“Why do they have to send me away?” she asked the cook.
Mary Bernice hadn’t heard about this. She put her spoon down. “You’ve mistook something, I’m thinking. Where on earth do they want to put you?”
“Some prison in Canada.”
“I’m sure you’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick, Laura. Your grandparents have their notions, but I doubt they mean to do anything of the sort. They’re just fretting about that hole in the ceiling. Sure, aren’t they besides themselves with getting ready, and them relations. Give your elders and betters a little room.”
Laura was mopey. She dawdled over the pasta fazool that Mary Bernice had set before her. “I don’t know why they are so jittery over a stupid dinner party. It’s Nonna’s sister coming for a visit, not the Pope.”
“Families are mysteries. You of all people should know that,” said Mary Bernice, a little belligerently. But Laura didn’t want to consider her own family. She turned her shoulder away from Mary Bernice to indicate indifference. Facing the little room off the kitchen, where Mary Bernice sometimes slept instead of returning to her husband in Stuyvesant Heights, Laura saw Mary Bernice’s coat and hat folded neatly on the bed. “Are you going home tonight after church?” she asked the cook.
“It’s Ted’s bingo night, so no. But I’m still hoping to take in the evening Mass. I prefer Guardian Angel in Chelsea, as I have a devotion to my own dear guardian, but not in weather like this. Queen of Angels will do in a pinch. I’ll hop the bus.”
Laura said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll come with you. I need to get out of the house. I’m through talking to them for good. They don’t listen anyway.”
Mary Bernice winked at Laura. “I’ll sort it out for you with mister and missus, shall I? We won’t be able to take Holy Communion, having eaten so recently, but tomorrow’s weather may be worse, and the Lord will understand.” She stomped upstairs to make the arrangements. Laura waited for her, huddling inside the basement door that let out under the front stoop. The cat wreathed itself about Laura’s boots like a sooty spirit of chimneys past, yellowish eyes narrowing in its grey face.
“Saints and celebrities, but you must have really given them a go,” said Mary Bernice. “If you’ve nothing else to pray for tonight, you can ask forgiveness for rudeness, I’m guessing. The missus was crying a little and old Ovid had set a copy of Life magazine on top of his bowl to keep the soup warm, he said, while he was looking through his hi-fi record albums. I think they weren’t talking to each other. Marriage is like that, more often than not. Now you stay put, kitty, or you’ll be sorry.”
Though they could still hear the moist industrial hum of traffic on FDR Drive, the snowy world was more hush than rush. On the crosstown streets the traffic had already thinned. Perhaps everyone but Laura had known a storm was coming, and had gotten home early. “You’re smart to stay over tonight,” she said.
“Himself will be glad to have a quiet night at home without my complaining, sure enough. I’d take a vacation from meself, too, if I knew how to book it.”
They crossed several blocks and ran toward the next bus as it pulled to the stop. It was like a lighted tank of seawater rolling through the snowy gloaming. From outside, the riders were glazed with wet halos, but inside they all seemed to be on morphine, as if they expected never to get home again. Laura snagged a window seat and Mary Bernice settled in next to her and found her rosary. She didn’t care for public transport; she used the rosary as a distraction and as a defense against uninvited conversation.
Laura watched the storefronts pass. The Rexall windows were particularly colorful, with their stacked displays of Lavoris, Old Spice, and whatnot. Most of the stores had their iron grates pulled already.
Mary Bernice said that Our Lady Queen of Angels was in the East 110s. Laura knew how the streets worked but rarely bothered to count them, as they counted themselves so correctly. At 91st Laura watched a lady’s umbrella blow inside out; the pedestrian pitched the thing in the gutter and sloshed on. The night seemed bedeviled with potential catastrophe, but here they were at church at last, so trouble would have to wait outside in the cold.
Laura didn’t have much feeling for Mass itself. Who could? She wasn’t expected to understand the Latin. It was a secret language, holiness in code. She read the prayers off the laminated cards in the pews—“Confiteor Dei omnipotenti”—(Confess your sins, murmured Mary Bernice helpfully). The congregation droned like zombies. The oddly clinical scent of beeswax candles laced itself into a mothbally fug of stone-pressed cold air.
In stained glass high above the altar, the Archangel Gabriel slid into the world. He held a lily in his hand, as if to offer it to the Virgin. She was examining her nails and paying him no attention. Perhaps she was shy. Perhaps the angel was speaking in Latin and the Virgin knew only English.
Finally the priest ascended to the pulpit and began to address the congregation in English. “Pay attention now, I’m going to grill you about it on the bus home,” growled Mary Bernice. So Laura tried to concentrate. She went back and forth between the words and the angel in the window, stitching everything together, like pictures and words in a storybook she read to the first graders at the after-school program at Driscoll.
“Well,” said Mary Bernice on the way home, “did you spend the entirety of Holy Mass thinking about yourself, yourself, yourself?”
“I did not,” said Laura, wondering what made Mary Bernice so crusty sometimes. Faith could be an angry urge in the cook. “Well, not the whole time.”
“Miss Laura Ciardi. We go to Mass for courage in our trials. I know you’ve had a bad afternoon and you’re feeling punky. Your faith can inoculate you against despair. Come along now, what did you take in?”
This was almost like being asked to cough up the natural resources of Brazil or the significant rivers of the African continent. Answers in words came so slowly. “He said angels were messengers. That the word angel means messenger in some rusty old language. That angels were a sign of, um, grace, and that Mary was one very lucky young virgin to win the big prize. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Also our guardian angels are invisible but this guy—Gabriel—came down from heaven and delivered a message, like someone from the telephone and telegraph company.”
Mary Bernice started to laugh a little despite herself. “I’m sorry I asked. The lesson of the sermon, listen to me, Laura, was simply that Advent is a time of holding your breath. He is coming, said the angel. The salvation of the world is coming. Hold on, everybody, and expect the unexpected. At least,” she said with a roll of her shoulders, “that’s what I got out of it. Father isn’t always easy to follow, with that accent. I think he’s from West Africa. But he says a nice Mass, for my money.”
“Is the owl from our ceiling like some angel sliding down on a slat of light?”
“Beware your imagination, Laura. Occasion of sin if you don’t look out. An owl is not an angel. A bird in the house is a sign that someone will die soon. Nothing more than that.”
They sat in silence the rest of the ride. The bus was emptier, sleepier. No other vehicles on the streets now but taxis.