said Jim, when he got off the phone with the city of Pasadena. There were old women milling around them in the kitchen, wearing pastel colors and cheerfully garish prints. One blouse had numerous teddy bears, with pink and blue bows around their necks. Angela had invited some friends over, unbeknownst to Susan, who had believed she had none. Without prior warning the house had filled with elderly ladies from a church book club. Angela wore a delicate crucifix and went to mass now and then, when she suddenly felt the need, but her beliefs were opaque to Susan. The other churchgoers she knew were all old and most were also female; only the old attended church these days, she’d told Susan solemnly, unless you counted the poverty-stricken, ethnic, or Deep South states where, if you believed the statistics, millions were joyously awaiting the Rapture. But these were not Catholics. Angela’s church was part white and part Mexican, she said, and the whites were all old because young whites did not believe in God.
