There were maybe a dozen parishioners assembled in the first few pews, and most of them were in their forties or fifties. Tess went down on her knees, clasped her hands, and bent her head. I just sat there waiting for the service to start, staring up at the half-size crucifix suspended above the altar and feeling awkward. Once it began, though, the Mass passed with surprising briskness. Everyone spoke the prayers at a different pace, so that there was a sort of discordant murmuring going on throughout the church. A woman in the pew behind us had apparently memorized the entire Mass, even the priest’s parts, though she uttered them so mechanically that she couldn’t have put any thought into them at all. There was no music and only two readings, and Father Lynch delivered his homily as if there were someone at the back of the church holding up a stopwatch. I looked over and saw Tess mouthing the Our Father with her eyes closed and her palms open at her sides, as if she were expecting a rather sizable gift.
