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Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Blame Iton Paris
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  5. Book One
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-one
  27. Book Two
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. Thirty-six
  43. Thirty-seven
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine

Again, silence. Several guests had started to join in; but without his lead, their voices gradually trickled off. Behind the choir ladies, I noticed Grégory trying to mouth the correct words to me. Éric, who was as unbaptized and atheistic as Sébastien but who had somehow learned the “Our Father” in his childhood education, tried to mouth the words to Sébastien. The problem was the two couldn’t make eye contact and keep a straight face. If anyone knew how much Éric hated religion, it was Sébastien. Sobriety was additionally hindered by another friend of theirs who was filming the whole thing. We couldn’t see him; but every time Éric looked past us his face spasmed, causing Sébastien to stare at the stained glass as diligently as he could, the corners of his mouth trembling.

The curé said two more lines. Behind him, Éric and Grégory tried desperately to feed them to us, but to no avail. Sébastien was pretty much not going to say an “Our Father” for anything short of being saved from the stake. Anyway, every time we tried to lip-read off them, suppressed laughter distorted their mouths.

The curé waited, said a few more words, then waited again. Éric stopped trying and stared resolutely at his feet, his lips twitching wildly. Not a sound came from the rest of the audience, and its members simply sat and stared at the priest. In this manner, with frequent pauses to emphasize our silence, the curé reached the end of the prayer.

“Amen,” he snapped. “I think young Sébastien needs to learn his ‘Our Father.’”

He slapped his hand down on his twenty pages of sermon. “And I think we’ve wasted more than enough time on this little repeat ceremony of theirs. So let’s go.” He strode out from behind the podium and grabbed us by the elbows. The organist tried valiantly to turn this into a recessional, but her hands had started shaking again under the pressure.

Sébastien and I removed our elbows from the curé’s hands, and I took Sébastien’s elbow instead. In France, the guests are supposed to leave the church first and bombard the couple with rice or flower petals as they come out, so there was a mad scramble for the door. Only a few of the kids managed to get out first, but the priest cut their petal-throwing short. “None of that here,” he said. “It might stain the stones.”