Chapter 11
She is quiet as a mouse, and before she answers, she glances up at the bell tower one last time. Taking a detour in the conversation, she says, “I miss going to church with my husband. Ollie was a religious man. He loved the church.” She reaches into her side pocket and pulls out a grimy rag to wipe her nose. She cries lightly into her balled-up cloth.
She shakes her head. I observe the thin smudges of dirt on the side of her face.
She tucks the cloth back into her pocket and leans her head closer to me, as though she is going to tell a private joke, or fall asleep on my shoulder. But she says instead, “Ollie and I never missed Sunday Mass in all of the fifteen years we went to church.”
Something in the way she says her late husband’s name—Ollie—touches me to the bone. The chilly afternoon wind prickles the nape of my neck.
It is as if she is waiting for her husband to come out the church’s front doors and join us on the bench.