Arthur felt his throat tighten.  He had to help this boy.  He reached out and put a hand on Charlie’s arm.  Dear Lord, it was so thin.

“You can’t be judged a loser until you’ve given up trying, Charlie.  And that’s why I brought you home.  I want you to try.”

Charlie looked up at him again.  “Try what?”

“To change.”

He shook his head.  “That’s not possible.”

“It is, Charlie,” he said, gently squeezing his arm.  “With God’s help and the right doctors, you can do it.”

Charlie’s laugh rang hollow against the walls.  “I think God must have lots of concerns more pressing than my sexual orientation.  And really, Dad, if it’s the election you’re worried about, relax.  No one connects me with you.  And even if they did, it could actually work to your advantage.  We’re a pretty cohesive voting block now.  We proved that in the last election.”

We...Arthur shuddered at Charlie’s casual alignment of himself with the likes of Act Up and Queer Nation and the pathetic human mutants and aberrations that marched in those Gay Pride parades.  If getting elected depended on their votes, he’d rather not run.

But public knowledge of Charlie’s homosexuality was only part of the real threat.

“I won’t deny the election is important to me.  You know that.  There’s so much good I can do for this country if they’ll only let me.  I have plans.  I can make us great again.”  He didn’t just believe that—he knew it.  “But if I can’t help my own son back on the right path, how can I expect to do it for an entire nation?”

“Dad—”

“Give me a year, Charlie.  One year of prayer and therapy.  That’s all I ask.  You’re young.  One year out of the rest of your life is not too much for your father to ask, is it.  If there’s been no change by the end of that time, and if I see you’ve made a sincere effort, then I’ll accept your...the way you are and never bother you again about it.”

Charlie was staring at him.  “Accept me?  I don’t think you can.”

“If you can try, I can try.  One year.”  He thrust out his hand.  “What do you say?”

“One year...that’s too long.”

“Half a year then.  Six months.  Please!”

Charlie hesitated and Arthur sent up a prayer: Please make him accept, Lord.  Between the two of us I know we can make him normal.

Tentatively, Charlie reached out and grasped his father’s hand.

“All right.  Six months.  As long as you understand that I’m not promising you results, just to give it the old college try.”

Arthur blinked back the tears that surged into his eyes.  He pulled Charlie close and embraced him.

“That’s all I ask, son.  That’s all a father can ask.”

Thank You, Lord, he said in silent prayer.  I know this is going to work.  If I can teach my boy to pray, if he can learn as I have learned, if he can find for himself just one tenth of the peace I find in You, he will be saved. I trust in You, Lord, and I know that You will help me in this.

But as he held his son, Arthur was alarmed at how frail he seemed.  He could feel the corduroy ridges of ribs through Charlie’s sweatshirt.  Weight loss, night sweats...Charlie couldn’t possibly have...

No.  That was impossible.  God wouldn’t do that to him.  Arthur didn’t know if he could handle that.  Not after Olivia.  He was strong, but he had his limits.  He wasn’t cut out to be a modern-day Job.

He cast the thought from his mind and held his son tighter.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Charlie.  God will make it so.”

I swore to all present that I would guard her until my last breath.  I told the brother, I will kill to keep her safe.   

But he said to me, No, you must not kill. 

And then I swore I would die to keep her safe.  But within I promised that if the need arose I would gladly kill to keep her secret.  It is the least I can do.

I do not fear killing.  I have killed before, slipping through the crowds in Jerusalem, stabbing with my knife.  And I fear not damnation.  Indeed, I am already thrice-damned.

--from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum translation

EIGHT

Manhattan

As Sister Carolyn Ferris reached behind the scratched and dented dresser in her room at the Convent of St. Ann, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall behind it.

You’re twenty-eight, she thought, and you still look like a child.  When are you going to get wrinkled so men won’t stare at you?

Maybe if she’d spent her teenage years worshipping the sun instead of God, she’d have at least a few wrinkles to show.  But she’d entered the convent at fourteen, and as a result her skin was pale and flawlessly smooth.  She kept her thick, dark, hair cut in a bob—straight, functional, easy to care for.  She wore no make-up—never a trace of mascara or shadow for her large blue eyes, never even a touch of color to her thin lips, and when out in public she tried to look as serious as possible.  Yet despite

her shapeless clothing and carefully cultured Plain Jane look, men still approached her.  Even in habit!

Maybe I should put on forty or fifty pounds.  That would stop them.  Or would it?

But no matter how much she ate, her body burned it off.  She seemed doomed to remain 120 pounds forever.

She removed the compact-like case from under the rear lip of the bureau top and opened it.  Inside was a foil and plastic card with twenty-one clear bubbles, one for each of the contraceptive pills the pack contained.  The label inside the lid read Yasmin and gave the patient’s name as Margaret Jones.  Half the pills were gone.  Quickly, Carrie pushed the next light-peach tablet in line through the foil and popped it into her mouth, dry swallowing it as she shut the case and returned it to its hiding place.

Good.  The daily risk of taking her pill was out of the way.  With no locks on the doors within the Convent of the Blessed Virgin, someone could pop in at any time.

Carrie had noted she had two refills left on her pills.  After that, the fictitious Margaret Jones would need another appointment at the West Side Planned Parenthood clinic.  She shuddered at the thought.  She hated pelvic exams and lived in fear of the chance that someone in the waiting room might recognize her as Sister Carrie.  But she put up with the indignities and the fear to avoid the greater terror of pregnancy.

Since she’d be traveling alone, she’d leave her habit behind.  She adjusted the collar of her starched white blouse and straightened the jacket of her black gabardine suit.  “Sensible” shoes—black pumps with one-inch heels—completed the picture.

She checked the rest of her room to make sure it was neat.  A bed, a night stand with a hand-painted statue of the Blessed Virgin, a reading lamp, a dresser, a crucifix, and a closet—not much to take care of.  Everything in place.  One last thing to do...

She knelt by her nightstand and gazed at her Virgin Mary statuette.  She repeated the same prayer she said every time she was about to sin:

Forgive me, Mother Mary.  I wish I could have been like you, but I was never given the choice.  And though I sin with full knowledge and forethought, please know that I am devoted to you and always shall be.  Yet despite all my devotion, I know I’m still a sinner.  But in just this one thing.  In everything else I gladly deny myself to do your work, do your bidding.  Yet a small part of my heart remains unruly.  I hope, I trust, I pray that in your own heart you will find room to forgive this sinner.

Sister Carrie crossed herself, rose, and headed for the first floor.

On the way out she checked in with Mother Superior to let her know she was leaving and told her when to expect her back.

The older woman smiled and looked up at her over the tops of her reading glasses.  “Tell your father our prayers are with him.”