New York Echoes 2

by Warren Adler

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It will be fine.”

  “No, it won’t. My mother will find out. You made me pregnant.”

  A stab of fear shot through him. For her, the shame of such an outcome was a fate worse than death. For him, it was an equal disaster, but in a different way. They truly believed that if she were pregnant their lives would be ruined. Perhaps they would have been.

  She told him that she had disposed of her panties and washed out her shorts and told her mother she was having her period, which did come after about a week, a week of agony for both of them. It was near the end of the summer by then, and a couple of weeks later, the crowd broke up and everyone went back to the city.

  For some reason, they assumed their separate city lives and he did see her a couple of times during the winter, but it was never the same again. It was as if a fault line had opened between them allowing other things to intervene. Sitting on the bench, smoking his cigar, the event came back vividly and, he was certain, that it was graphically and emotionally accurate.

  Considering that this event was a defining moment for both of them, he was oddly disappointed that she did not recognize him, although he was relieved. Pure and simple, it was rape and he could not know how the event was characterized in her mind. Nor, at this stage, did he wish to know.

  It was the very first time he had gone all the way with a lady and for her, however she reflected on its consequences, he would always and forever be counted as her first lover. In the crude vernacular of the day, he had popped her cherry.

  “Isn’t this a great time of day?” she said suddenly. She was silent for a long time, watching the river and the boats lazily floating past. Then she got up and looked down at him.

  “Nice meeting you, Mr.…”

  He hesitated for a moment, tempted. “It’s Beebee,” he nearly said.

  “Bass,” he said. “Herbert.”

  “Oh yes,” she said smiling, showing her dimple.

  “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  He watched her back recede as she entered the apartment house, marveling at the extent and vividness of his memory.

  To his great surprise, he discovered he had an erection.

  In God’s Name

  The neighborhood, west of Sixth Avenue, a few blocks from the cusp of gentrification, was rundown, a relic of the twenties. Rows of tenement-type four-story walk-up apartments lined both sides of the street. Garbage cans, secured by chains, sat beside the narrow entrances of the buildings.

  Consulting his little notebook, Carey checked Father Joseph’s address, and shook his head as he confirmed it. Not very pleasant, he thought, but then the man was in a kind of forced purgatory, out on bail and awaiting the result of an appeal that seemed bound to be denied. He faced the remainder of his life in prison.

  He had followed the case in the newspapers, at least at the beginning, until it had become too painful, especially when confronted by photos of the poor man, aged, blank of expression, empty-eyed and pitiful. An embarrassment to the Church, a pedophile, a seducer of young boys, he had been excoriated in the media, broken; his life as a priest, a shepherd to his flock, ruined.

  Guilt-ridden by his own cowardice, Carey could not bring himself to step forward. Gilbert, his partner for a quarter of a century, his lover and true friend, had agonized with him, losing sleep, listening to Carey’s litany of memories and, in the end, advising him to stay silent.

  “Leave it alone. We have a good life,” Gilbert told him. “There is no point in martyrdom,” Gilbert advised. They were untroubled, respected, with a wide circle of friends of all genders and persuasions. Carey was a lawyer at a prestigious law firm and Gilbert a professor of English literature at NYU. To step forward was pointless. Whatever he would say would have no legal standing. Nothing could possibly change the relentless course of justice.

  The law was the law and the vaunted self-righteous Catholic Church, which had long been a secret safe harbor for men of their persuasion, was being called to account and doomed to embarrassment and monetary loss. And the men caught in the trap of their sexual orientation who had crossed the legal line had to be prosecuted. It was a drama that was destined to be played out with a vengeance. Numerous witnesses who professed to have had sex with the priest had come forward, testifying how Father Joseph’s seductions had impacted negatively on their lives.

  “You would accomplish nothing,” Gilbert pressed. “He has numerous accusers, people who allege that they have been damaged by the priest’s conduct. Then there is the element of greed. The Church is a great money target. To assert publicly that the priest’s illegal conduct was a boon to you would make you a laughing stock. Put it out of your mind.”

  “I won’t act, of course. But it won’t be easy getting it out of my mind.”

  “Try.”

  For Carey, the memory of his own experience was powerful, life-changing, and yes, wonderful, joyful. It was burned into his memory, contemplated obsessively, shared with Gilbert numerous times in their earlier days together. It was the quintessential watershed moment of his life. Years ago it had receded. Other events put it on the back burner of memory, exploding again when the situation was revealed and Father Joseph stood accused by boys now grown.

  The notoriety of the trial had ignited his memory, bringing back the full untarnished narrative from the very moment the troubled twelve-year-old boy arrived in the confessional box with the words “Father, I have sinned.”

  “Tell me, my son,” the priest beyond the grille had said in a kindly soothing voice. Carey was imbued with faith then, the recipient of a strict Catholic upbringing by good and caring parents, traditional, religious, believers with unquestioned alliance to the Church and all its rituals. Carey had been an altar boy, a devoted participant, and like his parents, a true believer.

  It had seemed a terrible sin at the time. Carey had been attracted to a boy in his class and they had indulged in a number of episodes of mutual masturbation which had graduated into something worse. It was the “worse,” meaning oral sex, that had driven the confused and guilt-obsessed Carey into the full confidence of the confessional. Up until then he had kept it concealed. Then it suddenly erupted in his mind as a full-blown sin. Not only the acts themselves, but the emotional component, the secret longings and desire to be with and please this other boy.

  In the context of the time, the mutuality of the acts was considered merely sexual experimenting among boys, as normal as what was then described as a “circle jerk” which was accompanied by fantasies about girls, about whose parts he showed little interest, concentrating instead on the sight of the boys’ erections. But the newly practiced oral aspect and the sense of longing was a step beyond, especially since he had these odd romantic and obsessive feelings about the boy in question.

  He was goaded by the priest on the other side of the grille, who he knew was Father Joseph, to supply precise details of the events and his reaction to them.

  “How did you feel while you did this?” the priest asked gently. To lie, he knew then, was to compound the sin.

  “I felt, well, good.”

  “Did you feel it was wrong while you did it?”

  “Yes, Father, but it did not stop me from committing this sin.”

  “Did the other boy like it when you did it?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Did he do it to you?”

  “No Father.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, Father.”

  “How many times did you do it to him?”

  “Many times, Father. He wanted me to do it again and again.”

  “And did you want to do it?”

  “Yes Father, I am ashamed to say. How can I absolve myself in the eyes of God?”

  What was particularly strange was that talking about the event
was arousing and before he realized it, he found that he had begun to stroke himself and his breath was coming in little gasps. He had the sense that the priest was watching through the grille.

  “What are you doing, my child?” the priest asked.

  “Nothing, Father.”

  He had continued stroking and could hear strange sounds coming from the other side of the confessional.

  “Are you certain?” the priest asked.

  “I am sinning, Father,” the young Carey said, lost in his culminating pleasure.

  “Does it feel wonderful, my son?” the priest asked.

  Not answering, he had rushed out of the confessional in embarrassment. That, of course, had been the beginning. In those days, Father Joseph was a young, quite handsome, popular figure in the parish. Parishioners of all ages and genders adored him.

  “You must come to confession again, my son,” Father Joseph told him every time they met. Carey had the impression that Father Joseph had singled him out, paying greater attention to him when he attended services and urging him to help in other ways. On those occasions when he entered the confessional box, the priest suggested that he tell that story again. He did and the same experience ensued. Oddly, he felt less and less embarrassed and would eagerly await the next session.

  After a while, Father Joseph would invite him to church for what was termed special instruction. His parents were approving thinking that perhaps Father Joseph would persuade him to enter the priesthood. Their extended family boasted two nephews who were attending a seminary and an aunt who had become a nun.

  What was happening, he knew instinctively, although it was only later that he truly understood it, was that he was falling in love with Father Joseph. He could not wait until he saw him again. Although he attended the confessional frequently, he was beginning to prefer his face-to-face meetings with Father Joseph, who was always kindly, reassuring and overtly friendly. He was often invited to dinner in Carey’s home, not far from the church. His parents adored him.

  One evening Father Joseph arrived unexpectedly when Carey’s parents were out to some function. By then his older siblings were living away from home attending college. Tim Carey was the youngest of three and he was then called Timmy.

  He was elated to be alone with the priest, whom he offered drinks from the family liquor cupboard. They sat together on the couch. Carey would never be certain who made the first overt move, but before he realized it he was entwined in a deep embrace with the priest. Father Joseph’s gentle caresses and sweet velvet-like kisses on his body were ecstatic, beyond any pleasure he had ever experienced before.

  He reveled in its mutuality and he lovingly ministered to the priest in ways that he had fantasized over the months before this had happened. The fact was, he loved it and over the months of his affair, he realized the depth of his sexual orientation. He was a homosexual through and through.

  “Feel no guilt, my son,” Father Joseph cautioned. “We are what God made us.”

  He believed that implicitly to this day. Months later, Father Joseph was transferred to another parish and Carey went on to other pursuits. But he remained grateful to Father Joseph for defining what he was, opening the door to the truth of himself.

  Still, he understood the trap that Father Joseph was in, having obviously set it for himself. He had entered the Church, certainly for reasons of religious conviction, but for a deeper reason as well. The cassock protected his sexual inclination which was strongly homosexual, powerfully so. His need was, as Carey remembered, very strong. Later, he would characterize it as insatiable. Father Joseph was at that point in his late thirties, making love to a boy that had just discovered his sexual preference and was reveling in the discovery. Their last moments together in a hotel room the priest had booked in an out-of-the-way motel under the West Side Highway were sad, tearful and repetitively sexual.

  “I cannot see you anymore, my sweet darling, but I swear to you in God’s name that I will love you forever,” the priest had vowed. “You are my one true love.”

  Carey believed this implicitly. Perhaps he still believed it. “In God’s name” was a powerful injunction. He could not remember whether he seconded the priest’s assurance, but he felt certain that he had. His sadness at their final parting was profoundly heartbreaking for him, his grief overpowering. He had spent months in a deep depression.

  Later he would wonder if Father Joseph had been transferred for having been found out, his sexual proclivity for young boys reported by other parishioners. Carey would not have believed it at the time. He was dead certain that Father Joseph had been a true and faithful lover.

  Despite the absolute logic of his not stepping forward in defense of Father Joseph, the idea of his inaction gnawed at him and grew into an obsession that morphed into a compulsion, a deep need. He had to confront Father Joseph and offer him the gift of his gratitude, his humble thanks for defining him, for demonstrating his true nature, for giving him the courage to confront himself without guilt. Surely it would brighten the bleak moments that now afflicted the poor man.

  Carey viewed such a face-to-face assertion as an act of mercy, an oasis of gratitude in a desert of excoriation and bitter accusation. What had happened between them was a good thing, not the bad thing that had been alleged by scores of others. In his heart, he was martyred by the idea that he was an exception and he wanted the priest to know this. Was there a biblical side to such an act? Familiar quotations from scripture rolled through his mind. Let he who was without sin cast the first stone? Was Carey the prodigal son returned? Or a rescued soul who had escaped the fate of Sodom?

  A private detective who his law firm used extensively had come up with Father Joseph’s address and apartment number in the dreary four-story walk-up. The buzzer system was not working and Carey was able to enter and find the apartment door on the fourth floor of the walkup. He felt a sense of heart-thumping fear grip him as he knocked on the door.

  Chained from the inside, the door opened a crack and he could see a partial view of Father Joseph’s face.

  “Are you a reporter?” Father Joseph asked hoarsely.

  “No, Father,” Carey said shocked at the ravaged face that peered at him through the partially open door.

  “Who are you?”

  “An old friend,” Carey said, hoping for some vestige of physical recognition.

  He sensed that the priest’s eyes scanned him.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m Tim Carey,” Carey revealed, gazing into the troubled man’s eyes, waiting for a response.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “May I come in?”

  “No.”

  “We knew each other long ago,” Carey said.

  “Leave me alone. Haven’t you all punished me enough?”

  “I’m not here to punish you, Father.”

  “Don’t call me Father. I have been defrocked.”

  “You will always be Father Joseph to me,” Carey said, feeling foolish, standing in the badly lit hallway, talking to half a face.

  “Go away.”

  There was a long silence as the priest’s eyes contemplated Carey.

  “You don’t remember? I’m Tim Carey. We were…” Carey looked about him, as if searching for eavesdroppers. He lowered his voice. “We were great friends once.” It shocked him suddenly to calculate the years, nearly forty.

  “I don’t know you,” the older man said.

  “I wanted to…” Carey felt choked for a moment. “…to show my gratitude.”

  “Gratitude?” Father Joseph snickered. “For what?”

  “You really don’t remember, do you?” Carey said after a long silence.

  “I told you. I never saw you before in my life.”

  How could it be? Carey thought. The poor man could not remember what for Carey was the quintessential experience
of his life. The words that Father Joseph had uttered many years before came back into his mind with perfect clarity. “I will love you forever. You are my one true love.”

  Suddenly Carey felt a sense of deep disappointment. He had expected the affair to be locked forever in Father Joseph’s memory and in his heart, an enduring, ecstatic and precious moment to be protected and perpetually savored. The two men exchanged glances.

  “Well then,” Carey said, his plan in shambles. What Father Joseph had fallen in love with then was a young boy, perhaps nothing more than a symbol, a mere representation of all young boys whom he craved and coveted, one of many.

  The older man who peeked at the priest through the opening of the chained door had no relevance to that craving. Carey was, he realized, hardly unique, merely disposable young flesh, not the one true love of his fantasy life. Still, the revelation did not tarnish his gratitude. Father Joseph had been the instrument of his self-knowledge.

  “You were a great help to me, Father. I came to thank you.”

  “You’re mocking me, mister,” the old man responded. “I deserved what I got.”

  “I guess the only thing to do, then, is wish you good luck,” Carey muttered.

  “Luck,” the old man croaked. “There is no luck in hell.”

  The door slammed shut and Carey stood there for a few moments in the dark hallway.

  “Still a believer,” Carey shrugged as he made his way downstairs.

  The Love Of His Life

  “Could it be?” Jason Haskell thought, his eyes focused on his open laptop laid out in front of him on the tray of the business class seat. His reference was to the woman sitting beside him in the window seat, a gray-haired compact figure, already settled in and reading a paperback. He studied her peripherally, uncertain what fifty years of living might have wrought physically upon her and his own perception.

  Such things had happened before. A gesture, an expression, a tone, some strange echo of the past, might trigger a tiny shard of memory, of vague recognition. Most of the time it amounted to nothing, a kind of false alarm, quickly dismissed.