The Gospel of Winter (27 page)

I sat in bed with my legs tucked up against me and my back to the wall, shaking and grunting under my breath. I was too blasted to sleep—I felt like I was hurtling downward without any sense of where I was going to land. Had I asked to become this? I hated myself all over again, because I hadn't meant to be so terrible to Mark. He was my friend. I knew what he wanted. To be heard. For me to see him, the whole him. To know that I understood how he felt. I wanted that too, I realized. Didn't we all want that, and didn't each of us deserve it—two people being with each other honestly?

After everything I had felt for Father Greg, I now had a new reason to hate him. Josie was right. It wasn't only our younger selves he'd twisted and manipulated, he'd also hurt the men we would become: our future as friends and lovers. He wasn't even physically present, but silently and invisibly, mysteriously, Father Greg was there—still demanding a singular devotion to him. What a religion he'd constructed: One that said,
Fear me if you don't believe in me
.

W
hen I woke and got ready for school, I was nervous to the point of nausea. I was unsure how to proceed, but when I looked out the window in the breakfast nook and saw Elena's small car parked in front of the second garage, I felt a sense of hope. I had no idea how long she'd been there, but I realized she'd come back to collect her things. The light from her apartment window shot out into the gray, bleak morning light, and her silhouette paced in and out of view as I walked along the stone path to the garage. The door to the trunk of her car was swung open, and I stood by and waited for her.

She came down the stairs a few moments later with an armload of clothing and a duffel bag. She paused when she saw me and smiled.
“M'ijo.”
We hugged awkwardly, and then she gestured to the car. I helped her throw the clothes into the backseat.

I followed Elena up the stairs to her apartment and helped her pack some of her picture frames and books into a box. “How are they?” I asked, holding the one with Candido and Teresa. I looked at the picture. Teresa was laughing in it, but I remembered the rage in her eyes when she saw me last.

“They are happy for me. Tere has stayed home with me every day after school. She's cooking dinner for us all tonight.”

“Do you have to look for another job?”

“Soon.” She passed me her Bible to put in the box, and I stared at it for a while.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“There is a reason for everything, isn't there?”

She was on the other side of the bed, and I wanted to hug her, but she was keeping her distance from me. She kept glancing out the window toward the house. “Hey,” I said softly. “It doesn't matter if we talk now. What is she going to do?”

Elena sighed. “I should be going soon.” She was holding back her tears. “This is hard for me. To see you,
m'ijo
. I'm sorry too,” she said. “I will miss you.” I came around the bed, and she hugged me. She let go, held me at arm's length, and then walked over to her cabinet to pack up the last of her toiletries. “But you do have new things going on, no?”

“I feel like a lot is changing,” I said. I pulled the cross down off the wall above her bed. “I almost feel like a different
person.” She kept her back to me as she quickly packed. “I mean, there are so many things I'd like to talk to you about. And things I maybe should have talked with you about before.” My voice trembled. I almost couldn't get it out.

She still didn't turn around. “Well, God will provide,” she said. “That is all you need to remember. I will find a new job, and you will grow up, go to a good college, and leave home. Thank God.”

When her small box was packed and she finally turned around, she saw me holding the cross and looking at her. “Have you been reading the news at all?” I asked. She ignored me, took the cross from my hands, and dropped it in the box on the bed. She pulled a pair of shoes out from beneath the bed. “Elena, come on. Why aren't you looking at me?”

“
M'ijo
,” Elena said finally. She stopped fidgeting. “I do not want to talk about any of that.”

“Well, I think I need to.”

“No,” she said. “Not to me. You need to talk to a priest. Talk to Father Dooley. Remember?”

“Them?”

“I have gone to church every day and prayed.” Elena held herself very still and breathed through her nose. “Because God knows best. He knows best, and I keep my faith in him.”

I was shaking and sweating. “I don't know what to do,” I said. “I need to tell someone. It's about Father Greg.”

Elena held up one finger at me. “No,
m'ijo
. No. You need to tell another priest. Do not tell me.”

“No. Please, I need you to listen.” I walked over to her, but she put her hand up to block me. She grabbed the two boxes off the bed and held them in her arms.

“No. I can't do this. I have been praying—that is all I can do. I have been praying, and I will continue to do that. I didn't think I was going to see you today. I can't do this.” She turned and walked toward the door, but I yelled to her.

“What? What are you saying?”

She turned back. “You have to talk to a priest. I struggled, but you have to learn to accept certain things. My priest has told me. There are some bad apples, but they do not ruin the whole barrel.” She stepped out the door. “Please. I have to go. I can't do this.”

I ran over and grabbed her arm. She yelped. “Did you know?” I asked her. Elena pushed my hand away, but I grabbed her again. “Did you know?”

She stayed silent for a moment. “I washed your clothes. I watched him drive you home. I saw how you looked at him. It wasn't right. But you also stayed,
m'ijo
. You stayed. God has his reasons for all things, and I believe in him. I will always trust in him.”

She went quickly down the stairs to the driveway. I followed slowly and stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. Elena threw the boxes into the trunk, and I began to cry. She walked back to the foot of the stairs and stared up
at me. “Please,
m'ijo
. Father Dooley will help you. Please go talk to him.”

Tears clouded my eyes. I slumped down onto the step and leaned against the railing. “That's what you've always said. ‘Go to the church.' ”

“No,” Elena said loudly. “No. I have struggled,
m'ijo
.” She waved her hand above her head. “I'm in pain too. But I believe in the Church. God will provide the way. He will. You have to believe that too,
m'ijo
.”

“Fuck.” I began sobbing. “Mark.”

Elena began to climb the stairs to me, but Mother came out the kitchen door and yelled to us. “What's going on out here?” she asked as she jogged toward us. “Elena? What is going on?” Mother looked up at me crying and shook her head. “My God, this is just enough. Get ahold of yourself, Aidan. Elena's leaving. She's not your mother. She's your nanny, for Christ's sake! Get a grip.”

“We have to talk,” I said down to her, but I didn't move. I leaned against the railing.

“Aidan Donovan, you get ahold of yourself this minute. I have my first official party tonight, and I have to get going to make sure everything is in order. The world can't slow down because you can't grow up.” She turned to Elena. “All right, enough of this. You've made me late enough. Do you have everything?” Elena nodded. “Then it's time to go,” Mother continued. “I'm sorry it had to end this way, Elena, but this is just ridiculous.”

Elena hesitated and then moved up the stairs to me. She held me, and I cried into her shoulder. “You will be okay,” she said. “I am sorry.
Te quiero.
I do. I'm sorry,
m'ijo
.”

Mother yelled up again. Elena pulled away and didn't look back. She passed Mother without saying a word. It wasn't until she backed up, swung the car around, and then sped off down the driveway that I realized I hadn't actually said the words I needed to to her. They were still lodged in me like shards of broken glass in my throat. She hadn't let me tell her. Now she was gone.

Mother chastised me again. “Not now,” she said, holding up her hand. “I have to go. We'll discuss all this more tonight.” She pulled keys from her purse. “It's only a cocktail party, so I won't be home too late. But what's done is done, Aidan. She's gone. You must move ahead,” she said with new command in her voice. “Get going to school.”

She marched into the garage. A few moments later, she backed out in Old Donovan's silver Lexus. She didn't beep or roll down her window. She righted the car, and she sped off as quickly as Elena had. I watched her taillights disappear around the corner, and she might as well have been steering toward her own Brussels.

When I got to school, all I could think about was Mark. His locker was near the chemistry lab, and before I went in for class, I found myself staring at it, remembering the way he would hunch toward it. He wasn't there, but I imagined Mark gripping the door of his locker with one amber hand.
He ran his hand through his tight curls, and they all fell back exactly into place. I could hear him humming, calming himself as he often would, but the distance he put between himself and those around him lost its air of confidence. To me, he was now the feral, frightened Mark I'd seen the other night, trying to warm himself on the cold rooftop, looking up at me with a face like a prayer. He was sick with fear. I understood. I knew it well. I needed to tell him.

I looked for him all day, but he was absent, his third day in a row—there was no way for him to escape the consequences now. Josie was absent too, and nothing could ease the pain in my stomach. It felt empty and rotted. Nothing could fill it. The gulps of water at the fountain did nothing to take it away. I didn't feel like I was moving. Rather, the world was moving around me. I couldn't animate or make a decision: The bell rang, so I walked; my teacher said, “Take out your books,” so I flipped to the last assignment and poised my hand in the gutter between the pages. I sat there in the lab and waited for something to crush me and turn me back into dust.

Outside, it began to snow. Fat flakes quickly clouded the windows. I sank low on my stool and stared at the chain of little tubes and balls of the model molecules on the lab table in front of me. I was afraid to speak and afraid to make eye contact with anyone in chemistry class. I was afraid of what I'd say now if I saw them, afraid of what I'd make real by finally telling them what I needed to say. In church,
stepping into the confessional, what you say is whispered up into the ether, taken like a breath up into the deep lungs of God, or so I was once made to believe, as if what we did with the lives we lived disappeared into the vastness of eternity and our meaning and purpose was to recognize the greater design, revere it and remain anonymous within it. But I could not allow myself to pretend to believe any of that anymore.

Instead, I thought of Most Precious Blood and whichever parish Father Greg worked in before, and the one before that, passing from town to town like a disease, invisible to most of us, but not everyone, walking into party after party hand-first, shaking and backslapping his way from family to family until it was my turn to endure the stink of his whispers and be told to believe it was gospel. He had infected me, and now he was in me, a part of me, forever. He couldn't hurt me any more than he already had. I wanted the chance to tell him no, to say,
I'm not afraid anymore
, to blow his rancid breath right back in his face and watch him and Father Dooley and all of them—all the sick, sociopathic old men who had watched us rot from afar while they let the Father Gregs sweep through our neighborhoods like a plague—feel the pain they'd delivered to us. It wasn't biblical; it wasn't an act of God. It was human; they couldn't hide behind a metaphor forever. Fuck hope and despair. We live in a world of consequence and effect. Look what they had done.

As I left class, I knew people were staring at me. I was ready to rip a locker door off its hinges and smash something with it, and I might have if I hadn't seen Sophie leaning against Mark's locker, hiding her face in her hands. I scared her when I said her name, and at first she stepped back. I thought Josie had probably already told her what I had done, and I expected her to yell or walk away, but instead she grabbed me into a fierce hug and would not let go.

“Do you know what happened to Mark?” she asked. I hesitated, holding her tightly, trying to say it, but I couldn't. “He's in the hospital,” she said. “He fell into the river beneath Stonebrook yesterday. He hasn't woken up yet.”

“Fell? From the bridge?” I asked, but I didn't ask any more. Neither of us moved, and Sophie cried softly on my shoulder as she explained how her father had told her what he'd learned at the hospital the night before. Mark was in a coma from head trauma and hypothermia. He was lucky to have been found and pulled from the river as quickly as he had been. We continued to hold each other as we heard the bell ring for the next class.

“Does Josie know?” I finally asked.

“No, she hasn't been returning my calls since last night.” Sophie stepped out of the hug. “What the hell is going on?” she asked, looking up at me. “I don't understand. Why would he do that? What the hell is the matter? What was wrong? Could I have done something?”

The door to the chemistry lab opened, and Ms. Richards
stepped into the hallway. “Hey,” she said. “Sophie. Aidan. What are you doing in the hallway? Get to class.”

Sophie shook her head. “I'm glad my dad told me, but I don't think I can do this,” she said to me. “I think I'm going to go home. I don't understand. I just don't understand.”

“Hey!” Ms. Richards yelled. “Did you not hear me? Do I have to call Dean Berne?”