The Gospel of Winter

by Brendan Kiely

  “I am!” I hit the door frame beside him. “It’s not just me. It is other people.”

  “There’s too much in the press. Don’t let that confuse things.” He reached out to me again, and I batted his hand away. He stepped back.

  “I’m not.”

  “Aidan, don’t join the witch hunt,” he snapped. “Think about this. You know Father Greg was a good man. Now get ahold of yourself,” he said, but then he grew quiet. He receded into the hall, away from me, moving back into the darkness between his office and us. “Now, Aidan,” he said. “You’re beginning to scare me.” He continued to back away. “I’m just an old man, and I don’t need to be threatened in this way. Don’t make me call the police.”

  “On me?” I yelled. “What will they say when I tell them?”

  “You can’t threaten me, Aidan. It isn’t right. You’re not the first to threaten us. The police know that. I can get a restraining order. They’re ready. But, please, let’s not do that. I care about you, and you can’t ruin everything else just for yourself. Please. Try to see this. Try to think of everybody else.”

  I pointed toward the basement. “I was there. I know it. He was with James. I was right there. He was with James. I was there!” I slammed the door frame again, and Father Dooley shrank back into the main hall. I followed him. “Everyone else? I am thinking about everyone else. James, me, Mark? Mark Kowolski, you goddamn criminal. Do you know what Mark did? He jumped off the bridge at Stonebrook. Father Greg needs to know that.”

  Father Dooley turned and moved quickly toward his office. “You need to know that too,” I said as I pursued him. “You knew about each of us. You knew what he did to us.” I grabbed him by the shirt and forced him back against the wall near his office. “He did this. Do you know what he did to us? He did this.” I shook Father Dooley and felt his bony chest bounce off my knuckles. I slammed him repeatedly against the wall, shaking him, crying, and I thought of Father Greg taking James in his arms and pushing him up against the workbench in the basement. Father Greg’s breath was a wind in my ears: Shh. Shh. Arms useless against a stronger chest. Muffled voices. Clothes rustling. Suffocation. Swallowing something like a roar within me. No: Shh. Shh.

  Leaning into Father Dooley, I sobbed with my head on his shoulder. “I’m going to say something,” I said softly. “I’m going to explain everything.”

  Father Dooley mumbled. His words were caught in his throat. His arms were not up against mine, and I stepped back when I realized my body pinned him against the wall. His cane fell to the floor, and he staggered forward. I caught him and dragged him over to one of the metal folding chairs nearby. He lifted his hands to his head finally, and a dull moaning echoed softly in the rectory’s main hall.

  “I’m going to tell everyone everything,” I continued. “You did nothing. Say it. Tell me what you did. Tell me, you monster.”

  “I can’t,” Father Dooley finally said. “I can’t.”

  Tears blurred my vision. I couldn’t remember why I had gone there in the first place, and I couldn’t imagine where I might go next. It was as if I had been nowhere before and would go nowhere else again. There was nothing that kept my mind fixed and present other than Father Dooley’s broken voice. He was talking again, but the words were incomprehensible to me. I couldn’t hear his excuses anymore. His noise became a chant echoing in my mind, a sound that haunted me as it reached for meaning and couldn’t deliver it. The gibberish gathered in the room in drifts of nonsense, clinging to me like clumps of snow, a wet fist closing up around me. There was nothing else for me to hear. I left him there, slumped in the chair, mumbling his prayers to himself.

  The steady snowfall continued. It had already spread itself over lawns, tree limbs, and the roofs of houses. Beyond the trees, nothing broke through the deadening, washed-out expanse above. I slowly loped across yards and listened to the new snow beneath my feet. Each step made a sound like vigorous scratching, and I repeatedly looked over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I didn’t wait to catch my breath. I kept moving, watching my own breath drift faintly ahead of me while the snow continued to gather, and as I approached the Stonebrook golf course, I took the long way around the back side of the course, careful to avoid the bridge. I couldn’t look at it. I walked by the fourth hole and saw a dark animal cut a lonely path through a nearby, whitewashed bunker. It paused to eye me across the distance before continuing its track.

  I let the whole day pass before I finally made my way into Mark’s neighborhood, turned onto his street, and looked up at his house. The yard was empty, and the house was completely dark. Blood pulsed in my wrists and at the base of my neck with a rush and thump that was beyond my control. I stood on the street for a while and let the snow stick to my face and bite me as it melted. Finally, I got up the courage to walk up to the front door and ring the bell. No one answered. I rang it again and again, and still no one answered. I walked around the house to the side door to the mudroom, where I had helped Mark on New Year’s Eve. I peered inside. Empty shoes and boots made a neat row beneath the bench. I walked around the back of the house to the kitchen. One pale light was lit over the stove. It was the only light on in the house, and a muted blue-white glow spread from the cooking station into the rest of the kitchen. Everything was tidy, spotless, and inhuman.

  “Please. I’m sorry,” I said into the empty house.

  A dog with a slow baritone barked somewhere far away in the patchwork of yards. Its bark carried from one neighborhood to another, becoming fainter. Its voice, as it traveled through the night, would eventually go mute and disappear in the distance, as it seemed everything did, and drift into the nothingness beyond. I hit the side of Mark’s house. I kicked at the door. “Please,” I said again. “I’m here. I’m here now!”

  The snowstorm smudged out any lights in the distance. The Kowolskis’ yard was dark, and beyond it was a deeper darkness. It was as if there was no one anywhere, and I thought of that same lonely feeling I had had when Father Greg had first beckoned me down into the darkness of the storage room, and how he must have called Mark down, and James, too, and all the others—an army of boys trudging slowly into the basement, wanting to believe. Over time, how could each boy not have lost distinction? Each of them would become another gray, cold, trembling body to terrorize with words like love, safety, and faith. I needed to tell someone else. I needed to tell the whole story. Mark deserved to hear it first, but I couldn’t wait any longer, and I ran to Josie’s neighborhood.

  At the foot of her driveway, drifts of snow now swelled up against the tree that had once held the image of us together. I reached toward the snowbank and left a handprint against it. In the morning, it would be a frozen image, a sign of life and recognition, like a cave painting.

  Josie’s mother and father would be at the same cocktail party with Mother, so I only worried that Ruby would see me approaching the house, but she didn’t. I went around to the back of the house and saw Josie sitting at the kitchen table, doing homework. When I knocked gently on the window, I startled her, and at first I thought she was going to scream for Ruby, but she didn’t. She composed herself when she recognized me. She pointed toward the back door.

  She braced herself when she opened it. She wore the same pair of sweatpants she’d worn when I’d last seen her. Her eyes offered the same concern, too. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “You’re right. I need help. I need your help.”

  I didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t. I felt my chin tremble, and I turned away and looked to the backyard and up toward the pool house. There were tears in my eyes. Josie stepped into the cold and hugged me. And that was all it took. How is it that a gesture so simple, from one person to another, could suddenly give me a confidence I didn’t know I had and free me to say, I am about to tell you a story that is going to hurt? What inspires that finally?

  Josie brushed the snow off my shoulders and back, and quickly and quietly she snuck me upstairs to her bedroom. Like in my own bedro
om, she had an armchair by the window, and she offered it to me while she ran back downstairs to clean up. “Believe me,” I’d said to her when I’d seen her last. That’s what I’d wanted then, but I couldn’t say it anymore. I heard Father Greg saying it. Saying Love, love, love, believe me, Aidan, believe me, this is love, love, love. I no longer had it in me. Josie was right, and there was nothing left for me to tell her but the truth.

  When she returned, she closed the door and depressed the button in the lock. “I said good night to Ruby,” she said. “So my parents won’t say hi when they come in. We still have to be quiet, though, in case Ruby walks by for some reason.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “But I have to talk.”

  She held me, not like a lover but in a way we should all be held at least once in our lives—in a way that lets us know we are not alone. A human absolution.

  Being near her gave me strength, and I finally began. I sat next to her on her bed, and I was dizzy and trembling, but steadied by her voice—rocking, holding. She asked questions, but they didn’t hurt, they helped buoy what I had to say. She held my hand as I told her everything.

  CHAPTER 15

  Hours passed. We heard Josie’s parents come home, and I knew, although she would be the last to leave, Mother would be home soon too. I called the house and left her a message, telling her I was at Josie’s, lest she think that I had run back down to Elena’s again. But also it felt important to fill Mother in—I knew very soon I’d be telling her the story I’d told Josie. I tried to imagine how I would tell Old Donovan, too, whether it would be on the phone or across a white-linen tablecloth in a restaurant down in Manhattan when he was next in New York for business. I was afraid, I would tell both of them. And I still am, so listen to me.

  “I don’t want to go home,” I said to Josie.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “You can stay right here.”

  I left a second message for Mother and told her I wouldn’t be home but not to call Josie’s, because her parents didn’t know. I promised to explain. “I’m safe,” I added. “I’m okay.”

  Josie watched me as I left the message. She got up when I finished and hugged me again. She kicked off her slippers, got under her comforter, and called me over. “Get in,” she said. When I did, she turned out the light and nestled up to me. We didn’t speak, but after a little while, she reached over me and held my hand.

  “It’s all my fault,” I said. “Mark.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  I stared into the room until my eyes adjusted to the dark and I could make out the silhouettes of the celebrities in the framed posters on the wall and the outlines of details in her furniture. There was no other noise in the house, and Josie was spooned up behind me with her arm around my rib cage. Her breath warmed my back. Her rhythm slowed and she fell asleep, and eventually, I was calm enough to join her.

  When her alarm went off in the morning, we slowly unwound ourselves from each other. I climbed out of bed and tried to press the wrinkles out of my pants. Josie turned on the TV and began her morning rituals. “Don’t worry,” she said, “nobody bugs me in the morning. We’ll get down the stairs and out the front door while everyone is still in the kitchen. This is going to work. We’ll be fine.”

  The clouds had cleared from the night before, and I sat in the armchair with sunlight warming my back. I listened to Josie on the other side of the bathroom door; she hummed in the shower. She had a kind of energy that propelled her, a happiness that was fueled not by joy but by a kind of understanding of connectedness, and her willingness to help, her wellspring of caring, seemed to fuel that connection. I was in awe of it and wondered why I’d seen so little of it before. She opened the door to her bathroom when she’d finished her shower, and the steam rolled out into the bedroom. She was wrapped in a purple towel with another one wrapped in a turban around her head. She smiled at me and continued her routine. She stood on the balls of her feet when she brushed her teeth, and the quick dabs of makeup she applied to her cheeks were perfunctory, just a part of her happy bustle.

  I wanted to make her coffee and scrambled eggs. I wanted to cinch up the knot in my tie, kiss her on the brow, and tell her to enjoy her day. When I stepped into the bathroom so she could get dressed, I thought about what it meant to really build a home. I didn’t want to think about sex—that could come later. All I wanted now was companionship. That was the real freedom. That was the only safety we could offer each other: what it really meant to love and live without a mask.

  It was all I could think about as I stood in the bathroom and did my own quick cleanup, washing my face and neck, rubbing my teeth with a toothpaste-covered finger. While Josie had been in the shower, I’d watched the morning news and listened to the anchors rattle off story after story. There were government investigations into the collapse of Enron; the first lady was running a campaign for teachers and parents to reassure children of their safety; the new terror alert system was being praised by some members of congress; and just the day before, the mayor of New York had begun issuing free tickets to help manage the enormous crowds making the pilgrimage to Ground Zero. I felt like I had survived the night because of Josie’s small, brave act of kindness; she deserved a headline too, but that’s not the kind of stuff that makes it into the news.

  Josie told me to come out, quick. She stood in front of the TV in her CDA uniform, clutching one furry boot to her chest. Mark stared back at us from the TV, and I ran to her immediately. It was his head shot for the yearbook: He looked out at the world with a joyless, skeptical smile, one I’d once read as snobbery but now knew was the only face he could make to hide all the fear behind it. A quick photomontage showed CDA, the pool, a row of swimming medals. He’d been on drugs, the news story told us, and not in his right mind, he’d climbed out over the railings of the bridge by Stonebrook and jumped. A search of his room at home suggested a long history of drug abuse that his parents had not known about. Josie cried into my chest. I held her, and I stared straight into Mark’s eyes when they showed his picture again, wishing I could hold him again too. Wishing I had.

  The news had switched from national to local while I had been in the bathroom, and Mark’s attempt at death was the headlining story. I held Josie as she sobbed. “It’s my fault,” I said. Josie tried to tell me otherwise, but I repeated myself. “It’s my fault,” I said again.

  “Stop saying that!”

  Over her shoulder, the weatherman animated storm clouds along the coast and waved them out over the Atlantic. Mark’s story was over. We continued to hold each other.

  “They don’t have the whole story,” I told her. “You know that.” The word abuse echoed in my mind. The way they used the word, it almost made Mark sound innocent, and the drugs, too, as if he and they were not to blame at all, only the “abuse.” They didn’t ask why he might have abused the drugs. They let the word linger without any follow-up questions, as if his abuse was an independent choice and that that choice was the aberrative behavior, not the depth and secrecy of all the other things he was weighing in his mind.

  “I think I need to see him,” I said. “I’m afraid to, but I think I have to.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Josie said. “You don’t have to be alone.”

  I called us a car service and had it wait down by the street. When it arrived, we snuck down the front stairs and out the door just as Josie had promised. We were dressed for school but on our way to the local hospital, hoping he was still there and hadn’t been transferred somewhere else yet.

  We were lucky. He was still there, on the second floor, but would be transferred later that day to a larger facility up in New Haven. Josie asked the nurse behind the desk if Mark’s parents were there. It hadn’t even occurred to me, and when the nurse explained that they had not come in yet that day, the sense of relief was overwhelming. I wasn’t ready to see them yet. I needed to see him first. Josie linked arms with me, and the nurse offered to show us the way to the room. I was l
ight-headed. The elevator ride up one floor seemed to take an eternity. The bright, white fluorescence in the hallways made me feel exposed and dirty, and when the nurse dropped us off, I was glad the light was dim in Mark’s small room.

  There was one chair near the bed, but neither Josie nor I took it, and the room felt cramped with all the machines and tubes and drips and wires that were keeping him alive. We huddled close beside his bed, and Josie clutched my arm tightly. Mark was thinner and paler, his cheeks were hollowed and gaunt, and he looked like the ghost of his old self. He’d been propped up in the bed. His eyes were closed, and he might have been napping, except the expression on his face was twisted and mutated by the tubes in his nose and mouth, and if he had been asleep, he could only have been suffering through a storm of nightmares looming behind his eyelids. This was not the Mark I had seen fall asleep on New Year’s Eve, the one on whose lips I heard the last breath puff before he drifted out. That night, he’d let his head loll, tilting toward me with a drowsy smile on his face. I could barely look at him now. He was the shell of my friend, not the friend himself, a prisoner trapped in a hell of silence.

  Josie felt me pulling away, and she anchored me beside the bed. She let go of me with one hand and reached out to Mark. His hand was out above the sheet and blanket, and she clasped her fingers around his and held him. Through Josie, we were a knot again. She looked at me and then back at Mark. “Mark,” she said, “we miss you.”

  She turned to me again and smiled, and I looked down at Mark. “I’m sorry,” I finally got out, and once I said it, the flood followed. I told him everything I’d told Josie the night before, about Father Dooley, Father Greg, James, him, and me. “You’re not alone,” I kept saying. “I want to tell you, you’re not alone. I want to tell everyone that.”

  Josie held us both as I spoke, and I thought about how people like Old Donovan and Father Greg and teachers and even Mother and Elena had all at one time or another tried to give me advice about who I was supposed to be and what kind of person I was supposed to become, but looking at Josie, I wondered if it didn’t all come down to something simpler: Are you the kind of person who is there for people when they need you, or not? Isn’t it in those moments when you have to work harder than you thought you could to reach out to another person, and you do, that you finally find the you who’s been hiding behind the mask all that time? Is it there, finally truly naked, and reaching for one another, that we create the chance to hold one another again? And what about the chance to love again? Do we get to create that possibility too?