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isn't a decision to be made quickly."
    Father O'Donnell had baptized me and given me my first communion. He had buried my father and married me. I had been in love with him when I was a girl. I had wished he was my father. Maybe once he wished I was his daughter, because it was plain that my news was hard for him to hear. His face was flushed and damp, and there was a trembling around his mouth not unlike my own. I may have made a mistake in going to him, though it seemed right at the time. California was full of priests who would try to dissuade me but not feel disappointed in me. It was his house, not God's, that I had come to in my moment of confusion. His windows full of saints, his pews, his rack of candles. Whenever I kissed a boy in school, cut a day of classes, argued with my mother, over what I can't remember, it was not God's forgiveness I sought, but his. He was the one I told. We sat in a small room behind the altar which he used to dress in before mass. His vestments hung on wire coat hangers from the doorjamb, great satin robes that looked ridiculously beautiful with no one in them. The window in that room had plain glass in it, meant for looking out over the parking lot and not for inspiration. There was a crucifix over the washbasin where anyplace else there would have been a mirror.
    "I have to go today," I said. "I've made a mistake and if I don't leave now I might not be able to straighten things out."
    "Divorce is a sin, Rose, I can't tell you otherwise. People today think that whatever they want, right at that moment, will be fine. But there are larger things to consider. Can you not see that?"
    It was a strange thing, but I never even considered divorcing Thomas. I was only leaving him. For some reason that seemed different, even if I couldn't say what the difference was exactly. "I'm doing the only thing I can do," I said.
    When I wrote down the address of Saint Elizabeth's, my hand was shaking. I asked if he would write a letter, telling them I was coming. "Don't tell them about Thomas," I said. I thought the fact that I was married might disqualify me from a home for unwed mothers.
    I stood for a long time at the door, looking around the altar to the church where I had spent so much of my life. Mrs. Marnez was there lighting candles, as I had done year after year, asking God to show her His will. Old Henry at the front railing on his knees. A few people I didn't know.
    "What about your mother?" he said.
    "Don't tell her either."
    "Are you going to let her think you're dead?" he said. His voice was a whisper but it carried, as the voice of a good priest carries.
    "Don't ask me this."
    "You've asked enough of me today, now I'm asking you, Rose. What will you do about your mother?"
    I turned around to face him, but I shouldn't have. I understood then why confessionals were dark places where you told your secrets through screens. "I'll give her up," I said, and went out to the car. The second I said it I knew that would be my penance, the worst thing I could bear. I was doing a terrible thing, but I would pay the price. If I gave up the thing I loved most in the world, then maybe God would respect my desperation.
     
     
    Elizabeth was not the saint I would have chosen to name a home for unwed mothers after. She had wanted a child, prayed for one for so many years, and when John came to her late in life she was filled with joy. But then again she was a woman who found herself pregnant when she did not think that such a thing was possible. Maybe that was the part they wanted us to remember. I have always taken names very seriously, people or places. It's because my mother took them seriously. It was my father who wanted to name me Rose. My mother told a story of being pregnant with me. "Big as a ship," she liked to say. She would lie on a chaise longue in the little garden outside their apartment, her swollen feet sunk into a sea of pillows, and argue with my father over names. "He was sure I was giving