The Halo Effect: A Novel

by Anne D. LeClaire

  “Outside of the structure of religion, the dogma you reject, do you find it so hard to believe there is a God?” Father Gervase asked.

  I readied a flip reply, but the priest’s sincerity elicited a more thoughtful answer. “I believe there is a mystery beyond our understanding. Why can’t we leave it at that?”

  “So you are a doubter. That’s good news.”

  “Good noose?” I said. Was I to be hung for my lack of faith?

  “Good news,” Father Gervase repeated. “There is no true belief that isn’t tested by doubt.”

  “I am not a true believer, Father.”

  “Even nonbelief is a kind of belief. And I do believe you are a believer, Will. For instance, you believe in art.”

  “Whatever.” I was determined not to be drawn into a discussion.

  The priest closed his eyes for a moment. His hands were folded in his lap. “Perhaps,” he said softly. “Perhaps in the end it is not our beliefs that matter as much as it is our behavior.”

  I wondered how the archbishop would respond to this bit of theology. “Whatever, Father. I guess what I am saying is I have no use for religion.”

  “And yet here you are,” the priest said. “Painting saints.”

  I laughed, a short laugh. “Yes. Here I am. Painting saints.”

  By late afternoon, the oppressive heat of the day abated a bit, and I left the studio and headed home, detouring first along the sea walk, observing a handful of swimmers and sunbathers enjoying the final moments of the day. A line of children queued up by the ice-cream truck, a vintage vehicle restored and operated by two college students. I replayed my conversation with the priest. I am not by nature an impulsive man, but in accepting the commission, I had acted on an impulse I couldn’t explain. I knew that on some level—the archbishop wasn’t the only one harboring hidden agendas—I hoped that it would bring Sophie back from Maine, would serve as a way of reconnecting us and bringing us together. Well, if that had been my expectation, it wasn’t working. While she seemed pleased with my decision and had called several times expressing interest about which saints I was painting and asking how the work was progressing, Sophie remained in Maine. With Joan Laurant.

  I left the beachfront. As I passed the playground, I heard a group of youngsters playing a game of tag, their laughter braiding the air. Off to one side, I caught sight of a lone teenager and recognized him as one I had seen there in the past. The boy was sitting on a bench and looking very much alone. I studied him from a distance, took in the narrow shoulders, now hunched, the bowed head, and saw a vulnerability so naked I nearly flinched from it. An image from the book Father Gervase had left at our home so many weeks before came to mind. Saint Sebastian. Pierced with arrows.

  Sebastian was not on the list I had drafted and submitted to the archbishop, but that easily could be altered. I approached the boy. “Hello there,” I called out as I grew closer.

  The boy looked up, his expression wary.

  “I don’t want to bother you, but I wonder if I could ask you something.”

  The boy drew inward, and as he looked at me, his face was stricken and his eyes widened in fear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Heat-stricken by the weather—Father Gervase remembered a time when such high temperatures would not have bothered him—he walked slowly back to the rectory.

  Although he knew boyhood memory was not to be relied on, summers seemed much hotter now than in the long-ago past. Or was it a factor of aging? Daily, he was aware of his aging. Why, just that morning he’d asked the man who mowed the lawns in front of the rectory if he would add more mulch to the perennial beds to conserve what little moisture the soil held, a job he once would have done himself. Easily. The yardman had then reminded him that he had already asked him to do the mulching. So memory waned along with energy.

  His hip was bothering him more today, and he limped along, shoulders slumped not only from the heat and aging, but from his visit to Will Light’s new studio. Again, as he so often did after encounters with the artist, Father Gervase allowed his thoughts to land on his own inadequacies. Even now, after having agreed to take on the commission, the artist was clearly still mired in grief, and all he had to offer were empty words about the comfort of faith, something Light wanted no part of. Of larger concern to Father Gervase was the matter of Will’s anger. Although it seemed to have abated, the priest knew it was there, beneath the surface perhaps but alive nonetheless. And so he continued to reach out to the artist, knowing it was the smallest things that could help. A hand on his shoulder. A cup of coffee. A bit of casual conversation. He still had misgivings about his own ability to help the artist and found himself making excuses that would relieve him of the mission. More than once he had spoken to his Lord about this. I think you’ve called the wrong number. Then he would remember that doubt made one cautious, made one stumble, and so he would return to the artist’s studio, a willing if inadequate instrument of God’s plan.

  He rounded the corner and began to climb the hill toward the rectory. It was his turn on the rotation for the weekly pastoral visit to Rose Hall Manor, and he wondered if this once he might ask Father Burns to step in for him. What he needed was a cool shower followed by a tall gin and tonic and then to sit down and watch the Sox finish the last game in the series with Cleveland. The thought of this quickened his pace slightly, but then, before he could alter direction and avoid her, he saw the figure waiting on the rectory porch. The sight of her took the last of the stuffing out of him and with it all hopes of the shower and a drink and finding Father Burns. No help for it now. The priest braced himself as Lena MacDougall shot up from the porch rocker to greet him, her face full of righteous purpose. “Good afternoon, Lena,” he said, noting her dress looked freshly ironed, her hair without a strand out of place. “Have you been able to keep cool amid the sweltering heat?”

  She didn’t waste a minute on small talk. “Have you heard the latest, Father?”

  There was little doubt he was about to. He forced a welcoming smile, allowing himself the small sin of hypocrisy.

  Without giving him a moment to reply, she began. “That man who is painting the saints,” she said. Lena seldom honored people with their names. That man. Her. That boy. Him. As if Father Gervase should intuit who was the latest to head her complaint list.

  “Are you speaking of Will Light?”

  The color rose in her face. “It’s a scandal,” she said. “An absolute scandal.”

  “What’s that?” Lord grant him patience.

  “An absolute scandal. Someone has to do something about it.”

  Father Gervase was quite sure that by someone she meant him. The prospect of the shower and drink disappeared completely. He’d be lucky if he had enough time to change his shirt before he was due at the nursing home.

  “It was bad enough when that Ramos girl was asked to pose. Well, you know how I feel about that. Not that my objections did the least bit of good.”

  Not something he could easily forget. Half the parish had heard her belief that it was completely inappropriate for an unwed mother to pose as a saint. An unwed mother and a teenager whose boyfriend declined to marry her, a position backed up by the boy’s parents. He wondered what her latest objection would be. He resigned himself to hearing her out.

  “Now he’s chosen that woman.”

  “Which woman is that?”

  “You don’t know?” Her eyes glittered with a gossip’s satisfaction that she would be the one to deliver the news. “I heard it from Lucia Crowley, who heard about it over at Amelia’s Shear Pleasure. She said the woman herself was telling everyone, pleased as punch she was.”

  “What woman?” he asked again.

  “Miriam Endelheim.” The name was a sourness on her tongue.

  “Ah.”

  “A Jew,” she said. “That man has chosen a Jew to be one of the saints.”

  “I see,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could manage.

  �
��It won’t do. You have to do something about it. This time he’s gone too far.”

  “I wonder,” he began. “I wonder which saint Miriam is to represent.”

  “Well,” Lena sputtered. “I can’t see how that matters in the least.”

  “I would think perhaps Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.”

  “I never heard of her,” Lena pronounced in a tone that suggested this failing lay wholly with the saint.

  “A remarkable woman. She was born Edith Stein. She died at Auschwitz.”

  Lena was unmoved. “Never heard of her,” she repeated.

  “Or,” Father Gervase continued, knowing it was weak of him to provoke her, but it was so easy to get her goat he found the temptation irresistible, “maybe Miriam is to be painted as Saint Martha. Or Elizabeth. Or perhaps even Mary.”

  She stiffened. “It’s just not right. Not right at all.”

  He heard her out, and when he finally explained he was late for his duties at Rose Hall Manor, she left, begrudgingly and unappeased. He stopped by the kitchen long enough to swallow a slapped-together jelly sandwich, washed down with water, and thought about his exchange with Lena, a conversation salted with prejudice and impatience. He took solace in knowing that in the eyes of God everything could be forgiven.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Rain woke in the dark, disoriented and still dressed in her T-shirt and tan capri pants.

  Gradually she rose to full consciousness and was swept up in memories of the evening and the scene at dinner. The meal began as usual: her brother staring at his plate in silence, her father shoveling food into his mouth as if this were his last meal on earth or as if eating was a job to be finished as quickly as possible, Rain moving the congealing concoction of cheese noodles and ham around in different arrangements on her plate, waiting for the meal to end, and her mother, as usual, chirping on as if they were a normal family.

  “How is the job going?” she had asked Duane. “Was it busy today?” Duane continued to stare at his plate and mumbled something that no one could comprehend. “Duane,” her mother had said in her sharp voice, which should have been a warning, but if her brother had seen the storm signal, he’d ignored it. “I asked you a question, and I expect an intelligent answer.”

  Her father ceased his obsessive shoveling to look up. “Let the boy alone, Beth. I’m sure he’s tired and just wants to eat in peace.” Duane had spent the day scooping ice cream at the Eastern Point Creamery, a job their father had arranged for him but one Rain knew he hated.

  With no warning, their mother stood up so fast her chair reeled back. “Why do I bother?” she’d cried. She threw her napkin on the table. “Why do I fucking bother?” The shock of hearing her swear (something she considered akin to one of the sins and for which, when they were younger, she had more than once washed their mouths out with a bar of Dove) was followed by a second jolt as she burst into tears and left the room. For a moment the three of them sat in stupefied silence; then, predictably, their father got up to follow her, to try to make the peace, and good luck with that.

  Rain exchanged glances with her brother. “Another pleasant dinner with the Freak Family,” he said, and then he got up and escaped down to the basement.

  For a moment, Rain almost followed him so she wouldn’t be alone in the room still echoing with her mother’s outburst. Instead she cleared the table and put the plates and glasses and silverware in the dishwasher while the scene replayed in her mind. She wished she could turn back time, back to when they were younger and, at least in recollection, there had been less tension, when her mother seemed happier or at least more patient, and her father more available or at least less absent and preoccupied, less passive. A time when her brother actually liked her and would carefully explain the rules of a card game or let her ride behind him, astride the rear fender of his bike, when he could make her feel special just by smiling at her or laughing at one of the silly jokes she read from A Child’s Book of Jokes, Puns, and Riddles. What happened? When had it changed? When had they all turned into members of the Freak Family?

  When she had finished the dishes, she’d wandered into the living room and turned on the television, but after a bit of channel surfing, she switched it off. Silence echoed throughout the house. Finally she’d climbed the stairs to her room, her stomach tight with anxiety. She sat on the bed and stared at the bottom drawer of her bureau. She was nearly faint with the need to feel the razor blade against her skin and considered the risks, the door with no lock, her mother’s strange and volatile mood. No. She would have to delay until it was safe. She rocked on the bed, waiting, and in the stillness, broken only by her own heartbeat, she heard the shrink’s voice. Take care of yourself, Rain. And if you can’t take care of yourself, call me. Well, good luck with that. Like a midget shrink with a stupid, smelly dog could change the world. Could make things right. Could bring Lucy back. Could make the police find the murderer and put him in jail. She sat stiffly, willing time to pass, willing the tears that welled to evaporate. But after a while, as if someone else had slipped into her body, she got up and rummaged through her desk until she found the shrink’s card in the back of a drawer. It was stuck in that stupid little book she had never bothered to read or return. She sat on her bed with the book and the crumpled card and stared at the telephone number. Call me. It was all hopeless. Utterly hopeless. She fell back on the bed and gazed blindly at the ceiling, and after a while, exhausted as a two-year-old, she escaped into sleep.

  Now, awake in the dark, she was aware of a deep ache in her stomach. Hunger pangs, she supposed—she had eaten almost nothing at the disastrous dinner—or perhaps something more serious. Serve everyone right if she had an ulcer or a tumor or something. She thought again of the razor taped to the underside of her bureau drawer. She swung her feet to the floor, flicked on the bedside lamp, and checked the time. Two a.m. Surely her parents were now asleep. In the pool of light cast by the bulb, she saw the shrink’s card on the pillow and next to that the book. A miniature book, hardly bigger than an oversized deck of cards, just like Dr. Mallory was a miniature woman, with a little dog, living a safe and boring little life, nosing into other people’s business. Rain didn’t trust her one bit. And seriously, who had even heard of a book that small, anyway? It couldn’t be much of a story. Hardly worth the trouble. She picked it up and flipped it over. From the back cover, a black-and-white photo of the author stared up at her, a woman sitting in an armchair, holding a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other with a serious, almost stern look on her face. Above the strong jaw, her lips were dark with lipstick, but it was her gaze which transfixed Rain. The author stared directly out at her with an intensity that made her want to look away. The dark eyes seemed to be seeing straight into her mind. Into her heart. Straight to the truth.

  In spite of the heat—even at night there was no relief from the heat, and her mother thought air-conditioning was unhealthy so everyone had to suffer—Rain felt chilled. She pulled her feet back on the bed and slid beneath the sheet. Leaning back against her pillow, she opened the book to the first page. The first sentence took her far from Port Fortune, transported her to Norway and the fjord between tall mountains. She reread the words, soothed by their cadence, and continued on to discover the town of Berlevaag, the little child’s toy town where the buildings were painted in pastel colors. And as easily as that she was drawn into the story. Something about it, the way it was written—a toy-town painted many colors—reminded her of the fairy tales her father used to read to her in the evenings before she went to bed. She wondered what it would be like to live in a place of many colors instead of the dreary gray shingles or white clapboards of Port Fortune. Once her grandparents had mailed her a postcard from Bermuda, a photo of pastel-painted cottages. That was the closest she would ever get to such a town.

  The book was only fifty-four pages in length, but it took her longer to read than she would have imagined. Although she usually read quite quickly, she found herself delibera
tely slowing her pace, sometimes rereading whole paragraphs or pages, worrying over the individuals on the island. The last line, Philippa’s telling Babette how she would enchant the angels, caused her throat to ache for reasons she couldn’t understand. She clasped the book close to her chest and at last fell back asleep. She dreamed of a town painted many colors and peopled by a general who looked a bit like her father and a cook, a woman who looked nothing like her mother and who wore ugly black shoes and held out her arms to her. She woke at eight, the book still on her chest.

  The story remained with her: the sisters Martine and Philippa and the mysterious Babette. Who would have thought such a small book could raise so many questions? Why would Babette spend all of the lottery money on the dinner? Why would the general return to the island? Did people really behave like that? Lucy, she thought. Lucy would have loved talking about the story.

  “Rain?” Her mother’s voice called from the hall. “Are you awake? It’s after eight.”

  Rain slipped the book beneath her pillow.

  It was later, in the shower, that she realized that for the first time in many months, a night had passed in which she had forgotten to scout the house after everyone slept, to check the locks on all windows and doors. The fear that had settled in her chest since Lucy disappeared eased, and she felt a flash of reckless freedom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Two boys swept past me, their skateboard wheels skimming the sidewalk, and I felt a flash of annoyance and then a clutch of resentment at their wild and careless freedom.

  I watched until the boys disappeared around the building’s corner and then unlocked the doors to the boat barn. The air was a few degrees cooler inside, and I rolled the doors shut to keep the heat out as long as possible. There still had been no break in the temperature, each day melting into the next. I planned on beginning the scheme for the second panel on the north wall, a grouping that would include Columba, Leonard, Martin de Porres, Simon, Blaise, Augustine, and Monica. Five men and two women. A mother and son. From the start it had been decided that the saints should mirror the diocese’s congregants in ages, occupations, and ethnicities, but culling the final forty-two from the hosts of the saints had proved more difficult than I would have imagined, and I still found myself debating some of my choices among the hermits and scholars, the fishermen and farmers, the lawyers and poets, merchants and bankers and ascetics, who peopled the ranks of the saints.