“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?