Saint Training (7 page)

M
ary Clare watched as her mother relit a half-smoked cigarette she had puffed on earlier that afternoon. She didn’t need to ask her mother why she was smoking only partial cigarettes, then carefully putting them out and relighting them later. Dad got paid on the twenty-fifth of each month, and by the twentieth her parents were down to rationing their cigarettes.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Not when she was trying so hard to be a saint. Yesterday she’d even given up her snack from the Camp Fire Girls meeting. It was a brownie. She’d brought it home and divided it between Margaret and Martha. If God wanted her to be a saint and make all these sacrifices, He was supposed to be making her mother and father happy and sending enough money so that they weren’t struggling all the time.

It was true that her mother wasn’t as depressed as before, but now she seemed angry. Angry and determined about something Mary Clare didn’t really understand. And nothing had changed about money. Mary Clare paused. Maybe God didn’t have faith in her. Maybe He thought she was too much of a sinner to become a saint.

Whatever God was thinking, Sister Charlotte said she would get the results of the essay contest by mid-May. Once she won,
she’d know for sure that God wanted her to be a saint. Maybe they would get rich all at once. Mom would answer the phone cheerfully, instead of saying a quick Hail Mary that it wasn’t a bill collector, and Dad would always have plenty of money in his pockets for meals out when he traveled.

Mary Clare gazed out the kitchen window at the red tulips that had opened overnight. She’d enjoyed the beautiful spring weather on the way home from school. The purple and white crocus had been out for weeks, but now the trees were budding, and her sisters were quick to point out each yard that boasted colorful tulips, grape hyacinth, or fragrant lilies of the valley. Summer was only weeks away and Mary Clare couldn’t wait for the long days at Rock Lake. Most of her friends went to Lake Ripley, which was closer but cost money to get in. Rock Lake was free. And since she’d have to watch the kids anyway, it didn’t much matter.

During her last class she had counted: only twenty-three days left of school for the year. Becky and Tina had twenty-four more days, because public school kids didn’t get off school for Holy Days of Obligation. May 4 was a holy day, where Catholics were supposed to remember some mystery of the faith. Remembering meant not going to school and going to Mass instead.

When she’d gotten home, Mary Clare found her mother on the phone, her finger to her lips signaling everyone to be quiet. Mary Clare prompted the kids to go upstairs and change out of their uniforms. But she lingered behind to listen to her mother.

“Thank you,” her mother was saying. “Then you’ll send me an application in the mail?”

“An application for what?” Mary Clare asked when her mom got off the phone.

“None of your business,” Mom said. But her voice was cheerful and her eyes flashed with excitement.

Mary Clare knew better than to press her mother, so she hurried up the stairs to get into a pair of jeans. She was in such a good mood that she decided to surprise her mother by cheerfully helping with dinner, cheerfully setting the table, and cheerfully doing the dishes, which might earn her saint points. Having now read
The Interior Castle,
she could see that Saint Theresa, the Little Flower, earned saint points by smiling and saying sweet things even when she was annoyed or in pain. Mary Clare might be floundering when it came to sins, but at least she could still do “good works.”

When Mary Clare swung the closet door open to hang her uniform, she witnessed a miracle. There, in the back of the closet, a rosary glowed.

She gasped. Tears sprang to her eyes. This was a sign from God. He
did
want her to be a saint! He was going to accept her deal!

Suddenly the rosary started to jiggle. It swung wildly and finally dropped to the floor. She heard an unmistakable giggle. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out a small body huddled against the back of the closet, reeling with laughter.

She had been had.

There was Gabriella—looking impish as she laughed, openmouthed, revealing her chipped front tooth. Gabriella scrambled to pick up the rosary.

“Give me back my rosary, you little brat!” Mary Clare lunged at her sister, grabbing at the rosary in Gabriella’s hand. Gabriella clutched it harder, still laughing until Mary Clare jerked it free and it flew across the room.

“You shouldn’t have tried to trick me!” cried Mary Clare.

“I
did
trick you,” said Gabriella. “You thought the rosary was a vision, didn’t you?” She was wearing that snotty I’m-smarter-than-you-and-you’re-nothing-but-a-fool look on her face that
made Mary Clare want to slap her. “You’re always looking for a miracle, Mary Clare.”

Now Mary Clare wanted to tear the ribbons out of her sister’s pigtails. Mary Clare turned away from her sister to collect herself. “Gabriella, you’re so—cynical. You should believe in miracles.”

Gabriella stood and picked up her rosary, now broken into three pieces. Her face twisted. “That was from Sister Lucy,” she blubbered. Mary Clare knew that Gabriella loved her second grade teacher. She was young and bubbly, and whenever Mary Clare walked by the room the class seemed to be laughing.

Mary Clare was still furious, but she knew what she had to do. She went over to her bed and pulled out her own glow-in-the-dark rosary that lived under her pillow. “You can have this,” she said, holding it out to Gabriella.

Gabriella’s hands remained limp at her sides. “I don’t want your dumb rosary. I want mine.” She held out the broken one. “I’m going to take it to Sister Lucy and see if she can fix it.”

“You can’t call a rosary dumb! It’s sacrilegious! These rosaries were blessed by the bishop.”

Gabriella ignored her. “Maybe I’ll get a new one for my First Communion anyway,” she said.

Mary Clare didn’t say a word. At the moment she didn’t feel Gabriella deserved the First Communion things she’d worked so hard to get for her.

“I need your help with dinner, Mary Clare,” her mother called from the bottom of the stairs.

“On my way,” Mary Clare called. But as she was leaving the room, she spotted the First Confession booklet Gabriella had dropped on her bed.

“When’s the important day?” Mary Clare tried to sound casual.

“What important day?”

“Your First Confession.”

Gabriella shrugged. “Tomorrow.”

“Have you thought about all your sins yet?”

Gabriella rolled her eyes. “I don’t have any sins to confess.”

“Of course you do!”

Gabriella looked big-eyed and innocent. “No, I don’t.”

Mary Clare could see that Gabriella wasn’t playing. She really believed she was free from sin—like the Virgin Mary. Mary Clare took in a breath to give her patience.

“Everybody
has sins, Gabriella. When you talk in class, or write notes in school, or gossip, or don’t pay attention in church, those are all sins. Even saints sinned—of course they were only venial, and they kept them down to just a few a day, but they still had to go to confession. If you don’t confess and do penance you’re going to be in purgatory for a long, long time—or worse!”

Gabriella was focused on the Beatles poster that hung above Mary Clare’s bed.

“Even the Beatles have sins on their souls,” Mary Clare added.

“Except maybe for Paul,” Gabriella said. She knew how much Mary Clare loved Paul.

“Mary Clare, get down here. I
need
you.” Her mom’s voice.

“In a minute!” Mary Clare snapped. It seemed far more important to straighten Gabriella out. “What about when you got caught stealing that gum from the 7-11 store? Stealing’s a sin.”

Gabriella’s brown eyes sparkled and she tossed her braids impishly. “That was before Christmas and I was only six. It doesn’t count.”

She had a point, of course. A kid could murder somebody at six and it wouldn’t count. Her soul would remain lily white. But turn seven, and everything counted. Big ugly blotches of darkness stained the soul with every infraction.

“Okay,” Mary Clare said. “But you’ve been seven for three months. You have to have tons of sins by now.”

Mary Clare picked up the First Confession booklet on Gabriella’s bed and leafed through it, looking for the page listing all the sins.

“That’s mine!” Gabriella objected.

Mary Clare was puzzled. How could anybody prepare for confession unless they had a list of sins? She picked up her own missal that lay on top of her books. It was her First Communion missal, white with a gold cross embossed on top. She flipped to the section on confession and opened to the tattered page that contained all the sins a person read through when they examined their conscience in preparation for each confession. She brought them over to Gabriella, who studied them seriously for a time and then burst out laughing.

“Lust, coveting your neighbor’s wife, the seven deadly sins—this is all so old-fashioned. Sister Lucy says that God is love and He loves us no matter what.”

Mary Clare seethed as she thought about the pebbles she’d tried using to track every little sin, and here was Gabriella thinking she had no sins at all.

“But look
here,”
Mary Clare said, pointing to the next column. “Lying, answering back to your parents, fighting with your brothers and sisters…You commit those sins all the time.”

Gabriella held the missal but turned her face away from the words so she didn’t have to look.

Mary Clare jerked it out of Gabriella’s hands. “You are
not
ready to make your First Confession, Gabriella.”

Gabriella’s face scrunched up. The light in her eyes dimmed, then filled with tears. “Sister says I’m ready. And you’re just mean.”

“MARY CLARE! If I have to come up there…”

Mary Clare bolted from the bed. “Coming!”

“Gee,” Gabriella called after her. “I think you’ve been
disobedient.
Isn’t that a
sin?”

The dishes seemed to slam down on the table of their own accord as Mary Clare set it for dinner. How could Gabriella not even realize that she had sins to confess? It wasn’t right. Maybe Sister Lucy wasn’t teaching them the right things about confession.

“What has gotten into you, Mary Clare?” asked her mother. “If those dishes weren’t Melmac they’d all be shattered. Come in here and wash up the lettuce. I’ll have Gabriella finish setting the table.” Her mother went to the staircase and told Gabriella to come downstairs.

Gabriella meandered down the stairs wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and a scowl.

“Why me?” Gabriella argued when her mother told her to set the table. “Why can’t Anne do it?”

“Because Anne is taking care of Johnny.”

“Margaret could…”

“Gabriella. Enough! Finish setting the table,” their mother said.

Mary Clare wouldn’t let herself look at her little sister. She would have glared and that would have been another sin. Instead she focused on the carrots and potatoes she was washing.

Gabriella pulled a stack of glasses out of the cabinet and brought them to the dining room table. “Anybody eating over tonight?” she asked. She was counting the glasses.

“Not that I know of,” their mother said.

“I wish everything matched,” Gabriella said. “At Sarah’s house the glasses match the plates and bowls and everything. The salt and pepper shakers even match the dishes.”

“Sarah’s an only child,” Mary Clare said.

“I know,” Gabriella said. “I wish I were an…”

Their mom stopped cutting the potatoes. Stopped cold.

Now Mary Clare did give her sister a dirty look. She could tell by how Gabriella was looking at their mom that she knew she had made a mistake.

Their mother resumed cutting potatoes, but she cut slowly and deliberately. She didn’t turn to look at either daughter, and the girls continued their tasks in silence.

Finally their mother sped up her cutting again and the girls knew that she was okay. “I think someday you may appreciate having brothers and sisters,” she said.

“I already do, sometimes,” Gabriella said.

When their mother opened the oven to check on the chicken, the smell wafted through the room and made Mary Clare realize that she was hungry. She could hear the living room door open and the familiar voices of Mark and his friend Flipper chatting. They came right to the kitchen.

“Dinner sure smells good, Mrs. O’Brian,” Flipper said. It was his typical hint to get himself invited to dinner, which he did three or four times a week. He flashed a half smile toward Mary Clare’s mom and winked at Mary Clare while he chewed his Wrigley spearmint gum. Flipper always chewed Wrigley spearmint gum.

“You’ll just have to stay and see if it tastes as good as it smells,” Mom said.

“Thanks, Mrs. O’Brian. I will.”

Mary Clare took out another place setting and handed it to Gabriella. She loved it when Flipper stayed. He was so cute. He was tall with dishwater-blonde hair that fell to his shoulders, and he treated Mary Clare as if she were a high school kid.

“We’ll be eating in twenty minutes,” their mom called after Mark and Flipper. They were already heading up the stairs to Mark’s room.

It was a typical weekday dinner, with their father on the road and Matthew at the seminary. Luke made it home just as they were about to sit down to the table. He was excited about another folk song he’d just learned on his guitar and hinted that he might play it for the family later.

After dinner they all brought their own plates to the kitchen. Mary Clare used a spatula to scrape the leftover food into a colander and handed them, one by one, to Flipper, who insisted on washing the dishes. It always irritated Mark how Flipper did this, but it thrilled Mary Clare. Their mom handed towels to Anne and Gabriella and a soapy dish rag to Mark so he could wash off the table and counters. Mary Clare rolled the garbage in old newspaper. Luke was supposed to take it out to the garbage cans, but he’d disappeared.

Just as the cleanup was almost finished, the sound of Luke’s guitar summoned everyone to the living room, where he had positioned himself in an armchair and was playing a Bob Dylan song he had just learned. Even Flipper and Mark stuck around to hear it. When he had finished, Anne made the first request for songs the whole family knew. “Sing ‘Puff the Magic Dragon,’” she begged.