An Imperfect Miracle Read Online Free

down to put up some dumb parking garage, even if it is three stories high and they’re getting state money to pay for it. Nobody ever comes to visit this dumpy old town anyway, except for maybe some drunks up from Florida for the summer and a few relatives at Christmas and the Fourth of July.”
    Mom tilted her head sideways and gave me a real soft look, like she did whenever I bashed up my knees or something.
    â€œDon’t be upset if someone scrapes her face off the wall. There’s a lot of vandalism down there.”
    I hadn’t thought about some drunk rubbing Mary’s face off the concrete, and I didn’t sleep too well that night. The next morning I was so nervous and excited that I headed straight for Mary’s lot. But nothing bad must have happened, because Mrs. Marcella and some other old chunky woman from our street were already kneeling on the bottom step right below Mary’s face. They had these black handkerchiefs wrapped over their heads that were so skimpy you could see right through them. And they were rubbing some kind of beads in their hands and praying, although I couldn’t tell what they were saying exactly because they were mostly mumbling.
    I circled around to the side of the steps to get a better view and noticed that Mary had what looked like a tear on her right cheek, like she’d started crying overnight or something. At first I thought it was just a little yellow bug, because I didn’t remember any tear being there the day before. But when I reached over and tried to flick it off with my fingers, it just stayed on. Then I tried rubbing it off with my thumb, but when that didn’t work, I leaned over a little farther and studied it some more. It was just this tiny yellow speck, and there was another one under her left eye. I decided that I’d probably just missed them, being that Mary’s face there on the concrete was so new to me and all.
    â€œThat’s probably why that smart-aleck reporter called her the Weeping Mary,” I whispered to Chewy, who was sniffing Mrs. Marcella’s toes. Now that she was invisible, Chewy could get away with pretty much anything.
    Mrs. Marcella cranked herself up onto her feet, sort of creaking and groaning the way old people do, and then she gave me this aren’t-you-so-cute-in your-little-blue-shorts sort of look. I backed away a step or two so she couldn’t reach out and pat me on the head.
    â€œI’m glad to see that there is at least one young person in this God-forsaken town that appreciates sacred icons.”
    I didn’t know if she was talking to me or not, so I looked behind me but didn’t see anybody. Then her friend, who had more ruts in her cheeks than any person I’d ever seen, came over and before I knew it she’d made the sign of the cross right over my chest, like Catholics are always doing to themselves. I wondered if she was putting some secret jinx on me and started wiping my hands over my chest to get it off me. But then Mrs. Marcella smiled, as sweet as an old hag like her could smile, and said that I must have found “favor with the Lord,” and that there was no telling what great things might end up happening to me. If I hadn’t been so creeped out by all those suffocating layers of perfume peeling off her and her friend and landing on my nose, I might have asked her what exactly she had in mind. Then they shuffled off, clacking at each other about one of their friends who’d just had two hip replacements right in a row, and how it was maybe the worst thing in the world.
    After they were out of earshot I was about to ask Mary if she’d had those two tears yesterday, or whether something had happened overnight to upset her. But just then these dried-up old guys from St. Sebastian’s came marching down the sidewalk wheeling an old rusty metal cart, which they steered into the lot through all the weeds and shoved right up next to the steps.