Folding

CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Folding Quiet, released from the diet to protect the heart, he finishes the sweet. Hungry always, my father's blood pounds lighter than the last time I saw him. He tells me he's reading a book on forgiveness. I imagine his neat notes in the margins, remembering he once kept account of the days our family spent using the new backyard pool. That ledger sits on his desk, under the painting of weeping at Gethsemane I made him as a child. My father gets dizzy and still faints in church like he used to seventy years ago, from hunger, before he was fed by the nuns. Now, with me in this coffeeshop, he praises the cook, then refolds his almost untouched napkin, setting it beside the clean plate. He will return, he tells me 259 260 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE later in my mother's garden, to that childhood church, having received a bestfriend, a job, and a marriage that works. Presenting himself to the congregation, he willclaim one brick before the building is razed. LESLIE SHIEL ...