Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

She showed me the glass, with its sharp edges.

“No, silly, show me your cut.”

She held out her hand, and droplets of blood fell on the front of her chosen Easter dress, a froth of ruffled pink with an overskirt of spangled tulle. It was excruciating, the sweetness and the vulnerability of this little girl. I stifled my urge to cry and said, “Let’s fix this. Okay?”

A few minutes later, Gilly’s finger was washed and bandaged, the glass shards were in a box in the trash, and now I was focused again on the time.

Gilly wriggled into her second-best dress, a blue one with a sash of embroidered daisies.

“Gorgeous,” I said.

I stepped into my clean white surplice, and peering into a small mirror propped on the bookcase, I finger-combed my unruly ginger hair.

“You look beautiful, Mom,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist.

I grinned down at her. “Thank you. Now, put on your shoes.”

“We’re not late, you know.”

“Not yet, anyway. Let’s go, silly Gilly. Let’s go.”

Three

I BRACED myself, then Gilly and I stepped out onto the stoop.

The shifting crowd filling the street roared. Communicants, neighbors, people who had come here to catch a glimpse of me, ordinary people of every age and description, reached out their hands, lifted their babies, and chanted my name.

“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”

I’d seen this outpouring of passion before, and still I wasn’t sure how to act. Sometimes the mood of a crowd turned dark. I’d seen that, too.

Gilly said, “Mom. You’ll be all right.”

She waved, and the crowd went wild again.

And then they pushed forward, toward the stoop. News broadcasters, megabloggers, televangelists, and entertainment-TV hosts pointed their microphones toward me, asking, “Brigid, are the rumors true? Have you gotten the call? Are you ready to go?”

I had answered their questions in the past but was always asked for more, and by now, I didn’t have any more. Gilly was too small to walk through this groundswell, so I hoisted her up, and with her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, I stepped carefully down to the street, where the crowd was at eye level.

“Hey, everyone,” I said as I waded into the river of people. “Beautiful Easter Sunday, isn’t it? I would stop to talk, but we have to get going. We’ll be late.”

“Just one question,” shouted Jason Beans, a reporter from the Boston Globe who liked to be called Papa. He was wearing a button on his lapel, the single letter Y, which stood for the all-inclusive, universal question about everything: the heat waves, the long, frigid winters, the eerily brilliant sunsets, and the ever-warming, rising seas. Why?

“We can walk and talk,” Beans was saying. He was standing between me and other reporters who were angling for their “just one question.”

I kind of liked the somewhat annoying Jason Beans, but Gilly and I couldn’t risk getting swallowed up by this crowd. We had to move.

“Have you gotten the call from the Vatican?” Beans asked.

“Aww, Papa. It’s a rumor, nothing more. And that’s the really big scoop. Now, pleeease pardon me. I have to go to church. I have a Mass to say.”

“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”

Flowers flew at me, and hands grabbed at my skirts, and Jason Beans stepped in front of us and wedged open a path. Gilly and I drafted behind him. We crossed the street, and there, midblock, stood the homey brick church that had anchor

ed this neighborhood for a century.

People crowded us from all directions, calling out, “We love you, Brigid. Brigid, will you remember us when you’re living in Rome?”