reflected. Of course, maybe he liked the penny candy because it came from Daniel, and he thought Daniel was practically God.
“Darling, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have Arthur be Peter’s godfather?’ asked Aunty Grace. Edith’s ears perked up at the mention of her father in this unusual context.
After a pause, Mr. DeMelo asked gruffly,”Are you completely out of your mind? He’s an atheist, and he’s not even a Catholic atheist.” Aunty Grace adjusted her pink hat.
“I know, dear, but he’s such a darling. He’s a wonderful father and he’d protect Peter no matter what, don’t you agree?”
“Where in heaven’s name do you get ideas like that?” Mr. DeMelo took the left turn onto Buck Hill Road so fast that Edith and Daniel slid to the right end of their seat.
“My mother always told me that God only cares if your heart is good. You know Arthur’s heart is good, don’t you?” Edith had noticed that Aunty Grace always laughed the hardest at Arthur’s jokes and listened raptly when he held forth about how mean and selfish bosses and bankers were.
Mr. DeMelo said, in an exasperated tone, “God’s one thing, Grace. I’m sure even you may be aware that Father Bernard is something altogether different. He’s not an idiot. It’s a small town we live in, and Arthur is always shooting his mouth off whenever he gets a chance. If there’s anyone in the county who doesn’t know he’s a Red, they must be deaf or an imbecile. I know he’s a great guy, but I hope you haven’t said anything to him, because it isn’t going to happen.”
“Hush, dear, don’t forget who’s in the back. Little pitchers have big ears, you know. Oh, I think he liked being asked, but I don’t think he’ll mind if I explain that we can’t do it. I’m sorry I’m such an moron, dear.” Grace went back to smoothing Peter’s scanty hair.
Betsy tried to trick Daniel and Edith into a “sucker race” to see who could finish theirs first, but they were smarter than James and remembered that when she’d done this before, she hadn’t sucked hers at all and when they’d waved their bare, limp, and soggy little white sucker sticks, she’d pulled a huge, glowing red, cherry-flavor Tootsie Roll pop, almost untouched, out of her mouth and gloated mercilessly.
***
It was a quiet morning in the farmhouse at the top of the hill. After a lazy alcoholic breakfast, Kitt watched with relief as Arthur put Marcus on his shoulders and wandered off into the barely budding woodland for a walk. Kitt retired to her study to work on a poem—one of her own, not the Russian translations that Earl Pipher in New York had invited her to do (she remembered their moonlight walk in the park with a small frisson), nor the awful, lead-footed effusions of her Creative Writing students. But these Russian poems—the way Mrs. Akhmatova managed to invoke a dark God of some sort, in the nightmare and horror and privation of her bleak Soviet world—were the inspiration for this poem she wanted to write for Edith. She had taken on the translation project almost absentmindedly, as a way of keeping a connection to a man she found attractive, but now she was deeply engaged. Some of the Russian poems were about the poet’s son, locked up in a prison called Lubyanka. Other poems were about the hopelessness of love, the impossibility of one person’s understanding another. Kitt hadn’t said much about these poems to Arthur, who, she knew, would find them decadent. She knew Akhmatova hadn’t been published in Russia for years and, supported herself with translation work. I'm sure she's a far better translator than I am, Kitt thought. Like the Party to which he was devoted, Kitt’s husband was partial to anthems and epics. He still believed in Communism and thought the awful stories about Stalin were lies. He didn’t know a great deal about poetry, so she’d let him assume that Akhmatova was a loyal Soviet writer.
As she filled her fountain pen with the violet ink she used to compose poetry (she used black ink for correcting papers, blue ink for letters), Kitt thought about her little Edith’s infatuation with everything Catholic. She wasn’t worried about it: Edith was much too intelligent to really believe all that nonsense. Kitt could see that church was like a version of Wonderland or Neverland for Edith. She’d probably grow out of it soon if she and Arthur didn’t make too much of a fuss. But just to gently push her in the right direction, Kitt was writing a poem for her daughter to help her with the outgrowing. It’s a child’s poem, she thought. Almost doggerel, but Edith’s too young for something without rhymes.
Kitt called to Edith from her study when she heard her open the door.
“Come here for a minute, dearest. I wrote you a poem while you were at church,” she said. She handed Edith a sheet of yellow-lined paper covered in her beautiful violet calligraphy. She’d written,
Let’s pretend there is a god
Let’s act as if he cared
For in this wild and cruel world
We’re either fools or scared.
So let’s all play god’s holy fools
Whose faith keeps them from harm,
Whose prayers are like a lullaby,
A light when nights are long.
She watched Edith quickly read her poem with a studious expression. I suppose she has rehearsed that look when she looks at her reflection in the toaster, Kitt thought. She knew Edith didn’t much care for poems, except for the funny ones in Winnie the Poohor Alice in Wonderland. The poem she liked best was “The Hunting of the Snark,” which Kitt could recite by heart when the mood struck her. Edith gave her mother an appreciative nod and ran upstairs to her bedroom in the attic.
After tucking Kitt’s poem into the flyleaf, she hid the stolen missal back between her mattress and the thick canvas straps that held it up. Now when she secretly said prayers at bedtime, she’d be able to sneak a look at it and get the words right.
She slid her magic box out from beneath her bed. No one knew about the box, not even Daniel. She’d never told anyone about the little worlds—castles, houses, streets, trees, brooks, ponies, cows, and people—that dwelt inside.
Today a circus was coming to town. A great line of brightly painted tiny wagons with throngs of gaily dressed acrobats, jugglers, and clowns paraded down the wide avenue that ran the length of the box, into and then out of the village center. Edith had never been to a real circus. One of the few things her parents and all four of her grandparents agreed on was that circuses were dirty, smelly, and noisy. She was sure that the tiny one in her box was as good or better than the genuine article. Two beautiful velvety gray elephants no bigger than mice proudly led the parade, holding rose silk banners with their trunks.
Edith never knew what she might see in the box. When she’d pulled it out a few days back, the box contained a village of Red Indians who seemed to know nothing of the existence of white people. They lived in little birchbark wigwams and carried their belongings on long travois poles over their shoulders. Their village was in a clearing surrounded by a dark forest of tiny beech and oak and spruce trees. A hunting party was bringing back a brace of wild ducks and the women were building up the cooking fires.
The little people and animals in the box never seemed to notice Edith watching them. They were never disturbed when she moved the box out or pushed it back under her bed. She wondered what happened in there when she was not watching, when the box was under the bed. Was it dark then in the box? Whenever she pulled the box out, there the tiny people were, busy, in the middle of things. She knew she must miss a great deal.
CHAPTER 3
THE CRYING ROCK
Kitt had been holed up in her study all that long, hot July afternoon. She was supposed to be working on her translation project. But instead she was taking a break and writing a letter to Earl Pipher. They hadn’t spoken or met since last February, when he’d offered her the work over coffee at the Plaza’s Palm Court and accepted her invitation to the ballet. But Kitt had frequently relived their long, starlit walk and their kisses and