She fingers the scapular she’s kept in her bathrobe pocket since Everett insisted she take it off. The tiny picture of the Virgin is sweat-stained and talcum-furry, still attached to the shoelace she’d worn around her neck through childhood. Rose tucks the scapular in the zipper pouch of Valley’s purse and puts it back on the dresser. Valley’s stuffed animals sit lined up facing her music stand. Rose chooses a lamb with a tattered pink bow and tucks it in the nook of Valley’s chin.
At her own bedroom door Rose sees the slope of Everett’s bare shoulder peeking out from the quilt. She pictures him propped over her, broad and strong on straight elbows. But in the morning light his pectorals look flabbier than she remembered, and her mother’s voice plays in her head: Control yourself. Pleasure doesn’t last. Eat only enough to know you’ve eaten. It’s the only tone Rose remembers now—since the night she was orphaned by a heart attack. She presses her thumbs into the pudge around her midriff, tattling, tattling on her. She used to be thin.
She kneels on the new waterbed and bounces. The mattress sloshes with the movement, and Everett’s body teeters back and forth. The musk of his skin—heightened by his effort the night before—is slightly sour. His eyes are closed, but a smile plays across his lips. His hand sneaks toward her and tugs on her bathrobe tie.
“Not now, Everett. We have to talk.”
He opens one eye.
“Were you awake when Valley came in last night?”
“I woke at one-ten and checked her room. She was asleep.”
“Her mascara’s streaked all down her face. I knew that boy was no good.”
Everett closes the eye again. “When she cried last month you blamed her hormones. Why is it suddenly the boy’s fault?”
Rose rolls onto her bottom. The mattress water cuddles her hips. “When he picked her up, he wouldn’t look me in the face.”
“Rosie, you never had to go into a strange house and meet a girl’s parents.” He tries to pull her over next to him, to comfort her.
Rose resists. Someone has to get upset about these things.
Everett gives up with a sigh. “She’s sixteen, Rosie. Nearly grown. You can’t run her life or choose her friends.”
You never did care about Valley, Rose thinks for the umpteenth time. She scoots to the edge of the bed. The mattress undulates, and she wonders what silly whim made him buy a waterbed—one of those midlife things, she suspects. At least it’s not some overpriced coffin, a motorcycle or a race car. Still. It has to be a sin to be so comfortable. “It will serve you right if she gets pregnant,” Rose sputters.
“For god’s sake, Rosie. She’s not a tramp.”
Rose hugs herself to hide her cringing. How’s she supposed to tell him the truth when he says things like that?
Everett tickles her upper arm, then reaches for her breast. Rose pushes his hand off. “I do trust her. It’s you boys I don’t trust.” She purposely bounces the bed and escapes his reach. “My mother was right. Men only want one thing.”
Rose drives past the brick elementary school and adjacent park, then crosses the bridge over the Miami River. The Catholic church, Our Lady of the Rosary, squats on the other side, a brick fortress facing east, bordered on three sides with blacktop, then graves, before the farmland picks up once again. She doesn’t know where else to go. Her conscience—an entity so real Rose expects to see it on a diagram of the human body—rants in her head: This is what happens when you fornicate and lie. You should have told Everett the truth before he married you. Of course she should have. And she didn’t. She’s certain of one thing now: Rob and Everett in a town this small is one man too many. Maybe the priest can tell her what to do.
There are no cars in the parking lot, only an old woman with long gray hair—a Chippewa Indian (crazy, some say) who keeps to herself on Esther Dalrymple’s land. The woman is picking through the church’s Dumpster as if she’s lost something. Stubby white disks lie around her feet. They look to Rose like burned votive candles, but surely the church wouldn’t throw prayers for people’s loved ones in the trash. They must be leftover biscuits from a church supper. The woman is hungry. All Rose knows is that Esther claims the Indian healed her roan calf and Joe Harper took his mother’s sick dog to her after it was too late.
Rose parks away from the Dumpster and squeezes through the church’s heavy oak-and-iron door. The smell of tallow hangs over the narthex, and she pauses there, inhaling deeply, as if wax has the power to sanctify her worldly thoughts. Instead it reminds her of crayons. She fumbles around in her purse for her grocery money, finds a five, folds it in fourths and fits it through the slot in the donation box. Then she lights a candle on the tiered table and asks Our Lady to watch over her confession. Her statue is adorned today with white roses. Someone in town has died. Still, she finds peace in the Virgin’s sweet face, as she had in the months after Rob’s desertion when only the Holy Mother knew and appreciated how she felt.
The sanctuary lies beyond a carved archway. Rose pulls a scarf from her purse to cover her hair. Father Andrew is at the altar, tidying up the morning Mass. He is old and stooped, as if burdened by the weight of the crucifix hanging over his head. Rose hides her face with the scarf, stands before the confessional, coughs. He motions for her to enter the booth, then joins her, on the other side of the partition. The rote learned in childhood pours forth. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession.”
“Go on.” His voice is thin and hollow and makes Rose’s voice sound shrill in her head. Her stomach gurgles and she remembers the chocolate she shouldn’t have eaten if she wants Communion.
“There’s something I haven’t told you.”
“Yes—”
“It happened some time back.”
“Go on.”
“I was seventeen.”
“Yes—”
“In love.”
“Yes—”
She can’t bring herself to go on. How could a priest, being male and celibate, understand her terror?
“And you…?” He’s starting to sound impatient.
“You have to understand. I was so afraid after it happened. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“That you…?”
Why must he make her say it? What other sin do you commit with someone you love? “I did it, okay? But it wasn’t just that,” she hurries on, afraid he’ll get angry if she doesn’t spit it out fast. “One thing led to another.” Through the screen she smells the wine on his breath. There’s a greater sin involved. “Oh, God.” Her throat tightens. She can barely speak. “I’ve received Communion anyway. Every week.”
She hears him shift in the booth and begins to babble. “I had to or my mother would have known. No one caught me and nothing happened, so I just, you know, forgot it was wrong, I guess.” It sounds lame, but it just about sums up how she’s been married so long—seventeen years almost—without telling Everett. If no one found out, she had reasoned, and nothing happened, telling the truth did nothing but hurt people. Even now she is only hurting herself with all this confessing. If she had any sense, she’d walk out this minute. She pulls the scarf down over her face, afraid the priest can see through walls, even in darkness.
The bench on the priest’s side creaks. “Let’s adjourn to the room next door. An open discussion, face-to-face, might help you more.”
Rose’s fingers press the backs of her clasped hands. Face-to-face indeed. Father Andrew is supposed to pronounce her penance