Michael Malone - Weebly

the robe and face and outstretched hands of the
Madonna painted on the stained-glass window behind
the altar. Streams of crimson light seemed to reach out
at her.
She thought of having sat as a child near the plaster
statue of Madonna and Child that still stood, chipped
and yellowed, by the side chapel; she had pretended
that the woman was her unknown mother and had
imagined crawling up into her lap, displacing, pushing to
the floor, the baby already there. Pushing aside Christ.
She had never confessed this sin, not because
punishment was unbearable, but because she could not
then bear to repent the daydream of hugging herself to
that warmth, of wrapping the arms of the Madonna
around herself alone. But guilt was stronger than desire
finally, and the wish had died by her tenth year. Mrs.
Haig no longer wished to be held.
After the prayers, Father Crisp stopped Judith on
the steps of the church. He brought with him faintly the
incense-mingled summer smells of Sebastian's and
Prudence Lattice's flowers whose colors mocked the
mourning they had been sent to grace. The old priest