The Simpsons, seated side by side at his right hand, glance at each other uncomfortably, they being nonbelievers, and at the Bergmans, looking equally discomfited across the table from them. More for their sake than for her own, Debbie asks, as if teasingly, "Whatever happened to the separation of church and dinner party?" To which Charles Becker replies smoothly, "In a Christian household, do as the Christians do," and takes her left hand in his right and Lisa Bergman's right in his left. David shrugs his eyebrows at Pete and goes along with it, joining hands with his wife on one side and with Shirley Green on the other. Peter follows suit, taking Debbie's right hand in his left and Peggy Ashton's left in his right; but the foursome neither close eyes nor lower heads with the others while their host intones: "Be present at our table, Lord. / Be here and everywhere adored. / These mercies bless, and grant that we / May feast in Paradise with Thee. Amen."
"And," Paul Ashton adds at once to lighten the little tension at the table, "grant us stomach-room enough for this entrée after all those appetizers!"
"Amen and bon appétit," proposes Sandy Becker, raising her wineglass. "Everybody dig in, and then I'll do the crabcakes while Chuck serves up the veggies."
"Such appetizers they were!" Lisa Bergman marvels, and then asks Paul whether he happens, like her, to be a Gemini. He is, in fact, he replies: "Got a birthday coming up next week. Why?"
"Because," Lisa declares, "it's a well-known fact that we Geminis prefer hors d'oeuvres to entrées. No offense intended, Sandy and Chuck!"
Her husband winks broadly. "It's true even in bed, so I've heard — no offense intended, Paul and Lisa."
Sipping their drinks and exchanging further such teases and pleasantries, all hands duly address the caesar salad, the passed-around optional anchovy fillets, and the pre-sliced baguettes. Although tempted to pursue what she regards as presumption on their host's part that everyone in their community is a practicing Christian, or that because the majority happen to be, any others should join in uncomplainingly, Debbie Simpson holds her tongue — as she did not when, for example, the Neighborhood Association proposed Christmas lights last winter on the entrance signs to Rockfish Reach (she won that one, readily granting the right of all residents to decorate their houses, but not community property, with whatever religious symbols they cared to display), and when the Heron Bay Estates Community Association put up it's large Christmas tree at the development's main gatehouse (that one she lost, and at Pete's request didn't pursue it, they being new residents whom he would prefer not be branded as troublemakers). She gives his left hand a squeeze by way of assuring him that she's letting the table-grace issue drop.
"So tell us about that strange letter you got, Pete," Peggy Ashton proposes. "From Uganda, was it? That Deb mentioned during appetizers?"
"Uganda?" the hostess marvels, or anyhow asks.
"Very strange," Peter obligingly tells the table. "I suppose we've all gotten crank letters now and then — get-rich scams in Liberia and like that? — but this one was really different." To begin with, he explains, it wasn't a photocopied typescript like the usual mass-mailed scam letter, but a neatly handwritten appeal on two sides of a legal-size ruled sheet, with occasional cross-outs and misspellings. Polite, articulate, and addressed to "Dear Friend," it was or purported to be from a seventeen-year-old Ugandan girl, the eldest of five children, whose mother had died in childbirth and whose father had succumbed to AIDS. Since their parents' death, the siblings have been lodged with an uncle, also suffering from AIDS and with five children of his own. Those he dresses properly and sends to school, the letter writer declares, but she and her four brothers and sisters are treated harshly by him and his wife, who "don't recognize [them] as human beings." Dismissed from school for lack of fee money and provided with "only two clothes each" to wear and little or nothing to eat, they are made to graze the family's goats, feed the pigs, and do all the hard and dirty housework from morning till night. In a few months, when she turns eighteen, she'll be obliged to become one of some man's several wives, a fate she fears both because of the AIDS epidemic and because it will leave her siblings unprotected. Having (unlike them) completed her secondary education before their father's death, she appeals to her "dear Friend" to help her raise 1,500 euros to "join university for a degree in education" and 1,200 euros for her siblings to finish high school. Attached to the letter was a printed deposit slip from Barclays Bank of Uganda, complete with the letter writer's name and account number, followed by the stipulation "F/O CHILDREN."
"How she got my name and address, I can't imagine," Pete concludes to the hushed and attentive table. "If it was in some big general directory or academic Who's Who, how'd she get hold of it, and how many hundreds of these things did she write out by hand and mail?"
"And where'd she get paper and envelopes and deposit slips and postage stamps," Lisa Bergman wonders, "if they're so dirt poor?"
"And the time to scribble scribble scribble," Paul Ashton adds, "while they're managing the goats and pigs and doing all the scut-work?"
Opines Rob the Accountant, "It doesn't add up."
"It does seem questionable," Sandy Becker agrees.
"But if you could see the letter!" Debbie protests. "So earnest and articulate, but so unslick! Lines like 'We do not hope that our uncle will recover.' And 'I can't leave my siblings alone. We remained five and we should stick five.'"
Taking her hand in his again and using his free hand to make finger quotes, Pete adds, "And, quote, 'Life unbearable, we only pray hard to kind people to help us go back to school, because the most learnt here is more chance of getting good job,' end of quote."
"It's heartbreaking," Shirley Green acknowledges. "No wonder you-all have so much of it memorized!"
"But the bottom line is," Chuck Becker declares, "did you fall for it? Because, believe me, it's a goddamn scam."
"You really think so?" Dave Bergman asks.
"Of course it is! Some sharpster with seven wives and Internet access for tracking down addresses sets his harem to scribbling out ten copies per wife per day, carefully misspelling a few words and scratching out a few more, just to see who'll take the bait. Probably some midlevel manager at Barclays with a PC in his office and a fake account in one of his twelve daughters' names."
"How can you be so sure?" Lisa Bergman wants to know.
With the air of one accustomed to having his word taken, "Take my word for it, sweetie," their host replies. Down-table to his wife then, "Better get the crabcakes started, Sandy?" And to the Simpsons, "Please tell me you didn't send 'em a nickel."
"We didn't," Debbie assures him. "Not yet, anyhow. Because of course we're leery of the whole thing too. But just suppose, Chuck and everybody — just suppose it happens to be authentic? Imagine the courage and resourcefulness of a seventeen-year-old girl in that wretched situation, with all that traumatic stuff behind her and more of it waiting down the road, but she manages somehow to get hold of a bunch of American addresses and a pen and paper and stamps and deposit slips, and she scratches out this last-chance plea for a life… Suppose it's for real?"
"And we-all sit here in our gated community," Lisa Bergman joins in, "with our Lexuses and golf carts and our parties and progressive dinners, and we turn up our noses and say, 'It's a scam; don't be suckered.'"