Separate Flights (17 page)

At first she blushed, but only for a second or two. She came into the room, gently took the box from me, put the cover on, and looked at it for a moment. Then she put it in the drawer, covered it with socks, got a pack of cigarettes, and started back to her room.

‘Why don't you bring me a beer,' she said over her shoulder. ‘And we'll have a little talk.'

When I brought the beer she was propped up in bed, and
The Idiot
was closed on the bedside table.

‘Are you really surprised?' she said.

I shook my head.

‘Does it bother you?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're probably scrupulous. You confess enough for Eichmann, you know.'

I blushed and looked away.

‘Do you know that some people—theologians—believe a mortal sin is as rare as a capital crime? That most things we do aren't really that evil?'

‘They must not be Catholics.'

‘Some of them are. Listen: Mother's only mistake is she thinks it's a sin, so she doesn't receive Communion. And I guess that's why she doesn't get a diaphragm—that would be too committed.'

This sort of talk scared me, and I was relieved when she stopped. She told me not to worry about Mother and especially not to blame Daddy, not to think of him as a Protestant who had led Mother away from the Church. She said the Church was wrong. Several times she used the word love, and that night in bed I thought: love? love? For all I could think of was semen and I remembered long ago a condom lying in the dust of a country road; a line of black ants was crawling into it. I got out of bed, turned on a lamp, and read the
Angelic Warfare
prayer, which ends like this:
0 God, Who has vouchsafed to defend with the blessed cord of St. Thomas those who are engaged in the terrible conflict of chastity! grant to us Thy suppliants, by his help, happily to overcome in this warfare the terrible enemy of our body and souls, that, being crowned with the lily of perpetual purity, we may deserve to receive from Thee, amongst the chaste bands of the angels, the palm of bliss.…

Janet didn't do so well in the war. That January she and Bob Mitchell drove to Port Arthur, Texas, and got married by a justice of the peace. Then they went to Father Broussard for a Catholic marriage, but when he found out Janet was pregnant he refused. He said he didn't think this marriage would last, and he would not make it permanent in the eyes of God. My parents and I knew nothing of this until a couple of weeks later, when Bob was discharged from the Air Force. One night they told us, and two days later Janet was gone, up to Michigan; she wrote that although Bob wasn't a Catholic, he had agreed to try again, and this time a priest had married them. Seven months after the Texas wedding she had twin sons and Mother went up there on the bus and stayed two weeks and sent us postcards from Ann Arbor.

You get over your sister's troubles, even images of her getting pregnant in a parked car, just as after a while you stop worrying about whether or not your mother is living in sin. I had my own troubles and one summer afternoon when I was sixteen, alone in the house, having done it again after receiving Communion that very morning, I lay across my bed, crying and striking my head with my fist. It was a weekday, so the priests weren't hearing confessions until next morning before Mass. I could have gone to the rectory and confessed to a priest in his office, but I could not do that, I had to have the veiled window between our faces. Finally I got up and went to the phone in the hall. I dialed the rectory and when Father Broussard answered I told him I couldn't get to church but I had to confess and I wanted to do it right now, on the phone. I barely heard the suspicious turn in his voice when he told me to come to the rectory.

‘I can't,' I said.

‘What about tomorrow? Could you come tomorrow before Mass, or during the day?'

‘I can't, Father. I can't wait that long.'

‘Who is this?'

For a moment we were both quiet. Then I said: ‘That's all right.'

It was an expression we boys used, and it usually meant none of your business. I had said it in a near-whisper, not sure if I could speak another word without crying.

‘All right,' he said, ‘let me hear your confession.'

I kneeled on the floor, my eyes closed, the telephone cord stretched tautly to its full length:

‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned; my last confession was yesterday—' now I was crying silent tears, those I hadn't spent on the bed; I could still talk but my voice was in shards ‘—my sins are: I committed self-abuse one time—' the word
time
trailing off, whispered into the phone and the empty hall which grew emptier still, for Father Broussard said nothing and I kneeled with eyes shut tight and the receiver hurting my hot ear until finally he said:

‘All right, but I can't give you absolution over the phone. Will you come to the rectory at about three?'

‘Yes, Father.'

‘And ask for Father Broussard.'

‘Yes, Father, thank you, Father—' still holding the receiver after he hung up, my eyes shut on black and red shame; then I stood weakly and returned to the bed—I would not go to the rectory—and lay there feeling I was the only person alive on this humid summer day. I could not stop crying, and I began striking my head again. I spoke aloud to God, begging him to forgive me, then kill me and spare me the further price of being a boy. Then something occurred to me: an image tossed up for my consideration, looked at, repudiated—all in an instant while my fist was poised. I saw myself sitting on the bed, trousers dropped to the floor, my sharp-edged hunting knife in my right hand, then with one quick determined slash cutting off that autonomous penis and casting it on the floor to shrivel and die. But before my fist struck again I threw that image away. No voices told me why. I had no warning vision of pain, of bleeding to death, of being an impotent freak. I simply knew; it is there between your legs and you do not cut it off.

2

Y
VONNE
M
ILLET
finally put it to good use. We were both nineteen, both virgins; we started dating the summer after our freshman year at the college in town. She was slender, with black hair cut short in what they called an Italian Boy. She was a Catholic, and had been taught by nuns for twelve years, but she wasn't bothered as much as I was. In the parked car we soaked our clothes with sweat, and sometimes I went home with spotted trousers which I rolled into a bundle and dropped in the basket for dry cleaning. I confessed this and petting too, and tried on our dates to keep dry, so that many nights I crawled aching and nauseated into my bed at home. I lay very still in my pain, feeling quasi-victorious: I believed Yvonne and I were committing mortal sins by merely touching each other, but at least for another night we had resisted the graver sin of orgasm. On other nights she took me with her hand or we rubbed against each other in a clothed pantomime of lovemaking until we came. This happened often enough so that for the first time in nearly seven years I stopped masturbating. And Saturday after Saturday I went proudly to confession and told of my sins with Yvonne. I confessed to Father Grassi, who still didn't talk much, but one Saturday afternoon he said: ‘How old are you, my friend?'

‘Nineteen, Father.'

‘Yes. And the young girl?'

I told him she was nineteen. Now I was worried: I had avoided confessing to Father Broussard or the Dutchman because I was afraid one of them would ask about the frequency of our sins, then tell me either to be pure or break up with her and, if I did neither of these, I could not be absolved again. I had thought Father Grassi would not ask questions.

‘Do you love her?'

‘Yes, Father.'

‘At your age I think it is very hard to know if you really love ‘ someone. So I recommend that you and your girl think about getting married in two or three years' time and then, my friend, until you are ready for a short engagement and then marriage, I think each of you should go out with other people. Mostly with each other, of course, but with other people too. That may not help you to stay pure, but at least it will help you know if you love each other.'

‘Yes, Father.'

‘Because this other thing that's going on now, that's not love, you see. So you should test it in other ways.'

I told him I understood and I would talk to my girl about it. I never did, though. Once in a while Yvonne confessed but I have no idea what she told the priest, for she did not see things the way I saw them. One night, when I tried to stop us short, she pulled my hand back to its proper place and held it there until she was ready for it to leave. Then she reached to the dashboard for a cigarette, tapped it, and paused as though remembering to offer me one.

‘Don't you want me to do it for you?' she said.

‘No, I'm all right.'

She smoked for a while, her head on my shoulder.

‘Do you really think it's a worse sin when it happens to you?' she said.

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

I told her what the Brothers had taught me.

‘You believe that?' she said. ‘That God gave you this seed just to have babies with, and if you waste it He'll send you to hell?'

‘I guess so.'

‘You have wet dreams, don't you?'

‘That's different. There's no will involved.'

‘What about me? It just happened to me, and I didn't use up any eggs or anything, so where's my sin?'

‘I don't know. Maybe sins are different for girls.'

‘Then it wouldn't be a sin for me to masturbate either. Right? I don't, but isn't that true?'

‘I never thought of that.'

‘Well, don't. You think too much already.'

‘Maybe you don't think enough.'

‘You're right: I don't.'

‘I'll tell you why it's a sin,' I said. ‘Because it's reserved for married people.'

‘Climax?'

‘Yes.'

‘But you're supposed to be married to touch each other too,' she said. ‘So why draw the line at climax? I mean, why get all worked up and then stop and think that's good?'

‘You're right. We shouldn't do any of it.'

‘Oh, I'm not sure it's as bad as all that.'

‘You're not? You don't think it's a sin, what we do?'

‘Maybe a little, but it's not as bad as a lot of other things.'

‘It's a mortal sin.'

‘I don't think so. I believe it's a sin to talk about a girl, but I don't think what you do with her is so bad.'

‘All right: if that's what you think, why don't we just go all the way?'

She sat up to throw her cigarette out the window, then she nestled her face on my chest.

‘Because I'm scared,' she said.

‘Of getting pregnant?'

‘I don't think so. I'm just scared of not being a virgin, that's all.'

Then she finished our argument, won it, soaked her small handkerchief in my casuistry. Next morning at breakfast I was tired.

‘You're going to ruin your health,' Mother said. ‘It was after one when you got home.'

‘I flexed my bicep and said I was fine. But now Daddy was watching me from his end of the table.

‘I don't care about your health,' he said. ‘I just hope you know more than Janet did.'

‘
Honey
,' Mother said.

‘She got it reversed. She started babies before she was married, then quit.'

That was true. Her twin boys were four now, and there were no other children. Bob had finished his undergraduate work and was going to start work on a Ph.D. in political science. Early in the summer Mother had gone up there and stayed two weeks. When she got back and talked about her visit she looked nervous, as though she were telling a lie, and a couple of times I walked into the kitchen where Mother and Daddy were talking and they stopped until I had got what I wanted and left.

‘I won't get pregnant,' I said.

‘Neither will Yvonne,' Daddy said. ‘As long as you keep your pants on.'

Then finally one night in early fall we drove away from her house, where we had parked for some time, and I knew she would not stop me, because by leaving her house she was risking questions from her parents, and by accepting that she was accepting the other risk too. I drove out to a country road, over a vibrating wooden bridge, the bayou beneath us dark as earth on that moonless night, on through black trees until I found a dirt road into the woods, keeping my hand on her small breast as I turned and cut off the ignition and headlights. In a moment she was naked on the car seat, then I was out of my clothes, even the socks, and seeing her trusting face and shockingly white body I almost dressed and took her home but then she said: Love me, Harry, love me—

The Brothers hadn't prepared me for this. If my first time had been with a whore, their training probably would have worked, for that was the sort of lust they focused on. But they were no match for Yvonne, and next morning I woke happier than I had ever been. At school that day we drank coffee and held hands and whispered. That night on the way to her house I stopped at a service station and bought a package of condoms from a machine in the men's room. That was the only time I felt guilty. But I was at least perceptive enough to know why: condoms, like masturbation and whores, were something the Brothers knew about. I left that piss-smelling room, walked into the clear autumn night, and drove to Yvonne's, where they had never been.

For the rest of the fall and a few weeks of winter, we were hot and happy lovers. I marveled at my own joy, my lack of remorse. Once, after a few weeks, I asked her if she ever felt bad. It was late at night and we were sitting at a bar, eating oysters on the half-shell. For a moment she didn't know what I meant, then she smiled.

‘I feel wonderful,' she said.

She dipped her last oyster in the sauce, and leaned over the tray to eat it.