Conceived Without Sin (23 page)

Shut up,
he told himself.

What's the matter, can't you take it? Big Mr. Tough Guy. Admit it. You don't know your wife's mind, or heart or soul while we're
at it. You know the criminals you track down better. You don't even know if your Sarah likes horses. When was the last time–

Mark broke the dialogue with himself.

He looked at the neighbor's yard. A man and his teenage son were playing catch with a football. There was a shiny new shed near their house. The kind of shed where folks keep rakes, shovels, and maybe a lawn mower. A strikingly lucid
memory came quickly to Mark's mind.

The Ulster brothers,
he thought bitterly…

The scene was one of several little league baseball fields in his hometown of Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Fifth grade. Football practice for Saint Katherine's Pop Warner team had ended. The team practiced daily in the outfield. The coaches were long gone. It was a chilly fall day, and the sun was a few paces from stepping
behind the trees on the horizon.

A few of the players had stayed to throw the ball, kidding around. Then the Ulster brothers and a few of their friends had walked by the field. They stopped. Mark and five or six of his teammates had already taken off their shoulder pads. He didn't remember exactly how, all these years later, but a game had started up.

It was supposed to be a touch game, not tackle.

The Ulster brothers, Henry and Marshall, were from the public school. They had just finished their own practice for the public school team. Mark, who had yet to hit his growth spurt, had not been much bigger than any of the other boys. He didn't know who the Ulsters were. After all, they were from the public school, which might as well have been Mars.

The game started off friendly. Then, Henry
Ulster, younger and scrawnier than his older brother Marshall, tackled somebody on Mark's team.

Everyone laughed. The game had changed. It was tackle football now. Twelve sets of shoulder pads and helmets watched the game from the rickety wooden stands outside the third baseline.

The grass at their feet was worn and torn from weeks of practice. There were stones in the grassless patches. Fall
leaves, carried by a fluttery wind, drifted past the ball as it sifted through the air.

The game was close.

Mark was rising to the occasion, making most of the tackles for his team, and effectively doing most of the blocking on the offense.

Then, on one crucial play, he turned his head while blocking Marshall, and felt a blow at the base of his neck. He collapsed on the ground, writhing in pain
as the play went on. Marshall rushed past him to the quarterback.

Mark looked up and saw scrawny Henry laughing at him. Enraged, he climbed to his feet and tried to punch the dirty little player.

Henry sidestepped his punch, and counterpunched Mark in the stomach. The little squirt packed a wallop. Mark doubled over. Suddenly, he felt more sharp blows on his back.

Marshall!
The older brother,
who was bigger than Mark, was now pounding him on the back.

Mark looked up just as Henry threw dirt into his eyes. Blinded, he never saw Marshall's sucker punch. He fell to the grass.

His teammate, Johnny O'Hara, the quarterback, saw what was happening, and took a step forward.

Mark heard Marshall shout: "Stay outta this, Johnny, this is between me and this faggot."

Johnny hesitated.

Then Marshall
had shouted at Mark, who was still disoriented, still in pain, on the ground. "Teach you to pick on my brother, you scumbag!"

Both brothers had started kicking him in the thighs and ribs. Henry spit on him, and got on his knees to punch Mark in the face several times. Blood mixed with spittle.

Mark didn't remember much else from the fight. Johnny had eventually jumped in, and a melee ensued between
the two teams. Mark was too beat up to be of much help. He had been sandbagged by the Ulster brothers.

The bitterest part of the memory was not the humiliation of losing a fight–the first such loss of his young life. The real humiliation had been after the limp home. When he slumped into the kitchen, his older brothers Tim and Shawn were at the table with his mom and dad. He saw the shock in their
faces when they saw the bruises on his face and neck and forearms.

Then their shock turned to complete disappointment. The young boy could see it in their eyes. Mark broke down, then, and cried.

"What happened!" Mrs. Johnson had called out, leaving her seat to comfort him, but Mr. Johnson had clamped a thick-fingered hand around her wrist.

"There's no part in this for you, mother," Mr. Johnson
had said coldly, tightening the grip on her forearm, pulling her away. Then his father had nodded to Tim and Shawn, who were three and two years older than Mark, respectively.

"But Paddy!" Mrs. Johnson had protested.

"I
said,
this is no business of yours, Sheila," Mr. Johnson whispered loudly, boring in on her with his eyes.

"It is my business, Paddy. He's my son," she rasped back.

Mark's father
continued to stare at her through icy blue eyes. The time for discussion was over. Mark remembered being frightened by his father's eyes then. Mr. Johnson was a statue, a rock, bigger than any building, stronger than any steel–and no longer in the room with his family, really, but atop some far off Spartan mountain, up high, beyond them all.

Sheila Johnson finally broke her husband's gaze, and
violently yanked her wrist out of his grasp. She felt her bones creak as she returned to her seat–to her place. Her jaw was set in furor. Her eyes could light a match. But she had not said another word. She had lost the battle for her son on this day, but the war was not over. She didn't say a kind word to her husband for weeks afterwards.

Tim and Shawn had taken him outside, behind the old shed
where the lawn mower was kept. They told him to quit bawling. Mark couldn't help himself.

Then Tim, the oldest, had slapped him.

"I'll beat the crap out of you if you keep bawling, Marky; make you think you just came back from a dance with Raquel Welch. I swear I'll do it."

Mark tried to stop. But he couldn't keep the sniffles in.

Tim and Shawn exchanged looks. Little Mark had always been the
softest. He hadn't gotten into many fights. Everybody liked him. That had to change.

"Not on the face," Tim whispered to Shawn, looking at his slumped-over little brother, still heaving with painful, silent sobs.

So they beat him, too. Several punches to his already sore ribs and stomach, until he stopped crying.

Even now, in the Kemp's backyard, Mark winced. Even now, the humiliation of not living
up to his brothers' standards hurt more than the punches themselves. The pain from the punches was long gone, but the other pain wasn't.

A week later, Tim and Mark waited outside the fence of the public school practice field, staring at the Ulsters. Everyone in town, Catholic or public, knew about Tim Johnson, the cop's son. The toughest kid in Cedar Grove. When the idiot Ulster boys picked a
fight with Mark, they hadn't known his last name. Now they were afraid.

Boy's Justice waited outside the fence.

After practice, the Ulsters tried to escape through the woods behind the field, jogging in the opposite direction, trying to look nonchalant, but Shawn, who was hiding behind a clump of bushes, jumped the two brothers, letting out a whistle. Tim and Mark ran around the fence to the woods.
Shawn had held his own for less than a minute.

That was all Tim and Mark needed.

Toward the end of the now one-sided brawl, Tim and Shawn knocked Marshall out cold. Henry, whose face was already bloody–some of the blood from his broken nose, some from the gashes in Mark's fists where they had torn on Henry's teeth–tried to run.

But Tim caught him.

Tim held him up, while Mark worked the body. None
of the Johnson boys had made a sound during the fight. That had been agreed upon beforehand. Partly, it was a family tradition for brawling that Mr. Johnson said went back all the way to the wars against Oliver Cromwell on the Old Sod, and partly it was to keep anyone from hearing the ruckus. No need for police during this serious business, no sir.

Mark remembered now how he had not enjoyed the
revenge. He had even felt sorry for Henry a bit towards the end of the brawl. But he knew now and he knew then that there was no room for pity when dealing with trash like the Ulsters.

Marshall's parents eventually took their son to the hospital with two broken ribs, and Henry's nose stayed broken for the rest of his life. Neither boy ratted on the Johnsons, despite their parent's entreaties.
Henry and Marshall knew the rules.

And neither Ulster boy desired another visit from the Johnson brothers. Tim and Shawn weren't known for
starting
fights or being bullies. But the Johnson boys were known for
ending
fights. They rarely got into trouble at school. They would have to answer to the head tough guy, Mr. Johnson, for any unwarranted shenanigans. Yes sir, indeed.

It was Mark's last serious
fight, except for a few tiffs during football practice over the years. But that was different. Coaches didn't mind their players mixing it up every once in a while. It showed that their heads were in the game. It was part of football. No, those fights didn't count. The fight with the Ulsters had counted. And in the end Mark had won.

Mark had never cried again.

What did you win?
he asked himself
now.

He went back inside. He took a deep breath, and looked into Bill's eyes. Then he looked into Joe Kemp's eyes. Joe was doing the dishes.

If I wasn't here, Joe, looking for your help, would I have thought you were a wimp for talking about some stupid book with your son?
Mark asked himself.

"Coffee?" Mary asked, breaking the tension.

"Yes, thank you, ma'am," Mark said, sitting down. The table
had been cleared.

"Do you always do the dishes?" Mark asked.

"Not usually," Joe said. "Just to give Mary a spell every once in a while. Why?"

"Uh, no reason."

Bill, sensing Mark's discomfort, changed the subject, and began talking about television commercials.

"Let me tell you about this campaign we put together for Kenny King's Chicken which caused all sorts of publicity to come our way…"

Mark
looked into his coffee. He wasn't listening to Bill. His being was disjointed. The wooden chair seemed too small.

What is my world?
he asked himself.
Is my world the real world?

What does it mean to be a man?

He had never asked this question.

Annie came in from the living room, and casually walked up next to Mark. She was such a pretty little girl. So innocent. She put an arm on his shoulder.

Mark tried not to think. He tried to ignore her. She had been affectionate like this with Bill yesterday. It was obvious she was taking a liking to him.

After a moment, she climbed onto his leg, and leaned back into his chest. She listened to Uncle Bill.

Mark ached for his daughters.

She half-turned her head up, and sideways, to look at him. "Your eyes look angry," she said.

"I'm not angry."

"I
was just praying for you," she said, her gaze steady into his. "My prayers are always answered."

"They are, are they?"

She nodded vigorously, smiling. She looked back to the table.

"Keep praying, then," Mark whispered into her ear.

4

They were in Bucky's huge den. Her father had gone to bed earlier. They were quite satisfied sitting close on the couch, kissing occasionally, chatting, holding hands–all
without the pressure to do much more. Ellie had gradually become excited about the idea of waiting until the wedding.

Would I have slept with him if he had pressured me?
she asked herself now, aware of his firm grip on her hand. He had surgeon's hands.

Probably, maybe–I don't know.

Because he hadn't pressured her, she really didn't know. She hadn't been forced to decide whether or not to cross
a river that most of the others had, sooner or later, asked her to cross.

Maybe that's why I love you so much. If you had pressured me, you wouldn't be Sam. You would be like the others. And I wouldn't be here now, with you.

And with the others, with a few exceptions, she had decided not to cross the river, to stay on the banks. Now, with Sam, the river had turned into an ocean. Rather than swim
the river alone, she now saw herself sailing across a calm sea, holding Sam's hand, standing at the mast of a white, pristine sloop, gazing toward an unknown horizon.

With the others, sex had been a power game. A game she had played well, like the great game of business. She was too smart and had too much self-respect (and perhaps too many alternative choices for lovers) to play
that
trump card
capriciously.

But what Sam had done, or rather, had not done, had made her feel precious and unique. Like a woman. Ironically, she felt that he had kept the power over her heart by letting her keep the power over
when
to give her body to him. It was no longer a game.

With the others, the power of sex had been a raw power, a matter of control, a matter of who was going to control the chains. She
had always been careful to be the one with the key to the chains. With Sam, it was a different kind of power, a power that was not about chains but about freedom.

She no longer needed to be careful with Sam. She no longer needed to worry about who was in control. She was free to love him, and free to feel like a woman, free to decide on her own, without the worries that came with the pills and
condoms of her past.

She also enjoyed the anticipation of making the wedding night special, singular. A first time together.

I could wait forever.
Her conclusion surprised her.
True love is full of surprises.

What had started as a novelty–chastity–was forming into a habit. Sam's self control also surprised and impressed her. She knew his body was telling him to
do more;
she could tell by the way
he kissed her, and by other signs. But Sam Fisk was not a slave to his body. He exercised authority over himself.