The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  He shrugged. “Well, that’s science.”

  “Actually,” I said, “didn’t someone once say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?”

  He smiled. Now that I’d gathered all my fallen things back into my bag, I’d started walking down the hall toward the doors, and Father Bob had fallen comfortably into step beside me.

  “That was Einstein,” Father Bob said. “But that only really counts when you’re actually running the same experiment over and over again. Eventually, you did something different—you did something right—and you succeeded. Do you feel insane?”

  “All the time,” I sighed, glancing back toward my sister’s room.

  “I’m sorry about Hannah,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Me too.”

  “Have you gotten a chance to speak to her?” Father Bob asked.

  I nodded. “We had a long talk. She told me all about Sabra.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “It appears she’s been carrying the weight of that tragedy around for a long time. People who are grieving become like whirlpools, Caro. Everything becomes dissolved into ceaseless orbit around them, sucked in and destroyed by the pain they’re experiencing. Do you remember what I told you about how being a contemplative nun requires a complete obliteration of the ego?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Hanging on to that sort of guilt and ceaselessly punishing yourself for it is an act of ego,” Father Bob said. “It requires an extreme amount of focus on the self. If it can’t be overcome, if a person can’t forgive herself, it can stop her from really opening herself up to God. At the end of the day, Hannah was probably too young still to enter the convent when she did. She needed more time to come to terms with her loss.”

  “She was twelve,” I said. I sounded pathetic, whiney, but I felt like a hurricane was raging inside me, ripping up trees and houses and playground equipment and tossing them up into a roaring maelstrom of sorrow. “She watched her friend die. I don’t understand how your God could let such a thing happen. How could he?”

  Father Bob took my arm and steered me into a less public corner. “It doesn’t really work like that,” he said softly. “If he reached down and plucked every human from the brink of death, the universe would collapse. It’s built this way for a reason.”

  “Don’t you dare try to bulldoze me again with that ‘perfect system’ crap,” I cried. “Fuck duality. Do you know how much it hurts to see her wasting away in this horrible place? It hurts. What sort of a loving God would create a world where children fall into wells and freeze to death? What sort of a loving God would create a world where the one person who desperately needs comfort is shut out completely?”

  “Listen to me,” he said sternly. “God never left Hannah. It was she who shut him out. She looked for him in a physical place and neglected her spirit because she was so afraid of what she might find if she searched for him there. She was so terrified that he had left her, or that he had never existed at all, that she closed her eyes and hid from the world he created for all of us. That is not a way to seek God.”

  “She worked so hard for all those years, praying and sacrificing so that he would comfort her and he did nothing!” I insisted.

  “She prayed, yes. She worked, yes. But she wasn’t open. She took all of her pain and stuffed it inside of her as a punishment for Sabra’s death. That is not a path to God. Forgiveness must be asked for by someone who believes they deserve it. Hannah didn’t believe that—I suspect she still doesn’t. No amount of prayer can remove the guilt she burdens herself with,” he said. “Your great strength is your openness. You listen. You believe. Maybe you didn’t believe in God before, and maybe now you’re angry with him. But that doesn’t change the fact that you can see. Hannah can’t. You have to be her eyes.”

  “But I don’t want to be her eyes,” I protested. “I want him to give her sight.”

  Father Bob shook his head. “I wish you knew how important it is for you to comfort her, to relieve her pain just by listening to her story and assuring her she’s not at fault. You don’t understand yet how things that seem so small and insignificant to you can change everything.”

  “I can’t help her,” I said. “That’s the worst part.”

  “You are helping her. You are, I promise you that. But Hannah needs more help than just you can provide. Her darkness is so strong and so vast. She needs more light.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Father Bob shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s your job to figure it out.”

  I sighed. “She really never told anyone, I don’t think,” I said. “And never talked about it with anybody who already knew. I really can’t imagine that. I can hardly keep my mouth shut most of the time.”

  “Well, you don’t know how you’d react if this had happened to you,” Father Bob said, holding the door open for me.

  “True,” I said. “Hannah says that when Sabra died, she lost her connection to God. Why do you think that is?”

  “It’s impossible to know,” Father Bob said. “Hannah’s faith and her connection to God are extremely personal.”

  “Have you ever lost your faith?”

  Father Bob took a deep breath and stared down the hallway, linking his hands together behind his back as we continued to walk. “More than once,” he admitted after a short pause.

  “Really?” I couldn’t hide my surprise.

  “It’s the risk you run when you think about God, or spirituality, or the self, or the universe, in a serious way,” Father Bob told me. “No one who is deeply considering every angle and facet of their faith has complete conviction in their beliefs. But doubt can also take over in times of despair or confusion, and that’s what happened to me. We call it the dark night of the soul, although, for me, it was many nights.”

  “What’s it like?” I asked, shaken by his serious expression.

  “Cold and lonely,” Father Bob said. “I can only explain it as the most profound despair, a feeling of separation from the universe, from God, from everything around you—you see everything at a distance, as if through a long tunnel, and you become terrified that all you thought you knew was the grossest lie imaginable. It’s a truly difficult experience for a person of faith, although I expect these things happen to everyone, even if they aren’t religious.”

  “You think that happened to Hannah?”

  “It happens to us all,” he said firmly.

  “She told me once that she couldn’t pray,” I said.

  “Prayer can be very difficult,” Father Bob said. “And not without reason. As Derrida said, it’s not like ordering a pizza.”

  “Whenever I’ve tried to pray, I’ve always just, you know, talked to God,” I said, thinking of how I had prayed the night before for the first time in I didn’t know how long. Had I been comforted by it? I still wasn’t sure. I remembered the feeling of my chest expanding, breaking open, and being filled by a strange sort of calm, foreign and familiar at the same time. But was that God, or just my tired brain trying to help me sleep? Maybe it was too early yet to call it.

  “That’s more of the idea. This is the way I’ve always explained prayer to people who asked,” Father Bob said. “There are two kinds, in my view. One is a sort of collective focusing of spiritual energy on a person or an event. Orders like the Sisters of Grace practice perpetual prayer and adoration in the hope of bringing something to pass.”

  “What’s the other kind?”

  “It’s the opening up of the soul to God, communing with him,” Father Bob said. “It’s more of a quest than an act.”

  “A quest for what?”

  “Knowledge. Grace. True union with the divine. I find that sort of prayer so much more difficult than the other, because it requires an extreme emotional and spiritual vulnerability. It’s frightening, because we’re trained not to expose the weakest parts of ourselves, the things that cause us pain and sh
ame and suffering. It’s those same things that often block our access to God—basically, we stand in our own way.”

  We’d reached the front doors of the hospital.

  “I guess I should be going,” I said, readjusting my bag, which had grown heavy. I felt in all ways weighed down and was anxious to get home and, at least, lighten my physical load.

  Father Bob put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Everything will be all right, Caro. You’ll see.”

  It seemed a touch cliché for him—the scientist priest, handing out platitudes about everything being for a reason, or whatever, but I guessed that was his job. I was so tired, as if I hadn’t slept in days. I tried to think of the last thing I’d eaten and couldn’t conjure up the proper memory.

  “Are you staying?” I asked Father Bob.

  “For a while,” he said. “I’ll have your parents let Hannah know I’m here, just in case she feels like seeing me.”

  Father Bob fixed me with a serious look. “I want you to remember this, when everything around you appears to be falling to pieces, when it all seems lost: the world belongs to those who stick around and tough it out. Learn from Hannah’s mistakes. Never run away from what scares you. It will always come back in the end.”

  I reached out for his hand, and when he gave it to me, I squeezed it hard, hoping to express in that gesture all the things I still didn’t have the words to tell him. “See you later, Father Bob.”

  He lifted his hand and gave me a little wave. “Later, Caro.”

  As I started my car, I kept thinking about what Father Bob had said, about Hannah’s needing more light. I understood what he meant, but I couldn’t figure out where that light was supposed to come from—or how I was supposed to get it.

  28

  “I need your help,” I said. Reb and Erin looked up from their lunches. I’d thought long and hard for several days about what Father Bob had meant when he’d said Hannah needed more light, and I had finally come up with something I thought might actually help. It was a long shot, but I was tired of sitting around and doing nothing.

  “With what?” Reb asked.

  “I need to find someone,” I told them. “And when I do, I’m going to go see him. But I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Who do you need to find?” Erin asked.

  “A boy—well, I guess he’s a man now,” I said. “Byrne Griffin. I don’t know where he lives, but it can’t be that hard to find out.”

  “Who is Byrne Griffin?” Erin raised her eyebrows at me. “I thought you were in love with Pawel again.”

  “He sounds like a soap opera character,” Reb said. “I think there was a character named Byrne Griffin on Days of Our Lives once. He was possessed by the devil a couple years ago.”

  “Okay, first of all, cut it out with the L word. Second of all, can we focus?” I demanded. “He’s an old friend of my sister’s. She’s going through something pretty awful at the moment, and I think seeing him might make her feel better. Either that, or it will blow up in my face and they’ll both hate me forever.”

  “Those are the options?” Reb asked.

  “Not all of them,” I admitted. “He might refuse to come.”

  “Why? What’d she do to him?” Erin was tapping away on her cell phone, which got Internet service. “What’d you say? Beau Bridges?”

  “Byrne Griffin,” I said. “Would you stop making fun? This is serious.”

  “Okay, fine, we’re serious,” Erin said. “Byrne Griffin. Not a lot of them in the world. How old is he?”

  “He’s a couple of years younger than Hannah, so like twenty-five?” I guessed.

  “Does he look like this?” Erin held up her phone so I could see the tiny picture she’d pulled from Google. It showed a dark-haired young man with glasses and some intentionally scruffy facial hair.

  “I don’t know what he looks like,” I said, squinting at the picture. “That could be him. He looks about the right age. Please tell me that’s not a mug shot.”

  “It’s a staff photo,” Erin told me. “He works at Loyola. He’s a professor there. Well, a PhD student who teaches.”

  “What difference does that make?” Reb asked.

  Erin shrugged. “Just stating the facts.”

  “His profile on the Loyola website says that he has office hours from two to three Wednesdays and Thursdays,” Reb said.

  “That doesn’t give us a whole lot of time. Okay, here’s the plan,” I said. “We leave right after we’re done eating and drive out to Rogers Park.”

  “You’re suggesting we skip school to stalk this poor guy at his office?” Erin asked. “That sounds kind of, um, desperate.”

  “I am desperate,” I said. “You’ve got to understand, guys. My sister is in so much pain, and I’ve been so hard on her, which makes it partially my fault. Not only that, but now I can’t say anything to make it better. I think this guy can. Or maybe he can’t, but I have to at least try.”

  “What happened to her?” Reb asked.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. I didn’t want to go into the story. It was too sad, and I was trying my best not to think about it much. I preferred to focus on what I could do for Hannah, and finding Byrne Griffin was it. After that, I was pretty much out of ideas. “You just have to trust that I’m not a crazy person and that getting them in the same room might actually do some real good.”

  Reb crumpled up her napkin and tossed it away. “I’m in,” she said. “Why not? You might be crazy, but it’s the good kind of crazy. I think.”

  “Do we have to skip school for this?” Erin whined.

  “Yes,” I told her. “Please, Erin. You’re my best friend, and this is going to be really hard. I need you to be there.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Erin sighed and nodded. “Okay. I’m in, too.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “Eat up, it’s almost time to go.”

  On our way out to the parking lot, we ran into Pawel, heading inside with a few of his buddies.

  “Where are you guys going?” he asked as we rushed to Reb’s car. He waved his friends on and fell into step with us.

  “We’re on a mission,” Erin said.

  “What kind of a mission?” Pawel smiled at me and I felt a tingle race up from my feet to my head at close to the speed of light.

  “A mission to fix Hannah,” I told him. “I think I might’ve found someone who can help her come to terms with some stuff.”

  “Who is this person?” Pawel asked. “A psychiatrist?”

  “No, a philosophy professor at Loyola,” Reb said. “And time’s a-wastin’.”

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” I promised him. “This is urgent.”

  “Can I come?” he asked.

  “But you have class,” I protested.

  “So do you. What am I going to miss? I’d much rather help you help Hannah,” Pawel said.

  “It’s okay, really,” I said. “You don’t have to come. I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”

  “Look, if you’re coming, you have to get in right now,” Erin said, yanking open the passenger-side door and sliding in. Reb was already behind the wheel, adjusting her mirrors and starting the car.

  “This is your last chance to bail,” I warned him.

  “Noted,” he said, getting in the backseat. “Come on, Caro! I thought you said it was urgent.”

  The drive to Rogers Park didn’t take very long, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I was wracked with nerves. I couldn’t even imagine how Byrne was going to react when I brought Hannah up. According to her, they hadn’t spoken since Sabra’s funeral. It had been fifteen years; more time had passed since Sabra had died than she had spent alive. Hannah had said that Byrne and Sabra had been so tight they might as well have been twins. If her death had done to him even close to the amount of damage it had done to Hannah, this impromptu visit was unlikely to go very well. But maybe I was underestimating Byrne. Maybe he was ready to face his demons. I couldn’t give up on him unt
il I knew.

  “Does anyone know their way around here?” Reb asked, switching on her turn signal.

  “You can’t go down there, it’s a one-way street!” Erin shrieked.

  “I knew that,” Reb muttered, continuing straight.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Pawel asked me sotto voce.

  “God, I hope not.”

  After twenty more minutes of driving around in a haze of absolute cluelessness, we finally found a lot we could park in without a permit. The four of us tumbled out into the cold, only vaguely certain which way we were supposed to be headed. Erin had pulled up a campus map on her phone, but it was tiny and not all that helpful.

  “Oh! Oh!” Reb cried, pointing a gloved finger. “I think that’s it. The Crown Center!”

  “Finally,” Erin grumbled. “I think my nose is going to fall off.”

  We tromped with a renewed sense of purpose toward the Crown Center. As we approached the doors, I checked my watch. It was quarter to three. I was seized by a sudden panic. What if Byrne wasn’t there? His office hours weren’t technically over, but if nobody had come to see him, or he’d canceled them, or there was an emergency, he might not be there. Every second that passed without Byrne and Hannah’s being in the same room seemed like an eon. After doing so little to help my sister in the past, and now discovering there wasn’t very much I could do, I was comforted to think that bringing her and Byrne together might make a positive difference. I couldn’t fail at this—I just couldn’t. It would break my heart.

  Byrne’s office was on the third floor—number 301. We climbed the stairs in a clump, moving slowly so that I could update Pawel on what we were doing there.

  “This professor guy is an old friend of my sister’s,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about Sabra to him. I hadn’t told my friends the full story, either. I finally understood how my mother had felt when I’d asked her about Sabra a few months before: it wasn’t my secret to tell. Talking about it in any way with people who didn’t know Hannah seemed like a betrayal, like gossip. There was no better way to show my reverence for what had happened than with my silence.