they woke until darkness fell, the sunlight of four thirty in the
afternoon, all of it familiar but seen, for the first time, as it might look
when it was empty, with none of them there. This both puzzled them
(because all three of them were indeed there, and Pauline was there,
and by nine o’clock each night when visiting hours at the hospital
were over, their father was there) and filled them with despair, which
was what made them tell their mother, once she had returned, the
baby in her arms, that they hated Pauline. That they hoped they would
never again be left in her care.
It wasn’t true, they hadn’t hated her at all (Jacob had struggled
with the choice between “From” and “Love” on the card he drew for
her; Michael had laughed heartily himself when Pauline said that Mr.
MacLeod next door, who looked like he dyed his hair with Orange
Crush, should lay off that piano and find someplace else to tinkle;
Annie now had three different vials of perfume samples tucked in her
sock drawer, courtesy of Pauline), but it was an explanation that
lingered, a conviction they would share for the rest of their lives.
“You choose likable people to be your friends,” their mother said.
She sat back from the table, the baby in her arms, and moved the
prongs of her fork, the good silver, through the white icing. “And you
have to love your family whether they’re likable or not.” She brought
the icing to her lips. “But the people you have to feel sorry for are the
ones without family. Unlikable people without family or friends.
Who’s going to care about them?”
Gripped by their new conviction, the three children shook their
heads. “Just don’t ever leave us with her again,” they said,
emphatically, crying it out, not because it was what they truly felt but
because it was the only, boisterous way they could demonstrate (other
than this birthday party in the dining room, on a Sunday afternoon,
with the good silver and the good china and the embroidered
tablecloth) their joy at her return.
Their mother, the baby in her arms, held up the small silver
fork—it was her wedding silver. In the midst of joy there was, there
would always be, the injunction to remember the sorrowful. “You
must be kind,” their mother said. “I know it’s not easy. Pauline’s not
easy. But what would happen to her if there was no one willing to be
kind?”
Later, recalling the homecoming, Annie would tell Michael that
like the infant in a fairy tale, Clare’s fate, her future, at that moment,
must have been sealed. Long after all of them had scattered, Jacob,
Michael, Annie, their mother and father, scattered—as their parents
would have said—to the four winds, Clare would have Pauline, still a
royal pain in the ass, in her care.
III
M AN is IMMORTAL , John Keane thought, or he is not. And if he is,
there’s the whole question of whom you pray to. If he’s not,
then prayer is wishful thinking.
You either pray to the dead or you don’t.
But the real question before them this winter evening, the six
men on the building committee, the pastor, the two priests, the
architect, the accountant, and the dead, beloved pope who still smiled
at them in oil from the end of the rectory dining room, was far
simpler: Could they break ground in the spring?
Like something out of a parable (The Good Servant? The Twelve
Talents?) each of the six men had brought to the table this evening the
stack of pledges they had garnered over the past six weeks from the
people of the parish who had not responded voluntarily to the pastor’s
initial appeal for funds. Two weeks into the New Year, when, they
figured, the financial burden of Christmas might have just begun to
ease, the six men had divided the more or less eight square miles of
St. Gabriel’s parish into six sectors. After some rigorous debate, it had
been decided that the men would not solicit from their own
Similar Books
