Mom cried harder. “I don’t know.”
I could hear Sophie behind me, somewhere in the roar of the rain. “Jules?” Her arm encircled my shoulders. “Jules? Come back inside. It’s okay. We’ll take a break. Get you dried—”
“That’s why she wears the hearing aid, isn’t it?”
Sophie’s arm went limp. “Yes,” she whispered.
I began to walk. My legs moved heavily inside my soaking pants, and water streamed down the length of my hair.
“Jules!” Sophie called behind me. “Where are you going?”
I moved forward, walking faster and faster, propelled by a sudden and unknown urgency.
“Jules! Come back!”
But I did not go back.
I did not look back.
I just kept going, moving toward something in the distance that I could not see.
chapter
43
Main Street was a wet blur of colors. I could barely make out the orange lettering of the Stewart’s sign across the street. The tiny green lawns that fronted the other buildings had all but drowned in brown puddles, and the Dunkin’ Donuts sign bled electric waves of orange and pink. A lone car drifted by, parting the water in the middle of the street like the Red Sea. I didn’t bother to step aside; by now, it was impossible to get any wetter.
The rain itself did not particularly bother me, and I had never been inside a church, so there was no reason for me to stop suddenly when I reached the front of St. Raphael’s, with its wide white doors. Maybe it was because it was at the end of the street. Or maybe I was intrigued by the fact that one of the doors was open a little, held in place by a small red brick. Whatever the reason, I climbed the steps, pulled open the door, and stepped inside.
Shivering overtook me almost immediately, a violent trembling that made my teeth chatter like castanets. My overalls were so heavy that moving forward out of the tiny vestibule I had just entered took effort. I swung open another door and stared. Rows of empty pews lined the huge room, and the vacant altar at the front was a lonely compilation of wood and marble statues. The stained glass windows were as dark and melancholy as winter. In one corner, a marble woman, all in white, stared out at me with empty eyes. Long robes clustered around the bottom of her bare feet, and a mantle covered her head. One of her arms was holding something, while the other remained empty and outstretched.
This place looked even emptier than I felt. I turned to leave and glimpsed a shadow in the far left corner. Blinking remnants of moisture from my eyelashes, I squinted through the shadows. An old man was sitting in the very front row, staring straight ahead. The collar of his tan windbreaker was rumpled and wet, and white tufts of hair curled along the back of his neck.
What was he staring at so intently, I wondered. And why was he in here all alone? Still shivering, I slid into the very last pew and hugged my arms against my chest. For a while, I just stared at the back of the man’s collar, at the streaks the rain had made along the slippery material. Anything to block out the impossible fact that twenty years ago my father had deafened my mother. Anything to prevent the impossible task of trying to understand how, even as a little girl, I had never completely believed her explanation about why she wore a hearing aid. Trying to comprehend all of it was like being in the middle of some vast vortex.
The man in the front row stood up. Walking slowly toward the marble woman, he pulled something from the pocket of his coat, placed it carefully on the flat pedestal where she stood, and then turned back around. Pulling a Red Sox baseball cap from his jacket, he adjusted it on top of his head, moved slowly toward a side door near the front, and disappeared.
When I was sure he was gone, I walked slowly toward the marble statue. My pants were as heavy as plaster, but it was the shivering that made it difficult to walk. Up close, I could see that the woman was holding a little boy. His feet were also bare and his tiny marble curls clustered gently around his face. I looked down at the base of the statue.
There, in a neat row, was a single line of perfectly white stones.
Hundreds of them.
chapter
44
Sophie draped another warm towel over my head and rubbed. I closed my eyes, inhaling the blended scent of lemony fabric softener and paint primer, which seemed to infuse everything now. It was a strange combination—sweet and acrid at the same time. Sophie’s fingers gripped my head and rubbed down, over and over again, until finally I pulled away.
“What?” she asked. “Too hard?”
“I can do it myself,” I answered, grabbing the towel from her hands. “I’m not a baby, you know.”