Pierced by a Sword (5 page)

"Oh...no, Father, I'm glad you offered. It's sweet of you."
I'm recovering nicely,
she thought.
No way I'm going to talk
to this, this–stranger. Blow him off.

"Maybe we could just get a cup of coffee and skip the museum. Are you with anyone, Father?" she heard herself say despite her resolution. Something inside told her to trust the man.

"As a matter of fact, I was planning on inviting Nathan Payne along," Chet answered, "but the man was last seen headed east toward South Bend with a lovely girl named Joanie Wheat.
I'm staying at his apartment." The young priest paused. "Just coffee?"

Father Chet now sounded relaxed and confident, as he had sounded at the party. In reality, he was quite nervous and silently began to pray another Hail Mary for Becky, prepared to wait a long time for her reply.

Indeed, Becky paused for a long time.

"There's a coffee shop just down the block from you near the lake, on Sheridan,
next to a pizza place named Leona's," she suggested finally, but nervously.

"Got it. I'm walking now. Ten minutes?" he confirmed.

"More like twenty. I have to do my makeup." She hung up by pressing a button.

My makeup! I sound like a ditz. I'll just go have coffee with him and catch up on Nathan's secret past with his boyhood priest buddy and find out all about that lovely girl he spent so much
time with at the party last night.

Becky went to the bathroom to get ready.
I don't really wear much makeup, do I? Dad's right. He always used to say that wearing makeup is like putting chrome around the Mona Lisa. "And the frame God gave you ain't so bad either, like your mother's."
She could still hear her father's easygoing laugh.

Maybe if you didn't have such beautiful brown eyes, Sam wouldn't
have bothered to fall in love with you. Love you? He doesn't even know you.

Suddenly, the emotions of last night's fight came back to her, followed quickly by the memory of Sam's cold words, couched as they were in such warm tones:

"Oh honey," he had said, "it's going to be all right–I'll even help pay for the doctor."

Her heart had jumped.
He wants the baby!

Then he had gone on with the phoniest
tone of compassion Becky had ever heard from him. It was almost a whine and had reminded her of a whimpering dog. "I know a guy at work whose girlfriend went to a clinic where they have counseling and everything before they, you know, take care of the problem. He drove her and stood by her the whole time. You know I'll do the same. I'm here for you, honey."

At that precise moment Becky Macadam
had ceased to be pro-abortion and became prolife.
Abortion isn't for women,
she had decided,
it's for the stinking convenience of men!

She had replied slowly, seething, "You can be so cold, Sam. This is your baby, too."

"Baby?" Sam had laughed nervously. "What baby? It's a blob of tissue. Look, when did you become such a prolifer?" He visibly caught himself, knowing that he had crossed some kind
of line with her.

"Oh honey," he said with false sincerity, "it's your choice. I know that. I'll stand behind your choice either way." The way he said "choice" sounded like he was describing dirty linen.

"Even if I decide to keep little Sam or Samantha?" she rejoined, looking at him, her brown eyes narrowed to angry semicircles.
Daddy always said I made snap judgments,
she thought now.
Later on
he told me that I was a "choleric." Some kind of medieval psychology thing. Why am I thinking about Daddy again at a time like this?

Somehow she had known what Sam's reply would be. A lie. She put her hands on her hips, waiting.

"Sure," he had said, flatly. Sam was staring over her head, beyond the couch, to the window. "Sure," he repeated, "whatever you decide. I'll stand by you."

Thoughts rushed
into her head like the broken remains of a ship crashing in on a huge wave during a storm.

You're lying, Sam! My God, you're already wondering where your next apartment is going to be! You sound like the Robot on Lost in Space. What did I ever see in you, Mr. Robot? Why, I oughtta smack you back into last Tuesday.

She still had her hands on her hips.

Who sounds like that? God, now I even
think
like Daddy!

Somehow that thought had made her even angrier. Then she did slap him. Hard.
Just like in the movies, Rhett Baby,
she thought wildly.

"Get out. Now," she hissed softly.

When he hesitated, Becky began to throw things. Sudden Sam scurried out the door like a scared cockroach. After he left she started breaking things. His things. First in the living room. Then she went into the bedroom
and pulled all the drawers out of his dresser, whipping the clothes all over the room. She had worked her way to the bathroom by the time the landlord came by to find out what the racket was.

It had still been early and even though she didn't feel like going to Nathan's party, she felt like hanging around her apartment even less.

When Becky got to Nathan's party, she didn't talk much except to
the nice young priest. And she didn't breathe a word to anyone about her brave new life as an unmarried, pregnant woman.

+  +  +

The smell of cologne brought Becky out of her funk. She looked at herself in the mirror, seeing no beauty, only sadness.

A fly landed on the mirror, distracting her from the memory of the big fight with Sudden Sam. Surprising herself, she smacked the fly dead so fast
and so violently that she cracked the mirror. Disgusted, she quickly washed her hands in a sink filled with broken bottles of Sam's cologne.

It stinks in here. Oh, Daddy, why did you have to die?

She threw on some black nylon tights and a big rumpled, white sweater. After donning her Keds she grabbed the keys.
Hi Father Chet! I'm Rebecca Macadam. You know, Macadam like in asphalt? By the way,
I'm pregnant. You Father. Me Mother. Ha ha ha. Jeeze. Get a grip–you're just going to get some coffee.

She closed the door behind her and started down the stairs, headed for the coffee shop and Father Chet, a Catholic priest.

5

Sunday Morning
8 October
Notre Dame, Indiana

Nathan Payne took a left off Angela Boulevard and turned onto Notre Dame Avenue, which was lined by enormous oak trees on either
side. He saw the famous Golden Dome at the end of the street, topped with a statue of Mary. She was crushing the head of a snake with her heel. The statue itself was over two stories tall. Nathan was so distracted by the dome that he almost drove directly onto the campus lawn where the South Quad intersects with Notre Dame Avenue.

So that's why Chet always goes on and on about this place. She
is impressive.

The Notre Dame campus is unique. It has no streets except an access road that circles its campus proper. Nathan was forced to park the Mustang in the lot of the Morris Inn.

Time to wake this girl up and find out where she needs to go next.

He looked at her.
She looks like that actress, Bridget Fonda, only with wavy, auburn hair.
Nathan was still troubled by his newly assertive conscience.
She definitely didn't have much experience doing what we did together, and she was more drunk than I was. Probably has a heck of a hangover coming.

He looked at her for a full two minutes and decided not to wake her. He grabbed a Kent and lit up. As he looked at the pack of Kents, the cigarette triggered a memory of his dad.

Still smoking that bastard's brand.

+  +  +

Suddenly, Nathan was four
years old again, sitting on the floor in the hallway next to the kitchen, with salty tears in his eyes, trying not to cry. It was Bloomfield, New Jersey. His dad had just snapped at little Nathan to get back to bed
or else.

The men in the kitchen didn't know that the little boy could hear them. Nathan could smell the cigarettes and cheap cigar smoke. His dad's friends were enjoying their weekly
poker game. Mostly they talked about sports or work. Sometimes, politics. There was a lot of foul language and some drunken laughter.

Nathan's dad was a postman, and this particular time, the old man was relating one of his many stories about seducing or being seduced by one of his several "regular" women on the route. Two of the other men were also postmen and shared their own crude stories.

Nathan only vaguely understood what they were talking about, but he knew it was about women, and Nathan knew his mom was dead, and that he didn't have a woman like those men had women.

His mom had died when Nathan was three. He didn't know why. Some kind of cancer. His dad didn't beat him as often after Sarah Payne died. Not getting smacked around made him feel happy his mother was gone. His father
had beaten Mom, too.

Then, feeling happy about his mother being gone made Nathan feel terrible, worse than ever.

He gave up crying a few months after his mother died because it didn't make him feel better. More often than not, his tears earned him a slap from the old man.

Life was a dark, silent hell until Nathan went to school a couple of years later. His only consolation before school started
was his Babsie, his Polish grandmother on his mother's side. Babsie lived in Nutley. She came over once or twice a week to look after him. She also took Nathan to Mass every Sunday.

The tender old woman taught little Nathan how to pray and told him stories he could only vaguely remember now. One story was about a painting of Mary where some soldier died when he struck it with a sword. The other
was about a priest-dude named Max who died in a Nazi concentration camp. (Nathan mistakenly thought concentration camps were places where there was no food except bread and everyone had to try to concentrate on math problems or else bad guys would kill you. This lasted until Nathan was in fourth grade and learned about real Nazis in social studies class.)

Babsie often told Nathan that he descended
from noble blood, insisting that he was from a line of kings. At the time, Nathan thought noble blood was blood that did not come from bulls.

God, talk about the fairy tales a grandmother makes up to console a pathetic little kid,
Nathan thought as he took another drag on his cigarette.

Babsie died the day the boy went to school for the first time. No one bothered to tell Nathan about Babsie's
death. When he asked his father where she was, his dad said Babsie went away, and told the boy to shut up.

Nowadays I would've ended up in some special class for the emotionally disturbed.

Young Nathan started to eat too much (his dad's favorite meal was boiled hot dogs and lots of potato chips) and by second grade he was considered chubby by teachers and classmates. Nathan wasn't quite fat.

I probably didn't eat one vegetable outside of school until I was fourteen years old. By the way, what's going on here, This Is Your Life, Nathan Payne? Must be the booze from last night. God, how depressing! Weren't you ever happy as a kid?

The answer was yes. On the first day of school, an Irish kid sat behind him and immediately started whispering in Nathan's ear about the teacher, Sister Leonardo
Mary. The Irish kid kept calling her Sister "Lardo" and would puff out his cheeks like a bullfrog–intimating that the good sister was less than svelte. Indeed, she weighed well over two hundred pounds. Nathan giggled.

By the third day of school, Nathan surprised himself by trying to come up with his own jokes to whisper to the Irish boy. Although he was never quite as funny as the skinny Irish
kid with the gleam in his eye, Nathan got off a few good ones. They sat next to each other at lunch, then began to hang out on the playground.

The Irish kid's name was William "Chet" Sullivan. The nuns called Chet "William," but all the kids called him Chet, which wasn't a common nickname in Catholic schools. In third grade Chet told Nathan that Chester was his mother's maiden name.

Presently,
Nathan wondered if he would ever have had any friends if a funny Irish kid named Chet hadn't sat behind him on that first day of school. With a capacity only children seem to have, Chet decided instantly that the shy, portly kid with the green eyes was his best friend in all the world, and that was that.

Chet was Nathan's ticket to a normal life. Chet had three older brothers who protected both
their youngest brother and Nathan from bullies. The Sullivan boys all played together after school. Chet and Nathan shared a somewhat sarcastic, wry sense of humor. Chet was cool. Therefore Nathan was cool.

Even though Nathan was not the biggest or fastest kid on the playground, he was deceptively quick and coordinated. Most kids wanted him on their team for boxball, stickball, team tag, and all
the other games kids played on the asphalt playground.

It's amazing how important playing games was in grammar school.

Nathan was an exceptionally adept game player. He was usually chosen captain of the team because he had a knack for picking players. He knew which ones would mesh into a winning team.

Nathan also had the uncanny ability to see everything and everyone in the field of play and could
guess what was going to happen next. He was almost prescient. On the playgrounds of grammar schools, these were highly valued traits, and seemed to make up for Nathan's quiet demeanor in the eyes of his classmates.

Why did I forget all this?
Nathan asked himself now, exhaling a plume of smoke in the direction of the dome.
Those were great days. I never even think of them anymore. Why did I stop
playing sports?

He didn't know. Then he remembered.

Oh yeah, my dad the felon,
he thought sarcastically.
Harry Payne, number 12345–whatever at Rahway State Correctional University.

When Nathan was in seventh grade, his dad was sent to prison for trying to steal something expensive from the post office.
Was it the safe?
Nathan wasn't sure of the details. Within days of his father's conviction,
Nathan had been put on a bus to Chicago. He didn't like his new "family." They were distant cousins on his mother's side. A social worker had recruited them to take him in.