Part 7 (1/2)

Charlotte, who'd been born and raised in a border town, believed it was the excessive Catholic breeding of Mexicans that was wrecking Texas. Joe was a more practical racist, who understood that without illegal immigrants he might have to pay a decent wage to get his yard done. But he agreed that it wasn't a religion for upright, gun-store-owning white folk. Things had looked a lot different to Thom once we were in Amarillo with his daddy asking me across the dinner table, ”Are you a practicing practicing Catholic?” in the same tone he might use to ask if I was a practicing cannibal. Catholic?” in the same tone he might use to ask if I was a practicing cannibal.

”You don't go to ma.s.s,” Thom said. ”You don't go to confession.”

I'd gone a few times, when Thom's daddy took him to a big gun show in Houston or Atlanta. It had caused a lot of friction early on, so confession, like coffee with Mrs. Fancy, was something I did on the sly.

I said, ”Give us a child until he is seven...”

”And he'll be a Catholic forever,” Thom finished for me.

”The church had me till I was eight. It's easier on everyone if I go to y'all's church on Sundays, what with your folks acting like incense and praying to the saints and votives is straight up witchcraft. But you don't stop being Catholic because you stop going to ma.s.s. I may be in your church, Thom, but don't ever think I'm of it.” I stopped pinching the edges of my crust into a ruffle and turned to face him, leaning back on my own piece of counter across the kitchen. I kept my body relaxed and my tone light, but I looked him in the eye, and he knew I meant every word I said. ”I am not going to wreck my figure and squeeze seven pounds of baby out my personals and spend the rest of my life raising something up unbaptized, just so it can get old and die and go to h.e.l.l.”

Thom was nodding, but it was thoughtful-like, not agreement. When he talked he sounded easy, but he was as serious as I had been. ”You're on the pill, Miss Catholic, so where are you going?”

”Purgatory, for my sins,” I said. ”I hope I squeak into purgatory. And I'll have earned every d.a.m.n millennium I spend there.”

I turned to the fridge and got out my bowl of filling, beating it with a fork to refluff the beaten eggs. He didn't go anywhere, but he didn't say anything, either, not until I was pouring the mix into the crust.

”Do I have to be Catholic?” Thom asked. ”Or just him?”

I heard it as an echo of Thom's old, favorite question. Who is he. Who is he. There had never been a him, but just the asking led toward fists and fury. I could feel little hairs p.r.i.c.king up on the back of my neck, and my hands slowed down. ”Who is him?” There had never been a him, but just the asking led toward fists and fury. I could feel little hairs p.r.i.c.king up on the back of my neck, and my hands slowed down. ”Who is him?”

”Or her. It could be a her,” Thom said, and I realized he meant the baby. ”But Grandee men, we tend to throw boys.”

I found my spine relaxing, and I said, ”I gave you up as h.e.l.lbound years ago, sugar. But I can't raise a Presbyterian baby.”

”I can live with that,” Thom said. ”I mean, I'm good with that.”

I shot him a skeptical look over my shoulder and sc.r.a.ped out the last of the filling with my spatula.

He said, ”I'm not converting, but if you need me to go sit through ma.s.s with you on Sundays to be a family, I can do that. It's not that important to me.”

”It's important to your daddy,” I said, peeking over my shoulder at him again.

All at once those two spiky creases were running up the center of Thom's forehead, and I gave all my attention back to my pie. But his voice came out even as he said, ”This won't be his kid, Ro. I don't see as how he has a say in where our baby gets his preaching.”

I had to bite back words then, about how Joe stuck his Roman nose into everything and Thom let him. Instead, I swallowed and said to my pie, ”Church is not the only reason, Thom.”

”I know,” Tom said. ”Money.”

I'd been thinking of Thom's temper. But more than half of Thom's rages and all our money came from Joe. I figured money was a back road in to what we both knew was the real subject. When he spoke, his voice had settled into serious tones.

”I'm going to talk to my father on Monday. We can't raise kids living in this school district, so there's a move to consider. You'll want to be home, and that means we'll be losing your little checks, too. He has to see that.

”I'm going to tell him straight up how much I ought to be making. I've asked around, and I've even been down at the library, doing some research. I have a pretty good idea what I'm worth, and it's a h.e.l.luva lot more than my current salary. I have it all on paper. I made a graph to show him what other men doing my kind of job here in Texas get paid.

”I made an appointment. I put it in his book for next week, like any employee would. When I began, he said he didn't want to start me out high because I was his kid. He wanted me to earn my way up, and I respect that. I think that was even good for me, because now I don't take anything for granted and I know what work is, which I sure didn't learn in college. But I've put five good years in, and these days, he's doing less and less as I do more and more. I've grown into doing a pretty big job.”

”I'm not the one you have to convince,” I said, turning back around to face him.

He was smiling, and his posture was loose and easy. He said, ”Sorry. I've been practicing this in my head for days, getting myself ready to say it to him.”

”What if he says no?” I asked carefully. ”If he starts in on that 'Boy, you're building your own future, this is sweat equity' stuff, and all it really means is no, what then?”

Thom said, ”Then it's time for me to find another job. I've been practicing how to say that to him, too.”

He sounded so sure of himself, so calm and confident. I was close to believing him, and I realized my floury fingers had come up to worry at my bottom lip. I made my hand drop and I said, ”You are going to give your father an ultimatum?”

”I wouldn't put it like that,” Thom said, but he shrugged with the easy jock confidence that had always before deserted him when confronted with his father. My jaw dropped and my eyes went wide.

”You are!”

”About time,” he said, shrugging, so cool. I realized I was staring at him like a middle schooler with a way bad crush. ”So what do you think?”

I blinked. The most important things were still sitting unsaid in between us. I was on the pill because it seemed to me the lesser sin. I'd never let him put a baby in me, on purpose, when I knew with such certainty he would punch it right back out. I couldn't see a single way that it would be any different from penciling in an abortion and then trying to get pregnant in time to make the appointment.

But I thought of the sole purple bruise on my s.h.i.+n, lonely in this new marriage we'd been making ever since I had hidden in the woods and taken those shots at him. It reminded me of a line from a story I must have read a thousand times as a girl. ”She would of been a good woman,” a character says, ”if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

The story was by Flannery O'Connor, and she'd been a southern Catholic, too. Like my mother, who had left O'Connor's stories and a hundred other books behind when she left us. And like me, who'd read each of those books over and over. We were rare things, southern Catholics, swamped in Baptists and hemmed in by Methodism. Maybe O'Connor had been telling me something, one pope's girl to another.

Six weeks was such a small time, for Thom and for me, especially when I held it up against the years that had come before. Still, it wasn't only the time I had to measure. Thom was offering me my religion back, like it was a gift. Presbyterians skipped a step, going straight from group confession to communion, as if absolution was a simple thing that slept at my feet like Gretel, waiting to be called. They didn't understand penance.

When Rose Mae brought me back to that crazy place where I called violence to me like it was my lover, if I had my religion back, I could learn to go to the priest instead of Thom. A few hours on bent knee with a rosary might still even Rose Mae Lolley. h.e.l.l, worst case, I could go dredge me up a nun. I still remembered the precision of Sister Agnes's ruler stinging my palm from catechism cla.s.ses long gone; no one understood crime and punishment better than a savage little nun.

Meanwhile, here was my husband, telling me he was ready to face his father directly and say a thing Joe wouldn't like. I didn't know this man, but I loved him. G.o.d help me, how I loved Thom Grandee in this moment.

I said, ”Why don't don't we have a baby,” with that same odd emphasis, as if I, too, could not imagine why it hadn't happened already. we have a baby,” with that same odd emphasis, as if I, too, could not imagine why it hadn't happened already.

”Why don't we,” he asked, and this time it did sound like a suggestion.

I said, ”I can't stop in the middle. It will mess me up. But when this cycle ends, I won't start the next month's pills.”

He ran right at me, fast, and I was not afraid. He picked me up and spun me. My floury hands left white prints against the dark blue of his s.h.i.+rt, and I clasped them around his neck. He carried me back across the kitchen, and I felt my ballet flats slip off and plop onto the floor.

He boosted me up onto the very countertop I'd fussed at him for sitting on earlier. Then we stilled, caught up inside a quiet kind of happy. He stood between my knees with my bare feet dangling down the counter on either side of him. We stayed there kissing with our mouths mostly closed for long minutes, innocent, the kind of making out I'd only seen practiced by teenagers on eighties sitcoms. We breathed each other's air, peaceful together, solemn and pleased inside of our decisions.

Thom was still Thom, so pretty soon the kissing got serious, and his hands took a wander up under my skirt.

”When we have kids,” he said, ”we won't be able to do it in the kitchen.”

The casual way he said it, ”when we have kids,” got me flushed. I laughed and said, ”We're not doing it in the kitchen now, buster. The countertop is the wrong height, and if you're thinking about that cold linoleum floor, I suggest you rethink.”

He grinned and kept on kissing me. I hopped down and we stood pressed together, me on tiptoe, mouth to mouth by the cabinets. We began to move like slow dancers, swaying our way to the living room, shedding clothes as we went. He had me right there on the oatmeal-colored rug, and I had him.

While we were busy, my lasagna burned up around the edges. When we were finished, we were so starved that we ate the middle right out of the pan, standing naked in the kitchen, side by side with two forks. I put the pie in to bake while we were showering, and then we ate the middle out of that, too, for no reason other than we wanted to.

The next morning, once Thom had gone to work, I checked my wheel. I had seven pills left before my cycle ended.

I took one little white disk and laid it on my tongue, then washed it down with a sip of my morning cran-grape. I looked at the new empty s.p.a.ce on the wheel, and it felt like the start of a whole new countdown. A week and change until the start of something lovely.

I tried not to think about how not so long ago, Rose Mae Lolley had been counting down the days and hours and minutes in an opposite direction, moving toward his death. She was quiet for now. Too quiet. Unriled and still biding. She had no faith in this new Thom that did not seem to carry her match inside of him. She had no faith at all.