The Dark Path (3 page)

My mother blows off the foam.

“I hate Brooklyn, Peggy.”

“I know.” My mother rubs Aunt Clara's back.

Aunt Clara starts to weep. “I'm going to die.”

“Nope.” My mother kisses Aunt Clara on the cheek, right where she always does, on the nastiest, wartiest part.

Watching my mother do this, I think,
Be like that, David. Make peace and kiss warts. Be a priest
.

I run to find my young cousins. I am always in charge of them at these backyard summer parties. They are half a dozen little boys and girls, all under ten. On this evening I lead them into the woods. I show them the hole of the woodchuck that chases me when I pick rhubarb. I point out a hawk overhead.

“It would take a tight spread pattern to kill that hawk,” I say.

“What's a spread pattern?” asks one cousin.

I don't know, so I change the subject. “I want to show you guys something.”

I take them to the path. It's an August evening, close to twilight, and the woods smell like sweet alyssum and grape blossoms. The shadows among the trees are floating and shifting like a fragrant fog, and I wish that I could dive into their blackness and hang suspended in it.

I stand at my spot, point at the woods. “Pretty great.”

“Stupid trees,” says a cousin.

“Yeah, let's go back to the house,” says another.

Sometimes I want someone else to see what I see. Other times I want to be the only one.

•   •   •

I'M TWELVE NOW
and sure that my sisters will kill me. Or themselves, or all four of us. It will happen in the yellow bathroom, the kids' bathroom, in the upstairs of our house. My sisters don't have much in common: Anne Marie, the eldest, is our family's sole, freckly blonde who gets straight A's and bakes cakes and wants a boyfriend. Tall, dark-haired Pamela is all energy, bored at school except in art class. Jeanne is cute and small and has striking blue eyes that are often worried. The only things my sisters all agree on and will do side by side are dance or style their hair.

The hair styling is how they will kill me. Each morning before school or church the bathroom floor and sink counter are covered with water puddles because my sisters either forget to use the shower curtain or else their hair drips everywhere. Buzzing and hopping in the puddles on the counter are plugged-in, running hair dryers, curling irons, and hair straighteners. I try to mop up the puddles so I won't get electrocuted, but it's hard because time is short and I have to move fast to grab
my
chance to use the dryer and the mousse and the thick black Goody brush.

One Sunday before church, Jeanne stands in a puddle, hogging the dryer and singing Fleetwood Mac's “Gypsy.”

“My turn,” I say.

I try to grab the dryer, but she keeps it out of reach. We bang into Anne Marie, who bumps us away with her hip and goes on curling her hair. Pam is beside Anne Marie, putting on eyeliner.

“And stop singing,” I tell Jeanne.

“Ha,” Anne Marie says. “What about you on the tractor?”

“I'll sing when I want,” Jeanne announces. “‘Gypsy' is my favorite song.”

“You'll be sick of it in a week,” I say. “You always get sick of your favorites.”

Jeanne's face clouds. She is eight and sensitive. “I . . . I love ‘Gypsy,'” she says stubbornly, her chin quaking.

“Enough, you guys,” says Pam.

“Soon you'll hate it.” I lean close so Jeanne will hear me over the dryer. “You. Will. Hate. ‘Gypsy.'”

“‘Gypsy'!” Jeanne wails. “I love ‘Gypsy'! FOREVER!”

She smacks the dryer down and I pick it up, satisfied. Jeanne is still crying. My parents poke their heads in and my father's eyes look ready to be angry. When he sees me teasing my hair back with the dryer and the Goody brush, he glances desperately at my mother.

“Everyone, downstairs,” she says.

Minutes later, we're at breakfast. My sisters and I sit there with moussed hair and thank Jesus for our waffles. After eating we go to Mass. Technically Catholics shouldn't eat right before receiving the Eucharist, but my father always says that Schicklers get cranky when they're hungry.

I'm now the regular altar boy for Sunday-morning Mass. I sit on the altar in my robes and wash Father Anselm's fingertips and ring bells and light incense. Father Anselm still says
nifty
too often around me, and there are still people in bubbly-safe pastels and I still get headaches, but I'm being patient. I'm waiting for the God I pray to on the dark path to appear in church. If He and His darkness ever show up at Mass, it will be a sign that He wants me to be a priest, to worship Him from the solitude that I feel on the path. That's the deal I've made in my heart.

In the meantime, I spot Caitlin Brenner in her pew. When she catches my eye, I telepathically zap toward her the haiku I've been working on:

Caitlin! The best girl.

I love how your blond hair shines.

Go to a movie.

I need to fix that last line. It should be “
Let's
go to a movie,” but that would be six syllables instead of five, which is breaking haiku rules. Still, I watch Caitlin, in case what I just broadcast to her rocked her world. She looks away, giving her hair a haughty flip. That's okay, because I've secretly written another version of the haiku:

Lesley! The best girl.

I love how your brown hair shines.

Go to a movie.

Since it's October and Lesley Hendrik doesn't attend Saint Helen's, I haven't seen her lately, so I haven't yet telepathed the haiku at her and blown her mind. I will do so over Christmas or next summer at the pool.

After church my parents sit me down at home.

My mother rubs my arm. “David, Dad and I have been talking. And we have a surprise. We're going to build you a special bedroom in the basement.”

“The basement?” I fret and think of fire exits. In my current second-floor bedroom there's a chain-link ladder in my closet. If a fire blocks us from the stairs, it's my job to attach the ladder to my window and get me and my sisters out.

“What about the fire ladder?” I ask.

“Anne Marie can handle that. Don't worry, your basement room will have a special, wide window with steps leading out.”

My heart calms down a notch.

My mother rubs my arm more. “A boy needs his space. You don't need to always be around girl stuff. You're practically a young man.”

Ohhh,
I think.
I get it. Me and the hair dryer. Me and the mousse.

I want to tell them not to worry, that I'm not homosexual, that I've started having
very
specific thoughts about Caitlin and Lesley's bodies. But I hold my tongue. They're offering me a Fortress of Solitude.

My uncle Travis, a carpenter, builds the room. When he's done, it's a wood-paneled den of a place. Before I move in I climb in and out of the fire window several times. Scott Barella clocks me and it never takes me more than five seconds from under the bedsheets till I'm standing outside in the freezing air.

I stay up late one night in bed. No moonlight makes it through my window. Even with my eyes open, I see total pitch-black in one corner. I snuggle under my blankets. The darkness feels hidden from the world, given just to me. I feel a great calm.

Is that You, Lord?
I pray into the darkness.
Are You down here with me?

•   •   •

IN JUNE WHEN
I'm thirteen I graduate from eighth grade at Saint Helen's School and I win the Religion Award. I hadn't known there was such an award, and after I win it a guy in my class signs my yearbook,
Nice Going, Jesus Tard!

When it comes to Jesus, I've always known what the Gospel says or what church adults want to hear. But I have a Jesus problem. According to Scripture, Jesus is the Light of the World. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that He has come as a Light into the world so that we won't have to abide in darkness. Everyone makes it sound like Jesus is literally hanging out in the sunlight at Saint Helen's during morning Mass, like He's right there in the weave of the bright, nifty sweaters around me.

My problem is, I like abiding in darkness. I like the dark path, the low, forever shadows among the trees. For me, God is in that darkness. He's not a devil, or a tree, or a wood sprite. He's the Lord, He just happens to be in darkness. I feel restful knowing that He's there and I love Him, but I can't explain why I find Him where I do. I'm afraid to try. I'm afraid it's wrong. And I'm afraid that if I go talking about how God is in the darkness, He will leave it and I'll be alone.

One night that same June, Scott and I prowl through the country club woods, hunting for Tommy Marzipretta. We and some other kids are playing a chase-and-hunt game that we call Ghost-Ghost and Tommy is the ghost, the prey. I'm excited because Lesley Hendrik is playing and she's wearing her blue jeans with the tiny pink suede frog sewn on the butt pocket.

Scott and I have been searching for a while. We scuff along on the dark path. Rounding a bend, we come across Lesley and Tommy. They're near my favorite spot on the path. Lesley stands leaning back against a large maple tree and Tommy stands close to her. Also, they're not wearing pants and he's fucking her.

“Shit bomb,” says Scott quietly.

I stop dead still. I've never even kissed a girl. I blink rapidly to make sure that those are Lesley's jeans lying disembodied in the grass. Yes, there's the pink suede frog. As for Lesley herself, her startling, pale white ass rubs up and down against the tree bark and I look at her startled, lovely face. Tommy casually raises his chin in greeting to us and keeps plunging into Lesley.

“Took you faggots long enough to find us,” he says.

I can't breathe right. It's a sin to fuck a girl you're not married to, and it's probably an even bigger sin if you fuck a girl you're not married to up against a tree. And Tommy is fucking my Lesley on my path. There's a knife dicing me up inside.

More ghost-searchers wander up behind me. It's the Langini brothers and Lesley's best friend, Theresa Whelan, another Raven Road girl. They all see the rutting couple and stop.

“Minghia!” says Mike Langini.

“Yep,” says Tommy. He stops thrusting and just stands there with his naked middle trapping Lesley's naked middle against the tree.

Theresa laughs her nervous laugh and waves. “Hey, Lesley.”

“Hey, Theresa.” Lesley waves back weakly. No one seems to know what to say. None of us except Tommy is even fifteen yet. Lesley looks like a specimen in science class, a butterfly spread and pinned to a board. I need her to feel embarrassed and terrified by what's happening to her, the way I feel, but she turns her face away so I'll never know.

“I'm inside her,” clarifies Tommy.

I can't take it. I run home, alone. My mother and sisters are at a dance show, like they often are, and my father is in Detroit on GM business. When I get into the house I sit on the living room floor, anxious. I need release from what I just saw.

I go down to the basement, to the carpeted area outside my bedroom where we have a stereo and where my sisters work up their dance routines. I put on the
Grease
soundtrack and cue up “Summer Nights.” Then I perform the routine that I—on previous occasions—have worked up to accompany this song. Dancing is what my sisters do to figure out their feelings and, when I'm alone, I sometimes do it, too.

I play the song through three times, performing the part that I've choreographed for Sandy, complete with falsetto high notes and skipping and flouncing. Then I play the song through three more times, performing Danny Zuko's part. Performing this girls-versus-guys duet is as close as I can come to processing thoughts about sex.

I am in mid-pirouette when the music cuts out.

“David?”

I yelp and turn around.

My father has his hand on the stereo volume knob. He's wearing a black suit and looking at me, astonished.

I pray,
Thank you, Lord, that I did Sandy's part first.

“Dad . . . I thought you were in Detroit.”

“I just got back.”

I hug him and hold on for a while to let my blushing die down.

“David, what were you doing? Was that one of the girls' routines?”

I step back from him. “Sort of. I just . . . like that song.”

He studies me. I know he worries that I act too much like a girl, but he won't freak out about my dancing. In our family we all love to cut the rug. At weddings my father jitterbugs with my mother, but he'll dance solo, too. During fast songs he has a move where he crouches down close to the floor and then shoots up, splaying out his arms and kicking, with a loopy grin on his face. When he does this, his stern authority melts and he looks joyful.

“David,” he says now, “you look keyed up. What's the matter?”

In my mind I see the girl I adore getting fucked in the dark place I adore. There isn't supposed to be fucking on the path. Only contemplation. Only God.

“Nothing,” I lie.

•   •   •

I GO TO
an all-male high school, McQuaid Jesuit, and for four years I run cross-country. I do other things, too—tons of schoolwork, small chorus parts in a few plays—but cross-country is my obsession. The most addictive part of it is the Five Hundred Mile Challenge.

This challenge takes place in the summers. Our coach asks each of us to run five hundred miles over ten weeks to get ready for the fall season.

Each summer morning, rain or shine, I run three or four laps around the edges of Black Creek Country Club. Each lap is two and a half miles. I run shirtless, in shorts and Nikes. I run through woods, skirt the rough beside the fairways, climb grassy hills, and then run down into the cool pockets of air along Black Creek. I know every snarled tree root to dodge, every mossy or brittle patch of ground. I pound my feet extra hard as I cross the shoddy wooden bridge over the creek on the second hole, and the mother duck under the girders flaps out and bitches,
Seriously? Again? I've got kids here!