Conceived Without Sin (13 page)

What did the Kemps have that Mark had missed along the way with Maggie?

"Are your children always this way?" he asked Joe.

"What way?" Mary asked.

"Like this. So calm. So well-behaved."

"They have their moments…" Joe trailed off.

"But is today a typical Saturday?" Mark pressed.

Joe and Mary looked at each other.

"Yeah," he answered for both of them.

Bill gave Mark a sober look.

Annie
seemed to sense the tension in the huge man across the table, and smiled at him. Mark was embarrassed.

Embarrassed by what?
he asked himself.

Embarrassed that you don't have a clue why this family is so different,
he answered.

This family has what I want,
Mark thought.
Now how do I get it?

"Uh, sorry to leave so soon," Bill told his hosts. "Mark and I have an appointment. Thanks for letting us
stop by."

"Are you leaving, Uncle Bill?" Annie asked sweetly, but with a tinge of sadness.

"I'm afraid so, Annie."

She gave him a hug and a little kiss. Bill whispered, "Pray for my friend," into her ear. She pulled away and nodded.

As the door closed behind them, Bill turned to Mark and said, "Let's talk."

Mark nodded. They went back to Bill's house.

Bill offered Mark a beer. He turned it down.

"So?" Bill asked.

"Tell me what I just saw," Mark said.

"A happy family. A holy family."

"I know that," Mark replied. "Tell me why they're that way."

"I'm not sure I can. I just know the Kemps are the best family I've ever known. I was showing you what to shoot for. That can be you and Maggie."

"I don't see how."

Mark's voice did not portray the despair he felt. These were not tough guy words.
These were quitter's words.

"Are you man enough to ask the Kemps?" Bill asked, knowing that he was challenging his friend on the most intimate and deeply held foundations.

Mark tried to hold Bill's gaze, but looked down. Mark hadn't looked down since–well, since he could remember.

"I'm not sure," Mark said. "I've tried everything."

"Everything you could think of…" Bill eased up.

"And…"

"Maybe
there's more."

5

"We're going down the shore!" Buzz shouted. "Long Beach Island!"

"Why are you shouting?" Donna asked from the back seat. "And why are we going
down
to the shore? Are we going to Florida?"

"No,
down the shore
is a New Jersey expression. In New Jersey, you go
down the shore,
and once you're there, you go
to the beach.
New Jersey has a couple hundred miles of the most beautiful white
sandy beaches in the world."

"But it isn't summer yet. What's there to do besides go to the beach? Come on, Jersey?" Sam asked. He pronounced it
Joisey,
without the
r
sound.

"Going to the beach is a great thing in and of itself. And nobody in New Jersey says
Joisey,"
Buzz corrected proudly. "We pronounce the
r
hard and slur the
new
right into New Jersey. New
jer
sey, like that. Only people from
Brooklyn say Joisey. Except for people who live in Jersey City. They say Joisey, but they're referring to their own city, not to the state."

"Welcome to the Geography Channel," Donna intoned. "Your host is Buzz Woodward. Today's topic is New Jersey."

Buzz laughed. "At least you pronounced it right."

"So what do you do at the beach?" Sam asked. "I've never gone to the ocean."

"You don't do much
of anything at the beach. That's the whole idea. Read. Listen to tunes. Talk. Play in the sand. If the Gulf currents running north drift in toward the surf, you can swim–body surfing for the initiate–even in May. By the end of June, the water's warm all the time.

"It's good for the soul. One of God's many earthly chapels. And the beaches won't be crowded. Too early in the season."

"Where are we
staying?" Donna asked.

"My uncle has a duplex. He's not there, but he sent me the keys. You've got your own two bedroom place, right above me and Sam. All on the up and up."

"Good, you guys are real gentlemen. It'll sound better to my folks–"

"You told them, didn't you?" Buzz asked.

"I'm in the process…"

Buzz rolled his eyes.

"Look, they're old-fashioned," Donna said, her voice rising. "And that's
not a bad way to be. It doesn't look good for a girl to travel with two single men. You know that, Buzz."

"Single girls, single men, travel rules," Sam observed. "It's not like we're going to have an orgy or anything. Sometimes you guys drive me crazy with your unwritten Catholic rules. Don't your parents trust you?"

Buzz lit up a smoke, and cracked his window open.

"It's not a matter of trust,
Sam," Donna said. "Sure, my parents trust me. But they don't trust original sin, and neither do I. For you, it's not a big deal. But if the chances are one in a thousand of falling out of the state of grace, it's not worth risking. It's like playing poker with the devil. My soul's at stake."

"Can't you just go to confession if you fall?" Sam asked. He was catching on to Catholic ways.

"I could
see how you might think that, Sam," Buzz cut in. "But that's the sin of presumption. You can't presume upon God's grace–"

"Sin of presumption? Another sin? Didn't you tell me once that God's, what did you call it, his divine mercy, was infinite, endless? There's no sin that can't be forgiven and all that. Very beautiful. Now you're saying you can't count on it?"

Buzz found himself temporarily
confused.

"It's not like that," Donna came to the rescue. "It's not a math equation: commit a sin, go to confession, go to heaven. It's a matter of love. You don't hurt people you love. It's just common sense that if we took off all our clothes and hung out in bed all weekend, we're upping our chances of doing something God doesn't want us to do."

She took a deep breath. "What if I did something
bad to you, presuming you would just forgive me? Is that loving you? I wouldn't even consider putting myself in a situation where I would come close to hurting you, Sam."

Buzz sighed relief inwardly. Donna really came out with some profound stuff every once in a while. And she had said something very close to saying that she loved Sam.
Good for her.

"That makes sense," Sam said, rubbing his chin.
"You know, I don't always agree with you guys. You know that. But most of your Catholic stuff has its own internal logic. It's a beautiful way to live. It's a beautiful vision. If only it were true."

"You're not patronizing us?" Buzz asked, pushing again. Always pushing, cutting, probing.

Sam just shook his head in mild disgust.

"Turn on the stereo, Buzz," Donna said. "You're such a jerk."

"What?"
Buzz asked, feigning innocence.

"Just turn on the radio," she persisted.

Come On Eileen
was playing on a light rock station.

"Great road tune!" Buzz shouted.

He started singing along. After a minute, they were all singing. Buzz turned the volume up louder, then louder. They sang louder.

They sang together the way only friends who aren't married and aren't hooked on classics and grew up in the
Seventies can sing together: all out, for fun, abandoning themselves not to some lofty Woodstockian demon or, as would come later, a depressing, small-world nihilistic Grunge devil.

They were part of the lost generation. A
generation-nothing
between a leviathan of Baby Boomers and an ugly toad of X-ers.

No one made movies about them. No one sang songs to them. No one wrote novels about them. Forced
to watch reruns of
Gilligan's Island
and listen to classic rock stations since Pampers, they had no place in American culture. No articles in the purple section of
USA Today.
They weren't spoiled. They didn't make money for its own sake, or start companies for status. They had normal dreams, which made them even more invisible. Generation Nothing.

Their parents had almost crushed most of them
under the goose-stepping boots of free love (divorce) and drugs (insanity). Some of their generation didn't exist at all on this world because of abortion (death), which the Boomers had legalized, then embraced. But some Catholics and their friends were emerging from the lost generation; singing, hopeful, bearing burdens, becoming a bridge to those who came before and after them, ready to storm endless
beaches while being careful to stay boy-girl-boy-girl in separate accommodations to please their sweet Jesus.

Buzz and Sam and Donna sang their hearts out as Buzz's little 7-Up can of a car zipped through the badlands of Pennsylvania.

"Come on, Eileen!" they sang.

Buzz's Festiva had a pretty good, four-speaker factory sound system.

Shout
by Tears for Fears came on next, and they nearly lost their
voices.

When the commercials came on, Buzz turned the radio off. Miles stretched before and behind them. They all looked out different windows, sipping cokes and coffees.

Sam felt like shouting for joy.
I've got great friends. I'm going to marry a beautiful woman. Who
do
I thank?

Buzz felt like shouting and crying.
I've got great friends.
He knew who to thank.

Donna took a peek at Sam from the
back seat and felt intense longing and emptiness.

I still love him. I can't keep hanging out with him or I'll go crazy.
She felt like hitting Buzz for bringing her along.

Who needs to go to the beach, anyway?

Oh, pardon me,
she thought,
down the shore.

A few hours later, when they rolled down the windows in the Pine Barrens on Route 72, and smelled the salt and the sand, no one regretted the trip.

6

It was lovely but cool on the first afternoon when they arrived. They went to the Acme to stock up on supplies: tea for Donna, Bud Light for Sam, and Pepsi for Buzz. And some food. They rented a video for the evening. Buzz cooked omelettes for dinner.

"Can't you cook anything other than omelettes? Not that they're bad. You make great omelettes," Sam said.

"Cheese dreams. I can cook cheese dreams.
My dad made them up. Thomas' English muffins, a slice of tomato, two slices of mozzarella, and bacon, lightly toasted."

"Mmnn," Donna commented. "Sounds good. I can cook, too, you know. So good it would make you cry."

That night they watched
Back to the Future.
It reminded Buzz of a modern
It's a Wonderful Life.

It was windy and rainy the next morning.

"Great weather," Donna said, when she came
down for breakfast, shaking the raindrops from her hair.

"We can play cards," Buzz suggested.

Sam and Donna, who both hated to play cards, gave Buzz a look.

"Oh," Buzz said.

"God's natural cathedral, eh?" Sam teased.

"Let's go for a jog, Sam," Donna suggested.

"Sure."

Buzz loved to sleep. After breakfast he went back to bed and napped while his friends jogged on the windy beach. He fell asleep
praying his usual prayer, the Rosary, for his friend Sam to find the true faith, and for his friend Donna to find a husband. He was set on praying for both those intentions until they were answered, or until he stopped breathing.

Donna was huffing and puffing by the second jetty. So was Sam. Their jog became a walk. The beach was deserted.

The ocean. It's huge. Makes Lake Erie look like a puddle,
Sam thought.
Makes me feel small.

He suddenly remembered standing before the El Greco in the Art Institute. The young girl he had seen back then had looked a bit like Ellie. That had been so many years ago; he was surprised by the clarity of the memory.

Feeling small is good for the soul.

It was so windy and rainy that they needed to shout to be heard, so they didn't talk much.

Have they gotten
me to believe in the soul?
he asked himself.

Donna wished that Sam would take her hand. She tried to take her mind off him. It was not easy.

Sam didn't mind the silence.

Their sweats and windbreakers became soaked. They were still walking away from the beach house with the wind at their backs. The breakers were loud–louder than the wind.

"Tell yourself you're warm, Sam!" Donna shouted over the
wind and waves. "It works."

She took off her windbreaker.

"See, it's not so bad."

The rain had flattened her hair. Drops of rain came down her forehead and cheeks. She smiled.

It really wasn't all that cold. Just wet and windy.

He took off his jacket.
She's right.

Buzz was right, there's something about getting to the ocean. It's cleansing.

The sand was thick under their feet. It was wearing them
out. Only when they turned back did they realize that walking against the wind was quite a chore.

7

Buzz was still asleep. The drive the day before had worn him out. Donna and Sam had two hours alone together after their walk. After drying off and changing clothes, Sam called Ellie's hotel (her seminar was in Boston) and left a message.

Donna made more tea for them both. It was quiet except for
the whistling of wind on the windows, and the sound of the ocean, which was less than forty yards away. The bottom apartment of the duplex was brightly decorated, but the clouds and the curtains made the lighting pleasantly grey. In that way of the shore, it seemed as if all the universe outside the apartment was an illusion, and that all that existed was the table and tea, and the bamboo chairs
and stained glass chandelier over the kitchen table at which they sat.

Perfect atmosphere for a conversation.

"So tell me about the secret life of men," Donna began.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I get the feeling that whenever I'm around you and Buzz, some kind of forcefield goes up, and just because I'm a woman, you act differently, and say different things."