Skinny Matilda's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Matilda went back to the chapel the next morning with her list in her pocket. She sat in the same back pew and pressed her feet flat to the floor. The door creaked open behind her. A small woman in a purple cardigan came in, nodded once at Matilda, and sat two rows up. She had gray hair and glasses and a small cross on a chain. Matilda knew her by sight from the store. Margaret Sullivan. Margaret did not stare. She bowed her head and stayed quiet, and Matilda let her breath slow. When the bell rang the hour, Margaret stood and turned. She looked at Matilda the way people look at a kettle, checking, not judging. "You come here early," she said. "So do I." Matilda's hands stayed still in her lap. She asked the question before she could lose it. "The old man across the fence from me. The one with the white beard. Do you know him?" Margaret sat down on the pew in front of Matilda and folded her arms over the back. "I knew his wife. She died in April. Thirty years they were married. He hasn't cooked a meal for himself since Carter was president." Matilda felt something shift under her ribs. She had counted the old man as an enemy. Now he had a reason, and the reason was not her. "I heard him say things about me," Matilda said. "At the fence. About my body." Margaret nodded like she had heard worse. "Grief makes people mean. It doesn't make them right." She paused. "But it does make them alone. If you want to do something with what you know, bring him a loaf of bread. Don't say anything about his wife unless he does. Don't stay long." Matilda thought about the loaf on her counter at home. She thought about walking up to his door in her bikini, and her stomach dropped. Then she thought about him sitting at a table alone for four months, and the drop steadied into something else. She went home, wrapped the bread in a clean towel, and walked to his gate. Her hands shook before she knocked. He opened the door in the same plaid shirt, arms uncrossed for once. She held out the bread. "I heard about your wife," she said. "I'm sorry." He looked at the loaf, then at her. His mouth worked. He took the bread with both hands and did not speak. Then he stepped back and closed the door, not hard. Matilda walked home on legs that held. She did not count the walk. She added a fourth line to the envelope: the old man's gate. The shaking came later, at her table. This time she knew it would pass.