Fit Month for Dying (14 page)

Greg laughs. “Maybe it's payback time for both of us. Mom said much the same thing to me.”

Greg goes back to his office to catch up on unfinished work. Before he leaves, he says reassuringly, “I'll talk to him before I drop him off at school tomorrow morning. Maybe Father Haley chastised him. Told him to hurry up or something. You know what a slowpoke he can be. He might have gotten chewed out for being late.”

This seems to be such a strong probability that as soon as Greg leaves I am able to put Brendan out of my mind and go into the den to finish up leftover work of my own, especially to bone up on a brewing illegal strike by the Association of Public Employees. But after several minutes of aimless paper shuffling, I realize I can't put Brendan out of my mind after all, so I shove the papers back into my briefcase and go up to his room.

I knock on his door. No answer. He can't be asleep because it is much too early. I knock louder.

“Go away! I'm sleeping.” His voice sounds muffled, as if it is coming from underneath the covers.

“I want to talk to you,” I say, keeping my tone light, trying to withhold censure from my voice. “I'm counting to ten and then I'm coming in.” I actually count to twelve, open the door and walk in.

“Did I say come in?” he demands, pulling the sheets away from his mouth just far enough to let the words escape.

I don't switch on the light. I don't have to. Moonlight slants in through his window, cutting a soft shaft through the blackness before dropping down on his bed. He lies crouched into himself, the bedclothes bundled around him as if he is trying to get warm. But the room is sweltering; its windows face west and the afternoon sun has been unusually hot.

I ignore his rudeness, go over and sit beside him on the rumpled bed. I pull the blankets away from his face and reach out my hand to brush his hair back from his forehead. Sensing my intention, he whips his head to the opposite side of the pillow.

“What's wrong, Brendie?” I ask, reverting to my pet name for him. “You act as if you're mad all the time. It can't all be about our marriage getting blessed.”

“I'm sleepy,” he grumbles. “Can't you see I'm sleepy? And don't call me Brendie. I hate that foolish name.”

He pulls the sheets back over his head, hoping to discourage me. I make one last effort to get him to talk, speaking louder to penetrate the covers. “I'll talk this over with Dad, but I'm sure he'll agree. I've been thinking. Instead of us going to the church for the blessing, we'll make it even simpler. We'll get Father Tom to come to the house.”

He sits bolt upright. “No way!” he shouts. I feel as if he has struck me, and I jump to my feet. The bedclothes have fallen away from his body, and I see that he hasn't even bothered to remove the shirt he wore to school. Although I make no mention of his being in bed with his clothes on, I'm wondering whether he even bothered to take off his jeans.

I ask angrily, “What's going on with you anyway? Why are you so stubborn?”

“I won't be here when he comes,” he says, ignoring my question and staring straight at me, daring me to contradict the pronouncement he is about to make. “And I
am
quitting the altar. I'm not going to serve on it ever again. I've decided on that, and you can't make me change my mind. Christopher O'Connell quit this week. His father said if he wants to quit it's fine with him.”

Refusing to be manipulated by the intimation that his friends have far more reasonable parents that he has, I snap. “Well, your quitting is not fine with us. Mr. O'Connell has his rules and we have ours.”

“I knew that's what you'd say. I told Christopher that's what you'd say. But I'm quitting anyway.” He plops back down in bed and pulls the bedclothes over his head again, allowing just enough space to mumble that he is sleepy and wants me to leave. Bewildered and frustrated, I do his bidding, making certain the door is closed tight so the light in the hall won't seep in.

Greg is home by the time I go downstairs. Like me, he was unable to concentrate. I unfold my conversation with Brendan.

“Let's drop the whole thing about getting the marriage blessed. It's embarrassing to him,” Greg suggests. “And for once can't we bend the rules? Can't we let him quit if he wants to so badly?”

Fresh from the scene upstairs, I yield a little. “I'll go along with postponing having the marriage blessed. It was mostly for Philomena anyway. I'll let you square it with her.”

“What about letting him quit? Just this once, let's go back on our rules. The world won't self-destruct because we bent a rule. And it's not like he wanted to quit without giving it an honest try.”

I have often heard him use such persuasiveness on juries, judges and prosecuting attorneys. I counter with a compromise. “We'll ask him to hang in until the end of the month. If he still wants to quit, I'll go along with it. That will give enough time for the influence of Christopher's quitting to wear off.”

“Good,” he says. “Let's go tell him right now.” He grabs my hand and tugs me in the direction of the stairs. “Let's tell him right now. Maybe this'll get him back to his old self again.”

But it doesn't have any impact on him at all. Because he never had any intention of either serving the Mass during our marriage blessing or of continuing with the Altar Servers' Association, he has no reason to be grateful for our compromise, and he is quick to let us know as much.

Chapter Seven

Although we have met George O'Connell at a few church functions, we are only nodding acquaintances, and we are surprised the next evening when he and his son Christopher appear at our door. Because George is recently widowed, I assume he wants to discuss Christopher's quitting the association with us, and I surmise that Christopher has told him that Brendan is quitting. Brendan had used this ruse on us a couple of times, and I had used it myself many times on Grandmother.

As soon as we settle in the den I go to the bottom of the stairs and call up to Brendan that Christopher has arrived. When several minutes pass and there is no sign of him, Greg, thinking he must
not have heard me, also calls upstairs. “Hey, Brendan! Christopher's here. Come on down.”

Within a few minutes Brendan comes into the den, slowly and hesitantly, and the instant he sees that Christopher's father is also in the room, his face blanches. His eyes widen in fear. He hovers near the door, ready for flight. My stomach knots with apprehension. I now know that this visit is not about Christopher's leaving the Altar Servers' Association. The air in the room fills with tension. The boys must have gotten into some kind of mischief. But what kind of mischief would occasion such fear?

“Come on in, Brendan,” Greg says, forcing Brendan to come all the way into the room. “You know Mr. O'Connell, don't you?”

Brendan nods uncomfortably towards George and mumbles a barely audible “Hi.” He quickly crosses the floor and stands in the opposite doorway, the one that leads to the kitchen, as if he doesn't intend to stay and is just waiting for the attention to move away from him so he can leave.

George O'Connell's firm voice squelches that idea. “Stay, Brendan! Come sit! Whatever I'm going to say to your parents, I want you to hear, too.”

Brendan slides himself down on the edge of a chair near the door. He looks so distraught my insides begin to churn, and I start forming excuses, justifications and alibis for whatever misdeed is going to be laid at his feet.

George clears his throat and looks from Greg to me. “I'm here about this priest, Tom Haley.”

My hastily concocted excuses to justify a schoolyard fracas are instantly shredded. Whatever the infraction is, and I now believe it has to do with impertinence or disrespect to Father Haley, it is definitely more serious than name-calling or a tussle that got out of hand.

George moves to the edge of his chair, like Brendan, ready for flight. He clears his throat again. “I didn't know what to do except come over here.” He turns towards Greg. “In fact, I half expected you to be on my doorstep instead of the other way around. I'm sure you feel like I do. That fellow should be drawn and quartered. I was going to go see him myself before coming here, but I was afraid I'd kill him if I got my hands on him and if there was no one around to stop me.” He pummels the palm of one work-hardened hand with the knuckles of the other.

Greg and I stare at him so blankly that he turns to Brendan, who looks as if he is going to throw up. “You didn't tell them, did you Brendan? You told me yesterday that you'd tell them tonight.” Brendan is silent, his face desolate. “We have to tell them, Brendan. We can't let it go on any longer.”

“Tell us what?” I demand, getting to my feet. My stomach begins to heave, buckling in upon itself in preparation for certain pain.

“What's up? What is it, George?” The tremor in Greg's voice does nothing to pacify my stomach. “What's going on?”

Brendan's head is bowed so low it almost touches his knees. Christopher is squirming and savagely biting his nails. George, who has continued to sit on the edge of his chair, stops pummelling his palm with his fist, stands up, clears his throat and says in a do-or-die manner, “I don't want to be the one to bring this news. It's...well, it's...it's about Haley. He
fooled around
with Christopher. And with Brendan. I wormed the truth out of Christopher yesterday.”

I look at Brendan, hoping for some sign that George is building something out of nothing. Brendan's eyes never leave the floor.

“Fooled around?” Greg repeats. “What do you mean, fooled around? You mean he was carrying on with them in the sacristy? Acting the fool?”

“No!” George shouts, as if loudness will make his meaning clear. He rams his hands in his pockets, takes them out and shoves them through his hair, lets out a heavy breath, and then coughs up the message he came to deliver. “Not acted the fool. He fooled around with them. He jumped them. He's been jumping them. He's a queer box. A young boy queer box. That's what he is.”

“No!” Greg yelps, jerking backwards as if he has been pole-axed.

I drop back down into my chair and grab its sides to keep from tumbling to the floor. I feel as if I am careening downhill, my legs trying to outrun the force of gravity pulling me to the ground. No! No! No! I can feel the words strangling in my throat. I can hear them echoing inside my skull. But no sound leaves my lips.

Greg recovers first. He gets up, crosses the floor in one hurried stride and crouches in front of Brendan, who, like Christopher has shrunk into himself and is staring at the floor. “Tell me it's not true, Brendan,” he beseeches. “Tell me!”

I know he wants Brendan to say George is mistaken, that it had only happened to Christopher, because that is what I want to hear as well.

“It's true,” Brendan murmurs, never raising his eyes.

Greg drops back on his heels, covers his face with his hands and rocks back and forth. “Oh God! Oh God! Oh Jesus Almighty! Help us! Help us! Help us!”

Brendan's shoulders slump even further. His head drops even lower. He begins to whimper. I stumble across the room and squeeze in between Greg and Brendan. Although pain more searing than childbirth is arcing through my body, making me wish I could drop to the floor and die, I put my arms around Brendan and murmur meaningless calming words and non-words. “Shh! Shh! It's all over now. It's all over.”

Greg leaps up, his anger revived by my ridiculous comforting. His eyes, glazed with pain, bore into mine. “Stop saying that! Stop that foolishness! It's not over! It'll never be over!” He clenches and unclenches his fists and then lets his mouth spew out his fury, sounding more like Danny than himself. But Danny's words never held such vehemence.

“That black-hearted son of a bitch. I'm going over to the rectory right now to beat the hell out of him,” he shouts. “If I get my hands on him, I'll strangle that scum-eating pervert. I'll rip the collar off his neck. And then I'll go to the archbishop and tell him to get that piece of tripe out of our parish before daylight.”

He continues to clench and unclench his fists, savouring the thought of his knuckles connecting with Father Tom Haley's flesh. He starts for the door, patting his pants pockets for his car keys and wallet.

Brendan throws off my arms, jumps to his feet to block Greg's way. “No! No! Please Dad, no!” he shrieks. “Please don't go over there! Please!”

“Why not?” Greg shouts back, pushing him aside. “For the love of God, why not? I'm not going to bed this night until I've torn that son of a bitch to shreds.”

Christopher begins to cry, whimpering against his father's sleeve. Brendan shouts and cries and pleads all at once, tearing at my arm. “Please Mom! Please Mom! Stop him. Please stop him! Please!”

“Calm down! Calm down!” George O'Connell shouts at all of us. No one pays any heed, especially Greg, oblivious to everything except his own fury. He takes a step towards the door. I vault upwards and stand in front of him, using my body as a barricade. “You're not going near him!” I shout. “Not tonight! Get control of yourself! This isn't about you. It's about Brendan. Do what he asks!”

As if I have punched him, as if I have kicked him in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him, Greg's hands fall to his sides, and he groans as he drops into a chair beside the door. He looks so beaten I want to put my arms around him, but Brendan's need is greater. He is standing behind his father, tears streaming down his face, mouth gaping. I go to him and put my arm around his shoulder. He doesn't squirm away as he ordinarily would have done, embarrassed at being mothered in the presence of a friend.

Greg remains wilted. He looks to where Brendan is cowering in the shelter of my arm and asks, from the bottom of his soul, “Why, Brendan? Why did we have to hear it from other people? Why couldn't you tell me yourself?” Although his every word accuses the son of having failed the father, the anguish underlying his words recognizes that the father may have failed the son. “Why did you keep this from me?”

Brendan moves out from beneath my arm. He slowly rubs the tears out of his eyes with the heel of his hand, first one eye, then the other, stalling. I am reminded of the times when, as a child in the Cove, I had hoped the sky would fall so I, Poor Carmel's Tessie, wouldn't have to answer questions regarding the whereabouts of Poor Carmel.

“Because they said I'd get everyone in trouble. And I'd get in trouble, too. Big trouble. If I told. They said...”

“
They
?” Greg interrupts.

“Willie Farrell and Father Tom.”

“Willie Farrell? Who is he?” Greg demands. “Who else is involved?” He wants an immediate enumeration of all of those he will have to tear apart.

“Just Willie. He's in the association. He's almost fifteen. I'm afraid of him.”

“Willie Farrell said he'd beat the shit out of us if we told,” Christopher says. He sniffles and adds dismally, “And he probably will, too. He even beats up his own dog.”

“And this...Father Tom? What about him? What did he say? Did he threaten you?” His voice is hopeful; it would be even more justification for beating him up.

In fractured sentences and phrases and in between rubbing his face and pulling his ear, Brendan relates Father Haley's reaction. “He told me I would bring scandal on everyone. On you. And Grandma. Even the Church. A mortal sin. That's what I had committed. A worse sin than...you know...a worse sin than what he wanted us to do. I said I didn't care, I was going to tell if...you know...if the stuff didn't stop, and he said okay, it would stop. But it didn't.”

Christopher rushes in to verify Brendan's confession. “That's right! I heard him. And he said the same thing to me. He said sex sins are sins of impurity. God forgives them quicker than other sins. But people don't. He told me they'd call me a pervert because I had committed the sin of sodomy, and when I asked him what that meant, he said it meant I had to keep the parties quiet.”

“Parties?” Greg interrupts. “Parties?”

Christopher looks at his father. “That's what he called our meetings. Parties. He said there'd be hell to pay if I told.” Expecting his father to chide him, he repeats, “That's exactly what he said, ‘hell to pay.'”

But if George ever had the will to scold Christopher it has now left him. He slumps in his chair, stunned mute. Christopher blurts more details in a helter-skelter fashion, as if now is the one and only time he will have to unburden himself.

“He asked me if I remembered my catechism, and I said yes, and then he asked if I knew why God had destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I said I didn't remember that part, and he said God would be so mad if we brought scandal on the Church by telling about the parties that he might even destroy St. John's like He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. I said I didn't care, I was still going to get out of the association, and when I came home I looked up in the catechism about sodomy, but it didn't say what it was except that the sin of Sodom was one of the five sins that cried to heaven for vengeance. But I figured out for myself that sodomy was what we were doing.”

He hauls back into himself and waits for the adults to make the next move. But the adults are too clobbered to even exchange glances. Although I have lost all sense of time, it seems that a lot of it passes before George pushes himself out of his chair and makes ready to leave.

“I've got to get back home,” he says in the weighted manner of a man having too many responsibilities. “My boss is supposed to call me about a job he's bidding on. He wants me to head up the carpenter work.” He turns to Greg. “Why don't you come over to see me later on tonight? We've got to decide how we're going to handle this.” He adds, deferring to Greg's lawyer know-how, “Whatever you want to do will be okay with me.”

As soon as the three of us are alone, Brendan threatens that if the news of the parties gets out into the open, he will never go to school again. In fact, he will never leave the house again. He might even jump off Hickman's Wharf.

“I swear to you,” he says with such desperation that I have no doubt he means every word, “I'll run away. If you lock my bedroom door, I'll jump through the window.”

“Don't talk ridiculous!” Greg almost shouts. “This has to be stopped. And right away! If we have to go public, we have to go public. That's final!”

He sees Brendan's stricken face and immediately retrenches, hastily manufacturing an air of quiet and calm. “Mr. O'Connell and I are going to talk over how we should approach this. That's all. Should we go to the archbishop first? Should we go to Haley first and let him know we know? Should we...”