Faith (18 page)

Tell Ryan Mommy is sick
, she said.
I don't care about the others. Tell them whatever you want.

She had ruined the day for him, for everyone. Mike hadn't even been watching when Ryan knelt to receive the Host. His thoughts were elsewhere—across town in Dunster, where he had left a piece of himself. While his son received the sacrament, Mike's thoughts were in Kath Conlon's bedroom.

Five weeks—he'd counted—had passed since that night. He hadn't seen her again, though for days afterward it was all he could think of: the girl in his arms, their chests pressing, for a brief moment her small, firm ass in his hands. But he hadn't gone back, not even to show Twelve Fenno, though two potential buyers had called about the house. His original plan—to question the boy, to determine Art's guilt or innocence—had not been abandoned, just deferred. The problem was Kath Conlon, his hunger to see her. He could question Aidan later, he reasoned—at some point in the future, when his hunger had abated. But more than a month had passed, and he was still starved.

“There you are.” The screen door opened and his uncle Leo appeared, with two cold bottles. “I brought reinforcements.”

They watched as Julie Devine spiked the ball over the net, her team erupting in childish shrieks.

“Jesus,” Leo said, covering his ears. “I should have brought the whole case.”

“Thanks.” Mike pulled up a webbed lawn chair. “Have a seat.” Leo, he realized, was the only relative he could bear seeing, the only one who wouldn't ask questions. When it came to First Communions, or family gossip, or marital discord, Leo simply didn't give a shit.

He sat heavily in the flimsy chair. “Thought I'd find your dad out here with you.”

“He's in the basement,” Mike said. It pained him to think of it, the old man hiding out from the crowd, his home invaded by people who'd become strangers, dozens of faces he ought to recognize but didn't. Ted was yet another victim of Abby's selfishness. Had that even crossed her mind?

“I was just down there,” said Leo. “The game was on, but no Ted.”

“He could be upstairs, I guess. In one of the bedrooms.” Mike rose, an uneasy feeling in his stomach. “Let's have a look.”

He led the way through the crowded kitchen, brushing off hugs and kisses and surprised greetings. (“Well, it's Michael! We've been looking all over for you.”) Leo followed behind him like hired muscle. They cut through the living room, where the Devine uncles sat staring at the television (“Have a seat, Mikey! Sox are up, top of the third.”), and climbed the stairs.

Both bedrooms were empty.

“I already checked his room,” said Leo. “Thought maybe he was taking a nap.”

Mike hurried down the stairs. He spotted Ma on her way to the kitchen. “Have you seen Dad?” he asked in a low voice.

“He's not downstairs?”

“Nope. We checked the bedrooms. He must have wandered off.” Mike gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I'm going to take a walk down the street.”

“I'll come with you.” Leo wheezing slightly, the emphysema he wouldn't admit to.

“Nah, you have a seat. Check the score for me.” Mike grabbed his jacket and headed out the front door, cursing Abby with every step.

A
S I
stood blushing and stammering, making awkward small talk with Brian McGann, a second car had pulled into Teare Street and parked behind Leo's Cadillac. The driver sat a long moment before getting out of the car. He carried a bouquet of flowers, a stuffed bear for Ryan, a strawberry tart in a white bakery box. In years past he would have come empty-handed, as priests did, as though their mere presence were a gift.

Art stood a moment on the sidewalk, listening to seagulls, a siren in the distance, children's squeals from the backyard. A storm was coming, and he had no umbrella; but no matter. He would head straight for the kitchen to greet Ma, his sole reason for coming, the one person who wanted him here. He would hand over his gifts, wish her a happy Mother's Day, and be back in his car before the rain started.

A voice called to him from across the street. “Hello, Father!”

He turned. A white-haired man waved from the Pawlowskis' front porch.

“Hi, Bern,” he called. Then he stopped a moment, looked again. The man on the porch wasn't Bernie Pawlowski, but Ted McGann.

“Ted?” he called, crossing the street. “What are you doing over there?”

“Lovely day, isn't it? I thought I'd enjoy the weather before the rain comes.” He eyed Art, his three odd packages. “Sit with me, Father.”

“Here?” Art glanced uncomfortably at the window overlooking the porch. The Pawlowskis' van, to his relief, was gone from its carport. “Why don't we go across the street and join the party?”

“It's a bit noisy for me,” Ted said. “I'm not one for a crowd.”

Art sat, wondering how much of the family Ted actually recognized. Were they all strangers to him now?

Ted nodded pleasantly. “What brings you to the neighborhood, Father?”

Art's hand went automatically to his throat. He hadn't worn his collar in weeks. Yet even without it, Ted remembered. The thought moved him nearly to tears.

“I came for the party,” Art said. “It's Mother's Day, and the boy's First Communion.” He patted the stuffed toy. “I brought this for him.”

Ted stared at him, frowning slightly. A flicker of something—confusion? insight?—crossed his face.

“The boy,” said Ted. “I've been meaning to talk with you about that, Father. What you're doing with that boy—it isn't right.”

Art stared at him, dumbfounded.

“You stay away from Arthur,” said Ted. “I mean it, Fergus. He's a good boy. It isn't right.”

T
HE RAIN
had come. I heard the first drops landing, halting, uncertain. Sitting on the vinyl-covered couch next to Dick Devine, I saw Mike come down the stairs into the living room, Leo behind him, red-faced and breathless. Mike spoke briefly to Ma, his hand on her shoulder. I felt a wash of alarm. You didn't touch Ma for no reason.

Something was very wrong.

I watched Mike leave through the front door, then waited a moment as all eyes returned to the screen. Pedro delivered a blistering pitch, to loud applause, and I slipped out through the front door.

Mike was standing on the sidewalk, hands on his hips, glaring at something across the street. Raindrops bounced off his broad shoulders: he was Superman deflecting bullets. I followed his gaze to the Pawlowskis' porch swing, where Dad was sitting. Beside him, holding a bouquet of flowers, stood our brother Art.

Mike crossed the street in a few steps, a loose athlete's jog. I ran after him.

“Mike, take it easy,” I said.

He bounded up the porch steps. “What are you doing here?” he said through his teeth.

Art extended his hand, as though offering the flowers. “Mike, I—”

“My kid's First Communion. What the fuck were you thinking? We've got a houseful of
kids
over there.”

“Ma asked me to come,” Art said softly. “I was just going to stay a minute. It's Mother's Day.”

Mike laid a hand on Ted's shoulder. “You okay, Dad?”

“Fine, fine,” said Dad, his eyes darting. “Don't blame Fergus. I've had a talk with him.”

Fergus.
It was a name I hadn't heard in years. Now I'd heard it twice in one day.

“Dad, come on,” I said, taking his hand.

Mike stared evenly at Art. “Give your flowers to Ma,” he said. “Then get the fuck out of here.” He turned and crossed the street to his Escalade, fumbling in his pocket for his keys.

“Where are you going?” I called after him.

“I've had enough.”

“You're leaving?”

“Take the boys home, will you?” Mike called over his shoulder. “Can you do that for me?” He got into the truck and slammed the door.

From the Pawlowskis' front yard, the Blessed Mother watched from her container, Mary on the Half Shell. Raindrops slipped down her face.

I
t was pouring by the time Mike arrived in Dunster. He paused at a stoplight and lowered the window. Rain hit the sidewalk, a thousand rubber bands snapping. At four in the afternoon, the sky was dark as dusk.

This is a terrible mistake, he thought. He understood it in a factual way, the way he knew baseball stats, the catechism he'd memorized. It was all just information, all equally irrelevant to him now.

He drove past houses, a gas station, a drugstore. Braking, shifting, signaling. He felt himself falling. Of course Kath Conlon might not be at home, or might have company: Mother's Day, her mom visiting. A boyfriend, even—the dirtbag in the Camaro. Aidan might have a playdate, neighborhood kids watching a video in the living room. Aidan himself might answer the door.

Perversely, these thoughts cheered him. He could still turn back. There was still hope for his marriage, his family, his future. Hope even for his soul.

Lightning, a clap of thunder. And when he turned the corner onto Fenno Street, Kath Conlon was sitting alone on her porch.

I
have heard two accounts of what happened next, what was said and what transpired between my brother and Kath Conlon. Their stories are remarkably congruent, differing in one particular only: the time elapsed between the rain-loud porch and Kath's bedroom, dim at that hour, its bed unmade, its bureau laden with female clutter, their clothing scattered across the bare floor. In one version the thing happened immediately, wordlessly. Both had been waiting for this, only this. That is Mike's account, and in his eyes, I am sure, it's perfectly true.

The basic facts Kath does not dispute, but her version is informed by events in her own life, which she explained to me later.

Of these events Mike knew nothing at all.

Take, for example, the morning of their first meeting, the Friday after Easter: Kath running late, struggling to get Aidan out the door. He is a slow-moving child, indecisive and pondering: if he finishes the Cocoa Puffs today, there will be only corn flakes tomorrow, and so on. That morning Kath's hurry has a nervous edge. She has an appointment with a man named Ron Shapiro at an office in downtown Boston. She has nothing decent to wear, even if she'd gone to the laundromat. (She hadn't.) She isn't sure what the right clothes would be, only that she isn't wearing them.

“Aidan, come on already!”

And when she nudges open the front door with her hip, her hands full with the trash and recycling, a strange man is standing on the sidewalk. Out of nowhere he appears and relieves her of her burdens, deposits them effortlessly at the curb. She registers, in order, that he is large, polite and well dressed: white shirt, striped tie, nice shoes. But his hair is very short, like a cop's or a soldier's, and this is an immediate turnoff. After Jack Strecker military men do not impress her, and cops have caused her nothing but grief. So, no cops for her. No thanks.

Her life is complicated enough. At that moment, for instance, Kevin Vick lies passed out in her bed, sleeping off whatever he did before he turned up on her doorstep in the middle of the night. He is not her boyfriend; he is a complication. They sleep together as chastely as children, because Kevin isn't interested in fucking. Isn't interested in anything these days except her lawsuit, and getting high.

These things interest her, too, more than a little, more than she'd like. It's a game they play sometimes, late at night: what they will do when the money comes. “
When
,” Kevin insists, “not
if.
” He believes in the power of positive thinking, though his own life isn't much of an advertisement so far.

He has plans for Kath's money. They will buy a boat and live on it—no neighbors, no rent to pay. In winter they will pull up anchor and sail south. That Kevin has never actually piloted a boat is a point neither mentions. They don't say, either, what Kath knows for certain: that Kevin can't be trusted with a hundred bucks, never mind a hundred thousand. That when it comes to money he is a human vacuum, any spare change instantly disappearing into his veins or up his nose.

But Kath has her own plans, beginning with her boss. She will tell him to go fuck himself. Twice now, the office empty, Chris Winter has put his hands on her. “Just playing,” he says, but Kath knows better. She's at a low point in her life, but not
that
low. She isn't about to blow some AA loser just to keep her shitty job. She will buy a little house for her and Aidan, a place from which they can't be expelled when a boyfriend is tweaking or evicted or ships out to Okinawa. She imagines a yard for Aidan to play in, her own washer and dryer. An address in Dunster, to keep Aidan in his new public school, with the teacher he likes. This is all she needs.

The little Cape across the street would satisfy her completely, and it is the yellow house she thinks of as she fingers Mike's business card:
South Shore Realty. Michael J. McGann.
She drops Aidan at school and begins the long crawl up the Expressway, chewing her cuticles, ruining her manicure, glancing periodically at the dashboard clock. Her appointment with Ron Shapiro is at nine o'clock.
Nine
A.M.
?
Kevin repeated when she relayed this information.
Are you crazy?
It hadn't occurred to her that she had a choice in the matter, that it was no different from scheduling a haircut:
Nine isn't good for me. How about ten?
Her last lawyer had been court-appointed. Locked up with nothing else to do, she had met with him whenever he said.

She reminds herself, often, that she is no longer a criminal. Her affirmations are taped to the bathroom mirror. “I am lovable and capable. Let go and let God.”

Let God
what? says Kevin.
What the fuck does that mean?

He laughs at them—more AA bullshit—but Kath leaves the affirmations on the mirror, just as she kept going to meetings even after deciding a few beers wouldn't hurt her. She was a tweaker, not a drunk; one had nothing to do with the other. For some people, maybe; but for her they had never been the same thing.

She is twenty minutes late for the appointment. Last time she'd managed to park on the street. This time she drives twice around the block looking for a space and empties her wallet, finally, to park in the garage.

Ron Shapiro has a new receptionist. The last one was stout and friendly. This one is Kath's age, and wears a skirt and stockings. Her nails are perfect, French tips. “May I help you?” she asks, eyeing Kath's Skechers and tracksuit.

Kath thinks,
I am lovable and capable
.

She thinks,
Fuck you, bitch.

After all her hurry Ron Shapiro keeps her waiting. Kath sits and flips through an old
Time
magazine. The waiting room is empty, which surprises her. Ron Shapiro moves fast, talks fast, like a very busy man. She has met him only once before, also in this office. Kevin saw his name in the newspaper when the stories started.
That
, he said,
is our guy
.

She wishes she'd brought somebody with her, but who? Kevin, Aidan? Her mother?

And strangely she finds herself thinking of the man she just met: his cop's haircut, his crisp shirt and tie. Michael J. McGann would know how to talk to a lawyer. They would get down to business after a manly handshake.

She barely remembers the drive home—high on what Ron Shapiro had said, as high as if she'd scored. He had apologized for his lateness and offered coffee, served by French Tips.
I've been in touch with the Canon lawyer. The ball is in their court now. You have an excellent case, Miss Conlon. All we have to do is wait.

That afternoon she walks past the yellow Cape, goes around to the back door and peers through the window. She sees a cute kitchen with an island, like her mother's; a sunny window where she could grow plants, vegetables maybe: tomatoes, peppers. She hates vegetables but would eat them if she lived in this house.

So when Mike McGann returns she is ready. She has banished Kevin for the weekend. In spite of his big talk, in the business of adult life he is essentially a fuckup: Kath's age, twenty-seven, and he's never even had a bank account. Buying a house, she knows, is complicated: there are endless forms to fill, building inspections, taxes to pay. It is way beyond Kevin's capacity. Beyond hers, too, probably, but she is determined to try.

That afternoon she has a few beers to even her out, to give her courage. Aidan is sick again, a sinus infection, and the prescription is expensive. She has signed up for MassHealth but the ID cards haven't yet arrived in the mail. The Benadryl, at least, will put him to sleep. All day long he's been dancing on her nerves.

She has just gotten him down when Mike McGann knocks at her door. She is surprised, embarrassed. She didn't plan to greet him with a beer in her hand. She expected him in a shirt and tie, a suit maybe. In his grimy T-shirt he is like a big boy, the athletes she remembers from high school but was too shy, then, to talk to. But Mike McGann is easy, friendly. He talks about his kids. They sit on her porch chatting like two parents. She has been a stripper, a drug addict. Men do not speak to her this way.

She doesn't have to ask him; he
offers.
Kevin, the lazy fuck, has been promising for weeks, though he isn't much stronger than Kath, with his stringy arms, his junkie's chest. Mike McGann lifts the air conditioner as if it were a toy, and she thinks about how smoothly some people move through the world, breezing through tasks she finds so crushingly difficult, as if they were nothing at all.

Watching him, she feels a little buzzed. Drunk, even. Drunk maybe, but not wasted; and as she watches Mike McGann she thinks of her father, a strong man, dead so long now that he seldom crosses her mind. Her father has been gone fifteen years, and she hasn't known a strong man since.

Help me
, she thinks, and Mike does. He lifts her into his arms.

•  •  •

A
ND THEN
it begins, the waiting. Days pass, then weeks. He doesn't come back to show her the house. He doesn't stop by, or call. From across the street the sign taunts her, South Shore Realty. Across the bottom is his name, Michael J. McGann.

She lets three days pass before calling the number. A machine answers. “I'm interested in seeing the yellow house on Fenno Street. In Dunster,” Kath says carefully, the speech she rehearsed. She doesn't leave her name, only her number. Surely he will recognize her voice.

He doesn't call.

And so she stops, actually stops, thinking of him. Then Mother's Day comes and Aidan is at his grandmother's house, a present to one of them, Kath isn't sure which. She is sitting on the porch listening to the thunder, about to light a cigarette, when his Escalade rolls up to the curb.

I
OFTEN
imagine how strangers make love. It's not a hobby so much as an idle habit, nearly unconscious, a way of passing time on the train. Yet when it comes to my own family I am more reticent, so we will give Mike and Kath a few moments of privacy, and rejoin them when the deed is done.

I imagine them lying there silent, their skin cooling, rain beating out a pattern against the windowpanes. The windows open, a breeze blowing the smell of wet asphalt, the white curtains dark with damp. In the gray light, her face turned slightly away, she could have been Lisa Morrison: the sharp clavicle, the curve of her hip. Familiar marks had been displaced, new ones added. Mike had found the heart, the cross, but no bird, no flower. The room was quiet but for their breathing, slowing now, as though a fever had broken.

Kath rose on one elbow and reached for her cigarettes, and Mike felt a momentary jolt. Abby had never smoked in her life. After so many years with her, only her, he'd forgotten how different women could be. He watched Kath light up, as in an old movie—what everyone used to do, he supposed, afterward.

“How long have you smoked?”

“Too long.” She inhaled deeply. “I quit when I was pregnant. I never should have started again.”

“Why did you?”

Kath shrugged. “Life is hard enough, you know?”

“Smoking makes it easier?”

“Quitting makes it harder.” She waved the smoke away from him. “Sorry. Anyway, who wants to live forever? It would suck to be old.”

Mike recalled the scene on the neighbor's front porch, his father lost, confused and distraught. It seemed a long time ago.

He traced with his finger the tiny butterfly at her hip.

“You like them,” she said. “But you don't have any.”

“I like them on girls. I knew someone,” he began, then stopped. “It was a long time ago.”

“Let me guess. She broke your heart.”

“Every goddamn day.” He took the cigarette from her hand and took a long drag. “We grew up together. I knew her brothers.”

“She was your first?”

“The first time I got it right.” He'd forgotten this part, how sex could shake things loose, the secrets tumbling out. He and Abby had shared their secrets long ago—at least, all the ones they were going to reveal. Now there was nothing left to tell.

Kath said, “I was twelve my first time.”

“Twelve?”
He stared at her, aghast. He had a clear image of her at twelve, her body unpierced, unmarked. He was suddenly, powerfully grateful that he didn't have a daughter. “Jesus. How old was the guy?”

“He was a sophomore. So fifteen, I guess.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was over fast.” She stubbed out the cigarette “It was just—nothing, you know? I didn't see what the big deal was.”

She stretched out on her back. There was a horizontal scar low on her belly, surgically precise. Until then Mike hadn't seen it; too much down there competing for his attention. He traced it gently with his finger and felt her flinch, as though he'd touched a tender place.

“Aidan,” he said.

“I was in labor forever. They lost his heartbeat. I was by myself, and it was too late for the epidural. I was freaking out.”

Mike stroked her belly, the shining stud in her navel. The room had darkened, dusk falling. In the dim light he could ask her anything.

“Where was his father?”

“No father. Virgin birth.” She exhaled. “You just popped my cherry.”

“Funny girl.”

She gave him the cigarette. “He was a sailor. When he shipped out he had no idea I was pregnant. Not that it would have mattered.”

Mike remembered a few close calls of his own, with Lisa and with others. How easily it could have happened: a kid of his gone unclaimed, out in the world alone.

“It would have mattered,” he said.

“Maybe. Who knows?” Kath shrugged. “I made the, you know, appointment. I kept putting it off. I figured I'm never going to do this again, so I just wanted to be pregnant for a while. To see what it was like.”