Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5)

by Susan Fanetti

  He had no qualms about the sounds of his pleasure, and he lifted his head and roared into the rafters.

  ~ 18 ~

  Katrynn leaned her shoulder against the end case of the Memoir & Autobiography row and listened to Theo read from Violets in Spring, his latest memoir, this one about marrying and becoming a father again. It was his third memoir, following Orchids in Autumn and Lavender in Summer. The morbid Pagano family joke was that he had only one more season to write about, so he’d better be careful he didn’t run out of life when he ran out of titles.

  This was his third reading of Violets, which had been released in the fall. Tonight, he planned to read from his work in progress as well: a collection of poems. He was a poet first, but his success had come from writing memoir, so he’d become a slave to reader expectation. It was kind of a shame; Katrynn thought his poetry was really beautiful.

  Theo was kind of a celebrity in Quiet Cove, as far as celebrities went. He wasn’t precisely a famous author, but he was a highly esteemed one, with a pile of awards, including the National Book Award, and he’d been published several times in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He was, in short, the kind of writer that the summer people of the Cove—those who, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, settled into the big houses on the beach—liked.

  Theo joked that the people who attended his readings here probably read the poems and musings he published in The New Yorker while they sat on their toilets in the professionally decorated, beachy-chic master bathrooms of their summer homes.

  But attend they did. They had a full house for this reading. The readings and signings at Cover to Cover during the summer always drew well, they made their year in the summer, but Theo drew best. Part of that was because he was almost considered a local now. He had lots of friends among the true residents, and there were plenty of familiar faces sitting before him. Often, people walking by came in for a reading because they saw the crowd, noshing on canapés and wine, and figured something good was happening.

  Carmen and Teresa sat up front tonight, as usual, and Theo mostly read to them. Most of the Paganos were there, which also contributed to the impressive attendance. Nick and Bev had stayed home; baby Ren was due in less than three weeks, and Nick had practically set up a perimeter around their house. Family was invited to visit, including Katrynn and a couple other of Bev’s friends, but Bev only left the house for doctor’s appointments and church. Katrynn thought often of “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” despite her friend’s apparently improved mental state.

  Apart from the prominent absence of the owner of the bookshop, the rest of the Paganos were there, even Manny, and the shop was near capacity. When that family showed up anywhere en masse, they made an impact.

  That family. More and more, it was becoming her family.

  In the seven years that Katrynn had lived in Quiet Cove and managed Cover to Cover, she had grown close to Bev and Nick and their girls. Through that connection, she had gotten to know all of the other Paganos, but she wouldn’t have said she was close to any of them. They’d been people she’d said ‘hi’ to in the market, people she’d seen in the shop, people she’d occasionally chatted with at parties and functions at Bev and Nick’s.

  Of all of them, until this year, she’d known Luca best, since he’d spent several months helping her and Bev learn about the financial elements of running a business.

  From the sidelines, she’d seen a big, full family that did everything together, a tight group, lively to the point of chaos, whose love and respect for each other pulsed out into the atmosphere around them. She’d also seen rambunctious arguments and a few physical fights among the brothers. It was a family unlike anything in her experience, and she’d always been a little envious.

  But since she and John had been together, she’d been folded easily into their huddle. All the brothers looked out for her, and the sisters and wives pulled her into their family talk. Katrynn didn’t know if they’d been like this with all of John’s girlfriends or if they saw her as special, but she felt special. Like they thought she was there to stay.

  In the month or so since her birthday, she was feeling more comfortable with the idea that she was there to stay. It was certainly what she wanted, and she had come to understand how much she’d been letting fear fuck with a good thing, and how patient John had been with her while she’d struggled to find a balance.

  John hadn’t yet asked her to marry him, and sometimes she felt a little insecure about that, but these weeks had been good between them. More than that, they’d been calm and easy. Katrynn supposed that Giada The Italian Tart was in the US, but John hadn’t seen her. He’d called her—not Skype, just a regular phone call—and had told her that he wouldn’t see her. There had been yelling, in both English and Italian, but then that had been the end of it.

  Never once, in the drama on her birthday or in their talks about The Tart afterward, had John brought up the fact that Katrynn had snooped in his phone. That part still ate at her a bit—things wouldn’t have blown up at all if she’d respected his privacy. Not only had she snooped, but she’d thought the worst of him without hesitation.

  That part, he had called her on. More than once. But the snooping he’d simply let slide, and she hadn’t brought it up, either. She thought—hoped—that part just wasn’t a big deal to him. His family got up in each other’s business routinely, and John was as nosy as any of them. Maybe he just assumed that she would do something like check his phone. Maybe he didn’t mind because he didn’t have anything to hide.

  She wouldn’t snoop, though. Not anymore. She was still afraid, but that was her problem, and she was working on it. She had to trust him. She had to believe.

  Because John was The One. He was perfect for her, and she’d almost ruined everything. So if he needed to believe in her belief, then she would be patient until he did. He had certainly earned her patience.

  Theo finished, and his audience gave him the polite applause patrons of an event like this gave. Katrynn hurried up and swung around the crowd to make sure that the refreshment table had been restocked and that Grace and Jamie were ready to organize people into a line for the signing.

  She caught John’s eye as she moved past the guests, and he smiled. He’d been to a few of these readings this summer, and he understood that unless she asked, his best help was to stay out of her way.

  It was nice, though, to seek him out and find his eyes on her.

  He could make a simple smile feel like a caress.

  ~oOo~

  “You did good, baby.” John unzipped the back of Katrynn’s wetsuit, and she wiggled her upper body out of it.

  “Don’t humor me. I sucked.”

  “No, you didn’t.” He racked the boards on his porch and turned his own wetsuit down to his waist. Katrynn was distracted from her lingering humiliation by the sight of him—tan and chiseled, glistening in the morning sun. His body had always been good, but it had gotten even better in the five months she’d been seeing a lot of it.

  She looked down at her Speedo. Carmen wore bikinis under her suit when she surfed, but Katrynn felt naked in a bikini under any circumstances. But her plain black suit was not exactly alluring. She felt like a charwoman standing at the David’s feet.

  The clumsy charwoman who couldn’t get to her feet on a surfboard.

  She didn’t actually want to surf. It scared her. She liked to body board, when she wasn’t adding gravity to the list of factors that could hurt her. But she wanted to go out in the mornings with John. Every morning, with the dawn, he was either on a surfboard or running a billion miles. If the weather was bad, he went to the gym and lifted.

  Surfing scared her, running bored her silly, and the gym was smelly and loud. She was more of a walker. That was about her speed.

  Which was why he looked like Michelangelo had carved him from marble, and she looked like the clumsy charwoman.

  He grabbed the wad of wetsuit at her hips and pulled her close. “You don’t suck. You’re better e
ach time. You got to your knees, right?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Big whoop.”

  “You don’t like surfing.” An observation, not a question. He knew she didn’t.

  The words that she intended to say—‘I will when I get better’—got stuck. No, she didn’t like it. She wanted to like it, to share this with him, but she didn’t. At all. She’d be much happier sitting at the fire ring with a cup of coffee, watching him behave like a hyper dolphin.

  “You’ve got to stop doing that, Katrynn. Don’t pretend.”

  “I wasn’t pretending. I was trying something new.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “Okay. I was pretending a little. But I started out wanting to try something you like. And you were excited about it, so I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  “Newsflash: it’s not that much fun surfing with somebody who looks like their fingernails are being removed every time they paddle out.”

  “Oh. Am I being a drag?” She’d been trying hard to fake it and be brave, but the scariest part was facing the next attempt.

  “We don’t have to like all the same things. Surfing is not a requirement for admittance to the Pagano family. Sabina doesn’t surf. Manny doesn’t. Rosa hasn’t surfed for a long time. Theo doesn’t. Joey doesn’t anymore. You can just say no.”

  “Okay. No.”

  He laughed and kissed her. “I love you, Katrynn Page. You. Not who you think I want you to be. The you I’ve wanted to be close to for years, and the you I’ve gotten close to this year. I love your boot addiction and your need to go through your magazines chronologically. I love the way you talk back to NPR, and that it takes you a week to eat a pint of ice cream. I love playing music with you. I love watching movies with you. I love talking with you. I love sleeping with you. I love loving you.”

  His smile faded, and he brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “But I don’t love it when you think I can’t tell that you’re faking. And I don’t love the faking. Be real with me, Katrynn.”

  She put her arms over his shoulders and fed her fingers into his wet hair. “I am real with you. Even with the surfing, I’m not trying to fake. I’m honestly trying to be good with it. But old habits die hard, I guess, and I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

  “That habit needs to die in a fire, baby. Promise me you’ll be straight about today. I’m glad you’re going, but if you don’t like it, you don’t need to go every week. Manny only goes for holidays and family stuff, and Theo outright refuses to go except for family events. If it’s not for you, no sweat.”

  John was taking her to church. He had asked her to go, but this wasn’t the first time he’d said that he didn’t expect her to make a habit of it.

  Katrynn didn’t have a strong feeling either way about God or religion. Like everything else about her childhood, religious concepts had been offered on a sporadic and senseless basis, so other than the World Religions 101 class she’d taken in college, which had given her some general understanding of the history and culture of the major religions and faiths, she had no foundation for believing in anything.

  “I promise. If it’s not for me, I’ll say so.”

  “Thank you.” He kissed her, and his hands slid into her wetsuit and grabbed her ass, and they were very nearly late for church.

  ~oOo~

  With the exceptions of Nick and Bev’s wedding and the baptisms of their daughters, Katrynn had never been to a Catholic service. She liked Christ the King Church; it seemed what a Catholic church should be, with high, sweeping, raftered ceilings, and tall, beautiful stained glass, with a gallery in a loft at the back, and a big organ at the front. It smelled of rich incense and wood polish, and she’d felt peaceful, even cozy, in the sanctuary the few times she’d been there.

  But she hadn’t been able to follow or understand the rituals. They appealed to her; she’d always felt comfort in routine, in knowing exactly how things were going to go, and the rituals obviously provided that. The parishioners knew what to do. There was a lot of standing and kneeling and sitting, and everybody seemed to know when it was time to speak, and everybody said the same thing.

  She’d also noticed that not everyone got up to take communion, which disrupted her comfort in the routine. The few other churches she’d been to that did communion passed it around the pews, but the Catholics got up and stood in line—but some people remained in the pews, sitting or kneeling. She didn’t understand why.

  And they didn’t finish the Lord’s Prayer. It was the one prayer she knew, and for Bev and Nick’s wedding, she’d embarrassed herself by continuing on with the next part when everyone else had gone silent. After that, she’d kept her mouth shut.

  John had gone to the church the night before for confession, something he frequently did on Saturday evenings. For that, Katrynn was expressly not invited. Catholicism seemed a bit like a secret society. It had her intrigued—and a little intimidated, too.

  By the time they ran up the steps and John held the door open for her, they were scant minutes from the beginning of the service. Katrynn stood at John’s side while he dipped his fingers into a font and crossed himself. At his nod, she followed his example, not sure what water—she assumed it was holy water—did for either of them.

  He took her hand and led her all the way to the front of the church; then, as his family scooted down the pew for them, he genuflected and slid in. Katrynn sat at his side, not sure if she was also supposed to do that crouchy-kneely thing, too, but since he hadn’t indicated either way, she didn’t.

  She caught Bev’s eye across the aisle and waved. Bev waved back. Nick gave her an amused nod.

  She heard John mutter, “Sorry, Pop,” and turned to see Mr. Pagano giving him a decidedly disappointed parental glare. At John’s side, Joey snickered.

  Then John pulled out a couple of booklets from the rack before them. He opened one to a point about halfway through and handed it to her.

  “What is this?” she muttered, as the organ struck a chord and everybody stood.

  “It’s a missalette. Like a program for the Mass.”

  “Oh.”

  Well, that changed everything.

  All of the responses were there, and all of the things the priest said, too. When to stand, and kneel, and sit—all there. The entire ritual, laid out before her.

  Almost the whole service was like that, all the way to the sermon—or, according to the missalette, the homily. And the words and acts of the ritual—what the priest said, what he and the altar boys did, what the worshippers said and did—it was all beautiful. Like poetry. The sentiment expressed was of unity and comfort, of mercy and support.

  She loved it. She loved standing next to John and singing, she loved the child somewhere—she looked back and saw he was in the loft—singing over them all in a youthful soprano, she loved John’s stepmother’s tone-deaf enthusiasm. She loved discovering that Carmen and Teresa sang in perfect harmony with each other.

  John leaned to her ear several times to explain what was going on, but she understood already. The missalette prepared her.

  Even the homily was good. She’d expected some kind of political screed, but instead the message was about love and acceptance, about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, about always reserving judgment and never withholding love.

  Jesus Christ! Katrynn giggled as those words leapt into her head. Well, yeah. Exactly. She felt good. She felt…warm. And full. She didn’t know if she could ever believe in heaven and a god hanging out with angels in the clouds, but she could get behind an hour once a week to feel this connected to the goodness in the world. It was like therapy.

  There was more poetic praying, and there was even a part where everybody in the church turned and wished their neighbors peace, shaking hands or hugging each other. Then it was time for—she checked the missalette—the Eucharist and Communion.

  After more beautiful ritual, with the priest holding up a wafer and a cup and intoning poetry, and the peo
ple in the pews responding, all the Paganos on their side stood. Across the aisle, Nick and his mother stood. Bev stayed seated with all three girls. Katrynn thought for a moment that she should cross over and help out, but then the aisle was full of people lining up at the altar.

  She moved to stand in line, too, but John pulled her back. “No, baby. Just sit tight. We’ll be back.”

  Then he stepped around her. People made way, and he genuflected and got in line. From her row and the one behind, Joey, Carlo, Sabina, Trey, Ben, Luca, Carmen, Teresa, Mr. Pagano, and Adele all followed John, doing the crouchy-kneely thing and getting in line.

  Katrynn felt left out. But she sat and waited.

  John was the first of their pew to return, and he came in from the other side. When he sat next to her, as he was putting the kneeler thingy back down and moving to his knees, he smiled and asked, “What?”