But You Scared Me the Most

by John Manderino

  “I’m sorry, Fred, but I don’t believe you.”

  “He said you wouldn’t.”

  Father stood up. “Enough.” He pointed toward the door. “Out you go.”

  Fred walked to the door, then turned around. “I’ll pray for you, Father.”

  “Out.”

  Fred began getting up every morning in time to make seven o’clock Mass, the one Father Dillon always ran. There were never many people, so he was able to sit right in the middle of the front pew. He was receiving the Eucharist each day as well, and as he waited at the altar he kept his eyes on Father, whose mouth always slid to the side when he saw Fred kneeling there. “Corpus Domini nostri,” Father would pronounce, having no choice, as he placed the wafer on Fred’s tongue, the altar boy holding the paten under his chin in case of crumbs. The altar boy was never anyone saintly or even close to it, yet there he was, in his cassock and surplice, while here was Fred in his school uniform. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. He hated Father Dillon.

  But as he returned to his pew all his anger would dissolve along with the host in his mouth, the sweet, loving mercy of Jesus seeping into his heart, and he would kneel and pray for Father Dillon, asking Our Lord to help Father get over this notion he had about Fred, that he was some kind of phony, some kind of fake saint:

  Lord, help him to understand.

  Meanwhile Fred’s mother was becoming concerned, since along with attending daily Mass he’d also begun speaking to her kindly and sympathetically and had even begun doing what he could to help around the house.

  “All right, Fred, what’s going on?” she finally asked him one day, after coming home from work to find him mopping the kitchen floor.

  “Just thought I would get this, save you the trouble.”

  It was just the two of them, his father having died in Korea a month after Fred was born. She had a photo of him in his army uniform on the lamp table in the living room, his hat tilted back, flashing a slanted, handsome smile. Fred knew it was hard for her: she was a real estate agent and had to look spiffy and maintain a perky attitude and she wasn’t all that spiffy and perky a person.

  She stood there watching him mop the floor. “Is there something you want to tell me, Fred? Something you want to talk about, that I should know?”

  “Actually, Mom, there is.” He stopped mopping and looked at her. “Jesus loves you.”

  She sighed, wearily. “Fred . . .”

  He went back to mopping. “He really does, Mom.”

  One person who had no doubts at all about Fred’s saintliness was his teacher, Sister Alice Marie. She was very old and rather feeble but could see what Jesus saw: how completely Fred had turned himself toward Heaven. She began finding excuses to keep him after school, to unpack some books or wash the blackboard or even help her check math papers. Fred was glad to oblige. He enjoyed the way she looked at him, as if he was giving off a soft light.

  One day after school while he was finishing up washing the blackboard Sister asked him if he’d ever seen Jesus.

  Fred told her, casually, “He comes to my room now and then, Sister, usually late at night.”

  “Oh, I knew it,” she said, and brought her small hands together. “And what does He say to you, Fred?”

  “Mostly just, you know, keep up the good work.”

  Sister shook her head. “How wonderful, how wonderful.”

  “It really is, y’know?” he said. “When you think about it.”

  She asked him shyly, “Has He ever . . . possibly . . . mentioned me?”

  Fred gave her what she wanted: “He told me I was very lucky to have someone like you for a teacher.”

  “Oh, Fred, He said that?”

  “He did, Sister.”

  Her cup began running over, which he found a little disgusting, so he made the sign of the cross in the air, blessing her, and got out of there.

  Walking home he was beaten up by Jerry Klinkhammer, but not very badly. Once Klinkhammer saw Fred wasn’t going to resist, he lost interest.

  Fred held on to his sainthood through the summer, and naturally he wished to attend the Catholic high school, St. Anthony’s, in the fall. The teachers there were mostly priests—not Dominicans, like Father Dillon, but Jesuits, known for their intelligence—but his mother didn’t have the money, not even close to it. So he had to attend Jefferson, which was huge, and you had to be in a different classroom every period, with five minutes to find it, and he kept getting lost. He hated walking in late, so he often ended up in one of the bathrooms sitting in a stall, praying to Our Lord to help him find the way.

  Our Lord said maybe if he didn’t go following Vanessa Hennesey around the halls like a little panting dog, he would find his room in time.

  This was something new: this banging of his heart whenever he saw her, this dry mouth, this clamminess, this urgent stirring in his pants, this boner. She was in his first-period history class, so impure looking with her black eyeliner and wild red hair, her gypsy fortune-teller clothes, bangles on her wrists, and the way she strode through the hallway swinging her long, skinny, freckled arms, never carrying books, a brazen look on her painted face. She was a harlot. That was the word the Bible used for girls like her. A harlot.

  Fred loved that word.

  You harlot, he would tell her from his bed at night.

  He pictured her standing there, hands on her hips, tossing back her head, laughing her brazen harlot’s laugh.

  Please, Lord, make her go away?

  Please, Lord, please? she would say, mocking him.

  You harlot.

  She laughed and took off all her clothes.

  You filthy harlot.

  In the confessional box one Saturday he said to Father Dillon quietly, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  Recognizing Fred’s voice, Father sighed.

  “Father . . . I committed an impure act with myself.”

  Fred waited.

  Father finally spoke: “That is a very grave sin,” he whispered. “Our Lord hates that sin very much. Do you know why?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You do?”

  “No, Father.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know, Father.”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and you have defiled that temple. Do you know what the word ‘defile’ means?”

  “I’m pretty sure, Father.”

  “It means to take something pure and holy and make it foul and loathsome. Do you know what the word ‘loathsome’ means?”

  “Yes, Father. I do.”

  Father let him kneel there crying.

  “All right, don’t overdo it.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  “And don’t raise your voice at me. Who do you think you are?”

  He knew Father was waiting for him to apologize. He let Father wait.

  “Do you want forgiveness or not?” Father asked him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes, what.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “All right, then. Pray the rosary. Pray night and day. Pray to Our Lady. She’s the one most deeply offended by your sin. Try to imagine the way Our Blessed Mother feels while watching what you do to yourself.”

  “She watches, Father?”

  “Of course she does, and it makes her sick. Now say a sincere Act of Contrition and go in peace,” he said, sliding shut the little grate in Fred’s face.

  Asshole, Fred thought, and left without bothering to say an Act of Contrition.

  Walking home, hands jammed in his coat pockets, dead leaves everywhere, he knew he wouldn’t be back. He wasn’t going to quit thinking about Vanessa Hennesey or quit defiling himself, so why pretend to be sorry? Let Father Dillon win, he thought, who cares? It was time to move on.

  In his bed that night while Our Lady watched with loathing, covering her eyes but peeking through the fingers, Fred whispered like a prayer, “Vanessa . . . Vaness
a . . . oh, Vanessa . . .”

  SELF-PORTRAIT WITH WINE

  I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t.

  The name’s Ray Parisi. You may have heard of me, probably not. I’m an artist. I do mostly portraits, with crayons and a pencil eraser. The effect is quite unique. Sometimes I think I might be another Francisco Goya. Other times I think I’m a loser who thinks he’s another Francisco Goya.

  Last night I was up until two in the morning doing a self-portrait in front of the dresser mirror, with some wine. Which is another thing about me, I drink too much. But so did a lot of great painters. But so do a lot of winos. Anyway, I went to bed thinking I had something pretty good this time, something pretty damn excellent in fact.

  This morning? Not so sure.

  It seems like every portrait I do, whether it’s of myself or somebody from a magazine, it ends up looking like some kind of a monster. I never mean it, that’s just the way they always seem to come out. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you know? I can imagine somebody, some art critic for a major magazine for example, writing something like Parisi has the rare ability to capture the dark essence of his subject, what might be called the Monster Within.

  Anyway, I couldn’t decide whether to feel good or bad about last night’s work, and the more I studied it the more hungover I felt, so I finally gave up and got dressed and went out. It was a beautiful morning, the first really nice day of spring, with that smell in the air, that hopeful smell. I started feeling better. I started thinking about doing a monster series. I wouldn’t use the word “monster” though, I’d be very dry about it, just call it Portraits. Let the critics come up with the idea of monsters, you see. Like I said, the air had that hopeful smell.

  Then along comes this guy.

  If you saw him, you would think okay, great big blustery guy in a blue business suit talking loud on one of those little bitty phones, so what? But the closer he got, the more I felt like I was being canceled out, know what I mean? Like I wasn’t just a nobody but a nothing, like I didn’t even fucking exist. And so, just as he was about to march on by without any sign whatsoever that I was here too—on this sidewalk, on this sunny morning, on this planet, this journey—in order to keep myself from being utterly rubbed out I reached over, grabbed the phone from his hand, and went tearing down the sidewalk.

  Sometimes you do things and you can hardly believe you’re doing them.

  I told whoever was on the other end what was going on, shouting into the bottom part, saying I had just liberated the phone—that’s the word I used, “liberated”—and was heading down Columbus Avenue, approaching High Street. “Over,” I said, and put it to my ear, then realized that was probably dumb, saying “Over,” but believe it or not I never talked on one of those things before. When you had it up to your ear the bottom part didn’t even reach your mouth, not even close.

  “Who is this?” a young-sounding woman said in my ear. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m about to cross High Street now!” I shouted, and ran across without even looking, a car braking and honking at me. “That was close,” I told her.

  “Would you please identify yourself please?”

  “Hang on a second,” I said, Fatfuck still in hot pursuit, calling me names, things I won’t repeat, everyone looking, so I put my head down and ran even harder, and when I looked back again he was all the way at the other end of the block, standing there bent over with his hands on his knees, out of breath, out of shape. Me, I’m in good shape. I stay up practically every night drinking and smoking and I can still outrun anyone out here, especially some lard-ass in a suit and tie. I slowed down to a trot and put the phone to my mouth again. “Hello? Still there?” I said, and put it to my ear.

  “Will you kindly tell me who this is please?”

  Walking now, I told her my name and a little bit about myself: between jobs at the moment, living in a room on Stevens Avenue—a “garret” I called it—and about my work, about this series I was planning to do, exploring the Monster Within. But that’s not the title, I explained to her. “I’ll leave that to the critics,” I said. “They like titles. They need them. Helps them understand,” and gave a little laugh. I can be charming as hell when I want.

  “Where is Mr. Soderstrom?”

  “Who?”

  “David. The owner of the phone you’re using.”

  I told her David was out of the picture. And he was, he was gone. “Probably to his office,” I told her. “Mister Bigshot, right?” She still didn’t seem to fully comprehend what was going on here, so I explained it all over again.

  “You stole David’s phone?”

  “Mistakes were made on both sides,” I said.

  “Right out of his hand?”

  “Hey, I’m an artist. I’m pretty deft.”

  “I said, you stole David’s phone right out of—”

  “I said I’m deft, not deaf.”

  We were both quiet then for a moment.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said.

  “Believe it, honey.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry. What should I call you? I gave you my name. ‘Ray,’ in case you forgot.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “It’s Alice.”

  I nodded. “That’s a good name. I like that. ‘Alice.’ Do you feel like you’re in Wonderland, Alice? Talking to the Mad Hatter? I’m kidding. I’m not mad—in the sense of crazy, I mean. Or in the sense of angry, although I do sometimes get angry, especially when I witness man’s inhumanity to man. That always pisses me off. Anyway, listen, might as well go for broke here, I was wondering if you’d be interested in a cup of coffee, Alice.”

  “Jesus.”

  “On me.”

  “You don’t get it, do you.”

  “Is this about the phone? Are we back to that?”

  “We never left it.”

  “Listen, he’s probably got about three or four of them. He strikes me as the type.”

  “Type, what type? You don’t even know him.”

  “I know he’s a big fat arrogant blowhard, I know that. I don’t like him, Alice. I’m sorry. I don’t know what your connection is, if he’s your boyfriend or what, but I don’t care for the man, in fact I think he’s the worst thing to come along. In fact? I might include him in my monster series. Call it simply Man with Phone. What do you think?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my boss.”

  “Ah. Interesting. So. Is he back yet?”

  “No.”

  “So you must be, what, at your desk?”

  “Amazing.”

  “You’re prob’ly like a, what, a secretary or something?”

  “Administrative assistant.”

  “So, what were you talking about, the two of you, before I so rudely interrupted. Anything interesting?”

  “God,” she said.

  “You mean like does He exist or is this all just a cosmic accident—that what you mean?”

  “I mean God as in ‘God, get a life, will you?’”

  That hurt. That really did. I stopped walking. I let my hand drop. I stood there looking around. As usual, everyone was on their way somewhere, except for me. Sometimes that makes me feel superior, like they’re all just a bunch of robots and I’m the only one with an actual human soul. Other times it makes me feel adrift, you know? Like I got no direction, no purpose. That’s how I felt right now. And panicky. I’ll be thirty-five years old next month and look at me.

  I started walking fast, towards this bar on State Street, called The Wit’s End, good name for it. I had enough on me for three beers and I could probably talk my way to a fourth. I almost forgot about Alice, then I heard her voice in my hand going, “Hello? Hello?”

  I put it up to my mouth again. “Listen,” I told her, “I have to go. I have to be somewhere, okay? I’m sorry. It was nice talking to you, Alice.”

  I was trying to figure out which b
utton to press to hang up but I could hear Alice yelling, “Wait! Don’t get off! Hello? Hello?”

  “Right here,” I told her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Um, look,” she said, “I’m going to put you on hold for a second, okay? Just for a second.”

  “I’m kind of in a hurry here, Alice.”

  “You can keep walking. I’ll just be a second, okay? Roy?”

  “The name’s Ray. Ray Parisi.”

  “I’ll be right back, Ray. So don’t hang up.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . . because. I want to talk to you some more.”

  “What for?”

  “Get to know you better. I thought we were hitting it off, didn’t you?”

  “You told me to get a life, Alice.”

  “I was joking. That’s what I do when I like someone, I kid around like that.”

  “It hurt my feelings.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Made me feel like a . . . you know . . .”

  “A loser, right.”

  “I’m not a loser, Alice.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “I told you about that series I was planning, right? About the Monster Within?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me, Roy.”

  “Ray.”

  “Listen, hang on, okay? I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  I told her I’d wait.

  Music came on, violins playing “Somewhere My Love.” As I walked along I sang quietly, “Somewhere, my love, there will be birds to sing. Somewhere, my love, there will be birds to sing. Somewhere, my love—”

  “Hi. Still there?”

  “That was quick.”

  “I told you.”

  “What did you have, another call?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Hey, I know how it is. Used to work in an office myself, wore a tie, the whole bit. Couldn’t take it, Alice. Couldn’t play the game. Know what I mean, the game?”

  “Right. Hey, listen—”

  “In fact? I might as well tell you right now before we go any further: as I mentioned, I’m an artist. And you know what that means? I’m out there. On the edge, Alice. Know what I’m saying?”