This Gorgeous Game

by Donna Freitas

  “He’s coming for dinner this week. Remember? And I don’t know what to cook yet.”

  “He’ll like whatever you make.”

  “But I want it to be special.”

  “We have priests over all the time,” I say, as if this explains everything. “It’s not as if Father Mark is any different.”

  “We have Father MacKinley over all the time. And Father Mark is different. You know that.”

  I wish everyone would stop acting like Father Mark is such a big deal. This is what I think but don’t have the guts to say out loud.

  “Olivia?”

  “What? Sorry. I got distracted.”

  “I can see I’m getting nowhere.”

  “Hmmm” is the noncommittal sound that comes out of my mouth.

  “Please think about what he might like.” She signals a willingness to let the subject drop, and then, “Ooh, is that your story I see?”

  “No,” I lie, but Mom reaches over my leg and pulls it out of my bag. I grab it from her hands with such force that I hear her hiss in pain.

  “Ow, you gave me a paper cut!”

  “Mom, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to…” Tears spring into my eyes. I turn the manuscript facedown, out of her reach. I don’t want her near anything having to do with Father Mark and what he writes to me because it is my problem and not hers and I don’t want her to see. I just don’t.

  She takes one of the napkins she brought with breakfast and presses it over her finger, trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Why won’t you show me?” She sounds hurt.

  “Um…because Father Mark made me promise not to let anyone see until it’s finished. It’s still a work in progress…you know how it is…” I bank on the fact that she will somehow understand what I mean because she is a writer.

  “All right.” She hesitates, then continues, “I suppose I can appreciate that. Especially if he asked this of you and you are trying to respect his wishes.”

  “If the circumstances were different you know I’d show you, right? Because I would.”

  Her smile reappears at this, and I know I’ve said the right thing, fixed everything. At least for now. “What an opportunity, Olivia.” She sighs, made content by this thought. “How fun that you get to go through this process with Father Mark Brendan!” She beams with pride that I’ve somehow hit the writer-mentor jackpot. “If you don’t want to talk about dinner or your story, maybe you can tell me how things are going with Jamie?” At the mention of Jamie, my face lights up and this encourages Mom to press on. “I liked him very much, Olivia, in the thirty minutes you allowed me to talk to him,” she says.

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Sorry. The thirty-five minutes.”

  “I like him, too, Mom.”

  “I can tell.” She stretches her legs out and leans back against her arms, turning her face toward the sun. Getting comfortable. We sit there a long time like this, first talking about Jamie, then in quiet, the two of us staring out at the water.

  My earlier anxiety has almost faded to nothing and then…

  “What are you thinking?” Mom asks after our long silence.

  “I don’t know. Nothing really.”

  “Is there something wrong, sweetheart? You’ve been acting so strange, so quiet lately. You’re usually so exuberant and full of life. It’s like someone drained you or—”

  “No,” I practically shout, then lower my voice. “I’m fine. Really. Enjoying the day.”

  “Oh, Olivia.”

  “Everything is great. I swear.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.” I am firm. Definitive.

  Mom’s eyebrows raise, but she doesn’t pry further. “Okay then. I’ve done my duty here. I’ve fed you. I’ve made you tell me about your new boyfriend or whatever you are calling him. I’ll leave you to your morning.” She gets up from the blanket, shading her eyes as she looks at me. “Can you hand me the glass and the container?”

  “Sure,” I say, and she takes them, balancing one on top of the other. “Thanks, Mom. For breakfast. It was really nice of you.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad you ate.”

  “I’m glad you came down to visit. It’s nice. Like old times.” I pick up my novel and open it. “Okay…I’m going to read now.”

  “I get the hint.”

  “Mom,” I call out as she heads up the bank toward the bridge, slow, steady, taking her time. “I love you!”

  “I love you, too, sweetie,” she yells back, turning to look at me one last time, her expression full of love, and I marvel how a single glance from my mother can feel like a shiny, protective shell all around me, as strong as the number 45 sunscreen I slather on my fair skin, the kind that won’t let any of the bad stuff in.

  ON SHAME

  FATHER MARK ARRIVES AT OUR HOUSE FOR DINNER AND sits at the head of the table, opposite Father MacKinley. Sister June is here. The happy couple, Greenie and Luke, are here. Ash and Jada—who keep mouthing “Jamie Grant” every time I look at them—are here. Even Sister Mary Margaret from our parish has come—she told Mom she’d always wanted to meet the famous Catholic writer Father Mark Brendan, and my mother’s attitude was the more the merrier. Mom has spent two entire days cooking and I feel guilty about not giving her more help, not offering suggestions of what to make, so guilty that I almost can’t get anything down. This makes me feel even worse because she’s already worried that I am not eating and here I am, doing it again. Pushing food around on my plate.

  The only important person in my life absent tonight is Jamie. It’s not that Mom didn’t want him to come, but more that I knew his presence might make things awkward.

  With Father Mark.

  So I told Jamie it was a family-only dinner. In other words, I lied. I hate lying. But I’m getting good at it.

  The discussion at the table is animated and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. Everyone but me. I am uncomfortable. Unsettled. Unwilling to meet his eyes. I need to get away so I excuse myself and run upstairs to the bathroom.

  I’ve had a glass of wine, something I never do, but my mother says it is a special occasion and so I drink it, but to tell the truth it makes me a bit dizzy. In the mirror I see a girl with tired eyes and no color in her cheeks and long straggly hair, and the internal voice that keeps talking to me lately wonders, What’s happening to you, Olivia? and I do not have the answer so that’s where the conversation ends.

  When I step out of my bathroom I am not alone.

  Father Mark stands in the entrance to my bedroom, his height reaching all the way to the top of the doorframe. His head bobs forward when he steps inside even though I have not invited him in and wasn’t planning to. The first thought that pops into my head is that I am not allowed to have boys in my room, but this is inane and I’m upset it even crosses my mind in relation to Father Mark.

  He is not a boy. He is a priest.

  “Oh! Um, hi. Hi.” I tug at the hem of my sweater, not quite knowing how to handle his presence.

  “Hello, Olivia,” he says, as if we are just now seeing each other and haven’t been seated together all evening. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

  “There’s one down the hall to your left, just after the bookshelves.” My tone is cheery, like a stewardess on an airplane giving directions. I wait, feeling awkward, wanting him to leave so I can get ahold of myself and rejoin the dinner party downstairs.

  But Father Mark shows no sign of leaving.

  My hands find my hair, twirling it around my fingers. I don’t know what else to do or say. The distance I’ve been creating between us little by little over the past weeks has accumulated and grown into a wide gulf, a space that to me feels necessary. Essential. But awkward, too. This is extremely awkward because I can tell that it is a space he loathes. That makes him angry. He doesn’t need to say a word.

  I wish we could go back to the beginning and start over, do things differently.

  “So this is where
you sleep,” Father Mark says, taking another step forward into this place that is mine, this place where I know he does not belong and where his eyes dart around, taking in my dresser, the rug, the windows, the closet, open, exposing my entire wardrobe. “And where you write,” he adds, glancing at the coffee table in front of my couch, on top of which sits my laptop, closed, obvious, hidden yet in plain sight. He walks over to it, picks it up, moves to open it, which shocks me—as though he’s grabbed my insides, squeezing them until I cannot breathe, and so I burst out, “Hey! Put that down! That’s not yours!”

  “Olivia.” He sounds startled, disappointed, but he hangs on, his arms cradling my computer in front of him. “Friends don’t keep secrets from each other.”

  “But my laptop, it’s just not—”

  He ignores my protest and flips it open, the light on the screen automatically coming to life.

  “I said NO!” I shout, not quite understanding what has come over me—maybe the wine?—rushing over, yanking it away from him.

  Father Mark is stunned, his face crushing with sadness, confusion, looking as if he’s been punched.

  So there we are, me hugging my laptop, safely closed, and Father Mark, looking at me, his eyes fixed on me, my body, his presence so strange, so dark against the vivid rose-colored backdrop of my room, a girl’s room, a seventeen-year-old high school student’s room, and my internal voice wanting to know, What is he doing in here, Olivia? and Don’t you see that something isn’t right?

  “I’m sorry.” Father Mark’s voice fills with remorse. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Really, I didn’t.”

  My mouth opens but the words stay put. I turn my back to him, so he can no longer see my face.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude,” he says.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, quiet, even though I don’t know if this is true or if I’m just saying it to try to make the situation right. More questions scroll through my mind: How did everything go from so wonderful and exciting to so awkward and uncomfortable? and What was the moment when it all changed?

  “Olivia.” He hesitates, waits for me to encourage him, but I don’t and he pushes on anyway. “I sense a change in you. Has something upset you? Did someone do something to you? Because if someone is bothering you—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “Everything is great.”

  “Good. That’s good. A relief.” He heaves a deep sigh and I can tell he means what he says and that everything is going to be okay—at least he thinks so—and we are going to go back downstairs and finish dinner and all will be fine.

  Then Father Mark exclaims in a voice that is loud and angry, “Olivia!”

  I turn toward him and see that he is standing near the couch and in his hands is a stack of letters that he’s plucked from the top of the pile, my Father Mark pile, and all of them are still sealed and I feel a combination of embarrassment—that he’s discovered how much I’ve saved; and shame—that he has evidence that I do not appreciate his attention, that I am ungrateful, that I don’t bother to read what he gives to me anymore; and fear, too, about what happens now.

  “You haven’t opened any of these?” In his voice is a combination of astonishment, hurt, and fury.

  All the possible excuses I might offer scroll through me like a tickertape—Greenie’s wedding, friendship crises, Mom has me managing stuff at the house while she helps Greenie with the planning—anything that would diffuse this situation, anything other than Jamie, because mentioning him might make everything worse somehow, and so I pick the most innocuous one and start to explain in a voice that is unnaturally animated. “Well, it’s complicated. See, Ash and Jada—” But I stop short when I hear the sound of all those letters falling to the floor in a soft shhhhh as they slide this way and that in their disarray and he turns around.

  Father Mark stares at me, his face a blank. Unreadable.

  “I’ll see you back at the table.” He walks past me toward the door in a few long, quick strides. I hear him leave, his footsteps, thump thump, thump thump thump down the stairs, and I recall that when he appeared in my room he was looking for the bathroom and he seems to have forgotten this. Laughter, loud, raucous peals of happy laughter erupt upon his arrival back in the dining room and I think he must have made a joke, delighting my family and guests as he always does, delighting everyone he meets. When he wants to at least.

  After I breathe, in, out, for a good long while, my laptop still pressed against my chest, I put it back on the coffee table, doing my best to avoid looking at the Father-Mark-mess on the floor and make my way down to the dinner party where Father Mark immediately sends a warm smile in my direction and raises his glass and says something about me but I don’t know what. I’m not listening. He acts as if nothing happened, nothing at all. I sit down, Father Mark to my right.

  “Jack,” Father Mark says, addressing Father MacKinley across the table. “Did you hear the news from St. Theresa’s?”

  “I did,” Father MacKinley says, looking stricken. “It’s so sad what has happened to our Church. Especially in Boston.”

  “I read about it in the bulletin this week,” my mother says. “I think it’s terrible.”

  “What is it?” Greenie sounds concerned.

  “Another parish closing its doors.” Mom shakes her head in sadness.

  “Why?” I ask because I want to be involved in the conversation—I need to so no one thinks anything is wrong—and because I also genuinely want to know. It would be awful to lose our parish, Father MacKinley, and the community along with it, which for so long has been a family to my family.

  “Why does any parish close its doors today?” Luke huffs, sarcastic. Angry. “These people and their accusations of abuse. They’re so righteous. They think it’s their duty to expose the Church’s ‘sins’ by bleeding it dry with lawsuits and destroying the priesthood in the process.”

  The anger in the room, from Greenie and Luke especially, is palpable. A part of me understands why they feel such pain, they are so invested, so Catholic, but I am startled, too, by the conviction of their disbelief, their lack of sympathy for the victims in this equation. I am upset by it.

  “I don’t think anyone will see the collar the same way ever again,” Father MacKinley says, resigned. “We live in a different era now. Priests aren’t regarded as they used to be.” The sadness in Father MacKinley’s eyes—sadness mixed with kindness—seeing it makes me want to weep and I can’t help but wonder, How could anybody ever accuse someone like him? because it is simply unimaginable. Impossible that he would do something so awful.

  I look around and notice that everyone has stopped eating. Even Ash and Jada. Each of us look back and forth between Father MacKinley and Father Mark, like at a tennis match, watching the two priests in the two collars, conspicuous now at either end of the table.

  Father Mark takes a sip of wine. “I’ve spoken to the Bishop about the situation.”

  “And?” Father MacKinley sounds hopeful.

  “The Diocese of Boston keeps my royalties in a trust.” Father Mark takes another sip, dabbing the side of his mouth with his napkin. “That’s how Olivia’s contest is funded.” He pauses, smiling at me, and my stomach churns. “But I’ve asked that they open the account to parishes in danger of closing. After all, it’s not as if I have any use for the money and it’s a waste to the faithful just sitting there. St. Theresa’s might be the first parish to benefit.”

  “Oh, Father! That is so generous.” Mom beams.

  “It’s priests like you that will help our Church get back on its feet,” Luke states with conviction.

  “Mark, what a good thing you’ve done for that community. What a wonderful idea.” Father MacKinley shakes his head, like he can’t find the words to fully express his gratitude.

  Greenie, on my left, leans forward, gazing at Father Mark like he’s some kind of hero, and I notice that everyone else does the same—Luke, Mom, Father MacKinley, Sister Mary Margaret, Ash, and Jada. They are absorbed in his
every word, drawn to him as if he is a magnet.

  And I know what they feel. I’ve felt his pull, too. From the very first moment.

  Only Sister June is unmoved. She looks at me now, looks at me hard, like she’s trying to see something, find something in my eyes.

  “It’s really nothing,” Father Mark says, deflecting the adoration flowing toward him, though I can tell he’s enjoying it. “Let’s turn toward happier subjects. I’m sorry I brought up something so dark at what’s supposed to be a party for my protégé.”

  I force a laugh, feeling self-conscious when everyone turns to look at me when Father Mark calls me “his” as if I am a possession. His possession. Again I meet Sister June’s eyes, her eyes searching mine, and a lightbulb switches to on and for a moment I am blinded by doubt and terror and the unfinished questions could I, am I, is Father Mark, is he? emerge from somewhere buried deep, but before they can become fully formed Jada steps in, taking Father Mark’s comment as an invitation for funny Olivia anecdotes, and soon Ash joins her and the somber mood that has fallen across the dinner party lightens up again. Waves of relief wash over me, relief that Jada saves me from following those questions to their end, and the light that went on so bright, so quickly, switches back to off and those horrible suspicions that make me a terrible person for even thinking them, half-alive as they are, were, scurry back into their hiding place, and I wish for them to never come out again. Never.

  ON IRREPARABLE HARM

  THE NEXT EVENING FATHER MARK AND I SIT NEXT TO each other on chairs that are tightly packed into this intimate space where everyone listens with rapt attention to James McDaniel, the famous Irish writer, memoirist, who reads from his newest work of creative nonfiction.

  I clap along with the rest of the audience in between one selection and the next.

  The celebration is invitation only, which Father Mark kept reminding me in the car on our way here, but I don’t realize how exclusive, how fancy it is until we arrive. I feel strange to be among the chosen, the writers, editors, publishers, and professors, the Boston intellectual elite, in this beautiful room with its glittering wall sconces, its shelves that reach the ceiling packed with the rarest of rare books, the Persian carpet soft, luxurious under our feet, and the air with its musty smell of greatness and history.