The massive church was eerily quiet on Monday morning. Just the patter of rain slapping against the stained-glass windows could be heard echoing across the marble and through the towering stone-columned halls. Julia sat by herself in the front pew. Directly in front of her, draped in a white cloth and the funeral spray she’d ordered, was Andrew’s casket, propped on a metal transport gurney. The white peonies from the funeral home filled the altar. She hoped Evelyn had selected a nice casket. She hoped it was lined with satin and maybe a soft pillow. She hoped he looked peaceful inside.
You don’t have to look if you don’t want to. The casket will be closed.
And so she hadn’t.
The parish of St Thomas the Apostle ran two churches in West Hempstead – the main church and the much smaller chapel on the other side of town by the Southern State Parkway. Her dad had always liked the chapel, so that was where her family usually went on Sunday mornings when she was a kid. But if given the choice, Julia herself always liked the main church. Especially for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Besides her parents’ funerals, that was one of the only times she could remember the huge church being filled to capacity, with every row filled and spilling out into the vestibule and onto the front steps. The choir would sing in the loft above, accompanied by the old organ and the folk guitars. Most of the choir members were the older brothers and sisters of her classmates at St Thomas’s elementary school next door – juniors and seniors at Sacred Heart Academy or Chaminade High School in Mineola. Julia could remember there was a time when she’d wanted to join the choir, too.
The door to the sacristy opened and a young priest walked out, his heels softly clicking on the polished marble floor. He fashioned a long stole around his neck and kissed it, genuflecting in front of the altar. He looked down the center aisle of the empty church. The two pallbearers from Barnes and Sorrentino stood in the far back by the doors, off to a side hall. ‘Do you want me to wait a little bit longer?’ Father Tom asked, softly. He looked like a young, balding George Clooney.
Julia shook her head. She didn’t look behind her. She didn’t need to. ‘No, Father.’
Aunt Nora had hung the phone up on her last night, the second she mentioned Andy’s name. She hadn’t even gotten to tell her he’d died. The line had stayed busy after that, all night long. Besides her and Uncle Jimmy, there was no one else to call. There would be no one else who even cared.
In her hand she held the folded-up drawing that Andrew had almost finished sketching. She’d found it in the paper bag of belongings that Dr Mynks had given her. It was a picture of her. Sitting at the table in the visiting room, smiling, framed by stars and moons.
‘Okay, then,’ Father Tom said. ‘I suppose this will be very intimate.’ He smiled a gentle smile and, instead of moving behind the pulpit, he stepped down off the altar and walked over to where she sat, sliding into the pew right beside her. To her surprise, he found her hand and held it softly in his. ‘We are here today to say goodbye to Andrew Cirto, a loving son and brother,’ he began in a mild voice that matched his smile and his touch. ‘A lost soul who will be missed by all who knew him, by his family and, most of all, by his sister.’
Julia did not correct him. She bowed her head and listened while Father Tom held her hand and went on for ten minutes about all the things Julia had told him last night when they met over coffee at the rectory. About ice-skating with Andy in Hall’s Pond Park, and movie nights at the Elmont Theater with their mom. About how it was Andrew who always held her head over the toilet whenever she threw up, and who shared his sandwich at school when she had forgotten hers – even though that meant being made fun of by the older kids. About how he’d shoved the first boy who had said something nasty to her. About how he would wait for her when she missed the bus at school so they could walk home together. About what a great listener he was and what a great friend he had been. All about the gentle, misunderstood man with the sheepish grin of a boy that she had just come to know again after too long of an absence. And while she listened, she was relieved to hear that Father Tom never once mentioned that Andrew was a murderer. Or a crazy. Or sick.
‘Let us now pray,’ Father Tom said and Julia got down on her knees and prayed hard to a God she thought was cruel sometimes. A God she had long stopped believing in. A God who now beckoned her back with his soft whispers. She closed her eyes and saw Andrew’s face as she wanted to always remember it, before the sickness sucked the life out of him. Swinging a baseball bat with a smile at sixteen. The tears slipped out of her eyes as Father Tom led an empty church in prayer.
‘Hail Mary, full of Grace,’ he began softly. ‘The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.’
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,’ Julia said, joining him. ‘Now, and at the hour of our death.’ She cast her eyes up to the Sanctuary, to the crucifix suspended above the altar. She saw Jesus smile down at her. He was whispering the words along with her.
‘Amen,’ she whispered back.