The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel

by Patry Francis

“Robert put his hands around my throat and tried to kill me the night before, Doctor. Do you know what that’s like? Can you begin to understand?”

  “But you’d seen Gus on the beach and followed him to the church. You knew the kind of man he was. How could you do that to him?”

  Ava’s eyes well up. “I never wanted to hurt the Father . . . and I had no reason to think Neil would, either. I wanted him to look after Mila when I was gone.”

  “And when you called him, leaving your number on his cell phone over and over again? When you asked him to meet you at the Pink Dolphin . . . Jesus, when you accused him of assault? How can you possibly say you weren’t trying to implicate him?”

  “We had to throw Robert off the track . . . But without a body, Neil promised me no one would ever be charged for the crime.”

  “And when someone was? When someone was not only charged, but sentenced to life—”

  “Neil said there would be an appeal. He claimed he was talking to a new attorney and raising money, that the conviction would never stand.”

  “And how did your husband reassure you when Gus was sent to prison? When he was attacked by some animal and nearly killed? When the weeks and months turned into years? How did you ease your conscience then?”

  “Do you think it hasn’t haunted me? I even told him we had to go back; we had to tell the truth,” Ava cries. “But Neil said . . .”

  “Go ahead,” Hallie prods. “What did he say?”

  “He said Gus didn’t care when he ruined your life—or his. And if he wanted to waste his life converting sinners, what better place to do it? That was when I truly understood how much he’d come to despise the Father.”

  “If it bothered you so much, why didn’t you go back yourself?”

  “Don’t you understand? I couldn’t. Neil and I were bound together—not just by our son, but by this terrible thing we had done. I was afraid.”

  “Fear,” Hallie replies disdainfully. “That seems to be your excuse for everything. In another situation, it might almost make me sympathetic to you. But other people were involved.”

  “What do you know about marriage, Doctor?”

  Hallie’s eyes burn. “I’m in no mood for riddles.”

  “But sometimes life is a riddle, don’t you think? Sometimes you believe you have escaped a man, only to find you have married him all over again, that cruelty is something you attract. No more than that. Worse than that—it’s something you need.”

  “Are you trying to say Neil beat you? Because as callous as he is, as much evil as he’s done, I don’t believe—”

  “No, Neil never hit me. But, like Robert, he drew a line between us.” Ava holds up an elegant hand. “This close you may come, and no closer. This much you may know, and no more. This you may ask, say, do, think—but not that. Never that.

  “Neil worked so hard; the only time he was truly happy was when he had become someone else. Underneath it all, though, there was a terrible torment. And rage. That was the line I couldn’t cross.”

  “Rage at whom? The man he sacrificed so the two of you could have your life?”

  “Yes, that man. Sometimes when he’d had too much to drink, it would come out. I remember one night, after I’d gone to bed. He was alone downstairs, yelling, caught up in a ferocious argument. Sasha was so scared he crawled into bed with me.”

  “So who was he fighting with?”

  “His orphan brother, of course. The one who had everything Neil wanted, but threw it away. Neil could copy it; he could bring an audience to tears with his brilliant imitation; all those years when they’d been friends, he had basked in Gus’s light. But he himself could never possess it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hallie asked.

  “His voodoo, Neil called it. The power he had over other people. I experienced it, too. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  Though I’ve been still and silent as a shadow while Ava and Hallie talked, all of a sudden I see Gus’s eyes as they were the day he told me about Xavier and his tattoo. “It’s not voodoo,” I say, startling them both. “It’s just love. Pure and simple.”

  Ava casts her eyes downward, but Hallie squeezes my hand. “Yes,” she whispers.

  Then she takes a long, deep breath before she speaks, obviously measuring every word. “Do you want to know what I think of you—you and your sad, tormented husband?” she says. “You are the worst kind of cowards. The most despicable of liars. The lowest of thieves. You stole a man’s life and felt sorry for yourselves as you did it. You don’t just prove the banality of evil. You are that banality.”

  When she turns to me, I see the immensity of sorrow behind her anger. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, Mila. With all my heart, I’m sorry.” But when she says “my heart,” she puts the palm of her hand on my chest, not her own.

  PART SEVEN

  MILLETTE STATE PRISON

  { OCTOBER 23, 2010 }

  Chapter 48

  The next morning, Hallie woke so early that the sky was still lit with sharp stars. While Mila and Julia slept, she showered and dressed and made coffee, enjoying the quiet hour as she always did. She was sipping her coffee at the table when she noticed that her father’s old diner mug, which she had grabbed at random from the cupboard, was cracked, and it occurred to her that it was time to get rid of all the old things. The objects that seemed to hold the past, but did not. Could not.

  She took her coffee up to the attic and opened the box where she’d put the book Gus had given her the first time she visited him in prison. Inside the cover, her father had written his name in the looping open scrawl that was never afraid of taking up too much space. Hallie touched the faded ink, smiling faintly. The light was like weak tea. If she hadn’t memorized the first line of the story long ago, she probably couldn’t have read the tiny print:

  Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

  She switched on the overhead light and continued, her voice as bright as it had been that day when she first knocked on the Barrettos’ door, naïvely, optimistically, bravely believing that she, one small girl, could cure a tragedy like the one that had visited Gus—with a book and two fish. How foolish she had been. When she reached the second paragraph, she was stopped by a line she had deliberately skipped the first time. It had seemed too cruel to read then, but now she repeated the wise old crones’ predictions for David Copperfield slowly:

  In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared . . . first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits . . .

  As she closed the book, she remembered Gus’s long silence after she told him about Neil’s betrayal, and the calmness of his voice when he finally spoke; and she knew, with absolute certainty, that whatever curses Gus had endured, his gift was far greater. She shut her eyes and imagined him as he’d been when he was a child, sitting on the couch in his aunt’s living room, his huge eyes full of heartbreak and his own luminous kindness, and she realized it had always been apparent. That was his voodoo.

  It was nearly seven when she heard the sound of Julia padding to the bathroom on the second floor. Hallie slipped back downstairs, the book in hand. She had planned to return it to Gus when he was released, but staring at her father’s cracked cup, she realized that he, too, had been carrying the past for too long. He needed no reminders. The cup shattered when she tossed it into the trash, but she resisted the impulse to hurl the book on top of it.

  Instead, she replaced David Copperfield in her father’s library, as if it were possible to reach back through thirty years and return the house to what it had been before she walked across town to visit a boy mute with shock and pain. She was just a child. She could never have imagined how his grief would infiltrate her life. But even if she had known, she would not have turned back.

  Julia, the steadiest among them, drove them
to Millette in her boyfriend’s van. Hallie sat up front, while Gus’s dog, Stella, who had just turned fourteen, rode in the back with Mila and Jack. Though Jack had been diagnosed with lung cancer only three weeks earlier, and had just begun chemo, he was determined to be there. Usually, Julia and Mila would be absorbed in their phones or arguing about what to play on the radio. But on that day there was so much emotion, so much inner noise and excitement in the car, they all seemed to understand that just one note, just one word might cause the van to suddenly combust. No one noticed the silence until they arrived, and then everyone seemed to be speaking at once.

  It was one of those frigid days that fall occasionally spits out in warning. This is the last time, Mila said, speaking for all of them, as they each recalled their dreary visits to the prison. The last time, they echoed in unison.

  When they reached the desolate parking lot, Alvaro’s truck was already there, and he was standing outside it, leaning against the fender, just as he’d been the day when Nick had gone to the house on Loop Street and tried to coax Gus into speaking. He beckoned to Hallie.

  “I’ll be right back.” She got out of the van and walked toward Alvaro, who pulled her into a strong abraço.

  They waited until exactly eleven, when Gus was scheduled to be released, and then they all got out and stood outside and watched the door, inured to the cold. Hallie had tried to persuade Jack to stay in the van, but he had quickly rebuffed her—“I didn’t come all this way to sit in the car”—and no one tried to argue with him.

  It was only a few minutes before Gus Silva emerged, holding a small gym bag stuffed with eleven years’ of his life. He started toward them slowly, almost as if he were reluctant to leave the place that had been home for so long. But as he got farther from the building, something propelled him forward into the bracing light. The walk was only about ten yards, but it felt like miles to Hallie as she watched him. Before he reached them, Gus stopped right there in the middle of the parking lot and let the gym bag fall as he opened his arms.

  Stella, the still energetic Jack Russell, was the first to run to him, with a wild canine joy that remembered everything. Julia let out a small cry before she and Mila rushed after her, while Jack limped behind them on his cane, alternately sobbing and coughing as he cursed his former curate for “reducing me to this.”

  Alvaro followed. “Hey, cuz. Helluva nice day out here, wouldn’t you say?” he said, grinning broadly at the white sky.

  Meanwhile, Hallie stood back, almost shyly, until Gus’s eyes found hers, and years of despair, mountains of loss, were swept away in one blinding smile. The first time he spoke, he just mouthed the word, the name he had carved on a tree in Beech Forest when he was a child. Then he whispered it, and, finally, he shouted it: Hallie. Hallie!

  Epilogue

  Bring all of yourself to his door:

  bring only a part

  and you’ve brought nothing at all.

  —HAKIM SANAI

  Nantasket Beach

  June 23, 2011, 5 a.m.

  Dear Hallie,

  In just a few hours, this beach will be covered with a patchwork of colorful towels, sand chairs, and umbrellas. Music will blare; children will shriek; adolescents will strut their bright new bodies down the coast the way we once did. In the background, the ocean will hum and roar. But right now it is the solitary and silent domain of one monk. I come here most mornings before Lauds and run the way I used to when I was a parish priest. Maybe Nick was right when he said it’s in the blood because a key criterion in my search for a monastery was that I had to be able to smell the sea.

  It was good to see you last week—even if it was for a funeral. I laughed when you said that Jack Rooney was such a great guy, that he almost made you feel like joining the church. Then before I could haul out my conversion speech, you arched your eyebrows and emphasized “almost!” Well, no need to worry. You are already one of the holiest women I’ve ever met. No conversion necessary. (Holy? I can see you cringing now.)

  I’ve been feeling the resonance of Jack’s life particularly keenly in recent days. I usually go to bed too exhausted for insomnia, but one night last week was an exception. Sometime in the middle of the night I sat up in bed laughing out loud as I recalled the day I told Jack I’d decided to enter a monastery. That white hair of his stood straight on end.

  “So you’re going to sit around and pray all day? Might as well have stayed in jail.”

  “What—you have something against prayer?” I asked him. He had to think about that a minute. “It’s all right—in its place,” he finally admitted. “But don’t you think you could pray and do something at the same time?” Jack was such a man of action. I think he saw the monastic life as an excuse for laziness, but I’ve never worked harder. We raise chickens, keep bees, and bake bread to support ourselves. Then there’s the work of taking care of this place and each other. But the real labor is the prayer itself. The most intense work. The greatest joy.

  The last time I visited Jack in the hospital, he brought it up again. “With all that praying, you and the Almighty must be on a first-name basis by now,” he said, showing me his famous scowl. I laughed, but the truth is, the more hours I spend in contemplation, the less I know about God—and the more I realize how arrogant it is for us poor humans to squeeze the Infinite into our limited definitions.

  Enough of this God talk, you’re probably saying, so I will stop. I hear that Neil and Ava divorced shortly after they were released. It’s a sad case all the way around, especially for their boy. Kids take the worst of it in these situations, as we all know.

  You may have heard I visited Neil in prison—probably because I refused to see my father before he died and I’ve always regretted it. When my aunt and uncle tried to drag me there, I sat in the parking lot, stubbornly smoking cigarettes. It’s an hour that still haunts me. In Neil’s case, though, it would have been better if I’d stayed away. It brought me back to our fight on Race Point, though this time the blows were verbal instead of physical. Strong as the desire for answers might be, I can only hope you will never try to contact him again. I don’t know what happened to the friend I knew in childhood, or when, but the man I saw that afternoon, like the one he briefly revealed all those years ago, is as troubled and dangerous as anyone I ever met in prison or elsewhere.

  After the visit, I went out to my car and wrote the very last entry in the journal I started when I was first sent to prison. When I finished, I looked up at my old cell block. Then I went home to my room at the monastery and tossed it into the box full of notebooks I’d filled when I was in jail, knowing I didn’t need them anymore. In many ways, those journals had been the only thing that kept me sane through all those years. And though they were often full of nothing but bitterness and rage, I believe that I was also unconsciously seeking Grace when I felt most abandoned. That night I took the box down to the fireplace in the monastery and burned them all.

  What you probably don’t know is that I also saw Ava. I know you still have a lot of bitterness toward her, but I can never forget how wounded she was the night she first came to me. Despite all the lies she told, that was something she couldn’t fake. We only spent an hour together, but I hope it was the start of some healing—for both of us. Yes, she caused immense pain, but she endured just as much. Does that exonerate her? I suppose not; but when I visited her, I was strengthened by the message from a sign in your father’s office: IF YOU JUDGE PEOPLE, YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO LOVE THEM. I’m sure you remember, and I’m sure you also know it wasn’t the words that fortified me. It was my memories of the man who lived them.

  Mila still writes me fat, rambling letters, though never without grumbling about my refusal to use a computer “like normal people.” Her letters are a great source of delight in my life, especially when she tells me stories about you, or about her growing connection with her brother. It’s limited to e-mail exchanges now, but I know that will change—and probably soon. For an honorary member of our orphan tr
ibe, Mila is amazingly rich in family. I give you credit for that.

  They will soon be ringing the bells for Lauds, so my hour at the beach is just about over. But before I sign off, there’s one more thing I need to say. Last week at the funeral, I caught you studying me in secret. When I looked back, you turned away. But in that instant, I saw something like sorrow in your eyes. Something like regret. I may be misinterpreting here, but I suspect it was sadness for the years I lost in prison. If there’s any truth to that, please let me clarify: I will soon put this pen in my pocket and walk down the beach with my arms wide open to a life more beautiful than I have the right to inhabit. Nothing of value has ever been taken from me. Nor can it be.

  Love always,

  Gus

  Acknowledgments

  This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Only the spirit that inspired it is real. I am grateful to my husband’s dear friend, Yvette Roderick Freller, and to Debbie Roderick Maseda, who generously shared their memories of growing up in a tight-knit community that shares its fate with the sea. Though both women passed away far too early and the town they remembered continues to evolve, the spirit remains. I have done my best to honor it.

  Alice Tasman provided advice, enthusiasm, friendship, and, above all, an unshakable faith in these characters and this story over the course of many years. My debt to her is beyond words.

  It has been a great privilege to work with Claire Wachtel, whose thoughtful questions and suggestions improved the novel immeasurably.

  Rona Laban, my lifelong friend and partner in adventures of all kinds, also accompanied me on this one, reading through many drafts, and offering a perfect balance of criticism and love.

  Thanks are owed to Jonathan Burnham for suggesting the prologue, to Amy Baker at Harper Perennial for her early support, to Hannah Wood, and to my copy editor, Edward. R. Cohen, for his keen eye and for teaching me, among other things, that only a dolt heats pizza in the microwave.