It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 10: Chapter I (Cont'd)

The history of St. Gregory's is, like its most famous raconteur, a history shrouded in mystery. No one is entirely sure who first established the parish, or why, and really, it matters little. You see, St. Gregory's, physical though it may be, is not entirely a place. Rather, it is a living organism that is as part of the fabric of our world as air. 

And far more than even that! 

Above all things, St. Gregory's is a state of mind. 

Like the Mother to whom it belongs, you may attempt to appease it, civilize its wild and bestial ways, covering it with pristine pavement and a fresh coat of paint, teaching it to speak and think, you may even try to abandon it, banish it from body and mind and sight, but St. Gregory's, feral and hungry, will always be there. 

Waiting. 

Wanting. 

The pavement will crack, the paint will chip, and if you spend too long in its tight and sparse company, St. Gregory's Parish will claim you. If you're lucky enough to escape, bless yourself and thank your lucky stars, for escape is only a reprieve, and soon you will find yourself drawn back into its depths. Mother-City may never be far from thought, but St. Gregory's will never let you go.

And yet! If we are being literal—such a defective requirement of modernity—then the parish was physically established at one time. Built by broken hands of journeymen and day-laborers, whose blood, sweat, and tears molded the cobblestone streets, and the shabby, lusterless three-deckers that so many lived and died in.

There were once records of all these creators. Names and dates and such necessary things of posterity, but then came the Great Parish Fire of 1887 some seventy years before our central protagonist was so unceremoniously given life. In those days, everything of importance, of memory, was locked safely away in the church basement. At the time of the Great Fire, St. Gregory's Church was in its original form. An old, badly converted, colonial farmhouse. No photographs or paintings exist of the original structure, but such things tell one very little about the quality of a place. To really understand something, or someone, you must rely on stories, and St. Gregory's was riddled with stories and storytellers. They came in all shapes and sizes, and originated from many different countries. Old, young, poor, waiting for death, or dreaming of escape, everyone in St. Gregory's had a story to tell. Most revered of all these fabulists was Mrs. Nora Lynch of 17 Bailey Road, a sprite of a lady in her elder years. Mrs. Lynch was the last living resident of the original church's era, and she remembered every innocuous detail and inconsequential name. She was the first of her family to be born in America, a point of pride she heartily boasted of, though technically speaking, she did have an older sister born in St. Gregory's, but Moira Lynch ran off when she was young, and was never heard from again. So, Nora was the first.

'I was the only one,' she'd proclaim in her reedy squeak of a voice, 'to not have an accent growing up. Thank the Lord for that!' She lived, as many did, her entire life within the confines of the parish, never once stepping out of its boundaries. 'There's no need to leave!' she would say. 'God gave us all we could ask for right here. And aren't we lucky!'

Come rain or shine, you could always count on Mrs. Lynch, wrapped in a heavy shawl, see-sawing in her worn down rocking chair, on the curb of 17 Bailey Road. Outsiders to St. Gregory's—Intruders!—often mistook Mrs. Lynch for a bag lady. Some even offered her cash and coin out of kindness, to which Nora Lynch, not stupid, graciously accepted. But the stoop of 17 Bailey Road was not some squatterdom, but a domain ruled over by a queen of infinite love. The rocking chair was her throne, her shawl a multipurpose cape and crown—depending on the weather—and her most loyal subjects, the children of St. Gregory's, always splayed out at her feet. They loved Mrs. Lynch better than they loved their own mothers. She was kind, and her hugs were cozy, and she never smelled of gin or bathtub swill. Most importantly, she never, not once, looked disappointed or annoyed by their existence. On a hot summer's day, after hours and hours of dismantling fire hydrants, or attempting to hijack Gio, the Ice Cream Man, (who, for some inexplicable reason, didn't find the children's tomfoolery all that amusing and was known to shoot them with his son's pellet gun), the boys and girls of the parish would gather around the old dear, eager to be regaled with the most fantastical of exaggerated stories. Stories that always portrayed the parish as the zenith of a joyous society.