Chapter 365: Scrapbook III
Transcript of
Recording Date:
Capsule Opened: 10/5/65 (2268)
…..should we even be debating this? I mean look at what she did! Of course she should have been sainted!
Murmuring from the students and then their instructor, Sister Gabriella Valeria quiets them.
Sister Valeria: But Jenny you have to agree, the manner in which Saint Cecilia Lafet lived was hardly in accordance with the lifestyle of a proper Christian much less a good Catholic.
Jenny: Oh yeah and our Pope is any different?
Laughter from the classroom while Sister Valeria attempts to quiet them. NOTE: The student is referring to a scandal in which Pope Joseph Penitent was discovered to have had an affair with a woman. The fact was discovered after Penitent attempted suicide when the woman, Aemilia Hinote cut off the relationship and then accused him of fathering her child.
Sister Valeria: Nothing has been brought forth except malicious allegations and the mind of a public overeager for good men to be smeared. Do not judge our Pope completely on the word of an unstable woman’s…..
Jenny: Just because she’s trying to get what’s due for her and her baby doesn’t mean she’s an unstable woman.
Murmurs of agreement from some of the students.
Sister Valeria: Just because she accuses him of improper conduct does not mean it is so.
Silence in the classroom, the sound of a sigh.
Jessica: Ha we’re really making a good showing for the time capsule, what will they think of us in a hundred years?
Sister Valeria: I had hoped we would leave behind a record to show that our faith as a religion is still strong and that the youth still show reverence to our saints, I hoped that this would be a celebration of a popular saint. It is Children’s Day after all, and I thought it would be perfect to commemorate the capsule with the Saint who began it!
Jenny: I don’t think there is any controversy; my point is that taking into account all the things SAINT Cecilia Lafet did for this world and for the children in this world; we can afford to overlook a few unproven rumors that have turned into accepted myth!
Jessica: Or Veronica Simpson?
Laughter in the classroom. NOTE: Veronica Simpson, the daughter of American President Lionel Simpson known for extensive charity word and lascivious behavior.
Jenny: Yeah but Princess Diana just fed a couple babies in
front of cameras and Simpson just writes checks that her daddy can write off,
none of them caused near world peace or caused such massive reforms for women’s
right and children’s welfare. Saint Cecilia changed lives, everyone’s lives!
She stopped an entire WAR in
William: Hey I love a good Saint Cecilia; I say she should be sainted on that ice cream alone!
More laughter in the classroom.
Sister Valeria: Finally a boy speaks in this class and it’s about ice cream, of course.
Brian: Hey that’s celestial ice cream, don’t punt it!
Sound of boys speaking in approval and high fiving.
Sister Valeria: Yes, yes, we know about the ice cream, but William, please tell us your impressions of her and why you think she should, and since this is now a debate, should not retain her status as saint, even though it isn’t within our power to change it.
William: Look she did a lot of good things but she didn’t exactly set a really good example morally I mean, she indulged in the ice cream right? But that’s like okay, but the other stuff, like pride, I mean wasn’t she known for piling shrieks if things weren’t all about her? And didn’t she take full credit for the miracles she performed? And hey, in the day before she died wasn’t she having sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral? How many lovers did she have anyway? Wasn’t there something about her and that sports guy, you know, that one… the hockey guy?
Jenny: See that’s where the rumor comes in! Nothing was ever proven there! Nothing was ever proven about any of that, it’s just cause she was pretty and everyone got obsessed about her, I mean no one can believe that someone that pretty could ever be a virgin.
William: She was not a virgin; I think that much is a fact. Didn’t Patrick Mallory say…
Jenny: Raving moonatic, he said nothing that can be trusted, the man was mentally unstable, I mean all his rabble about fate and cycle and Cecilia being part of some sort of race of witches! Truthfully William, come away!
Brian: Yeah, I think Mallory said some interesting things though. I mean his stuff about little things leading to big things. I mean what if it’s true and Pat Roy raped her and that set her on a course that led to her becoming sheltered in The Church, and resurrecting that child, stopping the world’s problems, and being sainted. I mean, should we then be thankful that she was raped? Cause otherwise there would be no Cecilia.
Jenny: Think about it, that Roy guy lived in Colorado didn’t he when Cecilia was supposedly growing up in New York so there is no possible way their paths could have ever crossed until at least around the time of her murder, in fact wasn’t there more evidence that Mallory was more a stalker of Patrick Roy than of Saint Cecilia and he was just trying to thrust his two banes into the same picture for his own interest?
Jessica: Wait, wait, wasn’t he dead long before then? Like years before that?
William: Hm, that’s a good one, lemme look it up……
Fragment from an article featured in Vanity Fair, “And the Sister Loves Ice Cream”
…impossible to even guess at her age, which no source has ever been able to discover. She sits across from me at the table and I am certain that Sister Lafet must be in her early thirties, the lines around her mouth and eyes, the set of her lips and the overall ethereal, knowledgeable confidence in her eyes. There is nothing youthful of brash about those eyes, she’s a woman of status who understands this and gets her purpose done.
I feel almost intrusive and unworthy sitting at the same table as her, as if the only thing I am accomplishing today is taking up time, her precious time. I feel like a worthless Earthling, and considering I am an atheist, I can only imagine how the massive devoted throngs she has already accumulated around her feel.
As I swallow to compose myself and try to remember at least one of the questions I wrote down that seemed intelligent and thought provoking enough to ask her, a woman comes to our table with her two small children. She is dressed in Prada and Gucci, her hair is styled and her skin crisp and her children are round cheeked and well fed, an adorable. A girl and a boy. With tears in her eyes, the woman says, “Please, Sister, please you have the power to bless my children. Please bless them today! I will give up everything I have if you would do it!
I raise my eyebrows. If I had seen her across the room, the woman would have seemed sane to me. Sister Lafet smiles. And with that smile reawakens the enigma of her age. Now she looks like an ageless icon, a movie star or an alabaster carving, flawlessly smooth skinned on her face and hard. “I cannot bless them today, for it is Children’s Day, and they are already blessed when they awoke this morning.” She touches their cheeks. “But I can make them smile.” And as if on cue, the children smile, beam, glow with happiness as if they’d just been giving the gift they didn’t get for Christmas.
The woman falls to her knees kissing Sister Lafet’s hand and by the time they have left I can feel myself staring at Sister Lafet with my mouth open and feeling undignified and pointless. Sister Lafet smiles.
“Children’s Day?” I ask. Ah yes not one of the intelligent questions on my list.
“Yes I will tell you all about it, I woke up this morning with the knowledge of a dream and today the fruition of it…” But our waitress comes to the table and asks for our drink order.
Sister Lafet’s face, unmarked by scar or blemish glows suddenly like a teenager, skin lining at her mouth and eyes in a child’s smile. “Do you have ice cream?”
“I’m sorry, Sister,” the waitress says in a worried voice, “We don’t have real ice cream for cheap, it’s very expensive and I think it’s out.”
Now she looks like a disappointed six year old. “Oh, I will have a salad then.”
She stays silent as the waitress leaves us and I think about how the Crestfield Moor virus has obliterated the dairy industry and left me with a suddenly crestfallen and distant shell of a woman. Now Lafet looks aged old, scrawny, anorexic like an old woman trying to remember the young girl she never was. I don’t even notice that the waitress completely neglected to pay any attention to me or take my order. But why should she? I am a mere mortal.
At this point I can see the quality of Lafet that has enchanted everyone who has met her. She has a very expressive aura and body, and I can see how it could be mistaken for something spiritual and otherworldly but to me it feels as if there is an entire life and other person burning in that eighty five pound frame and it’s being held back by the tail. But do I tell Sister Lafet this? No, I stay quiet, waiting for her to speak first because for some reason, I cannot find the courage to speak.
“Pardon me Sister!” A man says in a heavy Italian accent. An older man in a white shirt and jeans. Sister Lafet nods to him and the man swallows, wringing his hands together. “I am the owner of this restaurant, yes and I find it disgusting that the stupid girl would not give you ice cream, of course you shall have ice cream, I have a little and I will give to you, no charge, charge is on me you see, stupid girl I shall fire her.”
“Don’t fire her,” Lafet says softly.
“I will not fire her!” The man exclaims throwing his hands up. He turns around and goes back to his kitchen yelling loudly. “Your job is saved stupid girl, Saint Cecilia has saved you!”
I look at Sister Lafet and notice that she didn’t decline the free ice cream, and nor did she offer any sort of payment for it. Real milk sells at 600 dollars a pint and even at that price can barely be found. I wonder how she feels about this small restaurant absorbing that cost. It’s an interesting thing to notice about this woman noted for charity, and probably completely sacrilegious that I note it down for printed word.
I could ask her this right now. I could ask her needling, thought provoking questions about this small fact and compare it to understood examples of Catholic righteousness. I could begin my article probing the persona of the real Sister Lafet for the better or worse of her image. Again I find myself unable to speak unless she speaks first and I think about how again I was not asked for a drink or food order.
“Here she is!”
Sister Lafet’s face lights up and she giggles and claps her hands. Set before now, personally carried by the owner of the restaurant is a large, round pink serving dish and centered is a scoop of pale ice cream flecked with black vanilla bean, cuddled by red and orange scoops of sorbet and drizzled with raspberry and caramel sauces, sliced strawberries and dates and candied walnuts. What’s the most shocking is seeing that the dessert is floating in pink milk, certainly more than a pint of it.
My mouth waters and I realize at that point how sick I am of sorbet and frozen syrup popsicles and I want milk, I crave ice cream, and I would pay more than the money in my account for a taste of that plate. Now I think to myself, if she is a real saint, really flawless in spirit as she has been enshrined she will offer that dish to the entire restaurant and find a way to reimburse the owner for this treasure. Sister Lafet giggles and digs right into the dish taking a huge bite of the ice cream and my heart breaks.
“Is it good?” he asks.
“Perfect!” She exclaims. “I shall recommend you to everyone, what a wonderful place!”
The man falls to his knees and kisses her hand crying and thanking her in Italian before he gets up waving his arms and singing her praises. And I finally ask her a question, “So you like ice cream huh?”……
Off the Record Notes:
Sylvia Lancaster/Cecilia Lafet—
Lafet: Might I speak off the record?
Lafet: I will count upon this not receiving print?
Lafet: I will not offer you a bite of this ice cream nor will I to the rest of the restaurant and you hate me right now for that, when was the last time you’ve had ice cream?
Lafet: Well, this is how it is, that man is devout and he believes and he has just given me a sacrifice, one he believes can save the fate of his suffering establishment, and no god or icon anywhere has the right to share a sacrifice. I will honor his prayer and I will eat all of this ice cream, and your printing of my delight in this restaurant will make his prayers come true. So forgive me but you shall not see a bite of this. Are you still disturbed?
Lafet: Of course.
Laughter from Lafet.
Lafet: I came from the black moment that remains in the time before dawn after a rough fuck realizing there were better things I could be doing with my pretty green eyes…..