The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (6 page)

The church was hushed, dark, and cool. A lingering fragrance of incense and candle wax pulled Hallie deeper inside, where she felt overcome with an ineffable sense of pooling peace. Of course, it wasn’t the first time she’d been inside St. Peter the Apostle’s. She and Nick had attended countless weddings and funerals, even a couple of baptisms there.

She’d stood for what felt like a long time, savoring the deep quiet, when she spotted Gus sitting alone near the front of the church. He was slouched so low in the pew that if it weren’t for the glow of his cigarette, Hallie might have missed him in the dim light. He didn’t react when she walked down the center aisle. She slid into the pew beside him.

“Cigarette?” he offered, breaking the silence as he pulled a pack from his pocket.

Hallie shook her head. “Aren’t you afraid God will strike you dead if you smoke in here?”

Gus’s eyes were inscrutable. “Not the God I know,” he said, retracting his Camels.

He continued to stare straight ahead, enjoying his smoke. Hallie took in the sense of spaciousness created by the vaulted ceilings and the sculpted shafts of light that poured through the stained-glass windows. “Do you come here a lot?” she asked.

Gus didn’t exactly smile, but a trace of the flirtatious boy everyone knew crossed his face. “Either that’s a really bad pickup line, or Father D’Souza sent you to find out why I haven’t been at mass lately.”

“Or maybe I just want to know.”

Gus was quiet for so long that Hallie thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he said, “Uncle Manny and Aunt Fatima don’t go to church much anymore, but when I was little, we never missed mass. Best clothes. Ten-fifteen sharp. This pew. Tell you the truth, I kind of miss it. There’s a moment when the priest lifts the Communion host in the air and we pray:
Just say the word and my soul shall be healed.
Sometimes it really felt true.”

Hallie nodded, though she always felt uncomfortable when people like Aunt Del talked about their faith. “I can’t believe they leave this place open. Aren’t they afraid it’ll be robbed?”

“Has been—more than once. Don’t you read the
Banner
? That’s why Father D’Souza gave me this.” Gus pulled a key from his pocket. “When I was a kid, I used to come here sometimes—usually at crazy hours. One night when I was ten, I crawled out my window in the middle of a huge storm, and rode my bike here. By the time Father D’Souza heard me knocking on the door, I was drenched.”

“Didn’t your aunt come looking for you?”

Gus stared at the altar. “Aunt Fatima checked out after she lost Junior. Woman never even knew I was gone. The next day the priest came to the house—kind of like your dad making a house call. He told me if I ever did that again, he’d give me a beating I’d never forget. When Uncle Manny asked what was going on, he just said, ‘Parish outreach.’ Gotta love that guy.”

He gave Hallie a long look. “So now that you know all my crazy secrets, what are
you
doing here? From what I heard, Nick’s an atheist and he brought you up the same way.”

“I saw your bike out back.”

Gus continued to watch her, waiting for the full explanation.

“And I heard about your dad.” Her voice had sunk to a whisper.

Gus looked toward a stained-glass window depicting a storm at sea. “I suppose everyone’s heard by now. This whole nosy town.” He turned back to Hallie. “So you’re here to offer your condolences? Avoid the rush, maybe? Well, thanks but no thanks.”

Feeling as if she’d been slapped—and worse, that she deserved it, she rose to go. “I’m sorry. I had no right to come in here.”

He grabbed her arm. “No, please—
I’m
sorry.
Again.
And don’t go. I know I’m an asshole, but I could use the company.”

“Not what I’d call a very appealing offer.” Hallie was still on her feet. “And like you said, I’m not used to hanging out in churches.”

Gus grinned, and in spite of the setting and the circumstances, she felt her skin flush.

“I can’t do much about my mood, but we could at least go somewhere else,” he said. He mashed his cigarette on the church floor. Then, apparently having second thoughts, he retrieved the butt and put it into his pocket. Hallie noticed a small bottle of Jack Daniels protruding from its fold. When he thought she wasn’t looking, he bowed his head and crossed himself.

“We better get out of here before Father D’Souza shows up and gives you that beating he threatened you with when you were a kid,” she said, starting down the aisle.

Once they were outside, Hallie was startled by the bright day. In the unforgiving light, it was obvious that Gus Silva was drunk. She wondered how she had missed that in the church.

“Where were you thinking of going?” she asked, realizing how little she knew him. This grown-up Gus whose gleaming black hair and bright teeth reminded her of his father’s. “I really should be getting—”

“I only know where I
don’t
want to go,” Gus said before she could finish. “Not to my house. Or yours. Not into town, or to the beach or the wharf. Nowhere we might run into anyone we know.”

“That pretty much rules out our entire world.”

“I know a place,” Gus said, impulsively taking her hand. Hallie felt a current go through her as he tugged her toward the cemetery.

T
he grave was located out near
the highway. Gus sat down on the broad, flat stone inscribed with his mother’s maiden name:
MARIA BOTELHO
. There were no dates, no
BELOVED WIFE
or
MOTHER
, not even a carved angel to soften it.

“Her family only agreed to bury her here because of me. I promised my grandmother I’d visit the grave every day.”

“Do you?
”

Gus looked straight ahead. “Only came once. The night of that storm I told you about. I kept thinking of her, out in the rain alone. I don’t know what I thought I could do about it, but I had to come. Pretty dumb, huh?”

“No. Not dumb at all,” Hallie said softly, imagining the night, the storm, the boy he had been when she showed up at his door. And she thought of her own predawn wanderings. Though she never went further than her own roof, she understood the impulse.

“When I finally realized she wasn’t here, it was a huge relief—and the worst moment of my life. It meant nothing could ever hurt her again—not the weather or my father or anything else,” he said. “But it also meant that I couldn’t climb out my window and find her. I couldn’t protect her, and there was nothing she could do to help me, either.”

The temperature was in the eighties, but Hallie wrapped her arms around herself like she’d caught a chill. “You walked straight to the spot as if you came here every day. Just like you promised your grandmother.”

“It’s not something you forget,” Gus said, as he lit another cigarette. He edged over to make room for Hallie. “Have a seat.”

She hesitated, feeling superstitious about sitting on a gravestone—and a little bit wary of being that close to Gus. “I should probably get back. I left a ton of work at the office.”

“You can’t leave now. Maria will be offended if you don’t sit for a few minutes.” Gus patted the stone like it was a couch in his living room. “ ‘What can I get you to drink?’ she’d say. She was like that. Traditional mom, you know?”

He pulled the pint of Jack Daniels from his pocket. “Sorry I don’t have a glass. Mom would have made sure you had some ice, too.”

“I kind of doubt she would have served me
that
either,” Hallie said. She waved away the bottle, as she sat beside him on the stone. Even half-drunk and sitting on his mother’s grave, Gus Silva was so handsome, she felt dizzy.

“Always the doctor’s good little girl, right?” he said and shrugged. “I guess that means there’s more for me.” He took a long pull from the bottle.

Hallie cringed at the image she’d been trying to live down all her life.
The girl genius. Dr. Nick’s perfect daughter.

“Not as good as you think,” she said, taking the cigarette from his hand. She dragged the smoke into her lungs. Nick would have been more shocked and angered by the smoking than if he’d caught her drinking whiskey with Codfish Silva’s son. On his mother’s grave, no less.

The cigarette tasted of nicotine, but also of something else. It took a minute before Hallie realized it was Gus himself. It reminded her of the scent that had followed her into the foyer, and trailed her home on the night of Neil’s play. She inhaled deeply, and began to cough.

Gus laughed, extending the bottle in her direction. “Now you have no choice. You have to accept my hospitality.”

“I think one new vice is enough for today.”

“Come on. Please?”

Hallie laughed. “Why do you care? Like you said, if I don’t have any, there’s more for you.”

But Gus remained serious. “If we both drink, it will be easier to tell the truth, and I want us to tell each other everything. Even the stuff we never told anyone else.”

Holding his eyes, she accepted the bottle of whiskey. Then she threw back her head like he had when he drank. Her throat burned, and her eyes watered.

“
Jesucristo!
” she yelled. “That’s worse than smoking! Are you trying to kill me?” But even as she jumped up and shouted, she was reaching for the cigarette from Gus’s mouth.

“I’d slit my wrists before I ever hurt you,” he said. “I hope you know that.” Then he undermined his seriousness with a loud hiccup.

“I didn’t mean . . . I never thought—” she stammered, wondering how she could have been so insensitive. She sat back down on the stone, so close she could see the amber flecks in Gus’s dark eyes. She’d only had one gulp of alcohol but she felt intoxicated.

“I know,” Gus said, putting a finger to her lips. “But I
do
mean it. All my life, my biggest fear was that I would grow up to be like him. And I wasn’t the only one. Whenever I went to New Bedford, I could see it in her family’s eyes. They loved me; I was all they had left of my mother. But they couldn’t look at me without seeing the man who killed her. Eventually, I gave us all a break and stopped going.”

“I don’t see much of my mom’s family, either,” Hallie said, passing the cigarette back to him. “Not since my grandmother told Nick he should put me in boarding school where I would be
properly
cared for. They never thought he was good enough, you know? Even with a Harvard education and his medical degree, he was too Provincetown, too eccentric—and probably too
Portagee
, too. They couldn’t believe their debutante daughter had married a fisherman’s son.”

“Their loss, right?” Gus said. They fell into a strangely comfortable silence as they looked out on the landscape of carved stones.

“Do you still miss her?” Hallie finally asked.

“Not like I did when I was a kid, but yeah, I miss her. You know what scares me? There’s so much I already forgot. And if I don’t remember her, who will?”

Hallie reached for the whiskey bottle. She pushed back the wavy gold hair that slanted across her face, determined to hide nothing. “Do you want to know the worst thing about me?” she asked. “The thing I’ve never told anyone?”

Gus waited.

“I’ve always been glad my mother wasn’t around. I
like
having Nick to myself.”

“Maybe that makes it hurt less,” Gus said, absolving her like she imagined Father D’Souza did in the confessional. Or like Nick did in his own way. “Besides, it’s not like you wished her dead. You just adapted to the way things were.”

“Don’t let me off so easy. I was jealous of her,” Hallie admitted. “Nick
adored
Liz Cooper.”

“Adored. That was the same word my father used,” Gus said. He laughed bitterly. “What
bullshit.
You know what pisses me off more than anything?”

A cigarette dangling from his mouth, Gus reminded her of James Dean or Marlon Brando in the campy old movies that played at the theater in town. “Today’s her birthday. Of all the days on the calendar, he chose this one.”

Hallie took the cigarette from his lips and drew the smoke into her lungs.

S
o are you ready to hear
the worst thing about me?” Gus asked.

Hallie nodded, though she wasn’t sure she was. In the last hour, she’d already learned that he loved the mass like an old woman clutching her beads, that as a boy he’d wandered around in the rain searching for his dead mother, and that he came to the church to drink and smoke.

“It was my fault,” Gus said abruptly.

Hallie stayed quiet, willing him to keep talking, but at the same time afraid that he would.

“The night she died I stayed in my room. I closed my eyes and covered my ears. I counted backward from a hundred and let the Portuguese song she taught me run in my head like a tape. I
sang.
”

Despite the heat, Hallie shivered as she thought of the voice that had awakened her that night. The sound she had never described to anyone.

“And you know what else I did?”

It had been many years since she’d thought about what Johnny Kollel used to say: that Gus Silva was crazy; that he was the one who’d really killed his mother. Codfish had only gone to jail to protect him. But now the memories, the rumors from that dark time crowded in on her.

“
Nothing
,” Gus said. “I was right there in the next room and I didn’t even try to save her.”

“You were
nine years old
!” Hallie was ashamed of her thoughts—and of the relief that flooded her. “You didn’t know what was going to happen. And even if you did, what could you have done?”

“Did your dad ever tell you about the time my mother went to him with a dislocated shoulder, her whole arm covered by bruises?”

Though she knew Nick harbored regrets about the incident, Hallie hesitated. Her father had taught her that anything she overheard about a patient in the office was strictly confidential. But this day, this encounter seemed to be happening outside all the rules she’d ever known. She nodded almost imperceptibly.
Yes, she knew.