Once Rachael got Lucrezia to come, so she could experience real Christian worship along with us. She had been a little late in coming up to the room to join us for church because she had gone to Mass first, which made us all very sorry for her, and we prayed she would see the difference between dead liturgy and the living gospel preached by a minister who really Stood on the Word and who didn’t follow tradition but who followed Calvin instead. She knew enough English to understand some of what Dad said. Rachael tried to teach her the choruses of our hymns. She sang with us, “I’m gonna let it shine! This little light of mine! I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. . . . Won’t let Satan blow it out, I’m gonna let it shine! Won’t let Satan blow it out, I’m gonna let it shine . . .” Janet showed her how to hold her finger up to be the little “candle” of her light and make a blowing motion instead of actually singing “blow it out” during the second and third choruses of the song. Lucrezia seemed to enjoy this. Dad said maybe we had planted a seed that day and next year we could water it more.

I lied to Mom. I said that I had asked Jennifer but that she showed no interest in The Things of the Lord, so couldn’t we just pray for her instead of my asking again. Mom said that would be fine, and even if she just heard us singing our hymns through the pensione window out on the beach, the Lord might “begin a work in her heart that would eventually bear fruit.”

I made sure to not sing very loud so that if Jennifer did hear singing, she wouldn’t hear my voice and maybe wouldn’t know it was us. But if she did guess who it was, I had my story ready. I was going to tell her that we were members of the school choir where my dad taught and that we had to rehearse for graduation day.

Some kids I met told lies to be special. I told lies to be normal.

Chapter 8

OUR FAMILY LIFE REVOLVED AROUND DAD’S MOODS. His emotions were extremely delicate, like orchids. If his Moods had been sent by parcel post, they would have been plastered with “Handle with Care,” “This Way Up,” and “Fragile” labels. Anything could summon the storm clouds of a Bad Mood. Mom’s perpetual lateness, a theological review of something Dad had written that was unfair, as all bad reviews of course were, any particularly long bout of giggling on the part of my giddy sisters, and worst of all his Dark Days, in which depression would settle on him and cling tightly wrapped about him in a smothering and stormy embrace.