The days grow short; the nights are getting colder—
So are the conversations on the phone,
And almost every evening he’s alone.
He shivered when he thought of what he’d told her.

The fire that blazed has now begun to smolder.
A new fire kindled from the earlier one
Is quickly lit and just as shortly done:
To have loved and lost is to be that much older.

A heart grown up but wandering like a waif,
Searching for shadows of what might have been,
Might find the light–the truth about the past,
A pathway to a clearing that is safe,

A comforter, whose kindliness could mean
A hearth, a home, a fire that’s built to last.

The door—here, too, something seems amiss
 If known conventions be applied to this.
 Unlike the tidy portals near and next,
 Of chrome and glass, exquisitely Windexed,
 The knotted oak leaves outside witness blind,
 But those who enter know what they will find.

Come in— behold the old world pass away
 Beyond those oaken sentries. Though it may
 Have once diverted you with hustle and shine,
 You scarcely notice leaving it behind,
 As certain (perhaps all) things now seem new.
 Turn, then, to what lies ahead of you.

The air is different here, by which you mean
 Not only the aroma: in between
 The ceiling’s vault and your unexalted feet
 There floats a certain sense of your receipt
 By sitting here, of some ancient craftsmen’s goal
 That builders’ every stroke should prove their soul.

And what a proof! The cornerstones support
 A gilded, grained, and marbled saintly court
 Whose heights, impervious to man’s impeach,
 Stand high (on common stone) above your reach.
 Such beauty seems beyond mere mortals’ sphere,
 But such, indeed, were those who put it here.

The rituals begin, and you’re aware
 That others might see merely folly there.
 But others stand outside the oaken doors
 And have what sight their chosen place affords.
 The chorus swells, a hundred voices. Then,
 The structure proves the builder yet again.

—Christopher Paolelli

(with apologies to G.M.H.)

Stove-knobs, strange numbers, goblin-glinting dials,
Flame-plates atop, caged conflagration hides,
Broil, bake, baste, burn, bent digit-discs deride—
O how to cook Spaghetti-O’s at whiles?
Filth-floor no-man-mopped, wretched refuse piles:
No trash-can-space for pizza boxes I'd
Consumed last night: alas, they're now inside
The stove whose every knob I've blindly twiled.
Enough! Extinguisher, thou scythe of might,
Gush gas at gaping jaws of jagged flame.
Away, Sith smoke tsunami, leering light,
Piss off, thou smoke alarm of blaring blame:
Th’apartment shall not be destroyed tonight,
Nor my Spaghetti-O’s be lost in shame!

Not so long ago Bruce Springsteen made a surprise visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland to take in an exhibit dedicated to his life’s work.¹ The exhibit, which took up two entire floors of the museum, was filled with artifacts from Springsteen’s life, including guitars, clothing, hand-written lyrics, and walls of photographs. One of the photographs was of an eight year-old Springsteen, standing with hands folded in front of the high altar at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Freehold, New Jersey—Springsteen’s first communion picture.

Bruce Springsteen’s relationship with the Catholic Church may have reached its peak on his first communion day. He writes, “In the third grade a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because, she said, that’s where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during Mass.”² By the time he made his confirmation, the sacrament which is supposed to seal you with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to spread the Gospel to all corners of the earth, Springsteen had had enough. In his words, “I quit the stuff (religion) when I was in eighth grade. By the time you’re older than 13 it’s too ludicrous to go along with anymore. By the time I was in eighth grade I just lost it all.”³ But in reality, he didn’t lose it all. He may have stopped going to Mass and formally practicing his faith, but the Catholic worldview he received through his family and the sisters at St. Rose’s never left him. However, it would take another cradle Catholic to help him understand, appreciate and develop his sacramental imagination and his worldview. Enter Flannery O’Connor.

Original Sin as the First Principle

Unlike Flannery O’Connor, who grew up in a Catholic home that encouraged reading from a very early age,⁴ Springsteen never read much growing up. He notes, “I wasn’t brought up in a house where there was a lot of reading and stuff. I was brought up on TV.”⁵ It wasn’t until much later in life that he would begin to take books seriously, and O’Connor was one of the authors whose work resonated with him most, specifically her view of human nature and the world.

In an interview with Walker Percy’s nephew, Springsteen explains his initial draw to O’Connor: “The really important reading that I did began in my late twenties, with authors like Flannery O’Connor. There was something in those stories of hers that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that Iwas interested in writing about. They were a big, big revelation.”⁶ That something about O’Connor’s art that resonated so deeply with Springsteen was twofold. First, O’Connor is a master storyteller. She notes, “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”⁷ This too was Springsteen’s principle, and the principle of every good storyteller: show, don’t tell. Second, O’Connor was able to identify a reality present in the world that spoke directly to Springsteen’s Catholic imagination—she had an uncanny ability of naming sin.

According to O’Connor, without sin, you have no story; or you have a very bad story. She notes:

The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin.”⁸

For O’Connor, the world is fallen, and this fallenness is not the consequence of an accident or the environment, but the direct result of humankind’s deliberate turning away from God; it is the doctrine of Original Sin.⁹

Original Sin, then, is the backdrop against which O’Connor writes. She believes that humankind is fallen and is in need of a savior, and she offers no apology for such a view. She professes,“I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that.”¹⁰ O’Connor’s ability to look out to the world to see and name sin, and the longing of every human heart to be rescued from that curse, would leave an indelible mark on Springsteen as a man and as a storyteller. He explains:

She got to the heart of some part of meanness that she never spelled out, because if she spelled it out you wouldn’t be getting it. It was always at the core of every one of her stories– the way that she’d left that hole there, that hole that’s inside of everybody. There was some dark thing—a component of spirituality—that I sensed in her stories, and that set me off exploring characters of my own. She knew original sin—she knew how to give it the flesh of the story.¹¹

Springsteen recognized a worldview, ubiquitous in O’Connor’s writing, that he deemed not only probable, but true. From his days of studying the Baltimore Catechism at St. Rose’s grade school, he would have been taught that “sin is divided into the sin we inherit called original sin, and the sin we commit ourselves, called actual sin.”¹² O’Connor was able to incarnate this doctrine of sin, to make it believable through characters in her stories. She knew that sin was not a definition to be memorized by students in Catholic schools, but that it was an undeniable reality, which is the starting point of understanding the human drama. She notes that “the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama.”¹³ This, then, is the mark that O’Connor made on Springsteen; she taught him that a good story is always told against the backdrop of original sin, and that without sin, you have no story.

Four Manifestations of the Mark

O’Connor’s influence on Springsteen can be recognized in four particular ways: 1) that a definite change occurred in the themes of Springsteen’s songs and development of his characters as a result of reading O’Connor’s short stories, 2) that Springsteen directly references O’Connor’s work in his style, song lyrics and album titles, 3) that Springsteen holds an unapologetic view of original sin as a ‘first principle’ in his songwriting, and 4) that although Springsteen has personally struggled in his relationship with the Catholic Church, he has not rejected the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, which, according to O’Connor, are essential to good writing.

Springsteen began reading O’Connor’s stories in his late twenties, which was at same the time he was working on Darkness on the Edge of Town, released in 1978. In his review of Darkness in Rolling Stone, Paul Nelson writes, “Many of the characters in the songs on Bruce Springsteen’s new album appear to be trapped in a state of desperation so intense that they must either break through to something better (or at least into something ambiguous) or break down into madness, murder or worse.”¹⁴ In the words of O’Connor, “Either one is serious about salvation or one is not.”¹⁵ 

Springsteen wrote over seventy songs for the Darkness album, and many of those songs appeared on his next album, The River. Of course, one wonders whether Springsteen pulled the album title directly from O’Connor’s story of the same name. It seems a safe bet, especially since he also penned a song during that same period entitled “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”¹⁶ 

In 1982, Springsteen released Nebraska, which, more than any of his other albums, sounds like O’Connor. Even the reviews that the album received sounded like reviews of O’Connor’s stories: “startling, direct and chilling.”¹⁷ Springsteen explains, “At home, just before recording Nebraska, I was reading Flannery O’Connor. Her stories reminded me of the unknowability¹⁸ of God and contained a dark spirituality that resonated with my feeling at the time.”¹⁹ This theme of God’s unknowability was mistakenly understood by some reviewers as nihilism, especially in reference to the last track on the album, “Reason to Believe,” where in the first verse, a man pokes a dead dog with a stick in an attempt to revive it; in the second verse another man leaves his wife, who waits for him, every day, down at the end of a dirt road; in the third, an old man dies in a whitewashed shotgun shack; and in the final verse, a groom, stood up at his riverside wedding, stands alone and wonders where his bride might be. Like O’Connor, Springsteen is no nihilist, and neither is he naïve. Springsteen recognizes that sin is present in the world, and whether we recognize it or not, it affects all of us. Yet, once recognized, it is ours to determine how we will respond to it.

In the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the Misfit tells the Grandmother that everyone has a choice to make: for life, which is following Jesus; or for death, which is doing whatever you want—sin. The Misf t says:

He (Jesus) thown everything off balance. If he did what he said he did, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.²⁰

For O’Connor, meanness is sin. This meanness is precisely the reason that Springsteen gives when explaining why the narrator in the song “Nebraska” killed ten innocent people. He confesses,“They wanted to know why I did what I did, well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”²¹ Again, this meanness isn’t random, it is a consequence of the Fall, and it is something that every human being must respond to, either by turning away from it or by embracing it.

Although O’Connor’s most direct influence on Springsteen is presented on Nebraska, his songwriting, after reading O’Connor, consistently accounts for the presence of sin—a meanness in thisworld—as a backdrop and a first principle for his narrative. On every one of his albums since Nebraska, Springsteen has continued to tell stories of men and women wrestling with original sin and its consequences, which are manifested in narratives of isolation, infidelity, injustice, robbery, terrorism, murder, and death. Yet as O’Connor notes, “There is something in us, as storytellers and listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demandsthat what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.”²² Springsteen, like O’Connor before him, also deals with thethemes of redemption and salvation as a remedy to sin in his writing, but the essential point here is to recognize that there can be no redemption and no salvation without first acknowledging the power, the presence, and the reality of sin as a first principleand starting point.²³

But the question remains: Does Springsteen’s worldview, specifically his recognition of sin, make him a Catholic writer, even though he does not practice his Catholic faith, and admits to being the father of three “pagan babies”?²⁴ It is a difficult question, yet by O’Connor’s description of what a Catholic writer is, it seems that Springsteen meets her standards.

In her essay on the Catholic novelist, “Novelist and Believer,” O’Connor offers her best explanation of what it means to be a Catholic writer. Of course, Bruce Springsteen is a songwriter, not a novelist, but this distinction does not change the substance of her argument. She writes:

[T]he writer whose vocation is fiction sees his obligation as being to the truth of what can happen in life. . . . The Catholic novelist doesn’t have to be a saint; he doesn’t even have to be a Catholic; he does, unfortunately, have to be a novelist. This doesn’t mean that the writer should lack moral vision, but I think that to understand what it does mean, we have to consider for a while what fiction—novel or story—is, and what would give a piece of fiction the right to have the adjective “Catholic” applied to it.²⁵

Within her description O’Connor seems to point to two components that make one a Catholic writer. The first is that the writer sees the world as it is, and the second is that the writer be good at writing. Springsteen undoubtedly meets both requirements.

Bruce Springsteen does see his obligation as a songwriter “as being to the truth of what can happen in life.” He observes,“Writers and artists create little worlds and control them. You do that well enough, you begin to believe you can live in one of them. But the real world doesn’t work that way.”²⁶ In other words, Springsteen doesn’t create a new world for his characters to live in; he actually writes his characters into the fallen world—the real world. This is precisely what O’Connor meant when she described a Catholic novel (or in our case, a Catholic song) as“one that represents reality adequately as we see it manifested in this world of things and human relationships. Only in and by these experiences does the fiction writer approach the contemplative knowledge of the mystery they embody.”²⁷ 

Second, Springsteen is a great songwriter, as is witnessed by exceptionally favorable reviews of his records and his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not to mention his AcademyAwards, Grammy Awards, record sales, concert sales, and faithful fan-base.²⁸ 

Meeting both of O’Connor’s requirements as one who sees the world as it is and being a good writer would make it safe to give Springsteen the distinction of “Catholic writer.” And as a matter of fact, Springsteen would not argue with this title, as he himself has explained that there are three reasons he writes the way he does: “Catholic school, Catholic school, Catholic school.”²⁹ Of course, he also admits that O’Connor was the one who helped rekindle those fundamental doctrines of Christianity he learned as a child in order to make them a part of his songwriting, specifically the doctrine of original sin.

The Tradition Continued

Flannery O’Connor served Bruce Springsteen as a bearer of a long tradition of naming sin, which she inherited from reading the Bible, as well as the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Maritan, Gilson, and Chardin, to name but a few. Through her short stories, O’Connor passed on her worldview to Springsteen, which made a significant mark on his song writing, and which continues to influence the likes of U2, Lucinda Williams, PattyGriffin, Josh Ritter, Arcade Fire, and other contemporary artists who also recognize the fallen world and write good music about it. And although it is true that Springsteen may not be a saint, he continues to be a great Catholic songwriter. He proudly professes that Flannery O’Connor left her mark on him: the ability to name sin—a priceless gift to any postmodern writer.

References

1     The exhibit entitled “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen” ran from April 1, 2009 until February 27, 2011.
2     John Duffy, Bruce Springsteen: In His Own Words (Musselburgh: Omnibus Press, 1993), 8.
3     Ibid., 86.
4     Consider the famous picture of three-year-old Flannery on display at O’Connor’s childhood home in Savannah, or her insistence on writing reviews on the title pages of children’s books, reviews such as “This book isn’t very good.”
5     Ibid., 10.
6     Will Percy, “Rock and Ready: Will Percy Interviews Bruce Springsteen,” Doubletake No. 12, 1999, available from www.doubletakemagazine.org/mag/html/backissues/12/steen/, accessed 10 October 2010, 2.
7     Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, sel. and ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969), 96.
8     Ibid., 167.
9     Ibid.
10     Ibid., 32.
11     Percy, “Rock and Ready,” 2.
12     The Baltimore Catechism, Part I, No. 3., Lesson 6.
13     O’Connor, Mystery & Manners, 167.
14     Paul Nelson, “Springsteen Fever,” Bruce Springsteen: The Rolling Stone Files, 13 July 1978, (New York: Hyperion), 1996. 70.
15     O’Connor, Mystery & Manners, 167.
16     Springsteen would eventually release “A Good Man is Hard to Find” on the 1999 boxed set, Tracks.
17     Steve Pond, “Nebraska Album Review; Springsteen Delivers His Bravest Record Yet,” The Rolling Stone Files, 28 October 1982, (New York: Hyperion), 1996. 131.
18     The unknowability of God is a major theme not only in O’Connor’s writing, but in Catholic theology as a whole. Thomas Aquinas, O’Connor’s favorite theologian, taught her that God is infinitely other and cannot be known as he is through our natural powers (Summa Theologica, I, 12, 4). However, just because God cannot be known as one might know some material thing or even a formal geometrical proof does not mean God does not exist. It simply means that God exists in a different way, as the sheer act of being, and that God’s ways are not our ways.
19     Bruce Springsteen, Songs (New York: HarperCollins), 2003. 136.
20     Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Collected Works (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), 132.
21     Springsteen, Songs, 143.
22     O’Connor, Mystery & Manners, 48.
23     Perhaps in another article I can address the theme of redemption as found in the work of O’Connor and Springsteen, but I am not afforded the time or space to deal with this topic here.
24     Bruce Springsteen, “Question and Answer Session,” VH1 Storytellers, prod. Patrizia Di Maria, dir. Dave Diomedi, Viacom International, 2005, DVD.
25     O’Connor, Mystery & Manners, 172.
26     Springsteen, Songs, 218.
27     O’Connor, Mystery & Manners, 172.
28     Flannery O’Connor was once asked, “Miss O’Connor, why do you write?” She responded, “Because I’m good at it.” (O’Connor, Mystery & Manners, 81)
29     Springsteen, “Thunder Road,” Storytellers.

Palest is his face to me
my dearie.
Tis a tint
Of the overcook of mil’.
All hint of heat
Has left it.

Here ran his horse and hied through the heather
and ran a pretty mile from the brink o’ the river.
The eddies are ruddy and dark in the gloamin’
the laverock sighs amid the river a-foamin’.
The heather was hewed in at the hoo’
purple hued in scarlet cut in the roo’
coarse is the line run by the horse
A meander of many which crushes the gorse.
And hewed was his frame as it lay by the byrne
by axe and by claymore and by rude Englishmen
and dark lay his locks, the rings of his hair
black as the mail-coat he suffered to wear.
Like t’ bite of the spider that comes not to heal
the break of the body will ne’er be weal.
The tale of his flesh lay open to wonder
the smile of his wounds tore our dreams asunder.
For we hoped he would gang as he was when he left
with bright mail-coat shining and standard aloft
our spirits would lift in the burn of his gaze
and the darkness would wilt for the smile of his face.
So Our Laird returns from over the main
and the pibroch rejoices to hear him again.
Of green soil a barrow his sins will atone
that our Laird of Barra may never leave home.

An hour after the accident, Elise looked out from the terrace and regained the loose thread of thought she’d entertained before they killed the man on the motorcycle.

It was the duck. They were on their way back from Florence where they bought a ceramic duck for his mother, even though Herman couldn’t stand his mother and thought the whole idea of a gift was stupid.

Now there was a man lying dead in the ambulance below and their Volkswagen sprawled on its side in the vineyard beyond the curve. No one had yet come to tow it away. Instead, a journalist took his time, walking around and around it, talking into a micro-tape recorder and snapping pictures with a small digital camera. The motorcycle, or the severed front half of it, stood like a sign-post in the dust under the shade of the cypresses that surrounded the castello. One officer directed the occasional motorist around the scene of the accident while the coroner sat off the side of the road, his legs dangling from the back of the open ambulance as he smoked a cigarette.

The captain of the carabinieri had requested their passports and said it might be a couple of days before he could return them. A cloud arose in Elise’s mind, that perhaps they suspected she and her husband were fugitives for other crimes they’d committed back in America.

Fugitives.

They reached that last lovely bend in the road toward Montegufoni, sweeping around the column of tall cypresses that girded the castello on the left and skirting the ledge sliding away into vineyards on the right—a picture-perfect snapshot of the Tuscan countryside. But they were arguing about the duck, and had been since they left the little shop in Florence. It was Elise who first saw the motorcycle rip around the bend ahead, cutting into their lane.

Herman had quick reflexes. She marveled at his ability to dodge wavering bicyclists, head-phoned pedestrians, and faltering old ladies in their Chevrolets drifting out of side streets.

But not this time.

Herman took his eyes off the road for just an instant to snap a rebuke at her, and then froze when he saw her strangled expression and she cried out.

The cyclist didn’t even try to swerve; it was as if he felt he had the right of way and expected all along that they would yield, that they would swerve aside for him, even though he was invading their lane.

Even in that last instant, Herman’s hands didn’t jerk the wheel to the right to swerve the car out of the path of the motorcycle. Instead the front left fender of the Volkswagen caught the cycle’s stirrup and sent the man flying over the car, head first onto the road.

Herman skidded off the curve, caught the side of a boulder, and the car rolled onto its side. Elise was shaken and terrified. Herman had a bloody nose from his head snapping forward into the steering wheel. After he clambered out of his window and pulled Elise after him, he stumbled back to the road as if he expected the twisted heap of leather on the asphalt to spring to its feet and shout at him.

The man lay where he landed. Behind the trees, she heard voices. The German family, who did nothing but sit by the pool all day, picked their way down through the hedge to get a look.

“Mein Gott!” the skinny grandmother hissed, the cigarette still hanging from her lips, a few pellets of ash clinging to the baggy breasts of her blue one-piece bathing suit.

Even before the carabinieri arrived with an ambulance, even before they confirmed the motorcyclist was dead, Elise looked around, grasping at the passage of time from their old life, sliding off the hillside like the shadow of a huge cloud, fading away forever. Why hadn’t Herman been able to get out of the way?

* * *

It was hot. A pair of kittens appeared at the top of the stone steps of the castello, and Elise smiled in spite of her lingering shock. They emerged like clockwork every day at noon. When the sun beat most mercilessly on the countryside of Baccaiano and Mantagnana, they scampered up the worn, cracked steps to the terrace, secluding themselves in the shady corner of the stone flower bed or beneath one of the patio tables.

Herman dragged the chair closer to the table as he spoke to the captain of the carabinieri. The screech of its taloned feet startled the kittens, and they darted behind the stone balustrade.

Elise crouched and held a hand out as one of the kittens cautiously crept back toward the table. She looked up at the captain interviewing Herman. He had a round face for a man so lean and lanky.

He’d be all right, she thought, turning her gaze to her husband, with a glass of shimmering brandy in his hand and the owner of Montegufoni standing solicitously nearby as he punctuated Herman’s weak remarks with solemn nods.

On the winding road below, another squad car pulled onto the embankment in the shade of the cypresses, and two carabinieri got out, carrying on a laconic conversation, leaning against the open doors of the car to enjoy a few minutes out of the sun. They cradled their hats inside their left arms, and Elise admired the red stripe on the sides of their navy blue pants; anything not to look at the little place in the middle of the road where the ambulance had come to remove the body of the man. For a fleeting moment Elise wished somehow they’d at least had a chance to meet him before the accident, although it seemed childish.

Maybe it was all a mistake, she thought, looking over the hedge and the scene of the accident. Not just the crash, she chided herself. Everything before that.

They met during their internships at Massachusetts General. They started living together almost immediately. Herman moved into her apartment. He became a psychiatrist, working at the Veterans Hospital in Jamaica Plain. They lived together for three years before she brought up marriage.

When she floated the subject, he was always curt and dismissive. His job was not secure (what job at a VA hospital ever was?), and she could tell he was resentful of the success she had publishing papers with her colleagues at the lab—even though he made twice her salary. Another year of arguments followed, and finally she started packing up to go home before he gave in and agreed to a wedding date

The coercion wasn’t a sign that she should get out of it. How could it be? That was just the way Herman had to be handled, she realized, about anything: what to eat for dinner, where to go shopping—and where to vacation. Wasn’t all his fault, his stubbornness. He didn’t come from a supportive family background like she did. His parents had been divorced since he was seven. His father never had anything to do with him and Herman hated his mother and sister. So, it wasn’t fair for her to expect him to behave in some traditional fashion, was it? Naturally she had to deliver an ultimatum to get him to agree. To anything. Stubborn, that’s all.

They returned to their room in the evening.

La Fatoressa. Herman opened all the beautiful shutters so that he could hear the other guests in the courtyard below.

“How are you feeling?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” He seemed calmer at last.

She didn’t answer what was in her mind—because every day of their honeymoon until this day he had complained of some ailment. His asthma. Acid reflux. The food not agreeing with him. The lack of ice for his drinks.

“I just thought, given some of your days over the past week, it might have had something to do with it.”

“To do with what? My driving? How could it have anything to do with it?”

“It’s just that . . . it seems when I think about it again, I don’t know, you had time to get out of his way?”

He turned. “What are you talking about? Don’t you remember, we were arguing. I wasn’t even looking at the road when he appeared.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, after I shouted. After you turned your head back.”

“Elise, when I turned my head back, he was practically up on my hood.”

“I don’t know.” But she was nodding.

“You weren’t driving, goddamnit.” He turned away and threw his wine glass at the wall. Elise jumped at the shattering sound, and felt a tiny shard of the glass stick to her thigh.

“You weren’t driving.”

The next day the captain returned their passports. A terrible accident he said, shaking his head.

“Perhaps you may want to return home?”

“No,” said Herman. “It’s our honeymoon.”

“Yes. That would be to admit defeat.” His smile faded. “Of course, I had to release your identities to the family of the man killed. They may contact you. Or perhaps, you would wish to call them?” He handed Elise a slip of paper.

Forse vorreste chiamarli?

She stared at the address. “In America?”

“Si.”

We killed an American, she thought, and she was ashamed to feel a small sigh of release in the back of her mind, a knot of tension giving way.

* * *

Herman ventured down to the pool in the morning. The German family was watching him. Elise could see them from the little bedroom in La Fatoressa. He picked a chair in the northeast corner, right under her nose, and pulled out one of his legal thrillers.

Elise got up the courage to join him when one of the German women, a doctor, came over to talk to him first.

“What did she say?” she asked her husband when the woman had left.

“Nothing of note.”

“You were talking for a good ten minutes, seemed like.”

“Yeah? Time flies when you’re having fun.” He went back to his book.

She swam and then returned to La Fatoressa. When she got out of the shower, she reached for a towel and realized the rack on the marble wall had been snapped in half. As she started to prepare herself some lunch, she noticed the wide frying pan they used for sautéing tomatoes had been dented on one side. None of this damage had been evident when they arrived.

She stood in the middle of the room, clutching the warped frying pan to her chest. He’d smashed the mirror in their bedroom after an argument once back home. He’d turned over the deck chairs outside. And she remembered seeing him scratch his key over the side of a colleague’s car door once outside the VA hospital. He always took it out on someone else. Wasn’t that something? It would always be taken out on someone else.

One of the women from the main office came to her in the middle of the day.

Telefono, signora. Elise followed the woman through the great hall and into the office, wondering whether one of her parents had taken ill or worse.

“Mrs. Gordon, my name is Tim Peebles.” For a moment it almost sounded like a telemarketer. Elise glanced at the two women behind the counter.

“Yes.”

“It was my brother crashed into you. I just wanted to call to see how you were getting along.” A rich deep voice, like someone she’d heard in an old western, Richard Boone, but with a kindly lilt.

“Oh.” The women were back at their terminals, but Elise could tell from their studied look of concentration they were listening. She turned away from them and leaned as much as she could against the wall.

“I am so sorry,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

But Mr. Peebles didn’t need any prompting. “I’m glad you’re all right. The sergeant there, or captain, at the police station said neither of you was hurt, and that’s a good thing.”

She nodded without remembering to say yes.

“Are you there, Mrs. Gordon?”

“I just feel . . . I suppose it’s us–I mean we should’ve been the ones calling you.” Mrs. Gordon. It was the first time since their wedding celebration anyone had referred to her as Mrs. Gordon.

“Well, I don’t see how you could’ve done that. You wouldn’t have known how to reach me. I’m on the road a lot. Salesman.”

“I see.”

“It was just me and my brother anyway. Our parents are both dead. And Bob and I weren’t as close as we should’ve been. He was the younger of us boys. I’m almost fifty.”

Elise stared out the crack of the office door, through the shadow of the hall and into the courtyard of Montegufoni.

“Anyway, Italy it was. The sergeant told me this was your honeymoon.”

“Yes.” She tried to snap herself out of it and listen.

“Bob always talked about wanting to bring his girl there when his tour was over. I told him to go to Greece–for the food, of course. He didn’t pay any attention. Had to be Tuscany. Ironic thing is, it might as well have been in the middle of Gaza.”

“His tour.”

“Yes. He was due back in Baghdad at the end of next week.”

He was a soldier. Herman had killed one of their soldiers.

“How long was your brother in the service?”

“Making a career of it. Bob was twenty-two when he went out in Desert Storm.”

“He was going to be coming home soon, wasn’t he?”

“It wasn’t your fault. Lady, that’s all I want you to hear right now. You’re a young kid with your whole life in front of you. Don’t let this turn your life upside down.”

“No.”

“You want to hear something strange? I’m glad it was other Americans who ran into him. The way things have been going in this world right now, I have a feeling anyone else would’ve been trading high-fives over his body. You know what I’m saying?”

Elise was silent. She could hear the women pausing at their computers. One was on the phone now, engaging in a hushed discussion.

“You there, ma’am?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Listen, I should’ve asked first, I suppose. You sound like you’re from the Northeast. Hey, for all I know, you opposed the war–”

“Well, no, not really–”

“–and that’s okay. We’re a free country, and everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But you see what it means to stick together, don’t you? And I hope you’re not shocked when I said I’m glad it was another American.”

“Of course . . . ”

The man had been drinking, she realized, and Elise imagined another phone call, much less pleasant, coming from him on the morning after his hangover.

“Yes, I understand.” She was trying to figure out how to sound more supportive while trying to bring the conversation to a close, when Peebles’ voice suddenly went flat, as though he were preoccupied with something he might have spotted on the television while they were talking. She imagined now an overweight fiftyish man, balding perhaps, still in his shirt and tie, sprawled on the bed of his hotel room as he leafed through the room service menu.

“Bottom line is I want you to put this behind you.”

“I will.”

When it came time for dinner, Herman again refused to leave the castello; he refused to go some place where no one would know them, no one would look at them. Instead, they had dinner served on the veranda, even sitting at the same table where the captain had questioned Herman two days before.

“What else did he say?” Herman poured himself another glass of chianti. “I’m getting used to this wine. Once you accept the fact that Italians can’t make cocktails to save their lives . . . ” Herman grunted. “Anyway, he sounds okay.”

“He didn’t say he was okay. He seemed more concerned with how we were handling it, whether we were okay. I don’t know if he was okay.”

She watched him swallow half of his glass in one gulp. “We are okay, aren’t we, Herman?”

He put his glass down briefly and sucked his lips. “That’s good. Although . . . people can change their minds. Once it begins to sink in. He could change his mind and sue us.”

“I just think it’s a little strange, what he said.”

“What’s that?”

“That he was glad that . . . we’re American. I see the point, that if it had been another Italian, or some French or German tourist we’d hit, for example, instead of an American . . . it would’ve been worse for us.”

Herman nodded and looked toward some of the other visitors seating themselves on the veranda. “They’d all be staring at us like zombies.”

She was surprised when he said it. It seemed to reclaim some common ground for both of them, and she nodded.

He wasn’t interested that night, although she thought he might be. She thought, because he had seemed to lighten up a bit more at the meal, that Herman would not leave her in the apartment again and sit by the dark pool as he had the night before. That he would want to make love, or at least fool around.

But he left again. And once again, she let him go. Elise didn’t like sitting in the darkness of the pool at night; it made her uneasy. Close as it was to the castello, it seemed too cut off from everyone, too far from help.

As she stared at his little shadow sitting by the pool, she heard a car approaching, and the headlights illuminating the trees as someone slowed to turn in the castello’s long gravel driveway. Some one of the visitors returning from Florence for the day, perhaps, after wandering the old city streets, peering in shops.

She thought no more of it until she heard heavy steps in the common room outside. Then a knock. She thought immediately of the captain again, wondering if he’d changed his mind about the accident, and he was coming to rescue her. It was only a fleeting thought, but for a shivering instant it almost overwhelmed her, and she ran to the door.

But it was the owner of the castello who stood in the doorway when she drew the bolt back. Behind him stood a tall, barrel-chested man, just as she had imagined him to be on the phone. His hair was white and thin, pulled neatly back into a ponytail. He was mopping his brow with one hand, dropping a beat-up travel bag to the floor. From head to foot he was dressed in black—indeed expensive black from the look of his jacket and tie, and his Gucci loafers.

“Signor Peebles,” said the owner, a bewildered, hopeful, apprehensive smile frozen on his face.

“I took the red eye,” said the dead man’s older brother. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She came out and closed the door behind her. She nodded and took his hand. His grip was firm, but fleshy, and she guessed he did not get a lot of time to exercise. They moved to the benches at a long oak table in the common room where they sat for what seemed like an hour.

“I do apologize if I startled you. It wasn’t my intention to come at first. I did want to say hello, however, before plopping down in my room. It wasn’t easy being able to find a spot here, given the season, but the manager, or owner, there was very kind considering the circumstances and all.”

He took off his jacket. She noticed now the red blotches, indicative of psoriasis, at both his temples, and a stretch of it on one short-sleeved arm as he sat down again and took a swig from a bottle of Evian.

“You’ll want to meet my husband,” she said for what seemed like the fiftieth time. But still he made no move to pick up his bag and retreat for the night. He looked around.

“Built around the fourteenth century from what the guidebook says. I read about this place on the way.”

She nodded and looked out toward the veranda.

His eyes followed hers. “How is your husband. Herman, you said his name was?”

She nodded again and began to move toward the open doors out to the veranda and the wide stone stairs down to the lawn. “He’s down at the pool. He likes to sit by the pool.”

“I guess you don’t, huh?”

She made a small laugh, to acknowledge this, although she didn’t want to agree. She could hear his heavy breathing behind her as they made their way down the stone steps. She wondered what kind of food he ate on the road, guessing his cholesterol was probably well north of 200 and had already started the process of arteriosclerosis. They were going downstairs, and he was already wheezing. She would let Herman deal with him for a while, that was the best course of action.

“You got here awful fast,” she said.

“Well. . . . ” She heard him thinking this through as he prepared to speak. “I wasn’t really at home when I spoke to you.”

She said nothing, nodding only, and not wanting to look back and meet his eyes.

“Truth is, I wasn’t even in the U.S. I was already in London for a sales trip when I got the news. I . . . I guess, I didn’t want to upset you when I called, maybe have you thinking I was going to accost you about the accident.”

“That’s okay,” she said, knowing that it wasn’t. “Watch your step up here, through the hedge. There’s a little stepping stone juts out of the grass.”

“I see. Pitch black down here. Don’t go in for night lights or torches like some of the other resorts I been to.” Peebles chuckled. “Of course, I know it–it isn’t really a resort.”

“There he is,” she said, relieved that Herman was in fact still sitting in his chair by the pool, looking at nothing and nowhere in particular.

He seemed to understand instantly, though, soon as he saw them come through the hedge, and he sprang to his feet.

In the morning they took their fresh bread, pickles, and cheese onto the veranda with their coffee.

The German woman, the dark-haired doctor Elise saw Herman speaking with the night before, was sitting on her own in the far corner of the veranda, her eyes hidden behind a huge pair of dark sunglasses. Elise couldn’t help it, but for an instant she had to cover her mouth so that Herman couldn’t see her suppress a chuckle, for she wondered whether her husband had met the woman for a midnight swim and Herman had somehow lost his temper and slugged her.

Then she noticed Peebles put down a newspaper across from them and her good humor evaporated. At first she was glad to see he was alone, that the captain of the carabinieri wasn’t sitting at his side taking notes.

But now he rose, grabbed his bottle of water and came to their table.

“Been following the war news?”

Herman shook his head. “Wanted to get away from it for a while.” Then he stopped. “Sorry. I mean, Elise told me your brother was in the service. He was over there.”

“He sure was. Always proud of it, too.” Peebles looked around. “Folks have been awful nice to me, I must admit.”

“Were you expecting them not to be?”

“Well, you read things all the time, hear things all the time.”

“Just because they’re upset with our government doesn’t mean they’re upset with us.”

“That’s a good point. What are you folks up to, today?”

Elise said, “We were thinking of a little driving trip. Maybe into Florence, or over to Sienna to see the vineyards, the duomo.”

“I need some exercise,” Herman said quickly. “I haven’t done any jogging yet.”

Elise nodded slowly. “I forgot about that.” She looked out to the hills, but could tell from the slight turn of his head that Peebles had caught her momentary exasperation and noted it.

“Hey, if you got any recommendations for walking trips, hikes, you know. I’d appreciate it. You can see I don’t get as much exercise as I should. But it’s so lovely around here. I’d be happy just to wander over to the houses on that next hill. Looks like a good mile at least.”

“That’s a good walk,” Herman agreed, and rose to clear the table. “How long are you staying?”

“Not sure. Of course, I came to fly my brother home. But, well, they take care of that for me, too. I mean, there’s no timetable not up to me. How about you folks?”

Elise could see Herman’s eyes harden. “Well, this is our honeymoon, you know.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Good for you.” Peebles pushed his chair back in. “Maybe I’ll see you all tonight then. We could have a drink of wine out here and watch the sun set. But I know you want your time, too.”

Elise didn’t have to see her husband’s expression to know what he was thinking: sun sets behind the castello, you moron. But already she wondered if Herman would even be with her in the evening. He’d be sitting at the side of the pool, brooding, like one of the statues of fish-headed men that stood out from the grotto under Montegufoni’s terrace, waiting for her, like some ancient supplicant, to drown herself as a sacrifice.

Later Herman went for his jog. He came back with the captain of the carabinieri, looking mussed and covered in dirt from a scuffle with someone outside the grocery shop in the village.

The captain didn’t look angry, but he directed his words almost entirely to Elise, as if knowing she was the more reasonable of the two.

“I understand what you’re going through. And if you like, we can suggest a specialist for your husband to talk to. But please, for the sake of the other guests, he should try to refrain from any more, what is the phrase, acting out.”

She nodded and watched him turn back down the stairs and walk to his patrol car. Herman went to their rooms without a word. You could slip into the idea that all men were like this, she thought, because he was all you knew. Elise’s father had died when she was ten, she’d grown up with her mother and two sisters. She had slept with two boys during her time in college, but those relationships had not been serious. She knew no one really, until Herman. She had no one to compare him to.

Peebles sat on the veranda that night, ubiquitous bottle of water at one side, half-empty high-ball glass on the table.

“I love the way they do cocktails here—no fooling around: about two-thirds straight gin, an ice-cube the size of your thumb and a dollop of tonic.” He laughed. “I’ve had three.”

He closed his cell phone when she sat down. He threw on his jacket, the same black suit jacket over a pink long-sleeve dress shirt.

“Would you like something? The girl’s just closing up the little bar downstairs, but I can ask for another, or whatever you’d like . . . ”

Elise shook her head. “I had a bottle of wine with dinner.”

“Go anywhere special?”

She shook her head, glancing down over the cypresses.

“Your husband’s not taking it too well, is he?”

“No. He’s been sitting by the pool every night since the accident. He loves that deep dark pool.”

Peebles leaned forward, and she could smell the Beefeater on his breath. It didn’t bother her; she realized she must have smelled of chianti classico. Peebles said in a low, almost inarticulate voice, “He won’t . . . he won’t do anything drastic, do you think? I mean, maybe, have too much to drink and go for a swim.”

She shook her head. “He’s not the one likely to end up in the pool,” she smiled. “And anyway, he’s not drunk. I am.”

Peebles grinned and his chest quaked with a silent laugh. His cell phone rang and he opened it gingerly.

Elise stood up and walked to the stone stairs. She could see him throw her a glance in the midst of his conversation. She went down to the lawn, but instead of turning left to the ring of cypresses around the pool, she walked further down the grassy slope to a couple of abandoned sun chairs and lay back to look up at the stars.

Herman would never understand. Leaving him because of an unspoken fear of what he might do to her someday. That would never work. He’d feel like he was being victimized. He’d claim to be the aggrieved party. There was an easier way out. She got up and found herself walking through the hedge of cypresses to the pool. But the pool was deserted. Herman’s empty chair was pulled to the corner where he liked to sit. She thought for a moment that he was with the German woman. The windows of the rooms the Germans occupied were all dark. Perhaps they lay within, groping each other in the dark.

She thought of walking to the castello’s parking lot to see whether he had taken their new Hertz rental car. But perhaps he had simply gone for a walk around the grounds and gone back to their room.

She hesitated when she came back to the steps to the castello, glancing back at the lawn chairs. Peebles was sitting in one of them now. He must have come down to find her.

When she stood beside him, she realized he had dozed off. She sat down next to him, and he stirred, mumbling. He was an old man, she realized, an old man still clinging to the shell of his younger, football player’s body.

He started talking about his brother, and in the gloom his muffled words began in sentiment, almost reverence, before she began to notice creeping into his voice some allusions to responsibilities not appreciated, opportunities missed, and later resentment. But his voice remained low, melodious.

Light headed, Elise realized she had been holding his hand while he spoke. Her back was aching and she longed to fall asleep with the wine in her head.

Elise drew his hand down with her as she lay back on the grass. She was still wearing her bathing suit under her halter, and that seemed natural, too. He buried his face in her lap, and with some effort she shrugged out of the halter and pulled the straps of her suit down over her hips.

He pulled them the rest of the way and Elise just closed her eyes and waited for him. But the heat of his hands drew away from her abdomen and she was cold again.

“I can’t.”

“Huh?” She must have sounded angry because he apologized right away. “I mean, I’m not prepared,” he said.

“Pill,” she managed to say without opening her eyes. “I’m on the pill.”

But now his voice was raised, in apology, apparently, for he was tucking his shirt back in and stumbling to grab his cell phone off the table.

“A terrible thing to presume. I’m sorry. Don’t . . . don’t hold it against . . . ” and he staggered up toward the stairs.

Elise lay in the grass. She stared up at the stars. Eventually, feeling the chill, she pulled her bathing suit and sun dress up from her ankles. She climbed back into the chair, but it was too cold now to stay without a blanket. She was relieved when she got back to La Fatoressa and found it empty.

When she woke, she realized Herman must have come back during the night, because his clothes from the day before were flung over the chair in the corner and he had brought the day’s bread in and put it on the table.

Elise threw on some shorts and a shirt quickly, but he was not out on the veranda. The pool was noisy with new guests. When she went back to the common room, the owner appeared and smiled.

“Everything is okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” Her head was throbbing and she needed some Advil.

“Signor Peebles left very early. It was good, yes, that you talk to him? That he talk with you? Everything is okay?”

Elise nodded.

She found him in his chair by the pool with a glass of Orangina. He had his eyes closed and his legal thriller spread open on his lap.

He said nothing for a while, but held her hand.

“We may need to see someone, Elise.”

She wanted to hear him say the rest of it. To accuse, to denounce her betrayal. She had a vision of him hiding in the cypresses last night, peering through the leaves as she lay back and offered herself to the dead man’s brother.

“I mean to say, I may have to see someone. About my anger. I know that. I don’t want to lose you.”

She nodded, folding his hand in both of hers, because it was easier than saying anything. Later on, she knew, she would be expected to say something. But not now. She was too startled by his meekness.

“Thing is, I know I take it out in the wrong way, and seeing what happened made me realize . . . ” His voice dropped and he glanced at some of the people in the pool. “Even if I’d had the time to get out of the way, I did realize, that I didn’t want to. I might not have. Even if I’d had the time.”

Again, Elise said nothing, but she let him hold her. Later that day, she walked out to the road. Elise passed through the courtyard, through the main gate of Castello Montegufoni and past their new rental Honda to the spot where Peebles was killed. The hot sun felt good on her shoulders, and the dry ground was purifying. Below she could see the reeds from the field next to the vineyard where their car had overturned to its rest.

At the edge of the road where Peebles had fallen, someone had placed a simple, empty urn. She wondered if Herman had done it during the night. Or Peebles’ brother during his hasty departure. Or perhaps one of the other guests in the castello? It was here, after all, out of this luscious countryside that the ancient Romans arose and established their pagan sacrifices as the backbone of their empire. She crouched at the edge of the road, clutching a handful of earth to put in the urn, to make a silent offering for her sin.

An image of the dead man’s brother floated before her eyes again, a tired overweight man sitting in a hotel room somewhere on his way back to Milan, flipping TV channels with the remote in one thick fist and emptying a small Beefeater from the mini-bar into the glass held between his legs with the other.

She turned her face back to the burning sun and closed her eyes over the image. She would put it out of her mind with the help of this sun. She would go back to her husband now, for the landscape had changed him as well. And she would never tell him. She knew they would never hear from the dead man’s brother again. And anyway, in this place it seemed only fitting, she supposed, only fitting one person should be sacrificed to keep another one sane.

Ejected, exiled, homeless, Eden banned,
   no fires called Adam home at end of day
   but Eve’s; and there alone where Sarah lay
held nomad Abram any share of land.
Beside the garden locked seemed naught but sand
   to Solomon his court in royal array;
   and home enough was Egypt’s farthest quay
to Joseph, if but Mary held his hand.
No, on this earth man has no fixed abode,
   but seldom reaping what few fields he sows.
     Yet to this rootless, shipwrecked traveller’s life
comes oft a woman’s heart to share the load,
   be tent and hearth, and go where’er he goes:
     God pities him and fashions him a wife.

At the end of the block on Main Street sits a small dry cleaners owned by the Choi family. It is a model of tidiness and precision. Every day the hum and whoosh of electric dryers and steam cleaners sound forth like the beating heart of a great giant. Mrs. Choi runs the register with an efficiency bordering on the brusque, but mitigated by her ability to greet each customer by name. The pronunciation may sometimes be wanting, but she’s got the raw data down cold.

No one could doubt her willingness to extend herself for her customers either. Like one February morning when a regular, Mr. Sam Gilette, came in with a black smudge on his forehead. After her usual boisterous hello, Mrs. Choi leaned over the counter, pointed to her own forehead, and whispered, “Your head,” in a discreet gesture meant to spare the man a day of embarrassment.

“What?”

“Your forehead. It all dirty.”

“Oh, that,” he said. “Church. I’ve  just come from church. Ash Wednesday.”

“Oh. Church.” A flash of recognition crossed Mrs. Choi’s face as she remembered seeing such a smudge before. She was satisfied by his explanation and her own solicitude, and business could proceed. It’s an admirable service they provide to the public. People bring in their soiled, stained, wrinkled and ripped clothing and receive them back a few days later fresh, pressed,mended and clean.

Serena, Mrs. Choi’s niece, works as a seamstress. She sits just near the front counter, facing the wall under a pegboard of dozens of large, brightly colored spools of thread ready for any contingency. She had left Korea as a teenager to join her aunt and uncle who had emigrated to America several years before, and everything she knows of her new home she learned from them. But she possesses all the softness her aunt lacks. Her face is smaller and finely shaped, not the broad block of Mrs. Choi. She speaks infrequently to the customers, but when she does, a shy sweetness emanates from behind her unfashionable glasses. When things get busy, Serena gets up from her sewing machine and helps at the counter, but this is always a last resort. Everyone knows Mrs.Choi is in charge.

All that changed the day Mrs. Choi suffered a stroke. She had been sorting the day’s receipts when Serena noticed a trickle of drool fall from Mrs. Choi’s mouth onto the counter. The right side of her face had gone completely slack and looked as if it were melting. Now Mrs. Choi is in a rehab center and Serena is running the shop. At first, Serena was terrified. Though her aunt’s imperious manner could sometimes be irritating, it had been so much easier when Mrs. Choi was there. Serena had never needed to think for herself or make any decisions. Submitting to the commands of her superiors was second nature to her. When her aunt told her to step lively and help at the register, barking orders at her one at a time, she would do what she was told. Serena could even anticipate what her aunt would say next, but she always hung back and never let Mrs. Choi know. Out of politeness, perhaps. Her aunt liked it that way and Serena liked to please. But from such submission she had learned to do things on her own. Serena soon found herself doing what she would have imagined unthinkable a mere six months before. “The buck stop here,” she had taken to saying. Sometimes her new motto confused patrons. Some thought she was talking about the bus. Others had visions of marauding bands of male deer.

From her days of hemming and mending, she had gotten good at concocting lives for the garments customers brought in. Bits of the world came to her one hanger at a time, like bodies without spirits. Each suit, each dress, each cardigan, was an occasion for her to wonder about lives being lived on a big stage somewhere.

Say a 38 Long Brooks Brothers suit came into the store. Serena would see a man strutting through the morning rush at Penn Station as if wading in the shallow end of the shore, the other people like so much water in a wave, their presence a slight dragon his progress. In the evening he would reverse course, but slowly, buffeted by more waves than before. Serena would smell the stale odor of cigar clinging to the jacket and conjure a scene of male bonhomie, muttered complaints and bursts of laughter, the slow release of strife amid the billows of acrid smoke.

Serena liked cocktail dresses and ball gowns best. Her eyes would widen at the first glimpse of sequin or bead. One dress in particular caught her fancy. Long to the floor and short off the shoulder, its golden silk ruched on the side to conform to the wearer’s shape. She could almost feel the soft skin of the slightly rounded shoulders, cold like a marble statue. This one, this one, would be worn to a party, a grand party with string quartets and canapés. She could see the lady in the gold dress walking into a parquet ballroom, a row of enormous floor to ceiling windows with layer upon layer of trim framing a Manhattan street scene a few stories below. The darkness outside would be punctuated by a haphazard array of lights—some red from the backs of cars,others white from lampposts or blue from shop signs.

Serena wondered what the size 6 gold dress lady would be thinking as she stood looking down to the street in between sips of her vodka tonic. Maybe she was steeling herself for the appearance of the woman her husband was carrying on with, andthe fake cordiality that she would endure. Maybe she would be cursing the ultra-support hose this clingy number necessitated, counting the minutes until she could free herself from the flesh-suffocating torturer. Or maybe she was thinking how pretty the street looked below with all the lights twinkling and the noise muted, and how golden the ballroom looked, and how she felt part of it all.

Serena never considered her own life a stage. She was always backstage. She was wardrobe. The real action of life was always elsewhere. She wasn’t depressed by this, and she suffered no envy. She was content with her place backstage. Almost.

Serena’s fear of Mrs. Choi had kept any thoughts other than pleasing her aunt in check. Her job was to do what Mrs. Choi told her, and she did that well. But with Mrs. Choi no longer there and her eventual success in running the shop assured, Serena began to think the stage not so scary either. She could run things. Mrs.Choi had become training wheels she no longer needed.

One day Mr. Gilette came in shortly before close. He placed a slender department store shopping bag on the counter.

“Serena, I have something I need cleaned. I need it tomorrow. Can you help me?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Gilette. It almost five o’clock. I don’t know. But I can try for you. The buck stop here.”

Mr. Gilette reached into the bag and pulled out a dress of lilac silk. He held it for a moment and then smoothed it out on the counter.

“Oh, very pretty.” She liked the smell of tea rose that accompanied it. “For Mrs. Gilette?”

“Yes, it’s my wife’s. Her favorite. I need it for her funeral the day after tomorrow. Is it possible?”

Serena, who had picked up and was admiring the dress, shuddered a little as if death had somehow touched her, too. “Oh, Mr. Gilette. I very sorry. Very sorry about Mrs. Gilette. I make sure it be ready.”

“She always looked so pretty in this dress. So soft,” his voice trailed off.

“You must loved her very much.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you, Serena. See you tomorrow.”

Mr. Gilette walked out the door and Serena took the dead woman’s dress to the machines in the back of the shop. She would take care of it right away. She held the dress out in front of her. It was lovely. A lady’s dress. Three-quarter sleeves, cut slim at the waist, with a gentle flutter of silk at the bottom. No adornments except for a pearly rosette at the neck. Serena checked it for stains. A little smudge of mauve lipstick near the neckline and what looked like tomato sauce on the bodice. All pretty normal. Then she noticed a black smudge of grease near the hem. That would be difficult. Grease is always the hardest to get out.

Serena checked the pockets. She found a crumpled tissue inthe left pocket. It also smelled of tea rose. From the right pocket, she pulled out a small laminated card. On one side was a picture of a sad-looking lady in a blue veil, and on the other side were some words that Serena read aloud: “I fear all things in my weakness, but hope for all things in Your goodness.”

While Serena pondered her weakness and turned on the dry cleaning machine, Mr. Gilette walked home and thought about how he had lied. “You must loved her very much,” Serena had said. But he hadn’t really loved her. He had admired her fine character and had been charmed by her dotty ways and sunny laugh. He was contented with the tidy house she kept and had grown accustomed to the feel of her back as she lay in bed. But love? That was something else. He had felt that flutter once, a long time ago, but it wasn’t with her. He thought he had resolved this long ago. But now that she was gone that nagging feeling of disloyalty unnerved him anew.

He felt a fool for waiting so long to get the dress cleaned. He knew her strength had been waning for a few weeks, but he somehow couldn’t bear to think of that dress.

His head weighed ten tons and his face felt blazing hot. The last two years of Sarah’s illness had taken their toll. But they had also given him direction. Before, he had faced a retirement with more choices than he could comprehend. Travel. Home improvement projects. Learning French. All these possibilities. He could hardly pick one.

Then Sarah got sick. At first it was just periodic stints in the hospital. Then rehab. Then a setback and finally, her last four months dying at home. Her sickness had become their life. It was their retirement. And the choice of what he should do with his time was made for him.

As Serena worked she took another look at the little laminated card. “I fear all things in my weakness,” she whispered to herself. She knew what that was like. Like the time Mrs. Choi blamed Serena for washing Mrs. Callaghan’s Aran wool sweater instead of dry-cleaning it, and thereby shrinking it to the size of a second-grader. Serena took the rap for that and endured Mrs. Callaghan’s subsequent glares. She remembered thinking that she should have said something. She had not put Mrs. Callaghan’s sweater in the wash; it was Mrs. Choi herself in a distracted moment. But Serena had not said anything; it hadn’t occurred to her to say something. She had been weak. But the weakness in her was really a strength, a docility of spirit that had enabled her to be trained by her aunt and to withstand wrongs done to her without bitterness. She had no complaints to make.

Serena finished pressing the dress. She slipped a plastic bag over the hanger and attached the receipt. “Sam Gilette, 29 Palmer Road, Same Day Special.” She knew Palmer Road. It was only a few blocks away. It was after six o’clock. The shop was closed and everyone else was gone. Sensing the urgency, as if the dead woman might go somewhere, Serena decided to deliver it immediately.

So with the dress in one hand and the shop keys in another, Serena locked up and took off down the street to Palmer Road. She had to hold the hanger way up past her shoulder to avoid touching the ground with the dress. She didn’t want to risk creasing it by folding it over, and tossing it over her shoulder might save her arm, but it somehow seemed to Serena too cavalier and disrespectful. So down the street she went, with the lilac mirage of Sarah Gilette walking next to her.

She arrived at number 29 and rang the bell. Mr. Gilette answered with a look of surprise.

“Serena!”

“Hello, Mr. Gilette. I have your dress.”

“Why, I didn’t mean for you to go to all that trouble.”

“No problem. I wanted to be sure it all ready for you.” Serena thrust the dress toward him.

“Come in, come in.”

She hadn’t planned to enter, but walking that peculiar way had made her tired and she didn’t mind resting a minute. The house had the air of a place in mourning, as if it knew that someone had died and had hushed itself in grief. The furnishings of the modest Cape Cod were probably stylish and upscale in 1984. In the foyer hung a crucifix. She glanced quickly away; these always frighten her a bit, and this one was particularly graphic. The arms were more vertical than horizontal. The shoulders looked dislocated, and the body hung low, with only the nails keeping the law of gravity in check.

Mr. Gilette took the dress and hung it in the coat closet. Serena looked into the living room. It seemed oddly named now, since this was where the dying had been done. She saw a hospital bed stripped of its linen. A portable commode still sat in the corner. The night table next to the bed held a neatly stacked pile of books.

“So many books,” Serena said. She indicated the end table. Mr. Gilette stood in the center of the room as if seeing it for the first time. It was a moment before he replied.

“Yes. Sarah loved her books. I used to read to her a little bit every night. I’m not sure how much she even heard in these last weeks. I kind of got to reading them to myself. For myself. Maybe to see how the story ended.”

“You good husband.”

“Well.” Mr. Gilette looked down at his feet. “Thank you again for bringing the dress so quickly. It’s very nice of you.”

“No problem. No problem,” Serena answered, suddenly embarrassed that she had come. She rushed to the door.

She turned one last time and said, “You must loved her very much,” before she walked out into the early October chill. The sky was darkening but a layer of light still shone under the cloud cover. The mottled look of the sky—the dark and light fusing together, hanging low and deepening—gave her a pang. The beauty hurt her somehow. Then she did something she herself couldn’t explain. She turned and walked back up Palmer Street and knocked again at number 29.

When Mr. Gilette answered, and before he could say anything, Serena blurted out, “You tell me where funeral tomorrow?”

“Funeral? You want to go to Sarah’s funeral?”

“Yes. Is okay?”

“Of course. Sure. But it’s not tomorrow. It’s Thursday at St. Clement’s Church on River Road. Do you know the one I mean? The big stone one across from the golf course. Not the one with the red door. That’s the Episcopal church.”

“Oh, so many.”

“Yes, so many.” Gilette could tell from the blank look on her face that she had no clue which church he meant. “I tell you what. You come here Thursday morning, say around nine-thirty. Can you get here at nine-thirty?”

Serena nodded quickly.

“You won’t have to work then?”

She hadn’t thought of that. “No, no, it’s okay,” she said anyway.

“Okay, then. You come here,” Gilette pointed to his front steps, “and I bring you to funeral.” He had started to talk like her. “Or somebody here will. In either case, we get you a ride.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Gilette. You so nice. Thank you. I come here Thursday nine thir-tee.”

As she left, Serena found that her mood had changed. She was going to Mrs. Gilette’s funeral Thursday, and she was suddenly, oddly happy. The sky even looked less gloomy as she bounded down the street with a spring in her step, unencumbered by the lilac dress. Her arms swung by her sides as if she had just flung open the stage curtains and emerged from the wings.

Mr. Gilette closed the door and stood there a moment. He turned to walk back into the house and began to laugh. A small chuckle was followed by another, then another, until his shoulders shook and he screeched with a mirth he could not account for.

What was he doing? Was he bringing a date to his wife’s funeral? The young girl from the Korean dry cleaners, no less! No, it wasn’t a date. He was being ridiculous. She was a girl, yes. And he was a man, a widower, more precisely. But he was just giving her a ride to his wife’s funeral. It was all perfectly normal. And he laughed some more.

Then he thought of the dress hanging in the coat closet. He pulled it out and removed the plastic covering. Serena had done a nice job. It looked tidy and smelled fresh, though somehow he thought he could smell the scent of tea rose still. Then he remembered the stain. He felt his chest tighten and looked quickly at the hem. Round and around he turned the dress. But it was gone. The black smudge of grease was gone. He couldn’t believe it. He checked the dress again. But, thank God! Serena had gotten it out. Relief poured through him and he sat on the steps and remembered.

It had been a fine April day when Sarah had last worn that dress. It was Easter Sunday and they were coming home from church with a lightness that seemed to be moving through every living thing. The air was redolent with promise and the daffodils on the front lawn danced to the silent tune the breeze played.

But Sam was slightly annoyed. They had declined an invitation to the O’Hearns for brunch. Mass had been long, and Sarah was tired. So it would be just the two of them this Easter. He always liked seeing Janet O’Hearn, still sweet and pretty at sixty-five, and Dave would surely have invited him for a cigar on the back porch. But instead they were coming home to the sliced ham and the potato-cheese casserole someone from the church social ministry had brought over last night.

Sam got out on the driver’s side and reached for the Easter lily on the back seat. Then he went around to help Sarah out.They had done this so many times he barely gave it a second thought. But Sarah seemed particularly slow, and the Easter lily was awkward and heavy in his hand. He reached with his other hand to help Sarah out and thought all was clear when he pivoted around to close the door with the back of his hand.

A sharp yelp came from Sarah as the car door closed on her ankle. She hadn’t been quick enough getting onto the curb. Sam cursed himself as Sarah leaned against him. He dropped the lily to the ground and potting soil spilled out from the purple foil.

He spent the rest of that Easter applying cold packs to his wife’s purple ankle, feeling guilty as sin. Sarah tried to make light of it, but the grimaces she made every time she moved told him that he had really hurt her.

Serena rang the bell Thursday morning at nine-thirty as instructed. She wore a red-and-black flowered dress. He had never seen her in a dress before. They rode to the funeral home together.

“You must really loved her.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that.” He was sharper than he intended to be. “I’m sorry, Serena.”

“No. I’m sorry, Mr. Gilette.” But she was undeterred. “But you read those books to her. You take care of your wife yourself. That why I say you must loved her very much. If you not loved her, maybe you not take care of her.”

“Yes, I tried to be good to her. I tried to be a good husband. But,…I don’t know.”

“You good husband, Mr. Gilette. You did lots of things forher.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. But it’s more complicated.” He stopped there.

St. Clement’s is the kind of old church they don’t make anymore. Built by French settlers, its blue stones gave it the look of a Gothic fortress that could withstand hurricane winds and other less obvious but destructive forces. One main steeple, topped with copper green with age, and four smaller spires, one at each corner of the building, as well as arched doorways and little clover windows, gave it an altogether pleasing countenance.

During the funeral Mass, Serena sat and stood at various times trying to keep pace with the rest of the congregation. Though all the getting up and kneeling down and standing up again baffled her, she felt a peculiar calm. She was swimming in a strange sea but was happy to allow the tide to move her along. The intricacy of the church’s interior overwhelmed her at first. Angels and pillars and statues, all seemed a riot of unfamiliar form and purpose. But rather than feeling put off, she was thrilled. She had found something new and beautiful, and that alone held out a great hope to her. She would nibble at the edges of this new beauty, seeking a tiny part that seemed familiar until she could consume it all, until she could say: Yes, I know this. I can see why people love it so.

For amidst the color and commotion, Serena landed upon the thing that was familiar: the rows of stained glass windows that flanked each side of the church. Their color dazzled in blues and reds and reminded her of all the spools of thread she sat beneath day after day. The people pictured in them wore long robes and held various things in their hands—a little lamb, a bouquet of roses, a quill pen, a palm branch. One even had a little baby. She didn’t know what it all meant, but she liked the look of it.

And that feeling came again, that strange pain. Looking around her at this new beauty, she wanted to take it all in, to have it and to keep it. The thought of losing it hurt her. Part of the pain was knowing that even if she didn’t forget it entirely, the memory of it would not be quite right. She couldn’t replicate it perfectly. But she would try anyway. She would glue all the bits of beauty in a scrapbook in her mind. There, next to the image of the mottled October sky from the other day and the magnificent embroidery of the dress she repaired two weeks ago, she pasted this new beauty.

She studied the windows happily as the sad singing went on and people started to go up to the front of the church to get something. As she watched the line of people, Serena looked up and saw an enormous cross hanging high above everything else. She was surprised she hadn’t seen it before. It was huge. This one also had the body on it, but unlike the one at Mr. Gilette’s house, it didn’t frighten her. The hands and feet were nailed on, sure enough, and the head wore a painful-looking thorny crown, but something about the face made it beautiful to look at. That face, which should have been contorted with agony, was placid and lovely. She found herself staring at it, unable to look away.

But the service was almost over, and the casket of Mrs. Gilette was being carried outside. Serena watched as Mr. Gilette walked alone behind the wooden box. The look on his face seemed more like the one she would have expected to see on the face of the suffering man on the cross. It was not calm and lovely. To all the world he looked like a grieving widower, lost without his wife.

But Mr. Gilette alone knew that the seeming anguish on his face was really shame. “Lord, forgive my lack of love,” he whispered again and again. “I tried, Lord, I tried.”

Outside Serena made her way over to a group of middle-aged ladies who looked at home and relaxed, as if waiting for their table at a café. She heard one say, “Oh, he was good to her. Other men would have put her in a home. But not Sam.” Another said, “Do you know he fed her and bathed her himself? Every day. We used to bring Communion to Sarah, and the home-health nurse would tell us that there was nothing for her to do. Well,except for her meds and caring for her skin.” A third said, “He’sa saint for all he did.”

At that Serena chimed in, “He read books to her, too. All the time. He love her very much.” The women turned to face the newcomer. Serena blushed at the sudden attention. Feeling on the spot with nothing more to say, she blurted out, “Yes, the buck stop here.” The ladies stopped for a moment and were quiet again. They looked at Serena with a politeness that could barely mask their bewilderment.

“I better go find Mr. Gilette. He give me ride home.” This did not make things any clearer to the ladies, who were trying to make out Serena’s connection to the day’s events.

The procession to the cemetery was beginning to take shape in the parking lot. Serena saw Sam Gilette on the curb next to the black Town Car that had brought them to the church.

“Mr. Gilette, I go with you?” She had no other way of getting home.

Gilette looked up from his grief and said absently, “Ah, sure, sure, Serena. Why don’t you get in?” Sam held the door open, and Serena started to get in the car. She stopped abruptly and said,“Oh, Mr. Gilette! I forgot to give you this before. It was in Mrs.Gilette pocket.”

Serena held out the laminated card with the sad lady in the blue veil. Sam took it from her, looked at it, and read: I fear all things in my weakness, but hope for all things in Your goodness. Then he began to cry.

Mrs. Choi returned to the shop a bit slower than her old self. She no longer works the counter but sits most of the day in a chair, separating the darks and the lights, and keeps Serena company by offering unsolicited advice. She tells Serena she needs to keep the counter tidier or the customers will think their clothes won’t be clean. “If counter not clean, clothes not be clean,” she says.

While tidying up a stack of papers near the register one day, Mrs. Choi spotted a lavender-colored paper, folded in half, with a picture of a cross and the words Mass of Christian Burial for Sarah Gilette printed on the cover. “Sarah Gilette,” she said. “I know this lady. She die? I know her. She in the rehab with me. She all the time go to the chapel. I say ‘you pray to get better?’ She say, ‘No, I pray for my husband.’ I say, ‘Why? He sick?’ She say,‘No. He thinks he doesn’t love me.’”

Mrs. Choi tapped her finger to her head. “Strange lady.”

For Blaise Gerard Kurtz

To him who overcometh, says the Lord,
A white stone will be given whereupon
Is writ his name, known only to himself
And God Most High: his true, eternal name.
I AM has sent us, given us His Word
(The Word Who is God and is with God too),
By word brought forth the firmaments of earth
And peopled them with everlasting souls:
We see His Name in bird and flame and breath,
And every blade of grass; and yet–and yet–
These are but adumbrations of that Name.
The Holy Name, in verity, is Joy,
Light, Beauty, Truth, Might, Goodness, Unity,
The Deeper Magic ancienter than Time
And Love immortal from before the Dawn–
A Word that only He can fully hear,
Within the borders of the Triune Land.
But every child of God perceives one part,
One aspect of His nature’s majesty:
The quintessential destiny of each,
Which none can apprehend but he and He.

To him who overcometh. May we all!
St. Francis of Assisi, long ago,
Made pictures in the snow and cried aloud
That they sufficed him for a wife and child.
And why, to him, that sacrament was barred
The rest of us need never understand;
We know enough: his yearning was denied,
But in its place from wounded hands divine
Received an infinitely greater love.
Perhaps the snow of his fidelity
Reflected or foretold his final name,
Its graces shining backward through his years?
Perhaps our absolutely brightest days
Are shadows thrown by what we may become.

And he who overcometh shall become
A splendour of humility refined
Before the Lord and men. Death opens all:
But there is much in life to overcome
Ere we embark upon the true crusade.
We bear, each one of us, a blackened stone–
Sin-heavy millstones lashed around our necks–
Through weeping vales beneath a shadowed sky–
Unhallowed vultures watch for us to fall–
oft enough we doubt our enterprise–
For sweet and seemly seem our sins betimes.
(Late, O Ancient Beauty, have I loved Thee!)
So toil and sorrow, death and Hell’s array,
Beleaguer every mile-post on the road:
But wise and loving counsels guide our steps,
And strong and loving shoulders bear our weight,
When we would falter, fail, or turn aside.
And far beyond the iron and the flame,
A place of light has been prepared for us,
A mansion in our Father’s holy House;
And there, at last, we shall be told our names.

Prologue *

On 4 April 1947, a house on the Rue des Trois Frères, raided by the Nazis and left untenanted since the liberation of Paris, was sold. Records of past ownership had been destroyed during the occupation, and since memory is short in that district, little was known of the man who had most recently lived there. No stories were known to explain his departure. How could there be at a time when so many were dead or disappeared without a trace? He might have evacuated the city with so many others; he might have been imprisoned; he might have been dead.

In the far corner of a dark and cluttered attic, a large, flat-topped trunk of soiled gray Trianon canvas was found. A label inside the lid boldly proclaimed the craftsmanship of Louis Vuitton—Malletier à Paris. Collaborator.

The trunk contained an eclectic collection of objects, like those found in most deserted houses—the disjecta membra of a life—old clothes of a faded, though still gaudy, flavor, five packets of letters, a crate of particularly colorful erotica, the manuscript of a rather sordid novel, and, at the very bottom, a dusty, soiled holy card with tinny gilt edging to frame a cheerful, young martyr attired in doublet, hose, and ruff, who leaned casually upon the rack beside him as if it were the pleasantest deathbed ever known to man. The card commemorated a young man’s ordination to the priesthood, dated 1915. The priest’s name was so faded as to be entirely illegible.

These are the final letters.

* * *

* It is almost a literary cliché to say that one’s characters have run away with one’s original idea, but such is the case here. This prologue is presented belatedly to the public because it was only when “J” finished writing letters that the author felt such meddlesome interference on her part was warranted—or even possible. EBD.