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and her inner Catholic schoolgirl emerged and she flashed back to high school, when Father Joseph advanced to confiscate the note she had been passing, a parodied song titled, “Father Joseph and the Amazing Lipstick-Covered Dream Condom.”
     
    ~~~~~
     
    Four lady friends watched Father Dante stride up the stairs.
    One is oblivious and the most innocent, contrary to public opinion.
    One has committed adultery with another’s husband.
    One will break the priest’s vow of chastity.
    One is the mother of a raped child.
     
    ~~~~~
     
    The full choir surrounded Father Dante and Bev.
    During the trial, they took sides.
    Some blamed the wife because she was blind to what was happening in her own home.
    Some blamed the husband because his screwing around precipitated the whole thing.
    Some blamed the other woman, the only one who wasn’t breaking sacred vows, as they always do.
    Some blamed the priest because God should not let murder happen.
    Some sided with the priest, for surely he was the innocent one.
    Some supported the wronged wife for fear of being a victim like her.
    Some took the side of the husband, for they were not blameless themselves.
    A few sympathized with the other woman because they knew in their hearts that they were as much the very Devil as she.
     
    ~~~~~
     
    Bev was late getting home because she circled the block four times. The January stars revolved around the cold suburban rooftops as she cruised.
    She finally parked her car in the garage beside Conroy’s Porsche—should a family man own such a smug, sexual car?—and walked into the hot house. The smell of the girls’ no-tears shampoo drifted in the laundry room.
    “Beverly?” Conroy hollered from somewhere in the house.
    “Yes?” She set her purse on the washer, and her keychain jangled on the enameled metal.
    “I missed dinner,” he yelled.
    She considered picking up her purse and circling the block until Conroy figured out that his plate was in the refrigerator where it always was whenever he was late, but she sloughed off her coat, hung it in the closet, and meandered toward the kitchen, where she removed his plate from the fridge and microwaved it.
    The pork chop and corn soufflé rotated in the microwave. It would be easy to shake a little rat poison on it, but she didn’t have any rat poison.
    She sat with him in the dining room while he ate and said, “I hope counseling will be better tomorrow.”
    Conroy cut a slice away from the apple-glazed pork chop with a strong steak knife, then divvied that into pieces. “I didn’t like him talking to our girls, alone, with the door closed.”
    Bev couldn’t watch him tuck away that pork chop that she had spent an hour and a half perfecting. He didn’t even chew. “He said it was about the school.”
    “Still inappropriate. He could have been doing anything in there with that door closed.”
    “The door wasn’t closed. It was partway open.” Conroy could have been doing anything to that whore in the hotel room that he had booked in the names Conroy and Beverly Sloan . Or that whore could have been doing anything to him. “And Father Dante is a priest.”
    “The corporate culture of the Vatican warps all those priests into sexual caricatures of men. They’re all perverts and pedophiles, like that one in Boston who sodomized those boys.”
    Yes, sodomized . Perhaps that was what Conroy did to his whore. Bev sighed.
    “This Father Dante was transferred here suddenly.” Conroy pointed at her with a square of pale pork atop his fork. “They say pedophiles get jobs in schools to have access to kids.”
    An image arose in Bev’s mind: smashed meat and potatoes flying, the glass table top lifting and flipping onto Conroy, imprisoning him in a makeshift glass house.
    She said, “Stop.”
    “I don’t want the girls alone with him. He might be a pedophile.”
    Pinpoint reflections shimmered in the tabletop. “You shouldn’t make such horrible accusations.”
    He held up his