know something? If you go through with it that's probably the best
luck you can expect. This according to her father. Dear Bill, who
had proved that just once, just that one crucial time, her judgment
had been far better than her father's. She was still married to the
man her Gram had called 'the big boaster.' At a price, true, but
everyone paid a price.
Her head itched. She scratched at it absently, watching for the next
Mother of Mercy billboard.
Horrible as it was to say, things had started turning around when
she lost the baby. That was just before Bill got a job with Beach
Computers, out on Route 128; that was when the first winds of
change in the industry began to blow.
Lost the baby, had a miscarriage - they all believed that except
maybe Bill. Certainly her family had believed it: Dad, Mom,
Gram. 'Miscarriage' was the story they told, miscarriage was a
Catholic's story if ever there was one. Hey, Mary, what's the story,
they had sometimes sung when they skipped rope, feeling daring,
feeling sinful, the skirts of their uniforrns flipping up and down
over their scabby knees. That was at Our Lady of Angels, where
Sister Annunciata would spank your knuckles with her ruler if she
caught you gazing out the window during Sentence Time, where
Sister Dormatilla would tell you that a million years was but the
first tick of eternity's endless clock (and you could spend eternity
in Hell, most people did, it was easy). In Hell you would live
forever with your skin on fire and your bones roasting. Now she
was in Florida, now she was in a Crown Vic sitting next to her
husband, whose hand was still in her crotch; the dress would be
wrinkled but who cared if it got that look off his face, and why
wouldn't the feeling stop?
She thought of a mailbox with 'Raglan' painted on the side and an
American-flag decal on the front, and although the name turned
out to be 'Reagan' and the flag a Grateful Dead sticker; the box
was there. She thought of a small black dog trotting briskly along
the other side of the road, its head down, sniffling, and the small
black dog was there. She thought again of the billboard and, yes,
there it was: 'Mother of Mercy Charities Help the Florida Hungry -
Won't You Help Us?'
Bill was pointing. 'There-see? I think that's Palm House. No, not
where the billboard is, the other side. Why do they let people put
those things up out here, anyway?'
'I don't know.' Her head itched. She scratched, and black dandruff
began falling past her eyes. She looked at her fingers and was
horrified to see dark smutches on the tips; it was as if someone had
just taken her fingerprints.
'Bill?' She raked her hand through her blond hair and this time the
flakes were bigger. She saw they were not flakes of skin but flakes
of paper. There was a face on one, peering out of the char like a
face peering out of a botched negative.
'Bill?'
