Faith (11 page)

A
rt had never, in my memory, taken a vacation. Now the empty weeks yawned before him. There were no Masses to say, no council meetings to attend, no catechism classes to visit.

A half mile from Dover Court he had spotted a public library. He drove there early Monday morning and sat poring over the
Globe.
From the first page of the Metro section his own face—many years younger—stared back.
SOUTH SHORE PRIEST OUSTED, ACCUSED OF ABUSE
.

The library was virtually empty at that hour. A young librarian sat at the reference desk, drinking her coffee. She, too, was reading the
Globe.

He spent that morning at a local Honda dealership having a timing belt replaced. In the afternoon he parked near Kath Conlon's apartment in Dunster. He watched Aidan step out of the school bus and cross the street. He drove away when the boy was safely inside the door.

His datebook lists, for that week, a doctor's appointment, a dinner with Clem Fleury, a reminder to send Clare Boyle a birthday card. In his jacket pocket I found a dated ticket stub from Symphony Hall. For years Art had held season tickets, his Christmas present from Ma.

And maybe it was that night at the symphony, that guilty reminder of her love for him, that led Art finally to her door. That conversation, so painful to both of them, is difficult to imagine. Even now Ma refuses to discuss it.

By then I hadn't heard from Art in ten days. I booked a flight and arranged a substitute to cover my classes. To Gail Hunter I offered no specifics. I simply told her that I had a family emergency in Boston.

T
wilight was falling as my plane landed at Logan. I watched the shadows gather as the jet roared over Charlestown Navy Yard, the dark, orderly streets of Southie. Headlights glittered on the expressway, an endless stream of red taillights. The workday had ended, and all of Boston was sitting in traffic. Everyone was trying to get home.

The terminal was crowded at that hour, business travelers boarding the shuttles to New York and Washington, tired men in unfresh white shirts. I followed the signs to baggage claim. In past years one brother or the other would have met me at the gate, but new regulations had put an end to such welcomes.

Mike was waiting at the curb in a huge Cadillac Escalade, its chrome gleaming. He had always been meticulous about his cars. “Sorry I'm late. Wicked traffic.” His tie was loose, his chinos rumpled, as though he'd worked a long day.

“You look good,” I told him. His blond hair was cut close, his face pink and unlined. He looked younger than he had in his twenties, when he'd worked the night shift and spent half his life in bars. Mike is built like a college athlete; at thirty-six he seemed to be still growing, taller and broader each time we met.

He gave my shoulder a rough squeeze, as close as we would come to an embrace. Four years ago, at Gram's funeral, we had hugged briefly, awkwardly; it had seemed the correct thing to do. Now, with no older relatives present, such a gesture was out of the question. “Don't be retarded,” one of us would have said, as we had so often in childhood. Then, as now, affection between siblings was
retahded
or
queah.

We rode in silence, a slow merge onto the highway. The radio was tuned to an AM station, a voice I recognized from hundreds of Sox games.

“How's Ma?” I asked.

“How do you think? She's ashamed to leave the house.” Mike glanced in the rearview mirror, waved the other driver on.

“And Dad?”

“He can't remember what he had for breakfast. In other words, same old.” He grinned slyly. “They'll be glad to see you still breathing, Mrs. Morrison and the rest. After all that chemo.”

I touched my hair, now long enough for a ponytail. Four years ago I'd shown up with a buzz cut. At Gram's funeral I'd been watched nervously. The neighbors had inquired after my health in hushed tones.
I have good days and bad days
, I told them somberly, and out the corner of my eye I saw Mike fall out laughing. The truth—that I'd lopped off my long hair for practical reasons, a summer of backpacking in Vietnam—would have seemed, on Teare Street, less credible. Who went to Vietnam on purpose?

“Fuck off,” I said. “And anyway, they'll have enough to whisper about besides my shameful haircut. Have you talked to Art?”

“No.”

A stony silence. I waited.

“Sorry, She. I got nothing else to say.”

I
T WAS
full dark when we reached Grantham. Mike turned off Lisbon Ave. onto Teare Street. At the end of the block, in the Pawlowskis' front lawn, stood a knee-high Blessed Virgin framed in a cement archway. Years ago, every yard had had an identical statue, cast from the same mold. As kids we'd had a name for it,
Mary on the half shell
: the Virgin served up in her own neat container, like a littleneck clam.

At the front door I hesitated, my finger hovering over the bell.

“Don't be retarded.” Mike threw open the door. “Ma! Sheila's here.”

The smell of the house hit me like vertigo: fried potatoes and onions, underneath it the clean, caustic odor of bleach. The parlor was dark and close, lit only by the television: the Sox were down, top of the fourth. One wall was covered with framed photographs. The Altar, Mike called it: a dozen Kodak moments Ma had chosen, plus a framed portrait of President Kennedy. As a child I'd assumed the man was a dead relative. Square-jawed and blue-eyed, he could easily pass for a McGann.

Mike put down my bag and kicked off his loafers, set them on the plastic runner. I bent to unlace my boots. It had been the rule for as long as I could remember. I could still hear Ma's voice, rising slightly on the last word:
No shoes in the
house
.

“We fed her this evening,” Mike whispered. “She won't bite.”

In the kitchen Ma was filling the kettle. On the table was her knitting basket and the
Grantham Tribune
, open to the obituaries—
the Irish sports page
, my father says
.

“Hi, Ma.”

“Hello yourself.” Her mouth was freshly lipsticked, Chinese Red; her hair dyed the jet black of her youth. She looked older than the last time I'd seen her—she was at one of those peculiar junctures when four years makes a visible difference—but ours is apparently a face that ages well. In her late sixties she was a handsome woman and knew it, though she had long pretended indifference to such things.

I could sense her stiffening, but kissed her anyway, lightly, on the cheek. We have not been affectionate with each other in many years. As a little girl I delighted in sidling up close to her in church, slipping my small hand into the pocket of her coat. Now we are the same size exactly, our shoulders perfectly congruent, as though we were cast from the same mold. She had been to the hairdresser's. The smell still clung to her, perm solution and Aqua Net.

Mike opened the refrigerator and stared inside.

“There's shepherd's pie yet. It's still warm.” Ma took a casserole from the oven, seeming grateful for this bit of kitchen business. She is the sort of person who needs something to do. “Your wife will have your head for spoiling your dinner. Though why anyone holds dinner until eight o'clock, I'll never know.”

“Ma, don't start.”

“I'm just saying.”

I watched them in wonderment: Ma serving the shepherd's pie, Mike poking around in the refrigerator as though he'd never left. In a way, he hadn't. Except for three years in the Navy, he'd never lived more than ten miles from this house.

“The flight was fine,” I said, though nobody had asked. “Ahead of schedule, for once.”

“I don't know how you can get on a plane, after everything,” Ma said. “I'll never fly again, I swear to God.”

You never flew before, I thought, but there was no point in saying it. No point in defending my own callousness, my apparent lack of feeling for the victims of terrorism, in getting on a plane.

Ma busied herself pouring the tea. “It's our own fault for letting those people into this country.”

Those people—
the faceless masses of nonwhite, non-Catholic, non-Irish. I kept quiet.

“Your father's downstairs watching the ballgame.”

“The TV is on in the parlor,” I pointed out.

“He likes to go back and forth. Don't ask me why.” Ma opened the door that led down to the basement. “Ted! Mike and Sheila are here.” She sat, offered milk and sugar for the tea.

“I thought Art would be here,” I said.

A shadow passed over her face. “The Archdiocese got him an apartment.”

“They kicked him out of the rectory?” I glanced over at Mike, hunched over his plate, impassively chewing. “Can they do that?”

“It's church property,” he said.

“But he's lived there—what, ten years?”

Mike kept his eyes on his plate.

“It happened so fast,” said Ma. “He doesn't know what hit him.”

A long silence. Finally Mike rose.

“I have to go. Abby will have dinner waiting. I might have to run around the block to work up an appetite.” He took his plate to the sink. “Tell Dad I'll see him tomorrow.”

I watched him go. Without him, the energy in the room seemed to shift. Men did this: unconsciously perhaps, they drew the eye, directed all attention toward themselves. Was it just their size, their deep voices? I noticed that my chair, and my mother's, were tilted forty-five degrees to face Mike's.

“What's his problem?” I said.

“It's an uncomfortable situation. His own brother. He doesn't like to talk about it.” Ma rose to wash Mike's plate. I watched her lips move, counting to twelve. It was the way she'd taught me to wash dishes: eight strokes to the top of the plate, four strokes to the bottom. It was a fixation of hers, nearly a sickness. She couldn't allow a single dirty dish—a saucer, even a fork—to remain in the sink.

“It's a disgrace. One minute that girl is on the phone to Lake Street, telling tales. The next day Arthur is out on the street.”

“What girl? Who is she?” I asked, though of course I already knew.

“A Conlon from Dorchester. Her mother was Arthur's housekeeper, a Kelly from St. Brendan's. Her father I don't know.”

“Art mentioned them,” I said carefully. “Fran was concerned about her grandson, so Art spent some time with him.” This was how Art had framed it to me, at least at first: the whole business had been a favor to Fran. “Ma, what is she saying? What exactly is he supposed to have done?”

“You'll have to ask Arthur about that.”

“I'd love to, but I can't reach him. I haven't heard a peep out of him. Ma, why couldn't he tell me himself?”

“He's ashamed, of course. And you're so far away.”

“Not now, Ma. Now I'm right here.”

Another silence.

“What did he tell you about the boy?”

Her mouth tightened. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Just what I said, Ma. Jesus. Did Art talk about him?”

“I don't like what you're suggesting.”

“Oh, for God's sake. I'm not suggesting anything. Forget I asked.” I rose. “I want to go see him in the morning. Okay if I borrow Dad's truck?”

“Sure, sure. He won't know the difference.” She eyed me uncertainly. “Have you had dinner?”

“I grabbed something at the airport.”

“All right, then.” She blinked rapidly. “About that boy.”

I waited.

“Arthur saw him quite a bit. The mother's car kept breaking down. Every weekend it seemed he was driving them somewhere. Shopping, or taking the boy to the movies.” Ma hesitated. “At the time I didn't think anything of it, except that she was taking advantage of his kindness. It never occurred to me that it would look bad for him.” She wiped down the faucet, dried it with a towel, wrung out the dishcloth. “Go down and say hello to your father. Keep him entertained while I have my bath.” Again she went to the basement door. “Ted, Sheila's coming.”

The basement was my father's domain; to my knowledge Ma never ventured there, and for Dad this was surely part of its appeal. Ten years ago he'd laid the carpet and paneling, installed a suspended ceiling, bought a massive television. A bar ran along one end, good maple. He'd taken his time sanding and staining, to show off the grain of the wood. For years he'd described his plans in detail—usually with a glass in hand, held to his heart.
One day I'll have a proper bar in the house. Oak, I think, or maybe maple.
The day after he retired from Raytheon, he'd driven to the lumber yard.

Now he lay stretched out on his recliner, wearing work pants and a flannel shirt.

“Well, it's Sheila!” He got nimbly to his feet, and as always I was startled by how young he looked. His skin had lost its old yellowish cast; his pale blue eyes were lively as a child's. He is shorter than Mike, but otherwise the resemblance is startling. Dad is Mike in miniature.

He embraced me firmly. “Such a good girl.”

I sat on the old sofa.

“What brings you to our house?” he asked, beaming.

“Art, Daddy. I've come to see Art.”

“Oh, very good.” He nodded energetically. “Yes, he'll be glad to see you.”

I watched him intently. “Have you seen him? How
is
Art?”

“Oh, very well. Fit as a fiddle, I'd say. He sends his love.” He turned his attention to the TV screen. It seemed too large for the room, too bright, too close. “The Sox can't get a hit. Not for love nor money.”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You're a good girl,” he said, his eyes not leaving the screen.

Upstairs the house was quiet. Water rushing through the pipes, Ma running her bath. In an hour she'd be in bed, knitting in front of the TV—my parents have a set in every room—and I could rattle around the house in peace.

In the parlor I switched off the television. The divan was thirty years old, its scratchy brocade still covered with clear plastic, protected for some crisp, stain-free future. It seemed a bit optimistic, not a quality I have ever associated with my mother. More likely, the years had made the plastic invisible.

I stood a moment staring at the Altar. Twelve shots of the McGann family, the highlight reel: weddings and baptisms and First Communions, parochial school graduations, Art's ordination at St. John's. A photo of my father, arm in arm with his brother Leo. They stood on the deck of Leo's boat, the
Sweet Life
, each holding a can of beer. Except for the JFK portrait, it was the only photo not taken in a church.

I took my bag upstairs. My childhood room is ten feet square; it seemed roughly the size of Mike's Escalade. As a teenager I'd covered the walls with posters—Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen. Now the walls were painted pink, a little girl's bedroom.
Your father's idea
, Ma had explained. Lace curtains covered the only window, lest any sunshine enter. Lace doilies lay on every flat surface, a slippery nuisance. Each time I came to visit, I gathered them up and stuffed them in a drawer.

I stretched out on the bed with my cell phone. “Hey,” I said when Danny Yeager answered.

“You made it.”

“It was a breeze. The guy next to me kept buying me drinks.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“Very. He was my dad's age, at least. Viagra territory for sure.” I felt my eyes fill, and I realized that this was the reason I'd called.