Church

It’s 1950 in Greenwich Village. Early summer. Sunday morning. Steel gray. Raining.

Patricia Highsmith is in her small apartment, lying on the sofa. A popular country song plays softly on the radio. ”Let’s Go to Church (Next Sunday Morning)” by Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely.

The duo croon about kneelin’ and prayin’ and lovin’ thy neighbor.

And Patricia thinks about a young couple and the friend they’ll meet on the way to church. How next Saturday night, the young man will hold up a candy store and the girl will sleep with the friend who will necessitate an abortion.

How these two will marry in less than a year and produce five more Catholics. They will vote in the Catholic senators and boycott the best artists and writers.

They will provide sons for the next war and dedicate the next superwar mondial to the unknown soldier. They will prevent people from parking on their block and they will turn the stomachs of the rest of us when they appear in bathing suits on public beaches. They will be honored because they carry on the race.

But they will not be the people by whom this century will be known.