The Last Beach Bungalow by Jennie Nash Page B

said more than two words to the boy that Jackie brought home, but Rick went to brush his teeth, and then he stood by the door jingling his car keys, saying that it was time to go in a voice that was still brittle with anger.
    We rode to church in total silence.
    We belonged to an Episcopal church that was tucked into a grove of eucalyptus trees in a small canyon that I always imagined to be the exact spot where Redondo Beach, the surf town, gave way to Palos Verdes, the hilly home of doctors and Hollywood lawyers. All the towns in the South Bay were crammed together so that you were never really sure where one began and another ended, but the Redondo-Palos Verdes border felt like a line of demarcation. The curve of beach melted into crumbling cliffs, the hills rose up behind them, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula began its audacious jut out into the sea. The Beach Boys sang about Redondo Beach. It was one of the hot spots you’d hit on your endless summer surfing safari, a place of leisure and delight. But it was from the hills of Palos Verdes that you could view it all: the palm trees silhouetted against the sunset, the crescent of sand wrapping around the Santa Monica bay, the spread of lights across the L.A. basin.
    Saint Francis Episcopal Church stood like a sentinel on the road leading up to those lofty views. Rick had been baptized in the original chapel and later served as an altar boy there. He’d kissed a girl named Patti Patter-son in the choir stalls of the new sanctuary building one Easter morning in eighth grade. I’d done all those same things, too—except the kissing—at a Methodist church in Houston, Texas. Far from feeling like a compromise, adopting Rick’s church and religion felt like a gift I was giving to our marriage. In the beginning I kept noting the differences between the two services: where people prayed or didn’t pray, how they kneeled or didn’t kneel. After a few years, I stopped paying attention.
    On Sunday, I focused on the purple candles on the Advent wreath and tried to feel some connection to God as I sang the familiar hymns and listened to the familiar prayers, but nothing was familiar because Jackie wasn’t there and anger still hung in the air around us. During the opening prayers, I tried to focus on the words, but all I could think about was the way Jackie had grabbed Max’s hand. During Communion, I tried to pray for the soldiers who had just pulled Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground and I tried to feel grateful for the simple fact of being able to sit in church on Sunday morning and not worry that I would be shot. My head, however, was filled with an image of the house on Pepper Tree Lane.
    The gospel reading and sermon that day were taken over by the pageant. Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper and assorted shepherds and lambs assembled at the back of the church. You could hear them shuffling and whispering, jockeying for position. The real Mary was purported to be a shy young thing, obedient and respectful of the law, but it was a coup to be chosen to play Mary at Saint Francis Palos Verdes, so it was usually a rather pushy girl who got the part—someone with a loud voice and a mother who was capable of spinning light blue silk into a fetching robe. The lights dimmed and a young girl, about twelve, came out and sat down at a piano that had been rolled into the sanctuary for the occasion. She was wearing a black velvet dress with a wide red ribbon around her waist, and her black hair was slicked back in a bun. She smiled and struck the first chord of “Once in Royal David’s City.”
    Mary came up the aisle, the angel Gabriel followed, Joseph came and gave his travel plans, the shepherds who watched their flock were amazed by the star in the sky, but I never took my eyes off the piano-playing girl. I played piano for eight years as a child and I used to love wearing a beautiful dress onstage. It was a thrill to play Chopin, to hit all the notes, to lose myself in the music