32
AND WHILE YOU’RE HERE in my head, she said to James, talk to me about Andre. You’ve been such a comfort for him. Keep him alive for me.
James was a kindly soul, balm for a wound. He had the presence of soft rain. Even imagining him would calm her. I’m glad my son met you, she thought. She knew that Gerard shared her feeling. Whenever he talked about James and how good he’d been for Andre, he’d remark on the price that loneliness exacts from the young, how fortunate it was that the two had found each other.
Gerard understood desolation, but he never spoke of his own. Nor did he offer platitudes to Andre. Never did he say in time you’ll meet someone or loneliness passes. Maybe he just wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to lie to his son about happiness. Things will work out, she’d said to Andre, and James was proof she’d been right. To her mind, it was life’s great gift that trouble was worn away by time, just as clumps of rocky soil are broken down by wind and rain.
Yet maybe today would prove her wrong.
She thought about the cruelty of that morning’s attacks. Mortal sin, Matt would have said as a priest — willful sadistic fantasies, thoughts no one had any business thinking, let alone enacting. God would forgive, he’d say, if one of those men had asked forgiveness. She doubted that this had happened. She felt certain that life’s good soil would never reclaim their stony deeds, never take them back.
Matt, she thought, would agree.
If he’s alive.
***
She had no way of knowing if Matt were alive. Yet she was exhausted from worry about Andre, and for that reason, she tried not to be anxious about Matt.
Yet there was so much he hadn’t yet resolved, so much he hoped to clarify, so many feelings that went deeper than he might have guessed. Matt’s soul had great depth, after all those lonely growing-up years in the woods with his father’s clocks, with his poor mother’s infirmity. He’d understood how Gerard felt, how lost he’d been all those years ago. Yet he’d been suspicious because Gerard had taken her — and not him — into his confidence about Ora’s death. “Come on, Matt,” said Valerie. “How many times would he want to repeat it?”
She’d been convinced that what Gerard wanted had nothing to do with her. It was the vision she’d harboured that attracted him — Ora’s spirit, trapped and beating its wings inside her body.
“It’s not that I don’t like the guy,” said Matt. “I mean, he’s okay. He’s—”
“Matt, I wouldn’t hurt you that way,” Valerie said.
“Even so, I wish he wouldn’t — look at you like that.”
“So do I.”
“So don’t encourage him.”
“How the hell am I encouraging him?”
“Frenchie’s got the hots so bad, you could fry an egg on his dick.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” said Valerie. Matt looked so unhappy that she could see his anguish, as if he’d lost her already. She grabbed his arm.
“Matt, I’m here, I’m yours. Grow up!”
He pulled away, dug into his backpack, pulled out a piece of paper. “My draft notice, see? I leave next week.”
“You’re afraid of losing me, and you’re the one who’s running off!”
“Reporting for duty is not ‘running off.’”
It is when I’m carrying your child, she thought.
***
Valerie pulled out her phone and dialled United Airlines. She waited.
I should have done this hours ago, she thought.
“I’m calling to enquire after passenger Matthew—”
“Are you a family member? We can only give information…”
She hung up.
***
She remembered a tap on the door, Gerard standing outside.
“Forgive me, I am not eavesdropping. But you’ve raised your voices.”
Valerie apologized.
“No, no. Just that I could not help overhearing. Matt, my friend, I must talk to you. May I come in?”
Matt shrugged.
“I know it is none of my business, but—”
“But what?”
“Why are you risking your life like this?”
“You need to ask?”
“From the first night you are here, I am wondering. You love each other. Why not stay and get married? You will be safe here.”
“No one’s safe. Thought you knew that.”
“I do not.”
“The world’s full of thugs, pal, in case you haven’t noticed.”
For a moment, Gerard was silent. “Well, I do not see the sense of it,” he said.
“You don’t?”
“There will always be wickedness in the world,” he said. “But can you just — desert your beloved Valerie? Your child?”
Matt looked stricken. “There is no child,” he whispered.
He pushed Gerard aside and strode out of the room.
***
Valerie punched in Matt’s number on her cell phone.
You have reached the voice-mail of Father Matthew Reilly, Department of Pastoral Theology, Boston College. My office hours….
Imagine if anyone knew what we’d been up to. All those years ago.
She couldn’t leave a message. What she had to say was too personal to leave on a priest’s voice mail. Matt, I’ve forgiven you. She wanted him to know that. She tried his cell phone.
We are unable to complete your call.
***
Valerie glanced at the screen. She kept expecting Matt to turn up on TV.
I wonder how many women miscarried today, she thought. Or died with their unborn kids. She felt sure that if he were to ponder this question, Matt the priest would be chastened. There is no child. His own words, long ago.
Matt, she thought, you were always afraid of life. Even as a kid. Remember in grade school, that bully who picked on me?
You drank. Later it was drugs. In the army, you were handy with a rifle. Or so you said.
No wonder you became a priest — you had to sort things out somehow.
She’d seen a few priests on the tube today — slim, stocky, black-shirted, Roman-collared — all of them in erratic motion, like insects in a wild garden, darting through swarms of fleeing people, congested airports, crowds in front of a church. Just as she’d glimpse the eyes, the mouth, the shape of the jaw, the priest would always turn away, as if he could feel her eyes on him.
***
She took the pastry dish out of the fridge, sliced the apples, scooped the cream into the shell, then placed the apple slices down in overlapping circles. There’s going to be a war, she thought. Another attack. On the stove was a simmering pot of melted butter and sugar for the glaze. She poured the glaze over the tarte, then put the dish in the oven.