Authors: Judith Krantz

Scruples (85 page)

“What if … what if you went to a strange church, by yourself, without your mother, and got it over with before your confirmation?” Mimi asked, inspired. “I’d go with you, we could take a taxi, no one would ever know … it’s a perfect plan! Then you could stop sinning, except for little stuff like swearing, until you made the official pre-confirmation confession. How about that? Am I brilliant or what? I think I could make a living giving advice to bad Catholic girls like you.” Mimi pinched her companionably.

“I’d still have to
intend
never to repeat my sins—really, truly believe that I wasn’t going to. Oh, God, how I wish I’d been born to your parents!”

“Me too, then we’d really be sisters. Oops, it’s Listerine time, not a minute to lose. Mom’ll be back in half an hour.”

Using Mimi’s plan, Teresa got through her confirmation with the eyes of the entire Riley clan upon her as she walked down the church aisle, a slender, angelic, dignified young girl, whose long black hair was plaited tightly and held severely away from her unsmiling, austere, heartbreakingly lovely profile under her plain illusion veil. Her features were eloquent with reverence and her green eyes, under her smooth, expressive eyelids, were filled with perfect tranquillity. She walked, restraining her usual stride, with poetry in her steps, wearing an unadorned dress, as plain and straight a gown as she’d been able to find, much to her mother’s disappointment. As the day had drawn near, Teresa had been adamant in refusing to enter the catechism class’s covert competition for the most elaborate, full-skirted confirmation dress.

“She’s not thinking she’s got a vocation?” one of Agnes’s sisters murmured to her in a worried tone as she contemplated her niece, startling in the unbending line of her marvelously shaped back and in the stern simplicity with which her long neck rose from a rolled white collar. All around her were girls decorated in a garden of billowing, complicated dresses, worn with smiling, innocent pleasure. Teresa looked years older than they did, and no smile had crossed her lips.

“Never,” Agnes laughed. “It’s just a matter of her personal taste. Teresa’s buying
Vogue
these days, with her allowance. Does that sound like a vocation to you?”

“Vogue?
Good heavens, that’s for rich women, society women. It’s much too old and fancy for her. What’s wrong with
Seventeen?”

“She says it’s silly. Oh, Millie, I think she’s growing up too fast.”

“It’s always going to be too fast from now on. Trust me, Agnes, I have six of them to worry about.”