The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel

by Patry Francis

  Gus’s mind leaped to the woman he had often seen on the jetty, her brown hair a forlorn flag in the wind, sitting knees to chest as if folded in to herself. How many times had he run past her, lost in contemplation, in the rhythm of his running? But Ava Cilento had not been on the beach since the night she came to the rectory.

  “No one but me and my dogs,” he replied.

  “Pretty weak,” Lunes said. “Not that I’m questioning your veracity. But obviously your chronology leaves you all the time in the world to run your three miles, go to the Cilentos’ house, beat Ava within an inch of her life, and still have time to fit in a rosary on your way back to church.”

  “I can’t imagine a more profane scenario.”

  “More ‘profane scenarios,’ as you call them, play themselves out every day,” Lunes said forcefully. “Don’t add naïveté to your handicaps, Padre.”

  “All right, say I am the kind of monster who can move from deadly violence to the consecration without missing a beat. Say I am that evil. That dead inside. It still doesn’t work. You say this thing happened at her house with her husband present. You think the guy just opened the door to me?”

  “Who said anything about Cilento being there?”

  “He works till about ten at night. Eleven at the latest. He’d be home sleeping at that hour, in bed with his wife, wouldn’t he? From everything I’ve heard, he rarely lets her out of his sight.”

  “You said you counseled the woman, Father. Surely, she mentioned that she and her husband were separated.”

  Gus was too stunned to respond, but Lunes read the answer in his confused eyes.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lunes said. “Looks like someone’s been playin’ you like a sax. And it’s a sad tune, brother. A real sad tune.” Seeing Gus’s growing consternation, he picked up his notebook and returned to a more professional tone. “So if you weren’t counseling her about her separation, then what exactly—”

  “Puta que pariu! The woman came to me with a ring of bruises around her throat! They weren’t painted on there. They were real. Now that he knows she’s told someone, it’s only going to escalate.”

  “Curse in English, will you?” Lunes said. “I don’t speak old country.”

  “Sorry. I don’t know what half the things I picked up on the wharf mean myself.”

  Again, Lunes chuckled. “I believe you, Father—not that it means shit, or merda, as they say on the wharf.”

  “So you do speak old country.”

  “A few words, but I speak common sense even better. Common sense and hard-headed facts. You ever heard of those languages, Padre?”

  “Obviously, they’re not my native tongue.”

  “Yeah, well, if you’re gonna get out of this one, you better brush up. Where’d you go after mass?”

  “I told you. Back to the rectory to check on my housekeeper. She just got out of the hospital and—”

  “Then where?” the attorney pressed impatiently.

  “It was my day off, so I decided to go to Provincetown. Visit my old house.”

  “Totally typical day, huh? You often make these little nostalgia trips to the place where your mom was killed?”

  “This was the first time,” Gus admitted quietly.

  “And don’t tell me. You were alone. No witnesses but those dogs of yours.”

  “Actually, there was someone else at the house,” Gus said in a low voice. He put his head in his hands, and when he looked up, he said, “I’m so screwed, Lunes.”

  “You mean this story gets worse?”

  “It was Hallie Costa. My old girlfriend from high school.”

  “The one you—”

  Gus nodded.

  “So now you got two women? Little Cod—I mean, Gus—damn.”

  “I know how it looks, but—”

  “You know what? I’m not even going to ask you to explain what you were doing in that house with the Costa woman. Because if I know too much more, I might not be able to defend you.” Lunes closed his notebook and left the cell.

  After the door closed, Gus leaned his head against the bars as he listened to the confident click of Lunes’s shoes as he walked away.

  Chapter 18

  The body of Christ,” Gus said as he raised the flat, papery disc in the air. Lucia Spinelli opened her mouth like a bird, her veiny eyelids closed and trembling. At ninety-three, Lucia only occasionally remembered the names of her five children; she had totally lost the name of the village in Italy where she was born; and she still expected the husband who had died thirty-seven years earlier to walk through the door and take her out of the nursing home where she’d lived for eleven years. The raised Eucharist was the only stimulus she still responded to consistently.

  Just as Lucia’s mouth clamped shut on the host, a daughter Gus hadn’t met before paused in the doorway, her movement impaired by two large canvas bags in her hands. “You’re that Father Silva, aren’t you?” she said. “The one I read about in the Times?” And then, while Gus blessed the old woman as he always did, she answered her own question. “Yes, that’s exactly who you are.”

  Lucia’s eyes snapped open in confusion, but Gus finished his prayer in silence before he acknowledged the daughter.

  “Yes, that’s who I am,” he said calmly.

  “Who asked you to come here?” the daughter snapped.

  “Your mother did.”

  “My mother’s incapable of asking an aide to take her to the bathroom, never mind calling a priest. If she had her wits about her, she wouldn’t be within a hundred feet of you.”

  “When she identified her faith, she asked for me,” Gus said, squeezing Lucia’s hand. He nodded to the daughter, looking her directly in the eyes.

  “You can take my mother off that list of yours, Father Silva,” she called after him as he left the room. “She doesn’t want you here.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Gus said, thinking of the comfort Mrs. Spinelli got from his visits. He kept walking.

  In the hallway, a nurse named Nancy, who was passing out medications, stopped him. “Don’t listen to that bitch,” she muttered. “No one who knows you believes a word of that garbage in the paper.”

  “That’s kind of you, Nancy, but I’m afraid a lot of people do believe it.” Ever since Jack had posted bail, writing the check in his shaky hand, Gus had maneuvered between the hostility of people who had been quick to assume the worst about a priest, after all the scandals, and unwavering supporters like Nancy.

  Seems like God’s trying to teach you equanimity, Jack had said when he saw Gus tense up after a parishioner conspicuously avoided them in the drug store. Well, I hope He knows I’m a slow learner, Gus answered. Oh, He knows all right, Jack shot back, and Gus had felt his anger dissipate as the two shared a laugh.

  Though the disdainful glances and quick judgments still bothered him, Gus had learned to react less as the days passed.

  “See you tomorrow?” Nancy asked.

  “Probably Thursday. I have some things to take care of tomorrow.” Remembering his appointment with Lunes the following day, Gus frowned to himself. He still wasn’t sure if the attorney believed in his innocence, and he also harbored a disquieting sense that to Lunes Oliveira, it didn’t matter. He probably would have defended Codfish Silva with equal vigor.

  “Are you back at the hospital?” Nancy asked.

  “They’ve replaced me as chaplain,” Gus said. “Temporarily. As you can see, some people feel uncomfortable having me around these days.” Though Ava was reported to be recuperating with a private nurse and a guard at her side at home, Gus was still forbidden to go near the hospital.

  Nancy pushed her meds cart toward the next room. “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “See you next week,” Gus called after her, though he realized that nothing in his life was certain anymore. “And take good care of Lucia. She’s always been one of my favorites.”

  “Will do. Bye, Father.” To Gus, the pity in Nancy’s voice was even more searing
than the hostility he’d met in Lucia’s daughter.

  While Gus made his rounds, the dogs stayed in the day room, moving among residents who were in various states of consciousness and alertness, but who were always responsive to the silky feel of their fur, the simple wet love from their tongues. Now the animals were eager for movement, air, light. When Gus mentioned their favorite words—the beach—they wrestled and nipped at each other in excitement.

  As the cold air entered his chest, Gus realized he had been suffocating in the nursing home; he hadn’t taken a nourishing breath since he held up the host before Lucia Spinelli and pronounced the words of will and faith: the body of Christ.

  But even the coastline had changed for Gus. The gray sky felt ominous. He jogged in the direction of the jetty, and walked along the mottled rocks, searching for some clue to the puzzle Ava had become.

  He didn’t realize he had cut himself on a jagged piece of stone until he looked down and saw blood spreading across the stones. Merda, he said, looking down at the wound, which Jane, who had followed him out onto the jetty, began to lick. Maybe it was the cut or the taste of the curse in his mouth, but Gus suddenly felt overwhelmed with anger. Why hadn’t Ava done more to protect herself? Why hadn’t she come back and let him help her? And now she threatened to destroy everything he’d worked for with her false accusation.

  Limping off the jetty, trailed by Jane, he spotted a couple holding hands. It had been years since the sight of two people clearly in love had brought such a sharp stab of loneliness. Leaning against the hood of his car while the dogs watched him with anticipation, he checked his messages for the first time in three days. In his former life, he had received a couple dozen messages every day. But now there were only two. The first was from Sandra, asking him to pick up a can of red beans on the way home.

  The second message caused Gus to stand up straight. Ava had recorded two long minutes of frustrating silence just like the messages she’d tormented him with before the assault. After what she had done, the wordless messages felt like a game, almost a taunt. He was about to press delete when the sound of her ragged breath made him pause.

  He listened again, remembering the night in the rectory when she’d bitten her lip, and how she’d been so distraught she hadn’t even realized she’d drawn blood. Suddenly, he was back in the kitchen on Point of Pines Road, staring at his mother’s swollen mouth. Mama, he’d begun, but before he could say more, her hand flew to her face, covering the injury. I thought I told you to clean your room, she said sternly. Again he was assailed by the helplessness he’d felt as he sat on his bed and looked around the impeccably neat room. When he went to the doorway, Maria had turned her back on him and switched on her tape player, filling the space between them with Amália Rodrigues’s plaintive voice. He knew it was heretical, but sometimes his failure felt so heavy that even God couldn’t release him from it.

  He played the message a third time, wondering if the memories would have been different if Maria had someone she trusted enough to call. An adult who would have known how to help her. Before reason could set in, Gus hopped in the car and drove the dogs back to the rectory, where he stopped to look up Ava’s address in the phone book. Jane and Stella watched vigilantly from the window as he fired up the car and roared toward Ocean Drive.

  The stone house dominated the coastline, dwarfing those on either side of it. Gus thought he had never seen a more garish home. Even from a distance, it felt silent and closed.

  Gus got out of the car and opened the iron gate before he pulled into the long driveway. He pounded on the door with the heavy knocker, but got no response. When he spotted a curtain flaring in a window on the second window, he trampled a flower bed and stood beneath it. “Ava!” he yelled. “Please, come down. It’s me—Father Gus.”

  Finally, he heard the sound of halting footsteps. When they stopped before reaching the door, he felt chastened. He had called a badly injured woman out of bed. Still, he couldn’t turn back.

  “Please, I have to talk to you,” he shouted insistently. “You owe me that much; don’t you think?”

  But when the door opened, Gus was confronted by a man of about fifty-five. He was small in stature, but thick-bodied and muscular in a way that went beyond the physical.

  “Tell me, Father Silva,” he said, giving every word sharp corners. “Exactly what does my wife owe you?”

  Gus stared into a pair of enervated eyes that were ringed from lack of sleep. “Where is she?” he asked.

  Robert stepped outside and closed the door behind him.“It seems I’ve overestimated you. I never thought you’d have the audacity to show up at my house after what you’ve done to my family.”

  “Your house. Your family,” Gus spat out, attempting to control his rising fury. “Tell me, Mr. Cilento, does anything belong to Ava?”

  “Save your sermons. You’re the one who’s been charged with assault. Aggravated assault.”

  “Another way you’ve exerted your sick control. If she wasn’t terrified, she—”

  “What? She would have defended her priest lover? Did you really believe that? As I said, you are a greater fool than I thought.” Robert emitted a short, caustic laugh as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and pressed three numbers.

  If a call went through to 911, Gus knew he would be sent back to jail and Ava would be left alone in that house with her husband’s wrath. In one deft motion, he ripped the phone from the older man’s hand and threw it down. It shattered on the driveway. “Get out of the way,” he yelled.

  “Or what? I need to know exactly what you’re threatening here.”

  In that moment, Robert Cilento disappeared. Instead, Gus saw his father standing before him. With a shove forceful enough to send Codfish away forever, he knocked Robert onto his manicured lawn, where he landed with a groan.

  Gus didn’t think he’d injured him—though clearly, in spite of all the hours of prayer, the life he’d dedicated to eradicating it, the violence was still there. Lunes Oliveira had known when he called him Little Cod. He pushed his way into a marbled entryway, calling Ava’s name. Hoping to buy a few extra minutes, he locked the door behind him. He was aware that he was risking his freedom and the bail money Jack had posted, but he was sure she would recant if he could only speak with her alone.

  He took the stairs two at a time. With every step into the cavernous house, Gus felt Robert’s need—for stature, armature, protection. Such need, Gus knew from experience, was the most dangerous force in the world. “Ava! Ava!” he yelled into the silence.

  Gus had almost convinced himself that something had happened to her when he heard a weak voice. “I’m here, Father,” she called from the foot of the stairs.

  He looked down and saw her standing in the overdone foyer. Her fragility, multiplied in the mirrors that lined it, stopped him for a second, before he raced back down.

  Dressed in turquoise silk pajamas and a matching robe, Ava lowered her head, allowing a curtain of hair to obscure the right side of her face. “Like I told you the first night, you must be a mad man. Why would you come here, Father? Don’t you know how dangerous it is?”

  Then, clutching her robe at the center as if in pain, she went to the window and peered outside. “I don’t see him. He’s probably already called the police and is waiting for them outside the gate,” she said.

  “He tried, but I smashed his cell phone.”

  “Do you think that will stop him? There’s a phone in the cabana. You have to—”

  “Where’s your daughter?” Gus interrupted. He wondered if a frightened child was hiding somewhere in the house, and if she’d heard the altercation outside.

  “Mila’s been with my friend Cynthia since the night I was—hurt,” she said, choosing the word carefully. “At least for now, she is safe.”

  Gus nodded. “Good. Now is there a way we can get to my car without passing through the front door?” With only the sea behind them, the prospects seemed dim.

 
“Not to your car, but out. Yes, there is a way.” Ava led him down a corridor into a room where a disheveled daybed and several magazines scattered across its covers indicated her presence. Unlike the rest of the house, the room was simple and unpretentious.

  From inside a desk she produced a key and some cash, and then she pointed down the hallway. “Go into the library on the right and through the terrace doors. This is the key to the house next door. The people are in Spain. From there, you can call a taxi to the bus station in Hyannis.”

  “What do you mean—I can? Surely, you don’t think I intend to leave you behind,” Gus yelled, no longer able to control his anger. “I’m already looking at possible prison time, and I just made it a lot worse. Why did you do it, Ava?”

  Ava glanced anxiously in the direction of the door. “Don’t you understand? There’s no time for this now.”

  “What I understand is that you’ve implicated me in a serious crime. I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”

  “Do you think I wanted to do it? The day when I woke up in the hospital, I cursed the sun, I cursed the stubborn heart that goes on beating after everything I’ve done. When the doctors promised I would recover, I wanted to scream. But Robert was there beside me, holding my hand. The concerned husband. When we are alone, he promised me how different things would be—but first, I had to do one thing for him. One small thing.”

  “He threatened you. I knew it.” Gus felt his chest constrict as the echoes thrummed in his skull. The words, the angry sounds of fists hitting walls, the weeping and begging—it had all come back.

  “He doesn’t have to threaten,” Ava said. “I knew what would happen if I didn’t . . .” She put her face in her hands and sobbed. “I tried to warn you outside the bar, but you wouldn’t listen. Whatever goodness I once had, whatever love, I lost it years ago.”

  Gus paused and reached for his handkerchief, but he had forgotten it. “You want to know his worst crime? He told you those things for so long that you believe them; and then he created a world where it felt true. But still you had the courage to come to me. And enough hope to call when you were too afraid to say a word. Now you just have to take the next step.”