Mother Read online

  Chapter 4

  “Saint Raymond Nonnatus,” Arielle whispered.

  She clicked the mouse, and her face was immediately bathed in the frosty blue glow from her computer screen.

  The painting on-screen depicted a man with short brown hair and an impossibly thick beard that hung nearly to the hollow of his throat. He was wearing a strange red shawl that covered his shoulders, and a white flowing gown that flooded to his ankles where it gave way to clichéd brown strap sandals. Grasped in his right hand and held out in front of him was what looked like a golden cup. The man held something else in his other hand—a scepter? A fancy mirror?—which was aimed high in the sky like some sort of beacon.

  For all Arielle knew, it was a beacon, a signal to the heavens.

  Giveth this woman a babe.

  “Nonnatus,” she repeated, enjoying the way the name rolled off her tongue. “Nonnnn—”

  A hand rested on her shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Jesus!” she swore, turning to face Martin.

  There was a goofy look on his face, one that made him look far younger than his forty-odd years. He looked like a little boy, and the fact that he was holding a bowl of cereal in one hand only perpetuated this image. His brown eyes squinted as he hovered over her, staring intently at her computer screen.

  “Yeah, it could be him,” he affirmed, nodding. He leaned away and brought another spoonful of cereal to his mouth. “Sure looks like Jesus.”

  Arielle shook her head.

  “No, it’s not Jesus. It’s Saint—” She glanced back at the screen. “—Saint Raymond Nonnatus. The patron saint of conception.”

  She felt Martin lean over her again, but this time he stretched so far that she was essentially giving him a piggyback. The sweet smell of Fruitee-O’s or whatever cereal he was eating mixed with the equally saccharine scent of milk filled her nostrils.

  How can he eat that stuff?

  “Hmm… looks like the patron Saint of crossdressing to me.”

  He pulled back and Arielle suppressed a smile.

  Martin had a point.

  “But look.” She switched to another browser window. A bulletin board popped onto the screen. “There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that swear by this guy. These woman, they—”

  “—are desperate and lonely?” Martin offered.

  Arielle ignored him.

  “They went once, just once, and prayed to this—”

  “—crossdressing makeup artist—”

  “—Saint, and they conceived shortly thereafter.”

  Martin’s expression changed from mocking to one of incredulity. He stared at her for a moment, as if sizing her up. Arielle refused to back down and stared back.

  He brought another spoonful of cereal to his mouth.

  “You’re serious?”

  Arielle nodded.

  Chew, chew, chew.

  “Serious, serious? Like you’re going to do this, serious?”

  Her gaze faltered, but only for a moment.

  She clasped her hands together and lay them on her lap.

  “I’m willing to try anything at this point.”

  Martin continued to stare, unabashedly sizing her up now.

  “Nana-tits?”

  “Nonnatus.”

  Martin made a ‘What the fuck?’ face and turned and went to the sink. She heard him sigh before dropping his empty bowl into the metal basin. There was an awkward moment where she just stared at his back, his hands clutching the sides of the sink, his head hung low. But when he turned back to face her, his expression was unexpectedly neutral.

  “Look, Air, I’m all for having sex on a schedule like a union worker, and I even don’t mind your ‘orchid trying to hold onto dew’ pose after sex. But, but this—” He gestured toward her computer screen. “—this Nana-tits is too much.”

  Arielle could feel her face begin to tingle. She was pretty sure that the color of her cheeks matched the crimson color of Saint Nonnatus’s robes.

  Anger crept in behind the embarrassment.

  “Arielle, did you ever think that it’s just not meant to be? That maybe we can be happy without children? Or—God forbid—adopt a child?”

  Arielle’s face transitioned from crimson to purple. She jumped to her feet so quickly that the computer chair rolled all the way to the far wall.

  In all seven years of trying to conceive, this was the first time he had ever said anything like this. And he chose now, wearing a crappy cotton t-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms with milk clinging to just beneath his bottom lip, to say it.

  Arielle lost it.

  “Without children? Without children? Martin, what the fuck are you saying? Don’t you want to have kids with me?”

  Martin recoiled as if he had been struck, and his face got all screwed up. It looked like he was having a stroke.

  “I—I—”

  “You really don’t want to have kids?”

  The last thing Arielle wanted to do was cry, but she was helpless to control the tears that welled from somewhere inside her lids. This tsunami of emotions was extreme even for her. But this was what her life had become lately; just a light breeze pushing her hair out of perfect and Arielle wouldn’t know if she would cry, scream, or pass out.

  This time, however, it seemed like it was time to cry.

  Martin recovered from the initial shock of her tantrum and quickly made his way over to her, wrapping his burly arms protectively around her.

  “Of course I want to have kids, Air, you know that.”

  Arielle sniffed and nodded. She buried her head in his t-shirt, enjoying the way it smelled faintly of vanilla.

  They stayed in that pose for a moment or two without speaking. She knew she should say something, that she should apologize, but she couldn’t; she was too busy holding back more tears like the Hoover Dam.

  “Hey, Arielle?” Martin said at last. He gestured to the computer screen with his chin. “Do you think Nana-tits is gonna breastfeed when we finally have our baby?”

  Arielle laughed. She couldn’t help it. Martin had a way of doing that; getting her to laugh even during the most stressful and anxiety-ridden situations.

  Even when laughing was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

  Chapter 5

  Of course Martin went with her.

  Despite everything that he said—which ranged from mocking, to incredulous, to dumbfounded—he eventually agreed to get in the car and drive her to the church.

  Just as Arielle had known he would.

  Now, standing at the base of a large, bleached staircase, staring up at the ornate church, Arielle felt silly. And with the sun beating down on her, causing sweat to drip down her back before being soaked up by her pale blue sundress, she felt incredibly uncomfortable as well.

  For what it was worth, Martin looked worse. She couldn’t tell if it was the heat, the church, or the fact that he seemed to have put on a few extra pounds ever since he had left his real estate firm to go out on his own. But whatever it was that was irking him this day, it was clearly etched on his handsome face: his eyebrows were knitted, giving him unsightly creases at the top of his nose, and the corners of his mouth, so very often leaning upward in a grin or the beginnings of a smile, were downturned. And he, like Arielle, was covered in a thin layer of sweat.

  What the hell are we doing here?

  The front of the church was adorned by several massive stained glass windows. Two huge Corinthian pillars held up a peaked awning that overhung a ridiculously large wooden door.

  It was a Catholic church, which made sense to Arielle. After all, not only was this the home of Saint Raymond Nonnatus, but she was Catholic. Not Catholic in a churchgoing, God-fearing way, but in the way a person is Jewish despite chowing down on bacon cheeseburgers on the weekend. She was a Catholic now, because she needed to be Catholic—it suited her purpose.

  And right now she needed Saint Nonnatus.

  Arielle turned to f
ace her husband, who was staring up at the church like a layman charged with writing a dissertation on a Jackson Pollock painting.

  “You ready?”

  Martin’s answer was immediate and unambiguous.

  “No.”

  He opened his mouth to add something else, but decide better of it. It didn’t matter; Arielle knew what he wanted to say. She knew because the same words were bouncing around in her blond skull.

  What are we doing here?

  “It will be quick… let’s get it over with. Besides,” she said, gesturing toward the awning and the large wooden door, “I need to get into the shade.”

  Martin nodded and hooked arms with her.

  “Let’s do this,” he grumbled, and together they made their way up the church steps.

  Arielle didn’t think it was possible, but she felt more uncomfortable inside the church than she had been staring at the facade.

  The cool church interior was predictably gloomy, with light only coming from two sources: weak streaks of colored rays of sun that squeezed through thick panes of stained glass, and a series of candles that seemed to be scattered about the church. Like forgotten relics, the candles dripped waxed everywhere: on makeshift altars, on the handles of massive brass candle holders, and even on what looked like a tapestry-covered coffin.

  And then there was the smell: the inside of the church smelled like a noxious concoction of bitter incense and must.

  Arielle crinkled her nose.

  As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dramatic change in light, she began inspecting the church’s other patrons. There were only a handful of people in the church, mostly women, which was odd for a Sunday afternoon—or so she thought.

  Isn’t Sunday their busy day?

  As it was, most of the other churchgoers seemed caught up in their business, and as strange and out of place as Arielle felt entering the church, they took no notice of either her or Martin.

  There was an elderly woman with long, frizzy hair kneeling on a pew, her hands clasped together so tightly that Arielle thought she might crush the plastic rosary that was intertwined between her fingers.

  Another woman was weeping silently over a table of candles, a thin wooden stick with the end alight in her trembling hand, casting flickering shadows across her hawkish features.

  A third woman stood in the center of the room, her head high, her eyes tightly closed. Her hands hung at her sides, palms out, as if she expected the rays of colored light in which she stood would suddenly beam her up and out of the church… and maybe off this earth.

  What are we doing here? Arielle wondered for what felt like the hundredth time. What are we doing in this place of death and mourning? Of sadness? We are not like this.

  She turned to stare at Martin.

  He looked constipated. Or maybe like he was having a stroke.

  We are usually not like this.

  “What do we do now?” Martin asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  When he turned to face her, he clearly didn’t expect her to be staring at him. His eyes bulged.

  “What?”

  Arielle shook her head.

  “Nothing.”

  Martin tapped the toe of his light gray loafer.

  “Well, what do we do now, Mother Teresa?”

  Arielle went back to scanning the inside of the church. She didn’t bother answering her husband, deciding instead that her efforts were best spent searching for divine inspiration.

  The truth was, she had no idea what to do next. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been in church, but assumed it had been when she still crapped in her pants.

  “Air? What—?”

  Arielle shushed him.

  Her eyes gradually made their way back to the woman hovering over the table with all the candles. She was pretty sure that this was where you lit candles for the dead—the exact opposite reason why they were here—but for some reason she was drawn to that spot.

  “Come on,” she grumbled, giving Martin’s arm a tug.

  The table of candles was pressed against the side wall, and Arielle dragged Martin over to it. The woman with the shaking hands had since lit her candle and now hovered over it, humming, her back to them.

  When Arielle was just a few feet from the table, she noticed it: a figure wearing red-and-white robes, just like she had seen on the Internet. It was a painting of Saint Raymond Nonnatus in a tacky gold frame leaning up against the wall. Just in front of the picture was a dark ceramic bowl, inside of which were a handful of small turquoise stones.

  “There,” she whispered, extending a finger toward the painting, trying her best not to disturb the mourning woman.

  Martin nodded, but the confused look on his face remained.

  “I think we take a—”

  The woman hovering over the candles turned to face Arielle.

  She was younger than Arielle might have expected based on her pointy features. Her smooth face was covered in strands of jet-black hair that were nearly indistinguishable from the streaks of teary mascara that marked her cheeks.

  “Please, my—”

  The woman had begun saying something as she turned, but when her eyes met Arielle’s, her expression immediately changed. The woman’s dark eyebrows furrowed, her eyes somehow became beady, and something akin to recognition crossed her face.

  “Filius obcisor,” the woman hissed.

  Arielle cringed and shrunk away from her.

  What the fuck?

  Martin, who didn’t appear to have even noticed the weeping woman, reached into the bowl of turquoise stones.

  “Air, I think you put one of these in if…” He pulled out one of the stones and rubbed it between his fingers. It was smooth, like marble.

  The woman with the black hair turned to Martin, and Arielle took another step backward. Her heart raced. She could feel all of the muscles in her face go slack, as if the anger and hatred in the strange woman’s eyes had somehow taxed her ability to form an expression.

  Inside, her mind was twisting into a carnival pretzel.

  “You already took one out,” she spat.

  Martin finally acknowledged the woman. Whatever hold the woman had on Arielle apparently did not extend to him.

  “Huh?” Martin held the stone up so that it caught a ray of stained glass sunlight. “This? It’s just a—”

  “You already took one out!” the woman hissed. “You are supposed to put one in.”

  Martin made a face as he tossed the stone back into the bowl, where it landed with a loud clack.

  “It’s just a rock,” he finished with a shrug.

  The woman turned back to Arielle.

  “Filius obcisor! You took one out, you don’t get to put one back in! Filius obcisor!”

  “I put it back,” Martin informed her, but his comment went ignored. “Didn’t you see?”

  Arielle felt like crying.

  “Filius obcisor! You took one out!”

  Who is this fucking psycho and what is she saying?

  Martin stepped between them.

  “Woah, now. I don’t know—”

  “A LIFE FOR A LIFE!” the woman suddenly screamed.

  The tears that had been welling behind Arielle’s eyes suddenly evaporated and were immediately replaced by fury.

  She stepped past Martin and grabbed the woman by the arm.

  “What the fuck did you say?”

  Spit dribbled from Arielle’s lip, but she refused to wipe it away. She squeezed the woman’s triceps so hard that her fingers started to ache.

  “What did you say?”

  The woman failed to acknowledge either Arielle’s words or her grasp. Instead, her expression twisted into a sneer. Her face, which before might have before been described as cute if pointy, was suddenly all angles and shadows; hideous.

  “Filius obcisor.” The woman’s voice was barely a whisper now.

  “No, not that. What else did you say?”

  The shock that had gripped
Martin suddenly thawed. Apparently realizing that the bizarre situation was about to reach a head, he leaned over and tried to separate the two women. It took him three tries to pry Arielle’s fingers from the woman’s arm.

  “Let go, Arielle,” he grumbled.

  Arielle ignored him.

  “What did you say?” she repeated between gritted teeth.

  None the malice she laced her words with seemed to matter; the stupid fucking words—Filius obcisor—that the woman uttered were some sort of anti-venom.

  “Arielle, let’s get out of here.”

  Martin tried to turn her, but Arielle held her ground.

  Did she really say what I think she did?

  She couldn’t let it go… the only person who had ever said that to her had been—

  “Filius obcisor!”

  “What did you say to me, you fucking bitch?”

  “Woah! Arielle, calm down. Let’s just get out of here.”

  She felt Martin’s hands grab her by the shoulders and attempt to guide her toward the door. This time she let him; if she didn’t, she knew that Martin would eventually just pick her up and haul her out of there, whether she wanted to leave or not.

  “Filius obcisor!”

  The strange words sounded as if they were coming at her in stereo now, and Arielle managed with great effort to tear her eyes from the psycho with the black hair. The other two women that had been in the church when they had arrived were now staring at her, their own lips twisted in matching sneers.

  “Filius obcisor!” all three women shouted in unison.

  What the fuck?

  Arielle didn’t know if she said the words, if Martin had, or if she just thought them.

  But they had never been more appropriate.

  What the FUCK?!

  The woman in the pews stepped into the aisle and her rosary, clutched so desperately only moments earlier, fell to the ground in a clatter, unwanted, useless.

  “Filius obcisor!” she hissed.

  The third woman was still standing in the glow of the stained glass, but now her head was facing forward and her eyes were not trained on Martin, who had succeeded in getting them both within a few feet of the large wooden door, but on her.

  In her.

  “Filius obcisor! Filius obcisor! Filius obcisor!!!”