It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 84: Chapter VIII

Coarse and Offensive Language. Reader Discretion Advised.

The fall of the House of Carr was slow, protected, and marred with incremental slights and indignations. It had been coming for years. As with a majority of families, the Carrs' fall, or disintegrations as is probably more appropriate to call it, would have continued on in perpetuity if it had not been for a sudden and deafening climax on a chilly, Thanksgiving night.

But what was it that caused so calamitous an end?

In his old age, Alan Carr, fully formed and repentant, was certain the answer to the question was rooted in predestination, a story set in stone long ago, before 'Woods', before him, before St. Gregory's. He saw his family's history as horribly common, an inevitable and inescapable tragedy, their lives, like all those around them, determined by curses and ghosts. There was no one person he could blame, for he knew they were all guilty.

His youngest sister, however, by his later telling, was less inclined to be so generous and far less disposed to feelings of personal guilt.

'For her,' he told the Author, 'it was all so simple. She blamed our mother and our grandfather. She blamed me most of all. Her Bud. She blamed us that Thanksgiving, and she blamed us in her middle age, and when she was old, no matter how much reconciliation could be had, no matter how many 'sorry's' and 'I forgive yous' could be said, I know for a fact her opinion had not softened.'

As Vera Carr would eventually explain to her brother during their fraught tenure as unified siblings once more, there was no option but to leave St. Gregory's. The abandonment by her family that Summer's night in Curly's courtyard, the way in which her neighbors had been allowed to so gleefully tear into the girl without any defense from those supposedly closest to her, had confirmed to Vera what she had long suspected and feared. The home she thought she knew, the cherished home she had bled for and boasted of, would never be loyal to her, perhaps even had never existed. She had meant what she had said to Louise Fitzgerald. St. Gregory's embarrassed her now. She had meant what she had said to Bobby. They could be better! Father Charles had told them so...how could they have forgotten? Better than what was given to them!

But that was all gone now. Any hope of betterment crushed under the weight of bus wheels and unconscionable hatred. The only thing left to do was to leave, to be free of it all.

But she would not be alone.

She would never be alone again.

Lee would be with her. Always.

Leanne Lee, the love of her life. Leanne Lee who had shown her possibility of true companionship. Leanne Lee, bravest of all she knew. Leanne Lee, who was equal to Vera in all ways—better, surely better, for it was Lee who had opened the youngest Carr's eyes to the abhorrent world they occupied. It was Lee who had first suggested they flee. It was Lee, optimistic to a fault, who believed most passionately in the promises of a better tomorrow, far away from the rotting corpse of the parish. It didn't matter where they went, as long as they were together, as long as they stood true to their values, they would survive—they would thrive!

'And who knows,' she told Vera on one of their many liaisons to the privacy of the graveyard. 'Maybe someday we'll come back, and they'll have to listen to us. I'm sure of it. Someday, we'll come back and we'll force them to be better.'

By late October, a plan was in place. Pocket change and limited allowances were calculated and commingled, and bus routes were researched as far west as Chicago. From there, the plan was to 'just see'. The date was originally set for the beginning of November, but Lee, having developed a nasty cold, begged Vera to delay until she was recovered enough. One week stretched to two, then to three. By the fourth week, with preparations for the holiday well underway, a unsettlement came for Vera Constance Carr, a deep and nagging worry that perhaps Lee would never want to leave. Like everyone who had been damned to St. Gregory's, talk would never materialize into action.