The Good Luck of Right Now(19)

“You’ll go?” she said.

I looked at the piece of paper.

Surviving Grief

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

Just then, the front door banged open. Father McNamee was standing there, his face red with cold. “Has our dear Wendy talked you into throwing me out on the streets yet, Bartholomew?” he asked as he charged through the living room.

Wendy took a deep breath—and then she exhaled audibly through her lips. She stood, met Father McNamee at the kitchen entranceway, and said, “Why did you ask me to help Bartholomew if you don’t respect my opinion?”

“I respectfully disagree with your opinion,” Father McNamee said. “But I still respect it very much.”

“I don’t understand what type of game you’re playing here,” Wendy said.

Father McNamee chuckled and winked at me.

“I’m reporting your whereabouts to Father Hachette,” Wendy said.

“I no longer answer to the Catholic Church. I defrocked myself.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on, but I don’t like it! Not one bit!” Wendy yelled.

She punched her way into her floral-pattern trench coat, grabbed her bag off the kitchen table, and then stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

Father McNamee and I looked at each other.

Then Wendy stormed back into the house and said, “You will be at that meeting, right, Bartholomew?”

“What meeting?” Father McNamee said.

“Bartholomew?” Wendy said, ignoring Father McNamee. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said, but didn’t bring up her end of the deal. I didn’t want Father McNamee to know I was trying to woo The Girlbrarian. I don’t know why.

“Good,” Wendy said, and then she stormed out once more.

“She’s feisty,” Father McNamee said.

He reached up, squeezed my shoulder once, and then went into the living room to continue his praying.

I had no idea why Wendy didn’t want Father McNamee to live with me, nor did I understand why Father McNamee had asked Wendy to help me and then blatantly disregarded her opinions.

But I really didn’t want to think about any of that.

I sat in the kitchen trying to hear the birds, but they just wouldn’t sing on that day.

Wendy’s perfume lingered.

Apricot.

Lemon.

Ginger.

What was I going to do next, now that Mom was gone?

I kept thinking about you, Richard Gere.

In the biography that Peter Carrick wrote—on page 17, when he is discussing your relationship with Cindy Crawford, Carrick writes, “He [you, Richard Gere] admitted it was hard for him to make decisions and saw the process as something definite rather than transitory, a situation complicated because of his oppressive tendency to over-analyse.”

When I read that, I knew the you-me of pretending was no accident, because I have always been kept paralyzed by my obsessive thinking, which is why I began playing the you-me Richard Gere game when my mother got sick. When I was you, I didn’t have to think for myself, and this protected me from making mistakes. I wondered if you have ever played such a game, and then it hit me that you are an actor who plays this game all the time, right?

In his book A Profound Mind, the Dalai Lama writes, “To change our lives we must first acknowledge that our present situation is not satisfactory.”

It would seem that both Wendy and Father McNamee want me to change my life.

But I wouldn’t say that I am unsatisfied at all, especially since I have you, Richard Gere, to advise me.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil





7


HIS USE OF THE PLURAL PRONOUN MADE ME VERY SUSPICIOUS




Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

There was a knock at the front door the other night, and when I answered, Father Hachette was looking up at me through his round glasses, the white of his priest collar illuminated by the porch light. He said, “I know he’s in there.”

“Who?” I said, because Father McNamee had instructed me to “play dumb” if Father Hachette should come looking for him. The night before, when Father McNamee was very drunk, he called Father Hachette “the one left behind” and “the man with no eyes to see nor ears to hear.”

“I think you know exactly who I mean,” Father Hachette said.

“Sorry,” I said, and tried to shut the door.

“Okay, okay,” Father Hachette said. “Will you at least come outside and speak with me?”

I hesitated for a second, but couldn’t see the harm in speaking with him, so I went outside.

“Cigarette?” Father said to me as he lit up.

“No, thanks.” He knows I don’t smoke.

We both surveyed the street as he took a few puffs. It was cold, so no one was out on the stoops.

“Father McNamee is sick, Bartholomew.”

I immediately pictured the squidlike cancer attacking his brain. But I didn’t say anything, because I knew the probability of knowing two people with brain cancer was unlikely. Still, I couldn’t help having some irrational fear.

“He has bipolar disorder. Always has. But he went off his meds right around the time your mother passed.”