The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace (3 page)

“Mart. Get your swim trunks. Let’s walk to the JCC.”

“OK,” I said, glad to follow him anywhere.

Nathan and his family lived just across the chain-link fence, in the yellow-brick house kitty-corner behind us. I didn’t know much about them until one day I started seeing Nathan in his backyard taking care of his gerbil, Moxie. Nathan was tall for his age and had the longest, blackest hair I’d ever seen on a boy. I first learned his name when his mother yelled, “
Nathan
, get your butt in here!” Her voice shook the pussy willows surrounding our incinerator. He asked me over one afternoon to watch
Creature Feature
. I found out he was a year older than I and went to shul as well as a school. Everyone—his three big brothers and sister—talked at once and loudly. His father was a wrestling coach and was always grabbing Nathan’s brothers and pinning them to the floor. It was a war zone of affection. I didn’t see Nathan often but whenever I did, he always showed up out of the blue, with a definite plan.

“Come on,” he said, standing on our patio that bright June day, straightening his cool wire-framed glasses. “This is a day for swimming.”

“OK.”

I followed, picking up what I could of his overflowing confidence. Past Flamingo, a right on Forest, we hopped barefoot down the broiling pavement past the rectangle houses, big porch, little porch, big, all the way to the Jewish Community Center.

I remember how the light shimmered on the water. This was the biggest and best pool around, shallow to deep packed with horseplay and high-pitched laughter. This was no place for laps, just splashing under the mile-high sky, pink backs smeared with Coppertone.

Eyes red, fingers shriveled, Nathan yanked my foot from under water, leapt up and out of the pool, calling, “Follow me.”

Magic words. I trailed his lanky frame up a back stairwell, stepping into his wide, wet footprints. We dripped our way down a long hall, feet-flops echoing along the polished tiles. As we reached the end of the yellow-colored hall, I smelled smoke. Nathan pushed open a door and—my God—it was a foreign country. A sprawling room filled with dozens of dads. They were seated around card tables or perched in fat lounge chairs watching the ball game.

“That was a bullshit penalty!” one man roared, sticking a cigar back into his mouth.

Some concentrated on books and newspapers. They were all naked. Naked as could be. Except some had on white socks and brown sandals, the kind Jesus used to wear. I was astounded. I’d never really seen bare grown-ups. Somehow, in my world, people emerged from separate compartments, scrubbed and fully clothed. The men had towels around their necks and were moving slowly in and out of steamy doors, chatting. This must be what they meant, I thought, by
Community Center
. Or by
Jewish
.

I panicked, thinking I didn’t belong here. Not allowed. That we’d wandered into something definitely venial, possibly mortal. But Nathan, with his usual assuredness, plunged right through the bare bodies. I followed, head down.

There was Nathan’s dad, sitting on a small stool with a crossword folded over his lap. I clenched, preparing for him to yell like he did at home. Nathan’s dad looked up, his gray eyes flashing.

“Hi, sweethearts,” he said, quiet as could be. “What’s doing?”

Nathan borrowed his dad’s towel and sat down on his knee to help with the puzzle. I wandered through the smoky sweat, lost in a forest of men. Who knew the human physique had so many shapes and shades? Or that human hair grew in such places and patterns? I heard splashing on the other side of a swinging door. I went in.

It was a huge chamber filled with showers, the kind I’d seen once when I visited the local public high school. There was only one grown-up in the room. A guy around eighteen or nineteen, I figured. He stood at the last shower opposite the door, rinsing shampoo from his curly brown hair. White suds made their way down his neck and chest. I recognized him. He was the lifeguard who blew the whistle when we ran too fast to the deep end. He was wearing red trunks with the cross on them. Not the crucifix, but the little white cross that meant he’d save you if you were hurt or drowning. He glanced my way. He had the whitest teeth you ever saw.

I turned on the nearest shower, next to the door. The warm water soothed my neck, ran down my spine. I loved that feeling. It’s what lured me out of bed on school mornings before 8:30 Mass. I watched the water glide down my stomach and jump off the drawstrings of my baggy trunks, scattering and flowing away. It had been another funny day with Nathan. Whenever I was with him, such grown-up things seemed to happen.

I looked up and saw the lifeguard taking off his red trunks. He began wringing them in the shower, his wide back tilted, twisting with the effort. He was bright white where his suit had just been, the rest of him dark with summer. He turned then and, in an instant, I froze under the hot water. My insides tangled, tightened as the space between him and me filled up with something that made my heart race.

Would I look like that in ten years? I wondered. A perfect triangle of hair below my belly? Everything . . . larger? I turned away and tightened my strings. I stared at the yellow tile, imagining ways I might begin to drown under a shower.

I twisted back around, I couldn’t keep, I couldn’t stop, looking at his . . . him.

I heard voices—Sister Agatha’s, Sister Joan’s—tell me this was wrong, rude. Or worse, this was my will acting up. Involuntarily curious, like Eve. I knew I should turn away but, heavenly God, he was beautiful. I watched the water slide across his skin and I could swear I was recollecting something I already knew. I recognized something in his shape; I felt some infinite hope in his particular curves.

He turned off the water and reached to grab his towel from a nearby hook. He shot me a look. I lowered my eyes to the drain, then peeked again. He dried his hair in a way that said he had no idea how nude he was, and then he wrapped the towel around his hips and walked my way. I dropped my eyes again to the swirl of water. I felt him, long-limbed and easy, right next to me. He paused and I looked up. His eyes were brown. And kind. He nodded—a polite farewell—as he reached for the handle of the door, and when he’d gone all I felt at the pit of my stomach was the weight of it. All I could see, stretched from now to forever, was the terrible trouble I was in.

F
OR AS LONG
as I could remember, since kindergarten at least, mornings were trouble. I often woke sick to my stomach. As I got older, I used to sneak out to the side of the house to barf right before car pool came to pick us up for school. I’d plant my feet in the snow near the naked rosebush, press my forehead against the brick, and get it out. If I could time it right, if I got past these early moments of the day without anyone hearing, it’d be OK. None of the questions.
What’s wrong with you? Sick again?
I had no explanations. Only embarrassment. At first, everyone figured it was the flu or a bad bit of food. But then it happened too often. I couldn’t skip school. Not again. Mom and everyone else lost patience. But if I could keep it a secret, get it over with quietly, then I could go to school, get on with the day. Every day a test, a chance to please. A chance to bring home As—the marks that held power, it seemed, to brighten the gloom. To make Mom smile. I’d lean into the brick and what wanted out so badly squeezed its way up the back of my throat. It spilled and burned right through the snow, a yellow hole down to the dirt. I’d wipe my mouth, tuck in my shirt, hurry along to grab my books before car pool honked. Hurry along, wondering what in the world was wrong with my body.

There was a statue of the Virgin Mary outside school. She was blinding white up on her pedestal, her arms lovingly outstretched, her wrists cocked in this odd way that always made me think she was directing traffic. You could sit on the steps, not far from Mary, and look west to see the whole front range of the Rockies, from Pike’s Peak in the south to Long’s in the north and all the mountains in between, standing jagged and mighty over our Disturbed Region. That’s what Father Elser—our priest and sometimes science teacher—told us Denver is called in geologic terms.
A Disturbed Region
. Because of all the tectonic accidents and violent collisions that create such beauty. He told us that a rock, a mountain, may look at rest, but they most certainly are not. Everything is filled with ceaseless subatomic motion. Often, in the mornings before Mass, I would stop and chat with Mary or with the godly view, the way you do with mountains and statues because you sense that somewhere behind the stillness, behind the scenes, they are alive somehow and keeping an eye on things.

One morning I was sitting out on the steps getting air, staring west, when Paula Plank appeared and gave me a kiss. She’d been running. She was out of breath and late, like me, but she stopped and stood still at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

Her cheeks were flushed, two splotches of red spreading over freckles. We locked eyes for a second, blue on blue, twinkle to twinkle. She said not another word, though I thought I heard her brand-new breasts whisper
morning
from beneath her plaid uniform. She reached out and gave me a kiss—a chocolate kiss—and ran.

I watched her go; the pleats of her skirt swirling, her plump calves scrambling up the steps. When she reached the side door of our church, the bells began clanging across the clear sky. She turned to wave and beckon me, then slipped inside. I stood there in my navy blue jacket and gray wool pants, and pondered Paula’s gift. It sat like a big silver teardrop in the palm of my hand. And out of the top of it, like a tiny plume of smoke, flowed a ribbon on which was printed in light blue letters:
kisses kisses kisses
.

I should have told Paula:
No, thanks
. It was Lent and I’d given up chocolate. “Virtue grows through deliberate acts,” Sister Christine had said on the day we wrote on a secret piece of paper what we’d chosen to sacrifice for the five and a half weeks leading up to Easter. “Pray for grace, you’ll get the help you need.”

But the kiss was so sweetly, so quickly, given. It would have been rude to refuse.
Put it away, save it for Easter, tally up your virtue
, I thought. I glanced toward our square yellow-brick school, toward the rectory, the convent. Not a witness in sight. Inside, at Mass, they were reciting the Creed by now.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen
. I peeled back the foil. I took a bite. There was a loud bang. I popped to my feet and shoved what was left of Paula’s gift into my pocket. I turned to see it was the screen door. The slamming of the convent door, and there was Sister Christine, hiking up her habit, dancing down the steps.

Sister Christine was our sixth-grade teacher. I loved her. You know how there always seems to be one nun in the bunch who’s different, cool. That was her, Sister Christine. She had a twelve-string guitar and a bucktoothed grin that made you want to sing. She was a tall, handsome woman with reddish brows and, I think, red hair—though that was another mystery that remained just beyond the veil. She still wore hers while most of the other nuns had taken them off. I asked her why once and she said, “I wear my veil as a constant statement of a deeper reality.” She was full of sayings. During class she’d often repeat, “Remember, it’s through discipline that the transcendent enters our lives.” She’d grown up on a ranch north of town and you could see it in her mighty stride. She marched straight for church, swinging her guitar case. Her rosary beads clacked against her thigh. I chewed fast and held still on the steps. She came to a halt and turned her head.

“Marty,” she called out. “You’re late.”

“I know. Sorry.”

She took a quick glance toward church, then walked over to the top of the steps.

“Lord, it’s so clear today.” She caught my eye. She was one of those adults who, when they looked at you, really
looked
. I ran my tongue around my teeth and swallowed, hoping to erase any trace of my transgression. “Marty? Are you sick again?”

“I’m OK. How are you?”

“Fine. Just . . . not sleeping well.” She moved down a couple steps toward me and propped her guitar case up, held the neck of it. “Have you been practicing your tunes?”

“Yep.”

Sister was the first person in the world who ever said she thought I might be musical. That’s how it started. Now I was studying with her twice a week, during recess, just the two of us chatting on a pair of stools, me learning chords on my cruddy little guitar.
Tie me kangaroo down sport, tie me kangaroo down
. I was always glad to be with her and not out on the playground, worrying about which sort of ball might hit me in the head.

“Marty, you need to get a better instrument. A real guitar. They’re not that expensive. Why don’t you find a way to earn a little extra money?”

“A job?”

“You’re at the age where that might be really good for you.” She gazed again toward the mountains. “Hard to believe Lent’s already here. Everything’s going to bloom soon. What did you give up, Marty?”

“Chocolate.” I looked down at my loafers.

“That’s a tough one.”

I nodded.

“Our Lord spent forty days and forty nights in the desert with no food or drink. And all for
us
.”

“Why
us?
”

“We’re blessed.”

“He must’ve nibbled
something
.”

“Nope.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s written.”

“Forty days. Why so long?”

“Lent is good practice for when you grow up and have even greater appetites to curb.” She looked right into my dark, chocolate-stained soul. “These actions,” she said, “are part of our redemption.”

“I know.”

“A way of buying back what was lost.”

“Sister . . . what did we lose?”

“Oh . . .” She stared far away over the treetops. “Our true place of rest. Our home with God.” She picked up her guitar. “We just have to keep winning our grace.”