The Last Time They Met

by Anita Shreve

  She takes a bite of mystery meat and sends up a quick prayer to Mary to intercede on Thomas’s behalf, to protect him and to guide him. They are nearly, but not quite, rote, these prayers. She says them for Jack and for Eileen, said them for Patty when she had the German measles, for Erin when she got a D in Latin. She thinks of the prayers as balloons and sees them squiggling up through the atmosphere, past the clouds, trailing string. Balloons of hope. A prayer is nothing if not a balloon of hope.

  “Linda Fallon,” a voice behind her says.

  She turns and quickly swallows the lump of mystery meat. “Mr. K.,” she says.

  “May I join you?” he asks.

  “Sure,” she says, moving her tray aside.

  “Don’t let me keep you from your lunch.”

  “No, that’s fine,” she says. “It’s disgusting anyway.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Mr. K., a short, squat, barrel-chested man who tries without success to look professorial, swings his legs over the bench. He is nursing a cup of coffee, poking at it with a straw.

  “You know,” he says, “in addition to being an English teacher, I’m also the senior class adviser.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “And to make a long story short, I was going over the list of students applying to college, and I didn’t see your name.”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t apply.”

  Linda unclasps a barrette from her hair and then puts it back in. “No.”

  “May I ask why?”

  She runs a finger along the edge of the beige Formica. “I don’t know,” she says.

  “You have tremendous potential,” he says, still poking at his coffee. “You put sentences together in a very lucid way. Your writing has logic. Need I say, this is a rare enough commodity in student prose?”

  She smiles.

  “May I ask you a personal question?”

  She nods.

  “Is the reason financial?”

  She has worked it out: even with all the tip money, she won’t be able to make a tuition payment, and she hasn’t saved all of her earnings. Tuition, room, and board run to $3,500. And that’s just for the first year. “Pretty much,” she says.

  Not adding that the real reason she hasn’t applied is that she can’t imagine telling her aunt, who would, she knows, see it as only one more example of Linda getting the jump on her, trying to be better than the cousins.

  “You know there are scholarships,” Mr. K. says.

  She nods.

  “It’s only the end of January,” he says. “Admittedly, it’s too late for a formal application, but I know some people and so does Mr. Hanson. We could make some calls. I could walk you through this.”

  Linda, embarrassed, looks over at Donny T. Will he be applying to college? Will he become a thief, a gambler, a banker? She doesn’t even know where Thomas has applied. She has made the subject more or less taboo.

  “Everything all right at home?” Mr. K. asks.

  Everything is just ducky at home, she thinks.

  “Do me a favor, OK?” he asks. “Promise me you’ll come by my classroom and take a look at some college catalogues I have. You’re familiar with Tufts? B.U.?”

  She nods.

  He catches sight of the cross. “B.C.?” he asks. The Catholic college.

  She nods again, seeing little alternative but to agree.

  “This afternoon? Are you free eighth period?”

  “I am.”

  “Good. We’ll do it then.”

  “All right.”

  He unfolds himself from the bench. “What do you have this semester? Twentieth century?”

  “Yes.”

  “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State / And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.”

  Linda smiles. “Randall Jarrell,” she says.

  ______

  She catches the bus that stops just beyond the student parking lot. The driver narrows his eyes at her as she gets on.

  “I’m sick,” she says. “I’m not skipping.”

  She rides along Main Street to Spring to Fitzpatrick to Nantasket Avenue, thinking it might just be possible to do this thing and get back in time for her appointment with Mr. K. She knows that if she dwells on what she is about to do, she’ll lose her nerve, and so she doesn’t. But her errand feels urgent nevertheless.

  All around her, the world is melting. Sparkling and dripping and breaking and sending huge chunks of ice from rooftops, ropes of ice from telephone poles, fantastical icicles from gutters. The bus is overheated, and she opens her peacoat. She has two classes before eighth period and will have to come up with a plausible reason for her absence. Perhaps she can use Mr. K. as an excuse.

  She gets off at the stop closest to St. Ann’s. The rectory is beside the church. If it weren’t for the sense of urgency, she would turn around and go back to the school. She forces herself to keep moving forward, even as she knows her request is likely to be met with derision. This is the boldest thing she’s done since jumping into the ocean.

  She walks up the stone steps and knocks at the heavy wooden door.

  A young priest answers it. She has seen him before, from the pews at church, but now, up close, she notices that he looks like Eddie Garrity. His collar is askew, and he is holding a dinner napkin.

  “Will you hear my confession?” she asks.

  The priest is startled by her request. “Confessions are heard on Saturday afternoon,” he says, not unkindly. Perhaps he is a cousin of Eddie’s, with his pink-gold hair and skinny frame. The good cousin. “This isn’t Saturday,” he reminds her.

  “I know,” she says, “but I have to do this now.”

  “I’m having my lunch,” he says.

  “I’m sorry,” she says and nearly leaves it at that. Maybe it’s a sin to want more than she is entitled to, she thinks.

  “I’ll wait,” she says.

  The young priest slowly brings his napkin to his lips. “Come in,” he says.

  She steps into a dark paneled hall. Electric sconces provide the only light. It might not even be day outside. From a room beyond, she can hear the scrape of cutlery against dishes. A voice speaking.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Will they be worried?”

  “No.”

  “What year are you?”

  “A senior.”

  “If we do this, you’ll go back to school?”

  “I will.”

  “I won’t ask your name.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Follow me,” he says, leaving the napkin on a side table.

  ______

  She follows the young priest to a small anteroom off the hall. But for the crosses, it might be a room in which a potentate would have an audience with a foreign dignitary. Two armchairs, side by side, face the entrance. Two matching sofas flank the wall. Apart from the furniture, there is nothing in the room.

  She watches as the priest pulls the armchairs out into the center of the room and puts them back to back, so that the people sitting in them will not be visible to each other. He gestures to her to take one.

  She sets her pocketbook on the floor beside the chair and slips her peacoat from her shoulders. Panic wells inside her. It seems inconceivable that she will actually announce her sins in this room with the two of them back-to-back — with no covering, no booth, nowhere to hide.

  “Father, forgive me, for I have sinned,” she begins, her voice barely a whisper.

  There is, at first, a long silence.

  “You have sins you wish to confess?” the priest prompts. He sounds, if not exactly bored, then perhaps tired.

  “Years ago,” Linda says, her heart thumping in her chest, “I had an improper relationship with my aunt’s boyfriend. I was thirteen.”

  “How do you mean improper?”

  “We . . .” She thinks about how to phrase this. Would fornicate be
the right word? “We had sex,” she says.

  There is a slight pause. “You had sex with a man who was your aunt’s boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old was this man?”

  “I’m not sure. I think in his early forties.”

  “I see.”

  “He lived with my aunt. He lived with us.”

  “And how often did you fornicate with this man?”

  “Five times,” she answers.

  “Did he force himself on you?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “Have you ever confessed this before?”

  “No.”

  “These are grave sins,” the priest says. “Fornicating and withholding a sin from your confessor. No one knows about this?”

  “My aunt. She found us. I was sent away for a long time.”

  “Ah,” the priest says. Unmistakably, the “ah” of recognition. “Go on.”

  “The relationship ended. The man just kind of left the family.”

  “And you think this was because of you?”

  “Possibly. I mean, it seems likely.”

  The priest is silent for a long time. His silence makes her nervous. This is not supposed to be how it happens. From outside the room, she can hear water running, voices in the hallway. Will the priest want more details?

  “May I speak frankly to you?” the priest asks finally.

  The question is unsettling, and she can’t easily reply. The priest turns in his seat so that he is leaning over the arm of his chair in her direction. “This is unusual,” he says, “but I feel I must talk to you about this.”

  Linda shifts slightly in her chair as well. From the corner of her eye, she can see the priest’s sleeve, his pale hand. Freckled, like Eddie Garrity’s.

  “I know your name,” he says. “You’re Linda Fallon.”

  She sucks in her breath.

  “I know something of your situation,” he says. He sounds kinder, not quite as censorious. Definitely not as tired. “The individual you speak of was a despicable man. I knew him only slightly before he went away, but I saw enough and have since learned enough to convince me of this. What he did to you he did to other girls your age and even to younger girls. He did this repeatedly. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  Linda nods, scarcely believing what she is hearing. Other girls? Younger?

  “We can say that he was a sick man or an evil man,” the priest explains. “Probably both. But what I’m trying to tell you is that you were not alone.”

  The information is so new to her, it sends the world as she has known it momentarily spinning out of kilter. She feels nauseated, as though she might be sick. She has a sudden memory of Eileen and her enigmatic comment: It was just your body acting, and you shouldn’t be afraid of your body.

  “I can’t begin to imagine the heart of such a man,” the priest says. “One must pray for his soul. But I can, I think, understand something of your heart.”

  The place where she can breathe seems to be rising higher and higher in her chest until, she is afraid, there won’t be room at all for air.

  “You feel responsible for what happened,” the priest says.

  She nods, but then realizes he might not be able to see the nod. She leans slightly more over the arm of the chair as the priest is doing, though she doesn’t want to look directly at him. In the distance, she can hear what sounds like a farewell, a door shutting. “Yes,” she says. “More or less.”

  “Though one might have wished for you to have been stronger and to have resisted this man, his is by far the graver sin. You were a child. You are a child still.”

  To Linda’s horror, tears come unbidden into her eyes. They well up over the lower lids.

  “It was wrong of your aunt to send you away. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”

  She shakes her head back and forth. The kindness, the kindness! It is almost more painful to her than a harsh word. No one has ever spoken to her like this before.

  “This is not a sin you need to confess, because you did not commit a sin,” the priest says. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  She doesn’t. Not exactly. It contradicts all she has ever been told.

  “Some might think so,” the priest says. He sneezes once quickly and says, “Excuse me.” He takes out a handkerchief and blows his nose. “I’ve got a cold coming on,” he says, explaining. “Would you like to speak to someone about this? Someone who might be able to help you?”

  She shakes her head quickly. “No,” she says.

  “I’m thinking of someone such as a doctor, who could talk to you about how you might be feeling about all of this.”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

  “I could arrange, I think, for you to speak to a woman.”

  “Not really,” she says.

  “It’s too hard to carry such a burden alone.”

  A great childish sob escapes her. A gulp, a hiccup of air. She turns away from the priest.

  She hears the priest stand and then leave the room. She thinks that he has left her to cry alone without anyone to watch, but then he returns with a box of tissues. He stops in front of her, but she is unwilling to raise her eyes past his knees. She takes a tissue from the box and blows her nose. All these functions of the body, she thinks.

  “Perhaps you would like some time to be alone,” he says.

  She shakes her head again. “I have to get back to class,” she says, wanting more than anything to leave the rectory.

  “I understand,” he says. “Linda.”

  She looks up at him. She was wrong. He doesn’t look a thing like Eddie Garrity. “Can you forgive the man?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I try not to think about it.”

  “Can you forgive your aunt?”

  She shakes her head. “She hates,” Linda says. “Which seems worse.”

  “It is not for us to decide which is the worse sin.”

  “No,” she says.

  “You’ll work on forgiving them. You’ll try.”

  “Yes,” she says, knowing this might not be true.

  “Do you have friends?” he asks. “Anyone you can talk to?”

  “I have a friend,” she says.

  “Someone you trust?” he asks.

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “Is this person a boy or a girl?”

  “A boy.”

  “Is he a Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “Well, never mind.”

  “He is my life,” Linda says.

  “Now, now,” the priest says gently. “God is your life. Your life is in God.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “But now is perhaps not the time to get into that. I assume you have had quite a religious training.”

  She nods.

  “More than you ever wanted.”

  She glances up at him and sees that he is smiling. No, he does not resemble Eddie Garrity at all, she thinks.

  The priest holds out his hand. She takes it, and he helps her up.

  “I’ll see you to the door,” he says. “If you ever want to talk, about this or about anything else, you have only to call.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Father Meaghan,” he says. “Don’t forget your pocketbook there.”

  ______

  Linda walks out to the sidewalk, knowing that the priest is watching her from behind a window. The light outside is so bright and so harsh she immediately has to take her sunglasses from her purse. She puts them on gratefully, makes the turn toward the bus stop, and when she knows she is out of sight of the rectory, she begins to cry.

  ______

  She waits outside the Nantasket room, leaning against the wall. She marvels at the architect who can have created such a monstrosity as the school and have thought the building conducive to learning. Perhaps it was a prison after all. Yellow brick rises high over her head,
allowing for only narrow transom windows. Years of student scratchings have turned the metal doors a muted blue or worn orange. Wire mesh is encased in the narrow slits of the glass in the doors, guarding, she supposes, against an errant fist. From time to time, she peers through the slit to see what Thomas is doing. He sits at the head of a long table with eight other students, and they seem to be deeply engaged in discussion. Stacks of the Nantasket have recently been delivered to the room from the printer and are in piles on student desks.

  She shouldn’t be here at all. She should, she knows, have taken the late bus home and closed the door to the bedroom and done her homework. She has a calculus test in the morning and a paper due on a book she hasn’t yet read. With the job at the diner and the hockey games (two a week) and her hours with Thomas (utterly necessary), she has less and less time for studying. Her discussion with Mr. K. in his classroom just now will be moot if she doesn’t keep up her grades. Before, school always seemed effortless, but effortlessness is only possible, she is learning, if you give it time.

  At the end of the corridor, the vice principal, who, months ago, was her introduction to the school, is berating a sullen student with long hair and a denim jacket. She can’t hear what he is saying, but she can guess. Get rid of the jacket. Cut the hair.

  She thinks about her meeting with the priest, an utterly astonishing event. So strange and so unreal, it might never have happened at all.

  But it did, she thinks. It did.

  ______

  The door opens, and Thomas emerges, carrying a copy of the Nantasket. He is reading as he walks.

  “Hey,” she calls.

  “Linda,” he says, turning. “Hi. I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “What have you got there?”

  “Look,” he says.

  He has the literary magazine opened to a page on which is printed a short poem by Thomas Janes. She reads the poem. “It’s very good, Thomas.” And it is good. It really is. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.” He bows. “What are you doing here?”