I made it a point to avoid churches, but I should have known my aunt would find a way to get me in one that weekend. My drive from New York had begun to feel interminable, and as I approached my aunt’s midwestern town, my mother’s words—at the time completely dismissed—came back to me with a new ring of attraction: “Aunt Ellen said you should visit on your way cross-country.” Anticipating my eye-roll, she had added, “I can tell her you couldn’t spare the time.” Honestly, I could spare the time, and, wild college boy that I was, I dreaded another night in a motel. So, that was how I decided to call up my aunt after all, and subsequently how I ended up in one of the largest Gothic churches of the Midwest on a sweltering July Sunday.

The drama on the stage in front of me was like a medieval re-enactment. I felt like I had, by some children’s book magic, been transported into the little colorful worlds displayed in the illuminations at the Met Cloisters. The priest standing before the altar with upraised hands was exactly like the miniscule figures on those parchments. The altar boys were like little page boys behind the priest, grasping his robes, ringing bells, and swinging incense. The priest and each member of that squad of boys moved with such slow precision, it seemed they wouldn’t mind roasting up there in their hot costumes forever. They went up and down taking first one knee, then two, they bowed at the waist, they filed around in lines carrying candles with precise choreography, all as if a panel of Olympic judges were grading them on difficulty, execution, and artistry.

Seriousness radiated from the scene to such a degree that I couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed. I looked around at the people in the nearby pews hoping I might find a sympathetic soul as perplexed and awkward as I. No such luck. That same strange seriousness emanated from every man, woman, and doe-eyed child as if the panel of judges watched them too. I wondered what in the world they thought they accomplished with this great show of theirs, but it was obvious they believed in it.

Of course, I knew my aunt would be only too glad to explain. She never tired of reminding me that I had been baptized long ago and that I had a mark on my soul. My little cherub cousins, Jacinta and Lucia, who hugged my knees and traced the tattoos on my forearms with their tiny fingers, would look at me solemnly and ask, “Cousin Will, don’t you want to go to Heaven?”

The night before this Sunday ordeal, I had sat watching soccer with my uncle while the infant Francisco rolled around on the floor and the girls made lemonade in the kitchen with their mother. I remember naïvely thinking that despite their quirks, they were a fairly chill, friendly sort of family. Jacinta and Lucia ran in and snuggled up to me.

“Cousin Will,” began Jacinta. “Mama said you have to get pictures of an old building for your class, and since our church is over a hundred years old, you could come to Mass with us tomorrow and take pictures afterwards. And you could drive in our van and I would sit on one side of you and Lucia would sit on the other side.” She finished with a pleading look that was so intentionally cute I wondered if she had practiced like some kind of child actor.

Then Lucia purred softly, “Please, please, please come,” and stuck on her own little angel face.

It seemed their mamma had forgotten the plan I had mentioned to her just that evening as she’d been showing me the guestroom—the simple plan to visit the Old Courthouse downtown and get the pictures for my summer class assignment there. How convenient for her to have a poor memory and irrefusable delegates! I glanced helplessly at my uncle in time to see him smother a knowing smile.

My attention was called back to the scene before me as people began filing up to the carved wooden rail that divided off the altar area. The priest finished giving Communion to the altar boys and went down to the kneeling people. My relatives stood up to get in line, and I pivoted my knees awkwardly to let them out of the pew. I heard Jacinta whisper something to her mother about my getting a blessing, but her mother shook her head, she knew I didn’t want to go and kneel up there. There were droves of people: stern fathers in suits and ties with little sons dressed the same, patient, relentless mothers in veils askew after the exploits of flailing infant arms and children tugging their skirts on every side, older children helping younger children, and even, most astonishingly, some people my age dressed up and seemingly on board with it all.

Then, in the aisle right next to me, among all those strange people going to take Communion, came the strangest of all. She was a bride—a full-blown, unmistakable bride. Her dress was like the church itself—old, ornate, a bit tattered, and, I had to admit, magnificent. She was tall and thin and walked with a slight stoop. My eyes darted to catch a glimpse of her face before she passed me by. It was a middle-aged, ordinary face, neither beautiful, nor ugly, but it had an expression of such fierce concentration, I thought she looked like a woman walking on a high wire. She stared at some object ahead with a laser gaze that contradicted the languor of her shoulders and her gentle gliding steps. It seemed as if that gaze were a single, tense thread that wound her together and drew her forward, and, on breaking, would result in her disintegration. Kneeling down at the rail with her veil and train spilling down the step behind her, she made those on either side of her look like little gray moths perched next to a regal white butterfly.

The Mass ended as grandiosely as it had begun with a parade of priest and altar boys to the thundering strains of the organ. After the last note died out, many people remained in the silent church. I had been slouching in the pew for about five minutes while my relatives prayed, when at last my aunt leaned over and whispered that she and my uncle would take the girls downstairs for donuts—I must join them later—and I could walk around the church to get my pictures.

I waited until I was sure they had gone before I cautiously slid from the pew. None of the remaining people stirred as I slunk around the back of the church snapping shots half-heartedly. I thought I had better get some shots up front, and on turning back that way, I saw the bride once again at the rail. The sight arrested me. Kneeling there alone, she no longer looked strange. Or rather, she was exactly the right type of strange. Churches, especially Gothic, ones are strange, and there she was splendid, solemn, and mysterious, the personification of the building itself. There was something beautiful in that.

My aimlessness fled, and my feet took me softly and swiftly up a side aisle as I hoped no one would guess I was angling to get a view of her face. I lost sight of her behind each mighty column, but as I passed the last one, she came into view almost in profile. Her stoop had given way to a strong arcing line that ran gracefully to the end of her train in the shape of a lily petal. She held her hands pressed together and thrust forward over the rail as if she waited for someone to take hold of them. I had to lean a little to see her face from where I stood in the shadows several yards off. It was tilted upwards and shining with tears which ran down its stillness like rain drops on the face of a statue.

My professor didn’t want figures in the shots. He had warned us that architecture alone was hard enough and advised us to wait on dealing with people until we had taken Photographing the Human Figure in Architectural Settings next semester. But as I stood there pondering the extraordinary power and grace of her pose, the effect of the amber light shimmering on her gown, and the beauty of her passionate expression, I felt my right hand begin to turn the aperture ring. The camera came up to my face.

“Screw the course,” I thought as I adjusted the shutter. Nothing they could tell me would get me a shot better than this one.



On the drive home, as Jacinta and Lucia dozed on either side of me, their little faces gently leaning on my shoulders, I asked my aunt about the bride. She let out a huffing sigh. “Oh, that’s Rose Linski,” and touching her temple added, “She’s a little off.”

“Does she always dress like that?”

“Only when she receives Communion.”

“I thought Catholics always received Communion.”

“She doesn’t. Today was one of her days, I suppose. I had so hoped it wouldn’t be. I didn’t want her eccentricity to scare you. Trust me, the vast majority of us are very normal, sane people.” She looked at me searchingly, hoping, it seemed, to find in my expression some relief born of her assurances.

Instead, a sense of keen disappointment seeped over me. I thought it mean of my aunt to throw the bride under the bus. Besides, her words were false. She was blind not to see them as such. They weren’t normal people. They weren’t sane. They all played a part in that crazy drama they called their Mass. The bride just went a little further—okay, a lot further—down the same road. They came sparingly like jaded actors at the afternoon rehearsal. She came like a new diva in full performance dress pulsing with energy, trembling with excitement, ready to pour herself body, heart, and soul, into her debut on opening night. She held nothing back. If she was eccentric relative to my modern world, she wasn’t relative to the crazy religious world of my aunt’s. She fit into it just as perfectly as the bejeweled diva fits into her gilded theater, and she lived her role and brought the story to life better than anyone. My aunt had one time told me their religion was full of beautiful paradoxes. Well, I guess this was one of them: The craziest lady made it all look sane.

Back in the dark room, I developed my shot of the bride as a twenty-four by thirty-six. I put it in a burgundy mat, and I made an exhibition label. It read: “Love’s Debut.”


The End