Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (general ebook reader .TXT) 📗

to hide it, so his head looked naked. He took Lavinia’s mother’s shaky old arm and led her up the steps, but his legs were bowed wide, and he mounted the stairs as if he were straddling an invisible horse.

“Too bad Lavinia’s husband never got to come to a party,” Delia said to the new sitter, whose name she’d already forgotten. Her mother was tired of teenagers like Michelle not turning up when they were supposed to, so she’d hired someone much older tonight, someone with little hairs on her chin. Delia had learned from her mother how to make small talk and was hoping to impress this hairy lady, who also lived in town but was not fun like Michelle had been.

“I’m sure her husband didn’t mind never being invited,” the woman said with an audible sniff. Her voice had a peppery sting to it that made Delia go quiet.

Didn’t mind? she thought. The parties were everything. Her mother had not been raised in Wyoming but in Boston, so she knew a thing or two about how to throw a party. And she was determined to bring civility to her new home in the Rockies, even if it meant forcing her ranch hands into clothes that didn’t smell like wet horses and manure and keeping constant vigilance over the dry red dirt incessantly carried in by boisterous winds and dogs and children.

Delia’s mother was never more in her element than when she was throwing a party. The catering staff barely knew how to carry a tray of martinis without spilling—but they had better not!—while her mother could twirl holding hers above her head and not lose a single drop. Her hair was piled higher than anyone else’s, her dresses were more sparkly, and her laugh was so high it bounced off the chandelier. Delia loved watching it all from the top of the staircase in her flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers, with her gum wrappers next to her and her fingers folding and unfolding tiny V’s that she fit together one inside the other, perfectly.

A lot of the money that swirled around them Delia’s daddy got from breeding cows with his prize bull, Brutus. Delia used to laugh when Brutus would try to walk with his huge bulbous ball sack hanging down and his penis practically hitting the ground like a fifth leg. Her brother used to laugh like crazy when Delia said “penis,” especially at the breakfast table. The first time, he’d spluttered orange juice out his nose and her parents had looked shocked and then everyone laughed and she’d felt like the funniest person in the world. She was six.

But a year later, when she said that Father Lazaria had unzipped his pants in front of her and showed her his penis, they did not find this funny. (Although Delia had not been trying to make anyone laugh or spurt juice out of their nose anyway.)

Father Lazaria was a man of God, and a family friend. He often came to the house for dinner, and her parents had always smiled and nodded at her when he wanted her to sit on his lap during dessert. Under the table, where no one else could see, there was a bulge in the priest’s lap that had made sitting there uncomfortable, but her mother scolded her when she tried to get down. Maybe, Delia had thought, priests had to wear robes during Mass because they didn’t want everyone to know about their bulging crotches?

Delia was leery of getting very close to Father Lazaria once she’d experienced his uncomfortable lap, but she tried to be polite about it.

It had happened on Easter when she was just finishing her important job of carrying the incense back into the sacristy. She was allowed to go alone to return the censer to where it was stored, in what looked like a gilded birdcage. As she turned the key to open the little door and set the incense inside, she heard a click: the door was being bolted behind her. When she turned around, Father Lazaria had spread his arms wide and was lifting his robes, facing her with outstretched wings, like a huge purple phoenix sucking all the air out of the room.

Instantly, the smell of incense went from being something Delia loved to being something that made her gag. It caught in the back of her throat, and she thought she might throw up. Then he pulled his penis out of his fly and held it out to her in a way that could have been a joke, but not the kind of joke her father or brother ever played. Her gag reflex kicked in, and before she could stop herself, she really was vomiting. All over her shiny black shoes. He’d tucked himself away and looked disgustedly at her.

Her parents had given her the same look when she’d tried to tell them. She didn’t know what she had done, but as she stumbled over words to describe what she’d seen, it became clear that no matter which words she chose, none of them were what her parents wanted to hear. Her mother informed her that what she said made no sense. Such things simply did not happen in their world.

But her parents didn’t make her sit on his lap anymore when he came to dinner, and she wasn’t allowed to carry the incense again. Her “punishment” was that they kept her away from the poor priest so she couldn’t tarnish his shiny image. Nothing else was said, but even her brother was different after that. He didn’t tease her anymore, didn’t try to make her laugh, and especially didn’t make jokes about Brutus.

It happened so quickly and quietly that it would have been easy to think she was imagining it. She only knew that whatever had caused her family to stop laughing was her fault.

If everyone was going to treat her like this, she thought, it would have been better to just