Dirty Read online

  Dan hesitated behind me, not making the quick, one-kneed motion that Catholics have perfected before sliding into the pew beside me. I heard Mrs. Cooper, my mother’s neighbor, murmur something to her husband Fred in the pew behind us, but I didn’t turn around to look at her. Mrs. Cooper used to bake me cookies and had taught me how to crochet. I hadn’t seen her in at least ten years.

  My mother grabbed my arm the moment I sat down and clung to me as though she were hanging over an abyss and I the only rope that could save her. Considering I’d often imagined my mother as hanging from a rope over an abyss, the irony of her sudden dependence on me wasn’t lost, but rather made me smile in an entirely inappropriate way I hid behind my hanky.

  She ignored Dan, and Mass was not the time for introductions. Once more I was transported. I’d forgotten how the familiar words used to soothe me, or how the bars of colored light coming in through the stained-glass windows always added up to numbers with perfect square roots. I’d forgotten the ebb and flow of religion and how it could make you mindless, and that wasn’t necessarily bad. My head might have forgotten how to pray, but my heart had not. I murmured the words, counting the beads of my rosary. It was learning one could pray using numbers that had first convinced me everyone must have never-ending calculations in their heads. I’d been astounded almost nobody else did.

  I was aware of Dan beside me, but he sat quietly without saying much of anything. He didn’t hold my hand, nor did he reach for a prayer book. He watched with interest on his face, like he’d never been to a Mass before, his eyes following the priest’s back-and-forth meandering around the altar as though he were viewing a particularly interesting tennis match. At the waving of the incense burner, he let out one stifled sneeze.

  I looked at him. We both smiled. I gave him my handkerchief. After that, he held my hand even though my mother sniffed and muttered and stepped up her wailing on my other side.

  My father was one of seven children and the first to die, so there was much commentary given about him before the Mass had ended and we could “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” I couldn’t avoid being part of the line of mourners at the door, shaking hands and accepting the sympathies of those who filed by us. Dan kept to my side, gamely taking hugs and shaking hands and murmuring thanks to those who must have assumed he had a right to be there. I was glad to have him at my side, a buoy helping me keep above the water my mother would have dragged me under. She kept her glare mostly hidden beneath the veil of her hat or her gigantic handkerchief, but every so often in a lull between mourners she’d turn and shoot me with venom, always adding an extra dose for Dan, who either didn’t notice or was calmly unconcerned.

  By the time the last person had left the church and headed to cars for the procession to the cemetery, my feet and back ached, and my face hurt from trying to smile and look woeful at the same time. My head hurt, too, from tension that radiated from my skull down the back of my neck and knotted between my shoulder blades.

  “I’ve rented us a car,” my mother said stiffly. “Since I knew I couldn’t expect you to drive.”

  “I’ll be happy to help you to it, Mrs. Kavanagh.” They were the first words Dan had spoken to my mother, and I tensed, waiting for her to snap his head off.

  Ah, but she was the queen of many things, the art of lulling her prey into a state of false security only one of them. “Thank you, Mr….?”

  “Stewart.”

  “Mr. Stewart,” she said with an imperious lift of her chin to indicate the disgrace of having to even ask.

  The car she’d hired was big, black and ostentatious, but while I might have rolled my eyes another time, I was glad for her pretensions this time. It meant there was plenty of room for the three of us. There would have been room, even, for two more…but those two weren’t here.

  “So, Mr. Stewart,” said my mother without preamble. “What did you think of the Mass?”

  “It was very nice.” Dan’s answer was diplomatic.

  “I noticed you didn’t pray along,” my mother continued.

  I groaned. “Mother, for God’s sake—”

  “I’ll thank you,” she said sharply, rapping me on the knee with her knuckles, “to watch your mouth.”

  Precious advice from a woman who had once stood in the doorway of my room and told me I was a no-account whore whose lying tongue would rot and sprout maggots on my way to Hell. I glared at her, but Dan seemed unfazed.

  “Well, no. I’m not Catholic. I didn’t think it would be appropriate. I was there to support Elle.”

  She sniffed, sitting back against the expensive leather seat. “What are you, Lutheran? Methodist? Don’t tell me you’re one of those Evangelicals.”

  “No.” Dan smiled with a small shake of his head. “I’m Jewish, actually.”

  For once my mother seemed to have nothing to say. My own jaw dropped, though I recovered quickly. He looked at us both with a hint of amusement in his shining eyes.

  “I see,” my mother said, though I was sure she didn’t. I was also sure she’d never met a Jew in her entire life. I was surprised she didn’t ask him to part his hair and look for the horns.

  Dan met my eyes, his mouth quirked in a tiny smile. He gave a small shrug, which I returned. The revelation kept my mother quiet until we got to the cemetery. Not as many people came to the graveside service, which was fine with me. Fewer hands to shake. Fewer hugs to suffer.

  We got out of the expensive hired car on a small hill of grass, and my stomach fell away. This time I was the one hanging over the abyss, and Dan was my rope. While my mother marched her completely competent self down the small gravel path toward the pile of dirt and open grave that awaited her approval, I gripped Dan’s hand so hard my nails gouged his skin. I had to turn away from the sight.

  “Roses,” I said through gritted teeth.

  He looked down the hill and put himself between me and the sight. “Doesn’t she know you’re allergic?”

  I had forgotten I’d told him that lie, because really, what’s one amongst so many?

  “She knows.”

  He put his hands on my upper arms, rubbing lightly. “Then we won’t go down there.”

  “I have to go down there, it’s my father’s service, she’ll be expecting me…”

  I was babbling and knew it but couldn’t seem to stop. Dan shushed me, his hands stilling. I looked up at him.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Elle.”

  I sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. Sunshine streaked his face, showing his freckles and the lines around his eyes. In bright light like this I saw the gold flecks in the blue-green irises.

  “We can listen from up here,” he told me. “You don’t have to go down there if you don’t want to.”

  He was right, but what’s more, wouldn’t budge. I babbled some more about duty, respect, honor, and expectations, and he listened to all of it but did not step aside to let me move toward the service that had begun without me.

  “You don’t have to go down there,” he insisted. His hand came up to smooth my hair. “It’s all right.”

  It was not all right. None of it was. It was wrong, all of it, and I knew I’d pay the price for my cowardice if not then, then later. I always did.

  My family is large and boisterous, happy for the most part and, for the most part, drunks. Alcohol is the thread that ties them all together, the jolly Irish aunts and uncles from my father’s side and my mother’s sentimental Italian relatives. I have all four living grandparents and a slew of cousins, many of whom are now married and starting families of their own. I hadn’t seen any of them in years, though a lot of them still lived close to the town in which my mother still lived. They probably saw more of her than I did, spent more time in her house with its never-changing decor and my father in his chair in the corner of the den.The chair was empty now and looking forlorn, and though there were more asses than seats to put them in, nobody sat in it.

  “Like some sort o