“Penance” by Kathleen McKenna

Teresa was fifteen, too young to be hired at any of the shops in town. So her Aunt Jean recommended her for a kitchen job at the residence, adjacent to St. Joseph’s High School, where all the brothers who taught at St. Joe’s lived. Aunt Jean worked at St. Joe’s. She was secretary to Brother Lawrence, the school principal, to whom she was devoted.

Teresa figured Aunt Jean was hoping the job might help Teresa become a good Catholic. Her parents took her to church only on Christmas and Easter, and when Aunt Jean had suggested they send Teresa to St. Joe’s, they wouldn’t consider it.

“The public school’s fine,” Teresa’s mother said. “It’s what we pay our taxes for. Not only that, I don’t want her fed all that religion.”

Teresa suspected that her parents couldn’t be bothered to send her to St. Joe’s, which would mean admission tests and a different schedule and a whole lot more school holidays. They owned a small real estate brokerage and Teresa knew they were relieved she no longer demanded so much of their time. Now they could focus instead on building up their business, which seemed to be a losing battle, but one they were always eager to fight.

It was no big deal to Teresa, who didn’t much want to go to St. Joe’s. The kids who went there were reportedly stuck-up, and the button-down shirts and short blue skirts the girls had to wear would not have suited Teresa, who was short and ten pounds overweight.

But she liked working at the brothers’ residence. Nobody there seemed to care where Teresa went to school, or whether she went to church, or even that she was Aunt Jean’s niece.

She rode her bike there each evening, Monday through Thursday, and performed a series of chores that she found both easy and satisfying. She filled water pitchers and bread baskets and butter dishes, and set five places at each of the dining room’s eight round tables.

An older couple, the Jamesons, did the cooking, which was mostly finished by the time Teresa arrived. When the brothers filed into the dining room, Teresa carried silver platters of meat or fish, and glass bowls of potatoes, rice, vegetables, from the kitchen to each table. The brothers served themselves, family style. One man from each table brought a decanter of red wine from the massive breakfront on one side of the room. During the half hour or so that the brothers ate, Teresa helped Mrs. Jameson with the pots and pans. Then and Mrs. Jameson went back into the dining room and cleared plates, utensils, and serving dishes and brought it all back to the kitchen, where Mr. Jameson was setting out dessert, usually something simple like rice pudding or ice cream. Teresa placed the dessert on the breakfront, alongside a stack of small plates, and the brothers lined up to serve themselves. Then Teresa returned to the kitchen to start loading the dishwasher. The brothers brought their dessert plates and wineglasses, plus any leftover dessert, into the kitchen before they headed to their rooms for the night.

When she first took the job, Teresa was afraid the brothers might be cold, or even scary. She’d heard all the stories about nuns who smacked kids across their knuckles with rulers, and priests who did horrible things to altar boys in church sacristies. So it was a relief when the brothers, who weren’t priests, but had taken the same vows of poverty and chastity, turned out to be so nice. Despite the fact that they spent all day with teenage students, they seemed to enjoy having Teresa around. Maybe it was because Mr. and Mrs. Jameson were getting old and they really needed Teresa’s help.

The Jamesons had lived in a one-bedroom apartment above the kitchen for the past two decades, Mrs. Jameson told Teresa. She regarded the brothers with a combination of parental affection and hero worship.  Feeding them seemed to be her life’s work, and her husband’s, too. Or maybe it was their ticket to heaven.

So it came as a surprise when Teresa arrived at work one day to hear that the Jamesons were retiring to Florida. She wondered how Brother Lawrence would find someone who could do their job to everyone’s satisfaction. They had run the kitchen with such an unwavering and precise routine that it seemed unlikely there would be many worthy applicants.

On the first day she rode to work after the Jamesons’ were gone, Teresa expected to find the brothers bumping into each other and making a mess in the kitchen. She was almost looking forward to the chance to help them sort things out. But she found a man and woman – younger than the Jamesons by decades – standing at the butcher-block counter. The woman was peeling potatoes, their skins falling into what Mrs. Jameson had called the utility sink. And the man was whisking a wooden spoon around a frying pan. He looked more like a biker than a cook, with blond hair that grew past his ears and a reddish-gold goatee. The woman was tall, with dark blonde hair pulled back in a low bun and big, sad eyes in a hangdog face. She wore a smock-type dress patterned in brown and gold. A hippie dress, Teresa’s mother would have called it. They both looked up the moment she walked in.

“You’re Teresa.” The man moved forward and pumped her hand up and down, which was awkward since she’d already started taking off her jacket. “I’m Gary Templeton.” He nodded toward the hippie. “This lady here is my wife, Lynn.”

“Nice to meet you,” Teresa said. She let go of Gary’s hand, then grabbed her usual apron from the back of the door and tied it behind her.

“Hi Teresa,” Lynn said, in a papery whisper. Talking seemed to be an effort for her, which might have been why Gary did most of it. Or maybe Lynn had given up on getting a word in. As Teresa cut loaves of bread and arranged slices inside eight wire bread baskets, Gary told her that they’d heard about the job through a classified ad placed in the newspaper by Brother Lawrence, which struck Teresa as highly uncharacteristic, and convinced her that he’d been desperate to fill the job.

Between Teresa’s trips from the kitchen to the dining room, Gary outlined his and Lynn’s job history for her. Between them they’d worked every job from dishwasher to chef to waiter at restaurants from the bottom to the top of New Jersey — Italian restaurants, German restaurants, and even one place that was a hybrid of both, with a menu that included both manicotti and bratwurst. One summer they’d run a boardwalk stand on the Jersey Shore that sold fried clams and cheese-steaks, and for a couple of years they’d managed a sub shop in Seaside Heights. When it came to feeding large groups, he told Teresa, they’d “been there, done that” at a summer camp for rich kids in the Western part of the state, and also on a charter cruise ship that sailed around the Statue of Liberty. They’d even owned their own pub-style place in Fort Lee. But it was shut down, Gary said, when a Beefsteak Charlie’s moved in down the street.

If all those letdowns added up to the unraveling of their lifelong dream, Gary didn’t let on. “It was bad luck,” was what he said. “Which is apparently the only kind we get.” But his smile seemed to say he was glad for the chance to live through it all.

Throughout Gary’s monologue, Lynn didn’t speak. She had a funny habit of humming under her breath as she worked, something unrecognizable and almost tuneless. When Teresa asked how she liked the apartment upstairs, she said it was fine.

“Are you all moved in already?”

It was Gary who answered. “Yep. We spent all day emptying the contents of a U-Haul, one of the big ones, into the place. Brother Lawrence said we could take tonight off, on account of the move and all. But we said, no sir, we’re here to work and we’re eager to get started. Isn’t that right, Mom?”

Teresa wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. But that was his nickname for her, Mom. Not honey, or sweetheart, or even plain Lynn. If Teresa’s father had ever called her mother ‘Mom,’ she would have cut him off at the knees.

Teresa wondered how many kids the Templetons had, and where those kids might be. There was no room in the tiny apartment for children. So they must be grown. Teresa wasn’t good with ages, but she’d guess that the Templetons were somewhere in their thirties. It was hard to tell because of Lynn and her shapeless paisley dresses, and that old-lady bun. Plus she walked in a sort-of shuffle that looked as if every step hurt worse than the one before. Teresa wondered what had attracted Gary to her.

The Templetons cooking was different from what the brothers were used to. The first night’s dinner was pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Normal-enough dishes, but the presentation was nothing like the Jamesons’. The meat was brushed with some kind of glaze, and the potatoes had flecks of green, maybe parsley, in them. And there were sliced almonds mixed in with the beans. The Jamesons’ approached the job as if the brothers were family, while the Templetons acted as if they were paying customers who might send their meals back to the kitchen if they were unsatisfied.

If the brothers minded, though, there was no sign, which was in keeping with their polite nature. Quite a few of them came into the kitchen at the end of the first meal to thank Gary and Lynn and say they’d enjoyed dinner. Lynn barely nodded at the compliments, but Gary accepted them with a wide smile and some long explanations of his cooking techniques. A few of the brothers listened, or pretended to, while the rest drifted off.

Afterwards, Gary seemed pleased with how the evening had gone. He studied what was left on each dish Teresa brought back to the kitchen, and referred to the uneaten food as “returns.” Lynn scoured the pots and pans herself, even though Teresa told her that was normally her job.

“You have enough to do,” Lynn said in her strange, soft voice. Then she looked up at Teresa, her big eyes startled. “As long as you’re okay with it. Are you?” Teresa told her it was fine. She’d always hated the pots and pans.

The Templetons seemed to accept that her way of doing things was the right way. Just once Gary said, “You might do better if you scrape all the plates before you load them, instead of doing them one by one.”

Teresa nodded, since it didn’t much matter to her either way. But Lynn said, “She has her own system, Gary. Remember, she was here before us.”

“You’re right, Mom, you’re right,” he said, and that was the end of that.

Each night, when the pots and pans were put away, Lynn excused herself and step outside. “Heading out for a cancer stick,” Gary told Teresa. She thought Lynn must be smoking more than one cigarette, because she was always still out there and always still smoking fifteen or twenty minutes later when Teresa headed out to her bike.

During Lynn’s smoking breaks, Gary and Teresa talked, which usually meant that Gary talked and Teresa listened. That was fine with her. She found him entertaining. And it was nice to have a male friend. Boys at school usually looked right past her.

One night, about a month after Gary and Lynn arrived at the residence, he asked Teresa if she could guess why Lynn always seemed so sad.

The question surprised Teresa, who’d decided that Lynn wasn’t really sad, but just looked and acted as if she was. “Did something happen?” she asked.

“It was babies,” Gary said. He ground his knuckles into the countertop and stared at the gouged wood. “Or lack thereof.” He told her that Lynn had suffered five miscarriages in as many years before finally managing a pregnancy that stuck all the way to the eighth month. That had been just a year earlier. They’d taken the baby by Caesarean section while Gary watched. It was a boy, stillborn. Dead on arrival, Gary said. The doctors told them there was some kind of congenital lung problem and that he’d probably died soon after Lynn went into labor.

Teresa felt her eyes fill, and Gary nodded as if he were grateful for her sorrow.  “Yep, it was terrible,” he said. “The worst.”

“I’m so sorry. Poor Lynn.” All at once she remembered Gary’s nickname. Why would you call someone Mom when she’d lost her only baby? It seemed cruel and twisted, but maybe there was a reason for it. Teresa’s mother always said that some things defied explanation, and this might be one of those things.

When she left the residence that night, Teresa lingered on the steps for a moment. Lynn seemed a little embarrassed, and stamped out her half-finished cigarette. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

“Don’t worry about me,” Teresa said. “My mom says that everyone should have at least one vice.”

“Really?” Lynn seemed interested. “What’s hers?”

“Oh, she has more than one.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Smoking, but only socially. Drinking, but only on weekends. Talking about people behind their backs, but only when they deserve it.”

Lynn laughed, the first time Teresa heard her do that. “She sounds like a lot of fun.”

“She is, I guess,” Teresa said. “Most of the time.” She was glad they were having an actual conversation.

“Gary’s got plenty of vices,” Lynn said then.

Teresa hadn’t seen that coming. “Oh, yeah?”

As was often the case, Lynn seemed to regret having spoken. “He tries to keep them under control,” she said. “His vices, I mean. And he has been, lately.” She’d dropped her voice, even though there were two heavy wooden doors between them and the kitchen, and there was no sign of anyone else in the darkened parking lot. “But I worry about him. He doesn’t get along with people sometimes.”

“He’s always nice to me,” Teresa said.

Lynn nodded. “He is nice. But he’s lost a bunch of jobs for us.”

Teresa thought of the summer camp and the German-Italian restaurant. “Really? How?”

“It’s never really his fault. Not exactly.” She fished in her pocket for her cigarettes. “I really should shut up. Will you forget I ever said that? Please.”

“Said what?” Teresa said.

Lynn squeezed Teresa’s hand. “Thanks.”

Teresa was glad Lynn had sort-of confided in her. And she didn’t care if Gary had vices. Everyone did.

Over time Gary’s cooking got more experimental, and he sometimes let Teresa help. He made sauces with curry or peppers, or with herbs with names like cilantro or tarragon. He served up strange new side-dishes such as polenta or orzo with Italian parsley. He also made occasional trips into the dining room after the brothers had said the evening blessing, and asked whether they liked a particular dish. Teresa was pretty sure that was a breach of protocol. But Gary seemed not to notice. Both he and Lynn, in fact, seemed unaware of the religious nature of the lifestyles the brothers had chosen, and continued to treat them as customers rather than almost-priests.

One night she told her mother how Gary had pulled up at a chair at Brother Lawrence’s table while he was still eating. “The Jamesons wouldn’t have sat at the same table as Brother Lawrence for anything,” Teresa said. “But Gary doesn’t think that way.”

“Good for him,” her mother said. “Those priests think they’re kings or something. What makes them so special that the guy who puts their food on the table can’t pull up a chair?”

Teresa was mad at herself for getting her mother going. “It’s not that they think they’re special,” she said. “They’re just kind of formal. And I keep telling you, they’re not priests.”

“You have to wonder about that Gary,” her mother said. “Him and his wife. Lynn, her name is? Why can’t they get a normal job?”

“It is a normal job,” Teresa said. She didn’t say anything about the Templetons’ failed restaurant and long resumes. “I work there, remember?”

“I know. But what would possess a couple of adults to move in with a bunch of priests and serve them dinner every day?”

“They’re not priests!” Teresa was surprised by how protective she felt toward the brothers. Especially Brother Lawrence, with his thick, smeary glasses and limp that appeared worsening. Since she’d told him English was her favorite subject he always asked what she was reading in school. To every title – Jane Eyre, Jude the Obscure – he reacted with something close to delight.

“Priests, brothers, it’s all the same to me,” her mother said. “Maybe they should cook for themselves like everyone else. Or get takeout.”

“They took a vow of poverty,” Teresa said. “It’s not like they’re walking around with cash in their pockets.”

“Oh, really?” Her mother laughed. “Don’t be so sure.”

“You’re a cynic, Mom.”

“I know,” she said, as if it were meant as a compliment.

Soon after Gary told her about the miscarriages and the baby boy who died, he started asking Teresa about herself. Did she like school? Did she have a lot of friends? A boyfriend?

Teresa had never had a boyfriend. Her hips and rear were too big for the rest of her body, and her face was plain as paper. Also, she wasn’t good at talking to boys like most of the girls at school. She froze up.

She liked a boy in her history class named Keith. He asked to borrow her notes once when he’d missed class, and something about the way he’d grinned at her when he gave them back made it so she couldn’t stop thinking about him. One night she found herself telling Gary about Keith, and wondering out loud whether his borrowing her notes when he could have asked anyone meant that he liked her. Or was he just using her because she was known to get decent grades?

“Of course he likes you.” Gary spoke as if it were fact. “Unless he’s blind or stupid, that is.”

Teresa was flustered by Gary’s conviction. “But he has a girlfriend,” she said. “Or at least I see him going around with this one girl. Anyway, he’d never look twice at me. He’s the type who could go out with anyone.” Fishing for a compliment, her mother would have called that. Teresa felt her face flush red.

But Gary didn’t seem to notice. “You’ve got to be kidding.” He finished wrapping foil around a casserole dish of rice pilaf, then leaned back to look her up and down. “You’re what I would call a catch.”

“Oh, you don’t know.” She heard an unfamiliar lilt in her voice.

“I’m serious. I’d think the boys would be lining up around the block. What’s wrong with kids today?”  He seemed truly grieved by her lack of popularity.

One night Teresa made a joke about all the wine the brothers drank with dinner. “I guess they don’t take a vow to abstain from alcohol.” She thought he might laugh, but he didn’t.

“I did.” He handed her a slice from the block of cheddar cheese he’d used in the potatoes he’d served that night, au gratin. Then he repeated it. “I took a vow to abstain from alcohol.”

“Really?” Teresa had gotten drunk only once, after drinking four beers at a party. She’d spent the next day throwing up and wondering what it was that made alcohol so hard for people to live without.

“Yep. It was a year ago. Just after my boy died.” It was the first time Gary had mentioned the baby since the night he’d told her about it. “I’d been drinking quite a bit.  And by that I mean way too much. I was afraid I was going to do something crazy. So I checked myself into recovery before somebody did it for me. I did the twelve steps, every one of them. Haven’t touched a drop since.”

“Congratulations,” Teresa said, though she didn’t know what he meant by twelve steps, and had only a vague idea of what recovery entailed.

Gary and Teresa’s conversations became more personal. He asked nearly every day about Keith from her history class, until she wished she’d never mentioned it. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her. So she didn’t say that Keith had never spoken to her again since the time he’d borrowed her notes. Still, each Monday Gary asked about her weekend, and whether she’d gone out with friends. If so, what did they do? And if she stayed home, what did she do there? How did she spend her free time?

Teresa liked the attention. It was nice to have a boy interested in her, even if he was actually a man.

One day Teresa mentioned to her friend Francie that the guy who cooked in the brother’s kitchen probably talked to her more than he talked to his wife.

“That’s the wife he calls Mom?” They were in Francie’s room, seated on the carpeted floor. Schoolbooks were spread all around them, though they weren’t getting much work done.

“That’s right.” Teresa had forgotten she’d told Francie that. She wished she hadn’t.

“I thought the brothers sounded creepy. But this Gary guy sounds like the total creep. It sounds like he’s you know, into you. Which he probably is, considering that wife of his.”

“Oh, he’s harmless.” Teresa didn’t like the idea that Gary was nice to her only because she was better company than Lynn. “He’s just a lonely guy who’s had some bad luck.”

“So has his wife, it sounds like.”

“I guess so.” Teresa didn’t talk to Francie about Gary anymore.

That weekend, Teresa’s parents were showing houses as usual. She was watching an old movie on TV when the phone rang.

“Is that you, Teresa?” a boy’s voice said.

Her heart leapt. “Who’s this?”

“Well, that depends. Who do you want it to be?”

“C’mon, who is this?”

“I can be anyone you want me to be, Teresa. I can be Keith from your history class, or anyone else.” When he laughed, Teresa realized it wasn’t a boy.

“Gary? How did you get my number?”

“Oh, I have my ways.” That laugh again.

“You sound different,” she said.

“Different, how?”

It dawned on her. “Wait. You didn’t break your vow?”

He didn’t answer right away, but she knew he hadn’t hung up because she heard him breathing. “What vow is that, honey?”

No one had ever called her honey except her father. “The vow you told me about. About, you know, abstaining from alcohol?” She giggled, trying to hide her nervousness. “Unlike the brothers.”

“We don’t call it a vow,” he said. “More like a promise.”

She wasn’t sure there was a difference. “Well. I was just joking. I don’t care if you broke it.”

He didn’t say whether or not he had. “Listen, I was thinking we could take a ride this afternoon. Maybe go get lunch somewhere. My treat.”

“You mean, me, and you, and Lynn?” Teresa knew he had meant just the two of them, but it seemed like someone should mention his wife.

“Lynn?” He paused, as if he were trying to place the name. “She’s not around.”

“Well, I don’t know if I should. Go out to lunch, I mean.”

“Come on. It will be fun. Let someone wait on us for a change, right?”

“My parents might be mad.” She pictured her father pulling into the driveway as she was climbing into Gary’s car.

“Aren’t they working? I thought you said they always worked on weekends, left you all by your lonesome.”

“They do. I mean they did. But they’ll be home soon.” They wouldn’t.

“I’ll have you home within an hour, okay? Come on, Teresa. Take a chance.”

She agreed, glad for something to do. She went into her mother’s bathroom to use a lipstick and comb her hair, then stepped outside. When Gary pulled up in the green Dodge Dart she’d seen parked outside the residence, she climbed inside.

“Hey there, gorgeous.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t call me that.”

“Someone’s got to tell you you’re gorgeous, right? You can’t wait around for those idiot boys at school.”

He put the car into drive and headed toward the town’s main drag. “Where to?” he said. “This is your turf.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She couldn’t picture sitting in any of the restaurants in town with Gary. She might run into kids from school, one of her mother’s friends, a neighbor. “Maybe we could just drive around for a little bit.”

“Sounds good to me.” He kind of nudged her side with his elbow. “You know all I wanted was to get you alone.”

“So,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Was I right? Did you fall off the wagon or whatever you call it?”

“I had a couple of beers.” He jerked his thumb toward the backseat and she saw a six-pack with four beers remaining, half-hidden beneath a sweatshirt. “I saved a few for us.”

“I really shouldn’t,” she said. “My mother would smell it in a minute. Plus I’m supposed to have all my homework done when she gets home.”

“Homework. On a Saturday afternoon?” They’d passed through town by then, and were now on a two-lane highway that headed south.

“Yeah. I have a ton of homework on weekends.” She wasn’t sure why she’d lied. She’d finished everything before she left school on Friday.

She wondered how drunk he was. Two beers wasn’t much. She knew plenty of kids who polished off a way more than that on a regular basis. And Gary was an adult.

“You think we should go get Lynn?” she said. She didn’t expect him to agree, but again, she felt she should bring up her name. “You could turn around at the next intersection, and we’d be at the residence in a few minutes.” Gary didn’t say anything, so Teresa went on. “I won’t tell her about you coming by my house or calling. I’ll just say I was walking along and you were nice enough to pick me up. Then we were hungry so we thought we’d come take her out.” Teresa was warming up to the idea, picturing her and Gary and Lynn in the booth of the diner they’d just passed.

“I don’t think she’d go for that, Teresa,” Gary said.

“Well, she must gets sick of that little apartment, especially on the weekends. Right?”

Gary didn’t answer, but he turned at the intersection, just as she’d suggested, and headed back in the direction of the residence. When they reached it, though, he drove straight past. Then he pulled into the nearly-empty parking lot of the high school and drove all the way around back, near the deserted football field. He pulled into a space and shut the ignition. There was no one else around.

“What are we doing here?” Teresa said.

Gary smiled and stroked his beard.  She wondered whether it was scratchy or soft, and felt like touching it. “I meant it when I said I wanted to be alone with you.” He twisted toward her, trying to look into her face, but she kept her eyes trained on her lap. “And you must have wanted to be alone with me, Teresa. Or else why did you come?”

“I like you, Gary.” Her voice sounded strange, like it was coming from someone else. “I like you as a friend.”

“Me, too,” he said. “I like you, too.” He left out the ‘as a friend’ part. Then he reached over and covered her hands, which were folded on her lap, with his. “One kiss, Teresa. You don’t know how much that would mean to me.”

The next thing Teresa knew, they were kissing. She wasn’t even sure who started it. It turned out that his beard was scratchy, but his lips were soft. And his tongue probing its way around the inside of her mouth felt better than she ever thought kissing could. He tasted like beer and salt. She pushed her tongue against his and he pressed himself against her. Heat spread through her body, and she had a sudden urge to cross her legs tight. Then Gary’s hand was down there, rubbing the place where her legs met. She heard a moan and realized it came from her.

He pulled back and stroked her face. “Feels good, right, honey?” he said.

She couldn’t even answer him. They went back to kissing, and he maneuvered himself so that one hand was so pressing her crotch, and the other was under her T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

“My baby girl,” he said. Then he was pushed her shirt up high and sucking on her nipple. An electric current shot between his mouth and the hand down below. She moved around she was as close as she could get to him, nearly curled up in his lap.

All of a sudden he stopped and sat back in his seat. “Jesus.” He closed his eyes, then took her hand as he’d done earlier. Teresa was nearly panting, trying to catch her breath. “Feel this, honey.” This time he pressed her hand against his jeans, and she felt what had to be his swollen penis. She knew that he’d want her to touch it, maybe even to taste it, and she knew she couldn’t say no. Not after all of this.

But she was wrong. “That’s for next time,” he said. “We’ve got to go slow, okay?”

“Okay,” she said with relief. Her whole body relaxed. Gary started the car and drove back to her house. Along the way he sang along with the radio. Teresa was filled up with happiness. Now she’d have something to think about when she lay awake at night. Something to look forward to. She pushed Lynn out of her mind.

Before she went to work on Monday, Teresa wore a V-neck top, dark purple, bought by her mother a week earlier but still unworn. She tore open a new pair of black tights and pulled them on. Then she hunted around in her closet and found a skirt, short but with a full skirt, with a print design that included the same shade of purple as the shirt. She would have liked to wear shoes with a heel, but because of the bike she settled for a pair of black ballet flats. She studied herself in the mirror and decided that she looked good. The shirt accentuated her small breasts in a way the baggie button-downs she usually wore didn’t. And the short skirts and tights showed off the skinny legs Gary had mentioned in the car. She felt as if her mind had been in that car for the duration of the thirty-odd hours since she’d been with him, while her body had been at the dinner table with her parents, on an unexpected trip to the movies with friends on Sunday afternoon, in the hallways and classrooms at school that day. As she parked her bike and climbed the stairs to the residence door, she prepared to act as normal as possible. She wouldn’t be any friendlier, or less friendly, toward Gary or Lynn than usual. She figured Gary was probably nervous that she might say or do something that would give it all away. But she would show him he had nothing to worry about.

In the kitchen she found Gary and Lynn at their usual spots at the counter. “Hey there,” she said. Despite her intentions, her voice sounded louder and higher than usual. “Did you guys have a good weekend?” It was the kind of thing she also said on Mondays, and usually Lynn answered with a small smile while Gary launched into a description of how they’d spent the past two days.

But this time neither of them answered her. Lynn didn’t look up from the red pepper she was cutting into what Gary called julienne strips. “We did,” Gary said, lifting his eyes for just a second. She’d expected him to say something about her outfit, at least about the fact that she’d put on a skirt. But he went back to his wooden spoon and his skillet.

Teresa didn’t know what to think. She put on her apron and performed her pre-dinner tasks. The silence in the kitchen rang in her ears. It was a relief to carry the bread baskets into the dining room, which was silent, but in a different way. She considered the possibilities and could come up with only one reason that Gary and Lynn would be so cold. Lynn knew what was going on. She was onto them. Maybe, Teresa thought, she’d left something behind in the car, a scarf or her wallet. But no. She remembered clearly that she hadn’t taken anything with her. And even if she had, she’d checked the seat and the floor of the car when Gary dropped her off in front of her house.

The silence continued as Teresa moved back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. She was aware of the skirt swishing against her hips, and wished she’d worn her jeans.

When the brothers filed into the dining room, she was relieved.

“Well, look at you,” said Brother Thomas. He was one of the youngest of them, a social studies teacher who liked to ask Teresa her opinion about the war in Iraq or the economic crisis, and he listened as if her uninformed answers really mattered. “You have a big date later on or something? Who’s the lucky guy?”

She ducked her head and smiled. “No. Just haven’t done laundry.”

He took his seat at the table. “You look very pretty.” Then, to his dinner companions who were already seated, he said, “Aren’t we lucky to have such a lovely young server?” And the brothers echoed agreement.

Their kindness filled Teresa with guilt. She almost couldn’t bear going back into the kitchen. When she did, nothing had changed. Gary and Lynn spoke to each other, but not to her, except to ask her to deliver a dish or a condiment to the dining room. That continued through the meal, and the clean-up. When a couple of the brothers passed through the kitchen, Gary was polite as always, though way less talkative. If they noticed anything strange, they didn’t mention it. Teresa wished they would.

At the end of the evening, Lynn stepped outside to smoke. The dishes were done by then, and the dishwasher was humming, but Teresa waited for Gary to explain why he was acting so strange. But he just wiped the counter his eyes were fixed on and didn’t speak. Then he hung up the dishtowel and moved toward the stairs to the apartment. Teresa couldn’t remember him ever leaving the kitchen before she did.

“Gary?” she said.

He turned around and stared at her with a look that felt like an accusation. “What?”

Teresa couldn’t think of what to say. “What’s wrong?”

He must have expected her to ask, but his eyes squinted with confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” she said. “The other day, I thought that….”

“The other day never happened,” he said, then started up the stairs.

She followed him. “Yes, it did.” She heard the panic in her voice. This hadn’t been her fault. It was all his idea. He continued up the stair, his step slow and heavy, like an old man’s.

Teresa took her apron off and hung it on a hook. She looked into the dining room, hoping to see a brother who she might engage in conversation. Who might walk with her into the parking lot so she wouldn’t have to face Lynn alone. But the room was empty, the lights turned out.

She had no choice but to step outside. Lynn was leaning against the railing, smoking what was probably her third cigarette. When she saw Teresa she didn’t avert her eyes the way she usually did, but stared at her with something like defiance.

“Good night,” Teresa said, and moved past her.

“I guess you got all dressed up just for him,” Lynn said to Teresa’s back. Teresa stopped on the second step. “I guess you think he’s your boyfriend now.”

Teresa’s hands moved down to her skirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He told me everything,” Lynn said. “He confessed.”

The word seemed odd, maybe because of the Virgin Mary statue nestled in the middle of the shrubs just a few feet away from them.

“He was drinking that day,” Lynn said. “That’s why he called you and came to your house. He never fell off the wagon before. And he’s never going to again.” Teresa felt sure Lynn was repeating words Gary had spoken.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Teresa said. “He started it.”

Lynn nodded. She took a drag on her cigarette, which was almost down to nothing. “I know that,” she said. “You’re just a kid.” They both waited a moment, as if daring the other to say something more. Then Teresa murmured good-bye and left.

At school the next day, she got a pass from her math teacher and went to the pay phone. She called St. Joseph’s and asked to speak to Brother Lawrence. When they connected her to his office, she told him that she was sorry, but she wasn’t going to be able to work there anymore.

He said he was sorry to hear that. “Can you stay for a week or two? So we can find a replacement?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

“May I ask why?” Something in his voice had changed.

She struggled to come up with something. “It’s hard to explain. I have to leave for personal reasons.”

“What personal reasons?”

“It has nothing to do with the job. It’s about me.”

That evening, when her mother got home from work, she knocked on Teresa’s bedroom door and asked her why she wasn’t at work. Teresa told her that she’d quit.

“I thought you liked it there.”

“Not really,” Teresa said.  She was sitting at her desk with a textbook open in front of her. “The brothers are kind of creepy. They drink too much, to tell you the truth.”

Her mother was looking at her funny. “Is there something you want to tell me? Did something happen to you?”

“No. It was nothing.”

She crossed the room and put a hand on Teresa’s shoulder. “C’mon. I can tell it was not nothing.”

“It’s just, well, I don’t know. I’m probably making too much of it.”

“Too much of what?”

“Just something weird that happened. Yesterday.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, I wore a skirt and that new top you got me? The purple one?”

“Yes?” Teresa had her mother’s full attention for the first time in ages.

“And, well, a couple of the brothers made some comments. Nothing bad, really. They just talked about how good I looked. Like I was going on a date. It probably sounds stupid, but it made me, I don’t know, kind of uncomfortable.”

“That does not sound stupid,” her mother said. “What they did was totally inappropriate, talking to a kid like that. I feeling like heading straight over there to tell them so.”

Teresa stood up, and grabbed her desk chair for balance. “No! Mom, please. You can’t do that. I wanted to quit anyway. I’m really sick of the place.”

“Well, I don’t blame you a bit.” Her mother pulled her close in a hug, which she hadn’t done in a long time. “But I won’t say anything unless you want me to.”

“I don’t,” Teresa said.

“As long as you’re okay. You sure you’re okay?” She patted Teresa’s back and the hug was over. Her mother moved to the bed and fluffed the pillows that didn’t need fluffing. She was already moving past it.

The next day Aunt Jean called Teresa’s mother to say that Teresa’s quitting had made her look bad.

“I wanted to tell her about the way those men talked to you,” her mother told Teresa after she’d hung up. “But I didn’t.”

“Good,” Teresa said. “Thanks.”

“But I wouldn’t count on Jean finding you any more jobs.”

“I know that,” Teresa said.

As time went on, Teresa tried not to think about her job serving the brothers. But her mother, who grew more disdainful of the church over the years, sometimes mentioned it. She said she couldn’t believe she’d ever let Teresa work among those people. And each time she did, Teresa felt a pang of guilt. The brothers were decent men. And she’d put the blame for her quitting on them, not just to cover up Gary’s reckless behavior that Saturday afternoon, but to hide her own to desire for someone who was old and married and reckless.

After she graduated from high school, Teresa started going to church on her own, but at St. Agatha’s, not St. Joe’s. By the time she’d moved out of her parents’ house, she was attending Mass every Sunday without fail. Whenever she stepped up to the altar to receive Communion from a man in a robe, she thought of her job at the residence, and of the brothers. She remembered their kindness, and their gratitude for their simple, orderly lives. And she offered up an apology, a contrition the brothers might have called it, for her weakness and for her sins.