A woman comes to the door and tells me that Father Warren is not home. She believes he’s still in the sanctuary.
I cross the road and enter the church. It’s dark and quiet. The heavy door slams behind me. I look at the holy water but don’t dare touch it. I have second thoughts in the vestibule. Do I turn back now?
“Yes? Is someone there?” I hear.
Father Warren comes out of a small room to the left.
“It’s me, Father Warren. Jocelyn McGuire.”
“Yes, Jocelyn,” he says, slowing down. “Come in, come in. Is there something that you thought of? Something that might help Gabe?”
He seems so eager. “I don’t have any information regarding Gabe,” I say, “but I was wondering if I could talk to you about something else.”
Father Warren nods his head. He’s disappointed. “Of course.” He motions me into the little room, sits at a small desk, and points me into the other chair. “What is it you are wondering about, Jocelyn?”
“It’s about me and Benny.”
“Go on,” he says, as if I’m making him guess.
“Benny tells me that you think I’m in partnership with the devil,” I blurt. I don’t mean to be so abrupt, but I’m desperate to be clear. To stop hurting.
He looks down and rubs his hands along his lap. “Is this what you came to talk about?”
I nod my head and wait for his reply.
“Jocelyn,” he begins.
And I breathe. Please tell me that God knows me. That I’m not a stranger.
“If you and Benny are having difficulties, we can schedule a time for the three of us to meet. We could sit down and talk together—urn, relationship counseling, if you will.” His voice is calmer, controlled, but not the easygoing voice I heard the morning we walked together.
I don’t get it. Why doesn’t he answer my question? My head is spinning. Was Benny lying? Is he the one who thinks I’m nothing more than temptation? Perhaps he’s simply making Father Warren the fall guy.
Then I remember that priests have to keep their conversations with their parishioners confidential. Maybe Father Warren feels that he can’t talk with me.
“Do you think I’m wicked, Father Warren?” Is my soul really stained? I hear my seven-year-old self asking. I feel as if my whole life has begged for this answer.
His mouth twitches into an almost smile. Then the door of the church opens again, sending a shaft of light into the little room. Father Warren stands, and without saying a word, he leaves to see who else has entered. He shuts the door of the little room, blocking my view and the view of the other.
I hear a familiar male voice. The two talk in hushed tones, which makes me crazy. Is it Benny? Should I go see? I start to pace around the little room, looking at the altar robes in an open closet, a picture of the Last Supper hanging on the wall, a prayer book open on Father Warren’s desk, when something memorable catches my eye. Partially tucked under the book is a faded photograph of Gabe—one that I’ve seen before. I slide it out to take a closer look. It’s a picture of Gabe standing on the dock with his brothers. I wonder if Father Warren uses the picture to show rescue workers what Gabe looks like. But the picture is old; certainly, there are newer ones available. Gabe had his picture taken every other day for one championship event or another.
Matthew and Timmy look handsome, but bored, as usual. Not Gabe. He’s staring at the camera as if daring it to take his picture. His shirt is off, his body is tan, his eyes are sparkling. Where have I seen this before?
My breath rushes in. I know exactly where I saw this picture. It was over the door of the rickety house. The very house that I have wished to erase from my memory.
Someone must have gathered the belongings that were stored in that house. But when? Soon after I was left in the woods nearby? A year later? Two? The picture is fairly weathered. Is it possible that Gabe gave this picture to Father Warren? If so, recently?
I hear Father Warren saying good-bye to the person in the vestibule and, on impulse, tuck the photo into the pocket of my shorts.
“Now then, where did we leave off?” says Father Warren as he slides back into his seat. “Ah, yes. You and Benny.”
Time stops. It’s as if I wake up from a dream. I clear the sleepies from my eyes and realize one simple fact: This man, priest or not, is not going to answer my question. He does not care about me. He doesn’t care if I am the Virgin Mary or Satan himself.
Father Warren rattles on about how adolescence is a confusing time. And I think, So what do you have to gain from your repeated talks with Benny? Why do you ask him, “Where do you touch her?”
Suddenly, I feel a little queasy. I get up, mutter some sort of thank-you, and leave.
I park my bike next to our shed and wonder, Does Father Warren enjoy imagining touching me? Or Benny?
FORTY
Eighth grade. Theresa and I stay after school to do research on the Second World War. It’s April, and our social studies teacher is beginning to get panicky. U.S. history, she says, never gets taught beyond that war. She’s determined to take us right up to Vietnam.
After about an hour of taking notes, we’ve had enough. We head outside early to wait for Theresa’s mom to pick us up. There is still snow in patches on the ground, but the sun is bright, the air smells of thawing earth, and the front steps feel warm underneath us.
“Have you signed up yet for the walkathon?” Theresa asks me. Theresa belongs to the outing club, and they’re organizing a trash-pick-up walk from Weaver Falls to Milford. If she’s not picking up trash, she’s protesting the nuclear plant they’re building in Seabrook or marching for the equal rights amendment.
I’m about to tell her that I haven’t yet but that I will, when a snowball, or should I say slush ball, comes flying toward us. Ice and mud splash at our feet. We jump up and bolt into the entryway of the school.
We peer out the tall windows. “Look,” I say. “Gabe O’Neil and his friends are across the street.”
“Do you think Gabe threw it?” Theresa asked. “Why would he do that?”
I am reminded of Gabe’s antics when I used to bring Anna home. “Maybe he likes you,” I say.
“Gabe O’Neil?” Theresa cautiously opens the door. She leads the way back onto the front steps. “Why would Gabe O’Neil like me? I’m not his type at all.”
“Who is Gabe’s type?” I ask. At that moment a small bird decides to inhabit my chest.
Theresa turns to stare at me. “Of course,” she says. “How could I not see it? You like Gabe O’Neil!”
“I don’t,” I say with as much force as I can. I sit down on the steps and throw my head back with my eyes closed. End of conversation.
“The lady doth protest too much, me thinks.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It’s from Shakespeare. It means that you are trying too hard to convince me, so there must be some truth to what I’m saying.”
At that moment another snowball hits me in the arm.
“Come on!” Theresa yells, and we race down the hill toward town. The boys follow, pelting ice. We hide behind the parish house, and then Theresa quietly leads us into the church.
“Should we be in here?” I ask.
“Sure, that’s why they keep it open. So you can come in and pray anytime.”
I sit in one of the pews and take a deep breath. The air is a musty mixture of candles, smoke, and wood.
“Come see what I found, Joss,” Theresa calls from the front of the church. She’s behind a small partition and has opened a box of papery wafers. “They’re the Communion hosts,” she says. She pulls one out and pops it in her mouth.
“You can’t do that!” I cry.
“Why not?”
“Aren’t they holy? Aren’t you eating the body of Christ?”
“Not yet,” says Theresa. “They haven’t been consecrated by the priest.”
“So what are they now?” I ask.
“I don’t know, yucky tas
ting. Try one.”
I take one, but I don’t put it in my mouth.
“They don’t taste that bad,” says Theresa.
I ignore her and walk to the back of the church to be alone. I stand in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, trying to remember a prayer. A prayer of forgiveness for all the ways in which I’m not tolerable. No words come to mind, but I think of a song I heard on the radio and sing it softly. When I get to the words Sweet Jesus come and teach to me your song, a bubble rises up from inside of me. I place the host on my tongue. It expands as it melts, and I imagine that consecrated or not, I am filled with something holy. I have made my First Communion.
Theresa is still holding the box when she comes back and sees me smiling.
“Want another one?” she asks.
I do.
That night I turn on the TV to watch my favorite Western show. My mother mixes herself a stinger and comes to sit next to me on the couch. I like it when she does that. It usually means that she’ll loosen up, talk to me like a friend—that I’ll learn something. I let her sip her drink and relax for a few minutes. I think of Gabe and the snowballs, and then during a commercial I ask, “What was my father like?”
“Oh, honey.” She sighs, swirling the ice cubes in her glass. “You don’t really want me to talk about him.”
I look over at her face, which is not cold and tight, but kind. And instantly, I get it. She’s right. I don’t want to talk about him. If she tells me wonderful things about my father, I will wonder why such a good person would not want to know me, his daughter. If she tells me bad things, I will wonder why there is this buried place in my heart that still loves my father and wishes he would come home.
The show comes back on, and my mother and I watch in silence. I guess that I have learned something. In real life you can’t always tell the good guys from the bad guys. I sure can’t.
FORTY-ONE
After my “little session” with Father Warren, there are two things I’m dying to do. I want to test out my theory on Benny—tell him that I think Father Warren might be some sort of pervert. I wonder if anything would have happened if I’d stayed in that little room.
The other thing I want to do is see if that rickety house is still standing. I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and tell myself that Fm being ridiculous. Gabe could not be as close as that shed in the woods. He would have heard the helicopters and known that the whole town was searching for him. And speaking of searching, wouldn’t someone, Matthew or Timmy have thought of looking at the house site? Fm sure they did.
I pick up the phone to call Benny. I dial his number but bang the receiver down before it rings. I don’t want to talk to him. No matter what has been happening, it doesn’t change what he said to me. You give it away, Jocelyn. I wipe off the counter, toss the crumbs into the sink, and head out the door. I can’t help myself.
The path looks regularly trodden, and I feel a sting of resentment. Who’s been coming here? Silly, I guess, to believe that we’d be the only kids who ever discovered Kiddy Brook. Other children have no doubt come to build rafts and splash like otters in the stream. Perhaps they found the rickety house and have taken it over as their own.
The house startles me. It’s smaller than I remember and partially sunk in the mud. One of the corners is falling down. I feel as if I’m visiting a grave, and perhaps I am.
I push open the barely hinged door. Not a whole lot has changed inside. Naked women still adorn the walls, only now they have dart holes all over their bodies. The floor is littered with cans of different sorts: tuna, spaghetti, beer. Apparently, this house lasted from Matthew’s to Gabe’s party days.
I crouch and pick up a wine bottle. It isn’t the slightest bit weathered.
“I wondered when you’d come,” says a voice behind me.
I turn and see Gabe standing in the doorway. I feel like I’m looking at a ghost. I want to run as fast as my Keds will carry me.
“Say something,” he says. I doubt that he’s slept this week. There are bags under his eyes, and he looks at me as though in a haze. I wonder if he’s tripping.
“What should I say?”
“How about, ‘You’re alive.’”
“You’re alive,” I parrot. And then I see that he doesn’t have any of the normal Gabe bravado. He’s hurting in a way that I’ve never seen Gabe hurt before. I relax a little and say the truth. “I knew you were alive.”
He takes a step closer. “Yeah, sure. How?”
I try to figure it out. I decide to be honest. “Because I have watched you and listened to you for so long, Gabe O’Neil, I can feel your breath inside of me. I would know if you were gone.”
“You are so fucking weird, Jocelyn.”
I feel like slapping him. “Why did you disappear?”
He doesn’t like the closeness of this conversation, so he bangs open the door and takes it outside.
“Your family is crazed out of their minds!” I shout, following him. “Whatever you’re going through, I’m sure they’d appreciate knowing rather than thinking you’re dead.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“I know more than you think, Gabe.”
“Yeah, Jocelyn, what do you know?” Gabe sits down on a fallen tree like he couldn’t care less what I have to say.
I pace, trying to siphon what I really feel. “I know that you are not the kid you pretend to be.”
“Are any of us?” he asks, chuckling in this deranged sort of way. “What makes you think that?”
“Well, I’ve talked to Bernadette, for one thing.”
Gabe jumps up as if a bee stung him. “What has Bernadette said?” he demands to know. He runs his hands through his messed-up hair. His face is panicked—a look I’ve never seen on him before.
I realize at this moment who Bernadette is. Bernadette is the keeper of Gabe’s secrets. She’s the one he trusts.
“What I mean to say”—choosing my words carefully to protect her—“is that I went to Bernadette’s house. I talked with her; she’s nice. But she’s different from what I thought, from what we all thought.”
“Whose fault is that?” asks Gabe.
He’s right. But I also know that despite Gabe’s ability to turn the tables, something is terribly wrong. “Why are you hiding here, Gabe?” I ask.
He steps away in disgust, as if he had momentarily forgotten what was wrong and now I was insisting on bringing it all back.
I pull the picture out of my pocket and hold it out for him to see. “I found this in Father Warren’s office,” I say.
He glances over and then begins to walk in small circles. “So?”
“So it made me remember this house. This picture used to hang above the door.”
“I gave it to him, okay?” He won’t stand still.
“Why? Why would you give him this picture? And why were you seen leaving the church the night you disappeared?”
“What are you asking, Jocelyn?” He stops turning and puts his face in mine. “Do you know that I spend nights with Father Warren at the parish house? Do you feel my breath inside of you when the two of us are getting it on?”
Gabe’s aim is perfect. I feel the weight of what he tells me in the center of my gut. He tries to hold back his emotions, but he can’t. Tears roll down his face.
“He’s why you disappeared.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Gabe says, words mixing with an eerie laugh. “The last time I was with him, I just freaked. I couldn’t handle it anymore. He would make me do things I didn’t expect. It was totally out of my control.” He crouches down, his head on his lap.
The pain spreads out to all of my organs, all of my limbs. I can’t think of Gabe, so I think of Benny. I think of all the times he’s felt forced to ride with Father Warren, forced to answer his questions just so Father Warren can create more pictures—real or imagined—for his collection. How dare that man say I’m evil! How dare he say that I am in partnership with the devil! He is the devil himself! br />
Without thinking, I place my hand on the back of Gabe’s neck.
He looks up at me as if I had just walked into our American history class and done the same thing. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I take my hand away.
“What, are you comin’ on to me?” He pops back up. “You want to show me that I still have a thing for girls? Okay, Jocelyn, let’s go undie-dipping,” he says, pulling on his fly.
We’re both standing now. I just glare at him. And I get it. For the first time Fm really clear about who the jerk is here.
He’s not put off by my stare. He keeps goading. “What is it with you, Jocelyn? How is it that you can still love me?” He reaches out and squeezes my cheeks between his hands. “And you know you do.”
It is not a kind gesture, and I snap my face to the side to break free. “Because I blamed myself for all your mean and hateful behavior,” I say. “I thought that I made you do those things because I was too stupid, too naïve. I thought that somehow I had asked for it.”
He starts to walk away. I run ahead and block him, my face in his. “But I didn’t!” I scream. “I didn’t ask for it. And it’s your shame, Gabe O’Neil—not mine!”
I expect him to haul off and hit me the way his father hits him, but he doesn’t. His face becomes calm, his body depleted. He looks at me in the same way he did when we were four and hiding in the bushes. “You’re right,” he whispers. “It wasn’t you. It was me.”
He grips a tree and moans into it. He’s sobbing. This time I don’t touch him. I just stand nearby. I want to rush in and fill the very deep, empty place in him, but I know it’s impossible.
What Gabe is enduring is too big for me to handle. “Gabe, I’m going to get help,” I tell him.
“No. Please don’t, Jocelyn.” He reaches his arm out to mine. It’s as if he’s trying to grab me and is begging me at the same time.
I walk over and hug him. At first he stands there rigidly. But I don’t back away, and eventually, he folds himself into me.
“I need food,” he says. “Can you go back and get me food?”