He says this all in one breath, as if he is unloading a magazine on the room.
Keisha looks back at the door. “Uh-huh. There’s dark forces out there. The devil has black arts he uses and it really messes with people.”
Greg looks at her. “You’re right. People don’t realize what’s going on—and I’m going to help change that. God wanted me to see. So I could prepare myself.”
Keisha stares past William to the window. She leans to the side again as if there’s something she’s trying to keep an eye on. She bolts upright, stands and points to a building across the street. “He’s going to jump!” she shouts.
All eyes turn. Nothing out there but sealed office windows.
Keisha sits down. She picks up another swatch of long black wig hair and stares closely at the ends.
Greg winces. He rubs his palms on his pants. His lips pull back like a mad dog when he says, “The mayors, governors, senators—they’re all—they don’t know what needs to be done. They have to go. Then I’ll be next in line.” He pauses as if he’s laying it out as simply as possible. “The man in charge needs to be slain. He’s part man, part reptile. He’s the Antichrist. I see that now. I know him.”
William the chaplain’s legs tense as if he’s just heard breaking glass. He glances to the door and back at Greg. “It sounds like a lot is going on for you. A lot of turmoil?”
Greg nods. He doesn’t take his eyes off William.
“That must be a lot to handle.”
“It is,” Greg says. “Nobody sees the evil—and it’s right here.”
Keisha nods.
William breathes through his nose. His eyes dart to the door once more. Who’s he looking for? Lambert? You don’t want Lambert in here, pal. You either are Ben or you’re not. That’s all Lambert’s got.
“Keisha,” William says, “you and Greg have talked about the power of darkness and evil. Do evil and suffering sometimes seem more real than goodness and healing?”
Greg sneers like he knows what’s what. Preparing for the big reveal. Bastard must be a killer in the courtroom. “That,” he tells William, “is a good question. God is powerful. But evil must be destroyed. That’s what God revealed to me this week.” Greg shrugs. “That I’m Jesus Christ.”
Oh Christ, he thinks he’s Christ.
Keisha rolls her eyes. “You ain’t Jesus.”
“Yes,” Greg says with a flinty kind of elation. “I am. I was surprised too. But I am. They put nails into my hands and feet when they were bringing me in here. I fell forward and I smacked my head on the floor and they put nails in my hands and feet. That’s when I began to realize I was Christ. I was right where I was supposed to be. My Father saw to it, and while I was being crucified, my mission became clear. I need to kill the Antichrist.”
Christ, he says! Christ is the biggest bully of ’em all. You’re Ben or you’re not.
Keisha tucks her chin to her chest and says, “I need to get out of here. These people are caw-razy.”
“That sounds scary, Greg,” William says. “It also sounds like a lot of pain. Is that right?”
Greg closes his eyes and lowers his head. He begins to inhale slowly and deeply as if he’s deliberating on each breath.
“What are you feeling right now?” William asks him.
Greg keeps his eyes shut. His breaths come deep and hard. “Anger,” he whispers. He raises a pair of dog pit eyes to the chaplain. “Righteous anger. Like I could kill. It wouldn’t be murder. It would just be killing evil.” He takes another breath. “But I’m not going to kill. I just needed to let the Holy Spirit help me answer the question you asked. I don’t think God wants anyone to suffer. Not even a man without a soul.” He turns his head to Ben. “What did you call yourself? An empty skinbag? You think we can’t see you. I see you. And I could find you anytime I wanted. The name outside your door says B. Brody. Benjamin Brody. I can find you anytime I want.”
Benjamin isn’t here. He’s out in the desert wrestling with Christ until the sonuvabitch says uncle. You’re Ben or you’re not. See? Ben’s been jumped by Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was a warrior and you, Greg, are no Jesus Christ. If Ben were here right now, he’d tell Greg to take a flying leap out that window and see if the angels break his fall.
A woman comes into the room. She stands by the door and mutters something.
“What’s she sayin’?” asks Keisha.
William turns to the door with his hope-eyes on. “Good afternoon! Are you coming in to join us?”
“Is this the spirituality group?” the woman says. In her early fifties maybe. Black jeans sag around her hips. Long gray sweater drips like water.
“Yes, it is,” says William. “It’s a group about hope and healing.”
She looks like Bambi’s mother with those skinny legs of hers. She comes to the circle and sits next to Keisha.
“Spirituality, that’s right. I’m Greg.” Greg, the Attorney, sticks out his hand like Christ looking for new clients. “What’s your name?”
“Gwen.” She starts to cry as soon as she says it. The fire in the room goes out with her tears. Cool and damp.
Greg jumps up and pulls tissues from the box on the table behind him. He hands them to her and sits down.
“Gwen,” William, says. “Would you feel comfortable telling us what’s brought you here.”
“I just . . . I’m depressed. I can’t—” She wipes her nose and shakes her head.
“Why are you depressed?” Greg asks.
Gwen looks into the knot of tissue. “Everything’s gone. My husband tries to help me, but I just can’t . . . My family, my place, my job . . .”
“You’re in a lot of pain?” William asks. She nods. “Has this been going on for a while?”
“Since my son died.”
Sons and sons and sons. For God so loathed the world that he snatched all their begotten sons.
“I’m so sorry,” says William. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Greg closes his eyes and lowers his head, breathes slow and deep through his nose.
“I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years,” she says. “And then I find out he’s died. He killed himself. I didn’t even know where he was.”
Still grappling in the desert, Ben pauses, turns his head to listen. He squints to get a better look. Voices roil around him, they whip like a sandstorm, push into every orifice and deep into his lungs until Ben breathes the breath of every lost son of every lost mother in the world. The desert parts like a dry sea and he is once again staring into a gulf, standing at the edge with his hands against the moon. Jump, says Jesus. Jump!
SIX
Maggie
The wine bottle is long empty and Francis is curled up asleep, his head at the other end of the couch. I keep hearing his words. “I’d wake up terrified.”
After our parents died, I clung to him. Francis was eighteen years old, just a kid. Then suddenly he wasn’t. Just like that.
If I had to choose between instant death and a slow death, I would choose the latter. An instant shatters. An instant can tear down the world.
It was an eight-car pileup on a freeway just outside town. Our father had taken Mom to a bed-and-breakfast for her birthday. A weekend getaway at a country inn. According to police, the driver of the semitruck had been awake for twenty-two hours when he dozed off and crossed the yellow line. Our car was crushed. Paramedics said my parents’ deaths would have been instant.
That’s the word they used. As if a switch was flipped and the lights went out. No time to wish or pray or say goodbye. That word instant was meant to give us solace, I suppose. What it did was coil at the bottom of my belly like a rattlesnake: What could you prevent from happening in an instant? Could I get from one room to another in an instant? Could I have saved our world if I’d been in the backseat?
For the first couple of weeks after our parents died, I asked Francis if I could sleep in his bed. Even there, I had to keep a foot or a hand against him, as if that contact
might be enough to give fair warning. I woke when he woke. I woke when he slept. I sat up in the dark and watched him. My brother’s sleep was so quiet, so still, that sometimes I put a finger under his nose to check that he was breathing.
When I think of it now, Francis had a quiet fortitude through the entire aftermath. He put his head down and plowed through funeral arrangements, death certificates, and the notification of friends and family. In hindsight I wonder if my parents had a premonition: They made him the executor of their estate just after Francis turned eighteen. I imagine they figured he would be quite a bit older by the time he took on that role.
He arranged to sell the house; he paid off the mortgage, sold off furniture, and moved us into a two-bedroom apartment. He cooked dinner most nights. He said it was important that we be a family and that we continue to eat together the way we did when Mom and Dad were here. He wanted us in church too—which had not been the case when Mom and Dad were here. Our family was nominally Catholic. Francis and I had both been baptized, but in the past we’d only gone to Mass for Christmas and Easter, sometimes Palm Sunday.
Since the funeral, Francis wanted our butts in the pew every Sunday morning.
I didn’t mind. I wanted plans. I wanted commitment. Commitment left less room for change. Which left less room for calamity. The more pieces that were locked into place, the fewer would fly off.
We’d been on our own for about two months when Francis asked, “How would you feel if I got a full-time job?” Between selling the house and paying off debts, Francis calculated that there would be enough cash to pay our rent for the next five years. But little else.
“Can’t we just be careful?” I wanted him home; I wanted him where I could picture the walls around him.
Sometimes in the middle of a school day, my chest would feel as if there were something huge and terrible pressing on it, and I’d be certain that it was a sign. I’d have to excuse myself and race down the hall to the school’s front entrance. My hands shook as I jammed quarters into the pay phone. They had to go in fast—in an instant. The surge of fear seemed to obliterate my thoughts so that sometimes seconds would pass where I couldn’t recall my own phone number.
I learned to keep it written on my wrist. I wrote our number there every day the first year after they died. I needed to dial immediately. Had to.
Standing in the school lobby, I could hear my breath echoing off the twenty-foot ceiling. Francis must have heard the fear at the end of the line. “You okay?” he’d say in a calm, easy voice.
“I just wanted to make sure.” That was all I needed. Just to hear his voice. Another instant thwarted.
“YOU COULD PROBABLY still call me at work,” Francis said. “But I doubt I’ll be able to walk you home from school anymore.”
He did that sometimes. He’d walk down to the school and wait on the sidewalk out front.
“Whatever. I’m not five.” Meanwhile my heart had begun to fling itself against the walls of my chest like a trapped squirrel.
Francis got a full-time job at Paulson’s, a paint and wallpaper store five blocks from our apartment. It wasn’t so bad. He still got me out of bed every morning and he was still home most nights for dinner.
And then we had Gale.
Francis called me from work one day and said that he was going to bring a friend home. Together, they would make dinner for us. “Gale makes the most incredible chicken you ever had in your life.”
Gale. Shit. I drooped inside.
Francis had had a girl in high school, but they’d broken up just before he graduated. Three months later we’d lost our parents. And he’d been looking after me ever since. He was almost nineteen now. Having a girl in his life seemed like a potentially disastrous distraction, but I wanted him near.
If you accept his girlfriend, I reasoned, he won’t want to go far.
Maybe she would be really cool and we could be friends. Maybe she’d have a cute brother and introduce us.
That night, Francis opened the door to our apartment with a bag full of groceries. “S’up, slob?” he said.
Sprawled in the armchair, I wore my usual TV-watching ensemble: saggy sweats and an old T-shirt.
“Hey, I’m Gale.” Sunlight angled low through the window and Gale seemed to step into a warm spotlight.
He looked older than my brother. He wore jeans and a brown leather jacket over a crisp white shirt. His hair was thick and wavy and you could see his five o’clock shadow. He looked like TV to me, as if he spent hours trying to look casual.
“This is my pet loudmouth,” Francis said and took the groceries into the kitchen.
“Pleasure to meet you.” Gale came closer and shook my hand. “Francis, you never told me Maggie was such a cutie.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“That’s no cutie, that’s my sister.” Francis came back into the living room.
My chest felt heavy, as if something were pressing again. What did Francis think he was doing, bringing a strange man into our apartment? A man named Gale. I muttered something about changing, got out of the chair, and went to my room.
We never had company. We didn’t even know this guy. I looked in the mirror to see if I looked as awkward and scraggly as I felt. Gale was probably twenty-five years old. Maybe more. His voice echoed in my head. You never told me Maggie was such a cutie.
Was he flirting? He was too old to be flirting with me.
I leaned in close to the mirror and looked at my skin. My forehead was broken out. I pulled off my T-shirt and stared at myself: Fifteen. I look fifteen.
Hands on my boobs, I pushed them up: I could probably pass for Francis’s age. If I wanted to, I bet I could pass for nineteen.
I went to my closet. What do you wear for company? Was I supposed to dress up? Maybe a white blouse and jeans. Like Gale.
I buttoned my top in the mirror. I put on lip gloss. And mascara.
Francis and Gale were well into dinner preparations by the time I came out. I leaned against the kitchen door frame and watched them. At the counter, Francis cut up tomatoes for a salad. Gale stood over the stove and turned his chicken pieces with a fork. Francis had given him my mother’s apron to wear. It was kind of weird and goofy that Gale didn’t mind wearing a woman’s apron. Sweet, maybe. Maybe it was sweet and goofy.
“Nice outfit,” I said. “You could probably moonlight as a French maid in that getup.”
Gale stood back from the stove as grease splattered. “I see you speak fluent smartass. Must run in the family.”
My brother gave me the once-over. “Don’t you look darling.”
I gave Francis a sarcastic bat of my eyes. I watched Gale’s hands as they worked over the chicken. My brother’s hands were kind of girly in comparison. “So how do you know a dork like Francis?”
My brother snorted. “Oh my God, she thinks I’m a dork. I think I’ll cry.”
“We work together,” Gale said.
“Gale is the big cheese at the paint shop.” Francis dumped his tomato slices into the bowl.
“You’re his boss? You don’t look old enough to own something.”
Gale turned off the oven. “My pops and I own it together.”
I nodded. “Do you get free paint?”
FRANCIS HAD ME lay an actual tablecloth. The way we used to do a million years ago. We put down place settings and napkins. We put out knives and forks and glasses. We even turned the television off.
Gale set two bottles on the table, one wine and one sparkling water.
“Fancy,” I said. “How’d you get the wine?” The sight of it was almost as foreign as the water. “Oh, right. You’re old.”
“Maggie!” Francis said it just the way our mother would have.
Gale picked up one of those little bartender corkscrews, twisted it into the cork, and popped it like an expert. “Will the lady be sampling the Chardonnay this evening?”
It almost felt as though Gale were talking to someone his own age. I wished I had so
mething clever to say. Not smartass, but really damn clever.
“The lady will be sampling the Perrier.” My brother unscrewed the bottle of fizzy water.
“God, Francis.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be such a fag.”
Gale glanced at me and heat flashed through my face. I hadn’t meant anything by it. Francis and I said rude stuff to each other all the time. He called me all kinds of things: silly twat, goon-girl, fuck-knuckle. But tonight there was a stranger in the house and suddenly it sounded as if I had just thrown dog shit on the table.
My eyes welled up. I was ready to bolt. This was why we should not have unexpected guests. This was why we should keep things in order.
Francis plunked his elbows on the table. “Listen, Liza.” He meant Minnelli. Liza Minnelli was Francis-speak for being a drunken berserker. The inside joke was calming. “Listen, Liza,” he said, “if I have to scrape your drunk ass off the floor one more time, we’re through.”
Gale laughed. I blinked at my brother and hoped he could read my remorse.
Francis poured Perrier into my wineglass.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
GALE CAME OVER again on the weekend and brought movies with him. I sat on the couch between Francis and him with a bowl of popcorn in my lap as the coming attractions began.
“Have you guys seen these new DVD players?” Gale asked. “My uncle’s got one. The whole movie is encoded onto a little silver disk this big.” He circled his palm. “The picture quality blows this out of the water.”
I looked at our VCR. My father had bought it about five years earlier. It was solid and real and it wasn’t going anywhere. “Why don’t you go to your uncle’s, then?”
“I like the company here better.” Gale dug his hand in the popcorn bowl and my stomach flipped.
On my sixteenth birthday, Gale took the three of us for dinner. He bought a bottle of champagne for the table and Francis let me have a glass to myself.
“I’d like to make a toast.” Gale raised his flute. “Cool, friendly, clever, beautiful . . .” He looked at me across the table. “ . . . but enough about me. Here’s a toast to Maggie.” He winked. His eyes were blue like denim. He looked as if he knew everything there was to know and still liked me. “Lovely Maggie,” he said. “May you live a hundred years and may I live a hundred and one, so that I may remember you! Cheers, sweet girl.”
The Crooked Heart of Mercy Page 8