Any Bitter Thing (29 page)

Monsignor Frank Flannagan, co-chancellor, Diocese of Portland.

Father John Derocher, pastor, St. Peter’s, Bangor.

Father Michael Murphy, pastor, St. Bartholomew ‘s, Hinton.

Mr. Douglas Dearborn, Case Supervisor, Department of Human Services.

MSGR. FLANNAGAN: I don’t see the point in going over this again. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.

BISHOP BYRNES: I would like to have it recorded that we have held a proceeding with all due opportunity for discovering the truth. This proceeding is private, as discussed. Sealed, as discussed.

MR. DEARBORN: Just to clarify, though: You don’t deny that you gave your niece alcohol.

FR. MURPHY: I told you this twice already. A sip. Diluted.

MR. DEARBORN: Right. On several occasions.

FR. MURPHY: Occasions of celebration. I told you.

MR. DEARBORN: To celebrate love.

FR. MURPHY: I don’t like your tone, Mr. Dearborn.

FR. DEROCHER: Mike, you’re not helping anything.

MR. DEARBORN: And you don’t deny that your niece often slept in your bed with you.

FR. MURPHY: I didn’t say “often.” I said “occasionally.” How many times are you going to ask me this question? She has nightmares. There is no comforting her. Anyone with a child knows this. I arranged—I always arrange the blankets in a proper way, Mr. Dearborn. I’ve already told you this.

MR. DEARBORN: What is a proper way to arrange blankets?

FR. MURPHY: I really don’t like your tone.

FR. DEROCHER: Can we just finish this?

MR. DEARBORN: To clarify, then, your housekeeper said—

FR. MURPHY: I know what she said. I don’t need to hear it again.

MR. DEARBORN: Her word against yours, then.

FR. MURPHY: I’m afraid so.

MR. DEARBORN: Well, we interviewed your niece this morning.

FR. MURPHY: What? You did what?

FR. DEROCHER: Take it easy, Mike.

FR. MURPHY: You said you’d leave her out of this. If I came down and answered these asinine questions, you’d leave her out of this.

MSGR. FLANNAGAN: We’re not the only ones making decisions right now, Father Murphy. This is taking on a life of its own.

FR. MURPHY: What’s wrong with you? She’s nine years old. Was Mrs. Blanchard with her? My neighbor, Mrs. Blanchard, was staying with her today.

MR. DEARBORN: We sent a female caseworker, Father Murphy. She’s very gentle when interviewing children, I assure you.

FR. MURPHY: I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this.

MR. DEARBORN: Your niece told our caseworker that you gave her alcohol, took her into your bed, and touched her inappropriately.

FR. MURPHY: What? What?

MR. DEARBORN: This is someone used to interviewing children, and her professional opinion is that abuse did occur. If you have an explanation, Father, now is the time.

FR. MURPHY: She’s a little girl. What in God’s name is wrong with you, asking her questions about—questions like that? Monsignor, you gave me your word.

MSGR. FLANNAGAN: Are you saying the child lied about being touched improperly?

FR. MURPHY: Lizzy doesn’t lie. I can’t imagine what you’re talking about. You had no right. I’m her legal guardian. You had no right to put things in her head. You had no right to harm her like that. Why are you doing this?

FR. DEROCHER: Take it easy, Mike. It wasn’t like it sounds.

FR. MURPHY: You were there, Jack? You let this happen?

FR. DEROCHER: I asked to go. I figured a familiar face might make her feel better.

FR. MURPHY: What did they ask her? What did they put in her head?

FR. DEROCHER: Mike, it was nothing, honestly. Totally preliminary. It took ten minutes. Calm down.

MR. DEARBORN: Well, she’ll be re-interviewed in a day or so.

FR. MURPHY: What? Over my dead body. Over my dead body.

MR. DEARBORN: Sit down, Father. Please.

FR. DEROCHER: Mike, take it easy.

FR. MURPHY: Help me out here, Jack. Help me.

FR. DEROCHER: Mike, for the love of God. What are we supposed to think? You can’t tell us what exactly Mrs. Hanson saw or heard. You can’t tell us why Lizzy hid herself. You can’t tell us why you slammed the door in Mrs. Hanson’s face. You can’t tell us why you put in for a transfer. What are we supposed to think?

MSGR. FLANNAGAN: Father Murphy, you’ve put the Church in a difficult position.

FR. DEROCHER: Please, Mike. You’ve got something to say, haven’t you?

FR. MURPHY: I’m afraid not.

FR. DEROCHER: Maybe your housekeeper made the whole thing up? Maybe you did something to make her angry and she’s using this to get you back?

FR. MURPHY: I never called her a liar. I said she was mistaken.

MR. DEARBORN: The child indicated otherwise.

FR. MURPHY: You will not ask her another question. You will leave your caseworker and your questions out of my child’s life. Not a single question, do you understand me? Are you listening to me, Mr. Dearborn? The one thing I gave her was an innocent childhood.

MR. DEARBORN: With all due respect, Father, you don’t make the rules here.

FR. MURPHY: Let’s wrap this up, then. I won’t have her questioned.

FR. DEROCHER: Mike. Wait. Can you see what’s happening here?

FR. MURPHY: I’m afraid so.

FR. DEROCHER: So help us out.

FR. MURPHY: I’m afraid I can’t. I’m finished here. Whatever you want, I’ll agree. Anything you want, I’ll sign. But this ends here. Now.

FR. DEROCHER: Mike. I’m begging you. Think what this means.

BISHOP BYRNES: Mr. Dearborn, perhaps we can talk about terms.

TWENTY-THREE

In graduate school, as counselors-in-training, we practiced on strangers, recruiting the secretaries and janitors who worked in the building, the occasional landlord or cab driver or store clerk, students from a neighboring high school, a dragnet of the walking wounded who populated an average day. Under the pitiless supervision of Professor Alice Talbot, we taped our sessions and submitted a written summary, after which she would have our tapes transcribed and force us to mark discrepancies between the wishful recollections in our summaries and the transcripts’ cold, unbending truth.

Talbot, imperious and near retirement, refused to trifle with the layered suggestions of body language, considering such investigations the first refuge of amateurs. “Words first,” she warned us. She believed, controversially, that our intuition as practitioners would be thwarted at every turn by a slovenly reliance on body language for cues. Body language served mainly to distract us from what she called “direct hits,” bald truths that are harder to discern in some people than others.

She began with voice, the first language of the body. Some voices sounded more naturally mournful than others.
Mumblers sounded less truthful than articulators, men sounded more convinced than women. “Voices mislead,” she told us. “And your client can do nothing about it. Not just voices, either.” Her lacquered hairdo tacked around as she eyed us each in turn. “A comely, heart-shaped face appears less desperate, does it not, than a face shaped more like a water bucket? Crossed arms might signify defensiveness, or it might be that your boiler’s on the fritz.” She lifted one powerful finger—her own body language tended relentlessly toward clarity. “Discipline yourselves,” she warned, “to hear the actual
words.
Difficult, yes, which is why most of us would rather throw our energy into guessing why our client’s picking lint off his collar. Until you learn to
listen
—and judging from these slaphappy summaries you’ve got a ways to travel—the transcript is your best shot at the truth, and your client’s best shot at being heard.”

We understood that our training would be inadequate; that experience would be a slow and ruthless teacher; that we would fail a few souls, maybe even ruin them, before training turned into skill. “Fuzzyboy” was Talbot’s name for those of us so eager to help that we defined problems in advance and heard only what we needed to fill in the right blanks.

As I sat in my car, turning the pages, my teeth gritting and ungritting, it occurred to me that Ms. Costigan might have attended my same graduate program. One of Talbot’s Fuzzyboys, Ms. Costigan was off to the rescue, a nine-year-old girl lashed to the tracks. A child who has never seen a naked man answers “yes” to a question that fuels the train, thinking of the cold she had when she was eight, the Vicks VapoRub her uncle massaged into her chest, the baths he gave her when she was three and four years old. She has been instructed to tell the truth, yes or no. This child raised on the Ten Commandments follows the directions exactly. Listen to the kid, Talbot would say. She wants to know where her uncle is. She is afraid of you.

As I turned the last page, however, I felt all of my training drain away in the bright wash of afternoon. A transcript was nothing but words on a page. I wanted to
see.
To
hear.
I could easily picture Mrs. Hanson’s expression as she told her first story, for I had seen firsthand the shocked collapse of her chin when she found me, innocently abed, on that April morning after a nightmare. But the second tale, of a wanton girl in a white-and-red nightgown, provocative noises behind a closed door—this is the story I wished I could see on her face, this preposterous lie. Were her thin lips sweating with shame?

Most of all, I wanted to see and hear my uncle, to find in him the thing that held him back. Did his glasses fog slightly, as they did when he felt angry or greatly moved? Did his hands drum anxiously on his thighs as if looking for the comfort of his cats? Did he for an instant believe I’d said those things to the caseworker? Why did he not rise up and knock over the tables, like Jesus in the temple?

Words first. Read the words.

I’m afraid so.

I’m afraid not.

I’m afraid I can’t.

Black and white. He’s afraid.

Worn out and near tears, I started the car. The park was empty, nothing but a few prospecting crows silhouetted against the waning afternoon light. My teeth chattered; I’d been sitting too long in the chill. December was a day away, but only now did winter seem possible. Where the park road drained onto the boulevard, I flicked the left-turn signal—I was heading home, of course home, where else but home?—but as I waited for a break in traffic, the sun dropped behind the cove, which glittered with water and birds. I turned right instead of left, drawn cityward, recalling the radiance of my childhood river. Father Mike seemed close indeed, such that any water became that water, any man became that man.

Harry’s lights were on. I ascended the knotted stairs, desperate to lay eyes on someone who recognized me. Before I could knock, the door swung open, revealing a woman clutching two lumpy paper bags.

“Elaine,” I said, astonished, recognizing the daughter from the photograph. In person she looked a little older, though less fierce. Soft, in fact. Born tired.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Your picture’s on the wall.”

She looked me over for several unnerving seconds, then stepped outside the hallway. “He shows everybody my picture.” She had a key ring looped around one finger and was trying to lock up with part of one free hand. “What do you want?” she asked, unable to aim the key with her arms encumbered. Finally she sighed, dumping the bags on the floor. They made a puff of noise: clothes.

“I was looking for your father.”

“Then you’re out of luck.” She gave the deadbolt a few tries, then jammed the key into the doorknob. “I don’t know why he locks up,” she says. “He owns squat.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Drying out.” The lock caught.’You Loreen’s daughter?”

I shook my head.

Her gaze, fretful and discomfiting, washed hotly over me. “Natalie’s, then?”

“No,” I said.

“Serena’s?”

I shook my head again, distressed to find him gone, shocked at my disappointment.

“Then I’m out of guesses,” Elaine said. “If you want to see him you’ll have to wait another twenty-six days. They don’t allow visitors in the booze barn.” She scooped up the bags again. “These get dropped off at the front desk.”