I do not expect acknowledgment, and receive none. Not a word, not a nod or shake of the head. Were the motives of my visit here even remotely pure I would inquire as to Moira’s state of mind. She has clearly been affected by my being here. By my words and whatever memories or feelings have been dredged from the dark places they haunted inside her. Places I, myself, know exist.
Places, for me, which have been flooded with a light which cannot be doused. Not yet.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” I say to the window. She will hear it, and might even take my apology to heart. But I may never know. May never hear my phone ring and her voice on the other end. I think this as I turn and head down the steps and the walkway to the street. Futility may be the operative descriptor of my act here. No more, no less.
Truth, it seems, is a commodity that can be lived, or discovered, but does not appear simply for the want of it.
* * *
The expressway rolls out before me, a strip of blackish road pointing toward the city skyline, top of the grandest towers lost in a soft ceiling of clouds that spit rain on my windshield. Every few seconds the wipers slap the annoying splatter away. It is hardly worth worrying about, but if untended it will build to a spotty film which obscures the way ahead.
Explanations in life are few and far between, and it might be no exception at this moment when I, without reason, fix on a recollection of my father and mother sitting in the back yard in folding lawn chairs talking about the day on his beat. But an explanation does come, quite easily in fact, from those very wipers keeping the windshield clear. My father is not one to let annoyances become problems, be it drizzle on a windshield, or weather sneaking through an aging storm door. Or, as I am remembering it now, those infrequent discussions in the back yard where, with my sister and me out of earshot, my father would share with my mother all about his day on the job.
Of course, we weren’t quite out of earshot, though Katie never seemed as interested as I in covertly listening to my father recount the highlights and lowlights that day, or week. I never considered until later, during my first year in the seminary, I believe, that his sharing, though counter to the ‘
keep the job out of your life, and your life out of the job
’ mantra which most cops insisted upon, was a recognition that, despite his nature, he could not keep to himself all that was ugly and worthless in the world. He was not the kind to stop by a bar after work to share a beer with colleagues, through the course of which each would regale the others with what my father, instead, chose to tell my mother. In bar or backyard, no matter what one thought of the process, it was no less a session of therapy than if the teller of the day’s tales were reclined on couch with a clock nearby ticking off not time, but money, as a stranger willingly listened.
Ahead the clouds seem to descend in the darkness as a downpour rushes at the earth. In an instant the pesky mist turns to sheets of rain sweeping across the expressway, erasing what lies before me. I turn the wipers to high and they fight with the torrent, struggling to keep up.
Sometimes what comes, simply comes, too fast to anticipate, or counter with prudence. The deluge just appears, on occasion, be it weather, or life. My father and mother seemed to always avoid being swept away in these unavoidable moments, and I believed myself their fortunate equal until recent days. Still, I could not have avoided what came to me. What washed over me like a wave energized by the throes of some storm far beyond the horizon. And though I wonder how my parents, my father more truthfully at this point in time, would have dealt with the knowledge which has come to me, I am thankful that this burden is not theirs to bear. And even once I reach the end of this search I have tasked myself with, I cannot imagine an outcome where I will share with my father what I have learned. My sister will still be gone. Putting a final face on the person, or persons, ultimately responsible will not change that.
Chapter Sixteen
Lost and Found
Three days pass.
No grand understanding has come to me over these seventy two hours. No gestalt awareness of a great truth. Instead I have stumbled through the minutes with a hum of stillness about me, wheels spinning in place. Perhaps I expected more. Or perhaps I am hesitant to test the boundaries of my calling more than I have. I even wonder if a part of me wants all I have started to come to a grinding halt. To have the decision made for me. To come upon a brick wall that cannot be scaled, or a chasm impossible to cross.
I go through the motions of living, doing what I do, celebrating Sunday morning mass as rain throbs on the sanctuary roof and cascades down the stained glass windows. As in most of the biblically inspired religions, the seventh day of the week is the traditional day of worship, and the mid-morning gathering of the faithful, started just before nine, is the most well attended. A full mixture of humanity. Young and old, couples alone and those with large broods. And those who have come with only themselves, mixed among the congregation like an extra uncle or grandmother appended to a random family next to them in the pew. They are surviving spouses whose other half has passed on. Dissolution of marriage has left some in a solitary state. Many are simply alone by choice, having never found another to share each day with. Most are older.
But not all.
I see Chris in the back of the church. In the very last row. Her gaze fixed on me as the words I speak to conclude the service drift over the congregation. A hope that all in attendance depart with peace in their thoughts and in their hearts. An altar boy bearing a crucifix as large as he leads off the altar and down the aisle, deacons and lay participants in the mass just concluded trailing behind. I follow, with Father Generette, my concelebrant, by my side. Our organist plays us out with a joyful aria, the main door to the sanctuary just ahead. On any other day myself and Father Generette would wait outside to greet our parishioners as they leave and offer thanks to each for joining us in the celebration so vital to our faith, and then we would retire to the church hall where coffee will have already been made, and donuts set out by the Knights of Columbus. But ahead through doors the ushers have just opened there is nothing but rain. Sheets of water dancing across the courtyard beyond. There will be no mingling outside this morning. A quick jaunt beneath the covered walkway will take us around the building and straight to the parish hall.
But I am not outside yet. Not dodging the torrent the heavens have unleashed this morning. I am just about to the door which will let me out into the deluge when my eyes track left to where I saw Chris from my place on the altar.
But she is there no more.
* * *
In the hall I mingle and make small talk with those parishioners who have remained after mass, either through force of habit or a desire to wait out the downpour before braving the roads. I compliment the Knights of Columbus for their usual fine fare, a spread of pastries and fruit, and a half dozen kinds of juice to accompany the required urns of coffee. These are things I do every Sunday after morning mass. The interplay is second nature. Familiar to the point that I am mindful to not let my interaction seem rehearsed.
Yet today it is just that. I move about as if on rails, from family to family, group to group, hall to kitchen to hall again. I converse in cursory snippets. I nod and display sympathy or surprise where required.
And I smile. This is the most difficult mask to wear, because what should be bringing me true joy passes through and around me like some inconsequential vapor. I am disconnected from this moment, trapped in the very recent past, reliving that glimpse of Chris at the back of the church. There and then gone.
She has not called in the days since we last spoke. Since I drafted her into the crusade I have taken upon myself. She was not unwilling, but that does not make right my using her. What I am doing is an affront to my calling, and I have made her party to it. Of course she knows nothing of my transgression. Nothing of Eric’s confession, or James Estcek’s existence somewhere in the Chicago environs. None of the revelations which drive me now.
“Father Mike.”
I have been listening to an elderly couple tell me of the trip they took to Mykonos for their golden anniversary, but it is another’s voice who draws my attention from just behind. I turn and see Ray Martin, not tending game booth or bingo bar this morning, but tasked with keeping the coffee full and steaming. And before he says a word my gaze drifts off of him. Through the glass doors of the hall to the courtyard beyond. Rain hammering the hardscape. A lone figure at its center beneath an umbrella. Chris.
“There’s a lady out there,” Ray says, and I notice now that he is dripping, a hint of the weather outside come in with him. “I told her to come on in, but she said she can’t.” I can see her beyond the glass and through the curtain of rain looking at me. Some expression on her face I cannot decipher. Some mix of sadness and apology. “She said she needs to talk to you.”
I nod to Ray, and he looks back over his shoulder toward Chris. It is not uncommon for strangers to appear on the church grounds in search of counsel, or consolation, and to Ray Martin the lonely figure being swamped by the rain in our courtyard is just another of these lost people. She is no stranger, but I cannot deny now that the look about her that I could not place is one of loss. Like a traveler who’s made a terrible error in navigation and must now find their way back home.
“I’ll see what she needs,” I tell Ray, moving past him to the door. I open and close it quickly, the portico above shielding me from the storm as I look the few yards to Chris. She does not move my way. Makes no move at all. Just stands there, staring at me.
“I’m sorry,” she says across the narrow divide between us, the ache in her words muted by the wash of water from the sky. But not enough that I do not notice. That I do not wonder what is wrong.
I dash out to the courtyard and duck under the umbrella, its canopy barely enough shelter for one. Standing close to Chris I not only see the distress I glimpsed from inside, I can feel it.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her. She just looks at me, and I notice something that the sight of her through the rain did mask. A glassy redness about her eyes. The look not of one who has wept, but one who wants to.
“I can’t help you anymore,” she says, adding quickly, “Okay?”
It is as if she seeks not approval from me for this decision, but agreement. Some pronouncement by me that I will end whatever it is that has brought her to some sudden pain.
“Chris, what happened?”
“Please, Michael.” For the first time since seeing her a moment before, her gaze drifts off of me. Toward the ground first, then over her shoulder toward the street. It’s as if she’s imagining herself already gone from here. From this conversation. From me.
For some reason I am hurt by this realization. More than I would have anticipated. It is not rejection in any sense I have ever known, but it is that nonetheless, and made worse by the silence that rages. She seems to want to say nothing, but has, for some reason, decided she must say at least what she has to me.
For an instant she looks to me again. No tears have come, just that dark threat of them raging in her eyes. “I left you something, Michael.”
There is no lingering look after her words. No punctuation of the moment with a hug, a hand put to my arm in gentle reassurance. She simply leaves. Turns and walks across the courtyard, rain dancing off her umbrella, the heavens drenching me as I watch her go.
* * *
Soaked to the bone, I return to the rectory after a cursory stop in the hall. There, dripping and, despite my best efforts to hide it, distressed, there were awkward questions, which I answered by explaining that Chris was an old friend of Katie’s who was having a hard time with something. Not a lie, but not the truth either.
Stripped of the drenched clothing, I stand in the shower and turn the water to hot, pushing myself to understand the ‘why’ behind Chris’ abrupt withdrawal from me. I could try to characterize it as flight from painful memory, the loss of a friend suddenly too much to bear. But it was
she
with the news clippings of Katie’s murder. She who inserted the
why
into my search. I dig and probe, replaying our exchange at her apartment over and over again in my head, seeking anything I might have said or done. Any catalyst that might have spawned her words to me today. ‘
I can’t help you anymore.
’
I find no answer. No explanation of her behavior. But I remember something else. More words she spoke. Her final words to me. ‘
I left you something, Michael
.’
I turn the shower off and reach quickly past the opaque curtain for a towel.
* * *
Dried and dressed I go downstairs. My colleague, Father Generette, is wiping dust from the mantle in our living room, a Sunday habit of his. Cleaning this one section of the home we share before his turn at the altar for two afternoon masses.
“Jimmy.” He pauses, the dirtied rag bunched in his hand as he turns toward me. “Was there anything left here for me?”
“Not that I know of.” He says, giving the space a quick glance. “What is it?”
“Not sure.” I give the room, and the entry, my own cursory once over, looking for anything that could be the ‘something’ Chris left. But everything I see I would have seen yesterday. Or the day before. There is nothing new. No addition. No package or note.
‘
I left you something, Michael.
’
Damn it!
I loose the curse within, though the frustration that gave it rise is plain about me, I am certain, as I grab my coat from its hook in the entry and hurry toward the back door. The rag in Jimmy’s hand does not find its way back to the mantle instantly, nor does his attention. In the mirror above the sideboard I see him as I rush through the living room. Just a glimpse of his puzzled stare tracking me as I disappear into the kitchen.