Fell of Dark (13 page)

Salve

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
have their answer in the Seven Heavenly Virtues.

The woman dropped her wallet. I shouted, Ma'am, Ma'am, even though I could see the bills in their slot, feel the weight of the change, and I returned it, even though I wanted to run with it. The woman who dropped the wallet was old. She walked with a cane in one hand, and she might have lost the wallet from her other, trembling hand, or from her pocket. Her eyes were watery, and her mouth was folded in on itself. If I'd known at the beginning where this wallet came from, I would never have thought to run with it, to steal it for myself.

“Oh, how stupid,” she said. “Careless.”

I wanted to help her walk, but she limped off on her own, talking to herself.

I thought,
It shouldn't matter. I shouldn't steal from anyone, young or old, or pray for easy money.

I can't claim all the credit for it, but I didn't hang myself or cut myself open in a tub. No matter how sad I get, or agitated, or storm-driven, I always do get up. I walk. I remember my mother. I remember you are in this world for me, and I am in this world for you. I remember whatever God might be, and I think about what has to get done. I have to do what's next on the list—go to school, help my mother, feed the hungry—and I have to do it awake.

I hear the sirens and the car horns, and I close my eyes and breathe.

The graying wolves see my mother as the alpha female, the one and only she-wolf who fed Romulus and Remus. She is that mythical and that beautiful. They can't help themselves. They're men. They lust. They're greedy, they're gluttonous, and my mother is a woman who attracts the best and worst in them. They want Rome. I know this, and I have to forgive them for their looks and comments and desires, even if I find nothing more insulting and dangerous. They want Rome.

I eat and eat, and I drink and drink, but I don't throw food away. The plates get licked clean. I finish everything, and my mother says I'm a growing boy. I feed the hungry at the shelter at St. Barnabas, and when I'm there, no matter how starving I am, I don't take a bite of food. I told my mother in a note,
No more sweet cereal
. I keep a fast between eight at night and seven the next morning. A long time ago, I gave up salt.

I love my mother. She reminds me that nobody is perfect. She tells me my father drank, sometimes too much, and they'd decided to face the problem together. Then he died. I wanted to ask if she thought he might have been drunk the afternoon he died, or if he'd ever ridden his bicycle with me after he'd been drinking, but I don't want to know.

I imagine the driver of the car who hit my father horrified when he saw a man on his bicycle wobbling or swerving out into the intersection without looking. The driver might not have been able to do a thing, all of it happening so fast. Can you see the grief? The real driver left the scene, but imagine getting out of a car and coming around front and seeing a full-sized man bleeding and gasping in the street, all but dead. I might throw up on the spot or start crying.

What last thought went through my father's mind? I'm sure, thinking of it now, he died in the street or in the ambulance. What was his last thought?

“Are all these bright lights for me?”

“Thank God Erik wasn't in the basket. You would've lost everything, Magda.”

“I lost my hat. Has anyone seen my hat?”

“Cold.”

“Sky.”

I go to St. Barnabas. I know one or two of the men who get their meals there must have been the smartest and fastest and most talented boys at sixteen. A man named Kermit I've met only once, supposedly went to Yale Law at nineteen only to come here for his food. His daughter drowned. “And my son,” he said, “he must be your age, but he's—. I don't know what to do about anything. I've lost my way.”

The men at the kitchen have their stories and sadness, and I wonder if they suffer demons.

Gemma Burns cried on my shoulder when Sam McHugh forgot Valentine's Day. “I don't want to hear anything,” she said. “I don't want to hear you say a word to me, and I know you won't. But you'll listen, and if I ask you, you'll write me a note. I know you're smart. Maybe I should always have been with you.”

I dropped my head.

“I know you like me, Erik.” She wore her hair in a bun so you could see her neck and shoulders, including the birthmark about three inches from her neck just below her collarbone. She's already a woman. I listened. She told her sad story of neglect, and I realized even the most beautiful girl can be left crying with the wrong guy.

I took out a piece of paper and a pen, and I wrote something like this.
We're young. Take a deep breath and go shine your light. Happy Valentine's Day.

Gemma read the note. Then she asked a very, very good question: “Why don't I shine my light on you?”

I held my pen over the paper, shaking for what felt like a year. I thought about asking her to a movie. I imagined kissing her, and I wondered for a moment, a split second, if she could be you after all. I finally wrote.
Your light's too bright for me, Gemma. You're too glittery. You should be with a boy who talks, and every word he says should be your name.

She took the note, read it, folded it carefully, and slid it into her white pleather purse. “Here's the problem with you,” she said. “You just wrote the most amazing thing, the perfect thing. What girl doesn't want a compliment like that? But you're saying you won't have me. Or you think I won't have you.” She shook her head at me: “You're so dumb. I don't understand you at all. You don't want me with Sam. I know you don't want that. All you have to do is take a walk with me or ask me to a movie. We could sit together without saying a word the whole time.”

Gemma twisted the strap of her purse in her hands. “I talk enough for the two of us,” she said. “But when I shut up, we'll kiss. You're the best-looking boy in school, even if you're the weirdest. What are the chances of that? The weirdest boy is also the smartest, biggest, and cutest. It's not like I haven't thought about you already. It's not like I don't wonder what you'd be like.”

She took one more breath and sighed. “Nobody would mess with you if we went out together. You're huge and crazy.”

Wait,
I wrote.
Crazy?

“Come on, Erik,” she said. “You know you are. This can't be a surprise. It's part of what makes you you.”

I shook my head and wrote,
I don't know if I'm crazy, but I can't figure out anything. I want to concentrate. That's all.

“Concentrate on what?” Gemma said. “Whatever. I know you will. But before then, you should take me out.”

I had to get away from her.

No, Gemma. I can't do that. I'm sorry. I have to go.

“You don't care who gets the light?” she called after me. “Even if it's Sam?”