The Good Luck of Right Now(17)

“I understand that Father McNamee has been your religious leader for your entire life—that your faith and the Catholic Church are very important to you. I understand that Father McNamee cares about you a great deal. Furthermore, he was the one who put me in touch with—”

“What happened to your wrist?” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself from speaking. There was a purple and yellow bruise on her left wrist that looked painful and awful. I saw it jump out of her sleeve when she was motioning with her hands.

“What?” Wendy said, and pulled down her sleeve, covering the bruise.

The look on her face made me wince.

“Oh,” she said. Then she looked up and to the left, which I’ve read is a classic sign that someone is lying. “I fell Rollerblading. Down on Kelly Drive. Should have worn my wrist protectors. But they are so dorky. I’m okay.”

I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t say anything more. Wendy is a terrible liar. She began talking about Father McNamee again, saying something about how she had been contacted by Father Hachette, who is very concerned about Father McNamee. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going. He hadn’t even said good-bye to anyone. She’d have to report his whereabouts to Father Hachette. I remember hearing the words “mental health” several times, but I can’t elaborate more because I was creating scenarios in my mind regarding Wendy’s bruise—trying to explain why her wrist was yellow and purple—instead of listening to her rant about Father McNamee. If she had fallen Rollerblading, she might have sprained her wrist or broken it—this was true—but I don’t think it would have turned such awful colors, but maybe I was wrong about that. I am no doctor.

I imagined maybe a dog had bitten her, but I hadn’t seen any puncture wounds or scabs. Maybe she had a pet snake that had wrapped itself around her wrist too tightly, and she was afraid they’d take her pet away from her if she told the truth?

Maybe.

But I couldn’t make any of these scenarios stick. I feared the worst—that something horrible was happening, and Wendy was pretending.

The angry man in my stomach wasn’t happy.

“Are you worried about me, Bartholomew?” Wendy said, and then looked at me the way Mom did when she first started calling me Richard—like the sexually active girls back in high school, tilting her forehead forward, staring up from under her eyebrows. Just like Tara Wilson looked at me before she took me into the high school basement. “You haven’t taken your eyes off my wrist.”

I looked down at my brown shoelaces.

“How sweet,” Wendy said in an almost mean way.

I didn’t like what she was doing. Using my concern for her against me. Using her beauty as a weapon.

“Father McNamee is not insane,” I said. “He’s just . . .”

I thought about telling Wendy about Charles J. Guiteau—that there are good and bad types of crazy—but I knew she wouldn’t understand.

Wendy said, “Regardless, I don’t think you’re emotionally ready for another housemate—especially one who is your mother’s age.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you need to work on making age-appropriate friends. Finding an age-appropriate support group. Finding your own way.”

“Being a bird,” I said.

“Okay, maybe that was a stupid metaphor. I’ll admit it.” Wendy watched me stare at my shoelaces for a long time—I could feel her eyes on me—and then she said, “You okay?”

I nodded.

“Have you thought any more about coming to the support group I told you about?”

“I’m still thinking about that.”

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about this week?”

“No, thank you.”

“What do you and Father McNamee do together?”

“Guy things.”

“Guy things?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“You are not a guy,” I said and then smiled, because it felt good to have guy secrets—like I was one step closer to having a beer with a friend at the bar. You would have been proud of me, Richard Gere. Truly.

“I see,” Wendy said, and then laughed in a good way. “What have you been reading about at the library this week?”

“The Dalai Lama,” I said, because it was true. “And Tibet.”

“Interesting. Any particular reason why?”

“Did you know that Tibetan monks have been performing self-immolations to protest China’s rule?”

“Self-immolations. Like burning themselves to death?”

“Not like. Exactly so.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you know about that? Why doesn’t anyone know about that?”

“I don’t know. If it’s true, you’d think it would be on the news.”

“It is true. You can look it up at the library. On the Internet.”

“You’d think Richard Gere would be promoting that more,” Wendy said, and then laughed. “That’s his thing, right? Tibet?”

I couldn’t believe that she brought up your name at first, even considering Jung’s theory of synchronicity. Her saying those two words stunned me. But then—once her meaning sunk in—the tiny man in my stomach was enraged; he kicked and punched my internal organs.