Proof of Heaven (8 page)

W
hile Cathleen dressed, Sean did his best to make up for passing out on her couch the night before and yelling at her this morning. He rushed to throw out the ruined magazine and tidy up the living room, folding the blankets and arranging the pillows. He grabbed the empty bottle of whiskey, rinsed it out, and dropped it in the trash, hiding it under the other garbage. Then he remembered to make the coffee he'd promised Cathleen. While it brewed he washed the few dishes and cups in the sink from Colm's Sunday breakfast that Cathleen never had a chance to clean herself.

Sean didn't want to be useless. He didn't want to be the burden he knew he could be to his sister. There were so many things he didn't want out of his life right now, and he didn't even know how to begin to change it all, or how to make it all better for himself or his sister. So he tried to make amends one dish at a time.

From the kitchen, Sean heard Cathleen leave her room, head back into the bathroom, and switch on the blow-dryer. He poured a cup of coffee for himself and took another down to her room and set it on a coaster on her dresser, placing it next to the picture of him on his graduation day from the Fire Academy. He was holding Colm, just a toddler then.

Sean shook his head as he looked at the picture and then at his reflection in Cathleen's bedroom mirror. He was the last person on earth anyone thought would grow up to be a firefighter. Even though his father had been a fireman, Sean had never had any intention of following in Michael Magee's footsteps. Sean had decided when he was a boy about Colm's age that he would do everything in his power to make his mother happy and never to give her cause to grieve. He'd grown up in the shadow of his mother's loss of his father and that was enough.

Like his older sister, he was intelligent, but he also had a daring, fearless side. While Cathleen sat on the couch reading or drawing, he ran around the apartment with his arms outstretched, pretending to soar above the earth. He wanted to see the world from above it, and he had marked the globe his mother had given him for Christmas with flags and stickers on all the places he wanted to go and see when he grew up—Ireland of course, Italy, France, Germany, England, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the wild American West, the Pacific Ocean. He had plans to see the world, but after that awful September day, his thoughts moved from this world to another. He thought only of one thing:
How could God let this happen?
Why was there so much evil in the world? Why and how could people who say they believed in a god, any god, cause so much pain, suffering, death?

In college, he immersed himself in a liberal arts education, preferring classes like philosophy and theology, which surprised him. He had been required to take them, but he ended up enjoying them more than any of the others. The more he read, the more something slowly started to change in him. Unlike his sister, who had begun to resist God and the church when she went to college, Sean felt oddly at home in the texts of Aquinas, Aristotle, and Augustine. A strange force pulled on his heart, and he found himself spending hours on his knees in prayer. It was the closest he felt to being weightless, almost as if he had been levitated, like he often felt after a night of drinking when he lay on his bed and watched the ceiling spin into infinity. For a brief moment, before the alcohol settled in his blood and made him sleepy, he could clearly see his purpose in life. But after the drink dissipated, so too did the feelings of certainty. And when he woke in the morning, he always felt more lonely and wanting than ever before. Praying didn't have the same effect on him that alcohol did. There was no letdown afterward. He knelt for hours, feeling as if the walls around him had disappeared and he could fly over the entire Earth and see all of its beauty, just as he always hoped to do as a boy. It was his dream come true after all. He tried, weakly, to explain it to a girl he had been seeing, but she thought he was trying to let her down easy. He was dying to tell someone who understood. He was certain that he was ready to spend his life drunk on God. It had all the benefits of alcohol without the hangover.

Sean spent hours in the dark, stone crypt below the Byzantine-style basilica on campus. He preferred it to the large upper basilica because he thought the larger one too garish. Most of all, he hated the mosaic of what he called the Giant Aryan Jesus—a blond, he-man-like figure who lorded over the entire altar. The image disturbed him and made him think of his childhood imaginings of what God might look like when he finally came to Earth—a gargantuan man, larger than the entire universe, who tore open the atmosphere like ripping a piece of paper and who appeared before everyone all at once so that no one could deny his existence. While he feared the God who could tear the sky in two, he secretly wished that everyone would know the God he did—the way he did.

Then late one night his sister called, ending his two-month-long bender with the Lord. He had just come home from church and was eager to begin studying for his final exams, so happy to have finally finished his first semester of college and ready to get on with the business of studying to become a priest. He knew from Cathleen's tone, from the words she stumbled over, what she was about to say. He knew with his whole body that his mother was gone.

“How did she die?” He said it so matter-of-factly, as if a part of him, the part that made him feel, was gone too.

Through broken speech and long controlled pauses to fight back her own tears, Cathleen explained to Sean how she had taken their mother to the doctor a few months earlier, after she complained of severe back pain. The doctors ordered blood tests, and they found out shortly after that she had an aggressive form of leukemia, but no one, not even her doctors, expected her to go so fast. They had planned on telling him after his finals, after he finished his first semester of college, but there wasn't enough time. Sean told her it was all
bullshit,
that he had every right to know what was going on. But Cathleen and her mother knew how Sean operated—if things didn't go perfectly or according to plan, he'd invariably quit and turn to the bottle. Or worse, he would have felt bad for his mother and would have given it all up altogether just to be with her. He would have easily sacrificed his career as a priest, if it had meant he could stay near her.

He wanted to be angry at Cathleen for keeping this secret from him, but he could tell she was hurting too. They only had each other now. There would be no one else in the world for them. He'd told Cathleen he would try to get to her as soon as possible.

After Sean had hung up with his sister, he cried for his mother, he cried for the father he never knew, and he cried for himself—his lonely, sad, adult-orphaned self. He cried because he was angry. His anger surged and rose through him, like a heat wave that evaporated the moisture off the city streets and made steamy waves that obscured his view, making everything look blurry. Nothing came into focus. He sat alone with his questions for a long time.
Why was everyone's life filled with so much loss and pain? Why did the people we love the most have to go?

Eventually he threw open the window of his dorm room and let the cold blast of air wash over his face and body. Finally, it seemed, he woke from the dream. Yes, as quickly as his newfound fire for God came, it left him like a powerful gust of air, a massive backdraft, fast and forceful, consuming him completely without a moment to inhale or to know what hit him before it all went black. He didn't know it then, but he would look for that fire everywhere, eventually settling for the real thing as a firefighter just two years later.

Sean quickly packed and turned off the lights in his room for the last time. Through the open window, the blue mosaic dome of the basilica shone underneath the moonlight. It seemed absurd to him now to think he would have ever said Mass below that dome. Everything around him seemed a cosmic joke, and for the first time in months he felt the ground beneath him, the cold air, and the ache in his chest and head. The light had gone out of him, and all the wonder and awe that had filled him until that moment just disappeared. In its place was a gaping hole in the middle of his chest that no amount of prayer or drink would ever fill. His life would never be the same. There was no one to please. No one to try to make proud. No one, except for Cathleen, left to worry about him—or to protect him.

Sean closed his eyes. Even though he was supposed to be a man, he still felt like a boy, the same boy who soared through his mother's apartment, running with his arms outstretched while warning, “Look out, look out! Here I come, Mama!” He felt sure that at any moment she would appear before him, and she would, he was certain of it, catch him midair, swing him over her shoulders, and tell him the entire world was his for the having.

But when he opened his eyes, he remembered he was not that boy anymore or the man he was supposed to be today. Who was going to hold him now and tell him it would all work out, that everything would be just fine?

His mother was gone.

When Cathleen stepped into her bedroom while brushing her hair, she found her bed made and the hot coffee set on her dresser next to her brother and son's picture. She smiled and shouted down the hall, “Thanks, Sean.”

“Does it taste OK?”

“I meant thanks for everything—for the coffee, for staying over, for being here, for helping with Colm yesterday. All of it. Thanks. And I am sorry. About before. What I said. I really am.”

“No big deal, Sis. Hurry up, so we can get out of here,” Sean shouted back. Sean wasn't big on scenes. Besides, he knew she wasn't the one who should be saying sorry to anyone, especially to him.

L
ater that same afternoon after Colm had woken up from his surgery, his mother and uncle were there waiting for him. Cathleen looked tired, and Colm could tell she had been crying.

“Did I do it again?” He looked at Uncle Sean. But his mother answered him.

“Yes, dear. But it wasn't so bad this time. The pacemaker is already helping.”

“Where is Dr. Basu?”

“He had to leave for a bit. He has other patients he needs to see.”

“Oh,” Colm said, disappointed.

“Are you feeling OK?” his mother asked while gently rubbing his cheeks.

“I'm tired.”

“I bet you are. Does it hurt?”

He felt a sharp, heavy pain when he breathed in and his shoulder ached. He reached across his chest and felt the bandages. A tiny, hard disc protruded from his chest wall.

“This feels funky.”

“I bet it does,” Cathleen said, feeling it for herself.

“Do you think it will work?” Colm pleaded.

“We already think it does. Your heart stopped beating for a little bit, and the pacemaker seems to be able to rev it up. I think the worst is over,” Cathleen said as she smiled, trying to remain calm for the boy's sake.

“Mama?”

“Yes, Colm?”

“I love you.”

It had felt like forever since he had spoken those words to her. It had only been days, but it dismantled her. She fell apart inside, but she knew he shouldn't see her cry. She smiled and said it back with a goofy cross-eyed face and grin: “Love you too, Bud.”

Colm giggled and immediately felt a surge of pain from the movement. He cried out.

“Just rest, kiddo,” Sean said. “We have all day. No rush. The insurance company is even gonna spring for another day. How do you like that? You get another day off of Cut and Paste Land.”

“But I want to go to school,” Colm argued. He was so sick of hospitals—even school seemed like a better alternative.

“Hon, there will be plenty of time for school. Right now you have to get better,” Cathleen assured him.

Just then the monsignor walked into the room, and catching the last bit of their conversation, he added, “Your mother is right, Colm. Our first order of business is healing you.”

Sean cringed and snapped back, “
Our, Our, Our first order of business.
Who invited you, Padre?”

“Excuse me? Sean?”

“Why are you even here? Did you come back to give God credit for ‘healing' my nephew? Did you come to fill my sister's head up with more nonsense about praying for miracles? Save it.”

“I am sorry, Sean. I don't know what you mean. What's this all about?”

“Sure you do, Father. Sure,” Sean said disapprovingly and shook his head.

“Sean, please. Not now. Not in front of Colm,” Cathleen pleaded.

“No, I got this guy's number, Cate. Believe me, I know what he's all about. He forgets I was almost one of his types—before I wised up,” Sean said while looking at Cathleen, and then he walked over to the monsignor. The monsignor could smell the alcohol coming through Sean's pores and the acrid smell from his mouth.
He must have been sneaking drinks all day,
he thought as he braced for Sean's attack. He had heard about them from his sister.

“Does it make you feel good, Pops? Does it fill your heart up with love and good shit to know you're serving God? Do you think that God stopped whatever he was doing to fill your precious heart up with love for him? You think I don't know? That I don't get it? What you and your
people
are all about? Give me a break, old man. Go sell your crazy to someone who buys it. That crazy feeling you get when you pray or think God is talking to you—you know what that is, Monsignor? A chemical reaction in your brain.” Sean was pointing at the middle of Monsignor's head.

Cathleen shouted, “Sean, please stop!” But Sean was on a roll.

“You get high off it, don't you, Pops? You're no different than a junkie or a drunk. You just get your juice from a different kind of bottle. Trust me, I know allllll about it. And let me tell you something else, Monsignor, he's
ours
, Colm's
ours
.”

“Not in front of Colm,” Cathleen said, cutting Sean off. She couldn't take it anymore.

“Mama, what's Uncle Sean talking about?”

“Nothing, Bud. It's just silly, stupid adult stuff. They're both cranky and tired.”

The monsignor was obviously flustered by Sean's tirade, but he was more angry at the way Sean had reduced his faith to nothing more than the old
opiate of the masses
line. He had spent the better part of his life arguing with skeptics that the God he believed in was real and heard and saw everything that everybody did and said—even doubters like Sean. Even though he wanted to tell Sean how disturbed he thought he was and how, at some point in this life, he would cry out for God, the monsignor held his tongue. There would be no use in trying to explain it all to someone like Sean, he concluded. If Colm's miraculous revivals couldn't prove it, the monsignor thought, then nothing ever could.

“Sean, we all want Colm to get better, that's all I am saying.”

“What's this
we
stuff, Pop? The only
we
here is Cate and me. Got it?”

“Stop!” Cathleen screamed. “Leave Monsignor alone. He's only here to help. And you're right, there is no
we
.
I
am Colm's mother. And
I
want the monsignor here. He's our family, Sean. He's the only one we've got left now to help us. If you don't like it,
you
leave. Just get the hell out of here. I can't stand to look at you right now.”

Sean felt a stabbing pain in his chest. The air completely left his lungs. He felt like the wet, bloody towel he had thrown out of a window.
An embarrassment. Discarded and forgotten.
He leaned in without thinking and kissed Colm's head and then started for the door.

“That's right, Sean. When the going gets tough, the tough get drinking. Have one for me, why don't ya?” Cathleen said it quickly and drily, hoping it would cut him deep.

Sean stopped himself at the door. He wanted to slap her, but more than anything, he was embarrassed because she was right. As he left the room he never looked back.

Cathleen couldn't believe she'd said something like that in front of other people. She and Sean often argued, but not in front of Colm. Her mouth and contrary disposition always made things so difficult for her and for those around her. She knew she had no right to speak to Sean that way. Her mother's final request had been for her to take care of her brother. And hadn't Sean been so good to her these past two days? She had just gone for the jugular, and now she regretted it. From the look on Colm's face, she could tell he was as disappointed with her as she was with herself. Maybe even angry with her. He adored his uncle.

“Mama, that wasn't very nice. I wanted Uncle Sean to stay.”

“I know. I was wrong, Bud.”

“You should say sorry so he forgives you.”

“I will. I promise.”

Dr. Basu was in the hallway on his way to see the boy when he saw Sean walking briskly toward the elevator.

“Sean! Where are you off to in such a rush? How is the boy?”

“Gotta run.” Sean pushed past the doctor, knocking his shoulder as he went by. He only wanted to get out of the hospital. To get away from everyone. There was a bottle of Jameson, Sean thought, and it had his name on it. The elevator door opened, but Sean turned around. “Hey, Doc!”

“Yes, Sean?” Dr. Basu headed toward him, meeting him halfway.

“Watch out for that priest. He's filling my sister's head with crap. And he's trying to convince her he can heal Colm—by praying and shit, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, he seems very, how should I say, vigilant.”

“My sis has gotta be prepared for what's really going to happen. There is nothing worse, believe me, than having death sprung on you without any chance to prepare for it.”

Dr. Basu nodded in agreement, remembering that awful day from long ago.

“I think your sister has been preparing for a long time to lose him. She has a bit more practice than most.”

“I know, I know. But you heard him yesterday. He's giving her hope that he has no right to give.”

“Hope isn't a bad thing, Sean. It will get her through the worst of it.”

“But it's a lie, Doc. A lie. I thought you were a smart guy. You know as well as I do hope isn't going to save Colm.”

“I think it's best not to get involved with what helps people in times like these. I have found that it is my job to fix what is broken, and do no harm. I can't control how people will react, and how they get through it.”

“Keep your distance. I get it. That way you hurt less. You're a lot smarter than I thought. Takes one to know one, Doc.”

“Wait, that's not what I . . .”

“No worries, Doc. Your secret's safe with me.”

Sean patted Dr. Basu's shoulder and headed back toward the elevator. As the doors were about to close, he said something the doctor could barely make out.

“I've seen the way you've been looking at my sister and my nephew these past two days, Doc. You're not fooling anyone. You may think you're tough and nothing bothers you, but I see it. I know. They're getting to you.
She's
getting to you.” Then the elevator doors closed and he was gone.

The doctor, unnerved by what Sean said, moved toward the boy's room and bumped into Cathleen, who'd just stepped out.

Dr. Basu looked at her and smiled. She was so beautiful. He wondered if it was as obvious to her, to everyone, as it was to Sean—how fond he was becoming of her and her boy.