The Gospel of Winter (24 page)

“Maybe something in a smaller format,” the other mother said. “This is all pretty sensitive.”

“Exactly,” Hazel said.

“Actually,” the mother in the furry boots said, “that's exactly what Father Greg should do. That's his responsibility, not only to his parish but to the whole community.”

“Father Greg didn't even give Mass on Sunday,” Hazel said. “Father Dooley did.”

“Father Dooley did?” Teal asked. “Did he say anything about all this?”

“Please, Teal!” Hazel said.

Hazel tried to put her arm around me, but I backed away. “I just don't know what you are talking about,” I said. None of it made sense to me. None of them had been there. Why were they the ones talking about it? Some of them weren't even Catholic.

I gestured to the clock in the lobby and broke away from the group of mothers. While the parents were clamoring for assemblies and discussion groups, the students were exactly the opposite. There was more of a hush, and whispers about the students who were associated with Most Precious Blood. I tried to avoid these conversations on my way to class, since there were also plenty of students who knew that I had worked at Most Precious Blood that past summer and fall.

Nick and Dustin found me in the hall too. Dustin stared right at me but muttered to his buddy over his shoulder. Everywhere I looked, I thought I heard someone saying my name, but when I turned, no one addressed me directly.

Mr. Weinstein made us do an in-class writing assignment, but I spent the period staring at a blank page, too afraid of the memories that had taken over my mind. Mr. Weinstein sat back in his chair with his hands behind his
head in the same way Father Greg used to as he orated in his office, and it reminded me of a conversation I had had with Father Greg early in my work with the campaign. He had been showing me pictures he planned to use in some of the case materials. Children raised their hands eagerly in a classroom. Two students hovered by a computer screen, and one pointed at the screen with a look of newfound recognition on her face. There were more.

“You know why I like bringing kids like you into this project?” Father Greg had said. “Because you are just like the kids on the other end, and I think it's important for kids to be helping one another.” He had flipped to a picture with three Latinas in white lab coats and goggles. “Helping others helps ourselves,” Father Greg had continued, and had said this again many times during our work on the campaign. It had been all too easy to believe that the rewards would come back to me, too. Father Greg had promised and reminded me that it was God's way.
I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you received me into your homes.

At that time, I had believed him because I wanted to, but staring down at the blank page in Mr. Weinstein's class, I thought about how a belief really begins. It doesn't hit you like a lightning bolt, smack you off your horse, and fill you with visions of a world tinted with more vibrant colors. Instead, it begins with a desire to see something in that certain light, or to see the world in a certain way. The
desire
paves the way. It makes you believe the clouds are parting—and parting specifically for you. You need them to, because their doing so, just for you, gives you some incentive, some inspiration to keep going. I believed in Father Greg. He knew that was what I wanted, and he told me to believe in it.

Mr. Weinstein asked for the essays we'd written, and I handed forward my blank page. Josie looked back over her shoulder at me.
What happened?
she mouthed.

“Nothing,” I said.

Mr. Weinstein asked me to be quiet and then began his class. I drifted back into my own mind. Had Father Greg been offering me compassion? Wasn't that what I was told was paramount in the teachings of Jesus—compassion—and that to act compassionately is our ticket to heaven? But is that really compassion—to extend oneself to others with the assumption that that act will be rewarded? Isn't the greater leap of faith the act of compassion in the face of nothingness? But who would do that? Who wouldn't act solely in ways that are best for him or her when the veil has been thrown off and words like
love
and
virtue
are left naked in their hypocrisy? Words that Father Greg had used so often now looked corrupted and dangerous. And what about when someone else used them? Why couldn't I hold them like the threat of the executioners' ax over someone's head until he did what I wanted him to?

I left Mr. Weinstein's class in a daze. I moved down the
hall from one class to the next and saw people glancing in my direction, but they looked away as soon as I looked back at them. It's not like anybody pointed, but after hearing Teal suggest that people were already talking about Most Precious Blood, I spent the day terrified that people had somehow found out, as if an article somewhere talked specifically about me, an article hungry to expose the freaks and monsters in our midst, an article pointing at me that said, “Don't let him in, he'll bring it all with him, it's contagious”—not understanding anything—and that someone had read that article and told others about it and me, and that all those people had made a phone tree with the entire upper school community at CDA, and finally, some kind of announcement was going to be made over the loudspeakers, I was going to get sent to the office, and then everyone would feel free to point and gawk at that weird, fucked-up creature making his final march down the hall to Mrs. Ackerson's guidance office, where I'd be told point-blank that kids like me belonged in the care of the experts at Bullington and I'd be given a special dispensation for transferring right then, right there, without even the chance to eat lunch. They would arrange for a car.

It was impossible to speak to Josie or Sophie. I didn't want them asking me any questions. I just wanted to be back at Josie's pool house, swapping smoke in a circle, lost in an easy numbness, but that seemed so long ago now, and I was too worried about Mark. I didn't see him at school,
and by third period I was sure he was absent. It was a small relief. Mark and I hadn't spoken to each other since I'd seen him on the roof of Coolidge, and I couldn't be sure what he'd do next. Wasn't this what he'd been talking about—everybody finding out?

I excused myself from chemistry class and went down to the middle-school-floor bathroom so none of the kids would bug me or tell anyone. I vomited. After I'd cleaned myself up, I felt a little better, but I waited for the class to come to an end before I went back upstairs to get my books and bag. I skipped lunch and sat in a stall in the third-floor restroom, trying to get ahold of myself. Sweat dripped down my neck and soaked my collar. I loosened the knot of my tie and splashed cold water into my face, splashing and splashing, hosing thick, curly bunches of hair until I could slick it all back like a gangster. I scowled at myself and had the urge to punch that reflection. Instead, I snapped the metal clip off one of my pens and scratched the mirror. I stood back to look at myself in the reflection and saw white gashes slashed across my forehead and cheeks, and one cut down through the yellow bruise around my eye.

When the bell rang, I dabbed my hair with paper towels and walked to class. I felt better.
I can do this
,
I kept telling myself. Nobody will ever know.

I called for the car service to pick me up after school, and I snuck out before the end-of-the-day announcements. I played the snob and completely ignored the driver from
the backseat. With all the snow nearly melted, the town was stained the filmy pallor of tobacco teeth. Once the cold passed and the spring thawed the slats in the shutters, the ice melted from the cracks in the streets, and the soil softened and the rich dirt could be raked up to the surface, the landscape companies, house painters, and asphalt trucks would fan out around town. And with surgical precision they would restore succulence and vibrancy to the gardens and plush life to the rolling lawns, the roads would be filled and smoothed, the weather-stripped houses would get the fine brushstrokes that would make them look as fresh as the flowers that lined their driveways, and all signs of decay would disappear. Why couldn't they come for me, too?

Because I got home much earlier than usual on a school day, I was surprised to hear the radio in the kitchen and Mother's voice. I could smell the cigarettes from the foyer as I took off my coat. “Aidan!” Mother yelled as I walked into the library. “Aidan, come in here.” She sat at the table in the breakfast nook, a smoldering ashtray beside her, and she stood abruptly when I entered the kitchen. She was still in her morning workout clothes, and wisps of hair had sprung free from her ponytail. She clasped her hands together, then released them and beckoned me with one, and clasped them again. “Oh. Come here. Please.”

I hesitated.

“The stories about the churches,” she continued. She didn't cross the room, but her legs twitched slightly, like
they were ready to run over. I sat down by the butcher block. The distance felt safer. I had reined in all the control I could muster—it was caged within me—but if she crossed the room and put her arms around me, I wasn't sure I could hold on to it anymore.

Mother sat down too. “Believe me,” she said. “I worried as soon as I saw it. With you and Most Precious Blood.”

“People were talking about it in school, too,” I said slowly. I corrected my posture and sat up straight. Mother's eyes couldn't meet mine. It was easier for me to stay focused on her, I realized. I was used to lying to her—and knowing I was and not fooling myself otherwise. “But nothing happened at Most Precious Blood. Not while I've been there.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I got a call. You remember Hazel? Well. There are some rumors.”

“Rumors,” I repeated, still looking at Mother. The fear in her eyes gave her everyday beauty a kind of attractive innocence, something you just wanted to protect and preserve—she was someone who pleaded for help with her eyes and was used to getting it, so you felt even more compelled to deliver it. “They're insinuations,” I continued. I spoke as slowly as I could to make it look like I was calm. “It's rude. It's invasive. They didn't work there. I did.”

“Oh, Aidan,” Mother said. “Please,” she begged. “Are you sure? This is serious.”

“So am I. Nothing happened.”

“It's in the papers everywhere. It's an epidemic. It's a
mass cover-up. There will be a class-action lawsuit—or there should be, somehow.”

“Well, I didn't see it,” I reiterated. “I'm sick of this.”

“Whoever is guilty should be prosecuted like any other civilian,” Mother continued. “Not just the abuses—what about those who abet the crime? The bastards.” Mother stood up, crossed the room, and put her arms around me. I stuck my head in her chest so I wouldn't have to look up at her. I didn't know how much longer I could keep myself from losing it.

“Everybody keeps asking me about it, like I'm guilty of something. I didn't do anything,” I mumbled. “I worked there, and now I don't. There's nothing more for me to say.”

Mother held me for a while, and I let her. I didn't say another word. Eventually, she took a deep breath. “I believe you,” she said. “I believe you, and we don't have to go on about it anymore. I was just so worried that we were victims too.” We were silent again, and Mother squeezed me tightly. I held my breath and let it out slowly. She pulled away but stayed beside me. I could barely hold myself together, and I hoped she didn't notice.

“And, Aidan. I know you already said this, but you are never going in that church again. Neither am I. I wasn't ready, and now? Why should I ever go back there? The whole organization. I just don't understand.” Her voice grew softer and quieter; she seemed far away. “It'd be different, though,” she said, walking over to the table and
lighting another cigarette. “It'd be different if we were the ones who'd suffered this.” She lit the cigarette and exhaled, without looking at me. “But we haven't. That's what's important.”

“That's right,” I said. “Exactly.” I didn't feel calmer. A strange numbness buzzed across my skin.

I went up to my room. I pulled my schoolbooks out of my backpack and sat down at my desk, but the geometry problems became a maze I couldn't get through. I knew the theorems, but I couldn't recall them. They were a language that seemed to mock the way I felt inside, as if the lines, one written out below the other, all implied a sense of easiness, a direction that led to a specific end: an answer. I couldn't help but see a pair of narrowing eyes staring up at me through the cylinders on the page. They wanted answers, but what if there weren't any answers, what if there were too many uncertainties, too much muckiness all muddled up in the situation, and there was no way to explain it? That's why the newspaper article was such a lie: The whole story wasn't that easy to explain in a few paragraphs stacked in the inverse pyramid style.

Trying to tackle my homework from the
Norton Anthology
wasn't any easier either. I couldn't remember the sentences, and I found myself rereading and rereading, retaining nothing. I could see Mr. Weinstein holding the book up in class, shaking it above his head when no one answered his question:
The answers are right here! Didn't anyone read the poem? They're
right there in front of you. You're going to have to learn the material in this book if you think you are ever taking the AP exam!

I threw the anthology across the room at my own bookcase and watched an avalanche of books tumble from the shelves. The cigar box of Old Donovan's trinkets hit the floor and spilled out across the carpet. The snow globe didn't break, but it rolled near the foot of my bed and sent a whirl of flashing flakes reflecting against one of my glossy bedposts. I was up instantly and had the globe in my hand and was hurling it down against the floor before I had any idea what I was doing. The glass exploded.
THE MAGIC OF REYKJAVIC
the black base of the globe read. Free from the bubble, it was merely a liquid stain in the carpet, and the once-iridescent snow became a gray dusting of nothingness.