Her face turns serious. She grips my brother’s arm with one hand and leans on the car door with the other. “You do what you need to do, but you just know that we love you. You’re our priest.” She looks across to me and says, “Father Luke made our church into a place we want to be. And it doesn’t matter what they say—we don’t care about any of that. It won’t be our place without him in it.”
Francis lays his hand over hers. “Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me.”
“No need for thanks, it’s the truth. What you did for Fiona Reagan, what you did for Edward Kelly and his family. And you and I both know—we all know—that Donald Kane wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. We are not a church without you. You’re our priest.”
My brother picks up her hand and kisses it. And the sight of his kiss knots in my throat along with You think I don’t have pain? And Why the priesthood?
“When you’re ready, we’re ready,” Mrs. Mundy says and presses her own lips to the spot on her hand where Father Luke kissed her. She gives him a stiff little nod, and pats his arm a last time. “God bless you. We’ll see you soon.”
I wipe my eyes and watch her scurry down the street, pulling her nylon windbreaker closed against the wind.
Francis presses his fingertips to his forehead.
I can’t manage to swallow and I can’t find the right words either. “That was really nice,” I say at last.
Dropping his hands into his lap, Francis straightens his back and takes another fortifying breath. “I’m heading up. I’ll give you a call later.”
“Do you want me to wait at the coffeehouse on the corner? I don’t have to meet Lucy until—”
“I’ll call you.” He takes my hand and kisses the back of it just like he did with Mrs. Mundy.
A sudden wave of loneliness washes over me—loneliness and gratitude—as he picks up his shoulder bag. He touches his collar once more and gets out of the car.
TEN
Ben
Today’s lunch sits by the bed. Gray is melting off the mashed potatoes, threatening the white, white room. Dr. Lambert’s already been and gone.
Sonuvabitch started in again with “Why don’t you want to be Ben? What is the most frightening thing about being Ben?”
Who the hell would want to be Ben?
Ben made his own skin crawl, and it’s never coming back.
From the doorway of the white, white room, the view of the ward is a charming shade of Technicolor gloom. Nurses trot by in their rubber clogs, and daisy-covered scrubs, scrubs with teddy bears and scrubs with polka dots, as if they all made a wrong turn on the way to the kids’ ward. A couple of patients shuffle from their rooms, carrying their lunch trays down the hall to the common room so they can watch TV.
“Ben? You’re Ben, right?”
Ah look, if it isn’t Greg, the Attorney. Doesn’t he clean up pretty. All ready to head back downtown and lawyer someone out of his life savings.
“I’m sure I deserve that,” Greg says. “I just wanted to apologize. I went off my meds.”
Greg the Attorney sounds almost bashful today.
He keeps going. “I said a lot of crazy shit during our group session, some threatening words that were inexcusable.”
Greg shifts his smile down the hall and then back. He looks at the name card slotted beside the door to the white, white room.
Can’t believe everything you read, Greg.
“I’m being discharged today and I wanted you to know that I wish you peace, man.”
If you want peace, prepare for war.
Off goes Greg the Attorney. He’s got a butter-soft calfskin carry bag with him. He pauses at the nurses’ station. He speaks, they giggle. Imagine if Cola had been born with a silver spoon up his ass. A grinning orderly arrives with a wheelchair.
“Ah,” says Greg. “I see you’ve brought my Porsche around.” He sits and the orderly takes hold of the chair’s push handles, turning Greg toward the exit. The buzzer sounds and the unit doors open wide and say, Awe, because who isn’t in awe of Greg the Attorney?
Between here and Greg’s chariot, a woman steps into the hall with her lunch tray. The black jeans still sag around her hips and her gray sweater continues to drip off her bones. Gwen. She turns to watch Greg being turned loose on an unsuspecting world. Sic ’em, Greg.
Gwen heads this way, her starved deer legs overshadowed by her starved deer eyes that roam to and fro as if she’s keeping an eye out for wolves. EverythingsGoneSinceMySonDied Gwen.
She creeps along, looking past her lunch tray, picking her way across the rough terrain. When she catches her reflection in a smoked glass door, she ducks her chin and averts her eyes.
She pauses at the entrance to the common room, getting her bold up. It ain’t easy but she’d rather be alone in a crowd than alone in her own white, white room.
If Ben were in his skin, he might go after Gwen to see what happens next. Ben may not be here, but his skin can still crawl.
Gwen has made it to the middle of the common room. She looks from the kitchenette in one corner to the television in the other. The television is bolted to both the wall and a Murder, She Wrote marathon. Angela Lansbury’s face is oh-so-soothing to the St. Anthony psych ward: porridge made flesh.
Gwen turns from the screen. She pauses to look at a painting on the wall, framed under Plexiglas. She ducks her chin again. Must have caught another glimpse of her reflection. Gwen wants no part of Gwen.
If Ben were standing at the entrance to the common room, he’d home in on Gwen right away. He’d recollect the day he walked into the bathroom and the mirror was gone. And then the mirror in the bedroom disappeared and the mirror in the hall. When all reflections disappear, it’s only a matter of time until the ghost goes with them. Gwen might not know this.
She finally chooses the table in the darkest corner.
Perhaps Gwen would like to dine with the skinbag formerly known as Ben.
It’s Gwen, right? Mind sharing a table?
Disappearing Gwen faces her tray and says, “That’s fine.” She doesn’t make eye contact. Maybe she is afraid she’ll see her reflection there too.
How to explain: There is no here, here.
There are now two lunch trays on Gwen’s table, each one daring the faithful: take, eat. This is the gruel, which is given for you.
Gwen unwraps her plastic fork, blinks at her own tray and then at the duplicate one across from her.
These green beans look like they washed up on the rocks somewhere.
Her tight mouth crooks and she says, “Yes. That is what they look like.”
Her eyes flick to the ceiling and then off to the side. She looks over to a table with a young woman in pajamas. Seated opposite pajama-girl is her mirror image dressed in street clothes.
“That’s her sister.” Gwen keeps her eyes on the women. She adds, “I always thought it would be neat to have a twin. All the people you could fool.”
Some people only fool themselves.
Gwen looks at their feet, the slippers on one pair, sneakers on the other. “I always wanted a sister. Or a brother. Someone you could tell things to.” She looks back at her plate. “I guess it doesn’t always work out the way you hope.”
What was his name?
Gwen is quiet a second. Then she says, “Nicolas. We called him Nicky when he was little.”
Nicolas? Nicky. Not Cola, Nicky.
How did he die?
“He fell, I mean, he—he jumped. Off a roof.” Gwen’s face crumples. “Maybe if I could’ve been there, I could have . . . It could have come out differently. He wouldn’t talk to me. He had a drug problem.”
Ben had a brother with a drug problem. A problem with a drug brother.
“Ben?” Gwen asks. “Is he your . . . ?”
Ben had a son too. And a wife. And he had a brother to talk to, but that didn’t make a difference. They all went out the window.
Gwen looks up. She looks right where Ben’s
eyes should be.
Ben could have saved them all. But he killed them all instead and they killed him right back. Right back. Shot in the back. Even Cola. Even Ben’s baby brother. Cola got the last laugh, didn’t he? Of course maybe there’s a black hole in Cola’s head too, just like this one, but deep enough to hold ten grand.
Gwen looks at the bandage. She squints at it, trying to see if the black hole makes any more sense than the mouth.
“Who is Ben?” She looks toward the door and her face turns tense and soft at once. As if she’s seen a lover. Her breath catches.
She watches someone come closer until he stops right here. “Hello, Father,” she says.
Black-sleeved arms lead up to a white collar. “Hello. Hi, Ben.”
Gwen looks from the priest to the skinbag across from her. “You’re Ben?”
Well, well. Look who’s come to deliver the last rites. Won’t he be sorry. Show’s over, folks, nothing to save here.
“It’s me, Francis, Maggie’s brother,” the priest says and extends his hand.
No kidding. This is the bughouse, Father, not the Federation for the Blind.
Francis nods and smiles. “Gee, it looks like I’ve interrupted your lunch. Perhaps I should come back another time.”
“No!” Gwen looks up at Maggie’s brother as though he’s got her heart wrapped in swaddling clothes. “Won’t you join us?”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” he says.
Ben wouldn’t want him to either. Gwen’s a different story though. Gwen is like Maggie is like Miriam is like, No intrusion. Please, have a seat.
Francis sets his bag down and pulls out a chair. He opens a sweating bottle of cold water and takes a slug. “It’s a warm one today. They actually sent me to the wrong room—I ended up in Ben Brody Sr.’s room! He was sleeping so I didn’t get a chance to say hello. Have you seen him?”
Ben’s old man is in this building? No. Yes. Of course he is. Is he still in restraints? Is he still sucking up bags of blood?
“He’s doing well,” Francis says. “Apparently, he’s even going for little rambles around the unit. Should be going home soon.”
“Are you a Catholic priest?” Gwen asks.
“I am indeed.” Francis opens his bottle of water again. “It’s nice that you have a place to eat besides your room.”
There’s no elbow room in the white, white room.
Not enough room to swing a cat. At least there’s murder in here.
A bead of sweat trickles off the good reverend’s temple. He looks over his shoulder. “Oh, right. I like Angela Lansbury as much as the next guy, but six in a row?”
Gwen laughs, ingratiating herself to the white collar.
Yes, the common room, where it all happens: group therapy, TV, and a bookshelf brimming with board games. A lunatic’s wet dream.
Gwen has no ears for the skinbag anymore. It’s all about the collar. It’s all about God’s mouthpiece strumming her pain with his fingers.
“Father?” Gwen scans the face of Francis. “Could you, um—my son died.”
Her eyes fill and flood and the waves roll down her cheeks. She touches his sleeve.
Francis covers her hand with his big soft palm. “Can you tell me your name?”
She tells him.
Oh, Gwen, come off it. There is nothing holy about the Father or the Son and you don’t want to get anywhere near that Spirit. Ask Ben, he knows. Ben’s had his ass kicked from one end of hell to the other.
“I haven’t been to church since I was a little girl,” she says. “I don’t think I know how to pray anymore . . . Maybe you could say, um, say a blessing. For Nicolas. And me.”
Go ahead, Padre, kill her softly with your song.
“I imagine everyone has felt at one time or another like he doesn’t know how to ask for help,” Francis tells her. “There’s a beautiful verse in Romans that says, ‘For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.’”
Gwen slides her other hand under the big palm of Francis and he begins his blessing. “The old order has passed away: Lord, please welcome Nicolas into paradise, where there is no sorrow . . .”
Even through a desert storm, Ben can hear prayers for the dead.
“ . . . no weeping or pain but the fullness of peace and joy with your Son and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Please deliver your servant Gwen from every sorrow and let her find your peace, which is beyond all understanding.” Francis brings his hand to Gwen’s forehead and makes the sign of the cross with his thumb.
Like a fugitive from mercy, Ben ducks and squints, trying to see past all those mothers milling in the tunnel of his vision: Gwen and Maggie and Miriam, all the mothers of all the sons shivering in the outlands.
TEN
Maggie
It’s twenty past three when I park Lucy’s car out front of her building. Today is her eighty-first birthday. Feels like about eighty-one years since I sat there in that bus shelter watching bulldozers and dump trucks across the road. It’s quiet over there now. Looks like they finished digging and have poured a foundation. There is something naked and pitiable about the sight of those concrete slabs and fresh gray walls.
No word yet from Francis. There are no missed calls on my cell phone. No messages. What could he be doing over there at St. Anthony?
Can’t bring myself to call. I’m almost afraid he would put Ben on the phone. Or maybe I’m afraid that he wouldn’t be able to put Ben on the phone.
I should be there, I should be there, I should be there, calling out to Ben until he answers me. I should be reaching into the quicksand and dragging Ben out, wiping away the muck and the mire until he sees us again.
Before it all went to shit, Ben and I could always find a way through. We could kick our way out of the black box, make it into something else, something powerless against us. Maybe we just forgot how.
When Frankie was fourteen weeks, he got a fever. No infection, the doctor said. He’s just caught your cold, she said. His temperature should be down by tomorrow. I blew my nose and quietly despised her for not fixing him immediately. What was she getting paid for if not omnipotence?
Back at the apartment, Frankie wailed. He wouldn’t stop. I held him tight and paced. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m so sorry.” I blew my nose and looked at Ben. “I shouldn’t even be holding him. Goddamn Typhoid Mary over here.”
Ben held me by the shoulders and sat us at the dining table. He took my snotty tissue and threw it in the garbage. “Look at me,” he said. “It’s not your fault. It’s a cold. He’s going to be fine. Why don’t I make you some ginger tea and then you feed him and it’ll be like you’re both—”
“We have to call Francis,” I blurted, Frankie’s overheated head against my chin.
Ben stared at me.
“Right now. Please.”
He didn’t argue. He dialed and handed me the phone.
“Frankie’s sick,” I said into the receiver. “His fever won’t come down. I’m scared.” I didn’t need to tell Francis what I wanted.
“It’s okay, honey,” he said. “Sit tight. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
No smart-ass remarks. God knows I would have deserved them. I’d been so smug when I told my brother that Ben and I had gotten married at the courthouse. We don’t need a bunch of hocus pocus to make our lives work, I said, so don’t expect a baptism either.
Francis doesn’t hold a grudge. He was there in exactly thirty minutes. He wore his clerical shirt.
I kissed his cheek. “Thank you for coming so quick.”
“You’re not kidding. I didn’t even have time to put my face on.” Francis winked and took my hand.
I choked out a little laughter as my eyes welled up—the sight of him, the feel of his big gentle hand. I followed my brother through the living room to the little dining table off the kitchen. I let his hand go and watched him open his knapsack, take out his prayer book and the holy water a
nd anointing oil. He set candles on the table and lit them.
Ben came out of the bedroom with the baby. Frankie was quieter now. Ben glanced at the flickering table and gave me a look of bewilderment.
I looked back at him, willing him: Just let me have this. I need this magic right now. I need it.
“Hi Ben,” Francis said. “Sounds like you guys are having a tough day.” He laid his hand on the crown of his nephew’s head. “Hey Frankie-boy, how’re you feeling?” Frankie blinked up, his mouth crooked and burbling. “Ah, you’re okay. He looks good.” Francis glanced from me to Ben. “You had me worried there.”
Ben nodded and the two of them exchanged a look.
“Okay,” I interrupted. “Are we ready?”
Francis smiled at Frankie. “You ready, handsome?”
My brother’s voice was low and gentle as he began. “Some people define baptism as a washing away of sin, but there is another tradition that sees it as the watering of seed, nurturing the soul for new life . . .”
The flickering candles, Frankie’s quiet babble, and the scent of the oil as Francis made the sign of the cross on Frankie’s forehead . . . it was all so dreamlike that I calmed and steadied.
The next morning, Frankie’s temperature was back to normal. He lay on the bed between Ben and me.
Propped up on one elbow, Ben took a sip of coffee, swallowed, and smirked at me. “I will never—” he paused for effect. “—ever baptize my kid. And that is that.”
That was me he was quoting, a six months’ pregnant me.
I kept my eyes on Frankie. “Could you give your daddy a message?”
Frankie wrapped his fingers around my thumb.
Ben went on. “We may as well wave a dead chicken at our baby.”
“Tell him,” I said to Frankie, “that he’s a big-mouth jerk-weasel.”
Ben coughed and spit coffee on himself.
Frankie hiccupped into laughter. Ben glanced at me, and the three of us giggled like maniacs.
Twisting my wedding band now, I try to hold on to that echo of our old selves, but as I look at the new foundation across the road an old Sunday morning warning comes to mind, the one about the foolish man who built his house on sand: The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a mighty crash.
The Crooked Heart of Mercy Page 13
