This was a lie.
Iris visited the Catholic cathedral not to light a candle for a beloved or to kneel in prayer, but to stand at the foot of the Holy Mother in a corner of the church. Iris associated deeply with the tragic beauty of the statue: the weeping eyes, the open palms, the blue folds of Mary’s skirts. She searched the eyes of Mary, the Mother of God, for a recognition of the self she saw reflected in the mirror every day and ultimately convinced herself that her child, too, had been conceived by the seed of the Holy Spirit, and not by an evening of sinful and confusing passion with an older married friend of her parents.
Iris had Nathaniel baptized when he was five. At the time, Nathaniel mistook the baptism water for his mother’s tears. As Nathaniel grew, so did Iris’s belief that her son had been cut from the same cloth as Saint Anthony of Padua. So she made sure he received the finest Catholic education, and she kept a journal of the little miracles that occurred in his presence — for the eventuality of his nomination to sainthood.
By age twenty-nine, Nathaniel Sorrows had been rejected by three seminary schools. He continued to live with his mother and spent both his days and nights reading Scripture and preparing for the holy work his mother so firmly believed he was meant to do. He allowed himself an hour’s break at the neighboring pub each evening for a bowl of soup and a handful of table crackers.
It should be noted that Nathaniel hadn’t grown into a handsome man. Nevertheless, there was something decidedly attractive about him. Young coeds from the nearby college were drawn to his table not with the same intensity they might approach boys who were marriage material, but rather with the determination of a ranch hand about to break in their first horse. They never ended up staying at Nathaniel’s table for long. If he had been any other man, they might have handed him their phone numbers. Instead, they went back to their rooms to throw away the contraceptives locked in their armoires and to call their grandmothers on the hallway community phone.
When Nathaniel arrived at his aunt’s house on Pinnacle Lane, carrying all of his belongings in one tiny suitcase, he arrived as a man many believed had never used his hands to point his genitals toward the toilet bowl, had never glanced down the cashier’s shirt as she made change, had never become angry at a traffic light, and never wanted more than what was given to him.
When Nathaniel Sorrows arrived at the house at the base of the hill on Pinnacle Lane, he exited the taxi and glanced around at the quiet neighborhood. And what did he see, this seemingly pious man? He spotted a pair of white and brown speckled wings behind the parched lilac bush in the next yard over.
And at that moment, an entirely new and unfamiliar feeling stirred inside him.
IF MY MOTHER KEPT a list of the reasons she confined me to the house on the hill, she’d have a length of paper that could stretch all the way down Pinnacle Lane and trail into the waters of the Puget Sound. It could choke passing sea life. It could flap in the wind like a giant white flag of surrender atop our house’s widow’s walk. To put it simply, my mother worried. She worried about our neighbors’ reactions. Would they break me with their disparaging glances, their cruel intolerance? She worried I was just like every other teenage girl, all tender heart and fragile ego. She worried I was more myth and figment than flesh and blood. She worried about my calcium levels, my protein levels, even my reading levels. She worried she couldn’t protect me from all of the things that had hurt her: loss and fear, pain and love.
Most especially from love.
During that spring when the rains had disappeared, Cardigan and I spent most afternoons sprawled in the browning grass in my yard, pretending to study as Cardigan beguiled me with tales of her latest beau.
By the tender age of fifteen, my best friend, Miss Cardigan Cooper, was already well versed in the complicated attributes of physical love. Jeremiah Flannery, the boy who’d once crushed a bird’s wing under his boot, was her latest acquisition.
“The poor bastard follows me everywhere.” Cardigan snorted. “And you should see the way he stares at me. I practically have to wipe the drool from his chin before I can kiss him. It’s pathetic.” She smiled wickedly. “I love it.”
I laughed as I attempted to make sense of Cardigan’s haphazard algebra notes.
That was another thing my mother worried about: my education. She modeled my daily home-schooling lessons off of Cardigan’s messy composition books.
“Is this a five or a three?” I asked.
“No idea. Looks like an R to me.” Cardigan arched her back like a cat and threw her arm over her eyes to shield them from the sun. I rolled my eyes. It was already late April, and though finals weren’t far off, Cardigan seemed quite content to maintain her C-minus average.
On the other side of the house, my mother was on the front porch, washing the windows in soapy methodical circles, when Henry came flying around the corner and screamed, “Pinna hurt! Pinna hurt!” His eyes were wide with fear. Trouver was right behind him, barking madly.
In one fluid motion, Viviane dropped the soapy sponge, flew down the porch stairs and around to the backyard to find me, leaving Henry on the porch, pounding his ears with his open palms. As she ran, my mother thought, This is it. This is the reason not to love. If I didn’t love, then whatever I find, no matter how awful, wouldn’t hurt.
My mother found me lazing in the grass with Cardigan. She reached down, grabbed my arm, and yanked me upright. “What happened?” she asked, frantically looking me over for signs of injury.
“Nothing,” I replied, blinking.
Viviane dropped her hands, suddenly aware of the wild beating of her heart, the labored pull of her lungs. “Are you sure?” she asked.
I exchanged a look with Cardigan. “Yeah. We’re both fine. Are you?”
My mother looked me over closely before turning away. “Sorry. I thought — never mind.” She sighed. “Do you girls need anything?” she asked as an afterthought. I shook my head.
Good, she must have thought, and slowly made her way back to Henry, who was frantically painting a map of our neighborhood across the front porch in soapy water.
It was just after that that Cardigan and I saw a taxicab pull up to Marigold Pie’s house. A man got out and retrieved a raggedy-looking suitcase from the trunk, then gave a halfhearted wave to the cab as it pulled away. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Marigold’s visitor carried a well-used journal in his back pocket. He took the journal everywhere he went.
Curious and impulsive, I dashed down the hill and ducked behind a lilac bush near the road to spy. The man walked slowly up Marigold’s front walk, taking in our quiet neighborhood. He paused for a moment, shielded his eyes from the sun, and stared up at my house at the top of the hill. Before he continued into Marigold’s house, I swore he saw me hiding there in the lilacs.
The door closed behind him, and I ran back up the hill to Cardigan, who looked bemused.
“Who do you suppose that was?” I asked breathlessly.
Cardigan shrugged. “What a dreamboat, though, don’t you think?”
I glanced back down the hill, my head reeling with the thought of this man having seen me. Could he have liked what he saw? “Oh,” I murmured, blushing. “I don’t know.”
Years ago, when Emilienne’s family was still whole and living in that tenement in Beauregard’s Manhatine, Emilienne’s maman spent a good deal of her time finding scraps of fabric to contribute to the quilts that were intended for her daughters’ dowries. The quilts were meant to be enclosed in elaborately hand-carved trousseaux, along with lace pillowcases and heavy silver flatware. They were also meant to be split fairly between three daughters, not left as an inheritance for the lone survivor, but Emilienne had long ago learned that perfection was hardly something to expect in life.