My eyes moved reflexively to his flowing soutane, but I held my tongue. “Father, I’m late for my next class.”
“Miss King has you now, does she not?”
“Yes.”
“I notice she’s also entered comments in the Burgundy Book.” He paused. “You’re quite right to worry about tardiness. I’ll have a word with her. She’ll understand.”
He began stroking the side of my buttock with the velvety gentleness of a baby’s touch. The hairs on my leg started crawling.
“Father Rafferty is a most unforgiving priest, isn’t he?” he said. “Will you promise to apply yourself from now on, Gabriel? I’m very concerned about you.” The strokes became firmer.
“I shall, Father.”
My voice sounded girly. His hand arced toward my fly. I stepped back.
“Come here,” he said.
“Father, I need to—”
“Stand here.” He pointed to the spot.
I obeyed. The fumbling recommenced.
“Father Cornelius, someone might come in and catch us doing this.”
The words I’d used didn’t sound right. They were words I should never have needed to say to a priest. Priests didn’t do wicked things. The stuff boys said about Father Cornelius were jokes. Everybody understood that was so at the end of the day. These words I’d used sounded like collusion. My mind played with the words, flinging some away and fitting in different, better ones that I should have used. The air in the classroom chilled a part of my skin that never should have been exposed in the first place. The word “boy” echoed in my head and mixed with the dough of different, better words I should have used. Chair legs scraped.
He eased to his knees as he said, “No one will come.” I stared at the cresting waves of gray hair running across the back of his head, waves almost like Father’s and Uncle Brendan’s. I stared at the waves until my parched eyes stung. I turned away and gazed out the window where the defined images of boys playing football became gray and blurred.
After he’d finished, Father Cornelius put me back in order, zipping up my fly and smoothing my trousers. He sat in his chair again.
“I lost my self-control just now,” he said. “This shouldn’t have happened. You can leave.”
My feet would not move.
“Go to your next class,” Father Cornelius said, insistent.
“Why did you ask if I was confused?” My voice was flat and distant, like I was outside the window looking in. “Is there something about me that told you I’m not normal?”
“There’s no such thing as ‘not normal’ in God’s eyes.”
Father Cornelius cast his eyes to his lap and massaged his left temple with the hand that had touched me.
“Something about me must have showed I’m maybe not normal. What is it?”
“You’re a bright young man, Gabriel. You’ll grow up and find yourself a lovely girl one day. Don’t ever think you’re not normal. Don’t even consider such a thing. The only thing is you’re too sensitive behind all the belligerence.” He paused. “Let’s not give another thought about what happened. It must be forgotten. It was the devil at work.”
I was too sensitive. It oozed from me like a stinking perfume.
“You must stop acting the class clown. Do you hear?” Father Cornelius sprang from the chair unexpectedly and raked his hair as he strode up to a window. He thrust it open and took a deep breath. For a moment, the terrible deafening silence returned as he stood gazing out at the football field. “Look here, boy. This incident’s to be forgotten immediately.” He swung around and stared at me. “Do you understand?”
I didn’t speak.
“I said, do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
He returned to his desk. “Let’s say an Act of Contrition together and receive forgiveness from the Higher Power.” He fished a purple stole out of the pocket in his soutane and sat. “Kneel before me.” His big farmer’s hand trembled as he laid it upon my shoulder.
I moved my lips as he recited the long version of the Act of Contrition. At its conclusion, he made a large sign of the cross in the space between us.
“You may now leave. I’ll speak to Miss King.”
I returned to my desk, eased my satchel off the floor and started down the room. I was different. The boys were right all along. Henry had known I was different. Aunt Peggy had known and warned my mother. Noel had known I’d allow him to do things with me. So had Connor. But he was now normal, like every other boy. He and I acted as if nothing physical had ever occurred between us, yet I wanted it to happen again.
“Oh, boy,” Father called as I reached the door.
I stopped and waited without turning to look at him. I waited for the final words. There were always final words in awkward situations.
“No more fooling in class. Study hard and maybe, just maybe, you’ll scrape through. Otherwise, you and I will pay a visit to Father Rafferty with all that that implies.”
The velvet-dressed threat. The guilt wrapped in compassion. Angry heat surged through my body. Every cell sweated at his overriding power.
Pani and Martin were dying to know what had transpired. We sat in Pani’s car at lunchtime, but I didn’t feel like listening to ABBA. I wanted to be alone and replay, analyze, work out other endings that could have been, had I only said different, better words. I needed to sort out my thoughts before the end of recess, so I could go to my next class and forget everything that had happened.
“I’m on a warning.” I rolled my eyes toward the padded ceiling, when what I really wanted to do was let them plummet to the floor. “Next time, it’ll be Father Rafferty’s office and possibly suspension.”
Pani looked hard into my eyes. I couldn’t take his scrutiny and turned away to look beyond the boxwood hedge to a small crabapple tree.
“Bastard,” he said.
“You’re lucky he likes blondes,” Martin said. “Maybe you should settle down a bit, Gabriel. It is getting close to exams, and you know what happened to Pani and me last year.”
Pani guffawed as he reached out with his long middle finger to turn on the tape player. I shivered as Agnetha’s dulcet voice snaked out from the cassette. For the first time, I took no pleasure in her singing. As her voice was chased and finally engulfed by heavy synthesized rhythms, I felt suffocated and needed to leave the car.
For a while, I strolled aimlessly. I came to near the line of arborvitae flanking the football pitch, my obliviousness pierced by the sound of boys talking as they smoked furtively. The cigarette stink reminded me of my failures with Lizzie. I walked the corridors, passing the tuck shop where junior boys were trying to buy goodies. A red-faced, blonde boy, a first- or second-year, fought his way up to the counter, shoving larger boys who could have flattened him. The boy saw me and instantly stopped pushing, fearing perhaps that I’d pull him out of the line and lecture him because I was older. He wasn’t sensitive. I was his superior, but he was stronger. His will wouldn’t allow Father Cornelius to do what I’d just allowed him to do. I was made of paper in comparison to this steely junior.
I continued on quickly. I retreated to an empty art room. I stared out the large windows at senior boys filing past an orderly line of juniors waiting to go into the school dining room. A row of pretty watercolors, bunches of foxgloves, seashells, and gnarly driftwood, lay drying on the long bench running the length of the room. God made delicate foxgloves and pretty seashells with smooth, pearly interiors, and He also made me.
“Why the hell are you doing this to me, God? What have I done to you?” I howled. I gripped the edge of the bench. “Why have You made me different from the other boys? Is it some kind of sport? Am I just a fucking sport to You?”
The art room resumed its indifferent quiet. I felt like ripping apart one of the seashell paintings. “Jesus and Mary, why can’t you intercede for me? Why can’t you make Him make me just like the other boys? Do you want me to fucking well hate and spurn you, too?”
> But God knew I would never spurn Him. He knew He was in every molecule of my being. He was my life force. Moreover, fear wouldn’t allow me to turn away from Him. I was too frightened. Without Him, I’d really have nothing.
For the next few weeks, attending Father Cornelius’s classes was purgatory. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him watching me. I wouldn’t look at him directly unless it could not be avoided. When he asked someone to read aloud and everyone bent their heads to their texts, I caught him watching me and my heart froze thicker than a fort’s walls with hate. I could not hate God, but I could hate Father Cornelius.
When he watched me, I wondered if the devil was inside him, if he’d try to get me alone again. I wished him dead. I wished him dead when he directed his stupid, clever questions at me in class to force my participation, while he sat in a soutane and dog collar, his white farmer’s hands resting on the desk. I wished him dead as I pushed the words from my throat, keeping my tone pancake flat so the other boys would never suspect anything bad had ever happened.
He did succeed in quelling my boisterous streak, but still I didn’t feel like studying. I didn’t study and I tried to turn back the homosexual thoughts. But the more I bridled and spurned, the more the deviant yearnings clung to me. Worst of all was nighttime. I would lie in bed after saying my prayers and the image of a handsome sixth-former would come to mind, followed by another, sometimes even a teacher or a passerby I’d seen on the street that day, and I’d fantasize a little and then pray them away. But the deviancy was patient and lurked ’til I was prayed out, and then it stormed back until, broken and loathsomely willing, I’d seize upon one favorite image and my fevered hand would become a piston, working and working until the moments of ecstasy came, followed always by oily, black, despairing guilt, guilt spliced with Why me, God? shrieked repeatedly into the downy pillow.
I’d curse Father Cornelius, but deep within I knew he wasn’t the only one to blame. What he’d done was sinful, but my desires had their own poisonous roots. I’d also try to bargain with God. I’d make desperate promises, promises to lead a good Catholic life if He’d just see His way to spare me, just see His way to turn me normal. If He’d just allow me to get aroused around girls so I could marry and have children one day, I’d be utterly His.
He must have partially heard my bargaining, because my old English teacher was released from the prison ship a few weeks later and Father Cornelius was gone from my sight. There were no more daily reminders. Now, I had to see him only from afar, and bear him if we chanced to meet in the corridor when, as a well-bred Saint Malachy’s boy, I was required to greet him courteously.
As time passed, I also developed a solution to the nighttime yearnings that assuaged my guilt and fears. It was a powerfully simple solution. As I performed the night act, I’d allow myself to think about a man right until the cusp of orgasm, whereupon I’d substitute him for thoughts of a naked girl whose face I could never see but whose breasts were always succulent and firm. In that way, I was thinking about a woman as I carried myself through, which meant everything was normal. I also convinced myself this was a great test that God set and wished me to pass. He was testing me, making me go through this painful phase, and all I had to do was struggle and pass and all would be fine.
Twenty-Four
In the midst of all my fictitious fornication, Uncle Brendan arrived. Auntie Celia had arranged to pick my mother up on the afternoon of his arrival, as she wanted someone to accompany her to the airport. Apparently, Uncle Brendan had informed her that he didn’t wish Granny to be present, which Mammy found extremely strange.
When James and I arrived home from school that evening, I found Mammy seated rigid on the living room sofa beside Uncle Brendan. Auntie Celia, despite her wide hips, was squeezed in a narrow parlor chair, staring out the window. The curly horns of what looked like a carved ebony antelope, presumably a present for my mother, protruded from its brown paper wrapping.
“We’ve just got in a little while ago,” Mammy said. “Your uncle’s plane was late.”
“James, I wouldn’t recognize you,” Uncle Brendan said. He rose, shook my brother’s hand, and then peered at me. “Gabriel . . . my God, you’re as tall as me. You’re a man now.”
Auntie Celia watched intently as he embraced me. I felt embarrassed as the hug dragged on. Men, much less women, never hugged in Northern Ireland, and I kept patting his back while I waited for him to withdraw. When he did, his eyes were misty.
The shyness I’d felt when I’d met him first so many years ago returned. I also felt terribly shabby in my uniform: my blazer was worn and the pants gleamed from two years of sitting on wooden school chairs. My skin looked anemic in comparison to Uncle’s nutmeg tan. He was even more handsome than I’d remembered, his frame lean, with no tiny paunch like Father had. Instead of clerical garb, he wore jeans, a wine-red T-shirt, and sneakers.
“I’ve football practice in fifteen minutes,” said James. “What’s to eat?”
“Make toast and scrambled eggs,” said Mammy, and she glanced at me. “The rest of you will have to make do with Chinese takeout. I haven’t had time to cook.”
Uncle Brendan’s eyes followed James as he left the room.
“God, Eileen, I’ve been in Kenya far too long. Your children are no longer children.”
Mother sniffed as she pushed a wayward strand of graying hair behind her ear.
Auntie Celia emitted a mournful sigh. “Gabriel’s in the same class as Martin and Connor now,” she said.
It was as if she’d forced herself to speak, and what she’d said sounded wrong. It sounded as if I, not Martin, was the intruder in my class. Uncle Brendan smiled wanly.
The intervening years had been good to him and I’d never have guessed he’d been ill, not that I knew what to look for—I’d never met anyone who’d had a nervous breakdown. Uncle was about thirty-five and better preserved than any man of similar age in Knockburn. Here, most men over thirty looked much older, their faces weather-beaten from tough farm work or manual labor in all kinds of rain and wind. Silver wings adorning his hair made him noble of appearance. The idea of silver wings appealed to me greatly, and I wished I could sprout them then and there, until I remembered my hair was brown and flat, not black and wavy like his or Father’s. Black, curly hair also peeped from Uncle’s open collar, much denser than Father’s, and I hoped to acquire this Harkin attribute, though, as I slipped a finger discreetly into the gap between two shirt buttons, things didn’t feel promising.
“Martin’s older than Gabriel,” Uncle said. “How can they be in the same class?”
“Don’t you remember I wrote you saying Martin didn’t pass his exams?” Auntie Celia’s tongue flicked out and moistened her upper lip. “Your prayers and masses didn’t work too well in Martin’s case . . . though now we know why.”
“That’s right, I forgot,” said Uncle.
“Your prayers didn’t work.” Auntie’s eyes narrowed, as if to reinforce her blame.
“The problems with my calling took over everything, Celia.”
Mammy coughed. “Gabriel, you might as well know your uncle’s left his vocation.”
I stared at her incredulously. No one left the priesthood. I didn’t even know it was possible to reverse Holy Orders.
“Why?” My mind raced all over: I saw Granny Harkin crying as she talked about him; I saw him administering last rites to the old woman with cancer; I saw myself serving Mass on the night he’d said it in our home. Leaving the priesthood was the ultimate disgrace to visit on a decent family.
“Why must you leave, Uncle Brendan?”
Auntie Celia stared out the window.
“It’s a long question to answer, but, basically, I’m being called to do other things with my life. The priesthood’s not for me. It’s wrong. It’s been wrong from the beginning. I’ve been fooling myself.”
His eyes burrowed into mine. I saw his pain, and saw immediately that it was important for me to understand.
“I see, Uncle Brendan,” I said, careful not to allow my tone to reveal my lingering shock.
Auntie Celia’s chair creaked shrilly as she rose. “This will kill Mother, Brendan.”
I was sure she was dead wrong there.
“For God’s sake, Celia, don’t say that,” Uncle said. “I have to be honest with myself.”
“Honest, indeed.” Her tongue flicked over her lip again. “You should have made sure you’d a call in the first place. Priests don’t get made in a day. You had plenty of time to change your mind at that seminary in Rome you ran off to.”
My mother nodded at Auntie Celia, but Auntie didn’t see because she was trapped in Uncle Brendan’s stare. He was giving her one of those brother-and-sister stares that meant nothing to Mammy, yet communicated a thousand messages between them. I recognized the penetrating, frozen eye lock. I used it on Caroline, James, and Nuala when I needed to rebuke or communicate with them in a stranger’s presence.
I thought about the money my mother had sent him over the years for masses. Masses for two deceased grandfathers. Two pounds when she was taking her driving test for the fourth time. Masses when Father was starting his business. I’d even sent him a pound for a secret petition. He’d never asked in his subsequent letter what my petition was for. He’d simply written and said he’d received the money and would say three masses, even though a pound only paid for one. I considered whether his leaving the priesthood might have diluted its effects.
“It’s God’s will and we’ll just have to hold up our heads and learn to deal with it,” said Mammy.
“Are you getting married to a girl from Kenya?” I asked.
Uncle Brendan laughed grimly. “Nothing like that.”
“Thank God for that small mercy,” said Auntie Celia. “Yes, indeed, thank God for that. If a darkie woman had been in the picture, I’d definitely have to pack my bags and go to live in Belfast, where nobody knows me.” She walked up to the fireplace and rested her hands on the mantel, very mannishly. “Brendan, you are very misfortunate and the terrible thing is, it always comes home to roost with us. It comes home to roost with your poor family.” She spun around to face him. “Daddy’s dead and gone, but you can be sure he’s spinning circles in his grave after you add the effects of this to the results of your first charade.”
A Son Called Gabriel Page 23