by Tonya Hurley
“I’m proud to sign my checks on the back. Not the front.”
Agnes was mystified at how venomous the bickering had turned. Just like the fights between her and her mother. She knew full well where this was headed.
Cecilia wouldn’t let it go. “Well, you look nothing like your pictures, but I won’t hold it against you in this weather.”
Suddenly, it dawned on Agnes as well. She gasped. “Lucky Lucy.”
“Brooklyn’s very own Miss Teen Famewhore,” Cecilia scoffed.
“Like it or love it.” Lucy shrugged, gladly embracing her reputation. “You can take your finger off the jealous button now.”
“Hardly,” CeCe said, dropping her cigarette to the floor. “But at least you’re self-aware.”
“Bitch,” Lucy said.
“God, when will they legalize medicinal murder?” Cecilia said out loud to herself, while looking up to the heavens.
“You’re making my head hurt!” Agnes was wearing down and it was beginning to show. They all were.
“Stay out of it, Rapunzel,” Cecilia said, a little irritated at both her long mane and her faux-bohemianism.
Lucy’s wasn’t the only familiar face to Agnes. The longer she listened to CeCe peck at her, the more she realized Cecilia had a familiar face as well.
“And I know you,” Agnes said to CeCe. “You opened for that band at my school a few months ago.”
“That can’t be true,” Lucy cracked. “You are an artiste. An indie goddess. An original.”
“It was for charity,” Cecilia explained sheepishly.
“Rockin’ the school gym,” Lucy snarked. “How desperate.”
“I rock anywhere I am,” Cecilia quipped.
“Something we have in common, then,” Lucy said.
“No, I actually do something.”
“Stop,” Agnes demanded. With points scored on each side, Lucy and Cecilia finally took Agnes’s advice and took a deep breath. They each plunked themselves down in separate pews and stared at the burning wicks, seated near to one another but each left alone with her own thoughts. All thinking the worst was yet to come, as the tension between them was growing, like they were passengers stuck in a stalled elevator car. “We’re all just tense. Let’s be silent. Be still.”
“I was just looking for a way out,” Lucy blurted. “That’s really why I’m here.”
“I get that you’re hiding,” CeCe said.
“Who isn’t?” Agnes agreed. “But there are other places to disappear.”
“Doesn’t everybody look for a shuttered church with a hot guy to hide in?” Lucy replied, trying to tamp down Agnes’s magical thinking.
The sudden sound of banging, nails being driven into wood, startled them and ended the conversation for the moment.
“Sebastian?” Cecilia called out to no reply, just more hammering.
“Actually, there is a long history of people seeking sanctuary in churches. To avoid persecution,” Agnes cut in. “Brooklyn is known as the Borough of Churches.”
Cecilia and Lucy just looked at her skeptically.
“Makes sense,” Lucy added. “I’m constantly feeling persecuted.”
“You and your first-world injuries,” Cecilia pushed back, lighting another cigarette from an altar candle. “It still doesn’t answer the basic question. Why were we all drawn here, to this place, with him, specifically?”
“I guess the honest answer is, I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I’m not religious or anything. I don’t even say God bless you when someone sneezes. What about you?” she asked Cecilia. “And yelling ‘Oh God’ early on a Sunday morning doesn’t count as religious.”
“I am a total ecclesiophobe,” CeCe responded.
“Wait, you’re afraid of churches?” Agnes asked.
“For good reason, I’ll bet,” Lucy added snidely.
“I just prefer preaching to come from an amp, not an altar,” CeCe said.
“So postmodern,” Lucy scoffed.
CeCe ignored her, lost momentarily in thought. She wasn’t feeling at all uncomfortable, to her surprise. “The majesty, the rituals, the history, the art. A lot of it is really cool,” she went on. “I get it. But it’s hard for me to believe in anything I can’t really feel.”
“I don’t go to church much, mostly because my mom makes such a big deal out of it,” Agnes admitted. “But I do go to Catholic school.”
“Those are the worst. I’d drop out if I were you,” Lucy snarked. “Oh wait, I did drop out.”
“My mom thought it would be a better environment for me.”
Lucy translated. “More disciplined, she meant.”
“Is that so bad?” Agnes asked.
“You tell me,” Lucy answered, pointing to Agnes’s wrists. “How’s it working out for you?”
“My parents tried that on me, too, but I told them I would run away before I went,” CeCe confided.
Agnes admired her backbone. “So they made you go?”
“No, I ran away,” CeCe said. “Public or parochial school wasn’t really my main issue. Going to school at all was.”
“So here we are: a squatter and a runaway, a dropout, and a would-be suicide. Four sinners in a giant church, and none of us knows why?” Lucy summed up. “Is that it?”
“One of us knows why,” Cecilia croaked, her voice getting hoarse from the dusty dampness.
“Knows what?” Sebastian said, emerging from the darkness.
“Eavesdropping?” Lucy asked.
“No need,” Sebastian said. “I’m surprised they didn’t hear that catfight outside.”
“So, what was it?” Agnes asked.
“A huge tree snapped in half, pushed through one of the windows. Glass everywhere. I did the best I could to board it up. You can’t keep it outside forever.”
“The storm?” Lucy asked.
Sebastian was once again silent.
“We were just asking each other how we all wound up here,” Agnes added calmly. “None of us has a clue.”
“How about you?” Lucy asked.
Sebastian sat down in their grouping.
“Me and this place go way back,” he began. “I was an altar boy here when I was a kid.”
“Overshare!” Lucy gulped.
“Nothing like that,” Sebastian pushed back. “I learned a lot about myself here.”
“Is that why you know your way around so well?” Cecilia asked.
“Sort of,” he said haltingly. “My grandmother raised me and used to bring me here on Sundays. When she died a few years ago, I stopped coming.”
“Did you lose your faith or something?” Agnes asked.
“No, I think maybe some other people lost theirs.”
“Have you been on your own since then?”
“I got bounced around to a few foster homes in the neighborhood, but that didn’t last long.”
Sebastian was clearly uncomfortable revealing details of his personal life.
“Well, we’re all here now,” CeCe observed.
Agnes was settling down but Sebastian could see she was still pale and shaky. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.
“No,” she said.
He walked over to her pew, helped her up, and moved her to the back of the church where he sat down next to her, leaving Lucy and Cecilia alone together.
“That was convenient,” Lucy whispered to CeCe as Sebastian led Agnes away. “She’s really working that whole little miss vulnerable thing, and he’s totally falling for it. Well, he doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“His life is really none of our business, and vice versa,” Cecilia whispered. “Once the storm passes, we’ll go back to our lives like none of this ever happened.”
“Yeah, but all I’m saying is the altar boy thing sounds a little shady,” Lucy pressed. “I think he lives here and he’s too embarrassed to say it.”
“So what if he does?”
“I hate wasted potential. He’s smart, cool, amazing-looking. The sky is the limi
t,” Lucy said.
“Not everybody wants what you want. Maybe he’s got other plans for himself. Better things than just getting his picture in the paper or on some blogger’s home page.”
“Like what? Playing dives and pretending to be happy?” Lucy railed snidely. “We live in a headline world and he’s a headline guy. In fact, he kind of reminds me of myself. The things I like, anyway.”
“Are you bipolar or something?” CeCe rasped.
“Tell me you don’t feel that way too?” Lucy asked. “He’s sensitive with Agnes, inspiring with you, reassuring with me. He doesn’t even know us but he knows what we want. What we need.”
“Your theories are making me tired.” Cecilia yawned, standing. “Besides, why do you care?”
“I don’t really. . . . But I do,” Lucy said. “Don’t you?”
Cecilia went silent as they walked toward a pew at the front of the church, sneaking peeks back at Sebastian comforting Agnes.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” she admitted.
“Whatever. It will be a good story someday,” Lucy said, putting her “promotional cap” on, as she was trained to do in difficult situations. “Maybe he’s just a religious fanatic or a Bible-banger or something.”
“I really hope not.”
“Why?”
CeCe flashed a smile.
“I don’t do Bible-bangers.”
“I bet you do.” Lucy laughed.
“We’re in a church for Christ’s sake,” Cecilia said, feigning indignance.
“Look who’s talking,” Lucy reminded her.
Cecilia felt her knees buckle slightly. “I don’t know what it is but my head is spinning. I need to chill for a while.”
“Okay, yeah,” Lucy agreed, her head still smarting. “I‘m not feeling like myself either.”
“I think you need some sleep,” Cecilia said. “We all do.”
CECILIA’s DREAM
Cecilia rose just before dawn.
She was alone.
Dressed in an elaborate garnetencrusted bodice and long, off-white, intricately ruffled gown, the entire ensemble sacked loosely in black chiffon. Her hair was teased a little, held in an updo by a supple, thorny vine. Her lips were white, like her skin, slightly powdered over. Her cheeks were etched in a deep rose color and her eyes were smoky and dark. She looked like a work of art, more palette than person.
The first wave of panic since she arrived surged through her, flooding her arteries with adrenaline and setting her heart racing.
“Lucy,” she called out. “Agnes?”
And finally, “Sebastian.”
“Over here,” he said.
She turned her head in the direction of the altar and saw him. The beams of light breaking through and into the nave actually made it harder to see from that distance. She needed to get closer.
“Don’t move,” she said, edging herself out of the long pew toward the center aisle of the church. “I’m coming.”
She paused, unsure whether to genuflect, bow her head, or just keep moving. It had been so long since she’d had to think about it. She did a little of all three—bending a knee, lowering her chin a touch, and slouched forward toward the altar. It was a far cry from how she’d pictured her wedding as a little girl.
Back then, her gait was slow and steady, in waltz time, her white-satin-and-bead gown flowing, the pews full, silk streamers hung into the aisle, bouquets of roses and peonies wrapped with fresh Irish bells adorning every square inch of the church. Waiting for her, of course, was the perfect guy. She could never actually see his face, but he cut a handsome figure nonetheless. Tall, tuxedoed, trim, she imagined him walking right out of a fairy tale when she was younger. These days walking off the cover of Rolling Stone would do just fine.
How different her life was turning out. Instead of a charming prince to cuddle, it was an endless parade of sketchy pervs, all take and no give. Their appeal to her soon became their utter predictability. They got what they came for, and she got what she asked for. A circle-jerk of boredom, guilt, punishment, and self-hatred. Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed, she’d heard it said. Cecilia was never disappointed.
She admired her dress, feeling like it was made just for her, but when and by whom, she had no idea. She felt like a goddess. As she approached the altar, she stared down at the two marble steps preceding it and looked up again at Sebastian, who was standing near the lectern, a harp behind him. A sudden bout of vertigo struck her and her ears began to ring, as if she’d been hit in the head. She felt unsteady, slowed.
“I’m waiting . . . ,” he said. “For you.”
“Where are the others?”
“We’re here,” he said, reaching out his hand for her.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
“The altar or me?” he said, his piercing eyes catching hers, burning through her resistance.
“Is there a difference?” To her, they felt like one and the same. A sacrifice.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said reassuringly, reaching now to her with both arms open.
She lifted her leg from the floor and placed it onto the first step. She was finding it hard to breathe. “I feel like a child. Why is this so hard?”
“Because it’s right.”
She bowed her head and gently began to sway it in time to the sound of the harp, which was just beyond her reach. “I hear music.”
“What is it?”
“A love song. Do you hear it?”
She began to mumble, then hum, and then sing softly as if channeling an invisible karaoke machine. It was an old habit. A chant to prepare her heart for battle.
“I do,” he said. “Blues?”
“Johnny Cash,” she said. “ ‘Hurt.’”
“Sing it for me.”
“No. Too sad. The saddest song I ever heard.”
“The happiest.”
“Is there a difference?” She moved her other foot up on the first step and then the second, music blaring in her head. She walked into his arms and pressed her ear against his chest. It was muscled, hard, unlike the guys she’d usually “dated.” She rested there in his warmth for a while and felt his hands roll over her back, which she was always self-conscious of. All those years of dance as a kid, she supposed. Her spine was an outie the entire length of her sway back, a ridge of bony angles pushing up through her skin. Reptilian. At least that is the way she always described it. Ugliness inside trying to get out, and if not out, then to make itself visible. A warning. A way to keep love at arm’s length. Like a cobra baring its fangs.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
She was embarrassed, both by the tenderness of his words and the depth of her own self-loathing. She’d heard those words before, from overenthusiastic fan girls spewing random compliments or smarmy one-night stands trying to make nice before asking her to leave. She’d heard those words, but never listened, until now.
“I don’t do love,” she whispered, looking up at him quickly for a reaction and then returning to the nest she’d laid in his chest.
“Because love has never done you,” he said, reaching out to hold her.
“Please, don’t.”
Sebastian reached inside a glass reliquary box and pulled out a plain platinum wedding band.
“The choice is yours,” he said, placing the ring on her finger and holding her tighter. “Not mine.”
“Love is never a choice. Is it?”
He reached firmly for her face and turned it up toward his for a kiss. Their lips met and joined in a gentle collision of confusion and desire. She felt the sharpness of his stubbled chin and cheeks rubbing against hers; it hurt and she liked it. Cecilia felt a peace she had never known and, all at once, an angst she had never known either. The harp song grew louder. She felt like a string being plucked. Vibrating in tune.
Her heart was beating even faster now, dangerously so, and she felt the blood leaving her head. Her hands went numb and her knees weak. Is this lo
ve, she thought, a panic attack, or something else?
“I’m not ready,” she gasped through purpled lips.
“Is there a choice?” he asked.
Cecilia often thought love might kill her, but this was different from anything she could have imagined. As if her heart were too full, not broken.
“I’m dying,” she said, reaching for his hand, which was now squeezing ever tighter around her slender throat. “You are killing me.”
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered again in her ear, tightening his grip.
“I have no faith,” she gasped, “in love.”
“You look so beautiful,” he repeated again. “So. Very. Beautiful.”
Cecilia continued to struggle but was weakening fast. She felt helpless to stuff back in the life that was leaving her body.
Her eyes were bulged wide and fixed on an illusionistic mural painted brightly on the ceiling. Angels and a blue open sky above, which seemed to come to life as she was dying. Then she fixed her eyes on his. He was looking at her so lovingly. So passionately. Like she’d never been looked at before.
“I love you, but I must not think of you.”
She felt clean again.
Her dress turned to pure white satin. Like her skin. The thorny vine that wove through her hair sprouted delicate, tiny, red spring beauties. Just like she always dreamed it would as a little girl.
As her chest heaved and her last breaths left her, her arms dropped limply to her sides, a stream of garnet blood began to color her powdered lips as black beauty roses formed a bed around her feet. The music stopped. Her consciousness faded to darkness and then suddenly a burst of white.