Faith (19 page)

“And what was it like?”

She lay a hand on her belly. “Weird. I talked to him all day long. It sounds queer, I know, but I liked it. How I was never alone.” She grinned. “I love that fucken kid. I quit smoking for him.”

“But you started up again.”

“The minute they cut the cord.”

And Mike thought—he couldn't help it—of his own sons' births, the nurse placing the scissor in his hand.

“You shouldn't have been alone,” he said.

Kath rolled her eyes then, the tart reply forming on lips:
Yeah, whatever.
But when he pulled her close she let him, and they were off again.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

I stood a moment reading over the man's shoulder. He turned to face me, a tall red-haired guy in a Boston College sweatshirt.

“What's this?” I demanded. “This garbage you're posting.”

“You haven't heard? We've got one of these pedophile priests living in this building.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” I said, my voice trembling. “It's just an accusation. Nothing has been proven.”

He gave me a withering look. “You have kids?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I do. And this piece of shit lives right across the hall from me.”

“This is slander, libel.” I knew there was a difference, but what was it exactly? “Both, maybe. Anyway it isn't true.”

“Believe what you want.” He turned away and headed out the front door.

Believe what you want.
Not long ago, my brother Mike had told me the same thing.

I waited until the front door closed behind him. Then I tore down the flyer and tossed it, crumpled, into the trash.

•  •  •

“THAT WAS
a terrible mistake,” said Art.

We were sitting in his living room, which now resembled that of a poor graduate student. He'd accumulated a few possessions since my last visit. Books—church history, theology, a smattering of popular novels—sat on improvised shelves, made of bricks and boards. The room smelled of throat lozenges, Halls Mentho-Lyptus, which Art sucked constantly. I stretched out on the lumpy futon, opposite his one chair.

“Ma wanted you there,” I said.

He had stayed just a few minutes, per Mike's orders; yet his appearance had finished off the party. The aunts—Norma McGann, Patti Devine—had greeted him in hushed tones:
Hello Father
, hesitating just slightly on the second word. What to call him now that he wore no collar, just a sport shirt and pressed chinos, like an ordinary man?

The other ordinary men, McGanns and Devines alike, had avoided him entirely. My cousins Brian and Richie hustled their wives out the back door, breaking up the volleyball game as they collected the kids.
Thanks for everything
, they called over their shoulders, giving Ma a wave. I helped Clare Boyle clean up, then took my nephews home to their mother. Oddly, Abby didn't ask where Mike was. She refused the foil-wrapped cake Ma had sent.
No, thank you. I don't eat that sort of thing.

“At least now I know for sure,” said Art. “Mike hates me. Not that there was any doubt.”

“There's no point in talking to him now,” I said. “Seriously. I wouldn't even try, until your name is cleared.”

Something in Art's face shifted.

“I got a call from Don Burke on Friday,” he said. “My lawyer.”

“You have a lawyer?”

Art ignored the question. “It looks like the Archdiocese wants to settle.”

I stared at him.

“Nothing's official yet, but they asked if I'd be willing. We wouldn't have to go to court. The whole thing could be over in a matter of weeks.” Then, seeing my expression: “This is good news, Sheila. I'm going out of my mind here. I need to go back to work.”

“You'd get your parish back?”

“Well, no. They'd reassign me to an administrative post. It's not my first choice, I'll admit,” he added hastily. “But at this point I'll take anything. I just want this to be over.”

“An ‘administrative post'?”

Art took a deep breath. “One of the stipulations is that I couldn't have contact with children.”

“But isn't that like saying you're guilty?”

I will admit, I can be dense in these matters. There was a long pause.

“Jesus, Art! I thought you wanted to clear your name.”

“Honestly, I don't think that's possible. The Archdiocese hasn't investigated anything, and I don't think they intend to. They'd rather throw money at the problem and make it go away.”

“That doesn't bother you?”

“Of course it does. But in this case, that money could do a lot of good. That boy—” Art stared at his hands. “Aidan and his mother have nothing. She has no skills, no training. She can barely earn a living. This is a chance for the Church to do some real good.”

“At your expense?” I glared at him. “A settlement isn't charity, Art. You'd be selling off your good name.”

“Which isn't worth a dime now anyway.” He reached for my hand, a gesture that surprised me. “I'm not young, Sheila. I've had a wonderful ministry, a wonderful life. This girl has everything ahead of her. She's made some mistakes, big ones, the kind you can't undo without somebody's help.” He hesitated. “She's a tough person. In a way she reminds me of Ma.”

At the time I found this comment mystifying. Later, meeting Kath Conlon, I would understand that she reminded Art of a different Ma, a woman I had never met: Mary Breen who'd raised him alone, in a time when this was a curiosity and a shame. I had seen her in a photograph. Her short skirt, her black hair loose; a man sitting beside her, his arm slung round her shoulders, a cigarette in his hand. Out late at the dances, she had met a fellow who amused her. He knew how to have a good time, this Ted McGann.

“I don't get it,” I said. “Why do you care what happens to her? She ruined your reputation. Ruined your
life.
”

Art did not contradict this.

“You'd have to say you did it.” I stared at him a long moment, my stomach churning with dread.

“Go ahead and ask,” he said, reading my face. “You've never asked me. Go ahead and ask.”

I would not.

“I didn't,” he said. “But trust me, plenty of priests have. The Church hasn't begun to pay the damage.”

There was something in the way he said it:
Trust me.
An agitation in his voice, his trembling hands. I guessed a moment before he told me.

F
ergus was a priest, our mother's uncle. To his face she called him
Uncle Father.
Arthur had been taught to do the same.

Uncle Father was small for a man, with coppery hair and a craggy freckled face and bright green eyes that danced and twinkled and widened dramatically when he was telling a story, which he was usually doing. It was the sort of animated face found on clowns, the actors on television pretending to be Buffalo Bob or Clarabell the Clown. Adults whose sole purpose in life was the entertainment of children.

To Arthur, at eight or nine or ten, Fergus was the only adult in the world who actually seemed young. Yet years later, looking at the man's tombstone, he saw that Fergus was born in 1901. That he'd been fifty years old when Arthur was born.

Uncle Father had a car, a Ford Crestline. He came every Saturday afternoon to drive Mary and Arthur to Star Market. He walked ahead of them as they filled the carriage with heavy items, sacks of potatoes even, not to worry, because Uncle Father would drive them home and carry their bundles up the stairs.

They lived in a third-floor apartment in a loud part of Jamaica Plain. They were lucky to have the third floor, “above the noise,” his mother said. Imagine having eight Sullivans above you, including a father and grown sons in the roofing trade, who wore heavy work boots all day and all night.

When the carriage was full Fergus would push it to the checkout and pay for everything.
Thank you, Uncle Father
, Mary would whisper. He answered,
Dear girl, don't mention it.
It was a thing adults always said, but Fergus seemed to mean it. He was flummoxed by her gratitude, blushing and stammering. Awkwardly he patted her hand.

They drove home in his magnificent car, which smelled of hair oil and chewing gum, Wrigley's Double Mint. Arthur preferred Juicy Fruit, which tasted nothing like fruit and was not even fruit-colored, but was delectably sweet for a minute or two. Occasionally Fergus would surprise him with it, an entire pack of Juicy Fruit all to himself. Arthur rode alone in the back seat, wide enough that an adult could stretch full-length across it. He knew for a fact that this was so.

At the apartment they unloaded the groceries. Arthur and his mother made a show of helping, each carrying a carton of eggs or a loaf of bread, but it was Fergus who hauled the heavy bundles up the three flights of stairs. Anyone they happened on—Mrs. McCready, one or two small Sullivans—would step aside to let them pass, looking chastened and impressed.
Good morning, Father. How are you, Father?
On any other day Mrs. McCready would ignore his mother entirely. Francis Sullivan would smack Arthur in the back of the head, but not if Uncle Father was present. There were things even Sullivans didn't do in the presence of a priest.

Later, the groceries unloaded, his mother would start dinner. Other nights they ate soup and potatoes only, but on Saturday nights she served lamb to the priest. Uncle Father would watch her briefly, jangling his keys in his pocket.

Why don't I take the boy for a ride?
he'd say, as though the thought had just occurred to him.
Give you a bit of a break.

Oh, that would be lovely
, his mother would say in the same tone, pleased and surprised, as though he hadn't made the same offer just last week.

Arthur would follow him down to the street, in plain sight of the neighbors. Imagining, always, that someone would appear and stop them, his father perhaps.
No need, Father Egan. Arthur can stay here with me.

Of course, this never happened. His father had gone away shortly after Arthur was born. To work in Florida, his mother said. To build railroads in California. His father was a train conductor, an engineer. He had gone back to Ireland to look after his grandparents. To run a farm. To raise sheep. All these explanations, and more, had been offered to Arthur. He could choose from among them whichever he liked, like drawing a card from a deck. Was any one of them true? It didn't matter. It mattered only that Harry Breen did not return, that he never once appeared as Uncle Father led his boy down the stairs.

They would drive down South Street in Uncle Father's car, Arthur now in the front seat, looking out over the long hood. Uncle Father would be silent, as though he'd used up all his conversation on Arthur's mother.

He would park the car at Forest Hills Cemetery, and if the weather was fine they would have a walk. Uncle Father would point out gravestones of particular importance—a bishop, a general, governors of Massachusetts—as though some dead people were more interesting than other dead people. Arthur would read each inscription; to distract himself he'd do the arithmetic: dead at age sixty, age forty, age ninety-two. One boy had died at eight, his own age. For a moment Arthur envied him, this boy who'd escaped from the world, beyond anyone's reach.

In the car the heater would be running, the rosary beads hanging from the mirror. There was a card on the dashboard that let Uncle Father park anywhere, a yellow card printed with the word CLERGY and a small black cross.

You must be tired from all the walking
, he'd say.
Lie down and have a rest.

And Arthur, following instructions, stretched out on the back seat, the black wool of Uncle Father's trousers scratchy beneath his cheek. Flutes and fiddles on the radio, a raucous
céilí.
For the rest of his life Arthur would cringe at the sound.

Afterward they would go to Brigham's. Arthur would ask for three scoops, more than he could possibly eat. There was Fudge Ripple with chocolate jimmies, a multicolored sherbet called Rainbow that was pink and blue and yellow and seemed to have three distinct exotic flavors until his mother told him it was simply vanilla with food coloring added and then it tasted all the same.

Uncle Father got a vanilla cone and drove home with one hand—jolly now, his good humor restored.
I've ruined my appetite
, he'd say, patting his belly.
Don't tell your mother. She'll have our heads.

At home the lamb would be cooking. Arthur would smell it in the stairwell, even in the street. The waste of it shamed him. Lamb was expensive and delicious and he was not hungry, would choke it down as if it were poison, knowing he would not have lamb again until next Saturday when he would again not be hungry. He could have cried from shame.

His mother would pour two glasses of Jameson's: half a tumbler for Uncle Father, a smaller glass for herself. When her glass was nearly empty Arthur would ask to be excused. The emptier her glass, the likelier she'd say yes. In the parlor he would sink into Saturday television, a western if he was lucky. He lay on the rug on his belly, feeling perfectly invisible, below the adults' line of vision. The soft front parts of him protected and hidden, pressed safely into the floor.

Were there a dozen such Saturdays? A hundred? Fifty? Three? Truly, he had no idea. He has tried to remember a first time, a first walk in the cemetery, a first
little rest
in the backseat of the car. Did Fergus plan it beforehand, or did it happen spontaneously? How exactly does such an idea occur to a man?

He has even wondered—is it possible?—if he, a boy of seven, started it himself.

I'm tired from all the walking. I need a little rest.

He has seen the affectionate nature of children. Is it possible that he curled up next to his uncle, lay his head in the priest's lap? Though clearly it was Uncle Father's doing, the thing that happened next. Prompted, perhaps, by simple pressure, the warm weight of a child's head in his lap.

Don't tell your mother. She'll have our heads.

Of course, he had never told.

S
ATURDAYS AND
more Saturdays. It seemed that nothing could stop it. And then, miraculously, something did.

His whole life his mother had been prone to nightmares. She dreamed, always, that she was drowning. As a boy Arthur often heard her cry out in her sleep. Then he would creep out to the living room, where Mary slept on the pullout couch, and climb in beside her.
Don't worry
, is what he'd say.
It's just that dream.

So when something woke him one night, he was not alarmed. He padded barefoot into the hallway and stopped short. The bathroom door was open, a man standing at the toilet, pissing through the opening in his boxer shorts. Arthur stood staring at the arc of urine, clattering loudly into the bowl.

The man saw him then.
Jesus Christ!
You scared me, kid.
He gave himself a shake.
Your mother's still asleep. Go back to bed.

When Arthur woke the next morning, the man was in the kitchen reading the newspaper. His mother stood at the counter fixing tea and toast.

Arthur, this is Ted.
She was already dressed, which surprised him. Usually she ate breakfast in her housecoat. Today her hair was combed, her mouth flushed red as it often was on a Saturday morning, when she'd been out late the night before.

Hi, kid. Have a seat. I won't bite.

After that, a change in their living arrangements. Mary took over Arthur's bedroom, and it was Arthur who slept on the pullout couch. The bedroom door had always been propped open with a doorstop, a brick wrapped in green velvet. Now the velvet doorstop disappeared, and his mother's door was kept closed.

T
ED VISITED
on Friday nights, and sometimes Saturdays. He was always gone by morning. Sometimes Arthur woke as he was crossing the living room, shoes in his hand.

Each Friday night Arthur watched his mother dress and put on lipstick. He didn't ask where she was going, or when she would return. He'd be awakened later when she and Ted came in, on tiptoe, and disappeared into Mary's room. They were quiet, but always he heard noises. Murmurs, a stifled laugh.

Spring came, then summer. On a Saturday afternoon in July, Ted McGann appeared at the door. Arthur was lying on the parlor floor staring at the television.
Turn that thing off
, his mother called.
Ted is taking us to the beach.

She said it shyly, her cheeks flaming. For months, since that one awkward breakfast, they had both pretended there was no Ted, no man creeping out of her bedroom at dawn, his car parked discreetly down the block to avoid alerting Mrs. Sullivan. Now Ted was here in daylight, decently dressed in Bermuda shorts and a madras shirt, for a wholesome outing in the sunshine.

Arthur had seen Ted's car from the window, in the half-light of early morning, peeling away from the curb. Now, for the first time, he climbed inside it, a gleaming white Impala with a broad backseat. Art sat close behind Ma, as if for protection. Beside him were a pile of beach towels, a Styrofoam cooler, and the picnic basket she had packed.

Ted drove fast, the windows down, the jangling piano of Jerry Lee Lewis bursting from the radio. To Arthur, who just a few moments before had lain in the dark parlor watching
Brave Stallion
, the wind and sun and loud music were strange and wonderful and nearly too much. He felt as though he'd been abducted, swept away by a stranger into a normal boy's life.

They parked among a sea of cars.
Gimme a hand, kid
, Ted said, and Arthur took one handle of the cooler. It was very heavy, but he didn't say so, having intuited, somehow, that it was important not to complain.

They made a long trek down the beach, looking for a secluded spot. Drinking was prohibited on the beach, but the town cops knew Ted and would give him a pass if he was discreet. Finally they set down the cooler and spread out the blankets. Mary stepped out of her dress. Underneath she wore a two-piece bathing suit, navy blue—not a bikini, not in those years; but brief shorts and a matching bra. Ted gave a low whistle.
That right there was worth the trip.

He stripped off his shirt. His chest and shoulders were thick and muscled. A green tattoo covered his left biceps.

Whaddaya say, kid?

Go on
, his mother said.

Arthur stared at her, astonished. His whole life she had kept him away from lakes, beaches, the town swimming pool. She herself would wade in up to her ankles, no more.

Reluctantly he followed Ted to the shoreline. Ted broke into a run, crashing into the surf.
What's the matter?
he called.
It ain't that cold.
In a single graceful motion he dove beneath the surface. Then his slick head emerged smooth as a seal's. He exhaled with a burst, a plume of seawater shooting from his mouth, and Arthur remembered him standing at the toilet, the great noisy arc of wet.

He stood at the water's edge up to his knees, watching his mother's lover shoot through the water, his muscled arms slicing like a propeller. Ted stopped, turned, yelled something unintelligible.
What's the matter with you? Grow a set of balls, for Christ's sake.
He might have said something else entirely, but that is what Arthur heard.

He's so little
, his mother said later. She and Ted sat in the kitchen, a raft of empties on the table between them. She spoke softly, but Arthur—lying in the dark parlor room, staring at the television—heard every word.

Maybe he's past the age
, she said.
There was no one around to teach him. Heaven knows I couldn't.

I've seen you at my brother's house. You won't even look at the aquarium.

It makes me nervous
, she said.

Arthur listened, then, as Ma told a story he had heard many times, the story of his grandfather. This hurt him in a way that was nearly breathtaking; until then the tale had been theirs alone. His grandfather, also named Arthur, had drowned while fishing for lobster. Mary was twelve years old when he died, his boat lost in a storm. He was the third Devine to die of drowning, and finally the family had learned its lesson.
I won't go near the water
, she said.
Arthur will be just the same.