‘And you were there when Mum and Dad met? It was in the White Castle burger joint, wasn’t it, when the production was shooting there?’ Pea asks, drawing Michelle back to us.
‘Sure. That was a real love story, right there.’ Michelle beams at us, clearly grateful to have something good to give us. ‘I was sick with envy; the way it happened, it was better than in the movies. Your dad was taking pictures, of the actors, the set, the scenes. And there were kids, so many kids hanging out on the street, and then his lens stopped on Riss. She didn’t notice at first, but I did. Because he just stopped, brought his camera down and just looked at her. And when she finally looked back at him, ka-bam, it happened just like that. It’s different now, I guess, but I dreamt of my wedding day from when I was a little girl. I dreamt of meeting Mr Right. And it was obvious to all of us that Riss had gone and done it first.’
‘And wasn’t there someone from the church that disappeared the same night?’ I frame the question as casually as I can. ‘A priest?’
‘Yes, that’s right, Father Thomas …’ Michelle bites her lip, a crease of concern appearing between her eyebrows. ‘For a little while some people thought she might of run off with him. Can you imagine? But I knew better, I knew her. She’d secretly gotten a passport, even before she met Henry, when the rest of us hardly ever thought of even crossing the bridge to Manhattan. Riss was born with itchy feet. She wanted to see the world; she wanted the world to see her. I always thought she’d end up doing something big, you know? Something we’d hear about one day and I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘So you work here?’ I ask. ‘I didn’t think women were allowed to work in the Catholic Church.’
‘Sure they are, it’s not the dark ages.’ Michelle smiles. ‘I’m the sacristan. It’s sort of like an office manager and church historian role all in one, serving a parish of around twelve hundred souls.’
‘So did anyone ever find out what happened to Father Thomas?’
Something in Michelle’s face changes, and she sits back in her chair a little, her expression closing slightly.
‘All I can tell you is, he was good-looking man, plenty of the wives of the parish used to flutter their lashes at him during communion. And he was a good priest; the congregation flourished under him. But still he was just a man, and men make mistakes. My guess is he probably got too close to the wrong woman; Bay Ridge could be a dangerous place if you crossed the wrong man, even for a priest. He probably had to cut town and fast. I guess we’ll never know.’
Without warning, her voice seems to be coming from very far away, and when I glance at Pea, she is out of focus and, somehow, even sitting so close to me that her forearm brushes mine, I know she is out of reach.
‘Excuse me, I just need the …’ It seems too difficult to finish the sentence, and I hope they will get the gist. Pea looks at me anxiously, but I shake my head, hoping that’s enough to ensure she doesn’t try and follow me.
Out in the hallway, I press the small of my back into the wall, drooping over, bracing my arms on my knees. I feel as if I can taste my stomach in my mouth, sour and acrid, and I focus on the toes of my shoes.
My feet push through the vinyl floor, slipping into space. I see the air thicken and solidify around me, and, as I gasp for breath, I feel it in my throat and lungs; I chew on it, and it becomes stuck between my teeth like candyfloss. I close my eyes and wait.
When I open them the corridor looks exactly the same, empty and quiet, except for the sounds of muffled voices behind closed doors. It was just a wobble, just a moment, brought on by the heat and the emotion, passed now. I am both disappointed and relieved as I open the office door.
‘Sorry, about that, I was just—’ I stop. An older man in his fifties is sitting at the desk. He’s wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses, and his silver hair is slicked back off his forehead. He’s smoking as he keys numbers into an adding machine.
‘And who are you … ?’
‘I’m sorry, wrong room,’ I say. Backing out and shutting the door behind me, I lean against the wall and take in deep breaths. It happened fast, faster than ever before; either I am mastering the transition or it’s mastering me, shaving away layer after a layer of me, until I can walk through walls.
Venturing a little further down the corridor I hesitate outside a room that seems quiet. I knock and there is no answer. Opening the door, I walk into the empty room and close the door behind me, taking a moment to catch my breath and compose myself. I’m here, right in the heart of the place where Thomas Delaney worked and lived, back in 1977.
Chances are he’s just around the corner.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
It’s just as I realise how close I am when my courage fails me. I’m overcome with the sudden need to get out of here and as far away from him as I can, as fast as I can. The thought of seeing him, admitting to his existence and how it is so deeply connected to mine, horrifies me. Blood crunches in my ears as I head back down the glass-covered walkway, looking for a place of safety, a calm harbour to hide in until I figure out what exactly it is that I am going to do. What was I thinking? Did I imagine that I was going to save the day by simply walking up to him and telling him to steer clear of my mother, or by telling her to stay away from him? Did I plan to push him under a passing cab and save everyone else the trouble? Perhaps I’d thought that whatever I did it wouldn’t matter, I wouldn’t care, or even feel it, because by then I would already be half gone, returning exactly that same amount of energy to the universe that it had taken to create me.
I thought I could be cold and heartless like him. But I am no avenging angel. At the end of all this drama, all this grand theatre playing out across decades, I’m just a lost girl. An outsider. A daughter who has never known her true father and somehow misses him just as much as he hates him.
The idea of actually coming face to face with him now makes me feel sick and scared and, yes, full of longing to know him. It’s not less that I feel, as I set in motion the events that will remove me from this life. It’s more – more love, more alive, more of everything – and it hurts.
Instead of finding my way barred by the coded lock that Michelle had swiftly punched an access number into, I swing open the door and head back down into the church. The pungent scent of incense stings my nostrils. A male voice sings in Latin and a meagre congregation returns each phrase as one. I hesitate, afraid to look over my shoulder; is that his voice?
Nausea sweeps through me; I struggle to keep control of my gut. I don’t want to look at him, see him, hear him, and yet … if I turned my head now I could see the face of the man that makes up half of me. Trembling, keeping my eyes focused on the door that leads to the street, I walk as quickly and as calmly as I can towards it, constantly afraid that the repetitive incantations that are crashing over me, wave after wave, will somehow trap me here, like a fly caught in amber.
My relief as I all but fall out of the church and onto the street is short lived. I feel very far from home. People are hurrying by, low slung, noisy sedan cars screech their horns at each other in the slow-moving traffic. There’s the heavy stink of humanity, people, cars, industry, the sweet smell of food mingling with the decay of rotting trash, a summer of strikes leaving its mark. This is real, it’s really happening, and I am much less certain, much less brave, in the daylight than I am wandering the empty streets at night. I might as well have just crash-landed on Mars. I have no idea how to exist here amongst these people, how to walk or talk. I’m afraid to move, and afraid to stay still.
Heat scorches the sidewalk, giving the smell of the street a charred and acrid edge; the midday sun burns the back of my neck at once. A drunk lies across the sidewalk, lost in his own private world, as people walk by, the flow of feet parting around him, like he is no more than a rock on a riverbed. An angry woman in a ripped, sequined skirt is sitting on the bench on the corner, arg
uing with thin air. Beneath her feet a newish-looking red handbag with its guts turned inside out lies on the floor, a lipstick with its lid off, crushed against the concrete in a shocking scarlet smear.
‘Jesus, move it, will you, lady.’ A guy shoves past me and I retreat to the safety of the church wall, trying to get my bearings, searching the street for something I recognise. It had been a little more than ten-minute walk from Mrs Finkle’s place to the church. All I need to do is to find the intersection of a street and an avenue, then I’ll know exactly where I am. I can find Riss, and wherever she is – even in 1977 – I feel safe.
In the exact second I formulate a plan, a door that I haven’t noticed until now, set deep into the wall of the church, swings open. A girl of about fifteen, in red shorts and a little, white, camisole top edged with embroidered strawberries, comes out onto the street. Her long, bare legs and her almost womanly figure is both awkward and balletic, as if she hasn’t quite learnt to inhabit herself yet. The back of her neck and shoulders are burnt bright red, except for two things: her white, spaghetti straps pushed off her shoulder, and the paler flesh beneath now revealed to the sun.
Turning on her heels, her parting smile is shy.
‘Thank you, Father Thomas,’ she says, blushing the same shade as her sunburnt shoulders. An electric surge of anxiety charges through to my fingertips. ‘I can’t talk to anyone the way I can to you, you just seem to get me.’
Her voice is full of admiration, affection and, yes, unknowing longing for something half-desired but barely understood.
‘I’m always here for you, Fay.’ His voice. I wouldn’t have had to know who was speaking to know it was him; the sound of it resonates in my chest: an accent that isn’t Brooklyn, could easily come from any state, tinged with an affectation of Irish. ‘Any time, you know that. Just call in and I’ll make time for you. You’re a very special young woman.’
The door remains open as the girl half walks, half skips away, turning back once more to offer him a cheerful little wave. I know with total certainty that he is standing in the shadow of the doorway, watching her go.
Standing motionless, I watch the door close and I hear the slide of a bolt, my breathing only slowing as I imagine him disappearing deeper into the bowels of the church.
Knowing he is still in there, and could appear at any moment, gives me the impetus to peel myself off of the wall. I can see the corner from here.
‘Hey, wait a second, would you?’ His voice stops me in my tracks. ‘Yeah, you. I saw you from the walkway. Were you waiting to come in?’
Slowly, very slowly, I turn around and see him framed by the doorway, his face standing out from the shadowy background. Thick, red-brown hair, long sideburns. A black shirt, open at the neck, no sign of a dog collar, and blue eyes that sing out to the sky.
‘Don’t go now.’ His voice is friendly, reassuring. ‘Stay a while, won’t you? Come and talk to me. All are welcome here, no matter what.’
‘Even me?’ I take a step closer to observe him, expecting something more than his benign smile, from him and me. Perhaps a gut reaction, a spark of some deep primal recognition, but there is nothing. I feel nothing.
‘God welcomes all who are ready to repent of their sins and commit to his love,’ he tells me cheerfully, stepping out of the door and onto the sidewalk, closing the space between us by a fraction more. ‘You look lost.’
‘I know where I am.’ I point at the street sign opposite, and he laughs.
‘Lost in your life, I mean. Our heavenly father can show you the way, if you’ll let him.’
‘You truly believe that?’ I ask him. ‘Even when there are drunks and addicts outside your door? Is there a way back for them too?’
He nods. ‘For everyone. Even you. Come inside, talk to me.’
Instinct pushes me from the inside out. I’m glad I bought the Pentax, loaded with fresh film, and I lift it to my eye. A man who works so hard to keep his crimes invisible won’t want to be seen in a way that is so permanent, so easily reproduced.
‘Can I take your picture?’ I ask him.
Through the eye of the lens, he simply smiles, shrugs, crossing his arms and leaning in the frame of the doorway, one leg positioned casually in front of the other. He looks like a catalogue model, not a monster. He looks like any man, not the man who is so intrinsically woven into my flesh. My finger hovers over the shutter, but it doesn’t click.
‘Come inside,’ he repeats. ‘Talk to me about what is troubling you.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Well –’ he shrugs ‘– you’ll know where to find me when you’re ready.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I will.’
My feet stumble over themselves in my haste to be away from him. It’s not the fear or repulsion I expected the first time I saw him, and somehow that makes it worse. He has a kind face, open and trusting. If I didn’t know what he was, I’d think he looked like a man you could turn to; a good man, with a church at his back. That’s how Mum must have seen him, and how it must have hurt her in those first few seconds when she realised everything she thought she knew about him was a lie. How it must have frightened her.
I need to be with someone I love so badly that it hurts, so I head for Lupo’s. I head for my mother, following instinct over design.
My mouth is dry, limbs trembling, my veins full of adrenalin, and the heat is pouring into me, melting me into the asphalt. Delaney was right about one thing – I am lost, a stranger in a strange land, with no place to go – and then I see a face I know. And it’s Michael.
‘Hey, it’s you.’ His smile of recognition makes my heart leap, and it’s hard not to think that fate, or some grand plan, has us turning endless corners always into one another.
‘Michael.’ Taking a step towards him, I stop just short of flinging my arms around him, so grateful am I to see him.
‘Hey, what’s up? You gonna cry?’ He ducks a little to peer into my face, and I shake my head, although tears are already rolling down my cheeks.
‘What happened, who’s upset you? Want me to talk to them, huh?’ He makes a fist. ‘Like Rocky would?’ I smile, not just because he makes me smile, but because he sees me. I exist.
‘Where you been at?’ he asks, puzzled and smiling all at once. ‘I asked Riss, and she said she saw you too last night. I knocked on the door of the place you were staying and they didn’t know you.’
‘Ah, I … I moved. I didn’t like it there.’ I pause. ‘You were asking about me?’
‘I was worried about you, walking around on your own. I wish you wouldn’t, OK? Look, if it’s money, if you can’t afford anywhere to stay, well, I’m sure we can find you somewhere, with one of the girls, until you get straight.’
‘That’s sweet,’ I say. ‘It really is, but … I’m fine on my own.’
‘OK.’ He nods once, deciding not to question me anymore. ‘That’s cool. And sure I went looking for you. I wanted to see you again. Feels like a lifetime since I last saw you. But it was only last night.’
He is so impossibly sweet that I can’t help but deflect it. ‘Do you practise these lines in front of the mirror?’
‘You bet I do.’ He grins. ‘I say them over and over again to my picture of Farrah Fawcett. Judging by the look on her face, she thinks I’m pretty hot. I’m supposed to be back at work, but …’ He digs his hands deep into his pockets, lifting his shoulders, suddenly coy. ‘Come spend the afternoon with me. We can sit in the sun and talk about nothing.’
My first instinct is to say no, Michael is not the reason I am here. And then somehow, almost unconsciously, my fingers gravitate towards his, and I find his hand in mine.
‘Sure, why not?’ I say.
‘Really?’ He is so surprised, so delighted, and it shows in his smile. His beautiful smile.
I let him lead me down the street, his gait confident, almost a strut, his head held high, uninterested in the curious glances and sometime naked stares we are attracting. For a minute
or so, I’m sure it’s me people are staring at. My faded jeans, plain white T-shirt and no make-up mean I stand out a mile among women who seem to take special care with how they look. Then I realise it’s him; wherever he goes people want to look at him.
He slows as we near the end of 3rd Avenue, a block from Lupo’s.
‘I’d better go see Dad,’ he says reluctantly. ‘Wait here a sec.’
‘Where the hell have you been?’ A raised voice greets him as he walks through the door.
‘I was on my break, Dad, you know that.’ Michael’s reply is quieter, respectful. ‘I don’t feel so good; I think maybe it’s the flu.’
‘The flu? The flu! I’ll give you the goddam flu,’ his father bellows, and I’m struck by how much he looks like that version of Michael I met in the present, only exhausted, and seemingly furious at his son. ‘When are you going to grow up? You ain’t no kid anymore, you got responsibilities, and you got a job, whether you like it or not. I haven’t broken my back every single day of your life, just so you walk out on me, you little prick. You don’t get to do that.’
‘Who says I can’t? Watch me.’ Michael reappears, backing out of the shop, and grabs my hand. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘You get back here, you little shit!’ Michael’s father hollers down the street after us. ‘You get back here, and I’ll show you, you aren’t too big to feel the back of my hand.’
Michael’s grip tightens on mine, but he doesn’t flinch or hesitate. He doesn’t look back; we just keep on walking, marching, and the further from the shop we get, the more his shoulders square, his chin lifts.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask him eventually, when we stop at the last road before the park. The Verrazano–Narrows Bridge soars above the treeline.
‘Sure, I’m fine,’ he mutters. ‘Why wouldn’t I be fine?’
His expression tells another story though: he suddenly looks much younger, and hurt. There are unshed tears in his eyes. I touch his cheek with my fingertips.
‘I don’t know why I care so much,’ he says. ‘It’s just when I was a kid, he got me, you know? We got each other. But now I’m a man, and I’m not like him. It’s like he hates me. Sometimes I hate me for not being the son he needs.’
The Summer of Impossible Things Page 18
