Before Father Leone could say anything, Elisabetta gave him her answer. He smiled as she talked.
“You are intelligent and beautiful and holy, Betsy,” he said when she was finished. “You are sixteen now, aren’t you?”
She nodded, pleased.
“Then I think you should have a glass of wine with me. First, I will bless it, and we will drink it in honor of God.”
She watched him bless the wine and pour two glasses. When she sipped it, she wrinkled her nose and he laughed.
Father Leone got up and closed the door. Standing behind her, he put his hands on her shoulders.
“Do you remember when we tried to do mental telepathy?” he asked her, his voice low.
She remembered everything he had said to her, ever. Everyone believed his handsome, still youthful looks were a gift from God. But she knew he was more than that. He was a man. I love you, Father Leone, she thought, sending the words out to him.
“John,” he said. “My name is John.”
She smiled. He could read her mind. He could. John, she thought.
She tried to turn in her seat to face him, but his hands held her in place.
“I believe you were telling me to kiss you that night.”
Elisabetta gasped.
“I didn’t want to say it because I am a man of God, Betsy, and we do not partake of bodily pleasures. You are such a beautiful girl. Believe me, if I were not a priest—”
“I shouldn’t have such thoughts,” Elisabetta said, dropping her head. “But I do, Father. At night, especially after we study together, I can’t stop imagining it.”
“Imagining what?”
“Is this confession?” Elisabetta asked, jerking her head up. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—”
His hands reached in front of her and stopped her from making the sign of the cross. “Not confession.”
She took a breath. “I imagine you touching me,” she said. Would he give her a penance now? How many rosaries for forgiveness of such a sin?
“Where?” he whispered. His mouth was pressed against her ear and she felt the tickle of his mustache.
She didn’t want to say it. She couldn’t. It was a sin. Elisabetta shook her head.
“Betsy, you can tell me anything.”
But she shook her head again. She couldn’t say it.
Father Leone released her hands and walked around, kneeling at her feet. “I’m sad that you don’t trust me. That you don’t trust God.”
Elisabetta leaned forward. She felt sweat trickle down her arms. She took the priest’s face in her hands and whispered in his ear: “Down there. I imagine you touching me down there. I imagine that we do all kinds of dirty things together.” She released his face and pushed away from him, running out of his office and down the long aisle of the church, past Carmine sweeping, out the door into the night.
THE NEXT WEEK, Elisabetta said she had a stomachache and couldn’t go to study Latin with Father Leone. She pictured him in his office, waiting for her. How long would he sit there? she wondered guiltily. But then Giulia came home, flushed and dreamy, and announced she was getting married. She had met someone at the mill, a foreman, and they wanted to get married next month.
“No,” Josephine said. “Out of respect for your father you have to wait one year.”
Giulia cried and carried on about love and desire, but their mother wouldn’t budge. “Next fall,” Josephine said, “we can discuss this.”
“Isn’t this romantic?” Chiara whispered to Bella.
Bella agreed. But Elisabetta thought it was terrible. “You want to be famous,” she reminded her sister.
“No,” Giulia said, “I want to marry Mario.”
“Enough about Mario!” Josephine said. “No one’s getting married until the year is up.”
“You’re jealous,” Chiara whispered, “because you can’t marry Father Leone. Ever.”
Josephine reached across the kitchen table and grabbed Chiara by the hair, hard. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing,” Chiara said.
Josephine turned her attention to Elisabetta. “What has he told you? What has he done?”
Elisabetta thought of the priest’s hands on her shoulders, the tickle of his mustache, the way he’d asked her what she’d imagined about them. She thought of what she had confessed. I imagine that we do all kinds of dirty things together. She felt her face grow hot.
“Elisabetta?” Josephine said. She stood in front of her beautiful daughter, her mouth dry with fear. He had told her that she was doing these things for God. She had felt holy as he bent and suckled her breasts. She had believed that his flesh was not like other men’s.
“Why didn’t you go to Latin tonight?” she demanded.
“Stomachache,” Elisabetta said, and her stomach was aching now.
Chiara began to pray for forgiveness. She had gotten her sister in trouble by saying her secret. Would she ever get to the safety of the convent? She prayed for the next six weeks to pass swiftly. She prayed to be twelve.