Read The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel Online
Authors: Patry Francis
The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (29 page)
When she rose to go, Alvaro stood and embraced her. “You don’t have to run off, you know. You didn’t even finish your beer.”
“Some other time maybe?”
Alvaro smiled. “I’d like that. And next time I promise I won’t break any glasses.”
T
wo Sundays later, Hallie walked up
the familiar hill to St. Peter’s and entered the church after the last mass. The hush, the shadows, the scent of burning candles all brought back the intrepid girl she had once been, the girl who had followed Gus here after hearing of his father’s suicide. Almost expecting to see him hunched over a cigarette in the third row from the front, she slid into the empty pew.
When she heard footsteps, she closed her eyes and pretended she was praying, hoping to remain unnoticed. A young man with thinning hair, his skin dotted with pockmarks, glided past her toward the altar, where he appeared to tidy up. He wore no collar but he was dressed all in black down to his shoes. She was grateful that the few times she’d seen Gus after he entered the seminary, he had been wearing his usual jeans and sweatshirts—not this funereal outfit.
“Dr. Costa?” he said warily when their eyes met. “It’s, um, good to see you here.”
“
Hallie
,” she said, extending her hand. He wasn’t a patient, and she didn’t see him around town much, but she’d noticed him a couple of times at Lucy’s Market. “And you must be the priest who replaced Father D’Souza.”
“I wouldn’t use the word
replaced.
From what I understand, Father D’Souza was one of a kind. I’m Matt,” he said, extending his hand.
“No
Father
or anything? Just Matt?”
“Matt’s fine. In any case, I’m sorry to interrupt your meditation.”
“I wasn’t—I mean, I
don’t
—” Hallie began, and then when the priest grinned, she smiled back. “Thank you, Matt. You’re very kind.”
She left when he retreated to the sacristy. The wind was always particularly fierce in the cemetery, but she welcomed the cold. She sat down on the stone marked
MARIA BOTELHO
and folded her long legs to her chest. Then she pulled a spiral notebook from the messenger bag she used as Nick had once carried his backpack—a combination of old-fashioned doctor’s bag and general catchall.
Since she’d met Alvaro at Cantelli’s, she’d written at least a dozen letters to Gus. She told him about the people they knew, and her days in the office, about the changing color of the bay outside her window and how much she loved winter when the village belonged entirely to those who called themselves
town people
. But the letters always felt like a taunt—the brightness and productivity of her days, held up against his gray surroundings, his wasted years, an existence she could not even imagine. Particularly not for Gus. Other letters were extended apologies, crammed with guilt and regret—as if it were possible to put a stamp on it and be done. She never mailed any of them.
She wasn’t sure why she’d brought her notebook to the cemetery. Her hands cramped in the wind, as brown leaves scuttled across the field of remembrance where Hallie found an odd peace and ease. She wrote about those leaves, and about the frozen weeds, trampled with unknown footsteps, about the yellow lichen on the ancient headstones, and how it often formed patterns like starbursts and daisies, about the flags and plastic flowers beside some of the newer ones. She described the grave that had been dug for the woman everyone called Jenny Z., who’d recently died at 102.
She admitted that she had become like the old
vovó
who used to take a folding chair and sit beside her husband’s grave for hours. She planted flowers in the spring—delicate bluebells for his mother’s grave, and bold red geraniums for Nick. On holidays, she said there were always flowers or wreaths left on the Silva graves; she suspected they were from Alvaro. There, in the cemetery, she smoked as she mused on the patients whose symptoms defied the usual explanations—often finding answers that eluded her in the office.
And then she told the truth that she’d been evading at home. Except in the strangely vivid dreams that still returned on occasion, she couldn’t remember him anymore. Not in any real way. Though she searched for him near the tower where they used to smoke before school and on the corner where he’d first hugged her, on Loop Street, Point of Pines Road, and especially here, he was gone. As elusive as the mother she’d barely known. Sometimes she thought she was being punished for her lack of faith in him, or for her years of resentment after he entered the seminary.
When she was finished, she fished the envelope and stamp she always carried from her bag, and scrawled his address across it in bold letters. Fortunately, she’d memorized it. Then, before she could change her mind, before she could tell herself that the letter was too morbid or self-indulgent, she stuck the stamp on the envelope and dropped it in the mailbox on the way home.
S
he was disappointed, but not surprised,
when there was no response. But then, nearly a month later, when she’d all but given up, she went to the mailbox and found a thin envelope addressed in Gus’s handwriting. The letters, leaning forward optimistically, nearly caused her to break down right there on the street.
Inside, she set the letter on the table and made a cup of tea she was too shaky to drink. She stared at the envelope, as if it contained a bomb, or a message that would save her life—she wasn’t sure which. She closed her eyes and was almost surprised when she opened them and saw that it was still there. The tea was cold before she reached for it.
Dear Hallie,
Do you have any idea how many times I’ve written those two words, thought them, dreamed them since I last saw you in the courtroom? When I gave up on everything else, they became my prayer, my mantra. Dear Hallie. Those two words, the beginning of the letter I was going to write someday, have gotten me through more than you’ll ever know.
And then you wrote. For good or for bad, your voice has worked on me as nothing else has. You described the cemetery so well that I could feel that cold wind, and trace the deep cut letters of my mother’s name in stone. I could see your face as it was the day my father died. You were too young and unscarred to take on my horrible story, but you let me give it to you anyway. I can still remember your innocence, your determination to grow up as fast as I needed you to.
Have I ever told you how grateful I am for that, or how lucky I’ve been to know you? Hallie, the child, the girl, the young woman? For a guy who swore himself to a life of celibacy at the age of eighteen, I have known as much of love as any man—and more than most.
Now I know why they call greed one of the seven deadly sins. Once I read your letter, I wanted more. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d love to see a recent photo. Dr. Hallie Costa in her office maybe.
There are no class pictures here, but here is a snapshot: My hair has gone from black to gray with a tuft of pure white in the front. I have replaced running with weight lifting (one of the only acceptable releases here) and that’s changed me too. In the mirror I see the face of a hard and bitter man, the man I never wanted—and still don’t want—you to know. So as much as I would like to see you, I won’t let you visit.
There are things about the human race that you learn in here that change you irrevocably. Once you see them you cross over to a barren place where there is no room for hope or faith or what I used to think of as redemption. I have no children, no church, no real family anymore. The only thing left to me is the wish that the few people I care about in this world will never cross that border.
But that isn’t the only reason I’m writing, Hallie. The other day I received another letter that demanded opening—this one from Ava Cilento’s daughter. The girl’s name is Mila and she’s sixteen now. She says she needs to talk to a priest, and she wants to visit me. At first, I thought it was a bad joke. Those were the same exact words her mother used when she pulled me into a storm that landed her in one hole and me in another. Obviously, the kid wants more from me than spiritual counsel. She’s gone to the trouble of having a phony ID made, and claims that if I won’t put her on the visitors’ list she’s going to come and stand outside the prison all day every Saturday.
I suppose I shouldn’t care, but I do.
If you could possibly get in touch with this girl before the 21st, I’d appreciate it. Tell her that I’m not a priest anymore, I don’t want to see her, and I have no answers to whatever questions she might have about her mother. Of course, you’ll have to get past her bastard of a father first. But for a woman of your brilliance, that should be no problem.
Thanks, Hallie.
Gus
Hallie hadn’t allowed herself to weep for Gus since she learned of his beating. Now as she set the letter aside, she cried a different kind of tears. They were voluminous, but silent. They rose up from the deepest part of herself, rinsing her clean. She cried for all the ways he had changed, but mostly for the constancy she felt when she read his words. No matter what prison had done to him, he was still Gus.
When the light changed, she got up and washed her face. Then she folded the letter and put it into her pocket, filled with resolve. The next day she would contact Ava Cilento’s daughter and do what she could to change her mind. As for Gus’s letter, she would carry it with her until she saw him again.
Within twenty-four hours, she wrote back.
Dear Gus,
I can’t tell you how much it meant to hear from you. Like you, I’ve written that greeting so many times I feel my whole life is stained with it: Dear Gus. Do you remember what you said when we first got together? You said that we had time. I didn’t know entirely what you meant then, but when I got your letter, those words came back to me, and I think I finally understand. I only hope that someday we will have time enough to say the things we’ve kept silent about for so long.
I’ll write more later, but for now, I wanted to let you know how I made out with your request. I wish I could say I’d been more successful. Oh, I got past the father, all right, but the girl herself is another story. I tried my best to dissuade her, but I’m afraid my efforts only made her more determined to see you. All I can say is expect a visitor outside your window on Saturday.
Love,
Hallie
P.S. No pictures. If you really want to know how I look now, you’ll have to see me.
D
on’t ask me how, but the
third time I went to the prison, I knew that all the efforts I made to get there—the fake ID that says I’m eighteen, the lies to the Bug, the nasty bus ride—would be worthwhile. This time, I was sure he would put me on his list. If nothing else, I figured he had to be a little curious.
The guards already recognize me. “You back again, sugar?” one particular lowlife says. “Can’t you see that man don’t want to see you. Obviously, he’s gettin’ all he wants elsewhere. Guys change inside, you know. Me, on the other hand, I know how to appreciate someone with your loyalty, your devotion—not to mention that valentine-shaped ass.”
There are other rude comments, too, but I just sit there on my little orange plastic chair and pretend I don’t hear a thing.
“He’s not my boyfriend, if it’s any of your business,” I finally snap when I can’t take it anymore. One thing I’ve learned in life is to never let anyone know when you’re scared.
And they all laugh. “Sassy little thing, ain’t she?”
Anyway, I’m so involved in my dissing match with the apes I don’t even notice that
my
prisoner had come down and taken his place opposite me, with only a wall of glass separating us.
Then he says my name.
Mila.
No hello or anything.
He looks absolutely nothing like I expected. At first, I even think it’s a trick. That maybe he sent someone else in his place. I know it’s sick, but I keep everything I can get my hands on about my mother’s case in a hatbox under my bed, and let me tell you, this guy is
not
the guy in the newspaper. The guy in the paper had a runner’s body and dark hair. I guess you could even say he was handsome in his own way. Someone I could easily imagine HER falling in love with. The man in front of me, on the other hand, has gray hair cut close to his scalp, a closed face, and the same hard-ass prison look everyone has here—even the guards. And though he’s still lean, he’s got the jacked arms and bulging veins in his biceps weight lifters get.
But what really shocks me is that there’s absolutely nothing special about him—until he says my name. He doesn’t just say it, he PRONOUNCES it, bringing me to life in some way I hadn’t been before. If that makes any sense.
Then he gives me this incredibly intense look, as if he’s seeing HER—just like my dad sometimes does. And though I’m hardly what you’d call shy, all of a sudden I’m feeling tongue-tied. It’s like all the things I’ve been wanting to say to him have turned to marbles in my mouth.
He, on the other hand, is totally zen. “No wonder you’ve been having trouble with the guards. Your skirt is okay, but don’t you own a more appropriate blouse?”
“No, I don’t. And I didn’t come here to get a lecture on my clothes.” But in spite of myself, I pull my shawl a little more tightly around my shoulders. Ever since I went to Mexico with my dad and one of his old girlfriends a couple of years ago, I’ve been dressing like Frida Kahlo: long skirts, peasant blouses, clunky ethnic jewelry. I even dye my hair black so I look more like Frida and less like HER.
“So you’re still living with him? I had hoped your mother’s friend—Cynthia, I think her name was—would have gotten custody by now.”
“Cynthia—against all my dad’s money, his lawyers? Was that the plan? Anyway, I barely remember her. She stopped visiting when I turned eleven.”
“I wish I had been able to help,” the priest says with a sadness that confuses me.
He pauses for so long that I think he started to meditate or something. Then he launches into his spiel: “Listen, Mila. I understand why you might want to meet me. You must think I have some answers for you about your mother’s death. Or maybe you just want me to listen to you tell me how difficult life has been without her, recite the victim impact statement you never got an opportunity to make. Well, if it’s the latter, I’m here to listen. But if it’s the former, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t expect you to believe this, but I wasn’t there when your mother died.”
“
Former . . . latter
. What is this, English class?” I say, trying to pull myself together so that when I tell him what I really want, it will be comprehensible. “To use your terms, let’s start with the
latter.
I don’t think I have to tell you what it’s like growing up as ‘the kid whose mother was murdered.’ ”
For a minute, I get the feeling that if he could, he would reach out and grab my hand. I tuck both of them under my thighs.
“How did you know?” he asks.
“Um, I can read.”
“Of course. The papers must have rehashed all that old stuff and you went back and looked it up. I did the same thing a few years after I lost my mother. Read those articles so many times, I practically memorized them, especially the quotes from neighbors and friends saying what a lovely person she was. It was almost like getting a little piece of her back.”
“All I ever heard about my mother was that she was a whore.”
For the first time, I get the reaction I want from Father Gustavo Silva. Until then, he thought
he
was the badass. Joe Lifer and all that. But inside me, there’s a girl as hard as anyone in this godforsaken place. Sometimes she makes me strong. Other times, she scares the shit out of me.
He stares at me a minute, then gets to the point. “In your letters, you said I owed you something. So tell me—what exactly have you come to collect?”
Again, I start to feel a little uncomfortable. I automatically reach around in my little red purse for my cigarettes. But since I know you can’t smoke in here, I end up stuffing a piece of gum in my mouth instead. The rhythm of my chewing calms me down. After all the effort I made to get here, I’m not sure I know the answer to his question.
“I want you to look at me,” I finally say. “I want you to sit on a chair behind the wall where they keep people like you, and spend five minutes of your life looking at me. Me. Mila Cilento. Her daughter.”
“I see you, Mila,” he says. “I’ve always seen you. And I’m sorry for everything you’ve gone through. Is there anything else?”
For a minute, I wonder if that’s some kind of a confession. Like maybe I should call someone and get them to write it down. But then I focus on that last question. “Yeah, actually there is something else.”
He waits.
“I want to look at you, too. I want to see what a guy looks like who claims to be all about God and love and all that crap and then goes out and does what you did.” I thought I was going to be so cool, but all of a sudden my voice goes wobbly. “My dad did everything he could to protect me from knowing too much, but he couldn’t stop me from growing up, going to the library, digging out the old newspapers just like you said. Now I can’t even drive along the beach road because even if I don’t look, I’m gonna see that dumpy motel. And you know what else? I’m gonna see the blood that was everywhere.
“I guess that’s another reason I came here, Father Silva. I want to know if you see that when you’re about to fall asleep.”
He closes his eyes for the briefest second, and then he says, “Well, first of all, I’m not a priest anymore. I’m not even a believer. So whatever you think about me, the Church has nothing to do with it. If you want spiritual advice, you can go to St. Ben’s and see a priest named Jack Rooney. And as far as the crime scene I was lured into that day—the
blood
—yes, I see it. There’s not a day when it’s not before my eyes. Does that make you feel better?”
The words sound sarcastic, but there’s something else in his voice, and again, I’m confused. Before I can say anything, he seizes control. “Listen, I’m sorry for what happened to your mother, Mila. But like I said, I didn’t kill her, and I don’t have the answers you’re looking for.”
He gets up to walk away when I call after him. “Hey, one more question—”
Though he can’t possibly hear me, he seems to sense that I’m calling him. He comes back and picks up the phone.
“Are you saying you don’t believe in God either?” I don’t know why that bothers me, but it does. Is
anything
about this guy real?
He rests his hands on his hips. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Mila. I don’t believe in God or anything else—except a couple of friends and a cousin.”
“You know what you are? You’re a dead man,” I yell at him. “And you’re not even good-looking like the guy in the newspaper!”
By then the guard inside is telling him to come on, hurry up, but he just stands there, watching me. And it’s like the moment when he first said my name. There is something so sad and deep about him, and it goes through me like a blade. I turn around and just about knock three people over, trying to get out of the place, tears wreaking serious havoc with my mascara, and people hollering at me to slow down, take it easy, until I finally reach the open air. By the time I make it to the street, the nasty bus looks like a limo with a driver; I’m that happy to get in it.
L
ast year, after I went through
a weird Kafka phase, I renamed my dad after the Bug in
The Metamorphosis
, and started calling my house
The Castle
. Not only is it the biggest, gaudiest mansion in town, it’s seriously goth. If my house was a person, it would be an emo girl with no friends who always wore black and cut herself in secret. Most people think I’m that girl. Especially my dad.
Why don’t you bring friends home? the Bug says
, his permanent scowl growing even deeper
. You’re such a pretty girl, Mila. Why no dates? And why the fearsome eye makeup? Who are you trying to
scare?
Stuff like that. But if I ever started acting like the so-called popular kids, dragging a bunch of people home to watch movies or sleep over and counting friends online, if I started shopping at Hollister’s and spending my days texting, he could never handle it. And a date?
Please!
Bringing a boy to Kafka’s Castle to meet the Bug would be like setting the kid up for a neo-pagan sacrifice. Besides, I
do
have a friend. Just one, yes. But if you ask me, one true friend like Ethan Washburne is worth at least a dozen bitchy back-stabbers.
But back to my house. We know each other very well, the Castle and me. I swear I can tell something is wrong in the place even before I open the door. It actually
looks
different. It’s made of stone (aren’t all castles?) and when things are bad, the stones turn a darker, more mottled gray. I call that bad sign # 1.
When I get home from my field trip to the state prison, I open the garage door and see his Porsche parked inside which means he’s home. Definitely bad sign # 2. Things are quiet, but it’s a spooky kind of quiet. Right away, I know where my father is. I can either avoid it, or run and jump right into the heart of it. Since I tend to be a leaper, I go to the room we call the “guest room,” though no guests have ever actually slept there. In fact, the last and only person to use the room was my mother. That was where she hung out when she wanted to get away from the Bug—which was probably a lot.
I open the door cautiously and find him sitting on her bed in his suit and tie, facing the bureau that still holds her things, her silky pajamas, the neat piles of tees and shorts she wore in the summer. There used to be a big envelope filled with letters written in her old language, and several photos of strangers who looked a lot like me in the bottom of her underwear drawer. But after the Bug caught me looking through it one day, the most interesting thing in the room mysteriously vanished. Her silver brush-and-comb set is still there, angled across her dresser just like it was when she was a little girl in Slovakia. Beside it is a bottle of perfume that condensed into pissy sweetness long ago.
I don’t even dare to think about how often my father comes in here or what he actually does in this room. Fingers her clothes? Sprays her dead perfume into the musty air? Runs her hairbrush through his own hair? (I confess: I’ve done all of the above myself, but not with the same sick reverence the Bug has.)
“Why aren’t you at the restaurant?” I ask nervously, not mentioning how much he’s creeping me out, sitting there in formal attire staring into a dead woman’s mirror.
He doesn’t answer. In fact, he’s so deep in his own obsession that my words don’t even penetrate. So I clear my throat and speak louder. “Sorry to er—
interrupt
, but I’m going to Ethan’s. His mom invited me for dinner,” I say (though Ethan’s mom has been drunk for pretty much two years straight and she hasn’t cooked dinner since she and his dad split up).
The Bug coughs, and readjusts his vision so that he can actually see something besides his memories of her. “I thought that’s where you were all day.” Then he gets up and ushers me out of the sanctuary. As soon as he comes into the hallway and looks at me, I realize he knows. Living alone in our haunted house, me and my dad have fine-tuned our communication over the years. Soon we should be able to eliminate talking altogether. I’ll look at him, he’ll look at me, and we’ll be there.
“You’re right. Maybe I’ll just stay home.” I start down the hall. “I’ve got a book report due next week, anyway.” (We never do “book reports” in my school, but they were big in the Bug’s generation, and he usually lets me go if I mention them.)
“Mila, stop right there,” he says in the voice that used to scare the shit out of me when I was little. “I want to know where you went today, and I want to know now.”
I spin toward him. “I told you—” Then, seeing that he’s not buying, I change my tactic. “Let’s go down to the kitchen and make tea, okay? Then I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.” One thing I learned from my mother is how
not
to react to the Bug’s intimidation—like never, ever show him that you’re afraid.
In the kitchen, Dad doesn’t take his eyes off me. I concentrate on the act of making tea. I pretend I’m performing a Japanese tea ceremony and every gesture counts. I make green tea with extra honey for myself (so I can outlive all my enemies) and Lipton for the Bug, who hasn’t tried anything new since 1981.