by Mary Pearson
“rub a back…?” and suited the action to the word—at least for a moment. Then she tried to get Stacy to rub her back, but her big sister was simply in no mood to comply. Having failed at this attempt, Reecie tried making the not-so-scary-scary face that usually got Stacy to laugh until she rolled on the floor. Nothing helped. So then Reecie started to cry, which forced her big sister to comfort her. This lifted Stacy’s spirits for awhile—until the little girl lost interest and traipsed off with the suggestion, “Watch Barney…?”
Stacy thought not. After she had cried for literal hours, exhaustion took over. She fell asleep and didn’t bother to get up all day or all night. She dragged herself to Mass with her family, but the tears flowed, if anything, more freely there. She couldn’t understand a word of the sermon, but the sweet lyrics of that morning’s hymns broke her heart all over again. And when during communion, the choir sang Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth, falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain of wheat and never the blade shall rise, she knew she was the grain the song spoke of. People glanced with embarrassed concern as she wept in the line that led to Communion, but she couldn’t help it and she wouldn’t sit down. She needed God as she had never needed anything before. In the Eucharist she found a measure of solace.
She hid in her room for most of the day, but when it came time for the rosary, she dried her tears and joined her family. As he was listing intercessions, George, who knew nothing of the past few days’ events, added a new one: “For whatever is making our Stacy so sad.” Maybe this was the reason she was able to pray without crying. When she awoke the next day, she felt she could face the day at school—but she wasn’t the same person she had been. She had been cruelly betrayed and she would never be so trusting again.
She saw Darius in the hall that morning , surrounded as always by his throngs (minus Junie, she was glad to note), only now there was a new addition—Libby. He seemed as carefree as ever, which didn’t surprise Stacy all that much. Seeing her looking at them, Libby extricated herself from the group.
“However that looks,” she put a reassuring hand on Stacy’s arm, “Darius and I are just friends.”
Stacy nodded. She really didn’t owe Libby anything and it didn’t seem that Libby was being particularly faithful to Arthur either. Nevertheless common decency compelled her to say it. “You might not want to go there, Lib.”
Libby forced a laugh. “I can see that someone’s jealous.”
Stacy shrugged. That was all she was willing to give her. She would have to warn Arthur about Libby and she dearly hoped that he, also, wouldn’t take it the wrong way.
At lunch that day, which she ate by herself—shades of old times—Junie found her. She sat opposite Stacy. “Ed’s gone—he moved out.”
“I’m sorry,” Stacy said.
“I’m not.” Junie’s voice was firm. “And neither is my mom. She thanked me, said he never should have moved in with us when he did.”
Stacy offered her some grapes, but the younger girl shook her head. “I can’t sit here long. It’s too unusual. I called one of those groups you told me about and they’ve hooked me up with a tutor. That way I can stay home while I’m showing. People don’t need to know about this.” Junie glanced around furtively. “It’s really nobody else’s business. I’m hoping that you’ll keep my secret, too.”
Stacy nodded. “But I hope you’re not protecting him.”
“He has a lot of big dreams,” Junie said in reply. “If he’s meant to become a politician, I don’t want this to be the reason he was forced to work in a warehouse.”
Stacy couldn’t help scowling. “He deserves to pay for this,” she muttered.
“And he will pay the birthing costs for the child,” Junie assured her. “It’s required by law.”
“I won’t say anything,” Stacy shrugged, “if that’s what you want.”
When Stacy was getting ready to go to work that afternoon, she glanced out the back window and saw the roses scattered where she had thrown them two days ago. The snow glittered in the bright sun and one particularly large sparkle reminded her of the diamond she had asked St. Jude to get her. She experienced a wave of gratitude that he hadn’t come through with that one and she hastily thanked him. This reminded her that she needed to thank St. Anthony for the safe return of Grandma Annie’s necklace. She was sorry to have doubted these ‘brothers’ in the faith. They weren’t ignoring her and they did get the job done after all.
As far as that went, she realized that if Junie could be forgiving with Darius, she could try to forgive him, too. I forgive you for hurting me, Darius, she whispered. Although the words felt forced and untruthful, she experienced an immediate rush of relief.
It was Monday and that meant Confirmation class. Father Joseph reminded Stacy that she had pledged to give a presentation on the Shroud with him and he suggested that next week might be a good time to do this. Stacy realized with a jolt that her in-school presentation was only a couple of weeks away. It was time for her to stop gathering data and start putting her information together in a speech. She had compiled quite a bit by now. She hoped it was enough. She made an outline for her first speech that night before going to bed. This presentation she entitled: The Shroud of Turin: How We Can Know It’s the Real Thing. Her other Speech would be more along the line of “The Grail We Guard: A Templar Knight’s Perspective”. As Stacy gazed at the 8x10 picture of Jesus—Divine Mercy and Shroud of Turin—she felt like a Templar. She had kept this picture on the desk by her bed ever since she got it at the conference and she couldn’t say how often she had sat contemplating Him. She ruefully realized that if she had been among the Templars she might have been executed for ‘worshiping a bearded Face’, like some of them were. She didn’t worship it, any more than she worshiped the photos of her dad that her mother had given her to help her remember him. But she did treasure it. The two of them had been through a lot since the conference and she knew He would continue to be with her—no matter where life took her.
Arthur was at the evening prayers the next night and Stacy knew that since he was studying architecture and graphic design in college he would be able to help her put together a power point presentation for her speeches. She asked him if he was too busy and he said he’d be glad to help her with this after work the next night. The school had a projector she could use and Stacy and Emily shared a laptop and scanner. There were loads of great photos in the books she had read, so they had everything they needed to begin.
“OK, so what is it that we need to accomplish?” Arthur asked as they hunkered down at the dining room table to begin the project. They were surrounded by all of the books Stacy had acquired during her research. Stacy had outlined the major points she wanted to get across for her presentation to the Confirmation class.
“We need to come up with photographic backup for every aspect I plan to discuss about the shroud. For example, my first topic is, What is the Shroud? I plan to show them the wall hanging you gave me for Christmas, while I tell them it is the burial cloth of Christ. If you could scan and display the cover art on the Antonacci book, which depicts Jesus being prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus…” She handed him the book and he scanned it, saving it as their first image. “I’ll tell the class that the Shroud was a 14’ 3”x3’7” cloth made of linen woven with cotton, reportedly purchased by Joseph of Arimathea for the purpose of burying Jesus after he died on the cross. At the moment of the Resurrection an image was imprinted on the cloth. The Image is a photographic negative, has 3-D qualities and is in some respects an X-ray of the subject as well. None of these properties could have been known until at least the twentieth century and most were only coming to light near the close of the century. A person can only make out the Image at a distance of 8 feet from the cloth—too near or too far and it disappears to the naked eye.” Stacy leafed through her books and found photos which showed the 3-D and X-ray qualities of the image and Arthur scanned them. Then she had him scan another full-col
or enhanced photo of the Shroud frontal image and pointed out that the most notable details were the scorch marks from the fire the Shroud had been through during the 1530’s. She also would have them note the blood images, which appeared as a photographic positive against the negative of the body image.
“My second topic is What do people think about the Shroud? Here she had Arthur scan an image of the D’arcis memorandum and a photo of Walter McCrone. She described the only credible objections to the authenticity of the Shroud—that it was a painted forgery, as stated by the Bishop of Arcis, and that the substance used to paint it was iron oxide bound using gelatin from boiled bones, which McCrone had stated erroneously, after cursory examination of the evidence, and which he later retracted. Then she showed the photo of the smug-looking doctors who were revealing medieval dates rendered by the carbon-testing experiment, and who had led millions to wrongly believe the Shroud was a painted forgery. Other than these rather weak objections, nothing had been brought forth to disprove Its validity.
Next she tackled the topic, Why the Shroud cannot be a painting. She had Arthur scan various close-up photos of the individual fibers. She would show them