“He’s so pissed, he won’t speak to me again. I figure I’ll get a good decade of silence out of this.” He picked up a straw, tapped it end over end on the table. “He takes his rants out on Mom, and she spreads the joy onto me. He doesn’t want Omaha, his cronies I should say, talking about how his son ran out on some pregnant girl. He says I’ve fucked up and need to face the consequences. Actually, I think he’s glad. He thinks this is the lesson I need.” He bit the paper tip off the straw, spit it to the side. “Like he’s such a good family man, coming home at dawn smelling of gin and ass. Mom’s already dragged me to Father Steinhouse.”
Willow flopped back against the seat. The conversation was moving too fast, had gotten way ahead of her. “Father Steinhouse! I don’t want him to know.”
“Well, he does. How the hell else are we going to get married?”
Her throat felt jammed shut. She swallowed. “Who says we’re getting married?”
“That’s what people do. Catholics at least.” He looked down at the tray of untouched food. “What else can I do?”
Willow’s mind spun around lyrics of a Paul Simon song: You just slip out the back, Jack. “You don’t have to do it.”
“I do if I want to ever see my parents again, if I want them to pay for college, if I want to stay in the church. I’m not giving up my inheritance.”
She knew he was an only child, and his father co-owned a large construction company. He wouldn’t want to throw that all away, but still, he didn’t have to marry her. Plenty of guys would walk away, no, run away from everything, even money. His being willing to marry her had to mean he thought they’d be all right together. Her heart was drumming, pounding the way it did in nightmares. “When?”
“Steinhouse says as soon as possible. He has an opening the Saturday after Thanksgiving.”
“This Thanksgiving?”
“No, next.” He glared at his untouched food. “He’s probably crowding us in for Mom’s sake. Those two are tight. She can’t stand the thought of us possibly screwing one more time without being married.” One side of his mouth lifted at the irony and dropped back. “Steinhouse says it’s a busy season: The Fall Festival next weekend, then Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas. We have to take a shit-load of classes between now and then.”
Willow was staring at him. “That’s just over two weeks. Doesn’t he have to post banns or something?”
“I told you, he and Mom are tight. She doesn’t want this broadcast to the whole parish.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“I mean why are you marrying me?”
He lifted a French fry, started it toward his mouth, but when he saw the way she fought back tears, he dropped it onto the tray. He took a deep breath. “It’s not like I hate you or anything. I just didn’t plan on this.” He picked up the fry again, waved it in the air at her. “You got a better idea? Babies need their dads. We’re Catholics.”
He hadn’t mentioned love, but she wasn’t sure she loved him either. She’d pray that would come as it did in stories. She wanted her baby to have two parents, something she never had, and brothers and sisters. If Derrick was willing to try, she would too. She’d have six kids, and she’d never be lonely again.
“We’re history at school,” Derrick said. “Expelled. I think we’ve got a week. I’m surprised we’ve got a day. The week is probably Mom’s doing.”
“Expelled?” The news was as shocking as hearing she was pregnant.
“You’ll be getting the news.”
Was this really happening? “Papa will be thrilled.”
20
Willow let the next week pass, going to school as usual, waiting for the best opportunity to tell Julian. When Monday came again, she told him she was sick and couldn’t make it to school. On Tuesday, four days before the wedding, she stood in the kitchen doorway. There was no easy way. “I’m getting married on Saturday.”
Julian looked up with surprise. What sort of joke was this? She faced him, blinking back tears, her left hand clutching the right in a choking grasp. His heart felt the touch of a hot poker. “What’d you say?”
“F.S. and…I mean Father Steinhouse and Derrick’s mom…”
He wasn’t hearing the names, only the seriousness in her voice. “A grasshopper’s ass you are!” He studied her, still disbelieving. “You aren’t marrying anybody. What are you talking about?”
“Father Steinhouse,” it wasn’t just him, “the church says we have to.”
He didn’t move from his place at the table, as if holding still could hold off what he was hearing. His face reddened. Ultramarine veins rose on his neck. “Have to?” His face was full of disbelief. “What are you telling me, Willow?”
She thought the words might not come out. “I’m pregnant, Papa.”
“Ahh. No.” He closed his eyes. Opened them. “Jesus Christ! How could you!”
She needed to lock the backs of her shaking knees, concentrate on them to keep from buckling onto the floor. She wanted to tell him she was sorry and scared, but the weight of her emotions and his crestfallen expression made her say, “I love Derrick. He loves me, too.”
Julian’s hands rose above the table and then dropped slack at his sides. He heard Jeannie starting to cry from the area of the sofa. He had to fight the urge to look over his shoulder for her. A tiny quake started in his knees. “Don’t tell me this.” He pushed back his chair, struggled to rise under the weight of the blow she’d delivered, opened the back door despite the cold, and stood facing the larger space and the bare oak tree. Wind smelling of winter blew in through the sagging screen. Jeannie was still weeping, his gut twisting.
She turned for her room.
“I promised your mother.” The tremor had risen into his throat muscles. “I promised her I’d take care of you.”
Willow spun back around. “What did you promise me? When do I become half as important?” Her shaking voice and his were a match. She hated that. “And just for the record, I didn’t promise her a thing. She didn’t stay to hear what I wanted.”
He charged back to the table. “You’re talking crazy. She didn’t choose to die.” He swung his arm, knocking a wine bottle to the floor. The green glass rolled and spun, blood red wine squirted out in tongues.
“Papa!”
“No!” He shouted the word without looking at her, his hand in the air as if to keep her from getting close. “I’ll have nothing to do with you getting married. Nothing. Get out of here.”
“To where? Tory said I could live there.” As she turned for her room, she saw the color leave his face.
21
Going into Father Steinhouse’s office with Derrick never got easier for me or for Willow. We both needed to gather our will to step inside those walls. I fortified myself by repeating over and over my resolve to stay at Willow’s side, to both companion and learn. Still, going into the private chamber of a priest caused dread. Father Steinhouse never touched a child inappropriately. He thought priests guilty of the crime should be tarred, feathered, and imprisoned. Yet, he abused little girls every day in his belief that they were lesser than. Let me repeat that one’s beliefs are always evident, are always communicated. His too, were suffused in his person: the way he stood, sat, spoke, and looked at her. It was in his clothes, the fat of his hands, the slack of his tired chin.
Willow sat on a chair before the priest’s desk, her plaid school skirt pushed down over her knees, Derrick in a chair at her side. The walls held as many as twenty crucifixion pictures, all in sorrowful colors: charcoals, burnt umbers, deep-night navies, and shades of blood-red scarlets. She considered the paintings, fitting them into three categories: reprints of the old masters but on cheap paper and with cheap frames; oils by fair-enough artists, most better than her own work and likely purchased at starving artists’ sales, and there were several that looked like paint-by-number kits done by children or palsied parishioners.
“Willow,” Farther Steinhouse drew he
r attention back to his instruction, “you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said in the last thirty minutes.” His elbows were wide on his shiny desktop, and his short, round fingers steepled beneath his chins. “Did you hear that you must make a confession before Saturday? I won’t perform the ceremony, otherwise.”
She wanted to like him, even thank him; he was the shepherd taking them to the altar. He’d been the loudest voice in favor of their marriage, and she believed marrying Derrick was her only chance of having the future and family she wanted. She accepted her guilt, knew she’d been so sick for love that even Derrick’s need for sex had been an acceptable substitute. What she objected to was Father Steinhouse’s insistence that she feel shame and repentant before him. As if the evil thing about her pregnancy was that she usurped church authority. She had sex, used her body as though it were hers, before a priest gave his permission.
Derrick nudged her, wanting the session over as much as she. “I’ve already made my confession.” Agree already, his eyes said.
She told her head to nod, yes. What was the big deal? Throughout her years at Our Lady of Supplication, the nuns routinely ushered all the students, class by class, to confession in September—as if to launder them of their sinful summers—and again at the onset of Advent and Lent, and before saints’ days and Holy Days. She’d confessed a hundred times, always trembling at the gravity of her big sin, the one that never went away, the one she whispered every time she entered his black-draped, coffin-sized confessional: “I told a lie about Papa.” However, being commanded to confess now felt different. Was it forgiveness he wanted for her or to see her on her knees?
The priest’s eyes were narrow. “It’s mandatory before the sacrament of marriage.”
“Yes, Father,” Willow managed. In the charged air, she shifted in her chair, straightened her skirt again, and looked sidelong at Derrick for support. Nothing. He had already confessed and was absolved. He was now blameless. She wondered too, just how much blame Father Steinhouse thought was Derrick’s. Fifty percent or a number far lower?
The tired priest turned to Derrick. “You’re enrolled in public school? The coaches here will miss you, but you understand we have rules.”
“I start next Monday. I’ve already met with the basketball coach.”
Father Steinhouse smiled at Derrick, and his expression fell again on Willow. “We expect our standards to be upheld at Our Lady of Supplication,” he paused for five, maybe six seconds, “especially by our financially-challenged students.”
I wanted to knock the man’s hands out from beneath his chin, to have his head slam down onto the desktop, and do a John-the-Baptist roll.
Willow felt herself beginning to sway. She widened her hands off her lap and onto the sides of her seat and held on. She should have known all along, but had somehow managed to keep the secret from her heart. She was a charity case. Other families, like Derrick’s, and of course, Mary Wolfe’s, paid a higher tuition to cover her costs. Shame burned her cheeks, and her knees began vibrating, trembling the hem of her skirt. The counseling session felt twisted up with things going clear back to Sister Dominic Agnes and being “disfigured,” the black paper chain that still snaked around the first-grade classroom, Mary destroying the Pandora painting out of some rage Willow didn’t understand. The incidents seemed like puzzle pieces she couldn’t quite fit together, and yet she knew they were somehow connected. If only she turned them at just the right angle, this into that, or if she had a few more pieces.
She stood. “I have to go. I promised Papa I’d be home early.”
Father Steinhouse rose and leaned forward on his desk. “If you won’t make your confession, I can’t perform the ceremony.”
Willow had her arms in her coat sleeves. “I’ve made my confession. I didn’t want to say so because I was too embarrassed, but I went to someone else.” It wasn’t a lie. She’d told Papa. He was a priest to her, and her condition hurt him as much as anyone. “I wish I could tell you where I went, but I know you guys take oaths and can’t discuss confessions. If I make another confession,” she shrugged, “wouldn’t that be like calling the absolution he gave me a lie?”
As she walked toward the door, I cheered her. At the same time, I wanted to linger, hoping the priest would realize how even his unspoken beliefs about females, the church doctrine he greedily accepted as his own, bled through and bruised Willow. I ached to discuss with him the church’s insistence that females confess their angers, doubts, and fears (mostly church inflicted) to males. How different might the world be if through the centuries males were required to confess their deeds to women: their wars, genocides, and the perpetrated lies about females in their “good” books. Suppose they had to confess their rapes and acts of incest to women, and women meted out the punishments? On what strange planet did sinners only confess to their equally-guilty cronies?
My war was not with all males. There was always Thomas to remember, beautiful and gentle, and every inch male. A man who could pull me close and without hesitancy whisper, “I’m sorry.” A man who could carry stones up a ladder for a chimney, heft a massive wooden yoke over the shoulders of a pair of oxen, kill a rattle snake with a rock in his hand, and weep over the genocide of the American Indian. A man who thought a woman’s cleaved fingers important enough to document and an infant girl half way around the world worth risking his life to rescue.
Willow hesitated at the door. She felt how wrong the session had gone, again. She did want to marry Derrick, and though she couldn’t stay a moment longer, she didn’t want to leave things so negative. “Angels are coming, tonight,” she said.
Father Steinhouse stared at her.
They left the rectory and drove back to Willow’s house. Trees with leafless branches clawed against a gray, cold sky. Derrick pulled to the curb, his bloodless hands gripping the steering wheel. Willow pressed herself against the opposite door, feeling claustrophobic and depressed.
He broke the silence. “Did you tell your dad I’m moving in?”
She hated the thought. What would Derrick think of Papa’s silences, the newspapers, the wine bottles, and how her house unraveled day by day like a rag in the wind? His house looked beautiful, at least from the outside, but Mary lived next door. “I will,” she said.
“You were just great in Steinhouse’s office. Really great, Willow.”
“Because I didn’t ass-kiss? I’ll ask Papa if we can stay here.”
“Tell him we are. I’m doing you a favor. You couldn’t stand listening to my mother all day, and my old man… forget it. I’ll be gone a lot with ball practice and working weekends, you might as well be home.”
She buttoned her coat for the walk to the house. He didn’t intend to spend any more time with her than he had to. Marriage wasn’t going to cramp his style. “On my nineteenth birthday,” she said, “I start getting five hundred dollars a month from my grandmother’s estate.”
“Five hundred? Every month?”
“Mémé left it for college. I think.” She was seized by the thought that Mémé, with her visionary dreams, may have seen this coming. She whispered as if to Mémé’s ghost, “I’ll start school again as soon as the baby is born.”
They hadn’t said “hello” or “good-bye” in days—the niceties felt too taxing on top of their stress. She stepped out of the car and walked up the sidewalk toward the house Derrick had not yet entered.
Papa sat in the dark at one end of the sofa. The television was on, but soundless, and Willow doubted if he saw the moving images. She tried to tiptoe past him.
“How was your meeting?”
She still felt sick from the pall Father Steinhouse had thrown over her. She swallowed, hugging herself through the bulk of her coat. “Could we live here? Just until my birthday?”
He stood, taking the few steps to her. He’d cut his graying hair, making him look years younger. His face was still thin and gaunt and riddled with stress, but his eyes were clear, not glassy with alcohol. In them, she s
aw sorrow and something else. Was it guilt? Not anger?
She turned to the newspapers stacked along the wall. Why was he blaming himself for what she’d done? She couldn’t carry that weight, too. Couldn’t he see? “Where’s your wine?” She hated herself, but how dare he be sober now? What about all the years he hadn’t been? She wanted to scream, to bust up the room. “Why aren’t you drinking now?”
He lifted his hands and spread his fingers in a gesture meant to calm her. “We’ll be all right,” he said. His voice even, as if he’d not heard her anger. “You and I. The baby. But marrying that boy?”
She took quick steps back. “His name is Derrick. You can’t stop us.” Did he know that by hurting him she tracked a razor over her own wrists? “I’m expelled from school too, just so you know.”
His eyes darkened. “You’re quitting school? No. Wait, come here.”
She couldn’t step into the arms he opened, couldn’t let him hold her. She’d shatter. “Remember, you want nothing to do with my wedding, which is fine with me.” She turned and hurried down the hall for her room.
Her paintbrushes and pencils lay still, and the Pandora canvas she scrapped clean weeks earlier looked as sickly and nauseated as she felt. She paced back and forth before the ducks on her wall and White Mask. Sobbed. Why was she hurting Papa and unable to stop herself? She loved him. How many aspirin would it take to go to sleep and never wake up? How easy, easy, easy.
But not for Papa. He didn’t deserve that.
The hours trudged on as she paced and flopped across Mother Moses. Was Papa right? Could he help her raise a child? Ha! He hadn’t raised his own child. Her baby’s life would be different.
In his room, Julian also paced, then opened the top drawer of Jeannie’s dressing table and pushed in her things: tubes of lipstick withered to kidney beans, her hairbrush and hand mirror, and the perfume bottles, the contents evaporated to dry and smoky rings. He closed the drawer and saw the tracks on top where his fingers had dragged through the dust. He pulled the thumbtack from her last picture and stared at the image briefly before he opened the top drawer again and placed it inside, facedown.
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