It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 93: Chapter I (Cont'd)

Alanna Mooney had not, physically, gone very far in life. She had only left the Commonwealth once, and that was for her honeymoon in 'far-off' Killington, Vermont. The rest of her days were spent within a 12 mile radius of St. Gregory's Parish. First, she had lived in Brighton, a neighborhood of Mother-City, and from there had gone to East Milton, Milton being a town not in Boston, but close enough that most people just pretended. Yet, in terms of Niamh's understanding, in terms of any understanding in St. Gregory's, the fact that Alanna was not present meant she might as well have hitched a ride on a steamboat to Timbuktu, or some other ungodly far place. But calling St. Gregory's 'close-minded' didn't do the parish justice in Alanna's opinion. The further removed she became, the more she saw St. Gregory's as a house in a ghost story. It had been built with grandeur in mind, but neglected, never touched, never changed, never repaired. For all time it would sit atop its hill, collecting the baleful spirits of its residents, long decayed past any point where former majesty could be recognized. If Alanna could have made one addition to the place of her birth, it would have been to add a disclaimer at the entrance of the parish:

You Are Entering St. Gregory's! Squint And Imagine What Could Be!

Over and over again, this thought was reinforced in the eldest Carr's mind. The way in which people not of St. Gregory's—Intruders, she had once called them—spoke vaguely of the place, as if it were some beleaguered hovel that was to be avoided at all costs. Recently, those criticisms had turned more concrete. What was once indefinite now came to symbolize all that was wrong and rotting with the state and country at large. St. Gregory's had made the news, almost nightly, for a week or two, as the riots of busing unfolded. There, on her colored TV, Alanna had seen the streets of her youth packed with the faces of the people she would much rather have forgotten. They had not changed a bit. They all still thought they were the Center of the World, that their problems were most important. God, and they still all talked out of their asses, as if they were intelligent, as if the odious thoughts and opinions they discharged were wanted and needed in the greater discourse of the nation.

'I'm never going back,' Alanna said one of those nights, half asleep and curled into her husband's arm. 'I don't want anythin' to do with those people.'

'They're still your family,' Christopher Mooney murmured back, in his usual, non-intrusive way, hinting at the only problem he felt hung over their otherwise blissful existence. 

It had been a long standing tradition for Christopher to never press his wife on matters relating to her biological family. After six years of marriage, he had almost all but given up asking questions about them, directly that is, but still he felt it might have been a healthy thing for his wife to introduce them all. From the way Alanna spoke, Christopher had no delusions of a untroubled family reunion, but he did think—he was sure!—that it could not be beneficial in the long run for a person to so clinically pack away a large part of her life. He respected Alanna's position on keeping in the present moment, but worried that, by doing so, it came at cost, as yet unseen, but not less detrimental to peace of mind.

'But they're not my family,' Alanna retorted. 'Not anymore. And I don't want 'em to be!'

'But why?' Christopher asked before he could stop himself.

'I dunno...' There was no easy way for Alanna to divulge what she meant for she hardly knew what it was that kept her away—

It's because I'm better than them! she liked to tell herself. I'm not beholden to expectations. I don't think the world owes me anything, or I it. I allow myself to be loved, and to love, and I will not allow anything to get in the way of what I, all by myself, have accomplished and built. I have nothing to prove. I don't want to have to prove anything...