“I see.”
“If I can be of any further assistance, I’ll be in my office.”
Billy stayed behind and stared down at Claudia’s face. He, who believed in normalcy, in rational behavior, in the sensible order of things, was suddenly overwhelmed by evidence of the chaos that lapped the very shores of his own existence. He didn’t like it. An unintelligible sound rose from Claudia’s throat and her right eyelid twitched, as if she were winking at him.
Had she spoken? Billy leaned in closer. The right eye was totally open now. He could see his reflection in the iris. “Did you say something?” he asked.
The other eye twitched open. “Did I kill him?”
“What?”
“Did I kill him?”
“No, Claudia, you didn’t,” Billy managed to respond.
Claudia seemed to weigh his words. “Too bad,” she mumbled. Then both eyelids closed, shutting him and the world away.
Billy was stunned. He retreated from the room in a daze, wondering if he had heard right. On his way down the hall, the doctor hailed him.
“Detective Wilde, there is one thing we found out from her blood tests. I didn’t want to mention it in the room.”
“What is that?”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, it could be a false positive. It’s still very early. But it seems to be the case. She probably doesn’t even know herself yet.”
Billy took the stairwell to give himself a few moments to gather his thoughts. When he reached Mano’s room, he still hadn’t decided if this was the time to share this latest bit of information. But when he pushed aside the thin curtain, he realized the decision had already been made for him.
Mano was gone.
2:46
The trees were taller and the bushes fuller and some of the houses had changed color, but as she sat in the parking lot beside Our Lady of Perpetual Light, Teri was surprised how little had changed in East Acton. That was the appeal of New England towns. People were born and died, but the towns themselves seemed to defy time.
After she and Mano had slipped out of the hospital, he had asked if he could see the church, where his father had served as a priest. It wasn’t much of a detour, but now that she was here, a certain reticence overtook her. Twenty years ago, she’d first met Father Jimmy in the staid rectory house. And there was Alcott Street, just on the other side of the intersection, where Hannah had spent most of her pregnancy. If you thought about it time was one son of a bitch. She couldn’t remember who’d said that. Maybe she’d seen it embroidered on a pillow.
Take her own life! One minute you were a waitress in the Blue Dawn Diner and the next minute, well, you were a waitress in the Blue Dawn Diner. But twenty years had passed and you’d brought up two kids (mostly by yourself), you’d stumbled more or less successfully from crisis to crisis and filled in the rare gaps with your favorite TV shows. Or reruns. Oh, yes, and you’d managed to serve a couple hundred thousand burgers.
A muffled ringing came from her purse. She dug out her cell phone and barked, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Teri?” It was Hannah.
“Sweetheart, where are you?”
“At the airport. Bill said Mano has disappeared from the hospital.”
“Not to worry. He’s with me.”
“Oh, Thank God. Can I talk with him?”
“Not right now. We’re in East Acton, if you can believe it. Mano’s in Our Lady of Perpetual Light. I’m waiting for him in the car.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, he said he wanted to see where his dad used to work, so to speak. I figured why not? The kid has been through enough already. Far be it from me to ask questions.”
Hannah passed on the information to Jimmy, then came back on the line. “But he’s okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“Let me ask you something. Jimmy and I had talked about taking him to New Hampshire, once he was out of the hospital. Maybe we could all meet there? What do you say? It would be a chance to spend some time together again. Or do you need to be back at the diner?”
“Are you kidding? That diner owes me six months in Acapulco.”
“You’ll join us then?”
“You bet. This is the most excitement I’ve had since you left. Now if I can just lose 15 pounds in the next two hours, everything will be perfect.”
Once she flicked off her cell phone, she allowed herself to remember the Hannah she’d known: a 19-year old girl. Now in a few hours she’d be meeting a grown woman with three children who had spent half her life in a foreign country. Would they even recognize one another?
She looked at her watch and then at the entrance to Our Lady of Perpetual Light. It was then noticed that the rose bushes on either side of the door were in full bloom.
“Bless me, father…”
A protracted silence ensued on the other side of the confessional grate. Monsignor Gallagher could hear breathing, so he knew the young man – at least it had seemed to him the voice of a young man – was still there. Not many young people came to confessional at Our Lady’s these days. Father Gallagher sometimes thought it was the silence itself that scared them off; they needed noise to exist. Noise was like air to them. So he waited patiently, before asking, “Do you have something to confess?”
“I have been thinking thoughts I shouldn’t.” Yes, it was a young man’s voice.
“Impure thoughts?”
“No.” Silence came over the confessional again.
“Do you want to tell me?”
“I have decided that it would be best…if I did not live.” And before the priest could respond, the young man added, “Best for the world.”
“But my son, there are so many reasons to live on God’s earth. I could list them all day.” The old priest knew to keep his tone firm, but friendly. The authoritarian ways of the past were self-defeating. “First, you must know that it is the devil that puts these thoughts in our minds. They are not of our own making. Knowing that will help you fight against them.”
“But if it is the devil himself who made me?”
“Is that what you believe?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, without hesitation.
“But that cannot be!” responded the priest. “It is impossible. The devil does not make men. Only God can. And his love for his creation is boundless. What you are feeling now, the emptiness, is the absence of God’s love. Not because it isn’t showered down upon you at every moment, but because you have chosen not to let Him in. Let Him in and these thoughts of despair, the devil’s thoughts, will vanish in an instant.”
“But father, I’m afraid of what might happen if I let Him in. I don’t know if I could handle the burden.”
“The burden? You needn’t concern yourself with that. God never gives us more than we can handle. With each trial, he provides us with the chance to grow, to gain greater access to him. Misfortune can be a blessing in disguise.”
“Not this time.”
“Yes, my son. This time and every time. God is inside you right now. Do you believe that?”
There was no answer to his question - just a silence that grew agonizingly long. The priest could sense the internal struggle taking place on the other side of the confessional. He put his ear closer to the grating; the young man’s breathing was short, as if the air supply itself was running out and his lungs were fighting for oxygen. Did the rustle of movement mean he was getting up to leave? Would he do himself harm?
The Monsignor had dealt with the perverse lure of suicide before – it was far more common than most people realized. Ironically, the obscurity of the confessional aggravated the temptation. Better to bring the young man out of the dark into the light, let him see the world he would forsake, let him put a friendly face on the voice of consolation coming through the confessional slats.
“Why don’t we continue this talk in the sacristy,” proposed the priest. “Things are sometimes much si
mpler in the light of day.”
“No,” came the swift response, colored, the priest sensed, with a flush of terror. “I need the anonymity of the confessional.”
“If you so wish….”
“Not for my sake, father, but for yours. For your protection.”
“Why would I require protection?”
“Anyone who knows me, who associates with me, will be in need of protection.”
The old priest was aware that exaggerated thoughts of grandeur often coincided with suicidal impulses. Even so, he was suddenly bereft of counsel. He was so old, too old. Maybe this young man’s anguish was beyond his province. As a young priest he had believed that God could solve all problems. But the years had also taught him that God would probably not help the ten-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome, who lived on the next street. God was unlikely to stop the tidal wave that would carry away thousands in Indonesia. And he knew with absolutely certainty that God would not reverse the cancer that was slowly eating away at his own tired body.
“I am the one,” the young man said, finally breaking the silence.
“The one?” the Monsignor repeated. “Which one? What have you done that is so terrible? Remember, I am bound by my vows not to report anything that is revealed in this confessional. So you can unburden yourself of whatever this deed may be, however horrible it may seem to you. Do you wish to tell me?”
“I do.”
“I am listening, my son.”
“I came here…because I thought you – you of all people -would understand why it is necessary for me to leave this world.”
“I would never advocate such a thing. It is never the solution.”
“But I’m different. Before I was born, you knew that.”
“How can that be?”
“You know what I am.”
The priest found his perplexity mounting. “Do I?”
“I have been in your thoughts and dreams and nightmares for twenty years probably. I am the one you have prayed for and the one you have feared … I am the blood of the cloth.”
The truth struck Monsignor Gallagher with the force of a body blow. He felt his heart begin to race and thought for a second that it might actually leap out of his chest. He strained to see the young man’s face though the grate. Nothing. Just the whites of his eyes.
“I have come to accept that my family would be better off, if I no longer existed. Your church would certainly be better off. I can only cause suffering in this world. I am a burden to all, a scourge no one can control. Because, as you know, I never should have been brought into this world.”
The priest shook his head sadly. “Twenty years ago, when Father James told me what had happened I refused to believe it. But once the possibility entered my mind that this inconceivable act might indeed be true, yes, I thought it was a mistake. That you were a mistake. A yearning gone terribly wrong. Something that needed to be stopped at all costs. But then Father James never returned. It seemed to me he had disappeared off the face of the earth and his absence affected me deeply. Since then I have thought many things.”
“Tell me about him when he was here?”
The old priest’s voice warmed with the recollection. “In all my many years in the church, James is the only one I felt had a true calling. Far greater than my own. Oh, I have known many devout, honorable men. But James’ calling was pure. It came from his soul. When he said his first mass, I felt I was intruding on a personal conversation between him and God. I have never witnessed anything like it before or since. Every time he said mass, it was the same - this intensely personal encounter.”
“But he left it all.”
“Yes, he did. And with him went that special … light. I had a long time to think, after he was gone. Had he fled because of me? Was my righteousness wrong? Had I failed to guide him properly?”
“It was to protect me that he fled with my mother.”
“Yes, I see that now. How different it seemed back then.”
“And now? What do I do now, father?”
The Monsignor sat motionless for several minutes. He had lived for more than 80 years and served the church for nearly 60. The young man kneeling on the other side of the grate had come to ask a question he had heard a thousand times over. “What do I do, Father?” And the response was always the same. “Ask our Father in heaven what He wishes of you and He will provide the answer.”
But this time he couldn’t bring himself to say those words. He needed to convey a different truth, one that had slowly matured in his breast during Father James’ long absence.
Although the priest spoke barely above a murmur, the words were clear and forceful. “We all must live with the duality of life, my son. The sun that warms us can also burn. The waters that slake our thirst can also wash away our homes. The ones we love most also hurt us most deeply. Heaven and hell are contained within each living thing. In me. In you. The choice as to which one will have power over us at any given moment is always our own. This is every man’s struggle, the struggle that will last until your dying breath.
“You have been told, more clearly than most, that each of these extremes exists in you. You are the power of good and you are the power of evil. Some see you as the path to heaven, others as the route to hell. But I say both are true. As they are for all of us. The source of your blood is no longer of any consequence to me. It is the goodness of your soul that matters. Every child born into this world has the power to save the world or destroy it. The decision is yours. It always has been. And it always will be.”
A tranquility settled over the confessional, while the priest gathered his breath. Neither could say how much time passed before the young man placed his hand on the grill. His fingertips protruded slightly through the grating. Without thinking, the Monsignor lifted his withered hand and touched the young man’s index finger with his own.
“Bless you, Father,” said the young man.
It did not occur to Monsignor Gallagher that he was the one who should have spoken those words.
A portly middle-aged woman was waiting her turn, when Mano emerged from the confessional. The gentle way he smiled at her made her think she’d known him all her life.
“Thanks for waiting,” Mano said, as he climbed into Teri’s car.
“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to go off and leave you here.”
She paused a moment, as if she expected an explanation for why he had spent so much time in the church. But none came and she concluded it was none of her business. People had a right to keep things to themselves.
“Pretty church,” was all Teri said, before turning on the ignition. She pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed down Alcott Street. Neither of them was aware that a middle-aged woman had just burst through the church door and was frantically calling for help. Monsignor Gallagher had collapsed in the confessional and for all she knew he was dead. The quiet neighborhood would soon be filled with the screech of sirens.
Less than an hour later, Monsignor Gallagher lay in a bed in the intensive care unit, breathing his last. He had touched the hand of …what? He would never know. But it was not doubt that characterized his final moments. He was filled with light. For touching the young man’s finger, he had been reminded of the basis of his faith, the impulse that had propelled him through his long ministry: the simple desire to be as near to God as possible. Nothing else counted now. He was ready. The confession was a gift sent to him so that he would be ready for the moment that was so rapidly approaching, the moment he did not want delayed for even an instant longer.
His hand stirred on the bed sheet, his index finger uncurled, and his arthritic arm reached upward, one last time, slowly but determinedly, in the renewed expectation of the moment when he would truly touch the hand of God.
2:47
After a couple of wrong turns and a few dead ends, Teri and Mano located the dirt road that led to the cottage on the shores of Lake Winnipesauke. The hills were green and welcoming, dotted with splash
es of wild lilac and rhododendron bushes, as if some impressionistic artist decreed that green alone was not sufficient without contrasting daubs of purple and pink.
The summer vacation crunch was months away and the countryside had reverted to its simple rural past. “Hard to believe this land was blanketed with snow, when you were born,” observed Teri.
She skirted a pothole and rounded a bend and the cottage appeared in all its weather-beaten homeliness. The whole family was seated on the porch steps, waiting. Almost before Teri had brought the car to a halt, Mano was out the door and running toward them, and the family had spilled off the steps and was running to greet him, and all Teri could think was “everyone of them is going to die in the collision.”
Instead, they hugged, then backed off to take a good look at one another, then surged forward for another round of hugs. Teresa locked her arms around Mano’s waist and Mano hoisted Little Jimmy over his head and Jimmy clapped Mano on the back, Mexican style, while Hannah squealed “Let me see him, let me see him,” before throwing her arms around his neck. It came as near to a brawl as any family reunion Teri had ever witnessed – well, the Italians came close - and she hung back until the affectionate mayhem subsided.
It was Hannah who broke the mood. As soon as she caught sight of Teri, she put her hands up to her mouth and murmured joyfully, “Oh, my God! It can’t be. Oh, my God!” They embraced tenderly, as if they were not quite sure of what they were seeing and were fearful of dispelling a wondrous illusion. Their eyes filled with tears, until Teri finally said, “Stop. Before all the make-up runs off my face. Believe me, that is something you do not want to see.”
The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two Page 23