by Joanna Rose
Michael said, “Thank you all for the kind words.”
Then he said, “In the name of the father . . .” It felt good to pray loud. Deep quiet voices joined in around him. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Then his favorite part in the middle of the prayer, where the cadence changed: Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, and he felt his shoulders drop, he felt his spine straighten, he felt his feet on the carpet.
When he was finished, they all stood, and Father came up to him. Touched him on his elbow.
He said, “Thank you, Michael.”
He heard himself say, “Thank you.”
He said it to Father, and then he looked out to the group of men standing before him in the small chapel.
“Thank you so much, from all my family.”
Father said, “And for the health and recovery of our brother Michael Bryn, oh Lord, we pray.”
And all the voices: “Lord, hear our prayer.”
Then Father said to him, “Okay, go get some rest. I’ll see you back at the hospital.”
He wanted to be part of the deep, praying voices. But he went back down the aisle, through the blur of faces, and out the door, closing it gently behind him. He stood there for a second. The voices from within responded again, “Lord, hear our prayer.”
He started down a side aisle of the empty, darkened church. Votive candles were glittering in the red glass cups at the shrine of Saint Joseph, and he stopped there, staring at the little flames. He felt like he could hypnotize himself, but the only words in his head were Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. He looked around, at the shadows in the back under the choir loft, at the dimmed lamps hanging over the center aisle. The prayer hummed in his head. Not words, just cadence. He pressed his palms into the small of his back and bent back, just a bit. His back cracked. It sounded loud. He was exhausted. He didn’t know how he was going to drive home.
Home.
He went outside and called Pattianne. She answered on the first ring.
He said, “Can you come to Edison and get me?”
“I’m out the door right now.”
Rye toast with peanut butter. She cut it into triangles, even using the cutting board, except he didn’t see her, him staring out the window, his coffee in his hand, not drinking it. Snow fell. No wind. The radiator clanked, warm. The morning felt big and dark, and not just because it was gray and snowing. She ached for him. And he loved rye toast with peanut butter. She took it to him.
“My dad asked me if we were thinking of getting married.”
It occurred to her to drop the plate. Maybe it would smash, and be funny.
But this wasn’t funny. She felt her life rushing at her.
Besides, she liked that plate. It was purple.
She said, “Are we?”
He set his cup down and pulled her to him, her face to his chest where the fuzz of his sweater tickled her nose and smelled like soap. She didn’t know what to do with the plate of peanut butter toast.
He said, “Yeah, I guess we are.”
He kissed the top of her head.
He said, “Is that for me?”
She called Jen first.
Jen said, “You’re getting married because his dad’s in the hospital?”
She said, “No. We’re waiting until he gets out.”
“Well, why?”
“So he can come to the wedding.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
“It’ll just be a small wedding. Like in the priest’s office, or whatever they call it. Behind the altar.”
“Rectory. And that’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s right up there, you have to admit.”
Father McGivens wanted to meet with just her. “Just a little chat, get to know each other” was how Michael put it.
“Is he going to try to get me to rejoin the church?”
“It’s okay,” Michael had said. “You’re a baptized Catholic.”
It was just the two of them, Father McGivens and Pattianne. He sat behind his desk, a blotter, a brass paperweight, a cut-glass dish of silver-wrapped candies. She sat in the small chair with a pink velvet seat again and wished she hadn’t. She didn’t feel like she was going to be able to bluff her way through this, and she felt like she had to. He offered her the dish of candies. She took one. Silver foil with familiar blue stars.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to rejoin the church.”
He eased back in his desk chair. “Well, that’s a place to start,” he said, a smile playing across his face, and she remembered liking him on that first visit. “What made you decide that?”
“Um.” When they were kids, they weren’t even allowed to say um, her father making them say “Um, sir” to get them to not say it. “Because I don’t believe.” Sir.
He said, “You don’t believe in what?”
She couldn’t really sit all the way on the chair. She wanted to say I don’t believe in you, but there seemed like more important things not to believe in. “In all the stories, I guess. The miracles.”
“The Resurrection?”
“Yes,” she said. “I mean no.” It was white and sunny outside the window behind him.
He said, “The Transubstantiation?”
But thinking of red wine made her think not of the blood of Christ, but Michael’s lips stained dark. “That too,” she said. The sound he made when she sucked his bottom lip. “I mean, that either.” Although she used to love that part of the Mass, when the music and chanting fell silent and the small bells rang. She wanted to say that, wanted to explain that she liked going to Mass, but that it was embarrassing, that she didn’t want to act like a believer when she wasn’t, that there didn’t seem to be any place in the church for an outsider to stand. One side of her butt was getting numb on the little chair seat, and she crossed her arms over her chest and sat on the other side of her butt. The chocolate was getting soft in her hand.
He said, “And what do you think of Michael’s belief?”
Michael disentangling. Michael kissing her the way he did, where he did. She could feel her cheeks flush.
“I think I can live with it.”
Wrong answer. He sat up straight, and then he rose, took up all the bright window for a moment, and then he came around the front of his desk. She slipped the chocolate into her pocket.
She said, “That’s not quite what I meant.”
He walked around her chair, behind her for an instant, the starchy sound of his cassock, and then he sat in the chair next to her. Square shoulders, square jaw. Dark hair, with a hunk that fell over his square forehead.
He said, “Michael believes in all those stories.”
“I know.” But she didn’t know, didn’t know how anybody could really believe, Jesus as magician, playing to the crowd at the wedding feast, feeding thousands with a loaf of bread and a fish. Okay, several loaves and maybe a couple fishes. God in heaven deciding thumbs-up or thumbs-down according to whether or not she went to Mass on Holy Days of Obligation. And Mary. She didn’t even want to start on Mary.
“The church is of course much more open to mixed marriage than it once was,” he said. “And I’m sure you would do what you can to support Michael in his belief.” He was taking a different tack now, his voice shifted to a lighter tone, reasonable. “But what you need to ask yourself is why you have decided to marry into the church. Not why you want to marry Michael, but why you want to marry into the Catholic church. To raise your children in the Church.”
He shifted his chair and looked at her the way Starla used to. She’d sit right in front of you if you were eating toast and make you look at her. He had pale blue eyes, nice eye wrinkles.
“Besides all the stories,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Which really are the best stories, yo
u must admit.”
There had been Mr. Bryn’s warm arm around her shoulders that first day in this place, the promise of a purple scarf. Now she stared out the window, sunlight on snow, the black twisted limbs of a bare elm tree.
“The church is her people,” he said. Still the smile in the voice. “The Body of Christ means all of us. I suppose I want to ask you what it means for you to join us, in marriage?”
She hated it when people said ‘her’ when they meant a country, or a boat. Or a church.
“I don’t,” she said. “Want to join. The church.”
He said, “It’s much harder to believe than to not believe.”
As if it were simply a decision to believe. There was the galaxy in its spiral, and other galaxies, in other spirals, and a universe, and beyond that another. Beyond that there was another, and maybe a certain number more, but there was an end to universes, and beyond that was something. Maybe a god.
“And children?”
She closed her eyes, and the bare elm branches were there in bright red behind her eyelids.
“Of course we’ve talked about children.”
Stephen and Luke and all those cousins, Claire studying child psych, Michael teaching special ed or at-risk kids.
Father McGivens leaned forward in his chair. The elm branches faded across his face, the wrinkles around his eyes that looked tired, the wrinkles across his wide forehead that looked hopeful.
“You are a very honest young woman,” he said. “Perhaps not with me, but I think you are honest with yourself. We’ll talk again, all three of us.”
His breath smelled like chocolates.
She called Jen when she got home.
“I met with the priest.”
“You guys met with a priest?”
“Just me. Their family priest.”
“Family priest? You mean, like, related?”
“It was a chat. Parish priest, I guess. He looks like the guy in that comic strip, what’s it called? The one with that country guy, Little Abner?”
“It’s called Li’l Abner.”
“Well, it was okay. He had a dish of Schildermans chocolates on his desk.”
“Kosher chocolates?”
“He gave me one but I couldn’t eat it.”
“I’ve never seen you resist a Schildermans chocolate.”
“He kept talking. Like, about my belief. I told him I wasn’t a believer.”
“What kind was it?”
“It melted in my pocket.” She hadn’t remembered it until she was home. “He thinks I am a very honest young lady.”
Jen snorted.
At the beginning of the small ceremony in the side chapel at Christ the King, as she and Michael stood side by side before the small altar, Michael’s father stood and took both their hands. He wore a gray suit with a silvery stripe that seemed to shimmer. His fingers were cold.
He said, “There are so many days in the life of your child that are the most important day.”
His skin was waxy and shiny. There were gray bruises under his eyes.
He said, “You and Michael are making us all very happy today.”
His voice whispered. She leaned close.
He said, “Our love for our children is the closest we can ever come to understanding God’s love for us.”
There were tears in Michael’s eyes, looking at his father, and she knew she had never looked into her own father’s eyes like that. She waited crazy-long seconds for them to look at her, and they didn’t, Mr. Bryn kissing finally both their cheeks lightly, letting go of their hands, sitting back down. Michael still didn’t look at her, watching Father McGivens now, his eyes still bright and wet.
He’d gotten teary at the end of Shane, too, both times they watched it, right in a row. When he’d thanked Melissa after learning it was Melissa’s idea for her to ask him out that first time. When an anonymous donor had pledged fifty thousand dollars during the Jerry Lewis Telethon.
They’d needed the bishop’s permission, a signature on what Father McGivens had called a canonical form, along with Michael’s promise that he wouldn’t fall from his faith, her promise to support him in his faith, their promise to raise their children in the church.
Their children.
Her parents were a blur at the edge of her vision. Actually, everything was. Except Jen, who wasn’t smirking or even smiling. Her eyes were big and round. And when she hugged Pattianne, at the end, she whispered, “I didn’t think you’d really do it.”
At the brunch, Mrs. Bryn stayed near her, laughing. Mrs. Bryn, who said to call her Dory, and who had sipped just enough champagne to laugh kind of loud, and Pattianne had sipped just enough to feel happy and stupid. The lovely brunch with quiche, and croissants, a pot of brilliant raspberry jam, silver winter sunlight coming through the sheer drapery of the dining room onto them all, Pattianne’s parents and Jen and Nana Farley. Father McGivens, and Michael’s aunt Alice, and Claire. There was a small cluster of guys, Michael’s friends, hanging out in the kitchen. Mr. Bryn sat on the couch, very still. He had changed from his shoes into brown leather slippers.
Now Mrs. Bryn—Dory—put one hand on each of Pattianne’s shoulders and turned her around so she faced the arched opening that led upstairs.
She said, “Through the doorway on the left,” leading her up the stairs. “And straight on till morning.”
Their bedroom was as big as Pattianne’s whole apartment, their bed alone the size of her kitchen. Mrs. Bryn sat down on a folded quilt draped across the foot of the bed, stripes of blue and lavender satin, and patted the spot next to her. Peacock feathers in a tall vase between the windows. A vase so big it was probably called something else. Up close Mrs. Bryn smelled like lily of the valley, her pale blue velvet dress matching the satin quilt, and she took Pattianne’s hand in her hand and turned it palm up, open, flat. She set the ring there. Lily of the valley. Blue velvet. Platinum and sapphires.
“It was Michael’s grandmother’s,” she said. “His father’s mother.” She wore clear nail polish. “I wore it for years.” She touched the ring. “She gave it to me herself.” The setting was filigree around the round sapphires. “Put it on.” She crossed her legs, a sound that on some women said pantyhose and on some women said silk stockings.
“She gave it to me when we were married,” she said. “And she told me, this is for the bride of your firstborn son.” Champagne on her breath.
Pattianne’s fingernails were clipped as short as they could be, a hangnail on the middle finger, mustard on one knuckle, her thin gold wedding band. She slipped the ring onto her left hand, where it was too big, and she held her hand out, the sapphires flashing like they were sending secret messages, out across the galaxies in their spirals.
Mrs. Bryn said, “This is for the bride of your firstborn son.”
And maybe Pattianne could be someone’s mother, with a son or a daughter who would maybe grow old enough to marry and receive such a ring. They went back downstairs, and there was Michael, standing by the window, watching her, nodding at her. She kept her hand tucked in the folds of her pale green, almost-white dress. Her ears were ringing, and there were sharp flashes of sunlight on the shining wood of the dining room table, the beveled glass of the hanging lamp, the small silver spoon in the pot of raspberry jam. Her head pounded gently.
II. ST. CLOUD
4: MY ANGEL
His dad had said, “Young couples need to get away on their own for a start.” His face was still puffy. He was sometimes out of breath. It was the end of summer and he hadn’t gone back to work.
“He’s kept up his volunteer work though,” Michael’s mom told him. “And he gets out. He’s improving.”
Father McGivens said, “Go. I’ll stay in close touch.”
It felt just plain wrong.
Claire had said, “It’s only a three-hour flight if you need to get back quick.” That was almost enough to make him turn down the St. Cloud School for Boys. He could keep his part-time job in P
atterson and just keep picking up substitute-teaching shifts.
But Pattianne had been all for it. “Minnesota? That’s amazing—that’s like another country. They even talk different there. And we can have a house. Even a yard.”
Secondhand shops were a good chance for a break, to stretch his legs, change drivers. All the way across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and up into Minnesota.
Pattianne would say, “I’m going to hunt us up some coffee. Meet you back at the car.”
“Roger that,” he’d say.
They were the away team. She’d bring back weak coffee in paper cups.
“Look,” he might say. A piece of cranberry-colored depression glass. A Stangl pottery plate with a quail on it. A plate with a blurry blue design. There was something about mismatched dishes.
He’d set his coffee in the cupholder between the seats and set his cell phone right next to it. Then they’d hit the road again.
He liked secondhand shops. There had been a lot of them around her neighborhood in Montclair. The first time he ever went into one was on a rainy morning, right after they were married.
He’d hated leaving her in the mornings, in her little apartment over the dry cleaner’s. It was almost as if it all hadn’t really happened, the wedding. They’d talked about getting another apartment, but there had been his dad in the hospital, and then at home getting better. Spring had turned into summer. The St. Cloud job was still only a possibility then.
He went into the secondhand shop because of a red-and-orange-plaid golf bag. He saw it through the window. His friend Rory was the world’s worst golfer, and his birthday was coming up. The place didn’t have an Open sign, but he could see a guy sitting in there. The door wasn’t locked.
It smelled like a basement. There was a rack of dresses and suit jackets, and a milk crate full of albums, and a set of TV trays with kittens on them, and a shelf of mugs. The tiny turquoise vase sat on top of a stack of Encyclopaedia Britannica, between the golf bag and a wedding dress. He didn’t know why he’d picked it up.
