Today’s Easter Vigil service is passably tolerable, as I have a vested interest. For one, my old friend Father Fisher Kelly presides over today’s Easter Vigil. For another, Beth and Sasha are receiving the sacrament of First Communion together. Father Fish wears the traditional Roman Catholic alb, a white linen liturgical vestment with tapered sleeves. The stole around his neck is reversible, purple on one side and white on the other, which allowed him to symbolically flip it from purple to white at the beginning of the service to symbolize the progression from Lent to Easter. He stands behind the altar. A large ceramic bowl of communal wafers sits to his left, a gold chalice of wine to his right.
“Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation,” Father Fish says. “Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.”
The congregation responds, “Blessed be God forever.”
“Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation,” Father Fish says again. “Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.”
We again respond back to him, “Blessed be God forever.”
Father Fish walked us through the requisite rituals: the singing, the bell ringing, the bowing, the reaffirmations we say by rote more than faith. After about ten minutes, Beth and Sasha approach the foot of the altar with the other catechists. My wife wears a sheer black dress, my daughter a floral print that, because she’s nine years old, I can still get away with calling cute instead of pretty. An altar boy stands in front of Father Fish, holding open a leather-bound book. Father looks down intermittently at the book, but the way he maintains eye contact with the congregation tells me he isn’t reading it.
“The holy Eucharist completes Christian initiation,” Father Fish begins. “Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lord’s own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.
“At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.”
This is the part about the Eucharist that usually freaks out non-Catholics. Protestants regard the consumption of Jesus’s body and blood as symbolic, while Catholics are supposed to believe in a process called transubstantiation, by which the bread and wine are mystically transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus. That’s right, Catholics are actively practicing cannibals. The doctrine is disgusting, but the truth is most Catholics don’t obsess about it too much; with all due apologies to Pope John Paul II and St. Peter, we don’t buy into it any more than our Protestant friends.
Father Fish continues. “The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.
“The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
“Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all. The Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking .”
If the Lord works in mysterious ways, the fact Beth came around to “our way of thinking” is as mysterious as it gets. How does the wife of the world’s worst Catholic, not to mention the daughter of a divorced atheist, decide that a world of rhythm methods and fish fries is the smart move? In the decade prior to Beth starting catechism, I could count on one hand the number of times we’d been to church that didn’t involve a holiday, wedding, or funeral.
Sasha is mostly to blame. Firmly ensconced in the Empire Ridge Public School system, she’s now more than two years behind her Catholic friends who received their First Communion at age six or seven. It got to a point where we didn’t go to church just to avoid explaining why she was the only one her age required to approach the altar for the Eucharist with crossed arms and a closed mouth. Barring that, we’ve deferred to the ultimate rationalization of thirtysomething closet agnostics that, our intellectual faculties be damned, we’re giving Sasha “a good foundation.”
Like most parents in their mid-thirties, Beth and I have talked ourselves into believing that in lieu of relying on our own reasonably competent parenting skills, it is up to an imaginary bearded old man in the sky to teach our kids right from wrong. Furthermore, he’s not even teaching them right from wrong; rather, he’s teaching them there’s no point in worrying about right or wrong as long as you bathe in the soul-cleansing afterbirth of his kinda-but-not-really-dead son.
Like I said, I’m the world’s worst Catholic.
“Welcome to the fine young cannibals,” I say, hugging my wife.
“Aren’t they a band?” Beth asks.
“Or so you thought.”
Sasha looks up at me. “Daddy, why do grown-ups drink wine? It tastes horrible.”
I smile. “Check back with me in about ten years.”
Beth wraps her arm around my waist. “If we’re that lucky.”
“I thought that was you,” a voice says from behind us. Before I can even turn to face him, Father Fish has me in a full bear hug.
“Been a while, Father,” I say.
Father Fish grabs Beth and Sasha and brings them into the hug. “Too long,” he says.
“I can’t breathe,” Sasha says.
Father Fish talks to us in between greeting the polyester brigade exiting the church. Glad-handing the procession of retirees is of absolute necessity. They will forever regard him as their pastor, seeing to it that Father never pays for a meal, eighteen holes of golf, a ticket to a Notre Dame football game, or a car. If Dad were alive, he’d be their ringleader.
“What are you doing here?” I say. “I thought you’re retired.”
“Semi-retired,” Father says. “I’ve been doing missionary work in Central America for the last three years and just needed some time to recharge the batteries. With Father Liam on sabbatical in Rome, I thought I’d come back to my old stomping grounds for Easter. I assume you’re going to be at the birthday party in a few weeks.”
“Birthday party?”
My master scheduler pipes up behind me. “Jack’s ‘Second Sixteenth’ party, husband.”
“Oh, that,” I say. “You mean the birthday party Mom is throwing for Jack two months after the fact because she was too busy back in February sitting on her ass in a ski lodge in Utah.”
“Show a little respect, Hank.” Father crosses himself, and then me. “For your church and your mother. She’s the only mom you got.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Hank!” Beth says, smacking my shoulder.
“I’m kidding,” I say. I rub my shoulder, looking at Father Fish. “Of course I’ll be there. I take it Mom invited you, Father?”
He flashes me his toothy white grin. “Not really. I kind of invited myself. I have a little surprise for Jack.”
“What is it?” Beth and I say in unison.
A liver-spotted wrinkly hand s
queezes my shoulder. I notice out of the corner of my eye that Father still wears a gold claddagh ring on his left ring finger, the heart turned inward as a sign of his commitment to the Lord.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Father says.
Chapter ninety
It’s Friday night, April 22. Although Jack’s birthday was technically in February and mine was yesterday, Mom decided to throw Jack a “Second Sixteenth” party after missing his actual birthday. With Father Fish here and Jeanine in town from Portland, Debbie was conveniently rewarded for being a shitty mother. As for me, well, I’m left with a quieter thirty-fourth celebration over Sunday brunch.
My passive-aggressive behavior toward my mother notwithstanding, I have to admit, sobriety suits Mom. She’s managed to throw quite a party tonight, rounding up conceivably everyone who’s ever met Jack. As I look around the backyard, it’s a who’s who of our family history. Gillman sweats over the charcoal grill, flanked by Lila and Chris. Mom sips on a glass of sparkling water while chatting up Aunt Claudia and Aunt Ophelia. Uncle Howard and Father Fish try to make small talk, pretending they have anything in common. Jeanine stands next to them, just in from Portland and newly single after her long engagement to Marcus ended with him taking a Euroleague front office job in Barcelona with Winterthur FC Barcelona. Nancy Friedman, Jack’s old babysitter and surrogate mother, nibbles on a plate of cheese and crackers. Aaron Rosner is down from Ann Arbor with a Monster Energy Drink supermodel on his arm. Hatch and Claire stand on opposite sides of the yard from one another, still happily married, although in typical Hatch and Claire fashion, you’d think they barely like one another. Beth’s parents, Stan and Joan, are also on opposite sides of the yard, not having to pretend. And of course there’s my brood, Sasha and the twins. They are playing a game of girls-versus-boys touch football, with Jack and the twins on one side and Beth and Sasha on the other.
The party has already had its requisite awkward moments. Gillman judged Chris with his eyes whenever she touched Lila in an affectionate manner, after which he caught me with a bottle of Miller High Life and gave me his “not in my house” speech. Stan and Joan tried and failed to not hate one another with Beth as the conscripted referee. Aunt Ophelia remained firmly entrenched in her tenth year of stonewalling me, somehow convinced I’m partially to blame for that pedophile rotting in the ground with a hole in his head. Claire relentlessly flirted with Jack—well, at least to the point where Hatch subbed for Beth in the game just so he could “accidentally” nail Jack in the balls with the football.
“Burgers are up,” Gillman says.
“About time,” I say, the ice rattling as I sip the soda from my red plastic cup. Rather than endure Gillman’s Mormon wrath, I stashed the High Life, but the joke is on him. I’m still making do with a hip flask of Jim Beam, which I use to top off my Diet Coke, and the eleven-pack of High Life sits wrapped in a bow in the mini-fridge in Jack’s room.
“Boys rule, girls drool!” the twins shout.
Their sister doesn’t appreciate the gloating. “Mom let you win, you dummies.”
Beth taps Sasha on her shoulder.
“What?” Sasha says.
“No dessert for you.”
“But Mom, there’s cake!”
“I know.”
“That’s not fair!”
“It’s fair for sisters who call their brothers dummies.”
Beth and the kids enter the house. I hang back with Jack. He seems leaner than usual, although all I have for a control group is my former sparkplug wrestling build.
“Soccer start up yet?” I ask.
“Just finished the indoor season,” Jack says. “I’m taking a few weeks off. Prep tryouts are in June.”
“Tryouts? I thought you were hoping for team captain.”
“I am. Coach has everyone try out just for appearances. No individual player is more important than the other. You know, all that team-building rah-rah shit.”
“Don’t let Gillman catch you with that mouth.”
“Fuck Gillman.”
“You got some game out there.”
“Where?”
“Out there, with Beth and the kids. You got some moves. Quick feet. You throw a nice, tight spiral. Why didn’t you ever try out for the football team?”
“No offense, but I was playing against a nine-year-old girl and a middle-aged woman.”
“If you call Beth middle-aged to her face, she’ll do worse than what Hatch did to you.”
“What’s with that guy?”
“Maybe stop making googly eyes at his wife.”
“Claire was coming on to me.”
“She just loves the attention, and she especially loves getting under Hatch’s skin.”
“So he’s not a dick?”
“Nah,” I say. “He comes on a little strong, but he means well.”
“Did he mean well when he threw me in our pond when I was three years old and didn’t know how to swim?”
“You still remember that?”
“I remember Dad wanted to kill him.”
“Yeah, buddy, that narrows things down to roughly two dozen moments in Hatch and Dad’s relationship.”
“They had a relationship?”
“More parasitic than symbiotic.”
“More what?” Jack asks.
“Never mind,” I say. I open the back door, ushering Jack inside the house. “Like I said, he means well.”
Between the Beam and Cokes, what I estimate to be a half of a cow, and the red velvet birthday cake made with butter cream icing, I need a nap. Sitting at the patio table on the back porch, surrounded by his loved ones, Jack seems pleased if not overwhelmed by his second round of gifts in the last eight weeks. Mom and Gillman got him an Indiana University soccer jersey to go with the week of summer soccer camp, which disappointed me. I gave Jack a secret “present” earlier in the day: my driver’s license that I had claimed as missing to the Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles. I said to him, “On the record, I strongly discourage underage drinking, and if you get caught with this I’ll claim you stole it. Off the record, if you can find an out-of-the-way, hole-in-the-wall liquor store, this should do the trick.”
Officially, however, Jeanine and I already went in together on a used Trek road bike we found on eBay. To go with the roundtrip ticket to New York they bought him in February, Lila and Chris bought Jack box seats and backstage passes to the musical Rent, a gesture Gillman seemed not to appreciate. Everyone else left it up to Jack, giving him a mixture of cash, checks, and gift cards.
“Is that it?” Jack asks.
“I guess I’m up, then.” Father Fish stands up from his chair and walks across the back porch to Jack. He’s wearing a red cardigan sweater and underneath that the standard black-on-black attire of a Catholic priest, his white clerical collar showing at the neck.
“Father, you didn’t have to get me anything,” Jack says.
“I didn’t.” Father Fish reaches into his sweater, pulling out a manila envelope. “This is a letter, from your dad.”
“What?” Jack says, as shocked as we all are. The backyard suddenly feels a whole lot smaller. Everyone has stopped eating, drinking, talking, or even breathing.
“I guess an explanation might help,” Father says.
Jack leans over in his chair. He rubs his mouth with his hand. “Uh, it wouldn’t hurt.”
“When you were about two years old, your father came to see me in my office.” Father looks at Mom. “You remember that, Debbie?”
“I think so,” Mom says. “That was after the motorcycle accident, right?”
“Exactly.”
Something Mom neglected to tell us until just recently was that three years before he was killed, Dad almost died in a motorcycle accident. Back in ’89, Dad was out riding motorcycles with a couple of his buddies. It had starte
d raining, they were on a bridge, and the semi-truck driver never saw them. My father barely avoided the truck only to see one of his best friends crushed between the trailer and the side of the bridge. The guy died in Dad’s arms.
Dad owned a motorcycle most of his adult life. His baby was a Candy Super Blue 1978 Kawasaki KZ900, just like the motorcycle used by Ponch and John in the TV show CHiPs. He used to sneak me out for rides when I was little, making me promise not to tell Mom. I could smell the collusion of father and son as we barreled down the highway, the wind a mixture of sweat, exhaust fumes, and English Leather cologne. I still have a scar on my right calf from burning my leg on the Kawasaki’s exhaust pipe.
Dad let Uncle Mitch on his bike just once. I can still remember Dad handing him the keys and Uncle Mitch sneaking one last drag off his cigarette before flipping it into our front lawn. It was a Kool, not a Merit, and Uncle Mitch was still everybody’s favorite, so it had to be back in the seventies. Uncle Mitch had only completed one lap around the neighborhood when he took the last turn right before our driveway a little too fast. He panicked, gunned the engine. The Kawasaki spun out, slid sideways a good five or six feet, throwing Uncle Mitch face-first onto the concrete. Everyone cried but me. Uncle Mitch managed to escape with only a busted lip. For a raging closet pedophile, the guy lived quite the charmed life.
Dad never told anyone why he sold the motorcycle. Three days after the bridge accident, I just noticed our next-door neighbor Calvin Franks riding it and never cared to ask. Mr. Frank had a miniature schnauzer, six saltwater aquariums, and two cockatiels. He liked to drink Pepsi, build radio-controlled airplanes, and light illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July with his cigarettes.
“John was white as a sheet,” Father recounts. “He told me about the accident, how he kept having nightmares, premonitions even.”
“Premonitions?” Jack asks.
“That he would die young,” Father says.
“Oh my God,” Mom says.
I stand up, waving my arms. “Okay now, take it easy. Let’s not make this out to be anything more than what it really is.”
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