CHAPTER 40
Julie
1962
Within a matter of days, we had packed our belongings and left the bungalow for the last time, and that put an end to my sleuthing. Isabel’s funeral took place the day after we returned to Westfield. I didn’t go because I woke up that morning with what, in retrospect, was surely a psychosomatic stomachache. Simply lifting my head from the pillow caused the room to spin and my stomach to churn. Lucy was sent to a neighbor’s house, while I stayed home alone with my aching belly and my troubled conscience. I wondered if I had cancer. I was terribly afraid of dying with such an enormous mortal sin on my soul.
The following Saturday, I waited for my turn in the confessional. I sat between my mother and Lucy in the pew at Holy Trinity, trying to figure out what I would say to the priest. I was always so mechanical in the confessional with my carefully rehearsed list of sins. This sin did not fit neatly into my usual categories, and although I’d tried to think of a way to confess many times since it had happened, I still walked into the tiny dark cubicle with no idea how to begin.
It didn’t matter. The second the priest drew back his little window, I started to cry. I recognized my confessor as Father Fagan, the oldest priest in our parish. He was white haired and walked with a limp, like my father, and he had big hands that had rested gently on my head more than once over the years. I let out huge, gulping sobs that could probably have been heard throughout the church. I thought my mother might open the door to the confessional to see that I was all right. Maybe she would hold me as she had not held me since Isabel’s death, but that didn’t happen.
Father Fagan managed to find a break in my weeping to say, “Tell me what’s troubling you, my child.”
“I…” I gulped down a fresh set of tears. “I did something that got my sister killed,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. His voice was very calm, not at all incensed or shocked, and I wondered if he knew about Isabel’s death and my role in it. I would later learn that he had been the priest at her funeral. “I think it would be good if you and I met together in the rectory tomorrow after church,” he said. “Could you do that?”
I was surprised. I couldn’t imagine confessing my sins face-to-face with a priest, but I knew I could not decline the invitation.
“Yes, Father,” I said.
“Good. Come see me at one o’clock and we’ll chat.”
I started to stand up, but dropped to my knees again. “What if I die between now and then?” I asked. “I have a mortal sin on my soul.”
“You’re forgiven that sin, child.”
“But…I haven’t even told you what I did. It’s…I think it’s unforgivable.”
“Nothing’s unforgivable, Julie,” he said, stunning me by using my name. “Right now, go to the altar and say three Hail Marys and make a good act of contrition. And then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up again. But I didn’t feel forgiven. I felt as though he didn’t quite understand how terrible I’d been.
The next day, my father took me to the rectory and waited in the parlor while I spoke with Father Fagan. We sat in a small room furnished with fancy chairs and a chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. I told him everything I’d done, and he listened, nodding slightly every once in a while.
“Your sin was envy.” He sat in a large chair that made me think of something a king might sit in. He held the fingertips of his hands together as though he might start to pray at any moment. “And lust for your sister’s boyfriend,” he continued. “And lying to your parents, as well as to a number of other people. And also, disobedience.”
I nodded as he catalogued all the things I’d done wrong.
“But,” he said, “your sin is not murder.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t—”
“You did not mean for her to die.”
I lowered my head and watched as a tear fell from my eyelashes to form a dark stain on my blue skirt. “No,” I said.
“You did not mean for her to die,” he repeated, as if he wanted me to truly believe it.
I shook my head. “I loved her,” I said.
He nodded. “I know,” he said. Then the tone of his voice changed, and I knew we were coming to the end of our session together. That disappointed me. I could talk about everything here. I couldn’t talk about any of it at home. “Julie,” he said, in his new voice. “I want you to feel you can come to me any time you need to. Any time. You can call me in the middle of the night if you need to. The Lord and I will always be here for you. Now, let us pray for your sister’s soul.”
That’s what we did. For a few minutes, I sat with my head bowed as he asked God to watch over Isabel. I felt the tiniest molecule of peace work its way into my heart as he spoke.
When we had finished praying and I was on my way out of the office, it suddenly occurred to me that he had not given me a real penance. The Hail Marys from the day before surely didn’t count; they were far less than I would have received from the priest in Point Pleasant for one single impure thought.
“You forgot to give me my penance,” I said, my hand on the doorknob.
“You need no penance from me,” Father Fagan said. “Your true penance is that you will have to live with what you did for the rest of your life,” he said.
He could not have been more right.
My grandparents put our bungalow on the market, and it sold quickly. That, too, was my fault. The house had meant so much to all of us and had been part of my family’s history for nearly forty years. We would never again go down the shore in the summer. That chapter of our lives was over.
No one ever said, Julie, you are to blame for this, you are a horrible person, but no one needed to. Everyone knew that was the truth. It was weeks before my mother could talk to me without asking me, “Why? Why? Why?” For a while, I felt cut off from the warm family life I had always known. That improved over time, although except for my father’s initial compassionate response to me, no one ever said, It’s all right, Julie. We know you didn’t mean for Isabel to die. Only Father Fagan provided that sort of comfort in the weeks and months that followed Izzy’s death, but I really needed to hear those words from someone in my family. And I never did.