2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas Read Online Free PDF

equivalent of lighting a white candle in a white room.” She lights an invisible candle with an invisible match. “Except …” She blows out the invisible match. “You are the white room and what’s inside you is the white candle.”
    It is the same speech she made before Madeleine’s class received the sacrament of Reconciliation, unburdening themselves of every
goddamn
, and Confirmation, when the Holy Spirit said,
Oh there you are, I see you
. Madeleine did not feel like a white room during either of those sacraments but assumes she will when it’s time for the next one, Matrimony. Madeleine is double-bolt positive that every married couple is happy.
    Principal Randles throws open the door to the church and ushers the children into pews to practice being white rooms. Madeleine flattens her back against the hard wood and waits to be overcome by light. Here it comes, she thinks. But it is a yawn. She smells the pine scent of mahogany cleaner. Her thoughts return to singing. Hit, hold, vibrato. She forgets to want to be a white room.
    Sunshine swells into the church. How the stained-glass windows screw with it, cutting the light into shapes and hurling them around! An orange triangle on the donations box. Lavender octagons on an altar boy’s vestments. Madeleine doesn’t understand decimals but she knows red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple make a rainbow.
    Around her, a group
Amen
. She has missed a prayer. Everyone crosses themselves. Everyone glances around for what now. “And now,” Father Gary announces, “Clare Kelly will lead us in the responsorial song.”
    Miss Greene pads onto the altar’s carpet and whispers into Father Gary’s ear. He forgets the microphone. “Is she dead?” Frantic explaining. “Madeleine Altimari?” He pronounces her last name as if somewhere there is another, more innocuous Madeleine.
    The fifth grade’s morning mass daze is punctured by this development. They turn shocked faces to Madeleine, who unceremoniously climbs over them to reach the aisle.
    Principal Randles goose-steps onto the altar. She and Miss Greene hold a muted, brief debate. Madeleine freezes in the aisle. The children squirm in their pews. The microphone catches a few words. “Assembly … unpleasant.”
    The knot of teacher/​principal/​priest untangles, leaving Father Gary to announce the call into the microphone: Madeleine Altimari.
    In her relief, Madeleine forgets to go slow, kneel, genuflect, bow at the cross, or acknowledge the priest. She races to the microphone, narrowly avoiding Miss Greene, who attemptsto give her a good-luck pat. The organist plays a plucky intro. Madeleine makes it to the podium.
Here I go, Mama
. She plants her child size twelves into the altar’s plush. Every child in every pew leans forward. The organist winds down the intro. Madeline opens her mouth to sing.
    “Here I am!” Clare Kelly step-crutches up the aisle, her arm tucked into a sling and her parents trailing. “I can sing!” she says, reaching the front. The organist stops playing. Madeleine’s mouth, poised in an angelic O, shuts.
    “A miracle!” Principal Randles jumps from her seat, applauding. Sarina protests. The principal asks, will Miss Greene join her in the back hall near the statue and the vigil candles? There she explains that while it was remarkable, exemplary even, worthy of Student of the Week if that ribbon hadn’t already been written out to Clare, that Madeleine was willing to step in at the last minute, when they thought Clare would be an unintelligible mess for days, but Clare is here, telligible, with her parents, the same parents who last year financed the building of this back hall, that statue, and these vigil candles. “It’s the daughter of all this.” She gestures around the hall. “Versus the daughter of a prostitute.”
    Sarina removes her glasses. Two red stars appear on her cheeks. “Madeleine’s mother was not a prostitute.”
    “Dancer,” Principal Randles