Mercy Street(28)

The Mass ended, Anthony lingered in the vestibule. It was a slow-moving crowd, what with the canes and walkers and Mrs. Paone’s wheelchair creating a bottleneck in the aisle. As he watched their halting progress, Mrs. Morrison touched his shoulder.

“How are you feeling, dear?”

Mrs. Morrison looked a hundred years old, but possibly wasn’t. Possibly she was his mother’s age, which was sixty or seventy. At a certain point the exact age no longer mattered. Mrs. Morrison had passed that point long ago.

He had a theory about old people, their greater devotion. Like everything in life it came down to timing, the historical moment, large impersonal forces at work in the world. Mrs. Morrison’s generation had hit it lucky. They were products of a better time.

Mrs. Morrison talked about a new medication she was taking, her daughter in Arizona with the fertility treatments and the one in Methuen who’d been diagnosed with lupus.

A better time, a better church. Anthony wanted the church of his grandmother’s day, the Kyrie and the Gloria, the Latin Mass in all its lugubrious perfume. In those days people dressed accordingly, understanding that it was the most important hour of the week. Hats and gloves for the ladies, ties and jackets for the men. Modern Catholics (he included himself in this) dressed like they were stepping out to Tedeschi’s for a pack of smokes.

He had never been to Methuen, a town that sounded like a sneeze.

He wanted fasting and indulgences, Baltimore catechism and fish on Fridays. Anthony missed these things as though he’d experienced them personally, when in fact it was all over by the time he came along. His generation got Reconciliation instead of confession. They got altar girls and folk Mass and guitar-playing nuns in blue jeans.

He took Mrs. Morrison’s arm and guided her down the church steps. “I saw your father in the post office the other day,” she said. “He was limping.”

Anthony didn’t know how to respond to this. His old man had walked out when Anthony was a teenager, though he didn’t walk far. For nearly thirty years he’d lived just across town, in the apartment above Grandma Blanchard’s garage. His departure was barely noticed. Anthony’s day-to-day life was unaffected. His dad was never home anyway. He’d simply found somewhere else to sleep.

“I asked him why and he said, I’m not limping. But I’m telling you, he was.”

It was Grandma Blanchard who’d kept the old traditions alive. For his First Communion she gave him a scapular, which was two pictures, one of the Sacred Heart, the other of the Virgin Mary, each the size of a postage stamp and laminated in plastic. The pictures were connected by a length of brown ribbon and were to be worn under his shirt, one against his chest, the other against his back. The wearing of the scapular conferred a plenary indulgence when combined with certain prayers, recited in a particular sequence.

He followed Mrs. Morrison into the parish hall, where volunteers were setting out donuts and coffee. He took a frosted donut and a cup of coffee that was mostly Cremora.

A plenary indulgence wiped out all your accrued purgatory time, for all the unabsolved sins committed in your entire life. A plenary indulgence reset the counter to zero.

The laminated pictures stuck to his skin.

The saints were prayed to for specific purposes: seasonable weather, relief of headaches, the protection of firefighters. Each saint was in charge of his own department, like middle managers in a corporation. The system was comprehensive. His own patron saint, Anthony, handled the finding of lost objects. There was a saint to help actors remember their lines, to prevent mines from collapsing, to liberate fish bones caught in the throat.

The Latin, the fish on Fridays. He’d seen photos from fifty years ago, Sunday Mass in Boston packed elbow to elbow. Now the churches were nearly empty. In ten years they’d be completely empty, the old faithful Catholics—Anthony’s entire social circle—gone to their eternal reward. There were no young people to replace them, due to the thing with the priests.

The scapular was to be worn day and night. Grandma Blanchard had been insistent on this point. In her final years she lived strategically, to collect the maximum number of indulgences. Spring was her busy season, the forty days of Lent like a January white sale, an annual event during which the best bargains could be had. Certain prayers doubled or tripled in value if said on a Friday, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Lent brought opportunities for extra credit, like managers’ specials: Stations of the Cross, the Friday fast. Mary Frances Blanchard took full advantage. In her heart she was a packrat—a thorough, organized, highly efficient hoarder of grace.

Under the Grandma administration, the Blanchard family had enjoyed peace and order. They had a blueprint for living, a clear and unconfusing path. In hindsight, which was always twenty-twenty, Anthony understood her power. After she died, his dad stopped going to church beyond the two inescapable holidays, Christmas and Easter. He walked across town and never walked back.

Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, which was the only thing anybody ever said about it.

Anthony wore the scapular until the cord frayed and the whole thing fell apart. For a long time after he missed the feeling, a square of plastic stuck to his back.

From across the room Mrs. Morrison waved him over to a table. She was still talking about the barren daughter in Arizona, but now four people were listening: Mrs. Paone and Mrs. Giuliucci, Mrs. McGann and her senile husband, who wasn’t paying attention but was always pleasant, which was how you could tell something was wrong with him.