The Halo Effect: A Novel

by Anne D. LeClaire

  Concern and conversation now centered on the weather. A high-pressure area had stalled over the northeastern seaboard, and an extraordinary, record-breaking heat had descended. For five days the temperature hit ninety-nine degrees, and accustomed to the mitigating influence of offshore breezes even at the height of summer, the town was unprepared for the intensity of the heat. Every AC unit within thirty miles had sold out days ago, and brownouts occurred periodically as utility systems wilted into overload. At the Port Fortune Sun Times, the editor reported that historically heat waves had proved more deadly than hurricanes or tornadoes. He reminded readers to stay hydrated and to remain inside during the peak hours of the day.

  Even in daylight, animals wandered into town. A deer was seen lapping water from a birdbath in Lucia Crowley’s yard, and two streets away Alan Moore witnessed a fox drinking from the bowl he’d set out on the back stoop for his dog. Over at Cape Port Ice, there was a sighting of a brown bear on the ramp leading to the worn loading dock, and in Jules Cavanaugh’s hives, the honeycombs began to melt in spite of the furious efforts of the fanning bees.

  In four days, ten deaths had occurred: three elderly residents of Rose Hall Manor, one suicide, two dogs, and four of Ben Roark’s hen pullets, whose bodies he discovered inside the coop, limp and covered with greenheads. People spoke of the heat as if it were an animal, a great creature that had crawled into their town along with the fox and deer and brown bear, suffocating all with its low-slung belly and fetid breath.

  That Tuesday morning at seven thirty the thermometer mounted outside the town hall registered eighty-three, and by noon it edged closer to one hundred. At the Morning Glory Bed and Breakfast, Leola Simmons had installed window fans in each bedroom, but arriving tourists, on learning there was no central AC, canceled their reservations and demanded their deposits be returned. At the Loaves of the Fisherman, the temperature in the kitchen by the Frialator reached one hundred and twenty-three degrees, triggering the fire alarm. Leon Newell, Caesar Amero, and Portuguese Joe sat at their regular table and recalled heat waves of decades past, the summers of ’98 and ’34.

  At the town pier the Johnny B Good arrived in from a trip offshore to a pier so hot the crew felt as if they were stepping on the sun. Moving as quickly as the heat allowed, the men unloaded the trawler and re-iced their catch. Waves of white incandescence rose off the parking lot; tires on boat trailers sank into the softening macadam.

  The police department issued extreme heat advisories, and Chief Johnson reminded residents that the elderly and animals were at the highest risk. Tempers flared as if in sync with the mercury, and Dot Hastings, the station dispatcher, dealt with a steady in-rush of calls reporting escalating bar brawls and domestic quarrels, people collapsing on the street, and homeowners violating the recently instituted ban on watering lawns. “This outdoes the full-moon mania,” Dot said to Dan Gordon, who arrived at the station having just cited the owner of an Alaskan malamute for leaving the dog in a locked car while she was shopping in an air-conditioned market. Even at the beach there was no relief. Swimmers suffered sunburns; cranky children blistered their feet just by walking across the sand.

  At Holy Apostles, fans had been set up in the sanctuary, and Father Gervase’s garden was showing signs of stress. Each morning and evening he surveyed the brown-edged leaves of daylilies and the limp blossoms of hydrangea bushes, and mindful of the request to limit watering lawns and gardens, he convinced Mrs. Jessup to save her dishwater, which he carried in jugs to pour out at the base of the plants.

  So life went on.

  If people talked about the Light family now, they focused less on the mystery of the daughter’s murder and more on the honor her father was bringing to Port Fortune. Will Light had been chosen by the archdiocese of Boston to paint the murals for that city’s new cathedral, a series of the saints that would hang in the nave, portraits for whom he had asked some of the people of Port Fortune to serve as models.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Ya know, Jossie thinks this is pretty damn funny,” Leon Newell said.

  “What’s that?” I was paying halfhearted attention to Leon’s conversation. When some models posed they tended to be talkative, and over the years I’d learned to filter them out.

  “This. Me posing as a saint. Jossie’s laughing her head off about it. She says if I’m a saint, it has to be one with singed and broken wings.”

  “She must be thinking of angels. I don’t think saints have wings.”

  “Well, she says that maybe me posing as a saint some of it will rub off. I told her not to get her hopes up.”

  I had to smile. As is true in many small towns, gossip was its lifeblood, and although I usually paid little attention to it, Leon’s reputation as a drinker was legendary. In that he was not alone. When the cod stock diminished, a good share of the fishermen began driving trucks with bumper stickers that said, “Port Fortune—A Drinking Town with a Fishing Problem.”

  “We’re almost ready,” I told him. “It’ll just take me another minute or two to get things set.”

  “No problem.” Leon looked around. “I haven’t been in this building in years. Used to be Louie Johns’s place.”

  “That so?”

  “Yup. I guess you’ve heard of him.”

  I ran the name through my mind. “Sounds vaguely familiar,” I said. “But I can’t place him.”

  “No kidding. I thought everyone in town knew of him. He was a boatbuilder. One of the best. A real craftsman. Wooden boats, ya know. None of that fiberglass crap for him. You wanted a dory or a catboat built, Louie was the man. Sloops, too. He had buyers coming up all the way from Maryland. Even a couple of times from Florida. Seams on his boats were so tight, they’d never sink as long as you kept them in water. Here. Let me show you something.” He stepped down from the riser I’d built for the models to stand on and crossed to the back of the building, walking with the rolling gait of a man who had spent years at sea. “Ya see that beam? See those cuts up there?”

  I stood beside Leon and gazed up at the beam, saw a faint hatching of scars.

  “There’s one for every boat Louie built. Must be a hundred of ’em. You can still see some of his earliest ones around the harbor. The narrower ones. They’re the ones that last longer. Boats are same as people. Bigger they are the more they carry, and the body can’t stand the extra weight.” Leon rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “Louie died a while back. Must be—let’s see. Must be ten years now. Kinda funny though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You painting saints in here. I’ll tell ya, most Saturday nights there used to be some hell-raising going on in this place.”

  “That so?”

  “Oh, you can’t imagine. ’Course, everything is so dull these days. Some guys I know turned into teetotalers. Attend those meetings. Like they took the pledge. Not like the old days. Chappy Wilson—you heard of him? No? Well, he’d bring in some of his home brew. High-octane, that stuff was. Ya know what he put in it? Potato peelings. See? Vegetable stuff. Oranges.”

  A poor man’s vodka, I thought and shuddered. “How’d it taste?”

  “It wasn’t the taste we was looking for. My Christ, but we had some good times. More than once someone called the police. Different times, those were. ’Course, after he lost his son, he quit the booze.”

  I looked up. “He lost a son?”

  “Over in ’Nam. Caught in an ambush. The day he got the news, Louie quit the drink cold turkey.”

  A better man than I, I thought. I gazed up at the marks on the beams and wondered how many of them had been incised after the death of the boatbuilder’s boy.

  As Leon walked back to take his place on the riser, he looked around as if ghosts of past days still lingered. “How long have you owned the place?”

  “Oh, I don’t own it. I’m only renting it for this project.” I would have preferred being in my own studio, but at the outset it had become apparent that the oversized dimensions of the canva
ses would require a large work space, and with the understanding that the diocese would absorb the cost, I’d negotiated for use of the barnlike building. There were two skylights in the high ceiling that, along with the rolling barn doors that opened to the water, offered good light. I had already grown used to the smell, an amalgam of wood and tar and varnish and the lingering must of a building that shouldered up to the sea.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get started. I don’t want to take up your whole morning. I’m going to begin by taking some photos, a few different poses that I’ll use as studies. As I explained earlier, your head, hands, and feet are all that will show in the final painting. The rest of you will be covered by a robe.”

  “Who am I supposed to be? Jossie was asking me. I know you told me, but I already forgot.”

  “Saint Brendan.” I looked over at Leon’s deformed hands, his seamed and weathered face, and saw in them a likeness of the ancient saint.

  “Brendan, huh? Never heard of him.”

  “He was Irish. A sailor. I thought you might know of him, you being a fisherman and all. He’s one of the patron saints of sailors.”

  “Hell, I was raised Baptist. No saints for us.”

  I gestured toward the far side of the room, where several stacks of books and folders were spread across the surface of a workbench. “You can read about him if you want. There’s a folder with his name on it over there.”

  “Well, he must have been an ugly son of a bitch if you want me to sit for him. So what do you want me to do?”

  “Stand there and look holy,” I said.

  “Jesus.” Leon laughed. “That’s one hell of a tall order.”

  “We’ll start with your hands.” People were most comfortable when I focused on their hands, and I began with those to put them at ease. If you pay attention, you’ll notice how revealing hands are of a person’s life. Looking at Leon’s I was reminded of the smooth, plump hands of seventeen-year-old Tracy Ramos, whom I’d chosen for Rose of Lima, and the pale, thick-knuckled ones of the Portuguese baker who posed for Crispin of Viterbo. Leon’s were thickened and worn, fingers permanently cupped from years of hauling nets.

  “Okay, now if you’d just clasp your hands in prayer.”

  Leon shifted from one leg to the other, then joined his hands.

  I never gave specific directions beyond that, just asking my models to hold their hands as if they were gathering for Communion. Some folded their hands, fingers interlaced tightly as if hiding something in their palms as Leon did then. Some cupped one hand over the other. Others pressed palms together, fingers steepled together, like a child’s, while others aimed their fingers straight forward. What I noticed, though, was how when they stood there, robed and hands held in an attitude of prayer, people stood a little taller, a little straighter, reverent, and I was unexpectedly touched by this. And then, immediately, thought if I wasn’t careful I’d find myself lighting candles. Or heading over to the grocery store to purchase some aerosol cans I thought of as spray and pray.

  After Leon left, I rolled open the large barn doors on the water side of the building to take advantage of the slight breeze coming in from the harbor, although the movement of air did little to alleviate the already intense heat. It was impractical to air-condition a space that vast, but if the weather continued, I knew I would need to install a few more fans. I was scanning the photographic studies I’d done of Leon when a shadow fell across the workbench. I looked up to see Father Gervase standing there. The priest held two takeout drink containers, the sides beaded with sweat.

  “I didn’t want to bother you, but I thought you might like a cold drink,” he said.

  “Thanks.” You might be surprised to learn I wasn’t unhappy to see the priest. We had developed an odd relationship, not friendship but a peculiar sense of ease with each other. He would show up at the oddest hours, always with a cold drink or cookies he had purchased at the bakery. Sometimes he would just sit and watch me work, and other times he would chat, reminiscing about his childhood in Wisconsin or his work as a young priest in an inner city. Once he had been called by the police to talk to a man who held an entire SWAT team at bay with a gun. “He told us to get you,” the cop had said. “You’re the only one he’ll talk to.” Again and again the little priest continued to surprise me. “As a matter of fact, I was just about to take a break,” I said.

  Father Gervase set the glasses down and sank down on one of the smaller benches. “I also come with a message.”

  I didn’t bother any attempt to withhold a sigh. “From the archbishop,” I said.

  He smiled. “From the archbishop.”

  “What does His Grace want now?” From our first meeting, the big-bellied and well-coifed cardinal had struck me as more a smooth and successful salesman than a priest—a salesman, I soon learned, who was adept at generating positive PR for the church. Once the many decisions, negotiations, and compromises intrinsic to the project had been settled and I’d signed the commission contract, the archbishop called a press conference to announce it. The surprise in all this had been Father Gervase, who was proving to be an unexpected ally. When Cardinal Kneeland voiced reservations about my idea of using the townspeople as models, it was Father Gervase who had reminded the archbishop that traditionally the greatest artists had employed local people as models, paintings resulting in some of the most famous examples of religious art. He knew of a former church in Rhode Island that had become renowned for its frescoes painted by an Italian artist in the 1940s, all of whom bore the faces of the church’s former parishioners. And then there was the matter of selecting the forty-two saints to be painted, seven for each of the six panels. The archbishop had wanted to choose them, but Father Gervase pointed out perhaps the artistic vision should lie with the artist but I could submit renderings to the committee for review, presenting the idea so cleverly that the archbishop ended up believing it had been his own. Again, I realized how easy it was to underestimate the little priest. And it had been Father Gervase’s quiet suggestion that one figure not yet sanctified be incorporated in the saints’ Communion gathering, a figure who would represent the potential for sainthood in everyone.

  “Cardinal Kneeland has a proposal.”

  “And who does he want included now?” It had been settled that I would choose the saints for the panels, but each week the archbishop “suggested” one he believed should be represented.

  Father Gervase hesitated. “Well, he’s been thinking about what an opportunity there is here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The fact that you’re painting here in this building, right by the center of town. He has an idea he thinks could be a win-win for everyone.”

  A win-win for everyone. I could hear the archbishop’s silky voice in that phrase. “So what’s the idea?”

  “That you open the studio to the public so they can come in, look at what you’re doing, see the work as it progresses.” Noting my expression, he quickly added, “It’s not proposing this for every day, you understand. Just one morning or afternoon each week.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “His thinking is that it would be good exposure for you and generate interest for the project.”

  “I don’t work that way, Father. On display. I don’t do sideshow art.”

  The priest nodded, then smiled gently, as if he had known before he asked that this would be my answer. “I’ll pass on your response.”

  From my prior interactions with the archbishop, I doubted that this would be the end of it.

  “How are things coming?” Father Gervase asked.

  “No problems so far.” If one discounted the meddling of your archbishop, I thought. “I’ve drafted the scheme for the first panel on the south side of the nave.” I indicated the white board I’d nailed along one wall of the building where some of the photos were displayed. “The photographic studies for Rose of Lima, Crispin, Peter, Paul, Maurice, Brendan, and Ambrose are completed.”

  The pr
iest inspected the photos. “Interesting.”

  “How’s that?”

  “That you have the baker posing as Crispin.” He pointed to Alonzo Americo’s head, black hair so abundant with curls they formed a cap. “Crispin. From the Latin. It means ‘with curly hair.’ And there’s Jules Cavanaugh as Ambrose, the patron saint for beekeepers.”

  There’s a saint for everyone, for everything, Sophie had said so long ago. Knock-knees and nose hair? I’d teased her. Lost pets, she’d countered. And lost causes. I wondered if she still believed.

  Father Gervase leaned in closer to the photos. “Hands,” he said after a minute. “So beautiful. So individual.”

  “Yes,” I said, and found myself sharing with the priest my observation about the different ways the models held their hands in prayer and how they stood more reverently when they posed.

  “And you find that unusual? Their reverence?” Father Gervase returned to the small bench by one of the worktables.

  “I guess I don’t understand the pull of religion.”

  “You never attended church?”

  “As a child. But a very skeptical child.” My parents had seen that I attended Sunday church school, but even then, as I’d listened to Mrs. Moulton read the story lessons, disbelief had surfaced. Alone in the bulrushes wouldn’t the baby Moses have cried and been discovered? And in that den? Wouldn’t a lion really eat Daniel? A lion? My questioning only grew as I aged. I couldn’t understand the mindless acceptance of dogma, an acceptance people were quick to call faith. And I was repelled by the way everyone protected his own little plot, which of course involved making everyone else wrong. I couldn’t understand the surrender of self to priests and popes that Sophie’s religion demands.