by Avery Corman
The dark angel was gone, Richard was back.
Father Connolly took her hands in his, willing her. “I remember that special little girl you were. Come now. Pray with your old priest.”
She was in the car again. Her father turned, took his eyes off the wheel. A crashing sound, then shattered glass.
The stained glass window of the chapel disintegrated. The glass shards struck her face. She touched her hands to her face and then saw her hands were covered with blood and she screamed. She couldn’t take it any longer. She felt weak, fading.
“Game’s over, Ronnie. We can bring an ambulance for you and you’ll be fine. You and Claire Reilly will be fine.”
The blood was gone. The stained glass window was intact. Richard came toward her and patted her on the arm condescendingly.
“Ready, Ronnie?”
Father Connolly shoved him away.
“Don’t you touch her! Veronica, look at me. For your mother, who loved you so much. Give us this day … You can do it. Do it for her. Give us this day …”
“Give us this day …” in a weakened voice, “our daily bread.”
“And forgive us …”
“And forgive us,” haltingly, weakly, “our trespasses as we forgive those …”
“Yes, go on.”
“… who trespass against us.”
“It won’t work, Ronnie. Satan is real. Too strong for this.”
“And lead us …”
“And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil,” she managed to say, her voice barely audible.
“Say good-bye to the world as you knew it. Your mind is going to belong to Satan for as long as you live.”
She felt herself slipping away. If she let go of the reality of this place, and of herself, it would finally be peaceful.
“That’s right. Give in to it.”
Father Connolly took his cross and placed it in Ronnie’s hands. He closed her hands over it and shook her hands hard to get her to focus on him.
“God’s light is your beacon. Follow that light. It will lead you to everything good and true about you. Concentrate with every ounce of your soul and follow God’s light. Follow the light, Veronica. The light of your God when you were a little girl.” Weary, she shook her head no. “You can do it. You have to try.” She looked at him, at his soulful face, and closed her eyes.
She began to see a faint light. It began to grow stronger, white, incandescent. Images played in and out of it. She saw Nancy and Bob, the three of them were laughing together. She saw children’s faces, the children from the recreation center, and she was with them. She saw herself as a child. She was about six. She carried a flower, a dandelion from the park, and she gave it to her mother, who was overjoyed at the sight of her. She tried to absorb it, that her mother was so resplendently happy with her, that the joy in her mother’s face was so radiant. For her to have made her mother so happy had to mean something. She opened her eyes and Father Connolly was with her, holding her hands over the cross.
“Pray to God in your own words. Pray with your heart.”
“It’s pointless. Satan owns you now.”
“Find the God of your childhood. Pray, Veronica, pray.”
Gripping the cross, she cried out, “Lord, please save me. I pray to you to save me. I didn’t kill my mother. Mommy, Mommy, I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t kill you. I didn’t kill anybody. I’m not bad. I’m not bad!” She wept profoundly, her body rocking.
Slowly, as if a fever had broken, everything began to come clear, where she was, the chapel, Father Connolly, Richard.
She turned to Richard in his imperiousness. “You evil bastard. Get the hell out of my life!”
“Look at this,” Richard said.
“It was you from the beginning. You sent the black cat. All that was you. Well, now you can get the hell out of here!”
“Really, now? If that’s the way you want it.”
“That’s the way I want it.”
He turned to leave, but with a last thought. “I’ll still be around.”
“Not with me you won’t.”
Arrogantly, calmly, he walked out of the chapel and she watched him go.
Father Connolly took Ronnie’s hands in his.
“He can’t hurt you anymore. You’re too strong for him, you and God.”
She was emotionally and physically drained and he brought her into his office and guided her to lie down on his couch.
“You’re the special person I always knew you’d grow up to be.”
He placed a blanket over her and she soon fell asleep.
Santini and Gomez never reached Nancy as to Ronnie’s whereabouts. In Staten Island, Beattie Ryan, the retired mail carrier whose religious beliefs originally led her to join the protest against Randall Cummings, underwent a challenge to her faith. She was watching television and Ronnie’s face appeared on the screen—wanted in connection with Randall Cummings’s murder. She called her priest for guidance and he suggested the Christian thing to do was contact the police immediately, and he was obliged to do so, if she did not. She located a number that had been given to her by Santini and called, the call routed to Rourke. She told him she had allowed the detectives to be misled as to the circumstances on the day of Randall Cummings’s murder. John Wilson was not with her the entire time. He left their position across the street and went into the church a few minutes after the girl came out, the girl who was wanted. Wilson was inside for a while and after he rejoined her he told her that he took care of it, that they wouldn’t have the evildoer to worry about anymore, and instructed her to say they were together the entire time. He told her he had done “God’s work.”
John Wilson was taken into custody for the murder of Randall Cummings.
Ronnie awoke and came into the office where Father Connolly was sitting with the secretary and a young man; a church volunteer whom Father Connolly called to drive her home. She asked to use the phone and dialed Nancy at work.
“It’s me.”
“Ronnie! You were in the news! They were looking for you! But they just said they arrested someone named John Wilson!”
“John Wilson.”
“Where are you, are you all right?”
“I’m good. Everything is good. I’m in my childhood church. Can’t beat the old favorites.”
As Father Connolly led her to the car, she said, “I can never thank you enough. This is beyond thanks.”
“The best thanks you can give me is to take a little advice. Now that you found it again, keep your faith. I venture it could be as important as your computer.”
Father Connolly continued along the street to a local coffee shop. He hadn’t eaten breakfast in the rush of the morning. Standing on a street corner was Richard, talking on his cell phone. He ended his call as the priest approached. The two locked eyes.
“You’re pretty good, old man,” Richard said.
“It is you, isn’t it?” Father Connolly asked.
He didn’t answer. He smiled and walked on.
A Biography of Avery Corman
Avery Corman (b. 1935) is an American author best known for novels that inspired hit movies such as Kramer vs. Kramer and Oh, God! Corman has written powerfully of divorce and family, as well as midlife crisis and the experience of living in New York City.
Corman was born on November 28, 1935, in New York City. His parents were working-class residents of the Bronx, and they divorced when Corman was a young child. Corman moved with his mother and sister into the apartment of an aunt and uncle, who were both deaf mutes. Complicated family dynamics and the challenges of communication would come to be prominent themes in Corman’s later work as a writer.
Corman attended DeWitt Clinton High School and then New York University, from which he graduated in 1956. After a short career in magazine publishing, Corman began writing humorous pieces for small magazines. He spent more than ten years cobbling together an income as a freelancer
before completing his first novel, Oh, God!, in 1971. The story of a writer who becomes a messenger for God after an interview on Madison Avenue, Oh, God! was made into a hit film starring George Burns in 1977. Next came The Bust-Out King (1977), a caper novel, quickly followed by one of Corman’s best-known works, Kramer vs. Kramer (1977). The novel depicts the toll divorce can take on parents and their children, and helped change the landscape of divorce and custody in America. The courts, and divorcing spouses, began to view divorced men’s participation in their children’s lives more positively. The novel’s film adaptation, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, was released to overwhelming acclaim, and went on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. A French language stage adaptation of the novel, Kramer vs. Kramer, by Didier Caron and Stéphane Boutet, was produced in Paris in 2010 and subsequently played in other French cities and in Geneva, Switzerland. Corman then wrote his own stage adaptation of the novel, which has been optioned for a Broadway production, and for productions in several foreign countries.
Following Kramer vs. Kramer, Corman continued to explore themes of families in turmoil. The Old Neighborhood (1980) follows the life of a man whose ambivalence about success brings him back to the city streets where he was raised. His fifth novel, 50 (1987), examines a middle-aged man whose life falls apart, leading him to unexpected contentment. The Big Hype (1992) skewers the publishing industry and celebrity culture, while Prized Possessions (1991) deals with the consequences of being a victim of date rape for a young college student and her family. A Perfect Divorce (2004) tells the story of a divorced couple struggling to co-parent their troubled teenage son. Corman’s most recent novel, The Boyfriend from Hell (2006), follows a young, single journalist as she embarks on a new relationship that turns out to be more sinister than she could have imagined.
After achieving success as a novelist, Corman noticed that a cherished basketball court in his old neighborhood had been torn down. He donated funds to build a replacement and this served as a catalyst for the creation of the City Parks Foundation, now a multimillion dollar nonprofit organization that creates and funds parks programs throughout New York City. He has served on its board of directors since the foundation’s inception in 1989.
Corman continues to write novels, plays, and non-fiction.
A young Corman in the 1940s with his mother and sister, Jackie.
Corman’s aunt and uncle, Anne and Moses Cohn, in whose apartment he lived with his mother and sister while growing up in the 1940s.
Corman with his cousin, Selma, in the 1940s.
Corman, age twenty-six, on a snowy day in Central Park. He worked in magazine publishing at the time.
Corman with his son Matthew in 1972. (Photo by Bill Powers.)
The movie poster for Oh, God! The film was released in 1977 and was a hit for the studio and for George Burns, who played God.
The movie poster for Kramer vs. Kramer. The film, which was released in 1979, earned Oscars for both Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, as well the awards for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director.
Corman with his wife, Judy, and sons, Nicholas and Matthew, in 1983. Corman was never divorced. He and Judy were married for thirty-seven years, until her passing in 2004. (Photo by Jill Krementz.)
Corman, who suggested the City Parks Foundation create a track & field program for New York City children, with some of the 2,000 citywide participants in 2012. (Photo by Alan Roche.)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2006 by Avery Corman
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-9242-6
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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