A Woman of the Inner Sea (2011)
“The Polish clergy who were friends of the Kozinskis said the Mass of the Angels for the occasion. The pale, not-so-Reverend Frank attended in a surplice at the side of the altar. He was already under his archdiocesan cloud, and demented in any case with grief. He would at the end of the Mass cling to Kate so closely that she could smell both the starch of the surplice and last night’s whiskey part denatured by Uncle Frank’s boilermaker’s body.
—It’s an utter visitation, said Uncle Frank.
She knew that a more orthodox priest might have said, It’s the will of God.
The vestments for the Missa de Angelis are white. The first cold night at the Soldier Settler’s farmhouse, lying for warmth in Gus’s arms, swathed in saddle blankets which may have been thirty years old, Kate was all at once and without reason overcome by a craving to see these vestments again. She saw the Polish monsignors standing amongst the eucalypts in their bland, waxwhite faces and snowy-breasted chasubles and felt that... she wanted at any risk to put her hand to the fabric, the white hot dignity of her children’s departure.MoreLess
—It’s an utter visitation, said Uncle Frank.
She knew that a more orthodox priest might have said, It’s the will of God.
The vestments for the Missa de Angelis are white. The first cold night at the Soldier Settler’s farmhouse, lying for warmth in Gus’s arms, swathed in saddle blankets which may have been thirty years old, Kate was all at once and without reason overcome by a craving to see these vestments again. She saw the Polish monsignors standing amongst the eucalypts in their bland, waxwhite faces and snowy-breasted chasubles and felt that... she wanted at any risk to put her hand to the fabric, the white hot dignity of her children’s departure.MoreLess
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