of us looked forward to Thursday Night School. When he wasn’t on his hobbyhorse, Reverend Jacobs could give lively, sometimes funny talks with lessons drawn from Scripture. He talked about real-life problems we all faced, from bullying to the temptation to cheat answers from someone else’s paper during tests we hadn’t studied for. We enjoyed the games, we enjoyed most of the lessons, and we enjoyed the singing, too, because Mrs. Jacobs was a fine pianist who never dragged the hymns.
She knew more than hymns, too. On one never-to-be-forgotten night she played a trio of Beatles songs, and we sang along with “From Me to You,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” My mother claimed that Patsy Jacobs was seventy times better on the piano than Mr. Latoure, and when the minister’s young wife asked to spend some of the church collection money on a piano tuner from Portland, the deacons approved the request unanimously.
“But perhaps no more Beatles songs,” Mr. Kelton said. He was the deacon who had served Harlow Methodist the longest. “The children can get that stuff on the radio. We’d prefer you to stick to more . . . uh . . . Christian melodies.”
Mrs. Jacobs murmured her agreement, eyes demurely cast down.
• • •
There was something else, as well: Charles and Patsy Jacobs had sex appeal. I have mentioned that Claire and her friends were gaga for him; it wasn’t long before most of the boys had crushes on her, as well, because Patsy Jacobs was beautiful. Her hair was blond, her complexion creamy, her lips full. Her slightly uptilted eyes were green, and Connie claimed she had witchly powers, because every time she happened to shift those green eyes his way, his knees turned to water. With those kind of looks, there would have been talk if she had worn more makeup than a decorous blush of lipstick, but at twenty-three, that was all she needed. Youth was her makeup.
She wore perfectly proper knee- or shin-length dresses on Sundays, even though those were the years when ladies’ hemlines started their climb. On MYF Thursday nights, she wore perfectly proper slacks and blouses (Ship ’n Shore, according to my mother). But the moms and grandmoms in the congregation watched her closely just the same, because the figure those perfectly proper clothes set off was the kind that made my brothers’ friends sometimes roll their eyes or shake a hand the way you do after touching a stove burner someone forgot to turn off. She played softball on Girls’ Nights, and I once overheard my brother Andy—who would have been going on fourteen at the time, I think—say that watching her run the bases was a religious experience in itself.
She was able to play the piano on Thursday nights and participate in most of the other MYF activities because she could bring their little boy along. He was a biddable, easy child. Everyone liked Morrie. To the best of my recollection even Billy Paquette, that young atheist in the making, liked Morrie, who hardly ever cried. Even when he fell down and skinned his knees, the worst he was liable to do was sniffle, and even that would stop if one of the bigger girls picked him up and cuddled him. When we went outside to play games, he followed the boys everywhere he could, and when he was unable to keep up with them, he followed the girls, who also minded him during Bible Study or swung him around to the beat during Sing Time—hence the nickname Tag-Along-Morrie.
Claire was particularly fond of him, and I have a clear memory—which I know must be made up of many overlaid memories—of them in the corner where the toys were, Morrie in his little chair, Claire on her knees beside him, helping him to color or to construct a domino snake. “I want four just like him when I get married,” Claire told my mother once. She would have been going on seventeen by then, I suppose, and ready to graduate from MYF.
“Good luck on that,” my mother replied. “In any case, I hope yours will be better looking than Morrie, Claire-Bear.”
That was a tad unkind, but not untrue. Although Charles Jacobs was a good-looking man and Patsy Jacobs was a downright beautiful young woman, Tag-Along-Morrie was as plain as mashed potatoes. He had a perfectly round face that reminded me of Charlie Brown’s. His hair was a nondescript shade of brunet. Although his