The Good Luck of Right Now (13 page)

Adam had blue eyes, brownish hair cut respectable but shaggy like yours, Richard Gere. Wendy introduced us. When he shook my hand, he squeezed really hard, hurting me a little.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said. “Sorry about your mother.”

I nodded and then stared at my brown shoelaces. I don’t think Wendy was supposed to talk about our sessions with anyone else because it violates counselor-client privilege. I began to feel like I shouldn’t have told Wendy anything about myself at all.

“Would you like a drink?” Adam said.

Soon we were seated at a large wooden table with wineglasses in our hands.

I sipped and the wine tasted expensive, or maybe I assumed it did, since I know next to nothing about wine.

“So . . . to what do we owe this honor?” Adam asked, in a way that suggested he’d rather be eating his red meat and radishes, which is exactly what he started to do. “Don’t want to let a good Kobe steak get cold,” he added, as if he could read my mind. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have—”

“We’re concerned about Wendy,” Father McNamee said.

“Why?” Adam said as he chewed, looking completely nonchalant.

“Maybe because it looks like she went ten rounds with the current heavyweight champion,” Father McNamee said, “whose name I cannot recall, but he must be able to smash up faces and make Wendy’s look like it currently does.”

“You know Wendy. Anything a man can do, she can do better—and don’t tell her otherwise. No, she will play softball against all men, and that’s that!” Adam said and then smiled at Wendy. “She’s so competitive that she knocked down a line drive on the hot corner with her face. No ducking for her.
Admirable
. You have to admit.”

Wendy smiled back but didn’t say anything; she looked stiff as a cardboard cutout of herself.

Adam said “admirable” in a way that made me believe he was telling the truth. It was like watching a television program. He looked like the lead on the show—the good guy—like everything he said would be followed by a laugh track of hundreds who loved this man. He was that type of person—the kind who could make you want to believe in lies, the kind who makes you feel stupid and ugly and too tongue-tied to express your own ideas, no matter how sure you are that you are right and he is wrong.

Father McNamee stared at Adam for a long time—it was almost like Father McNamee had entered into a trance.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Adam said to Father McNamee. “What are you doing?”

Father McNamee opened up the whirlpools in his eyes, and the whirlpools began to suck.

“Okay. Stop that. You’re starting to freak me out.”

You could feel the power.

I half expected the plates and silverware to begin sliding toward Father McNamee.

I averted my eyes.

“What’s with these guys?” Adam said to Wendy, and then downed his wine.

Father McNamee kept staring into Adam’s eyes.

The whirlpools were really starting to scare Adam, you could tell.

The whirlpools were sucking the color from his skin.

A giant pink elephant had filled the room and was crushing us against the walls, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.

“Stop staring at me,” Adam said to Father McNamee.

Father McNamee leaned forward and kept staring.

“You told me the big guy was crazy, but you didn’t say the priest was nuts too,” Adam said to Wendy.

The angry man in my stomach started to rage with great fury.

“I never, ever used the words
crazy
or
nuts
!” Wendy said to me.

“Listen,” Adam said. “Why are you staring at me?”

Father McNamee kept staring.

“Stop staring at me!” Adam said. “Stop it!”

Father McNamee stared so intently, he started to tremble a little.

“Horrible,” Father McNamee said. “Horrible what must have happened to you when you were a boy. I’ve counseled many abusers, and they were all abused. You learn it, and you must
unlearn
it too.”

“Get the hell out of my house!” Adam said.

“Horrible
,” Father McNamee said as he tilted his head. “You’re broken.”

Adam jumped out of his seat and made his way around the table, as if he were about to attack Father McNamee, but Wendy stood and put her hand on Adam’s chest. “It’s okay. They’re leaving.”

“I want them out of here!” Adam said, eyes wide, veins bulging.

“Okay,” Wendy said, gently massaging his biceps now. “Just go upstairs. I’ll make them leave.”

“I swear if these two clowns aren’t out of here by the time I—”

“I’ll take care of it.
You have more important things to worry about. Let me handle this. It’s small stuff. Nothing. Don’t worry.”

Adam glared at us for an uncomfortable ten seconds and then yelled, “Out! I want you out of my house!” before stomping up the spiral staircase.

“You better go,” Wendy said, trembling.

Father McNamee reached out and took her face in his hands. He removed her sunglasses, and her black eye looked even worse than it had earlier. The colors had dulled, but the damage appeared more pronounced and permanent—as if it had settled into her skin for good.

“You don’t want to move back in with your mother, I know. You think that would be a step backward. I know she’s depressed. Your mother can be oppressive. Adam provides a good life for you, financially. He pays for your schooling. He buys you nice things. He’s handsome even. He looks like a shiny key to a better beautiful life. You think you can save him, but this is not how you save people.”

“I got hurt playing softball,” Wendy insisted, but she was crying now, and her words made her sound like a child.

“You can live with Bartholomew and me,” Father McNamee said. “Leave with us now, and it will be easier for you. If you stay, he will beat you again when we leave. You know that. He can’t help himself. He’s sick. And make no mistake, you are part of that sickness now. You’re keeping him sick. Continuing the cycle. You need to leave right away—for him, for you.”

“It was a softball game. Third base. A line drive to my eye,” Wendy said, but she was looking at her slippers now, and her words were quiet and light as plucked feathers.

“Our door is open to you any time, day or night,” Father McNamee said, and then he hugged Wendy. “Let’s go, Bartholomew.”

We started to walk down the spiral staircase.

“How did you know his name was Adam?” Wendy said to me. She was leaning over the railing, watching us descend. She had put her sunglasses back on. Her angry words echoed in my head.
“How did you know that?”

I couldn’t think of the right way to tell her, so I just shrugged.

But then I thought of a line from the Dalai Lama’s book
A Profound Mind
: “‘We should work toward cherishing the welfare of others to the point where we are unable to bear the sight of their misery.’ The Dalai Lama said that. It’s hard for me to look at your bruises. That’s how we ended up here. That’s all I can explain right now.”

“Our home is open to you,” Father McNamee yelled up the stairs, and then we left.

We didn’t say anything to each other as we walked home.

I think we both knew what was happening to Wendy as we strolled—like our slow steps were prayers that could save her—and even though we had tried our best to protect her, there was nothing else we could do now.

Father McNamee seemed drained of energy, and I was too.

He got down on his knees and began to petition the Almighty just as soon as he arrived home, and he didn’t stop until late in the night when our doorbell rang.

It was Wendy.

The entire left side of her face was swollen and bruised. Her teeth were coated red with blood. Her posture was defeated.

“I’m so stupid. I’m so weak,” Wendy said, her voice sounding like a little kid’s, and I felt for her—I wanted to take away her pain, mostly because she was saying the things the little angry man in my stomach says all the time, and I know how horrible it is to hear those sorts of words associated with yourself and to believe that it’s all true.

She crumpled onto our couch and cried and moaned in Father McNamee’s arms as he rubbed her back and I wrung my hands until they looked scalded.

When she had cried herself out, Father McNamee covered her with a blanket and whispered, “You’re safe here, and you can stay as long as you like.”

Wendy was asleep in the fetal position.

“She needs rest,” Father McNamee whispered to me, and so I followed him upstairs.

He paused in the hallway and handed me his flask. It was silver and inscribed.

MAN OF GOD

We each took a few long pulls of whiskey. I felt my insides warm. When I handed the empty flask back to him, he lightly slapped my cheek twice and smiled at me.

“We’ve done good work tonight,” he said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“But you have,” Father McNamee said, and his face looked so proud.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words would come out.

I was confused.

“Good night, Bartholomew,” Father finally said.

“Good night,” I answered.

He went into Mom’s room and closed the door.

I had cleaned out all of Mom’s things, donating most to the local thrift store, but it was still her room—the place she had slept for many decades—so it was strange to think of our priest sleeping there now. And yet I felt like Mom would be okay with Father McNamee using her bed, because he was her favorite priest—a man she believed was all good.

I stood in the hallway wondering if I could take any credit for what Father McNamee had done to help Wendy. I couldn’t decide.

So I went into my room and wrote you this letter.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil

9

THERE WERE INDEED PATTERNS TO THE UNIVERSE

Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

Wendy didn’t get up off our couch for three days, and the whole time Father McNamee prayed in Mom’s room, which is becoming
his
room, and that hurts my brain a little.

The past few days have been a confusing time for me, as I’m not sure I enjoy having so many people in my mother’s house—especially Wendy, who Mom never even met. It was starting to feel like Mom never lived here at all, and I don’t like that one bit.

But I tried to remind myself of what the Dalai Lama says about compassion in
A Profound Mind
: “When our heart is full of empathy, a strong wish to remove their suffering will arise in us.” Wendy was clearly suffering. I want my heart to be full of empathy; I want to be as much like you as I can. And so I’m trying.

Father McNamee brought Wendy buttered toast and orange juice, macaroni and cheese and coffee, but she left it untouched and mostly buried her face in the cushions of the couch. I heard her use the bathroom late at night and wondered how she held it all day long. The bruises on her face were transitioning from purple to yellow. Father McNamee said this meant Wendy was healing on the outside, but not yet on the inside. Father McNamee said Wendy was embarrassed, mostly because she’d “traded roles with me.” I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but after a day or so I figured he meant that I was the one trying to get Wendy through a difficult period when she was supposed to be helping me. I can understand why that would make her feel like a failure, and I began to wonder if she had a little woman in her stomach that yelled at her and called her names.

I’ve tried to speak with Wendy, or her curled-up blanket-covered body on the couch. At first I said I was sorry about what happened. I asked if we should report Adam to the police and offered to go with her, to hold her hand the whole time while she reported the violence her man had committed—I even told her how hard it was for me to be alone when I had to talk to the hospital people and social workers about the squid cancer that was eating Mom’s brain, how I wish I had had someone to hold my hand and stay by my side—but Wendy did not respond; she didn’t even make eye contact with me. Then I asked her if she wanted to counsel me about having a beer with a woman at the bar, thinking that maybe returning to our original roles would help her feel better and more normal. But Wendy didn’t even pick up her head. Next I tried to talk to her about the weather and current events, which I had read about on the Internet at the library, but she didn’t respond. She kept her head buried in the cushions of the couch. So I just listened to the tough (or lazy) birds outside the kitchen window, and I thought about how those little winged creatures sing on and on regardless of who dies or who gets beaten or who feels like a miserable failure.

The birds are steady as the sun.

Last night, I wanted to watch a movie, because I was feeling the need for some “movie magic,” as Mom used to say, because she and I always watched a movie when one of us was down or when something bad happened in the world. “Movie magic is just the thing,” Mom would say as she held up a VCR tape and shook it like a tambourine. So I picked out one of her favorite VCR tapes—
An Officer and a Gentleman
—shook it and said, “Movie magic!” as if those words and the shaking could heal Wendy, trying very hard to believe in the power of believing. Wendy was still stretched out with her head buried under throw pillows, her usual position, so I sat on the floor with my back up against the bottom of the couch, like I used to do when I was a teenager and Mom was lying down.

When Father McNamee heard the opening sequence of the movie, where you—as Zach Mayo—tell your drunk father that you want to join the navy and fly jets, my ex-priest began popping popcorn in the microwave, which surprised me, because he had been praying at the kitchen table for almost seven hours, so I thought he was deep in an effort to converse with Jesus.

Watching you on the TV screen after all of our many conversations was a bit surreal—especially because this was the first time I’d watched one of your movies since Mom died, and I had never watched any of your movies without her. I thought I would be sad, that I would miss her, but watching you this time around made me proud to know you, if that makes any sense. I had seen
An Officer and a Gentleman
a million times before, but this was the first time I watched it as your friend. It was an entirely different experience, which made me wonder if you, Richard Gere, can ever just watch a movie, as you probably know every actor in Hollywood by now, so every time you see a film, you aren’t seeing strangers pretending, but people with whom you’ve worked and therefore have had conversations with and probably even drinks at the bar.