This sign was unwise. With the political bigwigs expected in St. Patrick’s, there would be an army of Secret Service agents around—and all the cops.

Stick to GOOD RIDDANCE, I was thinking—in the context of O’Connor’s funeral, the GOOD RIDDANCE message was the only one that made sense. “I wish you wouldn’t do this,” I was saying to Em, when Grace called to tell me I should keep Em away from St. Patrick’s—or I should go to the cathedral with Em, if I couldn’t keep her away. “That’s my plan,” I told Grace, hanging up the phone.

I was fed up with Grace’s interfering in our lives, but you shouldn’t complain if your ex-wife is on your side, and even Em agreed that Grace’s interference with the Oscar in our lives had been a good idea. As a means of toting Oscar around, Grace had replaced Molly’s athletic sock with a drawstring dust bag for shoes. Typical of Grace, it was not just any shoe bag; it was a Manolo Blahnik bag, for a pair of high-end heels.

“Cold water, air-dry, and it won’t shrink,” Grace said—her washing instructions for the designer shoe bag.

Molly was relieved Matthew wasn’t carrying Oscar in her sock. “The sock can slip off, Kid—if Matthew drops the big dick on his foot, it’ll break a toe, or something,” the old patroller said.

Matthew thought the shoe bag was a better idea than the sock. All of Oscar fit in the Manolo Blahnik bag, even the pedestal; it was much easier for Matthew to take the naked gold man everywhere. When Matthew was staying with his mother—or with Molly, or with Em and me—the Oscar stayed with Matthew. He’d been asked to bring the Oscar to his school, so that all the kids could see an actual Oscar. Matthew might have wished that Manolo Blahnik’s name was not so prominent on the shoe bag. A smart-assed kid in Matthew’s class had teased him. “That’s not an Oscar—his name is Manolo. You just have a stupid Manolo,” the kid teased Matthew.

When Matthew was alone, he played with Oscar—as if the naked gold man were an immovable kind of action figure. Oscar wasn’t a posable soldier or superhero—Oscar had no jointed limbs—but what mattered most to Matthew was that Oscar had no uncertainty about his name. “Your name is Oscar,” Em and I heard Matthew tell the statuette. There was no mention of Manolo.