Father McNamee kept staring.
Stop staring at me!” Adam said. “Stop it!”
Father McNamee stared so intently, he started to tremble a little.
Horrible,” Father McNamee said. “Horrible what must have happened to you when you were a boy. I’ve counseled many abusers, and they were all abused. You learn it, and you must unlearn it too.”
Get the hell out of my house!” Adam said.
Horrible,” Father McNamee said as he tilted his head. “You’re broken.”
Adam jumped out of his seat and made his way around the table, as if he were about to attack Father McNamee, but Wendy stood and put her hand on Adam’s chest. “It’s okay. They’re leaving.”
I want them out of here!” Adam said, eyes wide, veins bulging.
Okay,” Wendy said, gently massaging his biceps now. “Just go upstairs. I’ll make them leave.”
I swear if these two clowns aren’t out of here by the time I—”
I’ll take care of it. You have more important things to worry about. Let me handle this. It’s small stuff. Nothing. Don’t worry.”
Adam glared at us for an uncomfortable ten seconds and then yelled, “Out! I want you out of my house!” before stomping up the spiral staircase.
You better go,” Wendy said, trembling.
Father McNamee reached out and took her face in his hands. He removed her sunglasses, and her black eye looked even worse than it had earlier. The colors had dulled, but the damage appeared more pronounced and permanent—as if it had settled into her skin for good.
You don’t want to move back in with your mother, I know. You think that would be a step backward. I know she’s depressed. Your mother can be oppressive. Adam provides a good life for you, financially. He pays for your schooling. He buys you nice things. He’s handsome even. He looks like a shiny key to a better beautiful life. You think you can save him, but this is not how you save people.”
I got hurt playing softball,” Wendy insisted, but she was crying now, and her words made her sound like a child.
You can live with Bartholomew and me,” Father McNamee said. “Leave with us now, and it will be easier for you. If you stay, he will beat you again when we leave. You know that. He can’t help himself. He’s sick. And make no mistake, you are part of that sickness now. You’re keeping him sick. Continuing the cycle. You need to leave right away—for him, for you.”
It was a softball game. Third base. A line drive to my eye,” Wendy said, but she was looking at her slippers now, and her words were quiet and light as plucked feathers.
Our door is open to you any time, day or night,” Father McNamee said, and then he hugged Wendy. “Let’s go, Bartholomew.”
We started to walk down the spiral staircase.
How did you know his name was Adam?” Wendy said to me. She was leaning over the railing, watching us descend. She had put her sunglasses back on. Her angry words echoed in my head. “How did you know that?”
I couldn’t think of the right way to tell her, so I just shrugged.
But then I thought of a line from the Dalai Lama’s book A Profound Mind: “‘We should work toward cherishing the welfare of others to the point where we are unable to bear the sight of their misery.’ The Dalai Lama said that. It’s hard for me to look at your bruises. That’s how we ended up here. That’s all I can explain right now.”
Our home is open to you,” Father McNamee yelled up the stairs, and then we left.
We didn’t say anything to each other as we walked home.
I think we both knew what was happening to Wendy as we strolled—like our slow steps were prayers that could save her—and even though we had tried our best to protect her, there was nothing else we could do now.
Father McNamee seemed drained of energy, and I was too.
He got down on his knees and began to petition the Almighty just as soon as he arrived home, and he didn’t stop until late in the night when our doorbell rang.
It was Wendy.
The entire left side of her face was swollen and bruised. Her teeth were coated red with blood. Her posture was defeated.
I’m so stupid. I’m so weak,” Wendy said, her voice sounding like a little kid’s, and I felt for her—I wanted to take away her pain, mostly because she was saying the things the little angry man in my stomach says all the time, and I know how horrible it is to hear those sorts of words associated with yourself and to believe that it’s all true.
She crumpled onto our couch and cried and moaned in Father McNamee’s arms as he rubbed her back and I wrung my hands until they looked scalded.
When she had cried herself out, Father McNamee covered her with a blanket and whispered, “You’re safe here, and you can stay as long as you like.”
Wendy was asleep in the fetal position.
She needs rest,” Father McNamee whispered to me, and so I followed him upstairs.
He paused in the hallway and handed me his flask. It was silver and inscribed.
MAN OF GOD
We each took a few long pulls of whiskey. I felt my insides warm. When I handed the empty flask back to him, he lightly slapped my cheek twice and smiled at me.
We’ve done good work tonight,” he said.
I didn’t do anything.”
But you have,” Father McNamee said, and his face looked so proud.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words would come out.
I was confused.
Good night, Bartholomew,” Father finally said.
Good night,” I answered.
He went into Mom’s room and closed the door.
I had cleaned out all of Mom’s things, donating most to the local thrift store, but it was still her room—the place she had slept for many decades—so it was strange to think of our priest sleeping there now. And yet I felt like Mom would be okay with Father McNamee using her bed, because he was her favorite priest—a man she believed was all good.
I stood in the hallway wondering if I could take any credit for what Father McNamee had done to help Wendy. I couldn’t decide.
So I went into my room and wrote you this letter.
Your admiring fan,
Bartholomew Neil
9
THERE WERE INDEED PATTERNS TO THE UNIVERSE
Dear Mr. Richard Gere,
Wendy didn’t get up off our couch for three days, and the whole time Father McNamee prayed in Mom’s room, which is becoming his room, and that hurts my brain a little.
The past few days have been a confusing time for me, as I’m not sure I enjoy having so many people in my mother’s house—especially Wendy, who Mom never even met. It was starting to feel like Mom never lived here at all, and I don’t like that one bit.
But I tried to remind myself of what the Dalai Lama says about compassion in A Profound Mind: “When our heart is full of empathy, a strong wish to remove their suffering will arise in us.” Wendy was clearly suffering. I want my heart to be full of empathy; I want to be as much like you as I can. And so I’m trying.
Father McNamee brought Wendy buttered toast and orange juice, macaroni and cheese and coffee, but she left it untouched and mostly buried her face in the cushions of the couch. I heard her use the bathroom late at night and wondered how she held it all day long. The bruises on her face were transitioning from purple to yellow. Father McNamee said this meant Wendy was healing on the outside, but not yet on the inside. Father McNamee said Wendy was embarrassed, mostly because she’d “traded roles with me.” I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but after a day or so I figured he meant that I was the one trying to get Wendy through a difficult period when she was supposed to be helping me. I can understand why that would make her feel like a failure, and I began to wonder if she had a little woman in her stomach that yelled at her and called her names.
I’ve tried to speak with Wendy, or her curled-up blanket-covered body on the couch. At first I said I was sorry about what happened. I asked if we should report Adam to the police and offered to go with her, to hold her hand the whole time while she reported the violence her man had committed—I even told her how hard it was for me to be alone when I had to talk to the hospital people and social workers about the squid cancer that was eating Mom’s brain, how I wish I had had someone to hold my hand and stay by my side—but Wendy did not respond; she didn’t even make eye contact with me. Then I asked her if she wanted to counsel me about having a beer with a woman at the bar, thinking that maybe returning to our original roles would help her feel better and more normal. But Wendy didn’t even pick up her head. Next I tried to talk to her about the weather and current events, which I had read about on the Internet at the library, but she didn’t respond. She kept her head buried in the cushions of the couch. So I just listened to the tough (or lazy) birds outside the kitchen window, and I thought about how those little winged creatures sing on and on regardless of who dies or who gets beaten or who feels like a miserable failure.
The birds are steady as the sun.
Last night, I wanted to watch a movie, because I was feeling the need for some “movie magic,” as Mom used to say, because she and I always watched a movie when one of us was down or when something bad happened in the world. “Movie magic is just the thing,” Mom would say as she held up a VCR tape and shook it like a tambourine. So I picked out one of her favorite VCR tapes—An Officer and a Gentleman—shook it and said, “Movie magic!” as if those words and the shaking could heal Wendy, trying very hard to believe in the power of believing. Wendy was still stretched out with her head buried under throw pillows, her usual position, so I sat on the floor with my back up against the bottom of the couch, like I used to do when I was a teenager and Mom was lying down.
When Father McNamee heard the opening sequence of the movie, where you—as Zach Mayo—tell your drunk father that you want to join the navy and fly jets, my ex-priest began popping popcorn in the microwave, which surprised me, because he had been praying at the kitchen table for almost seven hours, so I thought he was deep in an effort to converse with Jesus.
Watching you on the TV screen after all of our many conversations was a bit surreal—especially because this was the first time I’d watched one of your movies since Mom died, and I had never watched any of your movies without her. I thought I would be sad, that I would miss her, but watching you this time around made me proud to know you, if that makes any sense. I had seen An Officer and a Gentleman a million times before, but this was the first time I watched it as your friend. It was an entirely different experience, which made me wonder if you, Richard Gere, can ever just watch a movie, as you probably know every actor in Hollywood by now, so every time you see a film, you aren’t seeing strangers pretending, but people with whom you’ve worked and therefore have had conversations with and probably even drinks at the bar.
Father McNamee sat down on the floor next to me and placed a large bowl of popcorn between us. He was drinking his whiskey from a coffee cup, and I said, “No, thank you,” when he offered me a swig, because I wanted to experience the movie fully conscious and whiskey sometimes makes me sleepy.
A few pieces of popcorn were perched in his beard.
We watched you train to become a pilot, Richard Gere, saw you make love, saw you make friends, saw you ride your motorcycle, saw you dance, saw you pretend to be a troubled, disturbed man. But when you were caught hiding extra shoes and belt buckles in the drop ceiling, and angry Louis Gossett Jr. tried to get you to quit the program—by making you do so many push-ups, squirting you in the face with a hose, and insulting you in numerous highly humiliating ways, while everyone else goes on leave—you’ll remember that Mr. Angry Gossett Jr. says this to you: “Deep down inside you know that all these boys and girls are better than you. Isn’t that right, Mayo?”
I sort of felt you and I were a lot alike at that point.
The little angry man in my stomach kicked and punched and yelled, Fool! You are nothing like movie star Richard Gere, nor are you like the character he is playing in the film, which is an entirely different (and fictional!) entity! And you are just a stupid man who pretends he is unable to tell the difference because he has done nothing with his life, nor will he ever, and therefore favors fiction over reality. Here is your reality: everyone is better than you! Everyone! You couldn’t even keep your mother alive, retard! and as the little tiny man in my stomach kicked and punched and yelled, I started to think of him as a miniature Louis Gossett Jr. of my own.
In the movie, you screamed, “No, sir! No, sir!” as you well remember, and I realized that I had screamed that right along with you in real life, in Mom’s living room, when Father McNamee looked at me and said, “You okay?”
I nodded. A few tears spilled down my cheek before I could wipe them away, and then we watched as angry Louis Gossett Jr. tried to get you to quit, made you do sit-ups, and finally got you to scream, “I got nowhere else to go! I got nothing else!”
I remember Mom always cried when you said those lines, and maybe it was because she’d had nothing but her house and me for so many years. She always wanted more. She wanted the fairy tale, but got brain cancer instead, even though she was a good woman who never did anything wrong, nor did she harm anyone, ever.
Father McNamee and I sat there until the film was over—only I just stared at the screen without allowing the pictures and sounds to enter into my mind.
I sort of retreated deep within some dark shadow inside my skull, hid in the dusty seldom-accessed attic of my mind, and I thought about Mom. How she is no longer here with me. Where she might be—what heaven might really be like.
I miss her.
I really miss her.
And even though I realize it’s selfish, I wished she were with me watching the movie, scratching the top of my head even, instead of Wendy and Father McNamee. I wished nothing had changed. I wished life were fair. These thoughts made the angry man in my stomach dizzy and nauseated.
Bartholomew?” Father McNamee said and nudged my arm.
I looked at him; he looked concerned.
Are you okay?”
I nodded.
I glanced over my shoulder at Wendy, and her head was still buried under the pillows.
I’m tired,” I said.
Maybe you should go to bed?”
I wanted to ask Father McNamee if we should be doing something more to help Wendy, if it was wrong to wish my mother were still here with me and not in heaven, what we were going to do next, and how I was going to move on with the rest of my life, but I knew he would say it would all be revealed in God’s time and not our time—that we should simply wait for God to speak to me, for me to start hearing His voice, that we had to be patient. Or worse yet, he’d say he was no longer a priest and God no longer spoke to him. Since I already knew the gist of what my spiritual adviser would say either way, I decided that asking the questions was pointless.
So I went up to my room, turned off the lights, let go of consciousness, and drifted off quickly into the other world.
I dreamed about my mother again, and she came to sit on the edge of my bed.
Mom!” I said in my dream, and immediately tried to hug her, but she was ghostlike and my arms went right through her body.
Can we talk?”
She smiled and nodded.
Mom looked as she had at the end, although she had hair and no surgery scars.
She was herself—as she was before the squid cancer altered her.