Page 22 of The Dutch House

“About our mother being, I don’t know, like a saint?”

The tension in the room shifted and then we were all very aware of how we were sitting and what we were doing with our hands. “Your mother,” Jocelyn said, and then she stopped and looked at her sister.

“Of course we loved your mother,” Sandy said.

“We all loved her,” Maeve said.

“She was gone a lot,” Jocelyn said, trying to pick her words.

“She was working.” Maeve was tense but in a different way from Sandy and Jocelyn.

I had no idea what any of them were talking about, nor did I know that our mother had ever had a job. “What did she do?”

Jocelyn shook her head. “What didn’t she do?”

“She worked for the poor,” Maeve said to me.

“In Elkins Park?” There were no poor people in Elkins Park, or none that I’d ever seen.

“She worked for the poor everywhere,” Sandy said, though I could tell she was trying her best to explain the situation kindly. “She could always find people who needed something.”

“She went out looking for poor people?” I asked.

“Dawn to dusk,” Jocelyn said.

Maeve stubbed out her cigarette. “Okay, stop this. You make it sound like she was never there.”

Jocelyn shrugged and Sandy reached down for the thumb-print cookie with the round spot of apricot jam.

“Well,” Maeve said, “we were always happy when she came home.”

Sandy smiled and nodded. “Always,” she said.

Early Sunday morning Maeve came into the bedroom and opened the blinds. “Get up, get dressed. We’re going to church.”

I pulled a pillow over my head, hoping to find my way back into the dream I was falling out of, a dream I already couldn’t remember. “No.”

Maeve leaned over and pulled off the pillow. “I mean it. Up, up.”

I looked at her from one slitted eye. She was wearing a skirt, and her hair, still wet from the shower, was braided. “I’m sleeping.”

“I’ve been very nice. I let you sleep through the eight o’clock service. We’re going to make the ten-thirty.”

I dug my face into the pillow. I was waking up and I did not want to wake up. “There’s no one watching. No one can make us go to church anymore.”

“I can make us go.”

I shook my head. “Make yourself go. I’m going back to sleep.”

She dropped down hard on the edge of the bed, making me bounce a little. “We go to church. That’s what we do.”

I turned over on my back and opened my eyes grudgingly. “You’re not following.”

“Up, up.”

“I don’t want anyone hugging me or telling me how sorry they are. I want to go back to sleep.”

“They’ll hug you this Sunday and next Sunday they’ll just wave like nothing ever happened.”