Even though he knew Casey had obviously made a deal with someone to take a fall for Wyncott and Feeney, he couldn’t help but think of the irony. An oily, amoral campaign manager showed more integrity by admitting his wrongdoing and suffering the consequences than Feeney or any of the other church leaders had since reports of the widespread sexual abuse first emerged. Following his resignation, Milton Casey was offered a lucrative deal with McIntyre Industries to be their chief lobbyist. It was hard to feel bad for him and his untimely exit from the world of presidential campaign strategy.
Some nights, Peter would pull out his copy of the smoking-gun file Ally had given him and read it over and over, searching for anything he could tie Feeney to. Nothing concrete enough ever materialized.
His continued pursuit of Owen Feeney would have to wait for another time. A few weeks after Milton Casey’s resignation, Patricia Roedlin called to ask him to write a full-spread article on James Ingram for the university’s biannual alumni magazine. Her deadline was surprisingly tight, she said, because the new university president was going to be announced soon, and they wanted to publish one last celebration of Ingram’s life before moving someone else into his office.
So he shelved Feeney for the time being. He recognized that, like evil, Owen Feeney and men like him had existed since humanity’s creation. And that sooner or later, they all slipped up. He would just have to keep an eye out for the opportunity.
Emma knocked on the door to his office and came in. She leaned against his desk, half sitting on the ledge, half standing.
“You’re looking thoughtful,” she said. “What about?”
Peter chuckled. “Take your pick.”
Emma rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Not Feeney again. Please, enough with him. Just for a little while.”
Peter reached over and pulled her to him, sitting her on his lap so he could bury his face in her side. “No more. I promise.”
“What do you think about Ireland?” she said.
“What for?”
“For vacation.”
Peter felt himself tense up. He hadn’t been on an international flight since his return from Jammu. It was completely irrational and he knew it, but his physical response was what it was. Emma noticed immediately.
“What’s wrong?”
He thought about their last big fight, about how she told him she could take almost anything that happened, but not the way he shut her out. He took a deep breath and decided to tell her about Jammu. He told her everything. About carrying the arm through his apartment, dripping blood the whole way, down the stairs and across the street to the school. People were shouting all at once, and he couldn’t understand more than a few words, they were speaking so fast. The bodies far outnumbered the stretchers, and two ambulances weren’t nearly enough. He didn’t harbor any misconceptions that Sheeraza Akhtar, whoever she was, might still be alive. That’s not why he was wandering around like a madman with a limb in his hand. He wanted to make her whole, if he could. So that when her family came to claim her, if in fact anyone could before the searing heat baked the corpses beyond recognition, she’d be there. All of her would be there. Soot and gore covered much of the scene. Some bodies were charred and black while others were nude, their clothing ripped off by the force of the blast.
More than twenty-five feet from the entrance of the school, he found a torso missing its head, a right leg from the knee down, and a right arm. The upper portion of the body was covered in a pheran that matched the fabric remaining on the arm. Pale blue with swirling designs in dark red. Her top was tangled up under her arms, revealing her waist and stomach. Men and women rushed past him to and from the explosion site. Even as they helped carry the injured out of the school, the Kashmiri women remained covered head to toe in accordance with expectations of modesty. He crouched down by the body before him and put the arm in its rightful place. Then he pulled what remained of her pheran down, covering her exposed skin, and pushed the full leg together with the other one. When he walked back to the apartment complex, he passed the section where they’d corralled the family members looking for news. There were a disproportionate number of children in the line, crying and wailing. The full impact of the attack hadn’t hit him before then. The NGO was working specifically to educate Kashmiri women of all ages. By his quick count, Peter estimated, the bombers had managed to leave twenty-five children motherless.
He went back upstairs to his apartment, sat down in front of his computer, and started typing. When he finally finished and filed his coverage of the explosion, he went to wash his face, looking in the mirror for the first time since that morning. Caked-on blood, vast quantities of it, was spattered across his forehead and shirt. That’s when he started vomiting.
Finally, he told Emma about how he’d encouraged a teacher from the school, someone he chatted with every Wednesday at the market, to start the training program. How he’d given her the contact details for the NGO that came to help them set up the classes. And how the bodies all around him that morning, the wailing children and the carnage, were his fault.
It was the first time he’d spoken to anyone about the incident. It just felt disingenuous to need to “talk” about it when he’d watched the whole thing from a distance, never in harm’s way, knowing that after he filed his story, he’d pack a suitcase and leave for America. The carcass of the school and the holes in entire families left behind would be there long after he was gone.
Emma was quiet when he was done.
“Thank you,” she said after a while. She got up from his lap and leaned against the desk again. “I don’t need to know what you’re thinking or feeling at all times, Peter. Really, I don’t. I just need to know you’re still feeling.”
He nodded. “I know. I want to try harder. I’m going to try harder.”
They agreed to work on it. And to get away—go on a real vacation, together for the first time in a while. Emma had her heart set on Ireland, and he couldn’t think of any good reason not to go there.
“Just as soon as I finish this article for Patricia.”
She leaned over to kiss him. “Then you’d better get working on it.”
He shut his laptop and reached over to unplug it. Stuffing it in his bag, he told her not to wait for him at dinner. He’d get something on his own.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Somewhere I can get the inspiration I need.” He tossed the bag over his shoulder and headed down the hallway, patting Grady on the head as he passed by. He was at the front door when she called out to him. He turned around in time to catch the miniature soccer ball he kept on his desk as she threw it his way.
“For when you hit a block,” she said with a grin.
“I love you. You know that, right?” he said. She nodded and blew him a kiss.
*
When he reached Ignatius University, he bit the bullet and paid eight dollars to park closer to the theology department. Walking across the main quad, he remembered clearly the first time he’d come to Ingram at his office. The department secretary had sent him to the newer office, nestled in the corner with huge windows and a perfect view of the quad. The office was empty. He poked his head in to look around and noticed it was also immaculate, as though it hadn’t ever been used. After waiting for twenty minutes, he had finally given up and left. On his way down the stairs, he ran into Ingram coming up.
“Mr. Merrick!” he boomed. The words echoed all the way up to the ceiling, where corpulent cherubs struck coquettish poses from the chandelier molding. “I wasn’t sure you knew where the theology department was!”
Peter blushed. “Actually, I was just looking for you.”
“Of course you were,” Ingram ribbed.
“No, I was!” Peter protested. “I went to your office, but I didn’t see you there.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Ingram said, not bothering to offer further explanation. “But if you’re not in a hurry, we can talk now.” He gestured for Peter to follow
him. They went down to the ground floor and then down one floor more to the basement. It smelled of mold and lemon Pledge. “Ahh, the site of God’s work, Mr. Merrick,” Ingram said. “And God’s humility.” He pointed to an orange-seeping moisture stain on the wall.
Peter wandered with him down a poorly lit hallway with a few scattered rooms. Inside one, what appeared to be large computer servers buzzed loudly. At the end of the corridor, Ingram keyed into the last office. The interior could not have been more different from the office his secretary had directed Peter to. There on the wall was the brass rubbing of the German knight. Books sat everywhere, on the floor, on the windowsill, and stacked in triplicate on the already overburdened bookshelves. In the corner sat a potpourri bowl from which the aroma of peaches rose. Ingram gestured for him to be seated.
“Now, then, what can I do for you?”
They started with Peter’s questions about an assignment, but veered quickly off course to everything from immigration to Beowulf. When Peter finally managed to end the conversation, not because he wanted to but because he had his first meeting for the Ignatius University Gazette, Ingram had loaded him down with books. “You must read them. They’re fantastic, each of them. No rush, but return them when you can.”
Nearly fifteen years later, the stairwell to the basement of the theology department still possessed that musky scent of mold and decay. The computer servers had long since been moved and the offices converted to cubicles for graduate students. There was a good chance the basement hovel where Ingram used to sit had also been converted. But it was spring break, and with any luck, not many students would be around. Even if he couldn’t get in, taking a stroll around the building for a minute before settling at the library might help increase his concentration.
Down the musty hallway behind the last door on the right sat Ingram’s office, door closed. As it turned out, there were no graduate students in at all. At first he thought Ingram’s door was locked, but it was just swollen with the basement damp, lodged hard against the frame but not closed all the way. After some impressive effort, Peter managed to move it.
Despite the months that had passed since Ingram’s death, the smell in the office was just as Peter remembered it. It was the power of memory, he suspected, but it was a comfort all the same. He was surprised to find the office nearly untouched. He wondered if Patricia and Jane hadn’t known Ingram had continued to use it, but didn’t see how that was possible. They struck him as the kind of colleagues who relished knowing everything going on with everyone else at all times. Then again, James Ingram had been their complete opposite. He would have cultivated the ability to steal a certain amount of privacy for himself, despite the best efforts of those around him.
Books, though not as many as Peter remembered, filled the shelves, and an electric teakettle sat on a mini fridge, which hummed with unnecessary energy use. He examined the kettle with amusement. It spoke of affluence and sophistication with its stainless steel casing, digital temperature display, and preset brewing options like “Green Tea” and “Chai.” It must have been a gift. He could only imagine what Ingram would have said if he’d seen it on the shelf of a store or how he would have struggled not to make a similar comment when it was presented to him. A coffee cup sat on his desk, glued to the surface by a dark ring of sugary liquid that had hardened practically to cement on the bottom. It was, perhaps, Ingram’s last drink ever in the office. Peter touched the edge of the cup as if doing so could make him feel closer to his friend. As often as he thought of Ingram, he was already starting to slip away. The anecdotes, the conversations—those remained etched in Peter’s memory with impressive clarity. It was the other details that were fading from prominence. The gentle earnestness with which he shook your hand when he hadn’t seen you in a while. The gifts and other packages that would arrive at the most random times, because, he would write in the cards that accompanied them, he saw it and thought of you. But most of all, the sound of his voice, deep, rich, and comforting even when it was expressing disagreement or admonishment. It was a voice that conveyed in tone and quality everything about the power of forgiveness represented by the Church he’d devoted his life to.
When Peter arrived at Ignatius University as a freshman, he would have identified himself as Catholic if you asked him. But it wasn’t part of him. It was more like a physical fact, like the color of the mailbox in front of his parents’ house (red) or how many siblings he had (two). He knew Catholic rituals, history, and teachings, but hadn’t personally connected to its beliefs. In truth, he’d gone to Ignatius not as an expression of his faith, but because it gave him the most money. He hadn’t expected to leave any more religious than when he entered. While he wasn’t a constant attendee to Mass, and even now his Lenten resolutions lasted as long as the ones he pledged for New Year’s, he had left Ignatius University a more spiritual man. This transformation was perhaps what he was the most grateful to James Ingram for.
Not long ago, Emma had asked him just why he was so angry at Feeney and about what had happened to Kevin Garrity. “I mean, it’s horrible. I get that. The man’s life was ruined. But I see that more as sad and tragic than infuriating. I worry when I see you get this angry. What’s the source of it, Peter? Did something happen to you?”
If Peter had been the victim of abuse, it would have made explaining his feelings instantly accessible and understandable. But he hadn’t. His childhood memories of parish priests were unmarred, his time with Ingram in college among the brightest spots in his life, and in all his years of providing news coverage in some of the most unpleasant corners of the world, he had never ceased to be impressed by the dedication of nuns and priests working on the ground. Including in Jammu, in the aftermath of the bomb. His anger came from the way Feeney and others like him cheapened the work of James Ingram and maintained a sense of entitlement.
It came from the way their lies and prevarications turned everyone who still believed into accessories to the cover-up. Most of all, it came from the double standard held by Church leaders in their prescriptive dogma that applied to everyone but themselves. It offended Peter’s core sensibilities as an American who valued equality. Maybe it was true the America characterized by opportunity and level playing fields had been gone since the 1980s. Maybe it had never fully existed in the first place, despite Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent words claiming it could. If in recent years America had lost its way, falling prey to gluttony, abdicated responsibility, and special treatment at every turn, then it was precisely this kind of moment when religion could have helped. Instead, Peter realized, it was part of the problem. And maybe it always had been.
He lifted the chair out from behind Ingram’s desk, sat down, and pulled out his laptop. In his eagerness to flip it open, he knocked something off the desk and winced when he heard breaking glass. Leaning over to pick it up, he felt a pang in his chest when he realized what it was: the framed photo of the hound urinating on the Anglican bishop.
Gently, he removed the broken glass, shaking the remaining shards into a nearby trash can. He placed the frame on top of his work bag. The bulk of James’s personal papers and letters may have gone to Owen Feeney, but this was going home with him. Away from his home office, in a basement where his cell phone didn’t get service, his writing got off to a strong start. It helped that from time to time he could look up at the bookshelves to make reference to the titles there and incorporate other characteristics represented by Ingram’s tchotchkes. As the article wound down, he found himself struggling with how best to end it, just as he had when he was working on the Courant article. More than an hour passed and he hadn’t gotten more than a few words out. The truth was that he didn’t really want to finish the article. It felt as though by writing these last lines about James Ingram he would be closing the book on him forever. He reached into his bag and pulled out the miniature soccer ball, grateful that Emma knew him well enough to have foreseen this exact scenario looming long before he did. The office resembled a bomb shel
ter with its books and knickknacks piled high, but Ingram’s desk chair was a thing of plush luxury. Peter entertained himself with it, rocking way back, nearly to the floor, and talking to himself while bouncing the miniature soccer ball against the wall.
He overestimated the flexibility of the chair (and his own body) when he tossed the ball too hard. It shot back down toward him at a sharp angle, causing him to duck to avoid its path. He heard it make contact with the concrete floor, but when he looked down, he couldn’t see it. He bent down into the leg space of the desk. It wasn’t there. He stood up and walked around to the other side of the desk—still no sign of it. Dropping to his knees, he peered under the desk and spotted it in the narrow space between the floor and the bottom drawers. He learned the hard way that his arm was long enough but not thin enough to reach it. After some difficultly dislodging his arm and losing a wrist button, he decided to try another approach. Attempting to shove the desk yielded little success and reminded Peter he was out of shape. Several times he heaved his body at the desk but it was too heavy. He’d barely moved it half an inch after ten minutes of trying. It was time to give it a shot on the other side of the desk.
The floor in the leg space was filthy. He could see clumps of dust spilling out from under the desk. On his knees, he reached under and grabbed blindly for the ball. No luck. He pulled back to see if he could spot it when the top of his head grazed something. It crinkled like paper. Running his hands along the underbelly of the desk, he found it and tugged hard. An envelope came off in his hand. Crawling out from under the desk would have been easier if he’d been a circus contortionist, but he managed to do it. The envelope had seen better days. Coffee rings dotted the exterior and the corners looked ready to give out at any moment. Inside was a packet of papers held together with a bright red binder clip that seemed totally out of character for Ingram.
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