The Good Luck of Right Now(64)

I made the requested donation, lit a white candle in a red glass cup for Father McNamee, and prayed to Saint Joseph, asking him to put in a good word with Saint Peter, petitioning to let Father through the pearly gates and into heaven, even though he had sex with my mother while he was a priest, drank himself to death, and never told me he was my father. Even still, he helped many members of our church over the years—and many nonmembers too.

Father McNamee was a good man, I prayed to Saint Joseph, and meant it too.

So many other people and pilgrims were lighting candles and praying; some were crying. It felt like a holy place, and even Max refrained from cursing for a time, which I interpreted as a great sign of respect.

We walked by walls on which hung hundreds of wooden crutches and canes donated by people who had supposedly been healed by Saint Brother André, a simple uneducated doorman who had dedicated his life to Saint Joseph and inexplicably became a miracle worker.

And then we went to Saint Brother André’s final resting place.

His body is entombed in a shiny black marble box that sits under a brick archway. There is a painting of a red cross on the wall between the arch and the sarcophagus. In Latin, an inscription reads: “Poor, Obedient, Humble Servant of God.”

But Saint Brother André’s heart was not there.

I asked another pilgrim where I could see the heart, and she pointed me toward an information booth. The man there showed me where to go on a map that cost me two Canadian dollars.

We took another escalator up and climbed a flight of stairs to a room of dioramas—Brother André’s bedroom, a mannequin of him standing in his office, a mannequin of him standing next to a chair, all behind glass.

“He was so short,” Elizabeth said. “It’s hard to believe such a fragile-looking man is responsible for all this.”

“Yes,” I said in full agreement. Saint Brother André didn’t look like the type of man who accomplishes great things. He really didn’t. He looked nothing like you, Richard Gere.

And then—when we turned around—we saw it.

The very place Father McNamee wanted me to go.

Where Father McNamee first heard the voice of God.

Opposite the dioramas was what looked like a vault fenced off by iron. Behind the gate stood a gray pillar, on top of which sat a square glass box, lined with ornately carved stone. There was a human heart inside this box. The lighting inside the vault was red, so it looked like you were peering inside a giant’s chest—a giant wearing a great breastplate of armor that opened to reveal a heart encased in glass.

“What the f*ck, hey?” Max said, ending his run of non-cursing.

“Do you think it’s real?” Elizabeth whispered.

“I do,” I said.

“Who the f*ck cut it out, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to think about the act of cutting a human heart out of a dead body—trying not to think about Charles J. Guiteau’s dissected brain, preserved forever at the Mütter Museum.

“What do you think the aliens would think if they came down and saw this human heart on display?” I asked Elizabeth. “If they saw so many people worshipping around Saint Brother André’s heart, lighting candles and praying to Saint Joseph?”

Elizabeth didn’t answer, but squeezed my biceps through my coat and walked away.

Max nodded at me and followed his sister.

It was almost as if they knew I needed to be alone—and I understood this just as soon as they left me.

I stood and stared at Saint Brother André’s heart for a long time, wondering who he had been.

They say a million people came to his funeral and walked past his casket in the freezing cold of Canadian winter.

How did that happen?

What separates men like him from people like Max, Elizabeth, and me?

From the rest of the world?

Father McNamee would have said Brother André had faith—he just believed more than other people.

And I wondered if faith were not a form of pretending.

I also wondered what Father McNamee would have said if he were standing there at that moment with me, in front of Brother André’s heart—the place where he first heard his calling.

Would he have asked my forgiveness?

Would he have said he was sorry?

Would he have professed his love for me—his only son? Did he leave the church to finally claim me as a son and be my dad?

I’d never get the answers to these questions now, but standing there gazing at the heart of a miracle worker, I started to feel like it didn’t matter—that I was going to be okay somehow, in spite of how uprooted my life had become.

I found Max and Elizabeth on a large balcony of sorts, looking out over Montreal, which was breathtaking, and not just because it was cold outside—cold enough to freeze you from the inside of your lungs out to your fingers and toes.

“Thanks for coming here with me,” I said to Max and Elizabeth.

“No f*cking problem,” Max said.

Elizabeth smiled politely.

Then we looked out over snow-covered Montreal for another few minutes as our breath slipped in and out of us.

It kind of felt like we were supposed to be there in that time and place—almost like it was predestined. It just felt right somehow.

I don’t know.