The Risk Pool

out of Mohawk since the war. She’d seen pictures of the national parks out west that made her want to see them for real and find out if they could be so pretty in real life. My mother found the notion of Aunt Rose in Yellowstone ludicrous, but she knew what her cousin was trying to tell her. She didn’t want the responsibility for an eleven-year-old boy for an entire summer. Forty-five minutes a day was all right, because she could feed me coconut macaroons and turn on the television, but she couldn’t imagine how to keep a boy my age entertained during a whole summer. She loved children andit was the great sorrow of her life that she hadn’t had any, but I wasn’t really a child anymore, and I certainly wasn’t
her
child.
    One morning, Father Michaels suggested I introduce him to my mother. She had left immediately after mass, however, so as to be in time for her ride to work. It was only a few blocks to my school and I was used to walking them alone. So I suggested that Father Michaels come by that evening when she got home from work. He could have dinner with us if he liked.
    By afternoon, of course, I had forgotten all about my unauthorized invitation, and we were just sitting down to a dinner of beans and hot dogs when a car pulled up outside. My mother feared all automobiles, because my father had one, though this was not his most effective distinguishing characteristic, since everyone we knew owned a car but us. Even Aunt Rose had a Ford. She never took it out of the garage, but she did have one. Still, not many cars pulled up in front of our house, and though no one in Mohawk had seen my father in years, my mother quickly got up from the table to make sure. She got into the living room just in time to see the young priest, his forehead glistening and a dark ring beneath each arm, getting out of the parish station wagon. He was carrying a bottle of wine.
    I don’t know what my mother was most confused by—the fact that a priest was coming to visit, that he was carrying a bottle of wine, or that he hadn’t common sense enough to avoid dinner hour. It had been a warm day, and the heavy, inner door was already open so that the house could air, so there was just the screen between them when Father Michaels mounted the porch steps. When he saw my mother staring at the bottle of wine, he raised it timidly and said, “For purely sacramental purposes.”
    This was a joke, but it confused my mother even more. She had made no move to open the door, but it was clear from the expectant way the man was standing there smiling at her that she was expected to. Surely this was no casual social call at such a time. Did the man intend to say mass in the living room? There was nothing to do but let him in.
    My mother’s hesitance finally tipped my friend that something was amiss. “I hope I’m not late,” he said. “Ned didn’t say what time.”
    They were both looking at me now. I’d started backing up when I saw who it was on the porch, but I was caught. I could feel myself flushing, but so was everybody else. My mother, no doubtremembering the small beans-and-hot-dog casserole already steaming in the center of the kitchen table, looked homicidal, and I was glad the police had confiscated my grandfather’s revolver. Of the three of us, however, Father Michaels looked to be in the worst shape. He was not only red with embarrassment, he looked as if he might faint. Three distinct trails of perspiration disappeared into his collar.
    My mother was first to rally, and she refused to hear of the priest leaving, though he expressed a fervent and sincere desire to. Instead, she got him to sit down on the sofa, and she left me, as she put it, to entertain our guest. I had no idea what that might entail. Father Michaels was too kind to say anything, but he wore the expression of a man cruelly betrayed by a trusted ally. We both stared at the floor and listened to the sounds emanating from the kitchen. I heard the casserole return to the oven and the sound of anxious, angry chopping on the drain board.
    “Ned?” my mother’s voice floated in, high and false from the kitchen. “Would you ask our guest if he’d like something cool to drink?”
    I looked over at Father Michaels, who shook his head at me, as if speech were an impossibility.
    “Nope,” I yelled.
    “Perhaps he would like to open the bottle of wine?”
    He nodded this time. He was still holding the bottle and had read the front and back labels several