Andre Dubus: Selected Stories

by Andre Dubus

  “And, see, Father, the whole family is living outside the Church. In sin. And now Dad and Brenda will be in the house.”

  “Don’t think of it as sin.”

  He looked at Father Oberti.

  “It’s even against the law,” Richie said. “Massachusetts law. They’re going to get married in another state, but Dad’s talking to somebody in the—legislature?”

  “That’s right.”

  “To try to change the law.”

  “It’s probably a very old law, Richie.” Father Oberti did not look shocked, or even surprised, but calm and gentle. “The Church had them too. It was to prevent murder, or the temptation to it.”

  “Murder?”

  “Sure. So that hundreds of years ago your father wouldn’t be tempted to kill Larry. To get his wife, and all her land and so forth. It’s just an old law, Richie. Don’t think of your father and Brenda as sin.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll lose my faith.” Heat rose to his face, tears to his eyes, and he looked at the dark blue carpet and Father Oberti’s shining black shoes.

  “No. This should strengthen it. You must live like the Lord, with His kindness. Don’t think of them as sinful. Don’t just think of sex. People don’t marry for that. Think of love. They are two people who love each other, and as painful as it is for others, and even if it is wrong, it’s still love, and that is always near the grace of God. Has he been a bad father?”

  Richie shook his head.

  “Look at me. Don’t mind crying. I’m not scolding you.”

  He wiped away his tears and raised his face and looked into Father Oberti’s brown eyes.

  “It is very hard to live like Christ. For most of us, it’s impossible. The best we can do is try. And two of the hardest virtues for a Christian are forgiveness and compassion. Not judging people. But they are essential parts of love.” His hands rose from his lap, and he clasped them in front of his chest, the fingers squeezing. “We can’t love without those two. And the message of Christ is love. For everyone. Certainly you will love your father. And his wife. Try to imagine what they feel like, how they comfort each other, how much they love each other, to risk so much to be together. It’s not evil. It may be weak, or less strong than the Church wants people to be; than you want people to be. And of course you’re right. It would be far better if they had fought their love before it grew. But there are much worse things than loving. Much worse, Richie. Be kind, and pray for them, and I will too. I’ll pray for you too. And I hope you’ll pray for me. People don’t think of priests as sinners. Or if they do, they think of sex or drinking. That’s very simple-minded. There are sins that are far more complicated, that a priest can commit: pride, neglect, others. He can be guilty of these while ministering sacraments, saying the Mass.” His hands parted, reached out, and took Richie’s shoulders. “You’ll love your father and his wife, and you’ll grow up to be a good priest. If it’s what you want, and if it’s God’s will. Don’t leave God out of this. Your father and the young lady are in His hands, not yours. You will have some embarrassment. Even some pain. What is that, for a strong boy like you? A devout boy, a daily communicant.”

  His right hand left Richie’s shoulder, and he moved it in a cross between them, then placed his palm on Richie’s forehead.

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “We can keep talking.”

  “No. Thank you, Father.”

  Father Oberti stood and held out his hand, and Richie shook it.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Father Oberti said.

  “Yes.”

  “Or sooner, if you want. ”

  “No. Tomorrow.”

  “Good. Go play baseball, and live your life.”

  Richie lifted his hand in a wave, then turned and left the sacristy, entered the church near the altar, genuflected, looked up at Christ, and went down the aisle. At the door he turned back to the altar, looked at Christ on the cross, then pushed open the heavy brown wooden door, and stepped into warm sunlight and cool air.

  On the street near his house, in the shadows under the arch of maples, he saw Melissa Donnelly and her golden retriever. She was two blocks ahead, walking away from him in the middle of the empty street. He pedaled harder three times before he was aware of it, then he slowed but did not touch the brake, and the bicycle kept its quiet speed on the blacktop. Melissa was wearing faded cutoff jeans and sandals, and a blue denim shirt with its sleeves rolled up to her elbows. The dog was named Conroy, and was not on a leash; he zigzagged, nose to ground, in the grass beside the street. When Richie was close, he braked and Melissa looked over her shoulder, then smiled and said: Richie. He said hi and stopped, and walked the bicycle beside her. She was thirteen, three months older than Richie, and he liked her green eyes. Her hair was curls of very light brown, and hung above her shoulders. She wore lipstick.

  “Where you going?” she said.

  “Home. You walking Conroy?”

  “To the field. So I can smoke.”

  “How did he get his name?”

  “He’s named for an old friend of my dad’s. From the war.”

  “Which one?”

  “Korea.”

  “Did he die?”

  “No. My dad just never saw him again.”

  Her shirttails were knotted above her waist, showing a suntanned oblong of her stomach. Her legs were smooth and brown. He was looking past the handlebar at her sandaled feet, when the blacktop ended at a weed-grown, deeply rutted trail beside a stand of trees. Beyond the trees was the athletic field.

  “Come on,” she said, and he followed her through the trees, while Conroy darted ahead and onto the field. On open ground at the edge of the trees they stopped, and Richie stood his bicycle with its stand. Melissa leaned against an oak, looked over each shoulder, then drew a pack of Marlboros from between her breasts and offered it to him. He shook his head.

  “Afraid of cancer?”

  “I just don’t want to smoke.”

  She shrugged, and he watched her eyes and the cigarette in the middle of her lips as she took a lighter from her pocket. She inhaled and blew smoke and said: “Ah. First since last night.”

  He imagined her, while he lay in bed before Larry came, or maybe as he stood on the steps or later as he listened in his room, saw her out here under the stars, the glow of her cigarette in the shadows of these trees as Conroy ran in the field.

  “Did you walk him last night?”

  “Yeah. You’d think they’d catch on. They used to have to tell me to, and now I’m always walking the dog.”

  “What time were you out here?”

  “About ten, I guess. Why?”

  “I was wondering what I was doing then.”

  “You should have been out here. It was beautiful, really. Cool and quiet, and all the stars.”

  She half-turned toward him. If he moved a hand outward, it would touch her. He folded his arms, then leaned with his side against the tree. He was so close to her now that he could only see her face and throat and shoulders, unless he moved his eyes.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  He said to her eyes: “I went to Mass.” Then he said to her mouth: “I go every day.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “I want to be a priest.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s not just that. I’d go even if I didn’t want to be one. Do you receive on Sundays?”

  “On Sundays, sure.”

  “So you believe in it. So do I. That’s why I go. Because it’s too big not to.”

  “Too big?”

  “You believe it’s God? The bread and wine?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I mean. It’s God, so how can I stay home? When He’s there every day.”

  “I never thought of it like that.” The cigarette rose into his vision, and she turned in profile to draw from it. “You feel like you have to go?”

  “No. I like it. I love it. It’s better than anything. The feeling. Do y
ou think I’m dumb?”

  “No. I wish I felt that way.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “The things I do, everybody does them.”

  He unfolded his arms, and touched her cheek.

  “You’re so pretty,” he said.

  “So are you.”

  His face warmed. “Pretty?”

  “Well. You know. Good-looking.”

  She looked out at the field, finished the cigarette, then called Conroy. He was at the other side of it, near the woods where Richie cross-country skied. Conroy stood still and looked at Melissa’s voice. Then he ran toward it.

  “Are you going to play softball this morning?” she said.

  “Probably. Are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Conroy stopped on the infield of the softball diamond, sniffed the earth, then moved, with his nose down, to short right field. He straightened, circled three times in the same spot, as though he were drilling himself into it, then squatted, with his four paws close to each other, his tail curled upward, and shat. He cocked his head and watched them, and Melissa said: “Remember that, if you play right field. Are you in a hurry to get home?”

  “Not me.”

  “I’ll have another cigarette.”

  She withdrew her cigarettes from her blouse, and he watched her suntanned hand going down between her breasts, watched as she returned the pack, and imagined her small white breasts, and the brown from the sun ending just above and below them.

  “Aren’t you playing softball?” he said.

  “Late. I have to do housework first.”

  “Last night—”

  When he stopped, she had been frowning about housework, but her face softened and she looked at his eyes, and said: “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Maybe I’ll tell you sometime.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Sometime.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. I just wish I had been here.”

  “Was that it?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  He unfolded his arms, lowered them to his sides, where they made him feel as though he were stiffly posing for a picture. Slowly he let them rise, let each hand rest on her shoulders, then move down and lightly hold her biceps. She watched him. Then he swallowed and patted her lean hard arms, and turned away from her, letting his hands slide down to her elbows and away, and he folded his arms on his breast and looked out at the field. Conroy was lying down, chewing a short piece of a branch.

  “You’ve never smoked?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Here. Try.”

  He looked at her, and she held her cigarette to his lips; he drew on it and inhaled bitter heat and waited to cough as he quickly blew out the smoke, but he did not. Then a dizzying nausea moved through him, and was gone. He shook his head.

  “Did you get a kick?”

  “Too much of one.”

  “You have to get used to it. Want another?”

  “Woo. Not today.”

  She smiled at him and ground out the cigarette with her foot, and he watched her toes arch in the sandal. She called Conroy. He came with his head high, holding the stick in his jaws, and Richie walked his bicycle behind Melissa, into the trees, and onto the road. As they walked, the bicycle was between them, and she rested a hand on the seat. In front of his house he stopped.

  “So maybe I’ll see you later,” he said.

  “Yes. Maybe tonight too. Father Stowe.”

  His cheeks were warm again, but he was smiling.

  “I feel like a bad girl.”

  “Why?”

  “I gave you your first drag on a cigarette.” Then she leaned over the bicycle and with closed lips quickly kissed his mouth, that was open, his lips stilled by surprise, by fear, by excitement. She walked down the road, calling for Conroy, and a block away the dog turned and sprinted toward her, ears back, the stick in his jaws. Richie stood breathing her scents of smoke and lipstick and something else sweet—a cologne or cosmetic—or perhaps he only smelled memory, for it did not fade from the air. He watched her stoop to pet Conroy and nuzzle his ear, then straighten and walk with him, on the side of the road, in the shade of the arching trees.

  When she turned into her lawn, he pushed his bicycle up the walk and onto the concrete slab at the front door. He crouched to lock the rear wheel and was very hungry and hoped his father was making pancakes.

  II

  HE WAS. GREG STOWE had waked when he heard the front door shut behind Richie, and now Richie was nearly an hour late and Greg stood on the narrow east sundeck, which they rarely used because it was shaded by maples and pines and was sunlit only in the middle of the day. But he drank coffee there in the morning, all during the warm months, and often in the colder ones too, in late fall and winter, on windless sunny mornings when the temperature was over twenty. And at night when he knew or believed he was not the same man he was in the morning, he drank beer out there long past midnight, because it was darker, the trees that blocked the sun forming a good black wall between him and the streetlights nearly a hundred yards behind the house. He had bought both lots, so that no one could ever build behind him, and his lawn would always end at streets, not another man’s property, and he had left the trees on the back lot, so he had a small woods. Children played there, and teenagers hid and left behind them beer cans and bottles and cigarette butts. But the teenagers always gathered at the same spot, and their trash was contained. He thought it was funny that teenagers, except when they were in a car, did not seem comfortable unless they were stationary in a familiar spot, like an old person, or a dog, in a house.

  The front sundeck was good for drinking with friends before dinner, but there was a streetlight, and the lights of other houses, and he could not feel alone there. He liked drinking alone in a place so dark he had to remember the color of his clothes, or wait until his eyes adjusted to discern at least their hue. On those nights, and last night was one of them, time stopped, while his sense of place expanded, so there were moments when the sudden awareness of the dial of his wristwatch, and of where he actually stood, beer in hand, came to him with the startling sense of being wakened by an alarm clock. In the morning, drinking coffee and standing where he had stood the night before, he simply planned his day.

  Not this morning, though, for today was a continuation of last night with Larry, interrupted only by his grieving beer-drinking on the deck and a short sleep, and it would resume with Richie as soon as he came home, and end with Carol. So his day was not only already prepared for him, like a road he had to follow (or, more accurately, he thought, an obstacle course), but in truth it could not be planned, for he had no idea—or too many of them—of how, and even when, it would be finished. Nor did he know what he meant by finished. What he hoped for was Carol and Larry and Richie and Brenda sitting in his kitchen while he cooked.

  But he knew he had as much hope for that as for the traveling he did on the deck at night; he called them his Michelob voyages. He did not have the money for all of them, but he had the money for any one of them, even each of them in turn, if he spaced them by ten or so months and lived out a normal life. He would like to buy a boat with galley and sleeping quarters, learn to repair and maintain it, to navigate, and then go on the Intracostal Waterway, the fifteen hundred and fifty miles from Boston to Florida Bay, then the eleven hundred and sixteen to Brownsville, Texas. His image was of Brenda on the boat, and maybe Richie, and himself on the bridge, simply steering and looking at America. But he did not want to do it as a vacation, something you had to come home from, and at a certain time. Take a year off, Brenda said.

  But he could not. He was the sole owner of two ice cream stores; fifteen years ago he had bought them with a partner, and seven years ago he had bought out the partner, who retired and went to Florida and, according to postcards, did nothing but fish. These s
tores, one of them in an inland town and open all year, with a soda fountain and sandwiches too, and one at Seabrook Beach in New Hampshire, open from Memorial Day weekend till Labor Day, sold homemade ice cream, or as close to it as people could get without doing the work to make it in their own kitchens. Greg had learned that Russians and Americans ate more ice cream than the people of any other countries in the world, and some nights on the deck he amused himself by thinking about opening a store on the Black Sea, at Odessa or Sevastopol.

  But he could not leave for a year, or even half of one, not for the Intracoastal Waterway or for any other place—Kenya, Morocco, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, places where he wanted to walk and look, to eat and drink what the natives did—because as well as owning his stores he ran them too. It was something his partner had not had the heart, the drive, to do; and that was Greg’s reason for borrowing to buy him out, figuring finally that debt and being alone responsible for everything was better than trying week after week to joke with, tease, and implore a man in an effort to get him to work; when all the time, although Greg liked him, and enjoyed drinking and playing poker with him, and going into Boston to watch games with him, he wanted every workday to kick his ass. So he bought him out, freed him to fish in Florida, a life that sounded to Greg right for the lazy old fart who liked money but not the getting of it, while he himself liked getting it but had little to spend it on, and was not free to spend it on what he would like to.

  At night on the east deck, when time relinquished its function in his life, and space lost its distances and limits, he completed his travel on the Intracostal Waterway by sending his boat from Brownsville to the mouth of the Amazon, in the hands of a trustworthy sailor for hire, then flying with Brenda to Rio de Janeiro where they would live the hotel life of sleep and swimming and drinking and eating (and daytime fucking: yes, that) until he was ready for the rigorous part that excluded Richie from the daydream. He would go with Brenda to the mouth of the Amazon, by car or train, however they traveled there. He would rendezvous with his boat and sailor at one of the towns he had looked at as a dot on the globe on his desk. Then he and Brenda would walk west along the river. They would take only canteens, and he would carry a light pack with food for the day. They would wear heavy boots against snakes, and he would wear his .45 at his waist, and carry a machete. They would see anacondas and strange aqua birds and crocodiles. At the day’s end the boat would be waiting, and they would board it, and fish, and sip drinks and cook and eat, then lie together gently rocking in the forward cabin with the double bed. Sometimes he imagined the river’s bank stripped of trees, and an asphalt road alongside it, with rest areas and Howard Johnson’s. But no: it must be jungle, thick living jungle, where each step was a new one, on new earth, so that you could not remember how you felt retracing your steps through the days of your life at home. He went there at night on this deck, and always with the focused excitement, the near-quietude, of love. Only in the mornings with his coffee, or driving from the inland to the beach store, or at other moments during his days, did he ever feel the sadness that he forced to be brief: the knowledge that he would never do it.