How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

Chapter Thirty


The annual St. Matt’s Fourth of July Funfair is the year’s third biggest deal, after the Christmas Eve Mass with the kiddie pageant and the May Procession where the Mary statue gets crowned with fake flowers and we pray for a thousand years in the hot church and one kid always passes out. My parents have been all about the Funfair since Nat and I were kids. Dad helps hammer all the game booths together and Mom decorates and arranges the food tables. The center table always holds three giant platters of her famous angel eggs, which are basically deviled eggs with cream cheese whipped into the filling and a name that won’t make the organist boycott them. Every year I stuff myself with angel eggs and fried chicken and try to beat Bec at ladderball and volunteer in the dunking booth, and then we all watch the fireworks over funnel cake and frozen lemonade and Dad and I throw a ball around behind the karaoke stage.

Every year except this one.

It’s after 4:00 by the time I park the Sunseeker back at my house, swap it for Mom’s old Jetta, drop Bec off at her place, and make the short trek to Donovan Street. The cars of the devoted already dot the St. Matt’s parking lot. Mom and Dad’s Ford Focus, Mrs. Heffler’s silver SUV, the Donnellys’ new Camry, the beatup blue Saturn Father Mike’s had forever. I slot myself into a spot surrounded by empty spaces. I check my email for a response from Abel, like I did every five minutes on the trip home.

Nothing.

I tap my shorts pockets. Plastic Sim in the right, Plastic Cadmus in the left. The Mom-and-Dad reunion looms like a one-on-one with Xaarg; I’m in no hurry.

Plus there’s one last thing I need to do.

I haven’t walked through the front doors of St. Matt’s in over five months. I clutch my breath as the door creaks open, as if a horde of crystal spiders might be sleeping in the shadows inside. But when I tiptoe up the three carpeted steps, it’s the same old church, everything familiar and summery. Red, white, and dyed-blue carnations on the altar, the faded tang of incense and sweat, a warm breeze wandering in through a few open windows and swaying the felt dove banners Mom helped sew.

I wander up the aisle, the same path my parents took on their wedding day. I trace a beam of light from the stained-glass Holy Spirit window to the bronze-and-oak font where I was baptized. Three tiers of red votives flicker next to it, each tiny light connecting a problem with a prayer. I’m surprised by what I don’t feel, standing here alone. A rock in my stomach, a hand around my throat. Father Mike would say that this isn’t peace, that I’m empty in a bad way. Spiritually flatlined, like he said once in a sermon. But no one’s behind the altar now, and I don’t have to listen.

I stop by the marble holy water font. Press a finger in the damp yellow sponge, like I did when I was a kid and St. Matt’s felt like home. Now it feels like a stop on a long trip somewhere else. Until this summer that thought would have made me sad and scared, but now I can’t wait to see where the road turns next.

I just wish Abel was in the seat beside me.

***


My parents are out on the Funfair field behind St. Matt’s, wearing matching sweats in my high school colors and hauling the ring toss platform together. Normally this is where I’d jump right in, grabbing a corner of something heavy and tacking up signs and testing extension cords. Two things stop me: the fact that they possibly want to wring my neck, and the fact that Father Mike is sitting on a stool by the ticket booth, tuning his guitar and blocking my way.

I shove my hands in my pockets and squeeze Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim, trying to absorb what I need. Control from Sim. Bravado from Cadmus. The rock in my throat shrinks down to a pebble.

After a minute, my legs start to walk.

“Brandon. Welcome back.” Father Mike doesn’t get up when he sees me coming. It’s a sly calculation: assume friendly nonthreatening pose, let the lost sheep come to you.

“Hi.” I nod. Neutral smile.

“Trip okay?”

“Yep, it was fine. Thanks.”

“Your mom and dad thought you might show up today.” He plucks the A string on his instrument‌—‌a haggard old thing with a GOT GOD? sticker on it‌—‌and twists the tuning peg. I think of the first time he passed me a guitar, showed my fingers how to shape the C and G chords. “I know they’ve been pretty worried. They’ll be super-relieved to see you here safe.”

“What’d they tell you?” I square my shoulders like Cadmus.

“Well, they‌—‌”

“Actually, it’s all right. I don’t want to know.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

“I’m gonna go talk to them.”

“Want me to come along? It might help.”

“No. No thank you.” Sim takes over: smooth and composed. “I can do it alone.”

“Sure, sure. I know. That’s fine.” He smiles that old I’m-just-a-dude smile, and my shoulders go soft. I’m not Sim or Cadmus anymore. I’m a kid, whispering fake sins to him in the face-to-face confessional, his mellow voice calming my jittering leg. hey_mamacita’s mean Father X caricature pops to mind, and my face heats up. It’s easy fighting villains with daggers for teeth and crosses that shoot hellfire. But he’s not Father X, or Xaarg. He cares about me, the way I hope my own father still does.

“Hey Brandon?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me a few minutes later on. Okay, bud? I’d like to talk to you.”

I pause for a second, the fight draining out of me, and then a whole vanload of kids in matching St. Matt’s Elementary t-shirts come rushing over. They’ve got all the usual grade-school-music-class instruments with them‌—‌triangles, egg shakers, jingle bells, probably the exact same ones I played at some point. Father Mike gives them a thumbs-up and a distracted smile. He won’t let me walk without an answer.

“Sure,” I mumble. I’m watching the kids. Pigtailed and sneakered, trusting and open. “I guess.”

“Awesome. Meetcha back here.”

I walk away. I walk fast, but his voice travels. “Hey, guys!” he’s saying. “How’re my SonShiners today?‌…‌Yeah? Let’s try that a little louder!” He starts strumming the opening bars of that cutesy “Whatever God Wants” song that still gets stuck in my head; I don’t want to glance back, don’t want my brain to sing along. I look for something else to focus on. I find it across the field by the popcorn stand.

My parents, standing side by side with their arms around each other. Like instead of waiting for me to cross the field and catch up, they’re watching me walk away.

***


We sit at a weathered picnic bench that’s survived about fifty St. Matt’s Funfairs. The bench is etched with decades of graffiti: BILL N SUE, KEVIN + KAYLA 4EVR. I trace the old names and promises, scanning my brain for the right thing to say.

Judging from past battles with Nat, I thought Dad would come down on me like the hammer of God. But he doesn’t even seem angry. It would be easier if he did. He seems remote and unsettled, like an alien’s replaced his son and he’s approaching with caution, trying to figure out what this new thing is capable of.

“Did you remember to clean out my refrigerator?” he finally asks me.

“We did.”

He ignores the we. “And did you empty the tanks?”

“Yes.”

“The black and the gray?”

“Yeah. I returned your camping stove, too. It’s back in the garage.”

“I hope it’s clean. If you let grease and food particles build up it can‌…‌”

He keeps going. The checklists and lectures might go on until sundown if I don’t do something. I squeeze Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim.

“Hey. Guys?”

“I wasn’t finished,” Dad snaps.

“Greg. Let him talk,” says Mom.

Dad bites his lip and taps the table with his fist. I take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry I lied,” I tell them. “I’m not sorry for what I did, or for anything that happened on the trip, but I’m sorry I lied. I’m not going to do that anymore. And I’m sorry I called you backwards.” I catch Mom’s eye. “Really.”

Mom nods. Dad’s eyes are shiny. He scrapes a splotch of dried mustard off the table with his thumbnail and blows the yellow dust away.

“So that’s all?” he says.

“I guess. For now.”

“We’re glad you’re home safe,” says Mom. “Right, Greg?”

“I‌—‌”

Dad just sighs. He looks like he wants to say more, but I know it’s not going to happen. Not today, not here. He drums at the table a couple times and then he gets up slowly and scuffs away, his ancient sneakers kicking up sad little puffs of fairground dust.

Mom watches him go.

“You were‌…‌safe, weren’t you? You and‌…‌” She clears her throat. “You and him.”

I blush. “Yeah. Of course.”

“That’s the most important thing. I don’t care what you’ve heard‌—‌”

“Mom, I know. I know. You don’t have to worry.”

She exhales, long and slow. We sit there for a complicated minute.

“Your dad just‌—‌doesn’t know what to say.” She says it like she’s apologizing for him, like she’s got no problem with this at all. I watch him fix a game booth, pounding nails into loose beams. I wonder if it’ll be like this all the time now, if I’ll come home from college and he’ll ask me if I’m passing my tests and keeping the bathroom clean and locking the doors at night, and then go off to the basement and start snipping his bonsai and hammering birdhouses together until I go to bed, and the danger of looking me in the eye has passed.

Mom, softly: “Are you in love?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

“I want to know.”

I squirm in my seat. “I screwed everything up.”

“You did?” Her eyes get big. It’s cute.

“I tried to get him back. Sort of.” I trace a heart carved deep in the bench’s center slat. This is so weird. “But I don’t really know how. I think it’s too late.”

“Oh.” She sighs. “Honey.”

A cursor blinks in the conversation. She looks like she wants to give me advice, the way she gave Nat advice before Nat shaved half her head and stopped listening, but I know she can’t. Especially not here, with the big gold cross on the St. Matt’s spire looming above the trees. She’s probably doing the math: Give your gay son love advice = twelve and a half years in Purgatory.

There’s nothing much else to say. I reach in my back pocket, pluck out the rolled-up David Darras head shot. I push it across the table to her.

“He couldn’t sign the TV Guide, but I got this.”

She smiles a thank you‌—‌not because of the autograph, but because I’ve changed the subject.

“I forgot I asked you,” she says. Her glossy fingernails rake the rubber band off and the picture unrolls.

“He did sign it. It’s just kind of messy.”

“How was he?”

“Funny. Really nice.”

“Was he just as handsome in person?”

I nod. “Even more.”

She reaches across table and grabs my hand. She pretends she’s looking at the Darras photo, but really she’s looking right through it. A light breeze curls the corners of the photo and ruffles her pale yellow curls. In the distance, Father Mike and the kids are running through “His Banner Over Me Is Love.”

“Are you staying?” she says. “For the fair?”

“I can’t.”

She nods; I can tell she expected that. I watch her gaze shift to the crowded food tables and the jumble of raffle prizes. She’s scrawling one of her checklists in her head, thinking about all the stuff she has to do before the Funfair starts, and if I fast-forward the future I can see her and Dad here year after year, arranging decades of gelatin stars and angel eggs and repainting the same ten game booths until the two of them are finally old and sitting side by side in their blue canvas lawn chairs, counting fireworks together.

The sun’s starting to slip away. More volunteers are coming with stacks of raffle-ticket rolls, bags of game prizes. She’s still holding my hand. I let her, for a long time.

Then I’m like, “Save me an angel egg?”

I squeeze her hand twice.

“I’ll save you two,” she says, and then she lets go.

***


I’m already in the car by the time Father Mike realizes I’m leaving. I see him with his guitar as I ride the brakes past the Funfair field: strumming another song with the kids, a whole fresh flock to teach. He looks small and breakable, like one of those ceramic saint figurines Gram keeps on her windowsill.

If this were a hey_mamacita fic, I would have confronted him before I left. The dialogue: “Bring back any nice souvenirs?” “Yeah‌—‌a boyfriend.” That would’ve left him comically stewing, his face purple and steam shooting out of his ears. I remind myself he’s not a cartoon. He’s not even a bad guy. I don’t need him now, but I don’t need to hurt him, either.

He glances up, catches me idling in the car. He lifts a hand from the guitar strings and waves, like C’mon over, bud. Come back. I stick my hand out the open window and give him a gentle return wave. Goodbye.

I slip Cadmus and Sim out of my pockets and drop them both in the dashboard cupholder, their limbs tangled loosely together. Then I shift into drive and start rolling forward, down the winding road away from St. Matt’s.