by Jim Sano
After Jimmy graduated, Annie saw him go out almost every night. She assumed it was to be expected but showing up for a quick dinner and then going back out again was difficult for Annie to accept. Annie loved Jimmy from the first second she laid eyes on him and now she felt she was losing him. To add to her stress, Gianni was going out more often at night right after Jimmy left, but they seemed to be fighting less often. Gianni would never tell Annie where he went or why he was out for such long hours.
The groceria was open late on Thursday night and sometimes Annie had to work later on those evenings. From the counter, Annie could see out the shop window and watch people walking past or entering the bar. One Thursday night, Annie was surprised to see Gianni walking past the shop. She moved closer to the window to see where he might be headed without stopping in to say hello. She was taken back when she saw Gianni talking with Mo Diavolo. Gianni didn’t seem angry nor was he acting as if he was trying to get away from Mo this time as his left hand rested on the right shoulder of Mo’s cream-colored jacket. She could see his other hand moving as he talked to Mo, almost as if he were making a proposition to him. Annie didn’t say anything to Gianni when she got home but noticed a difference in his behavior and more secretiveness of late. As they moved into the fall, Annie noticed that Gianni became quieter and was going out more evenings. When she talked to Gianni about Abbie’s surgery, he continued to seem confident they would have the money and that she wouldn’t have to worry.
David had temporarily drifted off to sleep with the diary in his lap and Trooper sound asleep by his side. When he awoke, he straightened the diary and turned the page to see the rest of the book was blank. The only last bit of handwriting from his brother he did spot was a figure on the back inside cover that read, 96,000 and underneath it was scribbled: Mo’s worried about Johnny. He felt as if he had lost access to Jimmy all over again.
David glanced at the clock: 4:14 a.m. He drank a cup of water, but it didn’t seem to quench his thirst. He fell asleep and didn’t wake until after 8:00 a.m., something he hadn’t done on a workday for as far back as he could remember.
At noon David canceled lunch with Quigs and Billy and spent the hour going for a walk to clear his head. He ended up in front of St. Anthony’s Church, where all seemed quiet. He decided to see if Tom was in the rectory, but before he could knock on the door, he heard a voice around the corner where the maintenance man was painting a window. “Father Fitzpatrick isn’t there.”
“Oh. Do you know if he’s coming back?” said David.
Angelo answered, “So far he has come back every time, so I suspect he’ll come back this time too.”
“I mean, do you think he’ll be back soon?”
“He’s usually over at the food kitchen serving on Thursdays, so I suspect he’ll be here in a bit. Did you want to sit in the church and wait?”
David had forgotten it was Thursday already. “No, no, no. I was just passing.”
Angelo said, “I’ll let him know you dropped by.”
On Friday, David took another stroll to the church during lunch. As he walked up to the rectory door, David knocked once before the maintenance man came around the corner.
“He did come back yesterday, but he’s back out again now.”
“Do you know if he’ll be long?”
“Well, he goes out every Friday at the same time, which was just a minute ago, and usually returns in an hour and a half. If you take the Green Line to Forest Hills and walk down Tower Street to the cemetery, you can probably find him.”
David asked, “The cemetery? Is he visiting his mom’s grave?”
“His mother’s buried in Hyde Park. I’m not sure, but I think it’s an old friend.”
David thanked him and found himself walking quickly to the T station to hop on the next outbound trolley. The Green Line trolley cars were old and crowded. David held onto a passenger strap as the trolley screeched and pulled away heading south.
The trolley was full of students from local colleges, older couples coming from one of the various Boston hospitals, and young, single women with one or two kids in tow. It was a motley crew that changed at each stop until he reached Forest Hills and stepped down to the ground as the folding doors slammed shut behind him and the trolley’s squeaky wheels pulled way.
David made his way down Tower Street, as Angelo had instructed, until he saw the iron gate leading into the large and impressive Forest Hills Cemetery. There were two beautiful chapels on the grounds, arches, and statues that provided a feeling of beauty and permanence. The fall foliage colored the landscape with bright reds, oranges, and yellows. The plantings and monuments made for a striking setting as well as the interesting task of finding Tom if he were there. He walked the curved paths through the cemetery, working his way up and down the lanes, around a large pond, and past the chapel buildings.
It crossed David’s mind that Tom may leave long before he found him. Just then, he saw someone kneeling beside a headstone. He felt awkward about being there and wasn’t even sure why he had come. There were trees and bushes along each section of that area and larger monuments that allowed him to move much closer without disturbing Tom or being seen by him. At that point, he realized Tom was sobbing. With a rush, he suddenly felt the tingle of the hairs on the back of his neck standing up in recognition of the pain of a still open wound. This wasn’t a momentary tear, but a lamenting cry of grief, sorrow and maybe regret. The always reserved and in control David was now flooded with emotion himself. The pain of the lump in his throat preceded the tears that began to roll down his own cheeks. Tom’s vulnerability, his obvious sense of loss and suffering, moved something profoundly deep in David. It wasn’t an emotion he could begin to control as he felt his body begin to shake.
Frozen in place, David slumped down on the grass with his back to the monument that blocked him from Tom’s sight. The old stone was cold; it made him almost shiver more as the comforting carved angel above him stood with her wings gracefully extended, one hand on her bosom and the other reached out as if to calm him. He sat for several minutes as tears continued to fall more slowly from his eyes. At one point he turned to try to catch a glimpse of Tom, but he was no longer there. He was slow to get up and made sure Tom wasn’t in sight. He felt as if he had invaded a very deep and personal part of Tom’s life without permission, but Tom was gone, and the cemetery was quiet except for the rustle of the colorful leaves being played with by the gentle fall breeze. He took a step out from behind the angel and saw the modest headstone Tom was leaning on moments before.
David slowly moved to the front of the gravestone until he was standing next to the spot Tom had knelt on. Below the carving of a small angel on the top of the stone, he read:
CORLIE ANN SMITH
May 13, 1964 – Oct 12, 1984
And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past,
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
Anne Bronte
At the base were a single white rose and a smaller bouquet of forget-me-nots. David thought how little a gravestone tells you about someone’s life, and that he had never visited the graves of any of the people he knew who had died. They were gone, and the relationship was done, but Tom had been coming to this grave every Friday. She was the same age as Tom, so she probably wasn’t his sister. The anguish he had seen on Tom’s face was that of someone who had recently lost someone they were deeply close to. David’s sincere interest in knowing who this deceased stranger was, among thousands in this burial ground, surprised him. Was it because he really cared about Tom more than he was used to feeling? Had he become so isolated from everyone in his life that entering into someone else’s pain out of pure friendship was now a foreign concept to him? He studied the stone, wondering what she was like, why she had died at the beginning of her young adult life, and what the poem meant.
Chapter 29
When David got ba
ck to his apartment, he found a note on the front door. “Are you up for a run tomorrow morning? The weather is supposed to be nice. I’ll bring some coffee at 9. (or you can come to Mass and we can leave from there.) :) TF”
For some reason, David hadn’t made any plans for the weekend. It was already nine, and Tom was knocking at the door with two coffees in hand, wearing a tee-shirt, shorts, and running shoes. It was already close to sixty degrees out and shaping up to be a good day for a run. He invited Tom in; Trooper barked until he saw David behind Tom with his hand up. Tom squatted down and took Trooper’s head in his hands. “So, you are the vicious attack dog I’ve been hearing about.” Trooper wagged his tail and rubbed his head into Tom’s chest. David showed Tom around, and Tom said, “Very nice, and no, I haven’t been here before, if you’re still wondering.”
With a nervous smile, David said, “No. No. No. The thought never even crossed my mind, but if you don’t mind, would you empty your pockets on the table?” They both laughed, and David led Tom up to the rooftop terrace.
“So, this is the life,” Tom said. “It’s quite impressive.”
“Thanks. I like that it’s comfortable and close.”
“Close to work, that is?”
After coffee and a small bite, they left for a run up Beacon Street, then out to the Charles River, running up one side and then down the other until they were sufficiently exhausted. As they walked on the dirt path along the river, Tom said, “Angelo tells me you dropped by this week?”
“Oh, yeah. I was just taking a walk during lunchtime and happened to be walking by.”
“So, does a busy executive such as yourself usually take the time to go for a stroll at lunchtime and does that same executive usually find himself on that particular side street?”
“I don’t like to get stuck in any routines. So, your maintenance man’s name is Angelo? He seems to watch out for you.”
“Yeah, he is more than a maintenance man. He takes care of everything and is a great cook, but don’t let him talk you into a game of chess. He’s sneaky. The odd thing about Angelo is that he does all that for nothing more than a hard cot in the shed and his meals. Just when we really needed someone we couldn’t afford, he showed up like a saving angel, fixing things without ever asking. He just saw a need and filled it.”
“Are you sure he’s just not homeless and looking out for himself?”
“I don’t think so. He is too talented and hardworking not to swing a paying job.”
David gazed up at the blue sky that held a few puffy white clouds. “Hmm.”
They sat on an old, wooden green bench facing the river, watching people running by. “Angelo mentioned that you came by two days in a row?”
“If Thursday and Friday are still next to each other, then yeah, that would probably be two days in a row.”
They watched a crew team smoothly make its way down the river under one of the arched bridges that dotted the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge.
“I’m glad you dropped by. Was there anything you wanted to talk about besides just saying hello?”
“Like what?”
“Just checking in as a friend. I don’t want to pry, and you may also have plenty of other people you would talk to if you needed to.”
David thought he really would have no one else to talk to. He‘d never needed to talk to anyone else since he always managed things independently. Why would he need to talk something out with someone who knows him less than he knew himself? “I’m good, but thanks for asking.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“You don’t have to convince me. It was just a sense I was getting.”
David leaned forward with his hands on his thighs. He peered out over the water with the sun now glistening on it as it slowly flowed in the direction of the Boston Harbor. “I do struggle to figure you out.”
Tom laughed. “Me? What are you trying to figure out about me except how to stop my killer crossover dribble and drive to my left?”
David joined Tom’s laugh. “That is probably the first thing I need to figure out. But you’re intelligent, talented, you could do just about anything you wanted in life, yet you chose this. It feels like you’ve given up your life, for what?”
“Fair question. What am I giving up? Money? Sure. Power? Prestige? Success? Popularity? Stuff? Sex? Yup, I did give that up. You probably know a lot of people who have more of each of those things than they know what to do with. How many of them, do you think, find their lives meaningful and feel a deep sense of satisfaction and joy? Those things gave me a constant sense of emptiness. They never satisfied. I kept convincing myself I just needed more of them to be happy. I tried to preoccupy myself with things to do, entertainment and seeking pleasure, but I found that I was only developing relationships for what I was getting out of them. Someone told me once to love people and use things and not the other way around. It hit me that I was doing the opposite. Did I have good self-esteem? Sure thing. I was all I could think about! I bought into the idea that it was the individual who brought temporary meaning to this existence, so why not focus on myself, do what I wanted and not need anyone? I pursued happiness with a vengeance, but I wasn’t happy. I had no story, no narrative, no direction to my life other than myself, and it wasn’t working.”
David listened intently as Tom relayed his story. “So, what changed?”
“I was coming home on a bus one rainy night. Across from me, there was a mother reading a book to her son and next to me was a tall black man reading his book. I zoned out for the ride home after a long day of selling. I felt so empty and so tired of trying to escape myself in everything I was doing. I listened to the mother reading The Velveteen Rabbit to her little boy as he leaned against her body. I had heard the story before but what struck me this time was the line ‘Sometimes it hurts to let yourself be loved for real.’ She said to her son, ‘Love is what makes us real. When someone knows you and loves you, as the boy loved the rabbit, it doesn’t matter if you look shabby.’ I hadn’t noticed before, but the boy had a brace on his leg.
“It made me think as my attention shifted to the man next to me. He was reading a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. He had an index card as a bookmark that was next to his seat. On it was a quotation from Dr. King, ‘The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure, and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.’ I can’t explain it, but it hit me that God’s only will is to love us, and that is what makes us real.”
David said, “So, you figured out the secret of life on a bus?”
Tom chuckled. “I had no clue at the time what I had figured out. I just knew I’d been looking in the wrong places and it wasn’t working. I figured out long after that bus ride that I’d been looking to create my own self, who always seemed empty and lost. I figured that I had nothing to lose and started reading the Bible and books on God and faith, as long as it wasn’t Catholic.”
Surprised, David said, “What?”
Tom laughed. “I hated everything about the Catholic Church, or at least what I thought was the Catholic Church. I joined an evangelical Protestant church that was similar to the one I had attended growing up and ‘caught the spirit,’ as they say.”
David shook his head. “How can you go from hating the Catholic Church to joining it? Why didn’t you just stay where you were?”
“The evangelical church was great. I haven’t found a kinder, more faithful group of people, but as I learned more, I started asking questions, important questions. Why is there so much disagreement between Christian churches? Where is the teaching authority to make the call? Jesus invested quite a bit of time to train and teach specific people and gave them authority. He didn’t leave a book, but he built a Church to teach the truth of his message. With no compiled Bible and dead apostles, what happened to the Church between then and the 4th century when we finally had a Bible? How could we trust this Church to compile the authoritative and in
spired books of the New Testament unless it was the true Church? What did that early Church, filled with the Holy Spirit, believe and practice when it came to Communion, Baptism, apostolic succession and priests, marriage, sola scriptura or salvation by faith alone? I kept getting unsatisfactory answers and recommendations to focus on other things. When I read more and discussed my questions with ministers that had done the same, I found the beliefs and practices of the early Church looked a lot more like the Catholic Church than the one I was in. My church had thrown out so much of what Christ had left us in the Church he had built. It was eye-opening. I started to see a lot of prejudice from bad information to some willful ignorance or—”
David smiled. “—or Procrustes’s magic bed syndrome?”
Tom laughed. “A little. So, you do listen.”
“A little.”
David asked, “So why did you hate the Catholic Church before then?”
“Tell me why you think you do.”
“Well,” David said, “it’s a little complicated. My mother would always be railing against one thing or another. Let’s see, she said they were anti-science and only interested in protecting their own power and myths. Then there was the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition, and the millions the Church tortured and executed if they disagreed with them. The Crusades were all about getting riches and power while killing countless people. The corrupt popes, and on and on she’d go. She wasn’t the only one who brought those things up either, and now there’s the sex abuse scandal and cover-up that are just part of a long list of proofs that this is not the Church Jesus intended.”
