Chapter 7 #2
Except she didn’t. She wanted to be the one in control.
So, as soon as Pastor Connelly closed the meeting with prayer, she jumped up and went marching over to Roland.
Halfway over, she realized she was acting like she was going on a death march, and she tried to modulate her speed and her directness.
She paused to give Mrs. Tucker a polite smile.
That soon turned sour when Mrs. Tucker said, “I’m thrilled that the two of you are working together.
I always thought that the two of you in high school were just absolutely brilliant.
You motivated each other to do far, far better than either one of you would have done by yourselves.
Of course, my Jamie was valedictorian, but I had to admire how you and Roland just were so determined to push each other to be your very, very best.”
Nelly practically bit her tongue in order to not respond to Mrs. Tucker the way she wanted to.
She heard snickering and turned in time to see Roland tucking a laugh back behind his hands.
It made her mad again, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes from flashing as she wanted to fly over to him and grab him by his ears.
Instead, she politely thanked Mrs. Tucker, complimented the woman on the Christmas cookies that she always provided for the after-show refreshments, and told her she was looking forward to the treats again this year.
Then, she politely excused herself because she had a few details to hash out with Mr. McBride.
She emphasized the “Mr.” as she turned and strode toward Roland, who hadn’t budged from his mother’s side.
As though he needed to hide behind his mother’s skirts for protection.
Which, come to think of it, maybe he did.
“Mr. McBride. It looks like you and I are going to be working together.” She wanted to add, “and you can’t be any happier about that than I am, so let’s make the best of it,” but there were people within earshot, so she just gave him a fake smile.
She felt the wickedness of her heart down to her soul and wished there was something that she could do to make herself actually be nice. After all, Roland wasn’t the devil.
Just the closest thing she knew to it.
“Looks like it,” Roland said, shoving his hands in his pockets and smirking at her. “I guess I’ll just let you do what you do best, which is boss everyone around, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. Which will be the safest choice.”
“That’s not the way partnership works.”
His brows raised. “Oh?” he said, as though he didn’t know how partnerships were supposed to work.
“Yes. We’re supposed to give our opinions and then talk it out.”
“All right. What’s your opinion on what program we should do?”
“Well, of course we need to do Mary and Joseph. That’s the program that we always do.”
“Yeah, we’ve done that over and over again. Let’s do something different this year.”
“Of course not. Not only are we going to do what the church has traditionally always done, but we don’t have time to work up anything else.” She felt her voice hitting screech level, and she toned it down. Or at least tried to.
“See? Like I said, I’ll just do whatever you tell me to do.”
“Well, you have to be reasonable. Of course, you can give your opinion, but you just can’t change stuff that has never been changed.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
Nelly felt herself wanting to back out, but she knew that the church relied on this outreach to bring in people, who might normally not be in church, to hear the gospel story.
It brought kids in who might not go to church every Sunday but who came during the Christmas season.
It was an important outreach of the church, and she didn’t want to ruin it.
Plus, she was very aware of everyone watching them. Some of them were smiling, almost endearingly, like they remembered their high school rivalry and thought it was cute.
Nelly didn’t think it was cute. It was annoying, as annoying as the man in front of her was.
“I think it’s important that we honor our tradition, but if you have any suggestions, you certainly are welcome to tell them to me.”
“I already did. You shut me down. Let’s just figure out the practice schedule.”
She gritted her teeth. She wanted to argue with him—actually no, she wanted to grab him by the throat and smack his head against the wall, but his mother was standing right there, so she thought she probably ought to restrain herself.
Although, the poor woman must be a saint and surely knew what it was like to want to grab a hold of Roland.
Be nice. Just be nice.
She had to remind herself that she was a Christian, and she was supposed to love people. Especially those who were of the household of faith. That included, allegedly, Roland.
Interesting how he brought out her absolute worst side.
After all, she was exceptionally interested in getting children into the church, along with their families, so that they could hear the good news of the gospel. Unfortunately, if she continued to spar with Roland, she would not be a very good example of how the gospel could change a person’s life.
It really had changed hers, just…sometimes she allowed her flesh to take over. Like anytime Roland was around.
Hopefully, her love for the children and her genuine desire to see Jesus be glorified would overcome these fleshly instincts to be unkind and mean to someone who really, probably didn’t deserve it, if she was being honest.
“All right,” she said in a calm tone. “I think we should practice every day of the week and have an extra long practice on Saturdays. I’m sure if we put it to the church, someone will volunteer to make food for us, and we can break on Saturdays to eat and then go back to practicing.
If we have that much time, I’m sure we can pull it together beautifully. ”
“You want to practice every single day and hours and hours on Saturday? There’s no need for that. We’re just doing the Mary and Joseph thing. Everybody knows how it goes. There are no surprises, and it doesn’t take that much practice.”
She almost smiled, because it sounded like he was irritated.
Almost, because she was as irritated as he was and did not feel like smiling.
“We’ve got to get it right. This is an important part of the church ministry.
People get saved because of this. People have their lives changed because of this program.
We can’t be relaxed about it.” What did he not understand about that?
She realized she was getting heated again and could tell from her peripheral vision that people were looking at her.
“We’re not being relaxed about it,” he said, putting air quotes around the word.
“We’re just being reasonable. People have a lot of things to do this time of year.
They don’t have time to have intense practices over a church program that isn’t that hard to learn.
We don’t have to have people giving up their entire Saturdays, cooking for us, and sacrificing time when they should be spending it together as a family during the Christmas season. ”
He sounded just as annoyed as she did. But again, she knew they weren’t presenting a very good example for the people around them.
“All right. Fine. We can practice half as many times as what I originally proposed.”
“Three times a week and two hours on Saturday?” he said, his eyes narrowed.
“If you feel that’s sufficient. But I do want it to be known that if this is not a complete and total success, it is all your fault.”
That seemed a little unreasonable, but at the same time, she would practice for hours upon hours, just to get every little detail right. He on the other hand was much more likely to wing it, counting on his natural talent and intelligence to get things right.
It was frustrating to her that all through their school years, he’d stayed close in competition with her, without putting in nearly the effort that she had. Maybe that was part of why he was so annoying to her.
But that seemed petty and small, and she definitely didn’t want to think that about herself.
“They always did have this rivalry going on between them,” someone said. It was a lady’s voice, but Nelly didn’t turn to look. Her tiredness had been forgotten, and all she wanted to do was win the argument with Roland.
“I know. Nelly always insisted on winning, but…sometimes I think Roland just let her win.”
She almost turned and snapped at whoever had even insinuated that.
Even though she had just pretty much thought the exact same thing herself.
But she collected herself and tried to speak rationally to Roland. “We can start—we can announce this on Sunday, recruit the kids, and start practices Monday. We’ll have them Monday, Wednesday, Friday and for two hours on Saturday morning. Does that sound okay?”
He nodded. “That’s fine. I’ll help however I can.”
He didn’t look enthused about it at all—in fact, he looked like he couldn’t wait to get away from her, which made two of them.
Why in the world would he have volunteered to do anything? Didn’t he know that she always volunteered for this? She’d headed it up for the last eight years, ever since she’d gotten out of college. And before that, she’d directed it in high school too.
She even helped the person who had done it during her college years. It was ridiculous that he would even volunteer, unless he was secretly planning on sabotaging it?
She couldn’t rule that out, although she didn’t think Marjorie would be included in that kind of plan, and she didn’t think that Roland would do something so sinister and break his mother’s heart.
Still, without his mother there, she thought he was perfectly capable of it. Sadly.
She tried to push all of that out of her mind as she walked slowly home. More to get her mind off Roland than anything, she thought about the helper that she now had, or seemed to have anyway, for her Secret Saint activities.
Now, she would not mind trying to figure out who in the world it could be. Possibilities exploded through her mind, and she blissfully forgot, for just a few moments anyway, that she was going to have to work with Roland McBride for the next few weeks on the Christmas program. Ugh.
In fact, she thought, as she walked along, maybe she should initiate contact with the other Secret Saint.
He seemed pretty interested in a partnership, and they had shaken on it that they would not reveal their identities.
Plus, she had several things that she wanted to do, but she couldn’t quite do by herself.
Perhaps… Perhaps a little camaraderie was in order.
A pleasant camaraderie, unlike what she was going to have to deal with with the Christmas play.
The thought made her smile, and she began to plan out exactly how she could relay her message to someone she did not know the identity of. She thought she could figure it out.