Chapter Text
Stained glass windows and tall stone pillars and details of gold and velvet and silks. High ceilings, grabbing the choir’s voices, and swinging censers of incense. The low mumbling of the congregation and the faint flicker of lit candles.
When Remus was young he tried to imagine how God managed to partake in each and every service. The priests always talked about it; how God was present and listening. Listening to every prayer and every confession. How he heard each vail for an answer and forgave every sinner.
Then Remus went to his aunt’s church a few hours away and the preachers said the same thing there. How God was present. How God was listening.
He used to imagine how God bent over the church and placed a large ear against the roof of the gothic building to hear each sinner, griever, or outcast. So how many ears could God have to be able to perform such a feat? How could he bend over each and every church in the country, in the world, and listen to all pleading inside? How could he be present?
No matter how omnipotent, Remus couldn’t fathom how that would ever be possible. It had to be impossible to hear every single voice in just one church, all speaking over each other in a jumbled mess of prayer.
Maybe he wasn’t present at all.
Maybe the God the preachers spoke of died a long time ago. Maybe he died when Jesus stepped off the earth to return to the kingdom of heaven. Maybe the only thing left of him is the lonely echo of conviction steeped into the stones of the uncountable number of churches across the world. In the dust that gatherers underneath the stones where they bury preachers and bishops and kings and saints.
Maybe God is alive and couldn’t care less of the kreatins he left on earth to vail until their voices gave out and denied themselves sex and love and coffee and revenge. Or whatever else it is that people give up in order to assure themselves a fast-track ticket to his right-hand side. Maybe he lives and makes sure to create war and cancer and famine to ensure people still plead with him.
Maybe God is a narcissistic asshole.
Late June. Remus, 14 years old
June creeps up like an unnamed shadow. Everything transforms from the ruddy mess of spring with its blossoming trees and muddy fields and bright sun, still with the threat of another cold front, to something more settled in early summer. The skies are bright even late into the evening and everything smells of dusty pavement and the soft smell of manure when the winds shift just so.
The scent of manure is not felt closer to the city center, but right here, where Remus rides his bike, it serves as a reminder of home almost as prevalent as the shoddy mailboxes lining up outside the houses. Right on the end of the streets lies the little house with a small home-painted welcome sign on the front.
Remus’ lungs burn as he rises from the saddle of the bike to race the final bit home. He is sweating underneath his backpack which hangs heavy on his shoulders, textbooks, and crumpled-up pieces of paper littering the polyester lining inside. When he turns up the cracked driveway to the last house he doesn't even bother to lock his bike before leaving it underneath the low ceiling of the garageport that leads to his father’s shed.
He digs deep into his pocket and finds the ring of keys before fumbling around with the old rubber Garfield keyring he won at a fair a few summers ago. Garfield has turned a bit dirty around the edges but it keeps his mother from claiming his keys as hers when she's hurrying out of the house in the morning.
Inside, Remus doesn't even bother to call out that he’s home when he swings the backpack off his shoulders and leaves it by the mess of shoes inside. There is never anyone at home when he gets home from school anyway.
Remus tries to ignore the mirror right inside the door, the teenage spots and the ever-darkening peachfuzz of his top lip are not doing him any favors and for some reason, he is more aware than ever that whatever it is his hair is doing currently, is doing his appearance more harm than good.
He constantly wonders when that change happened. Two or so years ago, it was still socially acceptable to play pretend in the schoolyard after classes ended. At twelve years old, the girls were covered in cooties but they were all still just kids. Remus had preferred it that way. They still played in the grove by the schoolyard with sticks longer than themselves and took titles deserving of knights and Vikings and pirates and they hopped over rocks covered in moss and roots sticking up out of the ground in the trails.
Then Remus came back from summer break, now nearly a year ago, and something had changed. Maybe it was the fact that Rosie had started wearing a lace bra underneath a slightly sheer top or that Tommy had shaved the sides of his head to a spiky grown-up haircut and the pretend play in the grove just stopped. They were no longer a collection of kids running around the woods, they were adolescents and there were rules in place for adolescents.
Remus never really understood those rules, so whilst groups formed of the ones that were “right” and the ones that were wrong, he got firmly planted on the wrong side. Or whatever it's called when the people you've called your friends for years suddenly turn to just people you go to school with. It's fine though, it's not like he wants to be with them either.
He has Peter. That's all he needs. And he has his parents, and the choir, it’s more than enough.
Remus walks into the kitchen, the pale yellow cabinets have been out of fashion longer than Remus has been alive and there are spots where the paint has chipped a little in the corners. His mum sowed the curtains that hang neatly above the little window, it has carrots printed all over the fabric which has faded slightly from the many years in the direct sunlight. The newspaper on the table is still open from where his father read it just this morning. That's a thing he does most days, never finishing the paper but letting it stay open to remember where he last left off. Sometimes Remus gets there before him and tries to solve the crossword puzzle in the back.
Remus scours the cabinet for something to eat. There's nothing in there. Or rather, there is but it's just oats and flour and cans of beans. It’s not like how Charlie’s family keeps their cabinets; full of sugary cereal and an array of chocolate bars or crisps.
Hope says those things are for special occasions and if Remus is hungry after school he can fix himself a bowl of oatmeal.
Oatmeal coats his throat like glue going down. When he grows up he'll never have oatmeal again. When he grows up and becomes a famous author or literary agent he will eat sugary cereals and drink orange juice until his teeth fall out.
That’s fine, he’ll have enough money to put fake teeth in. He could put a whole row of gold teeth in if he wanted, and then he would eat sugary cereals until his dying days.
He finds an apple in the bowl on the counter that hasn't over-ripened yet in the heat and fetches his book from his backpack before heading out to the backyard. The afternoon sun is beating down on the yard but there is solace to be found in the hammock hanging between the two apple trees close to the shed.
Body cocooned by the soft canvas of the hammock and the sunlight streaming through the branches, Remus anchors his teeth in the apple and opens up the paperback book.
It's Sartre. He hates Sartre.
But Ms. Anderson, who teaches his English classes, thought he would enjoy it and Remus really likes her, he’ll manage through the whining for her sake.
It's not like he has anything better to do. He could do his homework, but that is reserved for after dinner when his parents have sat down on the couch to watch the news he doesn't care about. Then he’ll find the privacy of his bedroom, he can open his window and let out the scorching hot air of the day to change it for the chill breeze of the evening.
I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way . In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way : I was In the way for eternity.
Maybe he should have.
Maybe Sartre should have killed himself. It would have kept Remus from reading this dread of a novel.
Philosophers are narcissists. Only narcissists sit down and think about existence until they twist their own perception of reality to the point where they start to disgust themselves. Only a philosopher manages to write a novel about one man’s discovery of the disgust of being human and the mundane of being alive.
The irony is that Remus agrees with him.
He agrees with Sartre, he agrees with the main character of the novel. He agrees with whatever nauseum it is described as performing the theater that is being alive.
That doesn’t mean that he likes it.
Living is about knowing all of this; the disgust and the uncomfortability, but also shutting the hell up about it.
Life isn’t fair and life isn’t necessarily good and no one’s going to save you, not even Jesus on the cross or his father who sacrificed his only living son. Complaining about it doesn’t keep it from happening. Keeping your head down and moving along might make it bearable.
Who does Sartre think he is? The world doesn’t consider him to be in the way. He merely exists in the world, his force isn’t strong enough to shape the world to his will — no one is.
And that is all so very fine. Remus is so okay with that, to be able to bend the world to his will sounds exhausting and like too much pressure. To not be able to do that, to let yourself be swept along, sounds much more relaxing.
Right now, he lets himself be swept up by the light rocking of the hammock and a book written by a man who thinks too much for his own good.
A few hours into his reading, right where he already feels tired of the prose and the philosophy he doesn’t really adhere to, the tires of his mother’s bike screech from the driveway.
“Hi, love!” She calls from the driveway, dutifully locking her bike to the railing. “You should really start to lock your bike, you know, someone might take it.”
“Who?” Remus asks, incredulous from the hammock as his mother walks into the backyard from the carport. “We’re at the end of the street, no one comes by here beside us.”
“All the more sense to lock it, no? We're the perfect house for bicycle robberies.”
Hope Lupin became pregnant with Remus at the ripe age of nineteen and got married to Lyall soon thereafter. She left her place at university and moved back to her hometown to take care of her little family that she had created too young. She never finished her degree in psychology but rather started beauty school when Remus was old enough to be left at his grandparent's house. Now she is in her early thirties working as a hairdresser in town, pretty as a buttercup with her auburn hair and hazel eyes. At least that's what the guys sitting in the bars in town always call after her when she walks down the street.
Remus sometimes looks at his mother and wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t happened to her. How she probably would have ended up somewhere else, with a career doing something different, in a large city with twenty-four-hour open cafés and cocktail bars. With people that are much more interesting than the ladies she meets in her chair. Remus tries not to think about too much, thinking too much about it makes his chest churn in a way that feels suspiciously much like guilt.
Instead, he places his bookmark back in between the pages. He would have dog-eared the page if it had been his own book, but this is the library’s book and he’s not that much of a monster.
Hope shades her eyes with her hand as she looks at him lying in the hammock. “How’s school been?”
“Fine.”
“Anything fun happening?”
“No.”
“Anything other than fine you want to share?”
“No.”
Hope’s eyebrows furrow. “Hey, stop with the one-word answers, it’s rude.”
“Sorry,” Remus grumbles and swings his legs over the edge of the hammock, sitting up. “It wasn’t a special day at all, a very regular day. The teachers are looking forward to summer break more than the students and Mr. Hansen let us watch a nature documentary so that he could step out in the sun with his coffee and afternoon cigarette.”
Hope’s face lights up with a smile, faint lines lining her mouth. “He did that when I was his student too, some things really never change around here.” She turns to walk away, waving at Remus to follow her. “Come on, help me scrub the produce for dinner.”
Whatever it takes to get him out of the anxious grip Sartre has on his spine is welcome. Remus swings his legs and gets out of the hammock.
They leave the back door open after stepping inside, it’s still not hot enough to warrant locking it to keep the cool air inside. And Remus knows, he knows that his mother wants the excuse to feel the fresh air waft in through the living room and inside the kitchen.
Hope prattles on as she retrieves food from the fridge and the cabinets. Dirty small potatoes and knobbly carrots and fat onions with papery skins line the countertop as she picks out dried herbs in their store-bought bottles on the shelves.
He is still standing by the sink, scrubbing new potatoes with a harsh brush under cold water when the door rattles and his father steps inside.
Where Hope had been a fresh-faced university student, Lyall had been working in construction not far away from campus. He had been left without parents two years prior and at just nineteen years old with no money and no support he worked in building houses or pouring concrete.
It had been a tale as old as time, the sheltered girl in academics being swept off her feet by the blue-collar worker. A stolen bottle of whisky, a ride in his ancient truck, and nine short months later, they were parents. Remus often looked at the pictures placed firmly in photo albums, he looked at his mother’s bright young face, happy and terrified, and at his father’s quiet devotion. There was love there, and hardship too.
Lyall could have left, no one would have batted an eye if he had left. But he loved Hope and he hated that the stolen bottle of whisky had led to the interruption of her blossoming adulthood. Luckily, he loved her enough to move from the city to her hometown, marry her, and promise to always love her. He built houses and poured concrete until a knee injury left him unable to work in construction and a recession a few years ago left him unable to keep the office job his employer had provided.
Now he works at Woodman's, the large hardware store in town, as a sales clerk and deputy manager. The pay is not the same. Hence, the very out-of-fashion kitchen cabinets and the paling carrot printed curtains.
“Hi,” Lyall greets when he steps inside the kitchen, Woodman’s polo unbuttoned and a tired look on his face. He leans over and presses a quick kiss on his wife’s cheek before ruffling Remus' horrible hair. “How are we doing?”
Remus ducks under his father’s rough hand. He always does that, asking how ‘we’ are doing instead of ‘you’. Remus thinks it’s because he’s been working in customer service for too long, Hope is convinced it’s because he sees the three of them as a family unit, a ’we’, and not separate entities, a ‘you’.
“We’re good, just prepping for dinner,” Hope offers, gesturing to the potatoes in the sink and the bowl of raw chicken she’s in the process of marinating. Lyall hums in response as he settles in on the table, head leaning in his hands as he starts telling them about his day.
“–And then when she refused to take my advice she still left with the wrong screws, I bet you next week’s paycheck she’ll be back tomorrow to return them.”
Remus tugs at a dead piece of skin by the edge of his thumb as his mother prepares the chicken and the potatoes and the vegetables to be roasted in the oven. A drizzle of cooking oil, a sprinkle of spices crushed in the mortal.
Lyall is sitting in his usual spot, on the other side of the table, opposite the empty seat which Hope usually occupies, he rubs his forehead. “Enough about Woodman’s, anything new at the salon, Hope?”
“Nothing new, really.” Hope says as she sprinkles salt over the pan. “But Meghan got her roots touched up so we’ll have pancakes after mass on Sunday.”
Meghan works as a hostess in the hotel restaurant downtown, it’s a swanky-looking place with gilded details and marble floors so shiny you could pick your teeth in them. And whenever Meghan gets her roots touched up, she tips using the promise of Sunday brunch with the employee discount.
That’s one of the few places they go out to eat, definitely the fanciest Remus has ever been to. They rarely have an occasion to spend that type of money anyway. Food is meant to be eaten at home.
Hope stuffs the pans inside the oven before she turns to face her son. “Is Jenny and Peter picking you up on Sunday, Remus?”
“Yup.”
“Good.”
A while later, when the dinner is served atop the table and the little family sits in the same seats they have been sitting in for the last fourteen years, Remus clasps his hands together with his mother’s and his father’s, grace rolling off his tongue just like it always has.
It’s not typical to say grace, there are kids at church that never grew up reciting it. But with Hope came the tradition, how her family would always say before eating, a chance to hold each others’ hand before turning to their plates. And what Hope wanted, she would get, one thing Remus and Lyall were in agreement on.
Maybe God doesn’t exist. Maybe God is dead or maybe God is a narcissistic asshole. But his mother isn’t. So Remus says grace for his mother instead.
It’s overcast on Sunday. It’s like the sun took the comforter and pulled it over its head and turned over in bed, refusing to shine yet. Remus sits on the steps leading up to the house. He really shouldn’t, there will be dust on his behind, but he honestly couldn’t care less. His rear will be covered by the church-provided cotta anyways, so the small act of not caring as a form of rebellion, really has no consequences.
He stands as he hears a car approaching, there are rarely any cars on this end of the street unless someone is intentionally heading in this direction. The car stops just by the driveway as Remus distractedly wipes off his behind and gatherers his things and heads into the car’s direction.
Peter’s wide grin greets him from the passenger seat. “Where’s your dress, Lupin?” he asks Remus with a teasing lilt to his voice.
Remus snorts. “It’s not a dress, you imbecile. It’s a cotta.”
“You denying it doesn’t make it less of a dress.”
“Hey shut–”
“Language, boys,” Jenny, Peter’s mother, warns from the driver’s seat as she tries to maneuver a three-point turn and get them out of the neighborhood.
Peter turns in his seat, still grinning from ear to ear. “I like your hair,” he says sickeningly sweet and with absolutely no honesty.
“Thanks,” Remus mutters and tries not to fiddle with his hair. It’s combed down with some sort of hair product that smells a little bit like the salon his mother works at. It’s awful and it itches behind his ears and down his neck. His hair is parted in an awful part.
But he has to look presentable for church. None of the other boys he knows has to wear their hair like this when they are at church, for some reason, his mother just likes to torture him. She says he has to look like this as long as he is part of the service. And since he “refuses” to have her cut into something more “presentable”, a horrid part it is.
Peter doesn’t have to part his hair. Peter’s hair is flat and straw-colored, not in any of the silently approved styles of a fourteen-year-old but at least it doesn’t poof like Remus’ does. His face is wide with a stubborn layer of child chub clinging to his cheeks.
He was a sweet baby, all round cheeks and chunky legs. After twelve years old, that child-like physique starts to appear a little weird. That’s what all the girls say. That Peter’s weird with his science fiction books and lightsaber replicas. They give him the side eye when he has ketchup stains on his t-shirt and dust all over his jeans from sitting directly on the pavement at recess.
Peter just shrugs.
Peter doesn’t care.
Sometimes Remus hopes that the lack of caring will rub off on him. He hopes he can someday move through life the way Peter does, with a shrug and a twist to his lips and to just let his body and his mind take it in whatever direction it wants to move, to hell with anyone else. Everything would be easier if he managed to just not care so much.
It’s not, however, the only reason he hangs out with Peter, hoping that the blaze attitude will rub off on him.
Peter is his oldest friend, from all the way back when their mothers would meet up in the baby group at church and take the burden of child care off each other's backs and find solace in the loneliness that motherhood chained them to. Peter is all large grins and dimpled knuckles punches into Remus’ sides. They would crawl around in the backyard and look for bugs, or curl up in Peter’s basement in front of the TV and watch Alien over shared bags of crisps. Peter would help Remus with his math homework. Remus would help Peter with his English assignments.
It’s a symbiotic relationship of sorts. A relationship that says ‘We’re both outcasts, and we’re both poor, let’s save each other from the absolute embarrassment of loneliness on top of everything else.’
Jenny parks the car close to the church in the employee parking spaces. Remus gathers his things and jumps out of the car, shutting the door behind him. He turns to Peter.
“So what are you going to do until the service?”
Peter shrugs in his wrinkly shirt. “I’ll read in Mum’s office I guess.”
“Hmm, have fun.”
“I will,” Peter grins. “Try not to mess up the hymns with your voice cracks, Lupes.”
Remus risks giving Peter the finger as Jenny has her back turned to them, if not for the comment then so for the nickname. Peter returns the gesture before his mother has the chance to chastise them for it.
The gravel crinkles under their feet as they walk the steps up to the church.
It’s a large building, taller than anything else close by, and surrounded by a large well-kept graveyard and neat rows of graves. There are several other churches in town, there is even a church on Remus’ and Peter’s side of town, that one has a smaller congregation, and the wooden benches inside lack the velvet cushions that this one has.
This is the church on the wrong side of town, the rich church. The only reason they’re here is because Jenny is the choral director here, and the second organist should the main one fall ill.
It’s interesting how that is – so clearly marked two sides. The rich church with its embellishments and the poor church with its creaky hinges and leaking ceilings.
Everything is like that; the rich school with the clean yard and sports teams, the poor school with the chain-smoking teachers and taped-together library books. The rich supermarket with the produce showers and clean-uniformed attendants, the poor supermarket with the discount bins and the theft alarmed baby formula.
Remus is always reminded of it, how this isn’t his side of the fence, when he steps inside the building and sees all the gold. All the riches that God almighty has bestowed upon its flock of lambs. It’s frighteningly dissimilar to the church down the road from Remus’ house.
Peter salutes them as he heads into the small office off to the side of the entrance and Remus follows Jenny inside the nave of this house of God.
Up by the pulpit, a small gathering has formed. It’s kids of Remus’ own age. Almost everyone is already by the piano up front, standing there with their combed hair and inconspicuous clothes and their black binders filled with sheet music.
Remus walks down to the altar. The story of John the Baptist on one window. Mary Magdalene on the other. Apostles, saints, and sinners crowd the stained glass windows that cast a gloomy shine upon the empty row of seats. So soon would they all be filled, each with sins to confess or wishes to be extended to the great big ear that would lean down and listen.
He greets the other members of the choir as Jenny claps her hands together to bring attention to her, a shuffling of feet to scurry to the correct location. Remus stands uncomfortably in the middle, first base.
Jenny strikes a chord on the piano. “Ma ma ma ma ma ma,” she sings in a scale sliding up her register, peaking, and then going down again.
“Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma,” the choir repeats.
Remus has been in choir his whole life. Ever since he was a child and started singing in his child seat in the back of the car and his mother would turn the volume up to encourage him to sing louder. Then Jenny became the choir director of St John’s and she encouraged Hope to send Remus to her children's group.
So Remus sings.
He sings to the congregation and for the look of pride on his father’s face and to the aching face of Christ immortalized with oil paint and stained glass and in wood carving hanging above the altar. He sings of forgiveness and devotion and righteousness and humility. It’s one of those things, like grace, that maybe he can’t give it all to the poor, since he is part of that group, but he can sing and partake and let himself be swept up with it.
He lets the base harmony thrum in his chest and waver with the ever-deepening of his voice, praying that it doesn’t crack and whistle in the middle of The Lord is My Shepherd. He dresses in the long cotta that hangs in storage just beside Jenny’s office and he lets his mother comb his hair into a god-awful part. He lets the world sweep him along, it’s easier that way.
Besides, he likes singing.
He likes feeling useful better. Likes feeling needed.
After warm-ups and a quick repetition, the choir gathers back into Jenny’s office and retrieves the cottas in which they dress. Remus smoothes down his hair where it has started to release from the stronghold of hair product. He glances in the mirror in the bathroom. Nothing can be done about the spots on his face or his bushy eyebrows or how his eyes droop a little at the corner, making him look tired and pathetic.
The long robe is pale white, like a baby ready for its christening. It’s getting a bit short too, it shows off his shiny church shoes and the bottoms of his black trousers. He will soon need to talk to Jenny about switching to a longer size.
The bells in the tower ring, calling the people into service. It echoes in Remus’ bones, both foreboding and comforting.
The candles are lit.
The scuffle of hundreds of feet can be heard gathering in the church. Fingertips of the more conservative making the sign of the cross. Psalm books trade hands along with pamphlets of the readings.
The choir walks behind the young altar boys leading the procession. The cross shines as a beacon where Remus walks, careful not to notice the full pews of hundreds of churchgoers dressed in their finest. The organ plays a somber hymn as the priest takes his place in front of the congregation.
As the train of people arrives at their assigned locations, the choir remaining standing on the other side of the altar from the pulpit, and the organ softly transitions to the intro of the opening psalm. Remus lets the silk tab direct him to the correct page in the psalm book.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When the music dies down, the priest smiles at the congregation and gives a sign to sit down. A scuffle of feet again. Then everybody sits. Remus manages to spot his mother and father by the far back, they smile at him before directing their attention back to the priest.
Remus lets the dull noise of mass fade out to the far edge of his consciousness as he looks over the eyes waiting for salvation.
The pews are full.
The fact that the pews are full does not say anything about the godliness of the town he grew up in. There are sermons about taking in the poor, and how Jesus washed the feet of sinners and placed his hands on the sick. There is the opening of pocketbooks whenever the call for collections is heard. But the poor still sit at the back of the church. The one’s not from this side of town.
At the back of the church, with Hope and Lyall Lupin, there are less shining cufflinks and silk ties. There are fewer hats and more mended shoes. They can’t pronounce the words written in Latin above the altar and the reason they’re in this particular church and not the one on their own side is often due to their children's involvement in the sermon, or maybe their own ideas of a richer church leading to a more secure spot in heaven.
The social class of the audience mixes somewhere along the middle. The middle class that has to consider sending their kids to a private school with its high tuition, but still does so anyway. The upper middle class who can’t stop bragging about their summer homes in the affluent countryside when everyone has received forgiveness for their sins and can’t wait to go for Sunday brunch afterward.
The upper class sits at the very front. These consist of the business owners and the old money havers and the doctors. They don’t have to even think about sending their children to private school, that’s a given. They don’t brag about their summer homes but rather turn the other cheek when they see people like Hope and Lyall Lupin scurry to meet their son on the steps of the church with large smiles and the ruffling of his hair. They say the same things as all the other ones, they just know how to twist their words to hide it better.
‘These bloody immigrants are stealing our jobs,’ becomes, ‘This country has an issue with the competency of the workforce being watered down by less skilled labor.’
‘You know, our taxes just end up in the pockets of politicians anyways, the lying scumbags,” becomes, 'Bureaucracy has a tendency to make the wallets of this great nation bleed dry.’
‘Fucking fags,’ becomes, ‘I may sound conservative, but the bedroom habits of others should not be openly displayed where children are able to witness.’
Then there is the very first row, ahead of all the others, right in front of Reverend Black preaching his sermon.
Those seats are reserved for his family.
Reverend Black, or Orion as his mother chose to name him, is tall in stature and in position. He is in his late forties, possibly early fifties, and at least ten years his wife’s senior. He is handsome in his holy garb, the white dress, and the gold embroidery in stark contrast to the black shirt and collar he wears underneath.
There is something uncanny resting over the faces of Reverend Black and his wife. They both have hair black as midwinter night, pale skin, and eyes. Lyall sometimes calls them Snow White and her husband because of it. They are beautiful, the two of them, beautiful in the same way marble statues are beautiful, cold, and stoic.
Reverend Black smiles at his audience, a smile that doesn’t crinkle the edges of his pale blue eyes. The smile barely puts a dent in his sharp cheekbones.
Mrs. Black sits with her back ramrod straight and her shining black hair pulled back into a tight knot at the base of her neck. There is something tight resting around her lips, her eyes, which are almost completely covered by a hat. From this angle, Remus can see her hands clasped in the cradle of her lap over the book of Psalms and the pamphlet outline of this Sunday’s service. The high neckline of her skirt suit is so different from his mother’s cotton dress. Sleek, expensive.
Reverend Black and his wife have two sons, they sit beside their mother in similar dark suits and ties; despite not being older than twelve and fourteen. Stark black hair, pale skin, and their faces are turned toward their father. Beside them, on Walburga Black’s other side, sit her sister-in-law, Druella, with her three young daughters. Remus doesn’t know their names.
Remus is brought back into the present as the organist starts to play the familiar opening of The Lord Bless You and Keep You. Jenny gives direction to the coir to stand. Remus feels a little woozy at getting up too quickly. The entirety of the choir takes a collective breath.
The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord make his face to shine upon you
To shine upon you and be gracious
And be gracious unto you
It’s a crowd favorite; Remus could sing it in his sleep, possibly backward.
He lets his eyes travel from the proud look on his mother’s face, to the slight nodding of his father’s head and lets his gaze pass over the collective of churchgoers. Peter is far in the back, sitting next to a neighbor of his, after his sister turned sixteen she was no longer forced to join for mass each Sunday, leaving her brother to fend for himself at the back-end pews. Peter grins widely and offers a thumbs up in Remus’ direction.
Remus wants to laugh in the middle of the second verse.
The Lord lift up the light
Of his countenance up on you
The Lord lift up the light
Of his countenance up on you
Remus looks over the rest of the audience, some have their gazes softly raised, others have closed their eyes. A select few look at the choir in polite interest.
The first row is a neat display of dark hair from each member of the Black family. Sleek and rich black hair.
All except one.
It’s easy to spot as they are all so dark-haired and fair-skinned. The contrast shows so incredibly easy. Remus can see the point all the way from over here, a neat little row of dark-haired heads of the Reverend Black family, all turned toward the altar.
All except one.
Orion Black has two sons, one twelve and one fourteen. Remus doesn’t know them better than their names and the fact that even the private school isn’t good enough for them, they go to boarding school during terms.
Regulus is younger, twelve years old, and sitting in a tailor-made suit next to his cousin Bella, on the far end from his brother Sirius.
Sirius is fourteen.
Sirius is looking right at the choir.
No, correction.
Sirius is looking right at Remus.
He has those same curious light eyes as his parents, a sculpted mouth, and high cheekbones. No teenage acne and no unfortunate haircut. No, his hair is wavy and it shines around his head, just a touch longer than his brother’s.
The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord make his face to shine upon you
To shine upon you and be gracious
And be gracious unto you
Remus holds his gaze. He holds those curious pale eyes. He shouldn’t, it feels as though he shouldn’t. He should avert his eyes, acknowledge that whilst Sirius’ father stands by the altar in all his glory, Remus’ parents sit at the back of the church.
Remus’ fingers prick. He can’t hear what he is singing. He just holds Sirius’ eyes.
Then Sirius looks away, looks back toward his father. Something sleek about his profile, sharp despite his young age, and beautiful in that classic artful way.
And the connection drops.
Sirius is back looking toward the altar and maybe Remus won the class-heavy staring competition, and he is rewarded by the dampness of his palms and the soft slope of Sirius’ nose he can barely discern from here.
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
When the last of the notes ring out, Jenny gives a sign for the choir to sit. Remus, still with his gaze fixed upon the first row, misses the queue, and lingers for one embarrassing second.
His head is full of fluff.
Reverend Black steps up on the pulpit to deliver the sermon. He smiles that same not-quite-there smile to his congregation. He speaks about the flock of believers, of the beauty of spring, and of the importance of donations. The ever-rustling bags of collections are like ghouls in the distance.
Remus doesn’t look back at the front pews.
Following the readings, Reverend Black opens his arms, palms facing the ceiling.
Different denominations and churches have different praxis regarding the communion. In St John’s the congregation is invited to partake in the Eucharist, the first rows first and then following the order of pews all the way to the back. All the while the choir sings Panis Angelicus with the soft thrill of piano.
Panis Angelicus
Fit panis hominum
Dat panis coelicus figuris terminum
O res mirabilis
Manducat Dominum
Pauper, pauper servus et humilis
Pauper, pauper servus et humilis
At the end, the altar boys and the choir are invited to partake under just the music from the piano. When Jenny gestures to them to leave their position by the piano and go to stand in line in front of the priest, the lyrics still play inside Remus' head. A bit of one of the alto girls in front of him, hair has escaped from her plait.
Panis Angelicus
Fit panis hominum
Dat panis coelicus figuris terminum
O res mirabilis
Manducat Dominum
Pauper, pauper servus et humilis
Pauper, pauper servus, servus et humilis
Pauper, pauper servus, servus et humilis
Remus receives the body of Christ, trapped into a small circular wafer, by the deacon. It’s placed into his awaiting palms. Panis angelicus. He places the wafer on his tongue and turns to Reverend Black with the chalice.
Reverend Black smiles at him, backlit by the painted windows and the tortured expression of Jesus on the cross behind him. Servus et humilis.
Remus parts his lips, letting the cool metal of the silver chalice burn on his cracked lips as Reverend Black tips the blood of god into his mouth.
He tries not to wipe at his lips with his clean white cotta, lest he stains it with salvation. He steps aside and looks at The Son hanging from his cross.
Fingertips to the forehead, to the middle of his chest. Over his left side, right over his heart. On his right side to tie it all together.
When Remus turns to go back, Sirius is already looking at him. It’s just for a second and Remus doesn’t dare to look back. If the Black kid has a staring problem, let him. That’s not any of Remus’ business.
The cut of Sirius’ Sunday suit isn’t his business. The manner in which Reverend Black looked at him isn’t Remus’ business. He is there to sing and to receive forgiveness. Just like every other poor soul in this very room.
Remus tunes out again. He hears the voices around him, he hears the call of the organ and the murmur of prayer. He stands when he is supposed to stand and he closes his eyes and clasps his hands when he is blessed with the other little lambs crowded together in the room.
It’s strange, isn’t it? For God to call his people his flock of lambs. People. People are not lambs. People are starving wolves and rabid raccoons and disease-ridden rats. People kill and hurt and destroy, they rip the meat off of bone to feed themselves and guzzle blood through sharpened teeth. It doesn’t matter that the blood is poured into silver chalices, it’s still blood.
That’s the thing with this time of year.
It’s not tethered to anything.
See, if you have spent any significant time in the church. If you have sung at mass and had to listen to the readings you would know why. You don’t even have to have paid any greater attention to it.
The church follows a specific calendar. Just like any other religion, it has its holidays that shape the experience, and the readings, and the music.
The protestant church, most likely the catholic church as well but Remus doesn’t have that good of an insight into the comings and goings of the catholic church, follows what is most commonly referred to as the liturgical year.
The liturgical year starts with Advent, the preparation time before Christmas, and the birth of Jesus Christ. Advent is filled with lit candles and anticipation. The readings speak of the Messiah which was promised and the treatment of the poor. It’s cautiously hopeful and it has something sacrilegious over it; darkness and light, the terror that can be found in the shadows, and the threat of freezing or starvation.
Christmas is joyous, and Epiphany is just as joyful. It’s difficult not to get swept away by it.
Then comes lent.
Lent is one of the heaviest ones. Lent talks about sin and the terror of man, of the evil that resides in straying from God, and the helplessness of souls that divulge themselves in sin. Remus respects Lent. Finally, it feels as if the whole congregation can actually accept the despair of being human. Death and despair and penance and cold dead hopelessness. It all culminates on Good Friday.
Then Jesus resurrects, walks along mere mortals for forty days and everyone is happy again.
Following that is just nothing.
Nothing.
A mismatch of minor holidays that no one celebrates and bible texts no ones read. There’s a faint blip of the Christian thanksgiving in the early fall but other than that there is no real structure for the priests to build their sermons around. There is no real reason for all of God's little fucking lambs to gather in church. And yet, they do.
When the organ pipes up again the skinny little altar boys scurry to fetch the cross and start the progression of ending mass. The choir forms right behind them, white cottas shining like beacons in the June sun that unforgivingly filters its way through the stained glass windows. Remus remembers when he was short enough to almost trip on his cotta, the first growth spurt now leaving him with his black trousered ankles bared.
It’s not until the entire choir is standing in the cramped little office of Jenny’s that they can hear the faint rumble of footsteps again, this time all people standing and getting out of the pews to exit the church. Remus gingerly pulls the cotta off, leaving him in just his long-sleeved t-shirt and trousers, hanging it up on its coat hanger, and handing it off to Jenny.
“Thank you, Remus,” she smiles softly at him. “Tell your mom I said hi.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles and tries not to suffocate as he makes his way through the remaining crowd of choir singers and out of the office to the still-exiting patrons. The midmorning sun crashes against him almost violently as he steps out onto the gravel. He shoots off a wave to Peter who’s waiting for his mother to pack up everything else before heading home.
Lyall Lupin brightens up into a huge smile as soon as he spots his only child. He extends his arm and waves him over. Hope is speaking to another woman standing with her husband. She, too, shines up as soon as she spots him.
“There you are! I’d almost begun thinking you got lost in the crypt.”
Remus rolls his eyes at his father with no real animosity. “Real funny.”
Lyall shrugs. “What can I say, I’m a funny guy. Shall we?” He gestures to the parking lot.
“Have you said thank you and goodbye to Jenny?” Hope asks as she bids adieu to the couple she is speaking with.
“Yup.”
“And Reverend Black? Did you thank him for the sermon?”
“Mhmm,” Remus lies. He has never even spoken with Reverend Black, hopes he never has to either. The man only tips blood in his mouth every time Jenny’s youth choir sings at mass, that has to be enough.
“Good,” Hope declares happily as they start walking towards the parking lot. “I have a shirt for you, ironed and all, in the back of the car that you can switch to.”
The drive downtown is smooth and easy. The sun shines through the car window and covers everything in a fake pleasant sheen promising of summer. Green grass lawns and flowering shrubs and families outside playing in the parks.
Lyall parks the car downtown. Right after church and by the openings of stores remain the time when people start milling about the cobblestone streets. He throws up his hand in a quick wave to someone he recognizes, most likely from Woodman's, if Remus were to guess.
Hope curls her hand around Lyall's upper arm as she looks over at Remus fiddling with the shirt hanging on a clothes hanger and on a hook in the backseat.
“I don't think you can wear the T-shirt underneath, honey, you’ll have to switch.”
“There’s nowhere I can change,” Remus claims with a grumble.
“You can whip off your shirt right here, that’s fine.”
Remus feels the hairs at the back of his neck stand and his hands prickle in shame. “I don’t want to get naked here.”
Hope looks like she is fighting not to roll her eyes. “You’re not getting naked, Remus. You’re just switching shirts, it’s fine,” she says with emphasis enough to make Remus understand there is no use arguing further.
Remus turns back to the car, letting his back face the public. The public is very scarce and not really something to be prude over but that feeling of shame still rises like bile in his throat.
He shrugs off the long-sleeved T-shirt as he feels his shoulders curving inwards as if his shoulder blades can help cover his chest. He quickly gets a hold of the shirt his mother has so lovingly ironed and buttons the buttons with fingers that shake a little.
“I don’t know why you have such issues dressing, Remus. No one’s looking.”
“I know no one’s looking,” Remus says lowly as they start walking to the entrance of the hotel. But it’s not about that. It’s about the very presence of him. It’s the way the boys have started sneaking peeks at each other's bodies in the changing rooms after PE, it’s the way the girls' laughter haunts him. It’s the way Jesus looks on the cross.
He’d rather not be noticed at all. Not perceived in the slightest. But if he had to, then he’d much rather do so fully clothed. Not with the soft underbelly of his naked skin on display and up for judgment.
As they step up into the hotel and turn left to get to the restaurant, Meghan meets them with a bright smile and even brighter highlights. She can bleach her hair all she wants, it’s clear to everyone that she belongs in this establishment and its crowd just as little as the Lupin family does, she doesn’t even need to wear her server uniform for that.
“Good morning, are we ready for some after-mass pancakes?” She asks with a twinkle in her eye as she reaches out to ruffle Remus’ hair.
“Morning Meghan, yes please!” Hope says, not really paying attention to her son’s burning cheeks. Lyall looks at him with smiling sympathy in his eyes, much more patient with what it’s like moving around the world at fourteen, than his wife.
The most impressive thing about the Grand Hotel is not the suit-dressed receptionists or the white linen tablecloths or the crystal juice glasses. The most impressive thing about the Grand Hotel is the high ceilings in the dining room; tall like in the church and painted frescoes in Renaissance-like pastels of angel babies with harps. That, paired with their towering stack of pancakes on the menu.
Meghan holds a casual hand on the back of Hope's chair as they have sat down and doesn’t even feel the need to retrieve her little notebook.
“What are we thinking? The usual or are you looking to switch something up?” Her kayal-lined eyes wander around the table.
Lyall glances at the menu, an unusual sight in his ironed shirt and blazer with the patches on the elbows. Even his hair is combed and his cheeks clean-shaven.
The slight buzz of people speaking with their indoor voices can be heard as a thrum in the air, white tablecloths, and the distinct clatter of silverware against porcelain.
Lyall looks up at his wife and then at his son in question, no one says anything besides Hope’s raised eyebrows. “We’ll do the usual.”
The thing when you don’t have that much money and decide to go out to eat is this; you will most likely stick to what is safe. An event such as this, breakfast after church at a nice hotel, is a luxury not afforded at most times. Even with the generous discount Meghan provides this meal is a definite luxury in the Lupin household. And you don’t want to waste those by choosing something off the menu that you may happen not to like.
The orders go like this.
Lyall will have the full English breakfast with the homemade bread and strong black tea, hold the milk and sugar.
Hope always goes for the goat cheese omelet with the side salad and shares the pot of tea with her husband.
Remus, if he could eat one thing for the rest of his life it would most likely be the Grand Hotel stack of pancakes.
Soft and round and served with the chocolate and hazelnut spread made in-house and large strawberries no matter the season. They come in a tower stacked on top of one another which always has the ability to fill Remus with a childlike glee. Why not round out a god-fearing Sunday with a portion of gluttony?
Meghan scatters away and whips through the room as if she knows where the tables are placed in her sleep, no matter the guests. There is a faint sound of piano music coming from a corner with a sleepy-looking player tinkling the keys.
“How’s Aunt Catherine?” he asks, just to kill the silence with something. Aunt Catherine is pleasant enough, just distant and very old and he will probably be quite sad when she dies. But he doesn’t have the facilities to care any more than small talk to kill silence right now.
Hope looks up at him with a soft gaze filled with concern. “I talked to her on the phone just yesterday afternoon, she’s not feeling too good, the poor thing. Her arthritis is really setting in. She complained about not being able to open tuna cans without using a spoon to bend the tab.”
Lyall fiddles with the collar of his shirt. “I can call the social worker to see if she can get a nurse to come help her.”
“I don’t think she’ll be so susceptible to that, Lyall. You know how she is, always wanting to do everything by herself.”
“Yes, sure, but an old woman like that shouldn’t suffer due to her pride, now should she?”
Huh, looks like gluttony will be served with a side of pride this Sunday brunch. The more the merrier.
“No I don’t think so either, love, but please don’t have that attitude toward me. I’m not fighting you on this, I’m just trying to be realistic.”
“If someone should be realistic it should be Aunt Catherine,” Lyall says, folding his arms over his chest.
Remus shouldn’t have asked. He should’ve spoken about the weather or something.
“Yes, obviously but—”
“Here we are,” Meghan says as she balances three large plates and the tea serving in one go, effectively ending the conversation.
Remus manages a smile to Meghan in thanks as she places the tall stack of pancakes in front of him.
“Now eat up, handsome. I reckon you’re going to need it if you’re growing to be the same height as your father,” she says with a wink and the brush of the back of her fingers on Remus’ cheek.
His neck heats at the touch and the humiliation of feeling like a little kid behind his stack of pancakes.
“We’ll make sure,” Lyall promises with a grin, now having lost the defensive crossing of his arms.
The talk of old Aunt Catherine dies out as they dig in. Hope hums pleased around the first bite of her eggs, really savoring the dish she never manages to fully recreate at home.
The pancakes are what they usually are, delicious and warm. Fluffy and soft. There is a small sprinkle of flaky salt just at the top of the cascading chocolate and hazelnut spread, cutting through the sweetness and decadence paired with blood-red strawberries. Remus tries not to get chocolate all over his face as he eats hunched over his plate.
Suddenly, it seems as if the music stops and the other patrons’ voices falter. They don’t, not really. But it all seems to come to a second of collective halt, everyone taking a breath all at once, when the door to the serving room opens.
Reverend Black walks in just behind the maitre de, his wife's thin hand around his arm and the two children behind them. The brothers haven’t lost their summer suits, not even their Sunday ties, and Remus can spot a small plaster on Sirius’ hand, right at the fleshy part of his thumb. He sees it all the way across the room due to it being a few shades darker than his skin. It wasn’t there during service.
The whole dining hall has seen them enter, they’re not looking glaringly but rather discreetly over their eggs and coffees. The maitre de leads them to a table by the corner and pulls the chair out for the missus.
“Stop staring,” Lyall says quietly to his wife over his tea. She shifts her face back to her plate but keeps glancing over.
“Why the look, Hope?” Lyall pesters as she digs into her side salad.
“I just… Those kids,” she mumbles as the waiter takes the Black family’s order.
Remus perks up a little, the tone his mother uses stirs a feeling of curiosity in him. The same morbid curiosity that happens when he sees the girls whisper in each other's ears at recess.
“What about them?” He asks, stuffing his mouth with a bite of chocolate-covered pancake as if to ignore his father’s scolding eye. Lyall despises gossip.
“They just…” Hope starts, trailing off a little as if she can’t find the words. “There is something about those kids, they seem very buttoned up.”
“Well, some kids are just like that aren’t they,” Lyall says, trying to kill the conversation.
“What do you mean buttoned up?” Remus asks despite his father’s attempts to settle the matter.
Hope sips her tea. “They don’t act like kids to me, they’re not smiling, never seen them joke or laugh.”
“I’m not smiling either,” Remus says, trying to make a joke that his mother doesn’t appreciate.
“Well, you’re rolling your eyes at least, you’re showing some emotion.”
“Hope, please stop,” Lyall pleads.
“I’m allowed to have an opinion, aren’t I?”
“Of course you are I’m just saying—”
“Meghan?” Hope calls as the server swishes past them, turns around a table, and stops in front of them.
“Yes?” She says, painted on eyebrows high on her forehead.
“What did they order?” Hope discreetly gestures with a nod to the corner where the Black family is sitting. “What did the kids order?”
“Oh,” Meghan starts, not even looking at where Hope is referencing. “Egg white omelets, spinach, and sparkling water.”
Meghan doesn’t even ask why Hope is wondering. It’s almost as if she exactly knows why.
“Thank you, Meg,” Hope says as the server goes back on her track to circle the dining hall once more.
Hope looks pointedly at her husband. “See? That’s what I mean. What children order egg white omelets with spinach and sparkling water? No pancakes, no muffin, not even orange juice.”
Lyall looks exasperated. “So, they’re weird kids? Who cares?”
Hope shakes her head determinedly. “No, I don’t think they’re weird kids at all.”
Lyall and Hope exchange a look that Remus can’t decipher. His mother’s eyebrows are raised high on her forehead and his father’s mouth is set in a determined line.
Whatever it is, remains unsaid and Remus can’t really put his finger on why. “What? What do you mean?”
Lyall looks at him, the same line of his mouth now directed to his son. “Let’s just drop it, okay Remus?”
Remus doesn’t want to drop it. He wants to know why Hope thinks Regulus and Sirius aren’t normal kids, he wants to know what it means that aren’t weird either. But a last look from his father and the abrupt shift in conversation hinders him.
He wants to know why Sirius has a plaster on his palm.