The Reinvention of Love

small church there is a side chapel for the Virgin Mary. Often there are candles burning in that chapel, and I sit in my pew at the back of the hall and watch their stutter. The church is draughty and the candles lean their small flames first one way, and then another. Fire is very agreeable. It does not mind bending to the will of air.
    The child-sized stone Mary stands in the arc of flickering wax. Some Virgins are defiant, staring strongly ahead, daring one to approach. Some Virgins are humble, with bowed head and clasped hands. This one is caught between the two. She has her head lowered, but her hands raised. She will not look you in the eye, but she is summoning you to come towards her embrace. I wonder at the mood of the sculptor. Her robes have deep folds, the stone gouged in channels, like rivulets, running down the length of her body.
    Mary holds a crucifix. There are red and pink roses painted on the blue background behind her. The blood of Christ,turning to flowers. If I move quickly, she sometimes seems like a real person, standing quietly in the shallow alcove of her chapel, her arms extended to welcome me. I sometimes think of her like that, as a human presence, as someone who is keeping me company while I wait for Adèle. Statues always seem to be waiting. They never seem to have arrived. There is perpetually the sense of expectation in something that is deathly still.
    There is a stained-glass window above Mary. It is the picture of a life-size head of Christ. The colours are simple, an arrangement of brown, yellow, and red. Jesus stares straight out at me, and he looks a little disappointed, as though he were expecting more people. I always feel apologetic when I look up at him there in his window.
    Jesus is positioned so that he gazes straight ahead. He can’t see Mary in her cave. And she looks down at her chipped stone feet. She can’t see him either. It would be better if they could look at each other, although I suppose their aloneness is about their relationship to God. If they were looking at each other they would be in a relationship with each other and God would be forgotten.
    I often think that Adèle is the stained-glass Jesus, all-powerful with the light behind her. I am more like Mary, with bowed head and beseeching arms. In fact, my Charlotte dress resembles Mary’s dress. My dress has heavy blue pleats and it arranges itself stiffly around me on the pew, as though it too were made of stone.
    We are waiting, all of us – Jesus, Mary, and I – for the moment when the heavy church door lurches on its hinges and opens to reveal Adèle.
    As Charlotte, I am free from my own history. I can sit in the church and not think about my uneasy alliance with faith. I do not have a past. All I have is this moment of waiting for Adèle. Itis so simple and so pure. It must be what true religion feels like.
    The doors to the church are oak. The hinges are medieval, black iron straps and studs. They are the doors of a fortress and seem designed to keep people out, rather than to invite them in. When Adèle lifts the latch and swings the right-hand door open, it is the weight of centuries that she shifts.
    The door opens. The light behind it is the real light of this day, not the eternal light of God that sifts through the stained-glass window at the front of the church. The real light always seems harsh, makes me blink my eyes and turn away.
    Conversely, when Adèle first steps into the church she is not used to the darkness and can’t see anything. She often stumbles on the threshold. It takes the full moment of the door swinging shut before she is able to distinguish objects inside the building.
    When I ask her what she is thinking of in the moment when she enters the church, she always says, “Nothing. I’m just trying to find you.”
    In our arrangement, I am the one who waits, and she is the one who seeks me out. It is partially a result of our circumstances, in that she is restricted by her marriage, so she is in control of the time we spend together – but it is more than that. Our natures are thus, I think. I am more comfortable waiting. She is more comfortable seeking. Our situation, although frustrating in terms of our being able to be together, is actually in perfect accordance with who we are.
    Adèle’s heels are sharp on the stone floor, like the hoofbeats of a small horse. They knock and echo as she walks up the aisle, so that by the time she gets to my pew, the church rings with