He imagined her crying softly, explaining how the doctor carved her belly to get him out. Perhaps she showed him the scar Jay had never seen. He wished he knew Muriel’s god and believed in this night of prayer and hope, the eve of All Saints’ Day. He remembered Muriel lighting candles for the dead trapped in Purgatory, saying her Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s, whispering: Our Father. He felt a flutter in his chest, his heart a flame, guttering in a drafty room. Muriel said: He won’t ever look at me again if I do this. She had one Jesus small enough to hold in her hand at night under her pillow. His pinpoint eyes revealed neither grief nor rage. But the tiny body twisted, rising off the copper disk, full of misery. She lay awake in the dark, feeling that body, touching Christ’s little hands and perfect feet, fondling the piece of cloth, a thin wrinkle of metal that hid his sex and kept him safe and separate even in death. On the lawn in front of her house a plaster Mary draped in blue stood watch, nose chipped, fingertips broken.
