Cameron Dwyer could tell this was going to be a long and potentially ridiculous day. On all of this property, in all of this large house, it seemed to be nowhere to get away from anyone and no one else to go see. Who lived in this town that she knew? So she walked around the house a lot, being avoided by her father and trying to avoid her brother who walked around looking pitiful the whole time.
Cameron went to the lake, pulling on her boots and tramping through the crusty snow. The edges of the lake were frozen, and she fantasized about putting her foot on the ice and hearing it break slowly. She turned around and saw Niall, his hood off, cheeks red, heading her way. He did not speak. The only noise was the geese. Those tough fuckers never left. Cameron had a sudden urge to get away from him. She had a ludicrous urge to actually run. Being around him made her feel as if what had happened was her fault. She felt an accomplice to something she didn’t want to know about.
“I was looking for you,” he told her in the quiet voice he hadn’t used in a while.
“Here I am,” she said.
“I wanted to thank you,” he told her.
“Please don’t.”
“Cameron, I was so scared yesterday. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get her home. I thought everyone was looking at me and I hoped you’d still be at school. I was so glad to see you.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Cam, please don’t shut me off,” her little brother said. He took a breath and said, “I can’t tell anyone. and I feel,,, like I’m going to hell. Or something.”
She reached out and hugged her little brother quickly. She couldn’t feel a great deal of affection for him at the moment, but where affection wasn’t enough, duty prevailed.
Anigel couldn’t stay on Curtain Street. When she was dressing to go she told Chayne.
“This is home, but it’s not home to my thoughts. Does that make sense? There’s something happening to me, and I need to go back to where it first happened.”
“That makes perfect sense,” he said.
She drove all the way across town, passed through the Breckinridge, and went south down Market until she reached downtown. The more she drove the more familiar things became. The more she was like herself. When she reached downtown and Brigham Street and crossed over the wide river into Little Poland, the bungalows and the upright, clapboard two and three story apartments welcomed her back. The little shops and bars surrounding Saint Celestine’s took her back to being a teenager just moved in with her sister and she came into the shop on Nassau where her brother in law was at the tiller.
“Hey, Ani.”
“You need help?”
“I’m good, the handsome little man said. “Caroline’s upstairs with the kids.”
“Oh,” Anigel said. “Well, she could probably use help then.”
She was glad to see her sister, but Anigel didn’t talk to her about how she felt. Caroline wasn’t that kind of person. If she said, “There’s something different about you,” while Anigel changed diapers, Anigel just shrugged and said, “It’s almost Christmas. It’s a beautiful day.”
She understood now that almost four years ago, in this house, she had been given the almost mystic sense that there was no God, or at least that the God she had been taught to believe in was a fiction. She had not grown up in this neighborhood all the time, but she could hear the bells of Saint Celestine’s, and it had been where she’d gone to school. Once, on a Sunday in spring, on Palm Sunday she had felt all of her belief shedding away and rather than being frightened, she had been freed.
Now, dawning in her was the sense that there was something else, something that was hers, calling to her, wanting to be known. The appearance had been so ridiculous Anigel was convinced it was just that, appearance. She did not think the Virgin had come to tell her that Catholicism was absolute reality. She thought that, had she been a Hindu, it would have been Lakshmi or Kali, and that the Lady had appeared in the guise of the religion she had always known, not to tell her that this religion was reality, but rather to tell her that there was, indeed, a reality, that the world was not empty of God, but full with Him. Him? Ridiculous pronoun. Maybe Her, or Them. Maybe a word not invented. But the world was throbbing with wonder, and as she sat with her sister who, not feeling that wonder, settled for belief, Anigel folded laundry and throbbed with it.
When Ralph and Russell arrived, Anigel was full of joy because they should have been together, because things were right between them, She wanted to throw her arms around them, so she did.
“Well!” Russell said as Anigel released him.
“What’s going on, Ani?” Ralph asked.
She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together.
“So the Virgin Mary spoke to you?” Russell said when he and Ralph turned up at Balusik’s.
“I know it sounds strange,” she said. “It sounds....”
“Like you’re cracked.”
They both took out Marlboros.
“You think I’m cracked, now?”
“No,” Russell clarified. “I said it sounds like you’re cracked.”
“She even left that one cigarette out of the pack.”
“Can I see it later on?”
Anigel nodded. “I hid it. It’s nothing special, looks just like a cigarette. You can see it, but you can’t smoke it. It’s sort of a relic.”
Russell laughed. Anigel was about to say, “What’s so funny?” But then, this just proved that everything was.
“You know,” said Russell. “I might not even know you if I hadn’t put that cigarette in the Mary’s hand back in school last year. So... maybe she’s trying to tell us something.”
“Oh,” Anigel suddenly remembered, slapping the table multiple times with her hand. “And she said hi.”
“To me?”
Anigel nodded.
“Ain’t that something,” said Russell.
“And to Ross too. She also said pray, pray, pray. I think she has to. It’s in the contract or something.”
They were both quiet for a few moments and then Russell said, “So the Virgin Mary is Black.”
“Well, she was when she came to me. It’s kind of a relief.”
Russell nodded his head.
“I agree.”
“Oh, my gosh, Dad, hurry up. We should be there by now. Mom, are you sure you’re not coming?”
“I wasn’t invited,” Patti said, sitting down on the sofa and turning on the TV.
“Patti, I’m sorry,” Cody said. “I just panicked. I didn’t mean only Thom and Russell and—”
“Cody, relax,” Patti said.
“If you think Mom’s offended, you have no idea how much she’d love a night to herself,” Russell said.
The doorbell rang, and when Russell answered, he wished he’d looked through the peephole.
“Jason.”
“Russ, we need to talk.”
He smelled good, like tobacco and cedar, like the sex they’d been having all late summer and fall and into the last few weeks. His grey green eyes matched his green checked scarf and his olive skin was blushed by the cold.
“You can’t do this to me,” Russell said.
“Please, can I come in?”
“I’m leaving. Can you not see I’m dressed? We’re all on out way out, which you would have known had you called, which you didn’t because the last time I saw you was when I came back and you were banging some chick on the side of the bed.”
“I can explain.”
“If you could have explained you would have done it already.”
“Russ!” Thom called, “I’m ready. Who’s at the door.”
“Will you come over later?” Jason asked.
“Hell no.”
“Can I call you?”
“You could have called for the last week.”
“Can I call you?”
“Uh… Fuck. Sure.”
“Goodni—”
Russell shut the door.
