Free The Hungry House by Elizabeth Amelia Barrington Page A

knelt before the toilet and heaved up the contents of my stomach. Finally, I was able to stand. I studied my image in the mirror, watching the tears slide down my cheeks. I had to get away from the house.
    I ran out of the library, with a greatly alarmed Frank at my heels calling after me to come back. I ran out through the garden to the cottage. Fortunately, Margaret and Mom were in her room. After grabbing my keys and purse, I pushed past Frank, who blocked my way out of the front door. I ran to the Volvo and got in, locking the doors and closing the windows. Then after putting the gear in reverse, I raced away down the street. Tears streamed down my face. My head and breast seemed to burn with shame where Frank had touched them. I wanted to shave my head of the hair he had kissed. I drove, wiping away the tears that blinded me, until I found myself at Mt. Calvary Cemetery where my father was buried. I walked to his grave sinking down on the grass on my knees and looked around. Thankfully, no one was in the area. I remembered Mom had always taught her that me that Dad watched over me and prayed for me in heaven. Kneeling at his grave, I said a prayer asking for help from God and all the angels and saints.
    After moving nearer to the gravestone, I reached out and placed my hands on his granite marker. I thought of the legend my Irish mother had taught me when I was small. In the story, a curious parishioner began hounding his mystical parish priest about heaven, asking had he had any visions about it, and did he know what it was like. The father kept putting Mr. Kelly off by saying, "when you go to heaven, God will have prepared you to see it." But he finally grew weary of being asked. He was old and frail and used a tall walking staff. He slowly raised his staff high into the air and a window to heaven was opened. After a time, he lowered his staff, and the vision was gone. The brief view of the heavenly lights and angelic hosts was so overwhelming that Mr. Kelly fell to the ground in a faint and never asked about heaven again. My mother had explained to me that the legend meant that heaven is in another dimension, unseen, but all around us.
    "Dad, I know you're in heaven . Please pray for me. Everything's gone wrong. Mom is sick, and she seems so strange and far away from me these days. And I feel like I owe my soul to a hideous man because he's paying for Mama's care. I have no idea what to do or where to turn."
    I continued to touch the granite monument that marked his grave and read the familiar words:  John Carlyle Howell, Beloved Husband and Father. I thought about the fact that he had been dead so long, cut down in his youth at the beginning of a promising life. I remembered all the trials Mom and I had gone through since his death. I heard a strong inner voice, which said do not be afraid .
    I looked around at all the graves and markers, some elaborate, some simple, and began to have a feeling of being part of the long history of believers across time and space. We all have our trials, but it's not what happens to us but how we deal with it that counts. That's what I have been taught. Many others have been subjected to far worse.
    My father had grown up not far from here and had been the long-awaited child of older parents. They had died the year he finished medical school, leaving their fortune to charity, assuming that a medical doctor would always be able to pay his bills. I sat on the grass until the evening began to grow chilly. I had never felt so at peace. Reluctantly, I walked back to the car.
    When I walked into the cottage, I tried to act as if nothing was wrong, though my heart ached. I stopped in the McDonald's restaurant on Burnside Street and, with shaking hands, I washed my face with cold water and used makeup to repair my swollen, tear-stained face.
    After a light dinner, I read to Mom , first in the living room and then in her5 room, from one of our favorite books:  The Invisible Man, by Ralph