Look at what money can buy, father
quipped, as I shrugged my shoulders
into my good suit jacket, slid
my feet into pumps, and got ready
to go to work. The two older children
were in school, the baby was with
her nanny. I made a mental note to stop
at the store for diapers before returning
home at five. Father was retired nearly
a decade then; and of poor health. He stayed
at home reading the paper in the corner
armchair, taking out his Novena to Saint
Pancratius and murmuring prayers with eyes
half-closed to this patron of children, jobs,
health, cramps, perjury, and headaches—
though you could say Pancras himself never
recovered from the last big headache
of his young life, having been beheaded
around 303 AD during the reign of the Emperor
Diocletian. As for diapers, I never made it
to the store that afternoon— An earthquake
rocked the city and it felt like any moment
the skies might part and we’d see the Four
Horsemen, lances drawn, come down into our
hills on vivid clouds of fire. In mere minutes,
buildings turned to rubble, walls into piles
of kindling. If anyone had known to pray
to Saint Emydius or Saint Gregory
the Wonderworker, patrons for protection
against earthquakes and floods, could that
day’s catastrophe have been averted? Two
weeks later, father passed away on a makeshift
pallet in the local hospital. Stories have it
that Emydius, though he was a bishop, was also
beheaded in that same period of persecution
that ended 14-year-old Pancratius’s life.