tables and white cloths, but the guest list was so enormous that there weren’t enough chairs for everyone who came. My mother brought out blankets for people to sit on, laying them on the perfectly manicured lawn.
For an hour that afternoon, I wove through tables, thanked everyone for coming, showed the tag of my dress when ladies from church asked about the designer. “It’s darling,” one said. “You look like an angel.” My mother heard the comment and smiled.
I was taking a break from all that, finally filling a plate with salmon puffs and sticks of chicken satay, when Father Murphy looped his fingers around my arm and pulled me aside. His grip was light, his pull gentle and slow, but I still looked at his hand like it was a hook. My narrowed eyes flicked from his fingers to his face and back to his fingers, but he didn’t seem to get my pointed gaze.
“Astrid,” he said. By now, we were on the side of the house, hidden behind the lilac bushes. “I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”
“About what?”
“About your recent impropriety.”
I’d had a salmon puff halfway to my mouth, but now I dropped it. “My what?”
“I heard about what happened,” he said, “with you and Bridget Matthews.”
I squeezed the rim of my paper plate. Her name sounded ugly in his mouth. Like a cough instead of a song.
“We’re friends,” I said.
“Ah, but friends do not engage in the kind of activity your mother told me about. You’ve upset her, you know. She came to me, shortly after it happened. She was shaking, Astrid. I thought someone in the family had died.”
Father Murphy had medicine, too, I saw, and every word he spoke felt like another spoon thrust onto my tongue.
“Then there’s God,” he added. “Do you know what the Bible says about what you did?”
“That it’s really fun?”
I couldn’t help the response. My body was rejecting the treatment.
His lips pressed together, a flat unbroken line. “That it’s sinful. That you should ask God for forgiveness, which I know he will grant if you come to him with an open heart.”
My chest burned. I plucked up a salmon puff and popped it into my mouth. I spoke through my chewing. “So you mean, like, any old heart that I cut open? Or specifically mine? Because if he’s not too picky, there’s this raccoon in the neighborhood that—”
“Do you think this is a joke?”
I swallowed the fishy pastry.
“I did,” I said. “But now that I see you’re not laughing, I understand I was wrong.”
“Your salvation is at stake here, Astrid.” He said salvation like it meant the same as life.
“I was confirmed, wasn’t I? I’m pretty sure that me and God are, like, together now, so.”
A part of me wanted to stop, submit, shake my head in apology. But I’d been good all day. I’d been good for several days. I didn’t deserve this reminder of the girl I couldn’t have. My kitten heels were still on my feet, weren’t they? My pantyhose still felt like a new skin that didn’t fit.
Anger flashed in Father Murphy’s eyes. But then he closed them, inhaled deeply, and when he looked at me again, his expression was closer to pity.
“You’re not taking this seriously. What you did with Bridget… it’s a sin.”
There was that word again, still sounding like a hiss.
“Why?” I asked.
Father Murphy tilted his head. “Why what?”
“Why is it a sin? I like her. And I can’t control that fact any more than you can control the fact that you love God. So how can it be wrong to feel something like that?”
“Ah,” he said. “It’s the act that’s the sin. Not the feeling. You must understand that to engage in… improper activity… with another girl—” He slipped a finger between his collar and neck, as if his shirt were too tight. “That’s the problem. That’s what you must turn away from so you can be back in the grace of God.”
I stuck another puff into my mouth and took a long time chewing it. When I finally swallowed, I said, “So I can like Bridget. Romantically. But I can’t act on that feeling. I have to find some guy to make out with instead. Which means I have to lie to the guy, lie to everyone who thinks I’m into the guy, lie to my parents. Only—lying’s a sin too, right? ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’ and all that?”