The Body

by RJ Martin

  “Well, when your dad gets back, we’ll be talking more about this.” Follow-up was not a given, and Angie and I both knew it. Lucky for us both, our dad had left not long after us. Gone ice fishing on the north end of the lake. He loved and took care of us, but the mountains were his real home. When he hiked out of the woods, revived and capable of doing for us again, it was fifty-fifty if Mom would bother him about it.

  We descended the three steps into our living room, then up the two into the kitchen—my house was so dumb—and found Mémé parked at the table with a tattered book in front of her. Angie did not seem interested, just grabbed a yogurt packet, and went down the hall to her room. Maybe I was too keyed up for bed or something because I poured a glass of milk and stepped closer than my usual.

  “What are you looking at, Mémé?”

  “Pictures.” She turned a page without facing me.

  “I haven’t seen that album before.”

  “Hmph.” She flipped past the front cover. Once black, it had paled to gray along with the construction paper pages. Some of the pictures fell out as the yellowed tape gave way. “People you don’t know and places you’ve never been.” She answered an unasked question. “I am too old to tell you about them now.”

  “Is it the Gaspé?”

  “Oui.”

  “Are there pictures of Grandpa Hank?”

  “Non, il n’est pas ici.” No, he is not here. My grandmother broke into French when she got flustered or wanted us to go away. “I have no energy to try and explain, hmph.” Most old ladies liked to share about their lives. It was supposed to be harder to shut them down than get them talking. That’s what happened on TV. My grandmother must’ve not seen those shows.

  “Qui est-il?” Who is he? I decided to use her native tongue as a signal I really was interested. I pointed at a handsome young man in an old-fashioned bathing suit. I could’ve worn it this summer; short trunks like those were in again except without the belt. Mémé was standing beside him. I knew it was her from looking at her ancient wedding pictures.

  “He was a man I loved.” She looked at me with an accusatory glance. It was up to me to decide if she should continue.

  “Before Grandpa Hank?”

  “Avant.” Before. “Après.” After. “Toujours.” Always.

  “You loved Grandpa Hank too, right?” Maybe I should’ve just gone to bed.

  “Votre grand-père a dit qu’il m’emmènerais en Amérique.” Your grandfather said he would bring me to America. This shocked me. It had been ingrained into Angie and me as long as we could remember that Grandpa Hank had been the driving force and Mémé the reluctant companion.

  “Why didn’t you get this guy to bring you?” I pointed at the picture. I thought about asking his name but decided it was all too weird even without knowing too much. Maybe if I hadn’t smoked out with Rusty before….

  “Il a dit non.” He said no. I had to translate on the fly. I excelled in the class because Grandpa Hank insisted we know his mother tongue.

  “But I thought you and this guy loved each other.”

  “Il m’aimait, mais sa vie était là-bas.” He loved me but his life was there. Mémé looked me in the eye, close up, the two of us in the faint pool of the buzzing fluorescent ring. “I chose America over him.” English returned as the story moved south. “I wanted America for so long it was part of me, hmph. I wanted it even when I didn’t want it anymore.”

  Mémé stopped talking for a few seconds. I just waited. I was afraid if I said anything she’d stop sharing her memories. Je me souviens, the Quebec license plate read. Literally, it meant I remember in English. Grandpa Hank had told me once there was a lot more to it, and you had to be from there to really understand.

  “Life was hard for me here,” she started again. Her breathing was heavier. I think our chat, hers really because I was mostly just listening, wore her out. “I didn’t know the English words as well as I thought. I was so lonely. Thank God for the church, hmph. It was all that reminded me of home.”

  “Why didn’t you go back?”

  “I had a husband, a son.” She shook her head. “I never went. Your father I sent every summer but me, no.” She lifted her mug but didn’t drink. It was like she remembered she had one more thing to say. “When your father was born, it hurt me inside.” She leaned closer, spoke softer, almost whispering. “I couldn’t have more babies and my belly…. Now I have the wind, hmph?” Mémé had never talked about her flatulence before. She sipped her tea and scowled. “C’est froid.” It’s cold. She frowned in both languages at once.

  “What happened to the man you loved?”

  “Je ne sais pas. And I don’t want to.” Mémé patted my hand. “The old lady must go to bed.”

  “Do you regret not marrying that other boy?”

  “Your grand-père was a good man, and regrets are for people who don’t make choices. Non?”

  “Oui.” Until that moment I had no idea Mémé had an interesting life and wisdom too. I felt like there’d been this great resource for knowledge and maybe even advice right in front of me all this time, and I’d never even thought to notice.

  “Va au lit, mon ange.” Go to bed, my angel.

  “Mémé, je ne suis pas Angie.” Grandma, I’m not Angie. I was worried she’d gotten confused.

  “Je sais.” I know. “Jonah.” Mémé patted my hand. That was as close as she’d ever been to affectionate. “Va.” Go. She switched off the light and left me in the dark. I got a whiff of one of her silent but deadly toots and, finally tired, I shuffled toward my room.

  I GOT back from the bathroom to find Angie on my bed. Since I hadn’t bothered to put on a pajama top, my first reaction was to cover my slender chest.

  “Where were you?”

  “Brushing my teeth?”

  “Chad was looking for you after the game.” She sounded playful but whispered because it was nearly two in the morning. It was like we were telling secrets like we used to. “I caught up with him later.”

  “Must’ve been right before I did.” I was getting better at lying, practice making perfect.

  When we were little, Angie sneaked in my room and told me things after our parents went to bed. Sometimes it was about how there were monsters in our crawl space. When I then ran screaming, she got on the toilet because she’d laugh herself into peeing. Other things she told me weren’t scary at all. My big sister once described in detail a purple-and-gray butterfly. Those were our school uniform colors and wasn’t it amazing she was in hers when she found it. She’d also bring me pictures, torn from magazines she read at the dentist’s office or salon at the mall, of exotic places that were pretty and warm. Where we’d escape to someday. I’d been part of her grand plan then. Now she thumbed the magazines and dreamed alone.

  “Some of the kids were talking about what you did for Bart.”

  “He’s a jerk, but his dad is even worse.” I dug a T-shirt from the pile on my floor and slipped it on. My room never looked messy like this before. Angie’s room looked like this. I would clean it tomorrow.

  “Maya was really impressed.”

  I shrugged.

  “She might be into you.”

  “No.”

  “I could ask her.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “She’s really hot.” Angie tried to entice me. “And she’s a senior.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “You haven’t been ordained yet.” She winked at me. “I’m sure lots of priests had sex at some point.”

  “Look, I still need to say my prayers.” JC glowed on the wall behind her. Had he sent my sister to warn me, to keep me in line?

  “One question,” she said and, by doing so, invoked a game we’d made up years ago.

  “Yes or no.” I set the terms. Open-ended ones were also options. In that version the questioner would keep going with a theory until they got some bit wrong and then the game ended. When we were kids the long answer to a question might’ve been as h
armless as being about what happened during recess that day.

  “Darcy was the pitcher and you kicked the ball right back to her and then you had lunch with her and Chad and then did pluses and minuses.”

  “No, just minuses.” Then the game was over. The other version was Yes or No. This game allowed the questioner to continue asking until an answer was no.

  “Me first,” she said and patted the bed beside me.

  “I’m really tired.”

  “You already agreed.”

  “Would you have let me get out of it?”

  “No.”

  “Game’s over, I lost.”

  “Nice try.” She patted the bedspread again. I caved and sat. “But it was my turn.”

  “Both at once.” The great thing about any kids’ game is the rules are fluid, and there were many.

  “Fine. One, two…. Did you ever go to Chad’s?”

  “Did you and Rusty do it?”

  She gaped, shocked at what I asked.

  “Maybe we should just quit.”

  “Jonah?”

  “You didn’t answer either.”

  “No, okay.” She sat back and stared at me. “He’s not some horny high school boy. He really cares about me.” She practically started to bounce. “He said I could be a model like him, and he’s going to help me get started. We might even go to New York.” Her words crushed me like a soda can under my heel. How could he have just kissed me and said that to her? Would I be able to sleep at all? “Why do you care anyway?”

  “You really like him, right?” I bit the inside of my cheek to not let her see any reaction.

  “Yeah.” Her face brightened the way I bet mine did when he kissed me. “It’s your turn.” She looked me right in the eye like she could see the truth inside me. “Were you at Chad’s?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell me where you were?”

  “The game’s over.” I kicked at the pile on my floor. “We both lost.”

  “You’re really becoming an interesting person, Jonah.” Rather than leave, Angie draped an arm around my shoulder.

  “You too.” The tote board exploded.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I GOT hard in church. I was on the altar, during Mass, and with the fullest house since Three Kings. Ash Wednesday: the first day of Lent when everyone that even pretends to pay attention gets back with the program for the forty days until Easter. It was the time of atonement, and I knew what—I mean who—I should give up. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I held the Gospel in front of Father Svi as he speed-read through Matt. 6. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be zeen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

  “Somebody getting high in here?” I spun my head, and saw Rusty just stepping inside.

  “It’s incense,” Angie whispered as she giggled. “Now behave, or we’ll get thrown out.”

  “They have bouncers?” Rusty’s voice wasn’t loud but carried over the silence in the pews. He ducked as he scanned the rafters like he was waiting to be struck down. Everyone turned and at least took a quick glance. Maya was there with Karen but not Jana. Bart sat between his mom and dad. My parents were going later after my father got out of work. He was stuck cleaning the rooms again because another housekeeper had quit. It paid crap, and the overnight, sleeping-it-off crowd Big Bart sent over could really mess things up. Chad and Darcy sat off to one side. Darcy went to Mass every Sunday and Chad not as much. His parents rarely came anymore, so I don’t think there was any pressure on him to go either. The only reason they made him go even once in a while was because Sister Margo would get the heads-up from Father Dom about who was and wasn’t keeping good with God, and then she’d call home. Embarrassed parents then made sure their kids were in the pews the following Sunday, and if Sister Margo laid it on thick enough, Mom, Dad, or both would be there too.

  Father Svi paused and cleared his throat just a little. Even that sounded like a z-sound. Zuh-uh-zuh. It was not just the disruption caused by my sister and her boyfriend but because of my not paying attention. I shifted my focus back toward the priest and his disapproving scowl. Father Svi finished the passage that said to give alms in private, pray in private, and generally don’t act pious in front of other people. Just live it instead.

  I sat down to hear Father Svi’s homily. The gist of it was that JC said, “Don’t be a hypocrite.” Rusty sat in the last row with Angie. His arm draped on the bench behind her back, and Angie’s head rested on his shoulder. They looked more like they were at the movies than a holy day Mass. Rusty pulled off his beanie and shook out his JC hair with the same whip of his head that I was getting used to but still made me tingle every time he did it. I was giving him up, I reminded myself, for Angie’s sake and I think mine too.

  I shifted my gaze up to JC himself. Rather than provide the comfort he once did, not even all that long ago, he became a temptation too. I could imagine his powerful legs in motion, a gait like Rusty’s. His forearms would flex the way Rusty’s had in the car. His chest would heave like Rusty’s had when he got too close and his lips found mine. Looking at Rusty was no better. I imagined him, arms outstretched, wearing nothing but JC’s old-fashioned briefs.

  Just before I was supposed to stand and assist with the ashes, I woke up down there. I felt it poking against the inside of my boxer shorts. To keep it hidden, I took hold of my puffy surplice and tried to hold the lace fabric out ahead of me. I must have caught some of the cassock underneath too and did a header right in front of Father Svi, Chad, Darcy, the Barts, Maya, my sister, Rusty, and JC. If you’ve never fallen on a boner before, it’s like getting kicked in the nuts by a horse. All the air left my lungs, and I know some of the groan leaked out even as I successfully swallowed the scream.

  “Sorry.” I got back to me feet and resisted the urge to wipe the tears from my eyes. At least the pain took my mind off the cause, and I was able to concentrate again on doing JC’s work. That only lasted for, like, a minute because then Rusty started down the aisle. In the ashes line, with his hands folded before him, he tried to look solemn. His half-dimpled grin betrayed the fun he was having with us all.

  “Give me a big one, please,” Rusty requested. “I want people to see it.” Rather than scold him, Father Svi dipped his finger back into the bowl of moist ash that came in a can. Father made a large cross that spanned the entire length of Rusty’s forehead and ran all the way across it too. He looked like some kind of medieval Christian warrior on his way to a crusade.

  “Thanks, man.” Rusty raised a hand to shake the priest’s.

  “Rusty,” I said as a warning before Angie had a chance.

  “Sorry.” He flashed me his million-dollar smile and showed both dimples this time. I didn’t have to face him to know Father Svi was glaring at me. Now both heads ached. Maya and Karen huddled, chuckled. I guess her interest in me was only in Rusty’s absence. Chad looked his way too. Even with several pews between us, I could tell my friend was not thrilled by what he saw. He whispered to Darcy and knowing him so well, I could guess at what he said, one of his favorite expressions: jerk.

  Father Svi reached an inky finger toward my forehead, and I felt it go from my hairline to the gap between my eyebrows. He dipped again and made the crossbar go all the way across too. I’d never gotten so much ashes, and I knew it was payback for Rusty being there. I hoped they would leave before Communion. My sister had the ashes: a requirement to get into school that day. Not officially of course, but you could expect a lot of stares from the sisters and teachers if you didn’t. It also meant repeating like a mantra that your family was attending the evening Mass. Instead Rusty filed back into line, again trying to be solemn. As Rusty got closer to the altar, Angie whispered too loudly, “Say amen.”

  “Amen?”

  She nodded.

  Rusty again stood before us: Father Svi, me, and JC. No way Father Svi would give an obvious nonbeliever the sacrament. Didn’t Angie kn
ow that? I almost gasped when the priest reached in the chalice and chose Rusty a Host.

  “Amen,” Rusty said.

  “Not yet.” Angie beat me to it this time.

  “The body of Christ.” Father Svi remained stoic.

  “Amen?”

  Father Svi set the JC wafer on Rusty’s tongue. He flicked it back like a breath mint and winked at me. He turned to return to his seat but not before trying to mimic the guy in front of him, a weekday raisin regular who made the sign of the cross in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin on his way out the door. Rusty messed it up and went up, down, and back and forth two times. Finally, back in their pew he and Angie knelt but didn’t pray. Instead she whispered something in his ear as his eyes found mine. Now, Rusty watched me just like JC did.

  THE SOUND of clapping startled me. I let my surplice fall back over my cassock and wheeled to see Rusty in the sacristy.

  “You can’t be here.”

  “I wanted to come backstage and congratulate you. Show’s over, isn’t it?” Rusty looked back toward the nave, where I was sure JC was fuming. “I mean everyone’s gone. Even your sister is on her way to school with her mean girls.” He stepped up too close for where we were. I leaned back so there was at least some daylight between us. “This is really cool.” He slipped the lace of my surplice through his fingers. “I’d wear this maybe.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  Rusty’s face scrunched up like he’d been stung by a bee.

  “Is that why you got up so early and came down here?” I slipped off my cassock and my undone tie fell out of my pocket.

  “I can show you how to do it yourself if you want.”

  “How do you know I can’t?”

  “Your sister told me.” Rusty draped the tie around my neck and started to make a knot.

  “She thinks I’m just a kid.”

  “I don’t.” He finished the knot and leaned closer until his shiny coat grazed my required white oxford shirt. The door from the nave swung open, and I sent Rusty back with a huge shove.