Cogitor, Ergo Sum
What he liked most about her was her generosity. She was the most generous shikse he knew. Once, when a group of snot-nosed kids pressed their faces up against his shop window, she went outside and invited them all in and bought them all any pastry they wanted. She would babysit for neighborhood women for nothing, but few asked, since most married women instinctively distrusted her tendency to reach out toward them in friendliness. Like dragons, they kept jealous watch over their treasures. Some treasures!
She walked out clutching her little white bag of rolls and glanced up the street for familiar faces. Of course she would not go directly home but stop in somewhere to eat, even though she was not particularly hungry. As she considered various places for dinner, her eyes, incessantly scanning, locked in on the pasty gray face and clerical collar of Reverend Peters, who was still half a block away. Ever since her divorce she had plunged into volunteer work for the First Congregational Church, to which both she and her ex-husband had belonged. Ideas she had had for new socials and fundraisers flocked through her mind like noisy birds competing for a scrap of bread. She smiled and waved, they exchanged greetings, and they stepped back against a store window as Vera seized this opportunity to broach ideas she had been developing for a building-fund campaign she knew the Reverend was contemplating.
“Excellent ideas!” he said. “We must talk about them again soon. But I’m afraid it would be a bit premature for you to begin making contact with the local businessmen. You see,” he said confidentially, “there are certain individuals among them I need to ‘tap’ for other purposes.”
“Oh, I quite understand,” said Vera, delighted to be so confided in.
THE REVEREND’S VIEW OF VERA
On the personal level Reverend Peters felt nothing but admiration for the energy with which Vera devoted herself to church and social causes. He remembered a book-and-bake sale she had masterminded that had netted a large chunk of the cash needed for roof repairs one year. Another time, under church auspices, she had organized a lecture series on Latin American politics to help Amnesty International raise funds and consciousness in connection with the “disappeared” of Argentina. Members of the congregation still talked about that series. Unfortunately, there were members of the congregation who had come to regard her as aggressive, somewhat pushy, a bit too hungry for the limelight—in spite of the success of her charitable endeavors. Wrong as he felt they were, he could not simply ignore these increasingly audible mutterings. It was his duty as minister to balance the various claims of his constituency. Other members of his flock-muddleheaded and inept though they might be—had nevertheless to be given their chance to shine. Accusations of favoritism had multiplied behind his back, and who could tell what even uglier rumors, lies more powerful than bombs, might have sprouted in the shadows if he had not learned judiciously to “sit on” her. The last thing he would ever wish to do, of course, would be to squelch that priceless enthusiasm of hers. It seemed that her divorce had suddenly released in her a cascade of constructive energy. He had little suspected how ill-matched a couple they were until her husband had confided to him, shortly before the public avowal of their breakup, that Vera was one of those women who never gave a man any room, any “space,” a condition especially asphyxiating to such a bookish man as Cameron.
