The Good Luck of Right Now(36)

“I was never a good mother,” she said.

“Pray,” Father McNamee said. “Pray. Believe. Have faith.”

Then Father McNamee bowed his head and said a silent prayer before he made the sign of the cross and turned to leave.

(I wondered if he was doing this instinctively, faking it, or if he had patched things up with Jesus.)

“Father?” the woman called as he walked away. “Father, wait! Please! I don’t know what to do!”

I stood there on the sidewalk, wanting to comfort the woman, but not knowing how.

“What should I do?” the woman screamed.

It was obvious that Father McNamee wasn’t coming back, so I caught up to him by jogging.

“Edna’s really upset,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

After a few blocks, I realized we were headed for Adam’s trinity. I did my best to keep up with Father McNamee, who was sweating profusely and breathing quite audibly.

When we arrived, Father banged his fist against the door, pressed the intercom button, and yelled, “Open up!”

“Wendy doesn’t want to speak with you,” Adam said through the intercom.

“She’s just a girl, you bastard!” Father McNamee yelled into the gray speaker-looking square. “She’s half your age!”

“You need to leave. She wants to be with me. Wendy’s made her choice. And I’m calling the police if you don’t vacate the premises immediately.”

“Wendy!” Father McNamee yelled into the intercom, with a force that scared me. “He’s not worth it! Run from this brute while you can, before he beats the best part of you dead and—”

“I’m calling the police now,” Adam said. “If you’re here when they arrive, I’ll be reporting the bruises that Wendy returned with after being in your care.”

“Wendy!” Father McNamee screamed like a madman.

People on the street had stopped to stare, and I could feel their eyes on us. One man had begun to film with the camera on his phone. I wondered if he would post Father McNamee’s rage on the Internet.

Everything was happening too quickly.

The police were coming.

The little man was ice-picking his way through my intestines.

Adam was much more believable than Father McNamee and me. You could tell this just by looking at him. And he was a doctor too. Wendy would corroborate his story because she needed him to pay for her schooling. The cops would definitely believe him over us. I knew this. And the truth terrified me.

“We have to leave,” I said to Father McNamee. “We have to go now.”

He looked at me, and his eyes were no longer whirlpools sucking in everything around us—the pupils were smaller than two tiny black snowflakes. It looked like he was going blind.

His finger slipped off the intercom button.

I looked up and saw Wendy in the window above. We locked eyes before she turned away. She looked just as scared as I was.

“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be,” Father McNamee said, but it was like he was speaking to himself—like he was looking through me. “What’s happening?”

“We have to go,” I said, and then led him away by the arm.

Father allowed me to lead him—it was like he had become a scared little boy and I had become the father.

It all started to feel like déjà vu, for some reason—like I had done this before.

When we were six or seven blocks gone, he pulled out his flask and downed the whole thing, right there on the corner, until thin golden rivers spilled from the corners of his mouth.

Father McNamee was unraveling fast.

I remembered what Father Hachette had said about bipolar disorder.

Whenever I get depressed I go to the Water Works behind the art museum and watch the river flow, which helps.

I had some money in my pocket, so I hailed us a cab, stuffed Father McNamee in, pulled Father McNamee out, and we watched the river flow for a very long time, just looking at the water and listening to its roar.

Around noon, I broke the silence, saying, “Father, are you okay? I’m worried.”

“Did God speak to you about Wendy?”

“No,” I said, and it was true. I looked around for you, Richard Gere, but you were nowhere to be seen.

Father McNamee peered at the sun and said, “Maybe Wendy wasn’t part of the plan after all. What do you think?”

“What plan?” I asked.

“God’s plan. For you. For us. For right now. What your mother’s death began. This. Right now. The cycle we are in. The tangent that has led us away from the past and into the now.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Do you believe He has a plan for all of us, Bartholomew?”

Mom used to say that God had a plan for everyone, but I didn’t respond, because I wasn’t really comfortable answering Father McNamee’s questions about God.

“What do you hear, Bartholomew?” Father McNamee asked me, cupping his ear and tilting his head. “Right now. Listen. Do you hear anything? What is it?”

“The river flowing?” I said, squinting.

He raised his ear a little higher before he said, “Is that the voice of God? I wonder.”

“Is what the voice of God?”