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Dedalus King. That’s taking it a little far. Have you ever read Ulysses?”
    “Of course not. He is a flagrant anti-Catholic. I’m a Chesterston man myself.”
    I felt an old flush of pride as I led the monsignor out to the central altar and spotted my parents in the front row, both of them saying the rosary. My father looked up and smiled when he saw me and gave me an exaggerated wink of his right eye, the one my mother could not see. She tolerated playfulness at church not at all. At every Mass, she wore her game face for a crucifixion as though she were an actual eyewitness to the death of Jesus each time she knelt in her pew.
    As he faced the small, mostly octogenarian congregation, Monsignor Max began the Mass in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. The words I heard him utter in his operatic voice washed over me like a clean stream from my boyhood, the delicate latticework of memory and language.
    “I will go to the altar of God.”
    And I went with him and let the ancient, sacrosanct rhythms of the Church seize me. When the priest called for water, I provided him with water. When he needed to cleanse his hands for the coming mystery, I emptied cruets over his fingers. When he called for wine, I supplied him with wine in the gold shine of chalices. At the moment of consecration, when he turned the wine into the blood of Christ and the bread into the body of the same God, I rang the bells that had sounded beneath altars for two thousand years. When I opened my mouth and received the unleavened bread from the consecrated finger and thumb of the priest, I felt the touch of God on my tongue, His taste in my palate, His bloodstream mingling in my own. I had come back to Him, after a full-pledged embittered retreat, after He stole my brother from my bedroom and killed him in my bathtub.
    But I had come back to Him, and that is part of my story.
    After Mass, we walked down to Cleo’s restaurant for breakfast, a ritual of summer as ingrained in the texture of our family life as daily Mass. Cleo was a fast-talking Greek girl who ran the cash register as though she were reloading an M16 rifle for snipers. Her patter was endless and profane, until my parents walked in for breakfast and her attitude turned beatific. Both of my parents had taught her when they were at Bishop Ireland High, and she held fast to the respect that high school kids who never go to college continue to feel for the last teachers of their lives. Even the young waitresses displayed new vigor when my parents appeared in the doorway, and Cleo delivered hand signals to the kitchen staff that translated into hot coffee, orange juice, and ice water on the table. Since I was in training for football season, I ordered two eggs over light, grits with redeye gravy, and three slices of bacon. My father would dig into country ham and biscuits with a side order of hash browns. Even though it was the most celebrated day of the year for my mother, she retained the strong-willed discipline that made up every habit of her life: she ordered half a grapefruit and a bowl of oatmeal. My mother admitted to needs such as nourishment, but not of appetites. “Happy Bloomsday, darling,” my father said to my mother, leaning to kiss her on the cheek. “This is your day and your every wish is our command. Isn’t that right, Leo?”
    “That’s right,” I said. “We’re at your beck and call.”
    “Very good, Leo,” Mother said. “Though you fight me on it, your vocabulary shows constant improvement. Here’s your list of five words to memorize today.” She handed me a piece of folded-over notebook paper.
    I made a groaning noise, as I did every morning, and opened the notebook paper to read five words that no one would use in normal conversation: sedulous, perspicacious, ribald, vivisection, and tumid .
    “Do you know what any of those words mean?” Mother asked.
    “Of course not.” I sipped my coffee.
    “Did you memorize the five I gave you