Darnay Road

by Diane Munier

  I can’t believe these Bloody Heart jocks give one another so much say. They move in groups, packs. Teams. One brain. No brain. But they are the top layer of this cake called high school. I figure, let them have it. It’s just a glorified Twinkie as in—stack of Twinkies.

  I just nod. It’s so strange to be saying yes to Rita’s question, but I don’t know what else to say. I feel protective of Easy. Like they could hurt him when I know they can’t. They have no power to hurt him. He doesn’t care. I don’t care. It’s kind of a great thing to suddenly know. Next to Vietnam they are fireflies.

  I just walk away then. “He’s a looker,” she says to her friends. “I guess every good man needs a dog,” and they laugh.

  Ricky is pulling on my arm then. “Hey, you don’t even know what you’re doing. Your Granma needs to leave them at Disbro’s. I’m going to talk to her.”

  He’s taken his hand off my arm and he swallows a belch.

  “You gonna sneak him to your room?” he says, exhaling alcohol.

  Ricky came in my room uninvited just last week. Granma was up the street getting her magazines and Abigail was there and Aunt May sent him over for Abigail May, which was a lie and he admitted it. He says he knocked, cause he’s supposed to unless Abigail May is with him. But up he came and we were in my room listening to music. He looked at everything and Abigail jumped on his back to get him out. He hadn’t been in there for years and I was just glad my laundry wasn’t all over like usual.

  He plopped on my bed, on his stomach, and Abigail May had yelled at him to get out and dove onto his back to hit on him and try to tickle him. He ignored her like she was a fly and he talked to me about the music and I was surprised we actually liked some of the same bands, so he ended up rolling Abigail off and sitting on the floor beside me and we listened to music so long Abigail May fell asleep on my bed.

  When we all came down Granma was so surprised Ricky was up there and she didn’t know. When he left I told her how it happened and she said it was all right but he should never have made himself so at home and she’d talk to him or to May about it and I got her to agree not to because it was all right and he’d never done that before.

  She asked me then if I returned his feelings.

  I said, “What feelings?”

  “He’s like a brother to you?” she said.

  “No,” I answered. He was not.

  “What if he’s…you know?” she raised her gray brows up and down.

  “Granma!” I had about yelled and that was the end of it.

  Then the next time I saw him, the very next day he was just Ricky, his usual jerk-self. He pulled my hair like we were still in grade school, and called attention to me so all the jocks could laugh and say dumb stuff and he could show them how he had a right to touch me or something, which I didn’t give him permission to do.

  So now he says he wants me to dance with him, and I say no. He doesn’t do this usually. He ignores me unless he wants to insult me. He’s no dancer, just a few slow ones is all I’ve ever seen when he’s like this. “No,” I say.

  “You’ve been back there with him,” he says. “Vi would kick your ass.”

  I really can’t imagine Granma kicking my ass. These days my granma wears blood red thick soled Dr. Marten’s oxfords. If she would kick anyone’s ass it would be Ricky’s for driving us home when he’s drunk.

  “I’m looking for Abigail.”

  It gets him looking for Abigail. “Where is she?” he says.

  So now I’ve got him looking for Abigail and he leads the way outside, and soon as the door opens I see her, across the quadrangle walking on a handrail like it’s a tightrope. She has her hands out and her shoes are parked on the sidewalk and she’s sliding along that rail with her arms out and in her socks and Cap and a couple of other boys are watching and laughing cause it’s pretty impressive. She’s practically a circus performer and she’s gotten in trouble for this before as this is a big no, but she’s showing off which is her favorite thing…next to Cap. See I already know. I’ve seen it because I know what she feels before she does. Is that what Easy meant about feeling my thoughts? But he can’t know me like I know Abigail May.

  I don’t call out to disturb her or to make noise that can draw a chaperone even though it’s cold out here. But Ricky does call her, loud and gruff, “Abigail May.”

  She teeters and the boys with Cap laugh, but she corrects and finishes balancing along the whole length and leaps lightly to the ground in her tiny jeans because she still has to shop in the little girl’s department.

  “What are you doing?” Ricky says.

  She hardly pays Ricky any attention.

  “Pay up,” she is saying while she gets her feet in her Weejuns, and the boys are putting their heads together and trying to scrounge up the bet.

  “I don’t want it,” Abigail says.

  “I do,” Cap says and they pay him what looks to be a handful of change. He takes it and holds it out to her. “You earned it.”

  “For you,” she says.

  “C’mon,” Ricky says to Abigail. “I’m taking you home.” He looks at me, “You too.”

  “It’s…too early,” I say. And anyway, we’re not leaving Easy. Cap too if he wants to come. Aunt May said.

  “I’m taking you girls home. They can do what they want,” he says like he’s more my dad than Stanley who never knows where I am or who I’m with.

  Abigail grabs Cap’s hand and mostly pulling she runs like she’s going against the current, straight for the girl’s field hockey court, Cap is laughing in tow. “Run Georgia,” she calls.

  “Abigail May,” Ricky says all belligerent, “you get your ass back here.”

  But Cap is running faster than Abigail now and he’s pulling her along and she’s screaming and laughing.

  I get Déjà vu. It means I’ve been here before.

  I turn and the same dad that gave Cap a hard time is coming out to see what all the yelling is about. Easy is behind him. He walks around the dad straight for me.

  Ricky is the one who has to answer the angry Catholic fathers. Ricky is the one who has to toe the line. Easy doesn’t say anything but keeps his eyes on me and takes my arm and we walk away. The dad is asking Ricky if he’s been drinking. I turn and Ricky is looking after me but he’s answering the man. “I haven’t been drinking,” he’s saying.

  “Don’t look back,” Easy says and I turn around then and we keep walking, walking, walking.

  Until we run.

  Darnay Road 54

  We run to the upper yard to the tall castle that is the church. Easy can run, but I can’t and I’m out of breath and laughing and I have to bend over and put my hands on my knees. “Easy,” I huff and puff. “I….”

  He wants to go in there, in the church. “Let’s go in. I want to see it.”

  It’s never locked, but it’s trouble to go in there if you’re caught. We walk in lines around here. They are drilled in from kindergarten and I’ve crossed them before and every year those lines are challenged, and in some ways they mean more…in others they mean less, but still, I haven’t crossed any of them, not here, not since the last time I was with him.

  This is—sacred. Do I believe it? He makes me question…maybe everything.

  “I want to go in,” he says. There’s something different in him now. Older, sure, but a part of him I don’t know, a room as overwhelming as the tall, up-sweep of the church.

  So I take the lead and lead him to the side door, we run up the stairs that are visible from the rectory. And in we go and I put my fingers in the holy water and I think of flicking it on him, in his face like Abigail would, but I don’t. I can’t. I make the sign of the cross. The only lights on are in the very front above the three storied central altar. The confessionals and the side altars are dark. The rows of pews sit silent, empty, like the furniture in all the empty rooms in heaven…waiting.

  We are side-by-side just looking around. Even together we can’t fill this…place. W
e wouldn’t want to. God should be bigger, even our idea of God should be bigger or we’re in trouble…so much trouble.

  “I’ve thought of this,” he says. He doesn’t whisper, but his voice is soft.

  This is not what I was expecting. “This church?”

  He smiles but he doesn’t look at me. He slowly lifts his chin and his head is back and he’s looking up. “You…and this.” And we’re like that for a minute, looking up at the navy blue and the gold frescoed ceilings that capture sound like giant cupped hands.

  Then he takes my arm and leads me into a pew and we sit like Sunday goers.

  He smiles and spreads his arms on the back of the pew. “You live inside…of everything,” he says.

  “Inside?”

  “Even God.”

  I don’t understand. I’m listening. I want to know. I want to talk like this.

  “I was always hanging on. My family. Just hanging on the outside ready to…fall off,” he says. “Then one day…we fell. And we kept falling.”

  For a while we’re quiet. I’m waiting for more. But I don’t know if more is coming.

  “You mean your mom?”

  He is shaking his head, looking all around. “Before that.”

  He lost his dad. The terrible time back there…I still see the bruises, could put my hand along their path. The time they thought would be better that ended badly--his father torn apart on the tracks. I don’t know about it, what he carries. But I chose him a long time ago over anything else.

  “Is it better?” I ask.

  “It will be,” he says. “Don’t be sorry about it. I’m fixing it. I’m…doing something, you know?”

  “You are better. Than all of them. Except for Cap. I know you love him.”

  “I don’t know. Remains to be seen I guess.”

  I don’t know what to say but I reach behind me where his arm is stretched and I touch his hand and he does look at me. He smiles a little.

  “Can you imagine…playing music in here? Rock music?” he says and he grins then.

  “The Beatles.”

  “Maybe. “

  “What?”

  “The Stones. Hendrix.”

  “Okay. But rock music in a church? Never happening,” I say.

  “Too bad,” he says. He’s looking around like he can’t get enough. “Let’s go in there,” he says, lifting our joined hands to point at the furthest confessional.

  “I don’t….”

  “Come on,” he says standing. It’s on my side so I stand also and walk sideways in the pew toward it. Every time I go in one of these booths I think of Easy sitting where the priest sits. Now he wants to do it again, like when we were kids. I don’t know why.

  “You get in the middle this time,” he says pulling the sinner’s door.

  “Easy.”

  “Go on, Georgia. Equal rights. Who you gonna tell your sins to, your mom or your dad?”

  “What? Neither.”

  “The cop or your granma?”

  “Granma I guess.”

  “Exactly. Women can hear confession. They’ve done it for years.”

  “Vi would say you could sell an igloo to an Eskimo,” I say pulling the door.

  He lifts his heavy brows and smiles. I enter and sit on the bench not meant for my backside at all.

  I open the sliding door between me and Easy, fumble for the purple light and switch that on. I see the outline, not in profile like last time, but Easy’s facing straight on. He is kneeling. I lean close and his lips are right there.

  “What do you say?” he asks.

  “Hi?”

  He laughs. “What do you say when you’re in here?”

  “My confession?”

  “No. Unless…I could listen.”

  We laugh.

  “Um…no,” I say.

  “How do you start? I don’t remember. You say you’ve sinned.”

  “Bless me Father for I have sinned. My last confession was…then you say how long ago.”

  “Bless me Father…all that. I’ve…never….”

  “Well you’re not Catholic,” I say thinking he’s going to say he’s never sinned.

  “I’ve never confessed.”

  I’m quiet again. As a Catholic, we confess from the time we make first communion. At least that’s when I remember it started.

  “You’re pretty…Father,” he says and I’m glad because I’ve been stuck.

  “You’re…pretty,” I say.

  “Pretty?”

  “Handsome. Pretty handsome.”

  He laughs. “You think so?”

  “I must confess you’re not ugly,” I say, “my son.”

  He laughs again, his head crashing against the mesh screen.

  “Is confession always this fun?” he says. “Do people ever laugh in here?

  “They say God has a sense of humor…but I’ve never seen one lick of evidence to support that.”

  “Oh come on. Isn’t that where thunder comes from?”

  “No,” I laugh.

  “Hey let’s do it again,” he says. “You’re beautiful.”

  “You’re…beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Beautiful. Handsome.”

  He laughs again, but he’s excited. “Kiss me through this,” he says meaning the metal screen.

  “No way,” I say. “You know how many germs are on this thing?”

  He’s laughing. “Why would anyone put their mouth on it?”

  “Exactly.”

  We’re smiling and his hand is on the screen. “Touch my hand,” he says.

  I reach and do that, the pads of his fingers showing through the metal. I touch him. For a minute it’s just this, and looking and it’s weird and purple. Almost psychedelic.

  “I don’t know if you want to wait for me,” he says.

  “To confess?”

  He laughs a little. “To…come home.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ve got…all this. Why would you wait? For me? I don’t know.”

  “I will. I’ll wait.”

  “You’ve got these…guys around just waiting to be Ken. Part of me wants to be pissed off, but I don’t have a right. I’m the one going away….”

  “I don’t want them.”

  “Oh? Maybe now…but guys like me go off…overseas…girls don’t wait. You’ve got dances…prom.”

  I laugh. “I don’t care about that. I want you.”

  “Want me? You won’t even marry me.”

  I feel embarrassed. Maybe it is too much—a stupid thing to say—a stupid way to say it. But marriage? He isn’t laughing and I’m fourteen.

  “I just didn’t know. I will if it comes to that, but I have to finish school.”

  “Well I feel that way,” he says.

  “But…this is our first day.”

  “It’s not our very first. I knew the minute I saw you again. There is no one else.”

  I am out of words.

  “I gave you my bracelet. I thought…it means I’ll wait.”

  Noise then, and he’s yanking the priest’s door and I’m on my feet and he has me then, in his arms, kissing my hair and I squeeze him as I hold on and keep him from flying away.

  I don’t know what wakes me. Voices and an echo. Soft under me, and hard. I am…I am in the choir loft. I am…Easy. I am laying all wrapped up in Easy. There’s a light in my eyes, and he stirs, in our eyes there’s a light, flashlight. The holder of the light points it to the floor and it’s a shape, a big shape. “Are you Georgia Green?” he says.

  I sit up. Easy sits up.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “They’ve been looking everywhere for you. You’re in trouble.”

  Three days later I am in my room. It doesn’t seem like I’ll be getting out. Not until Thursday for school. And then, only school is what Granma said in the wee hours of Saturday when they brought me home. She wouldn’t listen to Easy, wouldn’t let him talk to her even.

  So now she even brings m
e my food. No need to come downstairs to eat. I gave her a scare. I didn’t come home. Everyone else did, but not me. Ricky did bring Abigail May home. So they searched for me for four hours, Ricky and Cap going in the direction they’d last seen me headed, Ricky already having searched for me, angry that I’d run off with Easy. Angry when he couldn’t find me and so he tells Granma—she ran off with Easy.

  Ricky is the one who insisted I was still on the grounds. Abigail is the one who asked if they looked in the church.

  Officially I hadn’t been gone long enough to get the police involved but Aunt May called Anthony and he called a friend at the rectory who alerted the convent who called the janitors old Jim and older Bob to help search the buildings. On his second search of the church Old Jim decided to check the loft and found us curled up on the old choir robes, sound asleep.

  Here’s what it means for me now—trouble. I’ve been in terrible trouble. Suspended from Bloody Heart for three days as the purple light was left on in the confessional. I was accused of playing in the church. It was shameful, Mother Superior said to my Granma.

  My article on Vietnam missed the Monday morning deadline and wasn’t published in “The Quill.” And as disgusting as that is it’s nothing compared to not getting to see Easy for the rest of the week while Granma simmers down. It didn’t help that she also found out about getting pulled over by the police after Easy picked me up from school, thank you very much Tim who rides my bus and told his mother, who then called my Granma once the story got around I was found naked in the choir loft with that cute soldier Ethan Caghan who’s dad died on the tracks that time.

  I was not naked or even undressed at all. Oh well.

  Concerning being pulled over by the cop I tried to tell Granma it wasn’t Easy’s fault, it was Disbro’s, but that didn’t seem to matter either because I was, “Up to stuff with Easy from the minute he got into town and I’m only fourteen and I am her first concern, me and no one else.”

  Granma and Aunt May are united in this. Aunt May is the one who gave me permission to go to the dance. But just to the dance. And she went out on a limb for Easy and Cap. But not now. Now everything is under review.

  I couldn’t even get some mercy when I concocted a story about how Easy wanted to see the church, with going away he was having spiritual thoughts, questions about being Catholic. And we were in the choir loft as I was showing him around and we got to talking about things and fell asleep. That’s all.