The Good Luck of Right Now(58)

Even though she hadn’t appeared to me, I talked to Mom for a time, telling her everything that had happened—asking her if my father could still possibly be alive—but the only answer I got was the noise of street traffic rising up from far, far below.

When I keyed into our hotel room, Father McNamee wasn’t snoring, but sleeping peacefully, so I tried to be extra quiet and didn’t turn on the light. The room reeked of whiskey, which meant Father McNamee would be hung over again in the morning.

I lay down in my bed and thought about how I was in Canada—how strange that seemed—as I stared at the ceiling.

Canada, eh?

It didn’t seem real.

Like maybe it’s just some unknown part of Philadelphia—or a known part dressed up as something else, like it was playing geographical Halloween, as crazy as that sounds.

Then, as Father slept, using the mini flashlight on my keychain, I wrote you this letter, trying to finish before it was time to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory, so that we might look at the preserved heart of a miracle worker and meet my biological father for the first time.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil





14


THAT IS THE MOST RATIONAL THING TO DO AT THIS MOMENT, GIVEN THE UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES YOU HAVE INHERITED




Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

When I woke up on the day we were supposed to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory and meet my dad in front of Saint Brother André’s preserved heart, Father McNamee was still sleeping, so I stared out our hotel window and admired the fresh snow cover that had fallen in the night. It looked like the city had been buried in fine white sand and was now pushing its way out again as various tides of morning commuters swept over the streets and sidewalks.

I smiled at my reflection superimposed onto the city in the window, felt a good lightness in my chest, took a shower, and then got dressed.

I let Father sleep for a time, as there were two empty whiskey bottles on the nightstand, although it was highly unusual for him to sleep past 6:30 a.m. no matter how much he had drunk the night before.

I was partly nervous to meet my biological father, but the larger part of me thought that my meeting him was completely impossible, and so I wasn’t all that nervous, because how can you fear impossibility?

Father McNamee hadn’t been acting very stable, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I was pretty sure the idea of meeting my father in Montreal was just the product of Father McNamee’s ongoing battle with madness. This was likely to turn out the same way our rescuing Wendy ended.

I did, however, allow myself to briefly think about the abstract possibility of meeting my father and decided that if this were ever to happen, say, in a parallel universe or something, I should probably be mad at him for leaving us, especially the boy me, who was quite impressionable and likely suffered more without a father than he would have if he had had a father—even a subpar father—and definitely for not giving my mom the fairy tale, because she deserved it; if any woman ever did, it was Mom.

Maybe I should be as angry as Elizabeth was with her mother—theoretically speaking—because what was worse, abandoning your son or making your daughter eat her pet rabbits? A tough call.

But in the real world that is my life, I wasn’t mad.

How could I hate a stranger?

How could I be angry with a man I’d never met?

Max called our room and when I picked up the phone, he said, “We’re ready. What the f*ck, hey? Fucking breakfast? My stomach is f*cking screaming, hey.”

“Father McNamee is still sleeping,” I whispered.

“Let’s eat without him. There’s a comple-f*cking-mentary breakfast downstairs. Muffins and other breakfast items of that f*cking nature. But there’s a f*cking time limit on that shit, hey. It says so in the f*cking brochure they leave next to the bed. Time is of the essence when it comes to breakfast in Cana-f*cking-da.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

I wrote Father a note, letting him know where we’d be, so he wouldn’t wake up and be confused, and then Elizabeth, Max, and I had coffee and muffins downstairs in the fancy hotel lobby, sitting on Canadian-red leather seats.

“Today is the big day,” Elizabeth said.

“Cat Fucking Parliament is the big day!” Max said. “Hey!”

I nodded, glanced at the clock hung on the wall, saw it was after ten, and said, “I better make sure Father McNamee is up.”

In the hallway, outside our room, I knocked on the door loudly to let Father know I was coming in, and maybe to wake him up if he hadn’t risen already. Then I entered.

He was still sleeping.

“Father?” I said. “Father, it’s getting late.”

He didn’t wake up, so I shook his shoulder gently—and then it felt like I was suffocating.

Father McNamee was frozen.

It was as if he had turned to rock in the middle of the night, because he was cold and stiff and whiter than the freshly fallen snow outside.

Immediately, the rational part of me knew he was dead.

Part of my brain was sober and straight and functioning just fine.

But the irrational part of me took control and started to shake him more violently, yelling, “Father McNamee, wake up! We’re going to Saint Joseph’s Oratory today! Remember? You promised I’d meet my father in front of Saint Brother André Bessette’s preserved heart! You promised me a miracle! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! This isn’t funny! Wake up! Father!”