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lost his faith, when in fact God seemed more abundant to him in the Regina Cleri home than any place he had been before. God was in the folds of his bathrobe, the ache of his knees. God saturated the hallways in the form of a pale electrical light. But now that his heart had become so shiftless and unreliable, now that he should be sens-ing the afterlife like a sweet scent drifting in from the garden, he had started to wonder if there was in fact no afterlife at all. Look at all these true believers who wanted only to live, look at himself, clinging onto this life like a squirrel scrambling up the icy pitch of a roof.

In suggesting that there may be nothing ahead of them, he in no way meant to diminish the future; instead, Father Sullivan hoped to elevate the present to a state of the divine. It seemed from this moment of repose that God may well have been life itself. God may have been the baseball games, the beautiful cigarette he smoked alone after checking to see that all the bats had been put back behind the closet door. God could have been the masses in which he told people how best to prepare for the glorious life everlasting, the one they couldn’t see as opposed to the one they were living at that exact moment in the pews of the church hall, washed over in the stained glass light. How wrongheaded it seemed now to think that the thrill of heartbeat and breath were just a stepping stone to something greater. What could be greater than the armchair, the window, the snow? Life itself had been holy. We had been brought forth from nothing to see the face of God and in his life Father Sullivan had seen it miraculously for eighty-eight years. Why wouldn’t it stand to reason that this had been the whole of existence and now he would retreat back to the nothingness he had come from in order to let someone else have their turn at the view? This was not the work-ings of disbelief. It was instead a final, joyful realization of all he had been given. It would be possible to overlook just about anything if a n n p a t c h e t t ❆ 132

you were trained to constantly strain forward to see the power and the glory that was waiting up ahead. What a shame it would have been to miss God while waiting for Him.

The old priest shifted in his chair and pulled the blanket up high on his shoulders. All around him Boston was waking up now. He could see the lights outside his window switching on one by one. He thought of all of those people in their beds burrowing down for a last minute of sleep and his damaged heart went out to them. Small wonder people longed to stay alive, that they would line up in his hallway on the misinformation that he could save them. Father Sullivan did not believe he had been a part of any sort of miracle, but wouldn’t that be a glorious transition to make so late in the day, to go from the business of saving people’s souls to the business of saving their lives? If he was right and God showed His face to the living then it was the surgeons to whom we should offer our novenas.

Let us pray to the ones who keep our tired hearts pumping.

More than anything, Father Sullivan wished he could say all this to Teddy, but he worried that suggesting an absence of afterlife would be like killing off poor Bernadette all over again. After so much time he could hardly suggest that he no longer believed his mother was waiting for him. If he could have wished a second life for anyone it would be for his favorite niece. She would have made such good use of eternity. At her funeral Father Sullivan had promised the congregation that they would all be together again, as if Bernadette had simply run ahead to secure good seats for her family. Now when he should have had thoughts of joining her, he found his own words to be foolish and hollow.
We always said that
Bernadette was the lucky one,
he had told the weeping crowd,
and
now we know it is her greatest luck to be sheltered in the arms of
Christ.
But was that even true? Bernadette’s luck had been her life, her love for her husband and her sons, the joy in her home. Her ex-r u n

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istence did not add up to a handful of tests meant to win her place in heaven.

Father Sullivan had come to these conclusions too late to put them to any good use. His health would never be such that he would once again clip a lavalier microphone onto the front of his vestments and expound on his theories of the day. But Teddy wasn’t even at the start of his vocation yet. If he did become a priest he would have his entire life to direct people away from some incalculable un-known in favor of valuing the lives they led. Father Sullivan smiled to think of how much he sounded like Bernard Doyle, looking to a son for the fulfillment of his dreams. Maybe that was the defi nition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

Had he wasted his life, or, far worse, wasted the lives of the people who had entrusted him with their faith? Father Sullivan shifted in his chair, trying to find a better angle to breathe. No good would come of exhausting himself, not when the sick would be at his door early. If he couldn’t heal them he could at least show them the courtesy of his full attention. He tried hard to clear his mind and watch the snow in peace until finally he closed his eyes against the city of Boston and fell asleep in his chair. It was just before six in the morning, and when Sister Claire came in with his coffee, she put down the cup and went to the closet for his slippers. With his feet suddenly, inexplicably warm, he managed to rest more deeply than he had in weeks.

It was because he was soundly asleep that he could not say exactly when Teddy came into the room or what part of the story he had heard and what part he had been dreaming. He tried to make sense of the details in his mind but they were coming so quickly he was certain he had missed the beginning: another mother, someone other than Bernadette, a little girl, an accident, Tip and Doyle, even a n n p a t c h e t t ❆ 134

Sullivan was there. No one had seen Sullivan in years. Father Sullivan nodded, hoping to jar the sleep from his brain, while Teddy stood nervously by the door and told everything he knew: an ambulance, a hospital, some talk of kidnapping. He couldn’t find a place to grab hold of the thread and so nothing in the story made sense to him. He could only think that he must have opened his eyes when Teddy came in and that Teddy must have understandably mistaken that gesture for his being awake. Now the boy paced in front of the door, now he stopped to close it as if someone might be listening.

He left a slushy gray trail of ice behind him on the floor, the fallout from the tread of his boots. Teddy could not get the words out fast enough. Had he done something or had something been done to him?

When fi nally there seemed to be a break, a breathing spot in the narrative, Father Sullivan picked a random question from the hundreds he could have asked. “This woman was just standing in the snow with her child?”

Teddy nodded and he sank down onto the unmade bed. “None of us saw them. We’ve never seen them.”

“And she pushed Tip into a car.”

“No, no. Away. She pushed him away to save him and she got hit herself.”

Father Sullivan shifted his position in his chair. As was so often the case he was having a hard time finding his breath upon waking.

The tide in his chest seemed to fill up his rib cage. He knew it would be easier once he changed positions but the story distracted him.

“Was Sullivan with you?”

“Sullivan was at home. He was there when we got back from the hospital.” Teddy was taking short, shallow breaths like his uncle. He pulled off his coat and his gloves. He crossed his arms over his chest and stuffed his hands into his armpits.

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“No, was Sullivan with you this morning at the hospital?” Teddy nodded. “I tried to get him to come here with me. I wanted him to see you but he said he was tired. He’s just come back from Africa. He said he needed to go home and get some rest.”

“You might think about doing the same thing.”

“It’s all straight in my mind and then it flies to pieces.”

“It would be too much for anyone.” He took the pillow that was under his left arm and forced it behind his back. He closed his eyes and tried to inhale through his nose. For a moment he saw himself running, not as the priest but as one of the boys in the pack, pale and slight as a stalk of wheat.

Teddy looked out the window. “What I don’t understand is how I never saw them.”

“It was snowing very hard.”

“How I
never
saw them. I think she’s been standing there since I was a baby. She was there when my mother was alive.”

“There must be people everywhere we never see.” Father Sullivan wanted to touch the boy, to put a hand on his wrist, but he was too far away.

“You would have seen her,” Teddy said dully, his eyes turned down to the snowplow that was digging out the front drive of the Regina Cleri home. He was quiet for a long time and Father Sullivan thought that he was going to help him up and into bed but then Teddy made his point. “Maybe you could come to the hospital and meet her.”

“The mother?” There was so little air in the room that he had to work to keep from gasping.

“I need you to.” They both realized simultaneously that this was the reason he was there, though honestly it had not occurred to Teddy before. It was the purpose of the story. “I think if you met her a n n p a t c h e t t ❆ 136

you could help me understand what’s happened. And since she’s in the hospital, since she was hurt so badly, I thought you might want to pray for her.”

Teddy looked at Father Sullivan and in that look was the hope of all the people who lined the hallway to his room every day, the people who could be lining up right now for all he knew. “Teddy, I didn’t make those women better.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Of course I know that. Do you think that from time to time I just become some sort of unwitting conduit for God?” Teddy never answered quickly when the answer was important.

That’s why his father thought he wasn’t as smart as his brother, that’s why the teachers discounted him. But Father Sullivan always told him there wasn’t any fault in thinking something through. “There are things that go on that none of us can understand, that even you can’t understand. I want you to come and see her. Maybe you can’t make her better but you could come and see. You know I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to.”

“It would be very difficult for me to go to the hospital.” It would be difficult to get out of the chair and into the bed, and that was the only thing he wanted.

“But you do go to the hospital. It’s the one place you go. You’d come if I was the one who’d been hit by a car.” And then Teddy had him because it was true: he would come.

He would walk there in the snow for Teddy even if it was all just a gesture in which his sacrifice would be to die trying. His students had cycled through his life every year, his parishioners came and went, all of the nieces and nephews he loved, his own brothers and sisters, they meant nothing to him compared to this boy. Everyone changed, the Church changed and the city changed, God changed, but Teddy was constant. Sometimes Father Sullivan would think, I r u n

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could have adopted this boy. Had I found him first he could have been my son. “Help me back to bed,” he said to Teddy.

Teddy leaned forward and Father Sullivan put his hands around Teddy’s neck and Teddy put his hands beneath his arms. He lifted him up so that his feet barely brushed the floor. As soon as he was standing straight Father Sullivan felt the air pouring back into his lungs and he yawned, trying to pull it in faster. “Let me just stand here for a minute.”

Teddy did not take his hands away. His uncle had once been a great man, straight and tall. He had swung Teddy up on his shoulders when he was a little boy. He walked out of mass with Teddy on his shoulders, stood at the front door of the church shaking hands with the people coming out, and there was Teddy, high enough to touch the arch of the door which was higher than any man was ever tall. Father Sullivan was not a young man then but the light of Teddy’s youth poured down on him and everyone who saw them felt it. It was not so different now, only less metaphorical: the young man held him up.

“I’m asking for too much,” Teddy said.

“I’m fine. I’m just catching my breath.”

“If anybody else told you you had to go out in this weather I’d tell them they’d have to get through me fi rst.”

“Well that makes it easier then. You won’t have to get through yourself.” Father Sullivan breathed again. He moved his hands to Teddy’s shoulders and took his weight onto his feet. “I’m better now. I can lie down.”

He felt stronger when he was in bed, even though the head of his bed sat nearly upright. As his strength came back to him he thought that maybe a small trip out would be fine. He shouldn’t be so quick to embrace his limitations. He certainly managed to go to the hospital for himself from time to time. He didn’t see how it could be so different to go for someone else.

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“Tell me she’s in Mass. General.” Mass. General he could practically see from his window.

“Mount Auburn.”

“Ah,” the priest said.

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

Father Sullivan smiled and took Teddy’s hand. “As long as you don’t expect that I can mend her bones and make her walk, we should be fine. You won’t do that, will you?”

“I won’t,” he said, and he tried to make it true in his heart.

“I would certainly want to meet the person who brought you into the world. I’d like to see those brothers of yours, too. Maybe if I could get out of this place they would meet me.”

“I will promise you that.” Teddy felt better having something that he could offer up in return. It was not unlike the sensation his uncle had, a sudden subsiding of pressure in his chest. He felt he would be able to make sense of things once Uncle Sullivan was there with him.

There was a light tapping on the door and before anyone spoke Sister Claire put her head in the room. “Father, are you up now?

There are people waiting to see you.”