Forgiveness 4 You

by Ann Bauer

  For the second time that day, I was shivering in a stopped car. But I resisted the thought of going upstairs and getting into Madeline’s large, warm bed. Instead, I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “He started carrying for me. Aidan. Taking care of really low-level sales. Sometimes I paid him in cash and sometimes in drugs. I taught him how to do it. All of it.” I stared out the windshield at the cement wall of the garage. “I bought him a roach clip once, because he wanted one like mine. He was easy. A little pot, a few lines, he’d be happy. He just wanted to hang around with me.”

  “What happened to him?” Madeline’s voice was tight, resigned.

  “He got hooked. Imagine you’re a kid like Aidan. No friends, not very good in school. And this drug comes along that makes you feel great about yourself. Who wouldn’t …?”

  Madeline sat up and grabbed my hand roughly, but this time I let her.

  “So, eventually, I got caught. It was the beginning of senior year. I was very lucky: I was two weeks shy of eighteen. So instead of going to prison, I was put in this diversion program for young offenders. I had to go to classes and get drug tested—stay clean for six months.”

  “Did you?”

  “Sure.” I could still remember lying on my bed, counting down the weeks until I could be done stopping by the police station Mondays and Thursdays to urinate in a cup. “I had plans. I was going to go to BU, full ride. Six months? I just put my head down and got through it. But Aidan …”

  “Did he quit with you?” Madeline asked hopefully.

  “Uh, no. He was on me every day, showing up at the house, looking for drugs. I was furious! My parents were already devastated and ashamed. This was a close neighborhood; everyone knew. To my mind, Aidan was just making things worse for them. It wasn’t my responsibility, of course. So I took him and introduced him to the guy who’d taken over. Really mean kid we called Nob.” The boy’s sneer surfaced in my memory. “I told Nob that Aidan would do anything. Just give him a little coke, and he’s yours for life.”

  “Did he ever get caught?”

  “Aidan? Don’t know. It’s possible the cops caught him a couple times and just gave him a lecture and sent him home. Everyone knew the deal with Aidan. He wasn’t masterminding anything. I doubt they would have put him in jail.”

  “Did you stay clean?”

  “Are you kidding?” I’d always thought of Madeline as the worldly one of the two of us. But about this, she knew nothing. “My friends and I had a party the night I was done with diversion. I got wasted, high, low, everything. I was destroyed for about a week. But I did quit dealing. That much I understood: I could take all the drugs I wanted, but if I ever got caught selling again, I’d do hard time.”

  “And I’m assuming Nob wasn’t about to give up his business.”

  I was impressed. She might know nothing about drugs, but Madeline understood commerce.

  “That helped, too,” I said. “I graduated, started college. I was a Physics major. Had wild dreams about grad school at MIT.”

  “You weren’t … religious?” Madeline asked, as if the question were impertinent.

  “I was Catholic, just like every other kid who grew on up my street. I didn’t question it. I’d study, smoke a joint, go to church. That’s just how things were. So, finals week, freshman year.” I realized I was clamped onto Madeline’s hand like a vise and made myself loosen my grip.

  “Gabe?” she said. “Do you want to go upstairs now? You can tell me the rest of it up there.”

  “No.” Madeline was freezing, and I hated doing this to her, but moving felt like a cop-out. “There’s not that much more.” I waited, and she didn’t say anything, so I went on. “Aidan was an addict, but he wasn’t. It’s so hard to explain. He didn’t have the cognitive ability to understand what was happening, so he acted more like an animal who was hungry. Starving. All the time.”

  Madeline shivered, from the cold or what I’d said, or both.

  “He was like that when he came to find me. I was studying for a big exam, but he didn’t understand that. He just kept asking me to give him coke. He didn’t have any money; everyone else had turned him away. Finally, I just pulled out the bag and kind of threw it at him. I told him to take it and leave me alone.” We sat for a moment. I was staring down at our clasped hands. “His mother found him the next morning.”

  Madeline shifted but said nothing.

  “She found him,” I whispered. “That’s one thing I cannot … tolerate. His mother opened his bedroom door to tell him the coffee was on or his eggs were ready, and she found him dead on the floor.”

  I looked at Madeline. There were tears on her face, but she wasn’t making a sound. “But you know what bothers me even more?” I wondered why I wasn’t more upset. I’d never told anyone this—I’d been holding it in for twenty-two years—but now I was reciting it like a sermon I’d written. “He didn’t have anyone to do it with. He didn’t have a party to go to. Even holding a gram of good coke, he didn’t have a friend he could call. Aidan was completely alone. So he just.” I breathed. “Snorted it all himself.”

  “And it killed him?”

  I nodded. “Probably. The autopsy showed he’d been drinking, too. And there was something wrong with his heart. Marfan’s Syndrome. That’s why his chest had that strange concave shape.” My voice broke on the last syllable.

  “Oh, Gabe,” Madeline murmured. “What did you do?”

  “Skipped my Physics final.” I squinted, remembering those days, that week. My parents grim and gray-faced, glancing at me as if I were a dangerous animal. They must have heard things, but they never asked me. Our conversations were limited to what we were having for dinner and whether my black suit was clean.

  “After Aidan’s funeral this local cop, James Pilot, took me by the back of the neck.” I reached back and pulled on my own collar to demonstrate. “He was huge, Pilot. He took me around the side of the church and told me they knew the coke Aidan used was mine. He said with my first bust, I was looking at three to five years minimum.”

  I could still hear his low workingman’s voice in my ear. Tree to five yee-ahs.

  “Only …” I could still see the prison cell that should have been mine. In my dreams, I’d been living there for two decades. “I didn’t sell the coke to Aidan. I gave it to him. That made it harder to prosecute. The district attorney wanted to charge me with manslaughter, and there were maybe four or five months where it looked like that would happen.”

  I had lived with my parents during that entire time, watching my mother age a decade in less than half a year. No matter how delicately I entered a room she would startle every time. It was as if she’d never seen me before. Her house had been invaded by the monster I’d become.

  “It was the Marfan’s that saved me.” I winced at the word saved. Because it had not. “His heart was weak and that muddied things, made the case against me too convoluted. It was the week of Thanksgiving by the time we found out. I’d been working at a tire store, preparing myself to go to prison. Then, one day, it was done. Over. I was actually …” I searched for the word. “Bereft.”

  “You wanted to be punished?” Madeline hadn’t spoken for so long, her precise Midwestern voice sounded foreign, as if she’d landed in the middle of South Boston circa 1991.

  “Yes, I wanted to be punished.” The cold had seeped into my feet, and they felt blocky, useless. “Don’t give me too much credit. I was relieved that I wasn’t going to prison. But I couldn’t just go back to college and live like I hadn’t …”

  I half expected Madeline to say the words: Like you hadn’t killed someone. But she didn’t. She was quiet, so I went on.

  “A couple weeks before Christmas, I went out and got the tattoo. I drove to Rhode Island, because I wanted a place where the ink guy wouldn’t know who I was. Still, how many twenty-year-olds ask to have a cross dripping blood tattooed on their chest? They could tell something was off. When I left, I heard them lock the door.”
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  I could see myself walking down a dark, cold street in Providence, my chest aching with a thousand tiny needle stings, head down, hands stuffed in my pockets. “It was literally the last plan I had, getting that tattoo. Once I’d done that, I was out of ideas. My life was a total blank.”

  “What happened?”

  “My mom eventually called her priest, because that’s what women like her do. Father Murphy. He was kind of an old drunk but a nice one. He listened, and he asked if I really wanted to atone for the things I’d done. There was a priest shortage.” I shrugged. “He offered me a way out.”

  “So you chose a different kind of punishment?” Madeline asked.

  “Maybe. But not exactly. Once I got to Holy Cross and started taking classes, it was okay. I started going to NA meetings. I was surrounded by a completely different kind of people. Everything I’d done before. The drugs. Aidan. All of that began to fade. And it was a relief. But also …” I turned to Madeline and looked at her. “It made sense to me. I was good at being a priest. Every time I helped someone it felt like a very tiny bit of what I’d done was being erased.”

  “So why did you quit the priesthood? Was it done? Had you gotten to the point where you no longer felt guilty so you resigned?” She sounded angry, as if it had been she—rather than the Church—I’d walked out on.

  “Not even close,” I said, my hand creeping to the spot on my chest where I could still feel the sting. “What I did to Aidan isn’t gone. It hasn’t left me. But I realized one day that what I was doing wasn’t honorable. There were men all around me hurting children, boys, and they were doing it with Rome’s tacit permission. Everyone knew. No one was doing anything. How was staying in such a system going to reverse my sin?”

  “Reverse?” Madeline gathered herself and seemed to grow somehow, large enough she could reach over and pull me to her. Her grip was powerful, and I let her lay my head near her throat. My arms slipped around her. Tears ran down my throat. “Gabe, you can never reverse what you did. None of us can. That’s not how it works.”

  “How does it work?” Now that I’d spoken the truth I felt like I was drowning in it. “Because I need to do something. I cannot live with what I did.”

  “Jesus, Gabe … I’m sorry.” I could feel her breathing, and I tried to breathe with her. “Listen to me. What do you think we’ve been doing all this time, packaging up forgiveness? This is exactly why. To help people live with the things they’ve done that they can’t change. That’s what this whole business is based on: people feeling exactly like you do. And with one exception, you understood. You forgave them. You forgave me for running out on Cassidy. You forgave that man who sold you clothes for not donating his wife’s organs. You forgave …”

  “There’s a difference.” The words came out of me threateningly, like a growl. But Madeline just held me tighter. “Your stepdaughter isn’t dead. She ended up with a new family. She’s fine. Raj doesn’t know what happened to the people who were supposed to get his wife’s organs. But he did what he did because he loved her. There was value in that. I just used someone, for no reason other than my own personal gain. I treated a vulnerable person like he was less than human. I took his life, and I wasted it!” My voice was rising, and the windows had a fine layer of steam. “I did something evil. Not just wrong, not just human. But evil, Madeline. There is no forgiveness for that.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said simply. “What you’re saying makes no sense. Cassie could have died because of me. She could have walked out in the street and been hit by a car because her dad was frustrated and overwhelmed and she had no one else watching over her. She could have gotten depressed and swallowed all the pills in the house. The fact that she’s happier today has nothing to do with me. I abandoned her.” Madeline was cradling my head against her chest and rocking back and forth, creating the lulling sensation of being on a boat. “And we know that Raj left that hospital without donating his wife’s organs because he loved her so much. But how do you think the people whose teenager was waiting for a kidney would feel? They wouldn’t care. To them, he’s a monster who took away their son or daughter’s best chance.”

  “Madeline …” The gentle rocking felt so good, I almost believed her. “You’re trying to use logic in a situation where it doesn’t apply.”

  “No,” she said, and now she was stroking my hair. “Actually you are trying to use logic. You’ve constructed this equation where because Aidan died you are evil.” She stopped moving but placed one hand inside my open collar, her cold skin against my heart. “I don’t know much about your religion, your God. But I can’t imagine you’re that powerful. You didn’t set out to kill him. You weren’t the only person involved. You were cruel and selfish, but we all are at that age. Your stupid acts combined with the Marfan’s and his addiction.” Her voice dropped low. “With luck.”

  “The Bible does not recognize luck,” I said into her neck. “Read Job.”

  “No. It’s all about God’s will, right? So according to you Catholics it was God who gave Aidan Marfan’s and allowed Peter to introduce you to cocaine.”

  I straightened, lit with frustration. “That is completely wrong,” I told her. “God gave humans free will. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”

  “No fair,” Madeline practically shouted. “I’m positive there’s some verse to support my point somewhere in the Bible, but I just don’t know it. Come on. Give me something.”

  I sat, torn between my sense of fairness and my desire to win this debate—even if it meant proving my own irredeemable sin. Madeline met my silence with a steely stare. Finally, I sighed and recited, “The race is not swift, nor the battle strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”

  “Ha!” Madeline was practically dancing in her seat. “Time and chance, exactly what I was saying.”

  I looked at her for a moment, her cheeks flushed with triumph despite the damp cold. Then, without thinking, I leaned forward and kissed her, and she let me. In fact, she pulled me in, turning her head so that we fit together, her hands under my coat and everywhere on me the way I’d imagined when we’d first met.

  After a couple of minutes, I broke away. “You’re still …” I started, embarrassed by what I had to ask.

  “Still what?” she prompted.

  “You’re still willing to …” I swallowed, “touch me. Even knowing what I did.”

  She smiled sadly. “Yes, Gabe. We’re both kind of broken people. That’s been clear for a long time, at least to me. But I think that’s part of what works. We’re both trying to be better. And we make each other better.” She paused and thought. “This is the first time in my life I’ve been able to say that. About a priest! That is so … ironic.”

  Then we were quiet for a time, just holding hands. Enclosed in that car in that garage in Chicago, it felt like we were the only two people on a tucked-away planet. Finally, in a rusty voice, Madeline spoke. “Do you want to go upstairs with me?”

  I groaned, my head back against the seat. “Madeline, I want that more than I want anything in this world.” Everything in my body was telling me to shut up, take this woman upstairs, and fuck her hard. “But I need to be fair to you.” I took a long breath and measured what I was about to confess, the clear fact that had come to me in the middle of the afternoon on the highway in Scott’s truck. “Whatever happens tonight, I’m going to leave.”

  My words echoed, and Madeline bowed her head.

  “I know that,” she whispered, as if imparting divine knowledge. “I understand that this is our last night.” When she finally looked at me, her eyes were shining. “Please, come upstairs,” she said.

  And I did.

  Harrington Post—Religion

  April 12, 20--

  Pope Breaks Through Vatican Security, Kisses Disabled Girl

  Only Renata Fay kno
ws what Pope Vincent whispered in her ear, and when anyone asks her, she simply smiles and shakes her head.

  Vincent “bestowed an extraordinary Good Friday blessing” on Renata’s Michigan family when he broke through his own security to embrace the eight-year-old, who has cerebral palsy, in St. Peter’s Square. The photo of Vincent hugging and kissing Renata has captivated the world, appearing in the New York Observer, the Wall Street Times, and on every major nightly news show.

  “I was awestruck and moved to tears,” says Renata’s mother, Michelle Fay.

  The family knew they were unlikely to find seats when they arrived only an hour and fifteen minutes before the Easter morning mass began. But as the Fays waited to enter the square, space near the front of the crowd miraculously opened up.

  As the Popemobile passed, several ushers stepped into its path and stopped the procession directly in front of Renata. Gently pushing security guards aside, Pope Vincent stepped out of the vehicle to sweep Renata into his arms and hug and kiss her before waving to the crowd and getting back in.

  “It was like he was pulled to my daughter,” said Fay. “He sensed her goodness, and he only wanted to make a connection. We are truly blessed.”

  XVII

  I WOKE BEFORE DAWN TO THE SOUND OF LOU SCRATCHING AND ROOTING in his bed of cedar chips.

  When I stood above the aquarium where he lived, the guinea pig looked up at me with glittering catlike eyes. I petted him with one finger and poured a little of his dried food into a dish, moving quietly because Jem would not need to get up for a couple more hours. Interventional radiologists, I’d discovered, worked a regular nine-to-five shift.

  I walked through the condo without turning on any lights. It had been less than a month, but everything was familiar to me. The beige couch. The IKEA desk stacked with books. Jem’s mountain bike that she rode everywhere and stored in the living room at night. The décor here was easy and artless, like the city where we lived.

  Cleveland would be tabula rasa, Jem said when we’d first talked about my moving in, and I remember feeling a tug of fondness for these two words of Latin. It was a perfect place to start over, she’d told me. A city with no spotlight on it. It wasn’t like Chicago; no one ever talked about Cleveland. The Catholic community was scattered and quiet. I could take some time, unnoticed, and decide what I wanted to do.