The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace (17 page)

If I was beginning to experience the Church as a dark and oppressive wall of silence, an impenetrable cultural monolith (which I did, I do), then here was a chink of light in the wall. A man who dared to talk of the body, of desire. I loved the way he was trying, it seemed, to work out his own thoughts and ideas in front of us. Things, I imagined, he was in conflict, in doubt, about. He trusted us with that, wanted us to think and query. His questions touched off in me the ache of my own unanswerables, a veiled remembrance of all the unspeakable things colliding deep in my own heart. A few times, I actually went home after school and started a note to him.
Brother Tom, could we talk . . .?

But my,
the
, wall of silence stood too solid and terrible between us. How could I find the words that might leap over, go through, that cultural wall? I couldn’t. Even if I did find words, I knew they’d never have risen to my throat. The things in me were too terrible, I thought, too buried, for language.

If I’d ever found the voice, the courage, what might I have described to my freshman theology teacher? Could I have told him about the man who entered my life? How I hated him?
And listen, Brother, it’s not just that. It’s also that I think I love men. Boys. I dream of them. I think maybe that’s the way I was made. That’s my imperfection. Now do you still think me divine? I’m torn down the middle. I want to be of you, I think, but I cannot. I went back, you see, again and again. Up to the mountains, inside a barn, inside a sleeping bag. And it was wonderful and terrible and I am ruined. And I will do nothing in this life but shame my father, my family. Shame this holy school of men. I must get out of this skin, out of this wretched life
.

W
HEN IT ARRIVED
, at an unexpected moment, I experienced the news as both shocking and inevitable.

They wanted him in jail
.

I heard it at a drive-in movie with John, my sister’s seventeen-year-old boyfriend. It was nearly winter; I’d made it through three months of the Jesuits. It was a rerun, a film with Peter Fonda and we’d come because we’d heard about a scene with a nude girl on a motorcycle. John (who’d attended and loved St. Malo) was at the wheel and as we stared up through his dirty windshield and munched our popcorn he said, ever so casually,

“You remember that guy from Malo? Bob?”

I kept my eyes on the giant screen. “What? Who?”

“Bob? He did some weird shit. Stole some stuff. He’s going to go to jail.”

My bowels squirmed. “Wow, really?”

“He messed around with boys.”

“Gross,” I managed to say.

“He’s in deep shit.”

Silence. Peter Fonda, thirty feet tall.

“He ever do anything to you?” John asked.

“No. No.” My heart had taken off, was racing.

“Listen, Father G. wanted me to ask. If anything . . . like that . . . ever happened to you, you could talk to him and well . . . they’ll take care of it. Of him.” I focused on keeping my face blank as my being went into spasm. I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head. It was all so twisted. Why was John asking me this? Why was he asking on behalf of an archdiocesan priest? What did John know, what did Father G. know? Who were
they
? Why do they think I’d know something? Mercifully, John let it drop, didn’t bring it up again.

I was sleepless that night. And the next.

I had always sensed that trouble awaited Bob, that the Law would come down on him. And the very thought of it, of him being dragged into a public mess, a court of law, caused my lungs to contract in terror.
Catholic Schoolboy Molested by Camp Counselor
. That headline would be the end of my life. I’d drown along with him. After hearing the news from John, I awaited in dread a legal-looking letter, a summons, a terrible phone call forcing me to go somewhere and spill the shameful beans. But I heard nothing.

It had been nearly a year since I’d seen Bob standing in his dark suit at the altar. Every day, every month that went by without hearing anything from him made me feel the relief of being further and further away from the dirty picture. I’d vowed after that sad wedding to never, ever, have anything to do with him again. It was a solemn, self-preserving promise.

But after that night at the movies with John, an odd and powerful idea began to take hold of me:
I must see him, face to face
. The sense that, no matter the danger, I had to confront him before he vanished into jail, would not leave me alone. It became an obsession. This thing grew within me, this beastly, crazy hope that the way to absolution, the path to release, was to look him in the eye and denounce everything that had ever passed between us.

My braces were off, my voice had dropped, and my suit size had changed. I could speak to him now with some authority, couldn’t I? I could tell him a thing or two and wipe the slate clean. Then it’d be all over. I’d go on with my real life, I’d have a shot at being a good person. This would be my chance at becoming a man, a father, a citizen.

One Friday night, some weeks later, my obsession forced me to make a move. I slipped the car keys from their hook in the hall. Dad was gone, Mom was asleep on the couch in front of the TV, exhausted from work. I took Daisy, her yellow VW Bug, without permission, without a license. I was fifteen, too young to drive legally, but I’d learned well from him just how to do it. How to sneak, how to use a clutch. I started the engine and headed west. If I found him, I thought,
then
I could forget him. Forget the whole damn thing.

I shifted to fourth, released the clutch, and held steady at sixty miles an hour. Daisy strained to keep up with the mammoth Blazers and Chevy pickups climbing past us along the Denver–Boulder freeway. I kept patting the dash. I wanted to thank Daisy the car for its effort, her loyal company. Daisy was the only one in the world who knew where I was, which way I was headed.

Mom’s Chanel knockoff was embedded in the plastic of the bucket seat. Every time I moved my legs a wave of perfume wafted up like a girly-ghost, following, watching me break the law, make a fool of myself. Again. I opened the window a crack and sucked in the night air.

You’re doing this because you’re weak
, a voice said.
No, Mart, because you’re strong
, said another.

The ashtray was open, stuffed with lipstick and toothpicks and floss. The instruments of Mom’s passion—dental hygiene. I imagined her cleaning her mouth, painting her lips as she sped down Speer Boulevard each morning to her new job. A woman possessed to save what teeth she had left, to be on time for the job that would buy her what she wanted most—a divorce.

I rolled the window down so the cold wind tore across my face; the half-formed fragments of what I might say when, if, I found him, whipped through my brain.

Long time no see . . . have you finished the house?

How many other boys did you . . .?

I got my braces off
.

Goodbye . . .

The rush of air screeched through the vents and the frayed rubber lining of Daisy’s door. It sounded as if the world was screaming:
What the fuck are you doing?
I didn’t know what I’d say to him. I’d stolen the car. This was a mess. Here I was again, my body flying off somewhere I didn’t mean for it to go. That alone place where you make it up as you go along, where desperate need becomes the mother of sinful invention. Panic rose from my stomach and clawed at the back of my throat. It didn’t want me to breathe.

I leaned forward and took great gulps of air. I recognized this—the adrenaline. The anticipation, so much like the sex, like the stuff that happened with him and me out in the secret zone, out at the edge of the world where not a soul knew where we were. It was the insane thrill of a hidden life, of sneaking off and cheating on the world to which I’d vowed, again and again, to belong. If I were normal I’d be on my way to the Friday night Regis–Mullen basketball game. I’d be cheering with the others, raising my fist, wanting the Jesuits to cream the Christian Brothers.

Instead I was stealing away, like I had so many times during the affair.
Affair?
Christ . . . is that the right word? The criminal affair. The love affair. Is it even possible for a kid to have an affair? It implies choice in the matter.
Yeah, well, that’s me. I chose, didn’t I? Again and again
.

I hugged close to the solid white line that ran along the shoulder of the right lane. Smooth and easy, holding to the speed limit. Everything by the book. Headlights kept rushing up from behind and blazing into the rearview mirror, lighting me up. They’d press close, then scoot into the left lane to pass. I kept thinking that the next pair of lights would go red, start blinking, pull me over and ask questions. Sometimes, as they zoomed by, I could make out the shape of a face, a phantom head floating by, someone with a license, the right, a good place to go.

I shifted to third so Daisy could climb the long hill outside of Boulder. The pitch of her engine rose as I put the pedal to the floor. A van roared past, its headlights blinding. I caught sight of my face in the mirror, the red, raging zits covering my chin. I reached up and pinched at one.

I crested the hill and the lights of Boulder came into view. In the distance, the windows of the two tallest buildings, the university dorms, were ablaze with a busy student body. I rubbed my chin again, wiped the blood on my jeans. I didn’t want him to see me like this, livid chin, poison coming out. From here, I figured, it was less than an hour to his place. I thought of pulling into the overlook, turning around at the next exit, but I didn’t. My foot stayed on the gas.

The traffic in Boulder wasn’t bad. I drove slowly, not sure but trusting that I’d recall which way to go. I’d nearly reached the north end of town when, as soon as I saw it, I remembered it was after the Dairy Queen, a good mile after the last light on Twenty-eighth Street, that I should turn and climb west into the canyon.

Before long, the walls of rock grew higher and the road was deserted. The moon was out and gibbous, and I caught glimpses below of the bright white water where the creek grew narrow enough to make rapids. The VW fought its way around the sharp curves, the headlights casting eerie shadows along the cliffs. I honked the horn as I drove through a tight overhang. Bob had always done that at this very spot, but the bleep of Daisy was nothing to the blast I remembered from the truck. Another mile or so and I spotted the yellow sign urging you to climb to higher ground in case of heavy rain. With it came the memory of the night Bob shot the deer. An age ago, it seemed.

The canyon walls widened and gave way to the clearing where houses began to appear. I passed the shop with the neat, suburban-looking lawn and the sign that said:
Cider, Beef Jerky, Antiques Here!
My heart sped up. The idea that he could be close—if he was home, if he wasn’t already arrested—frightened me.

I spotted his VW in the gravel driveway—an older, paler model of Daisy. The truck was nowhere in sight. Other than a light in the kitchen window, the house looked dark. I couldn’t bring myself to stop the car. I drove on, climbing up the canyon toward Nederland, realizing I was looking everywhere for cops. What if he was being watched? What if some authority saw me? I might be questioned, dragged into it.

I pulled over, yanked the wheel, turned around, and within moments was parked in his drive. My body had taken over. My head was full of thunder but I could hear my feet crunch through the gravel and up to the doorstep. I looked on as my fist rose and knocked.

And he was there. Standing tall and quiet, silhouetted in the soft light of the kitchen. He didn’t have his glasses on. His eyes looked puffy and tired. And like a performer who’d been a wreck in the wings but knew just what to do upon entrance, my voice rolled out low and steady.

“Hello, Bob.”

He remained still, seemingly placid, and stared at me. For an awful moment I wondered if he’d actually forgotten. If I really was one among too many and he was rifling through the boy files in his brain.

“Long time,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. And that one word, that single sound of his voice crawled across every synapse of my nervous system—head to toe—as if my body recalled in an instant everything that had ever passed between us. “Come in.”

I followed him through the kitchen and into the dim light of the living room. There was the faint smell of fresh paint. He’d done a great deal of work in the months since I’d been there. Wires were hanging from an unfinished fixture on the ceiling and a wood door off its hinges was leaning against one wall. Otherwise, the house appeared finished.

“Place looks great,” I said. “Nice carpet.”

“Thanks.”

He was wondering why I’d come, of course, wondering, perhaps, if I was one of the enemy. I could see it in his pathetic manner and I could feel the stupid smile I’d stuck on my face to reassure him. Why did I need to reassure
him?
Why did I care? He gestured for me to sit with him on the lip of a step that encircled the stone fireplace in the middle of the room, stones I’d helped carry and cement into place. He had on his usual Levis and white T-shirt. He folded his hands and let them droop between his knees. His eyes were lowered, looking, it appeared, toward his scuffed penny loafers, the dimes still there—tails right shoe, heads left.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Last time I sat here it was all plywood and sawdust,” I said, digging the car keys into my palm. I could barely hear the gurgle of the creek behind the house, beyond the sliding glass doors that led out to the deck. Other than that it was perfectly quiet. The air was thick, somehow, with grief, with troubles. A place under siege. “I wanted to see you, I . . .”

I heard the cry of a baby. Bob raised his face toward the stairs that led up to the bedroom. The room where I’d slept and wakened with him many times. The bed with the skylight overhead.

“Karen, look who’s here,” he said.

She came down the steps slowly as though she was in pain. Perhaps from childbirth, perhaps from everything. She still had her long blond hair. It was tied in a ponytail. She’d gained a good deal of weight. She had a pink blanket in her arms, a tiny child inside.