterwards. I won’t.”

“You do now. When do you want the wedding?”

“I’ve said it’s your choice. But the honeymoon has to be after the end of school, though,” he said.

“June wedding?” anything sooner looked impossible.

“Sounds great.”

“I’ll be here through Conference. So, you need to check out the place you’ll be living. Is the bed the proper firmness? That sort of thing.”

“I love you, Jen.”

Jen’s next call was from Margaret Baxter. “You were so busy yesterday, reverend, that I didn’t have time to invite you to dinner. Can you come and eat with Fred and me next Sunday?”

“Sure.” She’d like to see the schedule some time, but she got an invitation from one family of parishioners almost every Sunday. Except when David had done his own inviting, she’d never received two.

“Can David come, too?” Now this was new. Apparently, the fiancé was included. Of course, it could be Mrs. Baxter’s own idea.

“I can’t speak for him.” She didn’t plan to speak for him even when they were married. “Do you want me to pass on the invitation?”

“That would be very kind of you. I’m sure he’d be more likely to come if the invitation came from you.” Jen wasn’t sure about that.

“Well, I don’t know his plans for the rest of Sunday. I’ll ask next time we talk.”

Campbell was congratulatory in a paternal sort of way. Jen was reconciled to the attitude. She’d done four hospital visits on Tuesday, and three patients had been either paternal or maternal. Old Mrs. Raleigh was out of it; Jen doubted she even knew her pastor had been there.

“I’m wearing two hats,” Campbell said. “Three, really, I hope I’m your friend, and -- as a friend -- I wish you two all the luck in the world. As your pastor, I’ll want to make sure that you understand the step you’ve decided to take. But I’m also Jen’s DS, and I have to see what is good for her and the church in the way of assignments.”

“We’d really like something closer to Garrett,” she told him. “This year doesn’t matter so much; we aren’t planning the wedding ‘til June. But the commute from Evanston would be a killer.”

“You aren’t pregnant?” asked Campbell suddenly.

That was blunt, she thought. “No.”

“Then I’d suggest that you take a second year here. I’ll be perfectly honest. This church is a one-year assignment in most cases. But you are starting one major life change; you don’t want to start another.”

“Jen’s a traveling preacher,” David said. “She goes where she’s assigned.” So much for his not speaking for her, not that she would have said anything different. Saying that some assignment would interfere with her vocation was one thing, saying that it would be personally inconvenient was another.

“I know that,” Campbell said. “And -- if she insists -- she’ll get an assignment with a shorter drive for you. I can’t promise that, of course. But, as a practical matter, she can probably depend on it. What I’m suggesting -- as her pastor as well as a member of the Cabinet -- is that she ask for a second year here. I think it would be best for her. The year after, we’ll know what you want; we’ll know that it is reasonable; it’ll be one of our priorities. The year after that, of course, I won’t be a DS.”

“I can handle the drive for a year.” Well, that wasn’t quite speaking for her.

“We’ll talk more,” she said.

“Good!” Campbell said. “A couple should make their decisions together. Do you want me to perform the service?”

“Would you like to?” she asked.

“Very much.”

“Then yes.”

“That doesn’t need a confab?” The DS raised an eyebrow.

“That,” David said, “was a question that could be foreseen.”

“And is the ceremony going to be here?”

“I’ve been warned of a mutiny if it isn’t.” Not that anyone had been quite that direct. Being direct wasn’t the Independence way.

“You’ve both done counseling?” Campbell asked. “Had courses in counseling?” She and David both nodded their heads.

“There are two ways of handling that,” Campbell continued. “I could do a nominal counseling session -- ‘You know what the questions are; what’s your response?’ I’d rather go the extra mile. What do you think?”

“Probably,” David said, “that’s for the best. There’s lots here that isn’t in the sort of wedding Jen is likely to perform in Independence.”

Campbell smiled. “Where do you see the problems?”

“In each of us,” David said. “Internally, I’m quite an opinionated guy.” Jen was glad he’d said ‘guy.’ He’d called himself ‘an opinionated son-of-a-bitch’ to her. “Externally, Jen’s a preacher. That lays all sorts of demands on her time and her attention which the traditional wife doesn’t have. And it doesn’t help that it’s a role where my opinions happen to be strong. Of course, my career ain’t a bed of roses, either. What happens if I publish something that Jen disagrees with? What happens if it causes a controversy with her peers -- or with you? Anyway, these aren’t quite the problems I counseled on, nor -- I suspect -- Jen. You’ve probably had more experience, if not lots.”

“A clear-headed analysis,” Campbell said.

“The word on Professor Blake at Garrett,” she said, “was that he is always clear-headed, even when he is wrong-headed.”

“The word on Blake at Garrett,” David said, “is that he is always wrong-headed.”

“We’ll need more sessions, then,” Campbell said. “Here?”

“Okay by me,” David said.

“Many of them,” she said. “You’re in Chicago often, Reverend Campbell. Maybe we could schedule one -- or even two -- there. I’ll have to go in sometimes. That would be more convenient for you than meeting here.”

“If you have to go in,” Campbell said. “Driving is part of a DS’s job description, otherwise. It would be more convenient for David as well.”

“I,” she admitted, “thought of that.” And it would be nearer to the apartment with its nice bed far from peering eyes.

“I’ll send you some thoughts,” Campbell said. “Some questions for you each to answer. Some things we have to discuss; others don’t need my presence. There’s a lot to marriage which has to be decided. It doesn’t matter whether you go one way or the other; you have to both go the same way. If the wife expects the husband to take out the garbage and the husband expects the wife to, you’ll get a huge pile of garbage in the kitchen before that question is resolved.” They both smiled at that.

Jen ushered him out. They watched him drive away. “That wasn’t so bad,” David said after they’d shared a kiss. “Funny, I’ve been on the other side dozens of times, and I was always amazed that the couple was nervous. What was I going to do, after all? Now, the shoe’s on the other foot, and I find that I was nervous. What was he going to do, after all?”

“He might ask if I was pregnant,” she pointed out.

“Darling,” David said, “I’m sorry. That must have made you feel rotten.”

“Not actually.” Though, it was something David should have considered. “He had to know. It’s something you suspect, these days, whenever you see an engaged couple. He doesn’t need to know whether we’ve gone to bed together, and he didn’t ask. My mother asked the pregnancy thing.”

“Mothers always do. It’s one of the things they worry about.”

“Y’know, it would get me a new assignment.” It had other attractions, too.

“And it would spoil your record for the rest of your career, to say nothing of how he’d suspect the reason. It’s not as if you hadn’t answered already. Let’s play this straight.” He took a long pause. “The cabinet can decide many things about our marriage. There’s no reason to allow them to decide about when we have children.”

“You’ve thought about that?”

“It’s on my list of questions,” he said. “We’ll each write our answer separately.”

“You’re uncompromising,” she said fondly. After all, the David Blake she’d first had a crush on had been uncompromising.

“I’m trying to compromise fairly.” And, she saw, that was true, too. He wanted rules to make it absolutely certain that she had as much voice in their future as she had. He’d said that she could decide whether or not Campbell would perform the service. He wasn’t looking for rules to assure his participation, but to assure hers. But he wanted those rules very rigid.

“You’re uncompromising about compromises.”

“And you are silly.”

“There is nothing sloppy about true paradox, as my favorite professor said.” See! She had listened in class -- final B or not.

“I thought I was the only person who said that.”

“Now,” she told him, “you’re fishing for compliments.”

“Fishers of compliments,” he sang, rushing the last word, “fishers of compliments, I will make you fishers of compliments if you follow me.”

This was too good an opening to resist. She started up the stairs, swaying from side to side as her weight came to rest on alternate legs. “If you follow me,” she sang, “if you follow me, I will make you fisher in women if you follow me.” He followed, but -- she reflected -- she didn’t really mean the plural. If he fished with the fishing pole she was thinking of in any other woman, she’d kill somebody. Maybe the woman, maybe him, certainly herself.

He followed. She stopped in the upstairs hallway for a kiss. He fondled her rump then. His tongue explored her mouth, and her tongue welcomed it. He drew his head back.

“This is fun,” she said. “But don’t you want to see the rest of where you’re going to live?”

“Lead on.”

“That’s my room.” She gestured at a closed door. “We’ll look at that last.” She planned to do some more looking after that, but not at rooms. “This is my office,” she only made a gesture. “This room,” opening the door to show him, “could be your office, your gym, or both. That one is identical, and I didn’t bother to unlock it. You could have both. Pardon the temperature, I keep the vents closed. The furnace works hard enough as it is.”

“Then I don’t need both. I can put my exercycle and my desk in the same space. I put my bed in with it, now.”

“Fond as my memories of that bed are, no you can’t.” She’d better make this definite. “This place has gobs of space for exercise; you could read in one room and write in another. What it lacks is sleeping room. You’ll have to share mine.”

“I’ll make that sacrifice.”

“Speaking of sacrifices, this is the bathroom. No shower. Thank your stars there is indoor plumbing.”

“It looks like there has been for a while,” David said.

Not for that long a while. “The church as an institution has existed longer than the town. Which was founded in 1876 -- when else? When the church building burned down it was rebuilt where water mains had reached already. The parsonage was saved.”

“Lots of history here.”

“Lots of history.” But she’d wasted enough time. “This is the bedroom.” She flung open the door. “And that is the bed.”

He responded to the blatant invitation by taking her in his arms. She turned up her face for the kiss. While his tongue explored her mouth, she could feel his solid chest against her breasts, feel his erection firm against her stomach.

She pushed back to unbutton his shirt. He was fumbling with the snap at the back of her neck. There wasn’t much he could do with this dress from the front. She wasn’t worried, having selected it for being the easiest to remove of those of her dresses which looked demurely professional. She usually dressed in suits, which could take an age.

When the shirt was unbuttoned, she turned around. He got the snap and zipper. She took the dress off on the way to the closet. While he was removing his clothes, she took a detour to lock the bedroom door. The outer door was locked -- however the locals acted, she was still a Chicago girl. This door was too flimsy to stop anyone, anyway. She just wanted the feeling of privacy.

When she returned, he was barefoot and bare-chested. He still had his trousers on. They had a kiss before he removed her slip. He tossed it over his shirt on the chair and kissed her again while he was unsnapping her bra. They parted long enough for him to toss that onto the same chair. She swept the bedclothes to the floor. She attacked his belt while he kissed the top of her head and caressed her back. She lay down on the bed while he stepped out of the trousers and stripped down his shorts.

“Sweet Jen,” he said. He got into the bed far enough down that his lips were level with her breasts. He leaned on both his arms while he kissed those thoroughly. His lips and tongue traveled everywhere. Finally, he leaned back on one arm while sucking her right breast. His hand stroked between her thighs.

This was delightful at first, but she soon wanted more. She ran her hands through his hair, hugged his head to her breast. This wasn’t enough. She ran her hands down his back, and then around towards his groin. He pulled back and off the bed.

David pulled his shirt from underneath the pile of her clothes. A moment’s digging in the pocket produced a small envelope, folded over. What could he want now? Then he shook something out of the envelope. It must be a condom.

He came back to the bed to take her panties. She raised herself and he pulled them down. They repeated this with her pantyhose. The position gave him direct sight of her groin, and she felt very exposed.

He walked to the foot of the bed and started to stroke her thighs. Then he tore open the package and rolled the condom on. He stroked her legs and then lifted one to kiss up the inside from the ankle to above the knee. Jen supposed that getting your ankle kissed was an honor. Getting your thigh kissed, on the other hand, was a definite turn on. And getting kissed on the sensitive flesh where her thighs met was an even greater turn on.

At first, it was a delightful glory; then she needed even more. When the need became unbearable, she reached down and pulled David up in the bed by his hair.

He responded, if slowly. He stopped to kiss her breasts and then her mouth. He spread her entrance. Then she felt him thrust inward. “Jen,” he said, “Jennifer.”

She liked the way he said her formal name as a love word. But she liked the rest of his actions much more. She was filled, possessed. And he stroked in and out again and again while her feelings spiraled higher.

Then they flamed within her. “Darling,” he said, and had his own. “Oh, my darling,” he said again. Then he moved out of her and off her. He kept close enough, though, that she didn’t feel abandoned. Lying like that was delightful. If she could only do it forever.

But, “I’ve got things to do.”, “ She said getting up. She headed towards the bathroom.

When she had relieved herself, washed, and returned, he held up the condom. “Who empties your garbage?”

“I do,” she said.