Faith (7 page)

He waited until dark before driving to the rectory. Upstairs in his bedroom, he unplugged the portable television, its screen the size of an index card. He filled a duffel bag with shaving gear, socks and underwear and a random selection of secular clothes: a few odd shirts, a single pair of blue jeans, a windbreaker emblazoned
SACRED HEART BASKETBALL
. He left behind a garish Hawaiian shirt and a closetful of black clericals, unsure when—or if—he'd wear them again.

I
t's time, now, to turn our attention to Aidan Conlon and his mother. It may seem strange that I have avoided speaking of them until now. I will admit that I find the subject difficult, as Art himself did. Three years ago, without warning, Art turned up on my doorstep in Philly; and late that night, over many glasses of wine, he spoke of them at length. His stammer, his flushed cheeks, unnerved me. He seemed uncomfortable and yet—I have to say it—strangely animated. It was an emotional state I had never sensed in him, a heated and fluttering excitement.

He'd met them in the spring, had been working in his office when Fran brought them by the rectory. Art described the scene so precisely, in such great detail, that I felt uneasy. I sensed that the particulars mattered tremendously, that this was a memory he had replayed many times.

It was a bright morning in April, unseasonably hot, the room filled with sunlight. He sat at his desk writing a letter to the regional school administrator, Monsignor Gerard Mooney—
Father Money,
as Art had come to think of him. In a few short weeks, the Confirmation class would be treated to a day at a local amusement park, a parish tradition. This year's class was unusually large, and the cost of admission had increased. Experience had taught him the proper way to frame such requests: the stilted diction, the supplicating tone.
To simplify matters on the day of the excursion, I ask that the funds be disbursed as soon as possible so that tickets might be purchased in advance
, he concluded, a sentence he quickly deleted. Father Money moved at his own glacial pace and would not be hurried. An insistent tone was never acceptable, not if the church itself were on fire.

Hunched over his desk, Art butted a cigarette and lit another. He was aware of the hot breeze through the open window, the green smell of cut grass. That, at least, was good news: Joe Veltri had managed to get the old mower running, and petty cash would cover the gas and parts. A new tractor would have meant more begging, a longer and far more obsequious letter that would have taken all morning to compose.

He stared out the window feeling like a restless schoolboy, trapped in the classroom on the first, long-awaited day of spring. Fran had filled the feeder in the courtyard, and a flock of small birds—robins? wrens?—had descended, trilling rapidly. In one corner stood a waist-high statue of St. Francis, arms outstretched in welcome. Birds lit briefly on its hands and head. Art closed his eyes, feeling pleasantly drowsy. For a minute or two he drifted. He was roused by a sudden brutal squawking, an airy rush of wings.

Blinking, he saw that the courtyard had been invaded by seagulls, gray and white and insistently cawing. They were a chronic nuisance, persistent as pigeons, large as cats. Every few weeks Joe Veltri cleaned their droppings from St. Francis's tonsured head.

“Fran?” Art called absently. “They're back again.”

Then he went to the window and saw the cause of the commotion: a small, dark-haired boy stood in the courtyard with a bag of potato chips. He wore shorts and a Red Sox T-shirt and was, Art noted, the exact height of St. Francis. His expression was rapt, his eyes wide.

Art watched, fascinated, as the boy doled out the potato chips. The gulls swarmed around him, squawking madly: six, ten, a dozen, more. Finally the boy threw down his bag and backed away from the mass of shrieking birds. He looked both delighted and terrified.

Art was standing at the window when he heard a knock at the door.

“Father?” Fran opened the door a crack. “Can I bother you a minute?”

He turned. She stood in the doorway, a young woman behind her. “I'd like you to meet my daughter, Kathleen.”

Art blinked, confused. Fran had been at Sacred Heart longer than he had. He'd met her two sons, their wives and children; but she had never mentioned a daughter.

“Hey. Hi.” The girl was young and slight, half as wide as her mother. She wore tight blue jeans and an abbreviated pink T-shirt; a diamond stud twinkled in her navel. Her hair was dark at the roots, the ends streaked platinum blonde.

“She's back from California,” Fran said.

“For now.” Her eyes darted around the room. They were arresting eyes, pale gray, startled and startling, ringed with black liner. Her left foot tapped briskly in its high-heeled sandal. “Hey, have you seen a kid running around?”

“He's out there.” Art put out his cigarette and nodded toward the courtyard, now a riot of seagulls. The boy stood with his back to the rectory wall.

“Oh, for heaven's sake. Excuse me, Father.” Fran rushed out of the room and down the hallway, her tread heavy on the wood floor.

“What's he doing, feeding the gulls?” Kath went to the window. “Jesus, will you look? They're everywhere.” She let out a sharp laugh. “He has a thing for birds.”

They stood watching as Fran appeared in the courtyard. “Honey, don't feed them! They're dirty birds.” She stooped and knelt stiffly. “Help your mimi pick up these chips.”

“Fran, don't worry about it,” Art called out the window. “Joe can clean up later.”

“Thanks, Father, but he needs to learn. He can't be making a mess at other people's houses. Come on, Aidan.”

It was an awkward moment, Art and Kath standing at the window, watching the little boy and his grandmother, with her two knees that needed replacing, gathering Ruffles from the parish lawn.

“Fran, be careful,” Art called.

“Don't worry about her. She lives for this stuff.” Kath turned her back to the window. “She's driving me crazy, I swear to God. Following me around the house with a broom.”

“How old is your son?” Art asked.

“Seven. Eight in August.”

“Is he enrolled in school yet?”

Kath shrugged. “It's almost summer. What's the point?”

“There are six weeks left in the term. A month and a half.” And then, before he knew quite what he was saying, Art added: “We can take him at Sacred Heart.”

The offer was totally irresponsible. Kath couldn't pay the tuition, hadn't applied for a scholarship. She wasn't even a member of the parish. All this would have to be explained in some future, groveling letter to Father Money. It's only a few weeks, Art told himself. I'll deal with that in the fall.

“It's almost lunchtime,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Aidan can meet Sister Paula. She has the second-grade homeroom.”

“Now?” said Kath.

“Why not? I can take him over myself.” Art led the way into the kitchen, where Fran and Aidan were throwing the potato chips into the trash.

“Hello, Aidan,” he said. “I'm Father Art.”

R
ECENTLY, OVER
coffee with her mother, I learned a few facts about Kath's history.

She was twenty-seven the spring she reappeared in Grantham. She'd been gone for eight years. In California she lived briefly with a Navy man named Jack Strecker, and got pregnant. Among Art's papers is a calligraphed Certificate of Christian Baptism from St. Sebastian Church in San Diego, dated June 1, 1994. It lists the boy's name, Aidan Andrew Conlon, and his mother's, Kathleen Marie. No father is named.

“We had no idea where she was,” Fran explained to me recently. We had drained the coffee pot and stood in the rectory kitchen drying dishes. The new priest had forbidden her to use the dishwasher, claiming it made too much noise. “I was sure I'd never hear from her again. Then she called one Christmas sounding messed up, and said she'd had a baby.”

“Messed up how?”

“Talking in circles. Hyper. She was high, I guess.”

Fran's older son flew out to San Diego and found Kath broke and homeless, sleeping on a friend's couch. She wouldn't let him see the baby. She told him to get lost. By then Jack Strecker had shipped out and Kath was working in a nightclub—doing what exactly, she refused to say and Fran shuddered to imagine. It was information no mother wanted to hear.

It was in San Diego, according to her mother, that Kath acquired a drug habit. Fran blamed Jack Strecker, and loneliness; the stress of early, unplanned motherhood, evil influences far from home. I knew by this time that Kath had told Art a different story, that she'd smoked or snorted one thing or another since junior high, often under her parents' roof: pot, speed, crack cocaine. For a long time she had no preference; she took what was free and available. In high school, and afterward, she was always somebody's girlfriend. She explained with a certain pride that she'd never paid for drugs.

Fran had no more word from Kath for several years, until the day she appeared at the door with her seven-year-old son, looking for a place to stay. Fran said yes, of course, but a blind man could see that the arrangement wouldn't last. She and her daughter were oil and water, any peace between them tense and temporary. Kath had completed a court-ordered rehab in San Diego, but even sober she had an unpredictable temper. When she eventually flew into a rage and stormed out of Fran's duplex—as seemed inevitable—she and Aidan would end up on the street.

“Did Art know this?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Fran. “I told him everything. That first day, when I brought them by the rectory . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Aidan took to him right away. And Father was so good with him. I blame myself, in a way.” She took the last cup from the drainer. “What a mistake.”

A
ND THAT'S
how it began. Aidan started school the following day. Each morning he rode the city bus to the rectory with his grandmother. At Art's suggestion the boy joined him for breakfast, though most mornings he left half his Cheerios floating in the bowl. Finally Fran came to her senses and served his cereal in a teacup. Art relayed these details to me by phone, amusement and tenderness in his voice. I found it all a bit mystifying, his delight in the daily routines of a second grader, but I chalked this up to my own inexperience. Art spoke of Aidan with the fawning interest of a new parent, an emotion I had never felt.

And yet, undeniably, my brother seemed well. Quietly, without fanfare, he kicked his thirty-year smoking habit. His annual spring cold failed to appear. For the first time in his adult life, he'd made it through the winter without taking antibiotics. He had never felt better in his life.

Each day at two-thirty, when the school day ended, Art would see the boy standing at the curb, waiting for his mother's car. When Kath was late, as often happened, Art invited him to the rectory for a snack, the milk and cookies he'd added to Fran's shopping list. On days when Aidan rode the school bus home, Art found himself oddly disappointed. For the rest of the afternoon he felt unsettled, as though he'd skipped some essential component of his day, a meal, a shower, his morning prayers.

I will admit that I found Art's behavior startling. Like him I am long single, accustomed to quiet and privacy, and it was hard to imagine rearranging my routines to accommodate a stranger's child. (I say this without pride or shame. It is simply a fact.) Yet my brother did this eagerly, without being asked. In some eyes, this alone incriminates him. In light of recent revelations, such enthusiasm for a child—a boy especially—by a grown man—a priest especially—is inherently suspect.

Yet it's worth noting that the adults closest to Aidan—his mother and grandmother—were not alarmed. “I didn't give it a second thought,” Fran told me later. “I was more worried about that Kevin Vick, if you want to know the truth. I knew he was bad news.” Kath had dated Vick in high school, an angry delinquent who'd spent his sophomore year in juvie and had been in and out of trouble ever since. Now he had reappeared, and Kath saw him almost daily. “He's been busted for drugs, Father,” Fran confided to Art. “More than once, from what I gather. If Kathleen moves in with him, she won't stay sober another week.”

Hearing this, Art made inquiries. Flip Finn owned several buildings in Dunster, and a week later Art moved Kath and Aidan into the apartment on North Fenno Street. The St. Vincent de Paul Society provided used furniture, a kitchen table and chairs, a sturdy sofa that was almost like new. Art spent a Saturday afternoon driving back and forth to Dunster with Marilyn Burke's son, who helped him unload the furniture from the parish van.

And it seemed for a while that Kath had turned a corner. At an AA meeting she ran into an old schoolmate, Chris Winter, whose father owned a towing business in Dorchester. It was a family operation, with Chris and his brothers driving. Their sister, pregnant again, had been placed on bed rest; until she delivered, they needed a replacement to cover the phones.

Kath worked the day shift, eight to four. At four-thirty she rolled up to the rectory in the ancient Buick Regal that Chris Winter had sold her for cheap. She honked the horn until Aidan appeared on the front step, in the relaxed school uniform Sacred Heart had adopted, khakis and a navy polo shirt. Child care is expensive, and Aidan was too little to come home to an empty apartment, so I suppose this arrangement suited her. She would claim later that it was Art who'd proposed it, a fact he did not dispute. Certainly it pleased him to see Aidan on a regular basis. For Fran it may have been less than convenient to have a small child running around what is after all her workplace, but she is a doting grandmother and for all I know enjoyed every minute.

Which leaves only Aidan to consider. Later, as I wandered through the sitting room and parlor—rooms hardly conducive to playing—I had to wonder: how did he occupy himself in the rectory for two hours a day?

When I asked Fran this question, she gave a cautious reply. Most days Art helped him with his schoolwork. Aidan was behind in all subjects; he'd had pneumonia that winter and had missed most of the second grade. After Art checked his arithmetic, they took turns reading aloud, books Art borrowed from the school library. Fran recalled two titles in particular,
Homer Price
and
The Big Red Balloon
. I read them both as a child. Parochial school libraries are notoriously underfunded. In thirty years their catalogs change hardly at all.