A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  Pattianne hung back as Michael kissed his mother’s cheek, his father’s cheek, and then Claire, who was bouncing in little lavender shoes, as pretty as Michael—Claire, not the shoes, although the shoes were very pretty—and they were all saying hello at once—the Bryns, not the shoes. Claire and Mrs. Bryn both wore silver crosses, each set with a purple stone, glittering at their necks. Claire lit up like the sunrise looking at Michael. They all had the same blue eyes.

  “This is Pattianne Anthony,” he said, and he put his warm, navy blue arm around her shoulders.

  Mrs. Bryn was smiling with her mouth, her shiny lipsticked mouth, but not with her eyes, and for the instant Pattianne dared think about it, she was glad she and Michael hadn’t had sex yet. His mother would know.

  Mrs. Bryn reached out a hand and said, “Hello,” in a voice smooth and low. A quick clasp and then she let go, and Mr. Bryn was next. He looked like Michael but there was gray in his hair and wrinkles at his eyes. Smile wrinkles. Warm hands, and he took both her cold hands in his and said, smiling, “Hello Pattianne. How are you? Besides cold?” and he rubbed her hands. They became instantly warm.

  Then he steered them all into the doors, letting go of her hands somewhere along the way, and then there she was—in church, Michael’s mother and sister and then her and then him and back there, shepherding them along, his father. Soft organ music overhead. She sniffed for the smell of incense but all she could really smell was the perfume Michael’s sister wore. The altar far to the front was crowded with white Easter lilies at the feet of a huge statue of Christ, who seemed to be standing in front of a cross instead of hanging up on it. The murmur of voices, hello, hello, happy Easter. No one saying alleluia as recommended on the website. There was the familiar thump of the kneelers landing on the floor. And pastels—lavender, pink, baby blue, peach, rose, on dresses and ties and shirts—she had forgotten about the pastels of Easter. The throng of pastels shuffled down the center of the main aisle, and to either side people genuflected and slid into the pews.

  Genuflect. One of her favorite words. She tried to think what it would take to play it on a Scrabble board, and then she panicked, being a nonbeliever, about the genuflecting, did she or didn’t she, and she only had a moment to panic and the decision was upon her as Michael’s mother chose their pew and in they all went, one at a time. Pattianne tried to make it some blend of perfunctory and respectful and mostly unnoticed. Got in. Sat down. She could feel her heart in her fingertips.

  She set her purse on the pew between her and the sister—Claire, Claire—and then Michael’s father dropped the kneeler to the floor, and they all knelt forward. She did too. A woman right in front of her wore a dress with apple blossoms on shiny material. She was fairly wide, the apple blossoms printed across her back in symmetrical rows. The woman had finished her pre-Mass praying and was sitting back in her pew, the rows of apple blossoms, eight to a row, inches away. Pattianne shut her eyes and felt like a phony and opened them again and concentrated on trying to remember the words to the Hail Mary. She peeked down the row at the Bryns. Mr. Bryn had wrapped one arm around Claire, his hand cupping her shoulder, and Pattianne looked away.

  The music swelled then, and goose bumps rushed over her body, front to back, even her nipples rising up, and they all stood, the entire place, as one. Michael squeezed her elbow, and she was afraid to look at him but she did. He was about the prettiest boy she had ever dated. The procession moved down the aisle all in white. Altar boys, one of them holding the tall gold crucifix, and four lesser priests, one of them swinging the smoking gold globe of incense, and the main priest holding a big red book.

  Her nose started to drip, and she got a tissue out of her purse and wrapped it around her finger and dabbed, her Grandma Anthony’s saying A lady never blows her nose in public. Ladies didn’t eat in public either. Smoking never came up.

  Celebrants. They’re called celebrants, those other priests.

  The choir filled the high space.

  The music was loud and it soared, and so did the rushing of air in her chest, and then the rushing to her eyes. She dabbed and dabbed, but by the time the processional got down the aisle the first tissue was a goner. Everyone sat, pastels rustling, pews creaking. She got another tissue and tried to breathe through her nose to calm herself like they said in yoga class, but her nose was clogged now. And a lady never blows her nose in public, and she was pretty sure a church counted as public.

  It was beautiful, the Latin, and the priest was a tenor. She had tried to learn Latin. Took it one year and had to drop or she would have significantly lowered her undergrad GPA, and she’d tried it again, audit, and dropped it that time, too, but it was beautiful, and she heard the words of it now like native language, its syntax informing her sentences, the music of her wordless thoughts.

  The crucifix was a regal cement statue, Christ with a crown, standing before the cross, his hand with its hint of stigmata held up in front of the sacred heart. Not quite as gory as the standard crucifix.

  The choir broke into song again and she jumped, and the word swoon came into her head, she felt like she would swoon, and she dug out another tissue. The main priest seemed to be doing all the stuff up there, all the other celebrants sitting and standing and kneeling on either side of the altar. To the right was a smaller altar, Mary with robes of sky blue and a crown, Queen of Heaven, stars around her feet. And then familiar music, she even knew some of the words: In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti. It felt wrong for her to actually sing them, though. Not a member of the club. Besides, she couldn’t carry a tune. Her mother used to tell her to just mouth the words. Besides, she kept tearing up. Besides, Michael had a gorgeous voice and he was singing right next to her, a little weird, his face raised, his eyes closed.

  And then came the small bells, and the silence, and then the big bells outside somewhere, and row by row in front people got up and headed down the center aisle to Communion. Entire rows emptied. No one remained. If she didn’t go up to the Communion rail, she would be sitting completely alone in the middle of a sea of empty pews.

  Like a neon sign over her head flashing Apostate Apostate.

  She sat. Michael moved past her. Then three women. Pink flowers, candy-yellow plaid. Mint-green flowers. Perfume.

  Peeps. They were called Peeps, those spongy candy chicks.

  The pastel dresses moved slowly up the aisle. Then they all came back. Michael’s father and mother and sister moving past her and kneeling. Michael next to her kneeling. She sat. Wished she were kneeling too.

  Standing, sitting, kneeling again, the music rising and rushing around. It kept pushing her to the edge of tears, the choir so big back there above them all. She wanted to turn and watch them. She didn’t. She stood, knelt, sat, so stiff that by the time the priest said, “The Mass is ended, go in peace,” every part of her body ached.

  Her face got red and blotchy when she got teary, even if there weren’t actual tears involved. By the time they all shuffled out to the impossibly sunny Easter morning, bells ringing, her head pounding louder, she just wanted to get away.

  Mrs. Bryn had a small twist of a smile on her face. Maybe it meant, Are you sleeping with my son? Maybe it meant, This is just the way my beautiful face always looks.

  It turned out to mean, We’re so glad you could come.

  “We’re so glad you could come, Pattianne,” she said, and held out a hand, took Pattianne’s, held it an extra moment.

  “Alleluia,” Pattianne said, hearing the chirpy sound of her own voice. “It’s a Hebrew word adopted by the Christian church. Hallel was an expression of praise in Hebrew, and Jah, the shortened form of the name of God, JHVH, which is Jehovah with the vowels taken out, meaning ‘I am.’”

  Michael’s mother said, “Really? The vowels taken out?”

  “Breath,” Pattianne said.

  They all nodded, waiting.

  And then Michael kissed his mother on the cheek and told her, “I’ll catch up with you at Aun
t Alice’s.” Mr. Bryn said something, and Claire did, too, and Pattianne was sure she did too. She had nice manners after all, as well as straight teeth and good, if sometimes blotchy, skin.

  The ride home was quiet. She took one quick look in the visor mirror and wished she had not, her eyes wet and red and glassy. She was exhausted.

  Michael kept his eyes on the road, Sunday traffic heavier now.

  She’d never even known she liked Mozart. She couldn’t really listen to music, always had to have it quiet when she read or studied, and got in the habit of just not turning any music on. She would hear classical music at Miss Mimi Stein’s house, though. Miss Mimi Stein lived in her parents’ neighborhood in Cranbury, and Pattianne would be there, in Miss Mimi’s pretty gray house, music playing, and sometimes she would say, “Who is that?” Or, “I like this music,” or something, and Miss Mimi would say, “That’s Mozart.” Finally she pointed out that Pattianne only ever asked about it when it was Mozart. “You love Mozart,” Miss Mimi told her.

  They pulled up in front of the dry cleaner’s, and Michael parked without turning off the car, which choked to a stop anyway. He kissed her cheek.

  “Thank you,” he said, and when he smiled, she could see where he too would have smile wrinkles around his eyes one day.

  “Thank you. Call me, okay?” She slid out, snagging her tights on the seat. The O-bug was a breath of ease driving away up the street. Inside she pulled off the tights and the dress, put on her overalls, her flip-flops, the stretched-out black turtleneck. The sartorial equivalent of junk food. Then she went to the nearest dark theater. Popcorn with butterlike flavoring. A peguin movie.

  It was too cold for flip-flops really. She sat there with her feet tucked under her butt, tucked into herself. The penguins all survived except for one egg.

  During what she figured to be dinnertime at Nana Farley’s, she called her parents’ house and said Happy Easter into their answering machine.

  “In the classic tradition,” she said. “Alleluia. Which, I learned, means ‘I Am’ in Hebrew, which is the name Jehovah with all the vowels taken out.” She always tried to fill in a little extra space on their answering machine.

  Then she opened a bottle of Barefoot chardonnay. Somewhere toward the end of the bottle she fell asleep.

  Monday was a little rough, but she had her hangover routines. Stay in bed a little long with an ice pack on the forehead. Drink lemon-ginger tea with honey. Take a bath with lavender bath salts. She washed her face with lemon and yogurt and patted a touch of rosemary under her eyes, an old trick of beautiful Frenchwomen to get rid of puffy eyes, which she saw on an interview with Catherine Deneuve, and which may work or may not, but by ten thirty she was ready to face the day when the doorbell downstairs rang.

  The sun was blinding. It was Michael. He pulled her into his arms and it was not a chaste kiss, and he whispered, “I have chocolate bunnies,” and he led her by the hand upstairs and then kissed her again and said, “I was lying about the bunnies.”

  And kissed her again. There were hands then, and tongues, and there went her overalls, and then his shirt. The smell of lavender bath salts everywhere.

  2: UNCHASTE, UNMARRIED SEX

  Jen was doused with perfume, which she only ever did when she’d been hitting on her purple pot pipe, which used to be Pattianne’s purple pot pipe. Pattianne had given up smoking pot when she’d figured out it made her ears ring, which Jen said was ridiculous but, nonetheless, she happily took possession of the purple glass pipe and seemed to use it fairly often. It was the last Sunday of the month, and she and Jen were at dinner at the parents’. Their father was snoozing in the maple-and-patchwork den, sections of the Sunday paper all around him, basketball on TV, their mother in the living room with her own copy of the Sunday paper. They were in the kitchen.

  “Hey, stoner.” Pattianne set a bottle of Barefoot on the counter. “Get down those wine glasses.”

  She didn’t let Jen know it was the perfume that gave her away. She let her think it was that she was acting stoned. That made her just a touch paranoid. Jen handed the glasses over one at a time, saying “So,” and then taking the lid off a pot of ham and green beans and potatoes all boiling away. She put the lid back on and turned to the refrigerator. “So,” she said again, and she took out the jar of mayonnaise. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  She said, “Easter Sunday and all.”

  “The choir was amazing. I cried.”

  “What about this new Who’s-It?”

  “What are you doing with mayonnaise?”

  Jen put the mayonnaise back. Pattianne handed her two glasses of wine and called out, “Hey, Mom, you want a lovely glass of Barefoot?” Their mom said yes. Their father stirred in the den.

  They drank the wine, they ate ham and beans, and Pattianne got itchy and wanted to drink the second bottle of Barefoot that was out in her car. Her father and mother maintained their hold over the empty space that existed somewhere above the center of the table, which she and Jen talked under and over and around.

  Her father asked Pattianne how the job search was going.

  “Dad,” she said. “I have a job.”

  “Is it full-time yet?”

  “I’m staying part-time for now.”

  Same conversation every time, although sometimes her mother thought to ask if she had benefits yet. No, Mom. I pay my own health insurance. Her mother would nod. She would pass the butter.

  Her father said, “Your hair is getting long, Pattianne.” This was more a comment on Jen’s short haircut, though.

  Pattianne had had really long hair growing up, hardly ever got it cut, except for getting the ends trimmed, or there were bangs every once in a while. Their father liked long hair. In grade school, Pattianne could sit on hers, and the other girls always wanted to undo the braids her mother braided every morning, and brush her hair and measure it. “Look at that mess,” her mother would say when she came home from school, hair loose and flying around, all rippled from braids and snapping with static electricity. She would rebraid it, pulling the braids tight against Pattianne’s head, so it was neat when her father came home. When she was thirteen, she went to a beauty salon and got it cut short. Her neck was naked, and the ends of her hair were thick and soft. It felt like she was going to throw up when she walked into the kitchen and waited for her mother to turn around.

  When she finally did, she said, “What is your father going to say?”

  And, “Where did you get the money?”

  Her father came home from work. He hung his suit jacket on the back of his dining room chair, and he stared. He didn’t reach down and rub Starla’s curly spaniel ears, and she sat at his feet, waiting. He loosened his tie and he stared. Then he turned away. He went in the den and turned on the news.

  Pattianne whispered, “Starla,” and the spaniel followed her out of the dining room and upstairs into her bedroom. She sat on the floor and cried until dinner, hugging Starla around the neck. Starla licked her fingers. She was always licking her fingers. “I hate him,” she told her.

  That’s how the parents were. The worse it got, the quieter they got. Unless they were happy about something. Then they just didn’t say anything.

  Now it always seemed like they were just really waiting for the girls to leave.

  They each drove their separate directions when they did, and Pattianne’s cell phone rang as soon as Jen’s car was out of sight. The ringtone was the whistle part of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” which Jen put on there so Pattianne would always be happy when the phone rang even though she hated phone calls for the most part.

  “So,” Jen started right in. “Why didn’t you mention the Catholic? Didn’t you say he was an ed major? You know that would have thrilled her to her toenails.” Their mother had been particularly unresponsive when she’d learned that Even-Steven owned a tavern.

  “Hey,” Pattianne said. “Do you know if anybody does a whistle version of Mozart?” Jen was g
ood at devising personal ringtones.

  “I’ll get right on that,” she said.

  “I gotta go, there’s too much traffic to talk on the phone.”

  “Can I tell her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause it isn’t anything to tell.”

  “You mean you guys aren’t sleeping together?”

  “What, that’s what you want to tell her?”

  “Are you?”

  “Jen, I have to hang up.”

  Pattianne really couldn’t talk and drive. She turned up the radio. The classical station was playing a march. The only thing she disliked more than a waltz was a march.

  She noticed he didn’t go to Mass every Sunday. He slept late on Sunday, at her house eventually. He slipped a box of condoms in the drawer of the table next to her futon. June came on cloudy and rainy, and there were long Sunday mornings of having sex and then not having sex and then having sex again before he went out into the rain to buy a Washington Post, because he hated the New York Times, and she would slip in whatever CD she had found lately, Concerto for Flute and Harp, Piano Sonata, and take long, perfumey showers and make coffee while he was gone. He came back with bagels, or merendine buns, and the Washington Post, and he sometimes said, “Mom says to say hello.” He could go from being with Pattianne to talking to his mother on the phone just like that. Pattianne would be in the shower, shampooing her tender parts, and he’d be walking along the sidewalk talking to his mother. She wondered if he let her know that they had just spent the night together.

  She asked him once, “What exactly did your mom say?”