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long, I’d weave through the house to the soundtracks of my father’s passions:
    “… and at tea, Australia is one for fifty-six, with Harris caught for a duck at silly mid-on …”
    “… andthey’recomingupontheoutside. It’sElPresidenteby anosetoHulaLadyandhalfalengthonit’sGhostlyGrey …”
    “YOOOOU LIT-TLE BEOOOUUDY! IT’S A GOOD ONE! RIGHT BETWEEN THE POSTS!”
    When my head rang from the voices, I’d retreat to the highest branches of the backyard willow tree, the only growing thing in the garden that escaped my father’s ruthless pruning. Hidden in its green tresses, I would read books published in Britain and wonder what “frost” looked like, or why writers used expressions like “cold as the grave” when our relatives were buried in cemeteries where the hard red earth was hot as a kiln.
    I was ten when the yellow mailbox became my way to find out.

3
    Little Nell

    My first pen pal came to me by way of the Sunday paper.
    On Sundays, our neighborhood quieted as if someone had thrown a blanket over it. It was a stillness different in kind from the weekday lull of the lonely afternoons. This was a peopled silence, like the self-conscious hush of a crowd in a library.
    Sunday’s sounds were the sputtering fat of the lamb leg roasting in the oven, the thud of my mother’s knife on the chopping board as she prepared a mountain of vegetables, and the rustle of the thick Sunday papers as my father turned the pages. In the street outside, the neighbors passed by on their way to Mass, their Sunday high heels clip-clipping on the concrete footpath.
    In our street, only the women went to Mass; the men stayed in bed with the newspapers or sat by the fridge with a beer. Outwardly, my family fitted the mold of the local Catholic community. I went to Mass with my mother and sister while my father stayed at home. But despite the family’s apparent conformity, I knew that there was something wrong with this picture.My father didn’t go to Mass with us because he wasn’t a Catholic, and that set him perilously apart from the other fathers who didn’t go because they couldn’t be bothered. Those fathers could be forgiven at confession, or at a last-ditch, deathbed repentance. According to the nuns, non-Catholics like my father were heading to hell. At best, they were doomed to languish in limbo, which sounded a lot like spending eternity in a pediatrician’s waiting room, keeping company with all the little babies who died before they could be baptized.
    Every night I finished my bedtime prayers with an ardent plea for my father’s imminent conversion. Bargaining a bit, I’d add that if it couldn’t be imminent “could it please be before he dies and You have to burn him in eternal fire?” My father didn’t seem perturbed about his long-term prospects. In fact, he looked extremely content, propped up in bed, as the three of us dressed up to go to church. He was a serene island amid the grumpy bustle as we searched for the shoe polish and fought for a turn at the iron, our moods set on edge by the pre-Communion fast that deprived us of any sustenance. My mother, who fared poorly without her morning cup of tea, was always particularly harassed, struggling to get the lunch in the oven before we set out for the church.
    At the age of ten, I decked my room with the gory paraphernalia of Catholicism. An anatomically correct crucified Christ writhed over the dresser, a Sacred Heart dripped blood by the door. My brain itched with the abstract thought required by the Sacred Mysteries. Three persons one God. And the Word was made flesh. I loved the potent metaphor of the litany of Mary: Lily of the Valley, Mystic Rose, Star of the Sea. I studied the ecstatic face in her portrait and longed to be transported by divine grace.
    But grace was elusive in Concord. The big church was too hot in summer, its crowd of tight-pressed bodies giving off a must of sweat and cheap perfume. The raw wooden kneelers cutinto