Page 45 - Vol. VI #3

burn it when you’re done with it?” asked Frank, who had been an Eagle Scout in his youth.
must be talking to that group what’s demanding structural change in the church,”–she waved at the gutted building– “and they don’t mean this.”
“If the kids see one of us climb the wall, they’ll get the wrong idea and follow,” said Maureen Evans. “Let’s wait until the bulldozer’s off so no one gets hurt.”
Esther sighed. “Oh, well. We’ll still have our mem- ories.”
“Hurt!” Esther O’Maley sniffed and tightened her coat around her. “What’s being run over by a bull-
“My memories are poisoned,” said Eric. “Betrayal’s warped the past.”
“There’s no trust in the world if
you can’t trust your own parish priest.”
“No one’s even talked to him since he left, as far as I know,” Sheila said. “Like we were nothing.”
“I refuse to believe Father would do this to us,” said Esther, blowing her nose.
Brendan Murphy, who’d been baptized and married at Holy Innocents, but would never see his funeral there, opened the bag of donuts and examined them closely. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised to see them act like what we know they are.”
dozer after what they’ve done?”
“Sssh! Don’t be disrespectful.” Esther shook her head and refused a cruller. “Father was just doing his job, I’m sure. He has to answer to his boss, just like any of us.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” said Annette. “I ache all over.”
~
Sheila Murphy, thirty-year veteran of the Flower Guild, snorted and ground out her cigarette with the tip of her rubber boot. “Don’t you know we’re supposed to start ‘healing’ over at Our Lady?”
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, Bruce stayed and watched the peaked shadow of the church move across the yard as the reconfigur- ing of the land went on, with neither rest nor reprieve. Three widows, covered in black down to their heavy stockings, were standing apart from the crowd, their heads bowed together in a circle, saying the rosary. They were old regu- lars at daily mass. Where would they carry their precious flame now? Our Lady? It was a long walk and he doubted if any of them drove. They would have to ask rides from their grown chil- dren, and the thought of them reduced to beg- ging made him sick. Maybe they would continue to come here and worship out on the sidewalk, as the residents inside the deconsecrated build- ing emptying their bowels and making coffee, performing a new sequence of morning rituals
Andy Ramos put down a cardboard tray of steam- ing Dunkin’ Donut containers on the retaining wall. “I don’t want to heal there, with a bunch of strangers,” he said. “I want to be a suppurating wound here.”
Eric reached for a coffee and pried off a corner of the plastic lid. “Keep the faith and change the church, is what my wife says, but at this point I just say fuck it.”
Sheila nudged Eric and pointed to the children playing near the curb. “Sorry,” Eric mouthed.
Annette took off her gloves and held her hands over the meager warmth of the coffee tray. “She
instead of mass. (continued on page 93) 36