“Then I would write out the letter over and over until my penmanship was good enough to be read by a real officially elected mayor. Mom would read it, and as we dropped the letter into the neighborhood mailbox, we’d both cross our fingers and hope the mayor was moved enough to let us visit City Hall—that I had been a good enough boy.
“I’d always receive a personalized handwritten response a week or so later, saying I was a good boy and was allowed to visit City Hall. Mom and I would walk down Broad Street hand in hand, watching City Hall grow up from the street taller and taller, and we’d take the elevator up to the top of City Hall—which, incidentally, once was one of the tallest buildings in the world and was the tallest in Philadelphia until 1987—and we’d look out over the City of Brotherly Love, seeing how Philadelphia is mapped out in right angles, like a big grid constructed by the most anal of city planners determined to make sure no one would ever get lost, and I’d be so proud to be high in the sky looking down, knowing I’d earned it by being an exemplary boy.”
I could see excitement in Elizabeth’s eyes, and I hoped I was doing well here, because my heart was pounding and my gloves were soaked through with sweat.
“It wasn’t until I was an adult that I figured out anyone and everyone is allowed to go to the top—regardless of whether they have been good or not—and that Mom had written the letters from the mayor, pretending.
“And so I visited the top of City Hall again as a man, took the same tour, but of course it wasn’t as special anymore, because anyone could do it—I hadn’t earned it. The building didn’t rise as majestically from the asphalt when I walked down Broad Street, the elevator ride up didn’t make my heart pound, the view wasn’t as spectacular, the right angles of the city blocks didn’t look as crisp, and I didn’t even want to stay up there for very long, not without Mom.”
“She sounds wonderful,” Elizabeth said, and smiled.
“She was.”
“You miss her.”
“Very much.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m sorry you had to eat your pet rabbits and were abducted by aliens.”
She sat down on a bench, and I sat next to her.
We watched the snow dance its way down from the sky and onto the river.
I thought Elizabeth would look up into the night, trying to spot UFOs, but she never lifted her chin even once.
She wasn’t interested in UFOs that night—nor was she interested in talking about aliens.
From watching movies, I knew that this was the time to put my arm around Elizabeth, and my heart was about to explode, just thinking about the possibility of having my arm around another human being, our ribs touching through our coats.
But I didn’t put my arm around her.
We just lingered next to each other on the bench until our hats were covered in white snow and our noses were red.
When she stood, I stood.
We walked back to the hotel in silence, leaving two sets of footprints that would shortly be covered by new accumulating snow and then shoveled away, erasing all evidence of our walk through Old Montreal together, and I thought about just how many millions of people had had significant small, quiet moments in the city of Montreal—moments that were so important to the people having them, but insignificant to everyone else who had ever lived.
Elizabeth opened her hotel room door with the plastic key card and then said, “Good night, Bartholomew.”
“Good night,” I said, standing in the hallway.
She looked up into my eyes for a long time, with her hand on the doorknob and the door slightly ajar.
Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out another tektite necklace.
When Elizabeth held up the leather loop, I lowered my head; she placed the necklace around my neck and nodded.
I nodded back.
“Max wanted you to have that, once you worked up to it. You have,” she said and then went into her room.
It was funny because two tektite rocks didn’t really feel like anything, but I noticed the weight of three.
Three wasn’t too heavy, but palpable.
It was a tipping point.
I stood in the hallway for a time, wondering why—after spending the entire day with three people—I felt so much lonelier than I had ever before in my entire life, and yet I didn’t want to go into the room with Father McNamee.
I wanted to be with Elizabeth—just to sit next to her silently for another five minutes would have been divine.
I also wanted to be by myself too, which was confusing.
Somehow I ended up all alone on the roof of the hotel, next to the steamy pool that was now lit, glowing blue and wondrous.
I looked out over the city and wondered if my biological father was really out there, somewhere in Montreal.
I looked up and wondered where Mom was.
I sat down on a chair and felt the cold on my face as I watched the snowflakes evaporate instantly, the moment they hit the warm, blue, chlorinated pool water—and I wondered if what I was witnessing could be a metaphor for our lives somehow, like we were all just little bits falling toward an inevitable dissolve, if that makes any sense at all.
I rested there by myself for what felt like hours, feeling like a snowflake the second it hits a heated pool—wondering if that could really be our whole life summed up in the grand scheme of the universe.
Even though she hadn’t appeared to me, I talked to Mom for a time, telling her everything that had happened—asking her if my father could still possibly be alive—but the only answer I got was the noise of street traffic rising up from far, far below.
When I keyed into our hotel room, Father McNamee wasn’t snoring, but sleeping peacefully, so I tried to be extra quiet and didn’t turn on the light. The room reeked of whiskey, which meant Father McNamee would be hung over again in the morning.
I lay down in my bed and thought about how I was in Canada—how strange that seemed—as I stared at the ceiling.
Canada, eh?
It didn’t seem real.
Like maybe it’s just some unknown part of Philadelphia—or a known part dressed up as something else, like it was playing geographical Halloween, as crazy as that sounds.
Then, as Father slept, using the mini flashlight on my keychain, I wrote you this letter, trying to finish before it was time to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory, so that we might look at the preserved heart of a miracle worker and meet my biological father for the first time.
Your admiring fan,
Bartholomew Neil
14
THAT IS THE MOST RATIONAL THING TO DO AT THIS MOMENT, GIVEN THE UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES YOU HAVE INHERITED
Dear Mr. Richard Gere,
When I woke up on the day we were supposed to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory and meet my dad in front of Saint Brother André’s preserved heart, Father McNamee was still sleeping, so I stared out our hotel window and admired the fresh snow cover that had fallen in the night. It looked like the city had been buried in fine white sand and was now pushing its way out again as various tides of morning commuters swept over the streets and sidewalks.
I smiled at my reflection superimposed onto the city in the window, felt a good lightness in my chest, took a shower, and then got dressed.
I let Father sleep for a time, as there were two empty whiskey bottles on the nightstand, although it was highly unusual for him to sleep past 6:30 a.m. no matter how much he had drunk the night before.
I was partly nervous to meet my biological father, but the larger part of me thought that my meeting him was completely impossible, and so I wasn’t all that nervous, because how can you fear impossibility?
Father McNamee hadn’t been acting very stable, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I was pretty sure the idea of meeting my father in Montreal was just the product of Father McNamee’s ongoing battle with madness. This was likely to turn out the same way our rescuing Wendy ended.
I did, h
owever, allow myself to briefly think about the abstract possibility of meeting my father and decided that if this were ever to happen, say, in a parallel universe or something, I should probably be mad at him for leaving us, especially the boy me, who was quite impressionable and likely suffered more without a father than he would have if he had had a father—even a subpar father—and definitely for not giving my mom the fairy tale, because she deserved it; if any woman ever did, it was Mom.
Maybe I should be as angry as Elizabeth was with her mother—theoretically speaking—because what was worse, abandoning your son or making your daughter eat her pet rabbits? A tough call.
But in the real world that is my life, I wasn’t mad.
How could I hate a stranger?
How could I be angry with a man I’d never met?
Max called our room and when I picked up the phone, he said, “We’re ready. What the fuck, hey? Fucking breakfast? My stomach is fucking screaming, hey.”
“Father McNamee is still sleeping,” I whispered.
“Let’s eat without him. There’s a comple-fucking-mentary breakfast downstairs. Muffins and other breakfast items of that fucking nature. But there’s a fucking time limit on that shit, hey. It says so in the fucking brochure they leave next to the bed. Time is of the essence when it comes to breakfast in Cana-fucking-da.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I wrote Father a note, letting him know where we’d be, so he wouldn’t wake up and be confused, and then Elizabeth, Max, and I had coffee and muffins downstairs in the fancy hotel lobby, sitting on Canadian-red leather seats.
“Today is the big day,” Elizabeth said.
“Cat Fucking Parliament is the big day!” Max said. “Hey!”
I nodded, glanced at the clock hung on the wall, saw it was after ten, and said, “I better make sure Father McNamee is up.”
In the hallway, outside our room, I knocked on the door loudly to let Father know I was coming in, and maybe to wake him up if he hadn’t risen already. Then I entered.
He was still sleeping.
“Father?” I said. “Father, it’s getting late.”
He didn’t wake up, so I shook his shoulder gently—and then it felt like I was suffocating.
Father McNamee was frozen.
It was as if he had turned to rock in the middle of the night, because he was cold and stiff and whiter than the freshly fallen snow outside.
Immediately, the rational part of me knew he was dead.
Part of my brain was sober and straight and functioning just fine.
But the irrational part of me took control and started to shake him more violently, yelling, “Father McNamee, wake up! We’re going to Saint Joseph’s Oratory today! Remember? You promised I’d meet my father in front of Saint Brother André Bessette’s preserved heart! You promised me a miracle! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! This isn’t funny! Wake up! Father!”
But he didn’t wake up, and the rational part of my brain still knew he wouldn’t, but the problem was that the rational part was now losing to the irrational part of my mind, and it was beginning to seem like the battle was a lost cause. Rationality was getting slaughtered and was outnumbered ten irrational thoughts to one rational, at least. I began to shake and cry and feel as though I was going to black out and—
Then, Richard Gere, you materialized at that very moment, and I don’t think I would have been able to get through that situation if you hadn’t.
You came.
To rescue me from irrationality.
You came.
You were dressed in the red-and-yellow robe of a Buddhist monk, and your eyes twinkled extra hard.
Bartholomew, you, Richard Gere, said to me. It was Father McNamee’s time. This is the way of the universe. Our lives here on earth are transitory. This is all as it should be. Breathe. In. Out. Repeat. In. Out. Repeat.
You demonstrated good breathing techniques here, elongating your spine, but I was too upset to breathe correctly.
“He was supposed to introduce me to my father today! Why would God bring us all the way up here to Montreal with the intention of introducing me to my father if He knew Father McNamee was going to die the night before he was to complete that task? It doesn’t make any sense! This makes no sense whatsoever! Father McNamee must have left a note of some sort outlining what I’m supposed to do next. There must be a clue here that will explain everything.”
I began searching the hotel room.
You will find no note, because there is none, you said confidently.
“How do you know?”
Richard Gere knows everything about your life, Bartholomew, because Richard Gere lives at the heart of your mind, deep within, at the center of your consciousness.
“I don’t understand,” I said as I continued searching for a note from Father McNamee—going through his suitcase, the drawers of the desk and dresser, running my arms and hands under the bed—and found none. “I don’t understand! Why would God let Father die just a few hours before he was supposed to complete his mission? Before he was to introduce me to my real father? Why would God leave me all alone in Canada?”
You smiled the way Mom used to smile at me when I was a little boy and had asked her the type of question that puzzles children, but to which all adults know the answer—like, why do birds sing or why do trees look most beautiful when they are losing their leaves in the fall or why do we fight wars or why does eating ice cream give you a headache or why do people always laugh at me?
Are you alone? Are you not traveling with others?
I thought about what you were implying—that maybe it was all for a reason—but I didn’t say anything.
Are you familiar with Buddhist koans? you, Richard Gere, said to me.
“No,” I said, even though I vaguely remember reading something about this at the library once.
In the West, people often mistakenly think of koans as riddles, tests of one’s intellect—something to solve. But a truer interpretation would be that koans are brief stories to meditate on—they have no answer. We cannot “solve” or “understand” these koans any more than we can solve or understand a shooting star or a lion’s roar or the smell of fresh dew on roses or the feeling of warm sand between our toes. We can only ponder all of these things deeply, and revel in the mystery. It is a mistake to think there is a correct answer or solution, but it is good to ponder all the same. The Dalai Lama would agree here. Trust me. He and I are friends.
“What does any of that have to do with Father’s McNamee’s dying just hours before he was supposed to tell me who my biological father is?”
You smiled at me as if I were a child.
Are you asking me to solve the koan? There is no answer, Bartholomew. None. But it is good to reflect upon the question that lives at the heart of your current story. I suspect you will reflect on it for many years, and this will make you wiser—it will enhance your experience of this current reality.
“So you’re saying that this story—what we are involved in right now—is a koan, something to meditate on, but it has no meaning?”
It has great meaning! It just has no answer.
“You’re confusing me!”
No, you are confused completely independent of my influence.
“What am I going to do?”
You are going to call an ambulance, Bartholomew. That is the most rational thing to do at this moment, given the unfortunate circumstances you have inherited. But first, take the money and credit cards out of Father McNamee’s wallet.
“What? Why?”
He wanted you to make this journey. You will need money to complete it. Trust me. This is completely acceptable. Father McNamee would want you to take the money and credit cards he had set aside for this journey and complete it in his honor. Search your heart, and you will discover that what I speak is the truth.
I searched my heart and it agreed with you, Richard Gere.
I saw Father’s wallet on the table.
Do it, you
, Richard Gere, told me, and I did, emptying his wallet, stuffing the money and credit cards into my pockets. And—
I saw something that made my heart leap, but also stunned me into a warm, deep calm.
Now hide the empty wallet in your suitcase so the police don’t see it, said the voice in my head, but it was no longer yours, Richard Gere.
You were gone.
It wasn’t my mother’s voice or the angry little man’s.
Was it my own?
Regardless, I did as the voice commanded me to do, slipping Father’s wallet into an interior pocket of my suitcase that was somewhat hidden behind a stack of clean white underwear briefs.
Good, the voice said. Now call the front desk and tell whomever answers that you need an ambulance sent immediately.
It took about fifteen minutes—during which I sat calmly on the bed, my mind blank, shocked into submission.
Father McNamee was pronounced dead immediately.
Two large men struggled to put his solid round body on a stretcher, but—with much breath and sweat—they finally got him strapped down, at which point they covered him with a white sheet and took him away.
Next, two local policemen interviewed me in my hotel room. One was tall with a mole on the end of his nose and the other was short with long sideburns. They both had freshly sharpened pencils and spiral-bound notebooks the size of bread slices, in which they scribbled furiously whenever I spoke.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Sideburns said.
“Unfortunately, we need to ask you a few questions,” said the Mole.
“And we apologize in advance if any of the questions seem disrespectful, given the circumstances, but we have to do our job,” Sideburns said.
I nodded.
“What were you doing in Canada with the deceased?” the Mole asked.
“We were on a pilgrimage to Saint Joseph’s Oratory. We were planning to visit Cat Parliament afterward.”
“Cat Parliament?” the Mole said, scribbling.
“In Ottawa,” I said.
The cops exchanged a glance.
“Pardon my asking, but is that a peeler joint?” Sideburns said, scribbling.