Princess of Passyunk by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

likes her.”
    â€œYeah, well, her brother sure doesn’t like him .”
    â€œI guess not.”
    They fell silent again.
    â€œWant to go to Izzy’s?” asked Yevgeny at last.
    â€œNyeh.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    oOo
    Each day thereafter it was the same. Nikolai spent each afternoon in the chapel. Nor was his new religiosity limited to this; he also attended Wednesday night mass at Saint Stan’s.
    Friday night, he came home with a black eye.
    This time, Da demanded a name—a family.
    â€œI don’t know his name,” Nick lied and gave Ganady, sitting once again on Da’s footstool, a warning glance from his good eye. He held the cold tea poultice more firmly to the other. “I’m not sure he even goes to Saint Casimir.”
    â€œThen why does he hit you, this boy you don’t know?” asked Da.
    â€œI think he was little drunk.”
    â€œDrunk? How is it that he’s drunk at a Church dance?”
    â€œHe and a couple of his friends had a flask of something.”
    â€œAt these dances they allow liquor?” Mama gasped.
    â€œThey don’t allow it,” said Nick. “But some of the kids sneak it.”
    â€œCigarettes, too,” Ganady blurted, and drew a scowl from Nick.
    â€œTwo weeks in a row, you come home bloodied. Next Friday, Nikolai Puzdrovsky, there will be no dance for you.”
    Nick’s eyes widened. “Da...!”
    â€œVitaly.” Mama laid a hand Da’s arm. “This is fair?”
    Da’s look was dark and thunderous, but his voice, when he spoke to Mama, was gentle, as always. “You want he should come home like this every week? What might it be next time, Rebecca - another black eye? A broken nose? An arm?”
    Mama looked from Da’s cloudy face to Nick’s doleful one and back again. In the end, she deferred to Da, having neither the will to support Nikolai nor the heart to deny him.
    â€œBut what’m I supposed to do on Friday nights?”
    â€œYou could go to library,” suggested Mama, “to study for school. More study wouldn’t hurt.”
    â€œSchool’s over in a month.”
    â€œYou could come to shul with me and Baba,” offered Ganady, garnering another lopsided scowl.
    With his mouth open to retort, Nick’s expression melted from annoyance to epiphany. He raised his eyes to his parents. “I could go to mass.”
    Mama and Da exchanged startled glances, then Da said,”You want to go to Friday mass, too? Already, you go on Wednesday and the Sabbath.”
    â€œI’d like to go,” said Nikolai with pious resolve. “I think it would be good for me to go. Don’t you think?”
    It was a point no good Catholic parent could argue in good conscience. But Ganady distinctly heard his father say, as he and Nick went upstairs to bed, “My God, will the boy become a monk?”
    Ganady laughed, notwithstanding he was sincerely worried about Nikolai, who had rarely, in his almost eighteen years, lied to his parents, and never—so far as Ganny knew—about something so important.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    Ganady reflected that he would have to get used to watching his brother meditate on the ceiling as if he found a vision of the Virgin there.
    Perhaps he did, after a fashion.
    Nick launched into a tale that, to his younger brother, was rife with excitement and intrigue. He and Annie had been cautious at first. Each staying close to their cadre of friends, touching only with wary glances that turned to lingering looks.
    Then Stefano—Steve, to his classmates—had gone outside with his buddies, and the couple had maneuvered themselves to a quiet corner next to the fire stair. They had reckoned, however, without Antonia’s so-called friend, Maria Teresa Reghetti who, seeing the sister slip into the shadows with her proscribed beau, ran to find favor with the ‘dreamy’ older brother by ratting them