After Kitty suffered her second stroke within a week, she could not talk, walk or recognize anyone. What she could do was smile, and when she did her face appeared virtually unlined, as it had been when she was in her twenties and her son, Roy, was a little boy. The last coherent sentence she had spoken, following her first stroke, came when Roy visited her in the hospital, and was directed at him: “You were always different,” she said.
Kitty died a few months later at the age of ninety-one. There was no funeral; Roy’s sister, who lived in the same city as their mother, had her cremated the next day. The afternoon Roy had seen her in the hospital, he had brought with him his cousin Peter, whom Kitty had not seen for fifty years. Peter wore a dark blue shirt under a black sportcoat and stood at the foot of her bed while Roy sat on a chair close to her.
“Who is that?” Roy’s mother asked him.
“Our cousin, Peter, Dora’s son. You haven’t seen him in a very long time.”
“Padre Pietro,” she said. “Please tell the sisters I’m sick tonight, that I won’t be coming down to dinner.”
Later, Peter told Roy, “I didn’t expect your mother to recognize me.”
“She thought she was back at boarding school, with the nuns,” said Roy. “You were a priest.”
“Padre Pietro.”
“Better him than one of her ex-husbands.”
“How many were there?”
“Five.”
“How many of them are still alive?”
“Two that I know of. My father died when I was five.”
“She knew who you were.”
“I could have been anybody.”
“No, she knew.”
That evening at dinner Roy’s sister asked Peter if Kitty had spoken to him.
“Not really, she thought I was a priest.”
“There’ll be a real one there to give her the last rites.”
“She thought she was still a girl at Our Father of Frivolous Forgiveness,” said Roy.
His sister laughed and said, “She never could.”
“Never could what?”
“Forgive herself for not having been a better wife or mother.”
“Padre Pietro forgives her,” said Peter.
Roy and his sister looked at him.
“Absolution is my business,” he said.
After his mother died, Roy reminded Peter of his joke about forgiving Kitty and told him about the time he was seven years old when she went with their neighbor, Mrs. McLaughlin, to St. Tim’s church to commit a novena. Upon her return, Roy had asked her what a novena is.
“A novena is an act of devotion,” his mother explained. “It’s a pledge to honor a specific religious object or figure for nine days by saying prayers, usually to request a favor.”
“Did you go to confession, too?”
“Not today.”
“That’s when you tell a priest about any sins you committed, right?”
“Yes, Roy.”
“Does committing a novena rub out those sins?”
“No, the priest listens to your confession and decides which prayers you should recite and how many times you say them in order to expiate your sins.”
“What does expiate mean?”
“To atone, to make up for having done something you shouldn’t have or regret.”
“What bad things did you tell the priest about the last time you went to confession?”
“Nothing really bad, only impure thoughts.”
“Did you tell him about the time you said you wished your boyfriend Phil Rogers would rot in hell because he went back to his wife? Was that an impure thought?”
“No, that doesn’t count.”
“Do I have impure thoughts?”
“Of course not.”
“And the priest forgave you for thinking them?”
“He did.”
“How do you know if something you’re thinking of is wrong?”
“If you feel in your heart and soul it’s not good, then it’s not. What the priest does is grant absolution, so you don’t have to feel bad about it anymore.”
“I thought only God can make things right.”
“A priest is an agent of God, His emissary. God speaks through him.”
“Why doesn’t God do it Himself?”
“Oh, Roy, you know He can’t be everywhere. He needs help.”
“I thought God is everywhere.”
“I can’t explain it any better, sweetheart. You’ll understand more about how God works when you’re older.”
“I heard Mrs. McLaughlin say that her Great-Uncle Declan in Ireland is older than God.”
Roy’s mother laughed. “That’s just an expression. It means she thinks he’s very old.”
“There’s a lot I don’t understand about how religion works, Mom.”
“I know, Roy. There’s a lot I don’t understand about it, either.”
“Did your mother continue going to confession for the rest of her life?” Peter asked.
“No,” said Roy, “at least not that I know of. Only when I was a kid, and then not consistently.”
“I don’t ever remember her going,” said his sister.
“She remembered the last words of the Lamentations from the Old Testament, though,” Roy said. “‘But thou hast utterly rejected us.’ Kitty quoted that line every once in a while when something bad happened or she’d been disappointed by one of her husbands or boyfriends.”
“She figured God had given up on His people,” Roy’s sister said, “so why should she bother talking to Him? After all, He was just another man.”