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sisters and a few aunts. I’ll admit, we gawked. The tasting room had a wide wooden bar and garish old-world Italian wall decor. The winery had issued a special bottling to commemorate the Confessions on a Dance Floor album release. We sipped samples; the wine labels and marketing posters were far from what I’d expected. They weren’t stylish or slick. I couldn’t imagine Madonna had any part in their design. In fact, the artwork was downright cheesy—images of Madonna, two decades after her debut, retro
again, in ’70s dance-floor poses with airbrushed pastels on black. It felt familiar, like it had been done before. The Madonna I knew, even in her fifties, had always been far ahead of cool. I tried to like the wine, but I didn’t.
    I could feel my own creeping judgment, as if I, too, had copped an accent I hadn’t earned.
    More than once since that afternoon I’ve wondered: at what cost do I remain connected to home, and at what cost do I sever the ties? If I ever found myself at dinner with Madonna, how much would either of us have to say about Michigan, anyway?

    It pleased me to read the press clippings my mom saved from the 2008 Traverse City Film Festival. Madonna had arrived by limo and walked the red carpet at the movie house of my adolescence, the State Theater. The Traverse City Record Eagle blazed with a full-color picture of her on the front page. But I most appreciated the story about her in the independent weekly Northern Express . Though the writer had socialized with Madonna before, she did not respond to his requests for an interview, so he’d had to pen it without her. He chronicled their missed meetings with a generous helping of forgiveness and a few thoughtful points about integrity, superstardom, and small-town life.
    Forgive her, Father, for she knows not what she leaves, nor what she takes with her. But if anything’s for certain, Madonna’s just the sort to make an about-face at the drop of her cane and top hat. Tomorrow she could move in to the vacant home next to my mom and dad’s house in Michigan—the one they emailed me about last week (and again today). I wouldn’t put it past her.

TRACK 2
    Like a Prayer
    “I was raised a Catholic and was never encouraged to ask questions, or understand the deeper meanings or mystical implications of the New Testament or the history of Jesus . . . So I rejected that, because who wants to go through life being told you do things because you do things?”
    —MADONNA
     
     
“I think they probably got it on, Jesus and Mary Madalene.”
    —MADONNA

Madonna vs. the Virgin Mary
    Maria Gagliano
     
     
     
     
     
    WHEN I WAS ten years old, my most dedicated pastime was praying the rosary. I’d go to my room at 8:00 PM, an hour earlier than my bedtime, to make sure I got through the entire circle of beads before getting tired. Just one set of ten Hail Marys wouldn’t do—a pulling paranoia insisted that I pray the whole loop every night. I had to concentrate on every word, consider its meaning, and I wouldn’t move on to the next bead until I’d felt each line in earnest. I forced myself to picture Mary, full of grace, blessed among all women with a blessed boy in her womb. Mary in her signature blue and white robes; God off to the side, just out of focus; Mary glowing, all-knowing, quiet and understanding, but with an iron hold that would not let me put down those beads. Even if it meant I wouldn’t go to sleep until ten o’clock. I didn’t give myself any other choice.
    My parents, God-fearing Sicilians that they were, didn’t know what to do with me. Yes, Sunday mass was nonnegotiable, and they were proud parents of my brother, the altar boy, but that was the
extent of their devotion. Walking by my bedroom door to see me chanting Hail Marys instead of watching TV or reading The Babysitters’ Club confused them . It just wasn’t something they expected to see from their little girl. They seemed relieved the few times they caught me in