The Good Luck of Right Now(38)
Why?
I remember coming home from dinner, seeing the edge of the wooden front doorframe splintered, the door slightly ajar, and knowing that something horrible had happened.
It was like looking down and seeing a gaping hole where your stomach used to be and knowing your legs were gone—like Mom and I had somehow each swallowed a live grenade.
Once we saw the damage, Mom simply sighed and called the police, but they didn’t come right away, and asked only a few general questions when they arrived hours later, before saying, “We’ll file an official report.” Father McNamee, however, arrived within minutes of Mom’s calling him, armed with a phone book and several bottles of wine. He organized a dozen members of the church and a cleaning party began. The water was mopped up, the glass was swept away, the beds were washed and sanitized, and the walls were even painted over with paint and brushes someone miraculously found in our basement. Father McNamee washed our crucifixes in holy water, using a Q-tip to get in between Jesus’ spine and the cross, saying, “Lord, I hope you like your back scratched!” I remember the men and women of the church working through the night—drinking wine the whole time, talking, singing even.
It was almost fun.
When the sun came up, Mom cooked breakfast for everyone, and one of the neighbors brought over plates for us to use. Before we ate, as we all held hands in a circle, Father McNamee prayed and thanked God for the chance to prove that people are good and often take care of each other when the right sort of chance arises; he asked God to burn this night into our memory as an example of what true disciples of Christ are and can be when called upon—people who help their neighbors with compassion in their hearts and wine in their bellies, ready and willing to overcome any sort of ugliness (no matter the magnitude of the tragedy)—and then we ate like a family.
Mom and I had never entertained so many people at once.
When everyone left, Mom said, “Wasn’t that a beautiful birthday party!”
“How do we know it won’t happen again?” I asked.
“Didn’t you enjoy yourself, Bartholomew? I’d love to have another party like that. Such a treat having all those people here to celebrate my sixtieth birthday!”
“How do we know horrible thugs won’t break into our home again?”
“We don’t!” Mom said, almost like she wouldn’t mind if they did—maybe like she even wanted it to happen again. “We don’t know anything. But we can choose how we respond to whatever comes our way. We have a choice always. Remember that!”
I remember feeling scared—as if I couldn’t be like Mom and never would be. That maybe I was a bad Catholic. A subpar human being, even. That maybe even Jesus thought I was a retard. Because I found it hard to celebrate what had happened to us. I didn’t necessarily believe the clean-up party made up for the violation we were forced to endure.
“What have I been telling you since you were a boy? Whenever something bad happens to us,” Mom said as she tucked me into my new bed, insisting that I needed some sleep after staying up all night, “something good happens—often to someone else. And that’s The Good Luck of Right Now. We must believe it. We must. We must. We must.”
She kissed me on the nose, pulled the blinds, and shut my door behind her.
I could smell the paint drying, and I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about people breaking into my bedroom and urinating on my pillow.
Why would anyone do that?
How could Mom be so unaffected by it?
Would it happen again, even though Father McNamee promised to install a new door with a heavier deadbolt?
Was it my fault somehow—like maybe because I was in my midtwenties and I still hadn’t managed to do anything with my life except live with Mom, I deserved to have my home raped? If I had a job, maybe we’d live in a better neighborhood. If I were a normal person, maybe I wouldn’t attract negative energy and bad luck.
Was God punishing me?
These sorts of things happen only to morons! the little man in my stomach screamed. Of course it’s your fault! Smarter men don’t have these sorts of problems!
But then I decided to take Mom’s advice, and so I thought about every single bad thing that had happened that night, breaking it down into individual acts.
1. Someone targeted our house.
2. Someone suggested a plan of action.
3. The door was kicked in.
4. Dozens of curse words were profanely spray-painted (each one counted as an individual bad thing).
5. More than a hundred pieces of glass and mirrors were smashed (each counted).
6. People went to the bathroom outside of the bathroom dozens of times (each movement counted).
7. Milk and condiments and lunch meat were wasted (each piece and ounce counted).
8. I’m sure they swore while doing all of the above (each cuss counted).
9. They ashed their cigarettes on the floor and left beer bottles all over the place (each drink and cigarette counted).
10. Pissing on Jesus must have counted as multiple bad acts, maybe one for every ounce of urine? (Also, maybe this counted as nudity?)
When I estimated the number of individual evil acts done by each person who trashed our house, the sum of bad things easily topped two hundred, and so maybe if Mom’s theory was correct, it meant that more than two hundred good things had happened or would soon happen all over the world to strangers, or a few incredibly really lucky things (worth more than multiple bad things) had occurred or would eventually occur to even out the many terrible events that had happened in our home.