purloined book fit snugly against her chest under her jacket.
She didn’t have to walk up to the altar, because she wasn’t expected—wasn’t even allowed—to take Communion. Not only hadn’t she had her First Communion, she hadn’t even been baptized, although her Granny Gladys was dismayed by this. Granny wasn’t much of a churchgoer, but she believed strongly in doing the proper thing. Her own children had all been properly baptized and christened in the Congregational Church, even if they hadn’t spent much time there since. Granny usually took Edith to the Christmas carol service there, but that was all. Edith was not permitted to go to the Catholic catechism class at Ascension College that Catholic kids went to on Thursday afternoons on a special bus. So for her there would be no confirmation, no beautiful white dress, and therefore no taking Communion now or ever. Daniel had just had his First Communion last month at Easter, so he filed past Edith out of the pew behind his mother and sisters to go up to the altar and have the priest put the cracker on his tongue and give him a sip of grape juice. The only walking Edith would have to do with the missal tucked up against her rib cage was on the way out of church after Mass. As the congregants exited the church, Father Bernard did not shake hands with children as he did with the adults. He tousled the boys’ hair and gave the girls a little pat on the shoulder. He couldn’t tousle the girls’ hair because they all wore hats. So Edith could keep her arms folded across her chest to prevent the book from falling down out of her dress to the ground. She interlaced her fingers under the small bulge and assumed what she hoped was a pious expression as they exited.
Edith worried how she would manage when they stopped on the way home at Nipmuck Variety on the Green. Mr. DeMelo gave each child, including Edith, a dime to buy candy. But luckily for her, the DeMelo kids had eyes only for the candy counter, and Mr. and Mrs. DeMelo were busy distributing dimes and supervising. No one was really paying her any mind. She was able to keep one bent forearm supporting her trophy, while with her other hand she picked out two Mary Janes, her favorite amber-colored hard-molasses candy with a soft peanut butter center. They came in a yellow wrapper with a red band, and her mother told her that they would rot her teeth if they didn’t break them first. She laid them down on the counter with her dime.
On the drive home, Daniel tricked James into trading his red all-day sucker for a crummy piece of penny candy. James was only three, not able to calculate relative candy values with accuracy. Daniel always told him that the nonpareil or licorice drop was extra good and the kind of thing that big boys like, and that everyone knows that suckers are only for babies. You would think from one week to the next James would learn that he is being duped, Edith reflected. Of course, maybe he liked the penny candy because it came from Daniel, and he thought Daniel was practically God.
“Darling, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have Arthur be Peter’s godfather?’ asked Aunty Grace. Edith’s ears perked up at the mention of her father in this unusual context.
After a pause, Mr. DeMelo asked gruffly,”Are you completely out of your mind? He’s an atheist, and he’s not even a Catholic atheist.” Aunty Grace adjusted her pink hat.
“I know, dear, but he’s such a darling. He’s a wonderful father and he’d protect Peter no matter what, don’t you agree?”
“Where in heaven’s name do you get ideas like that?” Mr. DeMelo took the left turn onto Buck Hill Road so fast that Edith and Daniel slid to the right end of their seat.
“My mother always told me that God only cares if your heart is good. You know Arthur’s heart is good, don’t you?” Edith had noticed that Aunty Grace always laughed the hardest at Arthur’s jokes and listened raptly when he held forth about how mean and selfish bosses and bankers were.
Mr. DeMelo said, in an exasperated tone, “God’s one thing, Grace. I’m sure even you may be aware that Father Bernard is something altogether different. He’s not an idiot. It’s a small town we live in, and Arthur is always shooting his mouth off whenever he gets a chance. If there’s anyone in the county who doesn’t know he’s a Red, they must be deaf or an imbecile. I know he’s a great guy, but I hope you haven’t said anything to him, because it isn’t going to happen.”
“Hush, dear, don’t forget who’s in the back. Little pitchers have big ears, you know. Oh, I think he liked being asked, but I don’t think he’ll mind if I explain that we can’t do it. I’m sorry I’m such an moron, dear.” Grace went back to smoothing Peter’s scanty hair.
Betsy tried to trick Daniel and Edith into a “sucker race” to see who could finish theirs first, but they were smarter than James and remembered that when she’d done this before, she hadn’t sucked hers at all and when they’d waved their bare, limp, and soggy little white sucker sticks, she’d pulled a huge, glowing red, cherry-flavor Tootsie Roll pop, almost untouched, out of her mouth and gloated mercilessly.
***
It was a quiet morning in the farmhouse at the top of the hill. After a lazy alcoholic breakfast, Kitt watched with relief as Arthur put Marcus on his shoulders and wandered off into the barely budding woodland for a walk. Kitt retired to her study to work on a poem—one of her own, not the Russian translations that Earl Pipher in New York had invited her to do (she remembered their moonlight walk in the park with a small frisson), nor the awful, lead-footed effusions of her Creative Writing students. But these Russian poems—the way Mrs. Akhmatova managed to invoke a dark God of some sort, in the nightmare and horror and privation of her bleak Soviet world—were the inspiration for this poem she wanted to write for Edith. She had taken on the translation project almost absentmindedly, as a way of keeping a connection to a man she found attractive, but now she was deeply engaged. Some of the Russian poems were about the poet’s son, locked up in a prison called Lubyanka. Other poems were about the hopelessness of love, the impossibility of one person’s understanding another. Kitt hadn’t said much about these poems to Arthur, who, she knew, would find them decadent. She knew Akhmatova hadn’t been published in Russia for years and, supported herself with translation work. I'm sure she's a far better translator than I am, Kitt thought. Like the Party to which he was devoted, Kitt’s husband was partial to anthems and epics. He still believed in Communism and thought the awful stories about Stalin were lies. He didn’t know a great deal about poetry, so she’d let him assume that Akhmatova was a loyal Soviet writer.
As she filled her fountain pen with the violet ink she used to compose poetry (she used black ink for correcting papers, blue ink for letters), Kitt thought about her little Edith’s infatuation with everything Catholic. She wasn’t worried about it: Edith was much too intelligent to really believe all that nonsense. Kitt could see that church was like a version of Wonderland or Neverland for Edith. She’d probably grow out of it soon if she and Arthur didn’t make too much of a fuss. But just to gently push her in the right direction, Kitt was writing a poem for her daughter to help her with the outgrowing. It’s a child’s poem, she thought. Almost doggerel, but Edith’s too young for something without rhymes.
Kitt called to Edith from her study when she heard her open the door.
“Come here for a minute, dearest. I wrote you a poem while you were at church,” she said. She handed Edith a sheet of yellow-lined paper covered in her beautiful violet calligraphy. She’d written,
Let’s pretend there is a god
Let’s act as if he cared
For in this wild and cruel world
We’re either fools or scared.
So let’s all play god’s holy fools
Whose faith keeps them from harm,
