The Room Mother, a Ruby Diamond Classic

 

Caroline Rumford was bored.  She was bored with her home. She was bored with her routine.  And she was bored with her clothes. The sight of her husband, the way he tapped his spoon on the side of his morning cup of coffee, made her agitated.

She would linger by the poolside at her country club pool, pondering those who came and went. Until that day when she spotted the friend of the Haverell's. Tall, lean, and well built, her eyes danced over his muscled body, at his thick dark hair and she wondered...

"Why Caroline, that's Trask Fontaine, the new first-grade teacher - he'll start in the fall now that Maxine Brown died in that horrible fall at the school bus dock," said Mimsy Goodhue. "He's terribly good looking, and getting his doctorate in elementary education from State."

"He must be good if he meets Superintendent Haverell's standards."

The two watched as Trask mounted the diving board, sprang forth, and went into the water with barely a splash.

"If he's new, maybe he needs help," thought Caroline.  And little Susie, her stepdaughter, would be in that class. I could become his room mother.  I could help him get a firm grip on his...

"Excuse me, ladies," said Trask as strode by, the fabric to his trunks clinging to his lower body.

Caroline was transfixed by what she saw, what she imagined, and how it made her feel.

"Mimsy, did you see the way he looked at me?  As if..."

1959: Father What A Waste

"The story of Father Chance McCoy was one that only Channing Carlton could bring to life."

"Father Chance, taking on his first assignment, a French Canadian mill town of Avecmoi was eager to help. Yet those confessing sin held back, and most of the congregation seemed to be probing his soul instead of finding comfort in his sermons.   At first, he feels the lack of acceptance is because of his youth, but the whispers of the grandmothers who called him "Father What A Waste" left him spiritually enervated.  Though he did his best to overcome these remarks, he knew that the wives of town came to him for a type of comfort he was unprepared to deliver. Their husbands looked at him with resentment and distrust.  Yet there were only two who understood those unspoken needs that left him aching for acceptance, the art teacher, and the lacrosse coach in the town's public school. Their time together, the turgid hours of understanding and fulfillment, lips in discourse about Descarte and scrums. Could the "pretty boy priest" save himself from the unspoken lust others had for him, or would he become a fallen angel himself?"