“That isn’t your job,” the bishop said. “Circumstances? They’re for cops and lawyers. We have to settle these things before that crowd gets involved.”
“What if they want money?”
“We’ll deal with that if it arises.”
“The wife had a doctor’s appointment,” the man said, handing me a mug of coffee. “She’s been on medication since this shit came up.”
He sat opposite me, a low table between us. There was a large art book beside a red glass ashtray. You remember the obscure details. They buffer all the odious realities. He was a businessman, the jeans he was wearing looked stiff and new, yet-unwashed. My formal suit, my collar, meant nothing to him now. The circumstances made us equals.
“The boy is in school. I thought we should talk this over man to man.”
“Yes. But I should meet him.”
“You will. He’ll be home in an hour or so. How was the drive down?”
It was a two-hour drive, but it took me three. By then I’d developed an aversion to these trips. I had stopped at a little restaurant and lingered over tea for as long as I could endure the glances and the stares drawn by my black suit, my Roman collar.
“This is hard to talk about,” the man said. “But let’s cut to the chase. I want that man out of here toot sweet. I don’t care where he goes. But I want him out of here. Preferably out of the Church entirely.”
“I understand,” I said.
“If he was anything but an effing priest, I’d shoot him, if you’ll pardon my language.” The contempt in his expression was all-inclusive. “I’m gonna tell you right up, straight, and I don’t want you to take this personally. But just looking at you sitting there gives me a problem. That’s what he’s done. That’s what he’s done to me, for God’s sake. I don’t even want to think about the young fellow and how he feels.” He waved a futile hand in my direction then looked away. “The collar . . . Christ, I was an altar boy myself. That collar meant something. It carried more authority than a badge. Now? I could just . . . rip it off of you.”
“If it would help, I’ll—”
“No, no. Christ. Don’t do that. I’m sorry.”
It was by then a familiar story. Devout family. Boys on the altar. Excursions. No suspicions of anything. Then a personality change. The boy seems withdrawn, uncommunicative, showing signs of rebellion. They think it’s growing pains at first. Then they find pot or pills and it explains everything for a while. They read how excessive use of cannabis makes them moody, causes school performance to suffer. There is a confrontation. Eventually, the tearful, heart-stopping allegation.
“I imagine it’s like getting shot,” the father said. “My dad was in the war. Got hit in France, a few days after D-Day. Said you don’t feel a thing at first. The pain comes later, gradually.”
I said I understood.
“Thank Christ he isn’t around for this,” he sighed. “Dad was from the old school.”
I sipped my coffee, waiting. They have to get it out.
“The thing that gets me is that I used to hear about this kind of stuff and I’d always minimize it. Isolated situation, I’d say. A bad apple in every barrel. Or you’d hear about a case that went on for years. I’d ask myself: How can someone be a victim for years . . . repeatedly? Over and over again. Why don’t they stop it? They must, in some way, be complicit. That’s what you’re thinking. You forget they’re only kids, dealing with the ultimate in moral authority.” He seemed to pause, to pull back from the brink of bitterness. He shook his head. “Then it happens to yourself. Right in your own family.”
“You weren’t exactly wrong when you thought it was a matter of ‘isolated incidents.’ I have to assure you that this—”
“Whoa,” he interrupted. His face flushed as he raised a cautionary hand. “We’re both grown-ups. Let’s not bullshit each other. I’ve been following what’s going on. In Newfoundland. Down in the States. What the Indians are saying about those schools.”
He got up then and took my mug to the coffee pot and refilled it. The angry spasm seemed to pass.
“He’s such a good boy,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “From the day he was born, you just knew that this was one of the special kids. Sweet-natured. Smart. Spiritual in a way you don’t see often in little boys.”
I could sense the returning outrage.
He lit a cigarette, tapping off the ashes even before they formed. “This was the last thing I expected. You’re ready for the little fender-benders and the mood swings and the booze and the pot. I mean, it isn’t so long since I was young myself. And we went through it all before, with his older brother. I thought he was haywire. I mean the booze thing. Even dope. But nothing like this.”
Tactical opportunity. “And where is he now?”
“Who?”
“Your older boy.”
“He’s at St. Mary’s. Maybe you heard of him. On the football team.”
“Ah,” I said, smiling, insinuating that I knew of him.
“We were going to send this one to St. FX. That’s where you are, isn’t it?”
I tried to read his face for insinuation, but failed. “Didn’t you play football yourself . . . I seem to remember . . . ?”
“Hockey. You have a good memory. I actually tried out for Winnipeg. When the old WHA was going. Got homesick, though. I’m impressed anybody remembers. How’s the coffee?”
“Fine,” I said.
A healing silence descended for a moment. I presumed his mind was briefly back in Winnipeg.
Eventually I said: “I’d like to hear as much as you care to tell me. And I want you to understand that this is just for the record. We are in no doubt about the truth of what you’ve already told us. I want you to understand that. Our only concern is the well-being of your son. And of course . . . and this is why I want to talk to him . . . any other possible . . . victims. We have to know the extent of this . . . situation.”
I knew that the anger was in check for the moment but that I would have to deal with it again when the time was right. When the tears were ready. Anger is safest when there are tears close by to extinguish it.
“Okay,” he said, and breathed deeply. “Jesus, this is hard.”
“Let’s just pray for a moment. Privately, if you wish. Let’s ask for guidance here. And justice. In the end, that’s what we want.”
He nodded fervently, lowered his head and clasped his hands before his face. In less than a minute he was sobbing.
When we sat down to Christmas dinner, they asked me to say grace, and after I finished I noticed the William person still smiling at me. The eyes, at least in my imagination now, were full of secret information.
Stella was seated across from me. She winked.
The old lady beside me was William’s mother, the aunt. Peggy.
“I imagine you’re happy to see the end of Christmas,” she said, nudging me. “I always feel sorry for the poor priests at Christmastime.”
I smiled. “It isn’t as busy as it used to be.”
“I suppose not,” she said, turning to her plate.
Later, the old lady, Peggy Beaton, nudged me again, leaned close and said: “I suppose you have the Gaelic too.”
“The what?” I said, confused.
“Your sister has beautiful Gaelic,” she said, nodding toward Effie.
“Oh, yes. No. I’m afraid most of mine is gone. Like everything else.” I tried to laugh.
She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “It’s like the faith. All watered down now. Or gone altogether. The times we live in, I suppose.”
She sighed.
I was shocked by the boy’s youth. Or maybe he just looked younger than his years, standing there dwarfed by his father, who brought him into the room, large arm draped over his shoulders.
“This here is Father MacAskill,” he said. “The bishop sent him. We’ve been having a good chat. He wanted to meet you.”
The boy was timid. His handshake tentative and soft. “Hel
lo, Father,” he said quietly.
The discussion was delicately phrased. The first incident happened during a visit to Halifax for a hockey playoff two years earlier. They stayed in a hotel. Father Al came to his room late. Checking, he said. To make sure the boys were all accounted for. Wouldn’t want to lose one of you, he said, joking. Father would make you laugh. But he wouldn’t leave. You look miserable, he said. I think you need a hug. It all seemed so normal.
How wrong he was.
And why didn’t he speak up sooner?
He had no answer. Just shrugged and looked at his father.
We worked together to sedate the worst of it with clinical evasions. Bum. Penis. Anus. The boy knew those words but didn’t know the proper words for the acts in question, so he eventually stumbled and fell silent.
And when he started to sniff, his father lost control.
“God damn it,” he cried, bringing his fist down suddenly on the small table in front of me.
“Please, Dad,” the boy pleaded.
After dinner, Effie whispered: “I see you and Aunt Peggy hit it off.”
“Aunt Peggy?”
“Their aunt, Peggy. I was talking to her.”
“Oh, yes. You made a big impression.”
“We might even be related,” she said brightly. “I had her do her sloinneadh. There were some familiar names.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “When did you become an expert on the family tree?”
“Stop it. You’re as curious as I am.”
“About what?”
“The Gillis connection. Peggy was a Gillis, originally. She thinks our grandma might have been a Gillis.”
“I only know of one Gillis connection that seems to matter to you,” I said playfully.
She gave me a look of disdain then walked away, arms folded.
Sextus noticed the tension. His eyes said Whaaat?
And then insinuating William was standing there with a cup of tea trembling in his hand. He was staring at Effie as she went. “A beautiful lady, your sister is, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Yes, I suppose she is.”
“I was listening to herself and Mamma talking gaidhlig. It was lovely to hear the two of them.”
“You obviously have it yourself,” I said.
“Ah, well. Beagan droch ghaidhlig, as they used to say. Then of course, they’d say there’s no such thing as ‘bad Gaelic.’ Right?”
“That’s what they’d say.”
“Your sister says we might be related, in a roundabout way.”
“Did she now?”
“She didn’t say exactly how. Through your grandmother, I think.”
“They say everybody around here is more or less related,” I said, and he nodded.
There was a sudden commotion in the kitchen. Loud greetings. And a gush of cheer and chilly air. Then Sextus entered the room to inform us that a fiddler had arrived, one of the new crop of local young musicians making reputations far afield. There was still a childish innocence about him, a warmth that started in the eyes and enriched a toothy smile. Beside him was Danny’s girlfriend, Sally. The fiddler, she told me, was her brother, Archie. After introducing us, she walked away in search of Danny.
“I heard about you,” said Archie. “I don’t get to church as often as I should. I’m on the road a lot. But they say you’re giving the place a new lease on life.”
I laughed and shrugged. I then noticed his friend, who appeared to be a little older. He told me his name was Donald.
“Donald O’Brian,” he said. “You know my father, Bob. In Creignish.”
There was something familiar about the adolescent rasp in the voice. From the confessional, perhaps.
“I remember you from campus, but you probably don’t remember me,” he said. “I live downtown.”
I said I remembered him. “Your father is the backbone of the parish,” I said.
He smiled broadly. “The old man should have been a priest. Of course . . . where would that leave me?”
We laughed. Where indeed!
And soon Sextus was handing out drinks again and young O’Brian was sitting stiffly at an old upright piano in the living room. The fiddler was on a wooden kitchen chair beside him and the music became a living thing that danced among us.
Afterwards, the old lady, Peggy, asked her son to sing a song. “Come on, Willie. Gabh oran. Chust one.”
Willie looked sheepish and declined, but Peggy insisted and the room went quiet.
“I’ll just sing one, then,” he said eventually.
I realized I understood the words. Age reopens forgotten places in the memory, I thought. Then I caught young Danny MacKay staring at me. His posture struck me as aggressive, one elbow propped on his knee, hand cupping the side of his face, the other hand clasping his thigh.
“What did you think of the song?” I asked him afterwards.
He made a derisive gesture.
Then the singer was squatting beside his mother, talking quietly. And she began to struggle to her feet.
Stella moved quickly. “You aren’t leaving,” she said with exaggerated disapproval.
“It’s late,” Aunt Peggy said. “And it’s starting to snow again. Willie is getting anxious.”
“But it isn’t late at all,” said Stella. “And you’re only up the road and it’s only a little flurry anyway. I can see the moon.”
“No, no,” William insisted, already guiding the old lady out of the room, tension in his face.
Near Danny’s chair, old Peggy stopped and he stood and gave her a quick, gentle embrace. William stood back, watching silently.
When they were gone, Sextus remarked, “There goes one strong argument against temperance.”
I asked what he meant.
“Some other time,” he said. “You know his claim to fame?”
“No.”
“He’s never been across the causeway.” He tilted his head, arched his eyebrows in mute disapproval.
“So, how well do you know Stella?” I asked.
“Not nearly well enough. I met her when she first landed in Toronto. You should have seen her then.”
She stepped briefly into the kitchen, smiled, went out again.
“Ohhhh, yes,” he said. “Then I saw her at a singles thing in town.”
“I didn’t realize that you were that hard up. Cruising singles functions.”
He looked at me with a slight trace of hostility. “By the way, Effie and I are thinking of leaving soon. What about yourself? Maybe you want to wait. Obviously you have your own ride.” He nodded in Stella’s direction.
“I’ll get my coat,” I said.
We held back briefly near the door while Willie and his mother got their coats and boots on. On the way out, the old lady paused, took my hand in hers.
“Be sure to come and visit. I was talking to your sister, Effie. She says maybe we’re related. And she said you’ve got lots of Gaidhlig . . .”
I laughed and winked. “We’ll see.”
I felt a sudden weariness. After months of inactivity, the days before Christmas had become endless hours crouched in the confessional, tedious visits to the housebound. Mass Christmas Eve. Mass at midnight. Two masses that morning. I was aware of a great weight. Anxiety and weariness. Or maybe a yearning.
Stella seemed to read my mind. “You really have to go?”
“I really do.”
“Some date you are,” she said, and poked my ribs playfully.
The wine, I thought. It’s the wine that makes her eyes go green like that.
Then young Danny was in front of me, a drink in his hand. “Can I get you something, Father?”
“No. I’m thinking of sneaking away.”
“Hey, it’s just getting started.”
His warmth seemed genuine now, and it occurred to me that this might be his essence, the basis of his friendship with his father.
“I did something the other day,” he said. “I didn’t want to
bother you. But there was an old tarp in the barn and I used it to cover the back of your boat. Keep the snow out. Snow is bad for the old wooden boats. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
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