AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“TheCatholicchurch,” she said, folding her hands and looking up at the altar. “I figured why should I keep going to a church that told me I was going to hell because of what I was? But after a while I missed something—a feeling I’d gotten at Mass sometimes, you know?”
She looked at me, an uncharacteristically uncertain look on her face, and I realized she was embarrassed. We talked plentyabout our sex lives but never about religion. “Yeah,” I said, “I think I know what you mean. I used to come to the cathedral between classes—for cultural and art history reasons, I’d tell myself—but also for the feeling I got sitting here.”
“Huh, so we’re both closet church groupies and we never knew it.” She grinned, looking more like the self-assured Annie I knew. “I came to this chapel in particular because it’s dedicated to an Italian saint. I figured it was one thing to give up being a Catholic, and another to give up beingItalian.”
“Dio mio!”I exclaimed in mock horror. “Perish the thought!” And then, in a more serious voice, I asked, “Did you really think you’d have to give up being Italian because you’re gay?”
“I know it sounds stupid, but I didn’t know what—or who—I might have to give up. I was relieved that I didn’t have to give up my best friend”—she gave my hand a quick squeeze—“but you know I didn’t tell my mother until I was sixteen. The day I was going to tell her I came here first. I prayed that my mother wouldn’t be too upset, and that I wouldn’t lose my temper if she was—and that she wouldn’t…stop loving me.” Annie’s voice broke on the last words and I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. I kept hold of it while she continued. “So I’m sitting here and this old woman comes in and sits down next to me. She looks like your typical Italiannonna. Black dress, black kerchief tied over her hair, which was gray—I was sure it was gray when she sat down—a widow’s hump the size of a basketball, no teeth. She was muttering something under her breath when she came in. Some prayer, I figured, although it didn’t sound like Italian or English or even Latin. Anyway, we’re both sitting here and after a couple of minutes she puts her hand on mine, just like you have your hand on mine now, and she says to me, ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Anne Marie, your mother loves you for who you are and she will always love you.’ I started to ask her how she knew what I was afraid of—did she know me?—but when I turned I was blindedby a light behind her, from the window, I thought, only it was an overcast day. I could still see her silhouetted against the light, but she was no longer stooped and old, and her hair was long and shiny white. Then I looked away for a moment and she was gone. Lying in the chair where she’d been was this…”
Annie removed from her pocket a small, round white stone. It was worn away in the center so that one edge formed a slender crescent. “I took it with me and held it in my hand when I told my mother I was gay. You know what she said, right?”
“‘Better you should like women than be aputtalike your cousin Esta,’” I said, repeating the line that Annie had told me years ago.
“And then she hugged me and scolded me for not telling her sooner. The old woman was right. My mother never loved me any less…” Annie wiped her eyes. Sylvana Mastroanni had died of breast cancer when Annie was eighteen. “That old woman gave me the courage to face my mother and if I hadn’t—and she had died before I did…” Annie stopped, unable to finish the thought. After a few moments she continued, “I’ve always believed that old woman was some kind of angel…or maybe, after hearing what you’ve told me, a fairy or an ancient goddess. So I believe that you’ve ended up at a college for witches and fairies.” She smiled. “Hell, I’m not even that surprised. You were always a little…different.”
“Thanks!” I said, swatting her on the arm. “You make me sound like a head case.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that your background—dead parents, frosty, forbidding grandmother…”
“My grandmother wasn’t that bad,” I interrupted, thinking guiltily that I ought to call her tomorrow. I hadn’t spoken with her at all since I’d called to tell her that I’d gotten the job at Fairwick, but then she’d been so snippy that I hadn’t wanted to speak to her for a while. “And she did her best for a sixty-year-old woman suddenly saddled with an obnoxious tween.”
“Okay, okay, I meant no disrespect to Adelaide. I’m justpointing out that you always had thesetupto turn into the heroine of one of those Gothic romances you’re always reading…and now you have.”
“I’m not a heroine,” I pointed out, trying to hide my immense relief that Annie believed me behind a façade of grumpiness. “Merely an assistant professor. I don’t even have tenure yet.”
Annie put her arm around my shoulder. “Hey, from what you told me, you’re important to these people…uh, fairies … witches … whatever they are. You’re the doorkeeper! They’ll have to give you tenure!”
