From Those We Love the Most
Part 4
If Sister Hazel had another Diet Pepsi that day, she realized, she might be dead. She might be good and gone by the time twilight settled in. But that didn't stop her from popping open the tab in the slightest.
To be closer to God, she wondered, while her other pupil settled himself by the piano. She was reminded of the Carpenters. Do do do.
"Rest in peace, Karen," she uttered aloud, not even aware of what she was doing. Charlie blinked, from his repose at the keys.
"What?"
"Oh, never you mind. Have you been practicing?" He nodded, but not really. He hadn't been practicing in the slightest. Was it an extra big lie to lie to a nun? Probably, probably somewhere between gluttony and lust.
"I had a cat named Karen once." No, he hadn't.
Yet even if Sister Hazel had been aware of these two rather tame lies, she wouldn't have cared. Part of her loved her students so much it was suffocating in a way near maternal. She wanted to run her childless hands through their hair and send them packing away from her small and modest home with sandwiches with the crusts cut off, just right. Even if they were really too old for those niceties. And their distant father, her omnipresent husband, Jesus Christ, would watch from the various pictures and religious statues devoted to his beaming, bloody face.
The doorbell then rang and of course it would be Veronica, who had her minute outside the birch tree in Sister Hazel's lonely front lawn. Her fragile legs were shaking some, left half-uncovered by the length of her skirt.
And what does that say about optimism vs. pessimism?
If Sister Hazel had another Diet Pepsi that day, she realized, she might be dead. She might be good and gone by the time twilight settled in. But that didn't stop her from popping open the tab in the slightest.
To be closer to God, she wondered, while her other pupil settled himself by the piano. She was reminded of the Carpenters. Do do do.
"Rest in peace, Karen," she uttered aloud, not even aware of what she was doing. Charlie blinked, from his repose at the keys.
"What?"
"Oh, never you mind. Have you been practicing?" He nodded, but not really. He hadn't been practicing in the slightest. Was it an extra big lie to lie to a nun? Probably, probably somewhere between gluttony and lust.
"I had a cat named Karen once." No, he hadn't.
Yet even if Sister Hazel had been aware of these two rather tame lies, she wouldn't have cared. Part of her loved her students so much it was suffocating in a way near maternal. She wanted to run her childless hands through their hair and send them packing away from her small and modest home with sandwiches with the crusts cut off, just right. Even if they were really too old for those niceties. And their distant father, her omnipresent husband, Jesus Christ, would watch from the various pictures and religious statues devoted to his beaming, bloody face.
The doorbell then rang and of course it would be Veronica, who had her minute outside the birch tree in Sister Hazel's lonely front lawn. Her fragile legs were shaking some, left half-uncovered by the length of her skirt.
And what does that say about optimism vs. pessimism?
Comments
Post a Comment