The Opposite of Hallelujah (12 page)

“I guess,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced. You couldn’t prove prayer had anything to do with making
the world a better place, and the idea that it could cure illness seemed like a bunch of voodoo magic to me, something that probably had more to do with the power of suggestion than it did with God.

“It’s not easy,” Father Bob insisted. “That life is very demanding. It requires an extremely strong and dedicated will, and an almost complete obliteration of the ego. Can you imagine how hard it is to never think of yourself above others ever again?”

“Are you saying Hannah wasn’t strong enough?” I asked. I was peeved on Hannah’s behalf. She’d wanted to be a Sister of Grace so badly that she’d sacrificed her youth and her family to do it.

“It appears that the contemplative life didn’t bring out Hannah’s best self,” Father Bob said. “It didn’t fulfill her in the way it should have if it was her true, lifelong vocation. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

I looked up sharply at Father Bob. This, I realized, was why he had come. He wanted her to know she wasn’t a failure for leaving the Sisters of Grace. I started to wish Hannah had been willing to talk to him. She probably needed to hear that.

Dad came back into the room then, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said. Father Bob rose from his seat, and so did I. “She just won’t come down.”

“I understand,” he said. “I can see that Hannah is going through a difficult time. Maybe she needs to sort
some things out on her own first. I’m looking forward to meeting her, though, when she’s ready.”

Dad nodded, although, really, none of us knew what Hannah needed. If leaving the Sisters of Grace was Hannah’s great shame, then this was theirs: they didn’t know how to fix her.

“My wife would come down, but …” Dad spread his palms the way Father Bob had, but it didn’t mean the same thing; it meant
Here are all the things I wish I had the words to explain
.

“I understand,” Father Bob said sympathetically, offering Dad his hand. Dad shook it gratefully, and Father Bob turned to me.

“It was nice to see you again, Caro,” he said. “If you ever need to talk, you know how to find my office, right?”

I nodded. He smiled.

“Good. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Mitchell,” he said.

“Evan,” Dad said. “Please.”

“Evan,” Father Bob repeated.

When the door closed behind the priest, Dad asked, “What did you two talk about?”

I shrugged. “Nothing important,” I said.

I had to fend for myself for dinner, because my parents spent the whole evening after Father Bob left trying
to reason with Hannah in hushed tones behind the closed bedroom door. I stood at the bottom of the staircase for a while, until it became obvious I wasn’t going to hear anything. I ended up eating a cold turkey sandwich in front of the television, waiting for someone to come downstairs, but no one did. Eventually I put the dishes in the sink and went to my room.

Around midnight, there was a knock at my bedroom door.

“Come in,” I called, shutting my textbook and putting down my pen.

Hannah stepped into the room uncertainly. She looked like she’d been through hell. Her face was all red and splotchy, and her hair was pulled up into the severest ponytail I’d ever seen. It stretched her skin tight against her bones. She seemed so exhausted, emotionally and physically, that I was surprised to see her standing. “Mom and Dad are asleep. I thought you might be in bed, but the light was on and I figured …”

I rubbed my forehead. “What’s up?” I wanted to ask her why she wouldn’t see Father Bob; she had to be more used to priests prying into her business than we were. Or maybe that was it. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded of the reasons she had left. I could see her side of it, but I was frustrated, too. She’d hidden away in her room like a child, but she wasn’t a child. How long were my parents going to indulge her? Not to mention I felt sort of bad
for Father Bob. He’d clearly wanted to do a good thing, to help Hannah in whatever way he could, and she’d refused even to acknowledge it.

“I was wondering if you’d do me a favor,” Hannah said. There was a pause, during which I was probably supposed to say, “Sure, anything,” but I didn’t. Hannah waited, and when I stayed silent, she continued. “If it’s not too much trouble, I was wondering if you would take me to get my driver’s license.”

I raised my eyebrows slowly; I don’t know what kind of favor I expected her to ask of me, but that wasn’t it. “You don’t need me to do that,” I said. “Dad can take you, or if he can’t, Mom will.”

Hannah chewed her lip. “Okay,” she said finally, turning to leave.

“Wait.” She looked at me expectantly. “Why do you want me to do it?”

Hannah shrugged. “You don’t have to.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“That’s not a reason,” I said.

“I don’t know. I just think I’d like you to drive me to the DMV.”

“The DMV is a hell mouth,” I told her.

“I know.”

“I spent four hours at the DMV on two separate days just a couple months ago when I got
my
license. It was
awful.” I’d failed my test the first time. I wasn’t proud of it, especially since the Illinois State driver’s test was supposedly one of the easiest in the country, but it was the truth. “I don’t want to do that again.”

“Okay. I just thought I’d ask.” Hannah gave me another one of her patented weak, sad smiles and left, closing the door firmly but quietly behind her.

9

“You’re taking your sister to the DMV,” my mother said, setting a plate with a bagel on it down in front of me.

“No way!” I cried, pushing the bagel away. It smelled like bribery.

“You’re going to do it, and you’re going to do it with a smile,” Mom said, looking at Dad for support. He looked at me and pulled his mouth into a Cheshire-cat grin with his pointer fingers.

“Ugh, you two are the worst,” I groaned. “I was just
at
the DMV!”

“I remember,” Dad said. “I drove you there. Both
times. To get the license we paid for to drive the car we generously loan to you. Not doing this for Hannah will disqualify you from using the car yourself. Got it?”

He and Mom stared at me. I relented.

“Fine,” I said, taking a bite out of my bagel. It might’ve smelled like bribery, but it tasted like coercion.

Pawel surprised me at my locker that morning. “Hey,” he said, leaning against the wall. “Did you get all that physics homework done?”

I nodded. “It took me forever, though. Didn’t you do it?”

He shrugged. “I considered doing it. I finished a couple of problems. It was really boring.”

I laughed and stood up, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “It’s homework. It’s supposed to be boring. Come on, we’re going to be late for class.”

“Do you always do your homework?” Pawel asked, matching my speed as we walked through the hallways.

“Usually,” I said.

“You’re a straight-A student, aren’t you?” His voice had a note of amusement in it.

“Pretty much,” I said. There were lots of things I didn’t like about myself, but the one thing I was never ashamed of was my dedication to school. Both of my parents believed in the value of a good education, and
they had passed that belief on to me. On to us, I mean to say. In the flickering nickelodeon of my early-childhood memories was a short clip of me standing in front of the refrigerator while my mom cooked dinner. I was staring at the various tests and papers sixteen-year-old Hannah had brought home with big red As on them.

Your sister is such a good student
, Mom said in my memory.
Are you going to be a good student, too?

Yes
, I told her firmly. At five I was already determined to be just as good as Hannah was.
I’m going to get straight As
.

At least, that was how I remembered it.

“Your parents must be proud of you,” Pawel teased.

“Sometimes,” I told him. “Mostly they’re just annoyed with me.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“They think I have a bad attitude,” I said. “But I maintain that it’s the other way around.”

“And you’re the youngest?” he guessed.

“How did you know?” Almost everybody who knew I had an older sister had forgotten years earlier, yet he picked up on it immediately, without knowing a thing about me. “Does my bad attitude scream ‘spoiled baby’ to you?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “First of all, I don’t think you have a bad attitude. Second of all, you don’t act like a youngest child at all. You work hard, you don’t coast. You don’t have a car of your own.”

“Reb has a car, and she’s the oldest,” I said.

“Who?”

“Reb. My best friend. She’s in our French class.”

“Oh, right. I’m not saying that all youngest children have their own cars, or that no oldest children have their own cars, but in my experience a younger child is more likely to have one than an older child.”

“I could be one of the exceptions,” I said.

“You could.”

“Or I could be an only child.”

“You’re not.”

“How could you tell?”

“You’re just not. Only children might as well be wearing Christmas lights made out of fluorescent bulbs for how easily they stand out at school. You’re the youngest. But you’re not spoiled. Curious.”

“What are you, some sort of aspiring anthropologist?”

“Not really. This is just a game I like to play.”

“Okay, so what made you think I was the youngest?”

He scrunched up his face, as if debating whether to say what he was thinking, or trying to think of a better way. “You don’t seem desperate for attention, I guess.”

“Thanks?” I wasn’t sure how to take that, although it sounded like a compliment, or at least a non-insult.

“There’s more,” he said. He searched my face as if to see if I was interested in hearing it. I gave him an expectant smile and he continued. “You’re friendly and outgoing, but you’re also really secure in your friendships,
so you don’t seem to care very much if strangers like you. I could tell when I first talked to you that you weren’t putting on a show. You were just being yourself. But it’s weird, you know.”

“What’s weird?” I asked.

“You’re, like …” He searched for the right words. “You’re really into school and obviously a total overachiever, which fits better with oldest children. But you don’t seem to be as neurotic about school as an oldest child would be. My oldest sister, Magda, is a bossy know-it-all but you’re not like that.”

I nodded, smiling.

“You think it’s bullshit,” Pawel said.

“No, no.” I rushed to assure him.

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s just a goofy thing I do for fun sometimes, when I meet new people. It makes it easier, you know. It gives me something else to focus on besides how nervous I am.”

“I understand,” I said. The notion of Pawel’s being nervous around anyone was odd. He seemed so sure of himself, so easy to be around. Had he really been nervous around
me
? If he had been, I couldn’t tell.

“So how many Mitchells are there?” he asked.

I considered carefully how much to tell him about Hannah. “Two,” I finally said. This was the first time in a long time I’d mentioned Hannah to anybody, even obliquely. Part of me felt like it wanted to tell Pawel
everything, every single thing I was thinking and feeling about Hannah, even the things I hadn’t quite figured out how to express in words; I thought once I started talking about her, it might all just pour out of me like a dam had burst. But there was another part that was afraid I had already said too much. I was used to pretending Hannah didn’t exist, and if I told Pawel, I might have to tell everyone else, too, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. That part of me wanted to lock it all away where nobody could get at it, where I was free to figure out how I felt and what I wanted at my own pace.

“Older sister?” Pawel said, pulling me back.

“How do you
do
that?” Although it was mostly guesswork, I had to admit that Pawel was skilled at this strange little game of his. “You should take this show on the road, maybe get a job at Six Flags guessing people’s ages or something.”