by Caryl Rivers
“I know,” be said, looking even more miserable. “Shit, all those courses we take on Moral Guidance, and they’re not worth diddly-squat. I thought the church would have answers. Maybe the Double Effect.”
The Double Effect was a system we learned for raking moral decisions. If an action had two effects—one good and one bad—if the good effect didn’t cause the bad effect, then the act was moral. Take Catholic Aviator Alphonse, for example, one of the examples in our book. Alphonse is flying a mission when his plane gets hit by a shell. He knows he’s bought it. Can he dive his plane into the enemy ship, and become a human bomb?
Answer yes, because the good effect—zapping the enemy—isn’t caused by the bad effect—Alphonse’s demise, which is going to happen anyhow. But I was always doubtful about deciding what was right and wrong by mathematical formulas.
“Look,” I said to Sean, “you think old Alphonse is really up there with his fuselage on fire, thinking about the Double Effect? ‘Let’s see now, I guess I can smack my Hellcat into the Jap carrier, thanks to the Double Effect. So here I go, dirty Nips! I’m blowing you fucking slant-eyes away, but I’m clean with God!’”
That made Sean smile and I poked him in the ribs, playfully. But in a minute he was miserable again.
“I should have known what to do. I mean, I’m going to be a priest, I should know what’s right.”
Being a Catholic kid was a real pain in the ass sometimes. We were always talking about our consciences, and worrying about them. Were they formed right? We had a whole book full of situations where our consciences had to be informed. There was convict Z., who is chained to the wall. A fire breaks out. Can he cut off his foot and crawl to safety, or is that a sin of self-mutilation? And Catholic father Leonard, whose kids are starving. Can he steal meat for them on Friday, or will he go to hell for stealing and eating meat on Friday? And Catholic girl Maria—can she slice up her face so the enemy soldiers won’t want to feel her up? And Catholic boy Gerald: The communists are telling him that if he doesn’t Deny His Faith, they are going to put lighted matches to his father’s feet. What does Gerald do?
Protestant kids didn’t have to worry about these things. You never heard them, over sodas at People’s Drug, debating about convict Z.
“I think he should cut his foot off. Better a gimp than burned to a crisp.”
“Yeah, well, what about Gerald? Would you let them toast your father’s tootsies?”
“It’s Catholic aviator Alphonse who’s really in deep shit.”
Why did we have to worry about all these people? Why did we have to get our consciences informed all the time and be on the lookout for sin, as if it were a mugger behind a bush? Why couldn’t we just grow up, and do algebra, and ride around in cars, and neck, just like other kids, without having to worry about theology? Being a Catholic kid was sometimes very hard.
“Sean,” I said to him, “I think you did know what was right. You knew you couldn’t do that to your father.” Then I added, “Even if he is a jerk.”
“I guess,” he said.
“I think you know what’s right, in here—” I pointed to my heart—“and you don’t need any old Double Effect to tell you.”
“But what’s more important, my father’s feelings, or the truth?”
“What feels more important?”
“My father.”
He sighed, a deep sigh; it was the sound a grown-up makes, not a kid, I thought.
“If I’m going to be a priest, I have to take a vow of obedience. That’s not something I’m real good at.”
“I noticed. What’ll he do to you?”
“Ream my ass. I’m used to it. But what if some superior tells me something and I don’t think it’s right? And I’ve taken a vow. A holy vow.”
“I don’t think anyone should go against his conscience. Vow or no vow.”
“But what if my conscience isn’t formed right? What if I’m wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter. You have to listen to what it says is right.”
“Hitler probably thought he was right too.”
“Sean, you’re not Hitler.”
“Invade the Sudetenland! Crush France! Sieg Heil!”
I giggled. “Your father, maybe he’s Hitler, but you’re not.”
“Yeah, my father and his blitzkrieg against cleavage. Why can’t he be like other fathers, interested in baseball or bowling or running around with women?”
“I’m really in the doghouse with your father now. He never did trust me, not since the business in the tent. He keeps looking at me like he thinks I’m going to pull your pants down and start messing around again.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind that,” he said with a grin.
Sean’s father never did get around to giving him a beating, because Sean said that since he was going to be a priest his flesh was probably holy, and it would probably be at least a venial sin to whomp an almost-priest. I figured Dr. McCaffey took a look at the muscles Sean had grown and decided it wasn’t very smart to mess with a kid who could break him in half. He never did talk to Sister Robert Mary, either, and I learned a valuable lesson. If you stood your ground, people would bluster and bluff, but in the end, more often than not, they’d back down.
Sean didn’t even get grounded over vacation, and I sure was glad of that, because Christmas was a lot of fun, with parties and movies and a lot of just hanging around. But Con wanted vacation to be over with, quick.
Con never was one for hanging in groups; she was a loner, really. She was waiting for Midshipman Masters to get back from St. Louis so she could get the anti-virginity campaign on the road. She said the parties and the goofing around we did over Christmas were just “kid stuff.”
She had his address in Missouri, and she was agonizing over whether to send him another Dorothy Parker poem. She had three of them selected, and the second night of vacation she called me, and I told her I’d come over to her house and give my considered literary opinion.
I drove my mother’s car over to Con’s house, and when I got there I saw that the front door was open, so I just walked in. But when I got into the front hall, I heard, from upstairs, a terrible scream. It stopped me in my tracks and it froze my blood; I’d never understood the expression until I heard that scream, because it really did feel as if all the blood in my body had stopped pumping and had turned to ice. I heard a moan, and then another. I was sure somebody was being murdered.
“Con! Con! Where are you?” I called out.
She came out of the kitchen, and the expression on her face was the most terrible I have ever seen on a human being—except for my mother’s face the day she learned that my father had dropped dead. Con’s eyes were cold, empty, and her face was all squeezed up into little bubbles of pain.
“Con!” I said. ‘What—shall I call the police?”
She shook her head.
There was the sound of a slap from upstairs, and another cry.
“It’ll stop in a minute,” Con said.
“Stop? What is it? What’s happening?”
“My father is beating the shit out of my mother.”
“What!” My mouth gaped open.
“It’s nothing new,” she said.
And then Con’s father came tearing down the stairs, his face all flushed red, and he didn’t even look at us, just stormed out of the house and slammed the door.
Con’s mother came halfway down the stairs, crying out, “Frank! Frank! Don’t leave me!” and I stared at her, not believing what I saw. A trickle of blood was running out of one side of her mouth, and the whole side of her face was red and raw, as if someone had been using it as a punching bag. She saw me and quickly turned around and hurried back up the stairs. I heard the sound of a door closing.
I just stood and stared at Con, not knowing what to say.
“Home sweet home,” she said. “Want a beer?”
“Con—why?”
“Come on,” she s
aid, and I followed her into the kitchen and she handed me a beer. “Now you know. Our dirty little family secret.”
“I won’t tell anybody,” I said. “But Con, how long has this been going on?”
“A long time. He gets drunk and slaps her around. I used to scream and get hysterical when it happened.” She shrugged. “Now I’m used to it.”
“God, Con, I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“Does he really hurt her?”
“Oh yeah, sometimes. Once he broke her jaw and another time he broke two of her fingers. The fucking bastard.”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“Yeah, that’s why we moved from Long Island. All the neighbors knew. My father stopped drinking when we moved down here and it was really great for a while. But it just started all over again.”
“Con, why does she let him do it? Why doesn’t she call the police?”
“Because that would be so embarrassing. My mother wants to keep up appearances. She wants people to think we’re this nice little family, just like everybody else.”
“But your father, Con, he seems so normal. So nice.”
“He is, when he’s not drinking.” She turned away from me. “When I was little he was the nicest father; he’d take me on his lap and read to me—but all the time he was beating up on my mother. I hate her!”
“You hate her?”
She turned around and her eyes were filled with tears, but they were tears of anger.
“I hate her for letting him do it to her. I hate her for being such a fucking–wimp!”
I didn’t know what to say; but I did know I would carry inside my head the echo of that scream for years to come.
“Con, can’t she get help?”
“I’ve asked her to. I’ve begged her to. She just says to me, ‘You don’t understand these things, you’re just a child.’”
“Oh shit!”
“And then he sobers up and we all pretend it never happened. We just go on pretending we’re a normal family. I even get to believing it myself, and then it’s Jack Dempsey time again. And she still loves him. That’s the dumb thing.”
I couldn’t imagine loving a man who beat me up and broke my fingers. I couldn’t imagine not fighting back. What did that have to do with love? It was all very puzzling.
“I’m getting out of this fucking house, Peggy, and I never want to see them again. When I graduate, it’s goodbye, and I don’t ever want to come back to this fucking house again. When we’re in New York, I don’t even want them to come and visit me.”
“Con, let’s go to a movie or something.” I could tell she needed to get out of the house. I think I knew, too, why she’d been so much of a loner. She had this secret, and she had to carry it around with her, all the time, and she was still only a kid, really, and that was an awful lot for a kid to carry.
“Yeah, let’s go to a movie,” Con said, and we went out together to my mother’s car.
I was growing up fast, I thought, too fast. How many secrets were there in the adult world, dirty little secrets I knew nothing about? So many wonderful things are going to happen to us, Con said, but what about the things that weren’t so wonderful? They could happen to us too.
I tried not to think about that as I watched Tyrone Power making love to Rhonda Fleming, kissing her madly when they both weren’t fighting off an irate tribe of Zulus somewhere in Africa, but I kept hearing in my head the sound of Con’s mother’s screams, and seeing her face, the way it had looked when she said, “Frank! Frank!”
With an effort, I forced my thoughts back to the screen. Everything would end up fine in the movies; it always did. Life, I thought, was a lot less predictable.
The Kissing Priest
THE ALTAR was resplendent with poinsettias; at Christmastime, St. Malachy’s always took on a festive air, with the red flowers matching the red vestments of the priests, and the sweet scent of incense wafting across the church, curling up inside your nostrils, and staying there for hours. Later, that smell would belong not only to Catholics, but would also become the equivalent of Lysol spray for potheads, the incense mingling with the even sweeter smell of marijuana. But while others associate the sweet, sandalwood aroma with turning on in somebody’s pad, it always reminds me of God. If God smells like an acidhead, so be it.
I knelt in the pew, inclining my head at the small, icy sound of the bells, and thought that it was my last Christmas as a high school kid—my last as a kid, really. People were right when they said that when you get old, time rushes by. I thought of something we had read in English class. Dr. Faust, waiting for the dawn when the devil would come to claim his soul, crying out, Lente, lente, currite noctis equi! Run slowly, slowly, horses of the night. I wanted to call it out, as the bells rang for the Offertory—“Run slowly, slowly!” I wanted this year to stretch into infinity. Next year, it would be different. All of us, the seniors at Immaculate Heart and Sacred Heart, would be spread out across the map, some to college, some to work, some to get married. Some girls would even be mothers by next year. Maybe we’d come back to St. Malachy’s for midnight Mass, but it would never be the same.
After Mass, I walked home with Sean, wearing on my wrist the silver bracelet he had given me, with our two names inscribed inside a heart. He wore the silver miraculous medal I had given him, with the word Sean etched below the feet of the Blessed Mother. We walked hand in hand, and the sky above us seemed ablaze with stars and the moon was a silver crescent, like a tree ornament, floating in the blackness. Christmas night had always seemed enchanted to me; it was a pagan sort of magic. The Christmas story and the fables of Rapunzel and Rose Red seemed cut from the same clothwithin them, the laws of man and nature were suspended, and marvelous things could happen.
The moonlight, cold and white, washed across the sidewalk and only heightened the sense of otherworldliness. I looked at Sean. His face in the moonlight seemed not to be solid, but ever shifting; he was ephemeral as the night. One minute he seemed the boy I’d always known, his face the same gentle, childish one I once held down in the sandbox until he came up gasping, his eyelashes encrusted with sand and his whole face looking like a sculpture of Childhood. (He stuffed a handful of sand in my mouth for that, nearly choking me.) But I’d look again and it was a man’s face I saw: the line of the cheek was more angular, not sweet and round the way it used to be, the jawline squaring off, but the hollow of the neck, the spot I loved to kiss, still as sweet and vulnerable as ever.
Suddenly I had the feeling that I wasn’t there, not really, but a long way off in the future, looking back at the two of us. I was trying to reach back, through time, to touch the cool silver of Sean’s cheek, and I couldn’t reach him, couldn’t touch him. “Sean,” I called. “Sean!” But he couldn’t hear me; he just kept walking in the moonlight, beyond my grasp.
Sean and I spent a lot of time that Christmas hanging around with Mollie and her boyfriend, Davy Parelli. Con wasn’t much in evidence. She had picked up a guy at People’s Drug, a sophomore from U.S.C. home for the holidays, and she was going to parties where everyone drank bourbon, not beer, and got drunk and passed out on the floor. With that kind of adult entertainment available, who wanted to hang around with a bunch of high school kids?
Mollie and I had sort of an easy rapport. We didn’t talk a lot, the way Con and I did; Con was so aggressively verbal that we talked all the time, but Mollie and I were good at just being quiet together. Mollie had even features and the blonde good looks so popular then (and now), but she had cool, smoky gray eyes that tended to keep people at a distance. “I am my own person,” they seemed to say, and she was. Mollie had a way of looking purposely deshabille before it became chic. Her red uniform ties were always faded, her blue dress a bit threadbare, her oxfords scuffed, but it always looked deliberate, not just sloppy. Mollie was a wizard at math, and she was going to be an engineer. When people told her that women just didn’t become engineers, she merely shrugged. Who c
ared what other people thought?
Mollie’s parents had a fit about her going out with Davy, and that wasn’t surprising. I thought Sean was mercurial, but compared to Davy he was an island of tranquility. Davy’s highs were manic; his laugh sometimes had a knife edge of hysteria in it, and when he plummeted to the depths you just stayed away from him, because he was withdrawn or mean. I think it was this roller-coaster quality of Davy’s that intrigued Mollie. There was something in Mollie that seemed drawn to the edges of things. When the eighth-grade class at St. Malachy’s went to New York for the class trip, Mollie was the only one of us who tried to lean over the rail fence on top of the Empire State Building, looking into the eye of the abyss. I sensed that Mollie had a recklessness inside that would put Con and me to shame, but it rarely showed on that cool facade of hers.
Mollie liked Davy a lot, though they rarely held hands or gave any display of public emotion. Davy had been thrown out of Sacred Heart freshman year, and was now almost flunking out of Hoover High, which seemed to concern him not in the least. Sean said to him, “I’ll never forget how you used to go out the window in the middle of algebra. Brother Michael would really get pissed. He’d keep screaming, ‘Somebody stop that boy!’ Shit, no one was going to try to stop you from going out the window. We knew you’d just do it all over again.”
“Yeah,” Davy said, “The fucking brothers!” and that was it, as far as he was concerned, for an entire order of clerics.
We’d never met Davy’s mother. She worked as a clerk at a Kresge’s downtown someplace, and his father had lit out years ago. The only time Davy ever mentioned him was to say, matter-of-factly, “If my old man ever shows up, I’ll cut his fucking throat.”
Other than Mollie, Davy cared for only three things as far as we could tell: cars, clothes, and movies. He was what we called a “rock,” or sometimes a “drake.” He wore peg pants with zippers at the bottom and pink shirts and “Mr. B.” collars—named after singer Billy Eckstine—and had the most perfect duck’s ass haircut I’d ever seen. It looked as though it had been oiled, and not a hair was out of place.