.7.

I was.

I was. I could just feel it. I had to be.

I read a book that explained how sometimes you can still get your period after conception. That morning sickness is not always confined to the morning. That some women don’t have many signs, and the signs vary. Some women, it said, develop a heightened sense of smell. Well that’s for sure.

I can’t say I was happy. The thought of growing bigger horrified me. Though the book said to eat well and often, I began to starve myself. I had visions of the wormy thing eating me alive. Syphoning my minerals and living off me. Which is pretty much the way it is. Another person inside getting a free ride.

I still had to see a doctor to make sure. Mark kept bugging me. My real terror was that it might be twins. I felt like I was carrying around my replacement, offering it all the comforts. How long before it made my clothes tight, my walk tired? I looked at my breasts. The thought of them filling with milk made me sick. I thought if I stopped eating the thing would starve and die. Disintegrate. I even stopped eating pastina.

I’ve started lighting candles to St. Jude. The thing is, I can’t figure out what to pray for. It doesn’t seem right to pray for the fetus to die. And I can’t exactly pray for Yvonne to get hit by a car. It’s not right. So I just pray to be happy and calm. For peace of mind. Thy will be done, I say, like they say to do in the Al-Anon meetings. Thy will be done. Then I light the candles. But I feel nervous leaving it up to St. Jude to decide what to do.

“Honey, you should eat something,” Sarah said. We were at Dean & DeLuca. She took a huge bite out of a mozzarella-and-sundried tomato sandwich and held out the other half.

“Here. Have some of this,” she said, her mouth full.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Oh God, that brings back memories.”

In the years we lived together—our dieting years—I was always better at it. I could just about starve myself to lose weight. “It’s because you’re Catholic,” Sarah used to say. “You’re big on suffering.” I could go an entire day on coffee and some carrots, and swear I wasn’t hungry, while Sarah often gave up, indulged in a pint of diet ice cream, and never really lost weight.

“You have to start eating. Does Mark know what you’re doing?”

“No. I tell him I eat before he comes home. Because of the fetus.” I still couldn’t call it a baby.

“What about your shrink?”

“No.”

“Terry, I’m worried about you.”

Fasting, I used to call it. Or atoning, if I’d eaten what I regarded as too much the day before.

“I don’t know what kind of weird religious trip you’re on,” Sarah used to say. “You Catholics scare me.”

There had been some kind of sacramental feel to it all. The ritual. The purity. Even when I peed it was clear. I’ve always wanted to feel untainted. Pure as bone. Clean and untouched. Ever since I was a kid. But no matter how much weight I lost I could still see my hips, breasts. I was never really anorexic, just a little extreme. It was just something I did from time to time.

Sarah said the food I ate looked like Communion wafers. And it’s true, I like white food—white bread, yogurt, apples. White chicken as long as it doesn’t have that chicken smell. Really, though, I just loved that feeling of being empty. Hollow. Waking up to feel my ribs, my hipbones jutting out like the lip of a bowl. Even now, my stomach only feels flat when it’s concave. I’ve lost four more pounds. Yvonne’s skirt is getting too loose to wear. But the fetus will change that.

“I don’t know, Sarah. You know, I don’t know if I want this thing.”

“Then you have to decide soon. But Terry,” she said, ever practical, “you should at least do a pregnancy test. Just to make sure.”

Dean & DeLuca was unusually empty. A young child sat on the floor peeling a piece of flattened gum from the tile. Its mother talked away to her companion, oblivious. At another table an enormous pregnant woman leaned back in her chair with that vague look pregnant women get. Like a bloated odalisque. Half of Soho seemed to be pregnant.

“Yeah,” I said.

I knew I was being a drag.

“Want to come up to Yvonne’s with me?” I’d finally told her I knew where Yvonne lived, though I hadn’t actually said I was going inside Yvonne’s apartment.

“Terry, don’t go up there.”

“Okay,” I said, to agree with something. But I knew I would go.

I started carrying saltines around in case I got nauseous. I brought little waxed paper packages to class, but didn’t explain why I suddenly had to eat crackers during my lectures. Except to Brian. When I told him he held his hand to my stomach to see if he could feel any vibrations.

“You could name it Curly whether it’s a boy or a girl,” he said.

That depressed me. Everything depressed me. Early Christmas decorations. Mark bugging me to see the doctor. Yvonne’s.

The last time I went up there things went wrong from the beginning. I was crossing Broadway when I heard someone call Yvonne’s name. When I looked around for her I saw a young woman walking toward me smiling. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. One of my students, I thought at first, though that doesn’t even make sense.

“I haven’t seen you in the rooms,” she said.

Al-Anon.

“No,” I said. “No, I haven’t been to any meetings.”

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Are you at least making phone calls?”

I must have looked pretty bad.

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

She looked concerned. “Your friend’s husband?” she asked.

I felt like I was beginning to unravel. I said something about not knowing and things working out. I promised to call and got away from her as quickly as I could.

Christmas decorations were hanging everywhere. Dirty fringe garlands and stars. A Salvation Army Santa waved a bell. The Al-Anon woman had thrown me and I forgot to stop at the Korean place before heading to Yvonne’s.

When I got there the key wouldn’t fit and I started thinking Yvonne was onto me. That she’d changed the locks. Then I noticed the number on the door. 4C. I’d gotten off on the wrong floor. It was a long wait for the elevator to go up and down and back up again and I was afraid someone would see me pacing the hall.

Once inside the apartment I didn’t even want to be there. I sat on the couch. I checked the painting of the dog. There wasn’t even a signature. So much for that. I went into the bedroom. She’d replaced the battery in her clock. I didn’t take anything. I didn’t open a drawer. I went back to the living room by the bookcase. I know everything I wrote inside the front cover of Ariel. Then I left.

Thinking about it now, I guess it makes sense what I did next. I didn’t even leave a note for Mark. Let him worry and imagine, just like I’d had to do. On the ferry I regretted it. I decided to leave a curt message on the machine when I got to Staten Island. Just say I needed to think and I’d be back soon. Not tell him where I was, though. Let him worry.

I stood on the upper deck and watched Manhattan get smaller and smaller, the seagulls dropping up and down on their columns of air. The only thing I could see through the fog.

I was trying to listen to myself, hear what I should do. “It’s a little voice inside you,” Sister Dominica used to say, “telling you what to do. It’s your soul, your conscience,” she said, “whispering to you.” But it always feels like there are so many voices inside me, whispering so many different things. “Sometimes the Devil will whisper to you,” Sister Dominica said. “He’ll try to trick you. He’ll make himself sound like an angel, and you must pray to know the difference.” Now what was I supposed to do with that?

When we docked, I found a phone in the terminal, left a message for Mark, and took a cab to Mount Loyola, a Jesuit retreat house I went to once in high school. They hold retreats there every weekend—I know because I’m on their mailing list. I remember the atmosphere as being somewhat punishing, but it’s cheap and quiet and always open.

I didn’t say a word to the driver as he navigated us through the fog. I was thinking about Yeats. Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. Everything felt like shit. I wanted to be somewhere safe and clean. My stomach felt sick. I couldn’t eat anything but the saltines and I’d forgotten to take them.

When I arrived, a middle-aged woman with stringy gray hair and a pair of rosary beads around her neck greeted me and filled out a card with my information. I wrote her a check for the weekend.

“Name?” she asked, tugging at the rosary beads.

I just stood there.

“Dearie,” she said, “what is your name?” Her yellow cardigan was covered with lint balls and turned up at the wrists.

“Theresa,” I said. “Theresa Spera.” I was so scared Yvonne would leap out of my mouth. “Yes. It’s Theresa.”

She looked at me like I was a little strange. Then she smiled sympathetically. “Running from your husband?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. It felt important and dramatic.

“Parish?”

“What?”

“What parish are you from?” She had on this terrible shade of mauve lipstick traced over the thinnest lips I’ve ever seen.

“They don’t have parishes in Manhattan,” I said. I hadn’t heard the word in years.

“Oh, you’re funny,” she said. “’Course they do.”

She took the rest of the details and filled in the card with a stubby pencil. I gave her the wrong phone number and address. It wasn’t necessary, but it added to the drama.

She brought me to my room and left me there. “You sleep here Friday and Saturday,” she said. “Departure time is one-thirty Sunday.” She tugged at the rosary. “Oh,” she said, “here’s a schedule of events. I almost forget. Have a peaceful stay.”

I took the yellow paper.

“Mass is at five-thirty. Right before dinner,” she said. “Would you like to help bring up the gifts?”

“Gifts?”

“The bread and wine,” she said. “Carry it to the altar.”

“No,” I said. “No. I’ll just watch. I’m a little ill.”

“It’s okay, dearie. Dinner is at six-thirty, right after Mass,” she said. The lipstick caught in little creases at the corners of her mouth. “There’s a silent table if you don’t want to talk.”

“Thanks. Oh,” I said, “where’s the phone? Is there a pay phone here?”

“No, dearie.” She shook her head. “Well, there’s one in the office for emergencies. But only for emergencies.”

She closed the door. I sat on the bed, which was hard and narrow and pushed against the wall. The plastic mattress was thin as a magazine. The rest of the room consisted of a small writing table, a Bible, a lamp, and a list of instructions tacked to the door. A crucifix hung over the bed.

The room was cold. Really cold. There was only one thin blanket and it smelled like wet wool, so I kept on my jeans and sweater and lay down under it with my leather jacket on top for extra warmth. When I looked up that crucifix was staring down at me, the bronze loincloth a little out of proportion to the thin bent legs. I stood on the bed, pulled it off the wall, and stuck it in the top drawer of the writing table. I’d forgotten my alarm clock so I tacked my wristwatch to the wall by the lamp. Then I got back in bed.

I woke to a bell.

“Mass,” I heard women whispering through the hall. I was freezing. Someone knocked gently on my door, whispered “Mass,” and passed by. I got up and put on another sweater and went downstairs.

The chapel was all angles and bright colors. Felt banners proclaiming Love and Peace. It looked like an Al-Anon meeting. Two priests in dark clothes walked down the center aisle after we were seated. I sat in the back row and watched. One—Father Dugan, I was to find out later—was a trim, severe-looking Irish priest with very prominent lips. He walked silently down the aisle, looking neither right nor left. Straight out of Joyce. Old style. The other, Father John, smiled and extended his hands to women he’d obviously seen before. He looked almost jovial, winking and waving. Two tall, plain women without a hint of makeup walked behind them carrying what appeared to be the gifts.

Mass went by in a blur. I hadn’t been to Mass, except for Anita’s funeral, in years. The prayers had changed. The language. It was bad enough when they went from Latin to English when I was six—one of the first linguistic blows of my childhood—but these new prayers were truly without resonance. They might have been instructions for the use of a blender.

I cried once when Father Dugan talked about atoning for our sins and begging for forgiveness. Our souls suffocating in filth and mire. He read a poem he called “The Hound of Heaven,” which I’d never heard. I imagined he was looking at me as he read it. I fled him down the nights and down the days, it began. Something like that. I hate dogs, but the metaphor seemed to work. On one hearing though, I couldn’t tell if it was about a man stalking God, or God stalking the man.

I wanted to talk to Father Dugan. I wanted to purge. To strip myself bare, beg for forgiveness. Release myself from all the sin and deceit and fear.

I watched him through dinner. I elected to sit at the silent table, and was seated beside one of the thin, tall women who’d carried the gifts. There was a young, very pretty woman with red hair to my left who smiled at me whenever our eyes met. She looked about twenty-eight and I wondered what she could have done to make her feel she had to come to a place like this.

Father Dugan sat at a regular table but did not seem to join in the conversation. The two priests were the only men in a room of about thirty women. Except for the busboys and cook.

“Not eating?” the busboy asked in a loud voice. Then he grinned and put his finger to his lips.

I was fasting. Not that I could have eaten anyway. The center table was filled with stacks of greasy hamburgers, canned peas, and some pasty-looking mashed potatoes. Two huge aluminum bowls of sliced white bread and pats of gray butter. It made me sick to look at it. I didn’t know if it was that food or the fetus, but I was feeling pretty bad.

I sipped ice water, but after looking at the food table, even the water tasted greasy. I was starving and nauseous at the same time.

After dinner I wanted to go to my room, but a mandatory orientation was set for 8:00 and I am, as Mark points out, profoundly obedient.

Father Dugan was the one I went for. The other, Father Johnny he called himself, turned out to be a cheery, red-faced, New Age type who chortled on about forgiveness and the love of Jesus. Everything you do can be forgiven and God loves you. Sister Judy, who was leading the structured group retreat, was wearing baggy, stone-washed jeans and a white Save-the-Earth T-shirt. She taught Jungian therapy at St. John’s University. She was into women and thought the Virgin Mary was a feminist.

I was desperate to talk to Father Dugan. To ask him about the poem. He announced he would lead the unstructured, silent retreats, in which experienced retreatants would confer with him privately and not attend the group activities. I chose him even though I’d never done a real retreat. There was only one other silent retreatant. A tiny nun who looked about eighty.

Father Dugan told me to meet him at 5:45 before Mass next morning. I didn’t have an alarm clock and was afraid I’d oversleep, but I needn’t have worried. The banging gongs and bells that go off at five could have woken the comatose.

The red-haired woman—Chrissy her name was—seemed to have attached herself to me. We were clearly the youngest in the group. She asked if I’d like to see a film in the lounge that night on the subject of Medrugorgie—I think that’s what she called it—a village in Yugoslavia where Catholics the world over were making pilgrimages to see the Virgin. I couldn’t imagine anyone would be going to Yugoslavia right now and I told her that. I told her it wasn’t even called Yugoslavia anymore, but she said it was film footage of an appearance in 1989. I explained I was seeing Father Dugan early in the morning and really needed to sleep.

She looked a little uncertain. She leaned toward me, hesitated. “He’s kind of a creep, you know,” she said.

“You know him?”

“He’s mean,” she said. She had a sterling angel pinned to her collar.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He seems pretty intelligent.”

“He’s mean.” She smiled. “But good luck.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. It’s funny, but I didn’t think at all about Mark, or the fact that I’d just disappeared. I didn’t think about Yvonne or Sarah. Even Brian. I thought about the fetus, but only because it was making me so nauseous. I tried to pray but I felt stupid. I couldn’t even say the Serenity Prayer. The room was cold, even under the blanket with all my clothes on.

I was awake most of the night. I’d look like a wreck in the morning, I knew that. I planned what to wear. I wanted to look penitant, but not demure. Attractive, but not obvious. I’d pull my hair back in a bun and wear discreet makeup. No lipstick.

I thought about Father Dugan’s being mean. There was something ferocious about him. That steel-colored hair. Those lips. I unzipped my jeans and lifted my sweater. I fingered my clit and imagined him questioning me, scolding me. I imagined him listing the things I’d done wrong, telling me severely that I needed to be punished. I couldn’t come. I couldn’t come and I couldn’t sleep.

I got up to check my wristwatch. Four o’clock. The window looked out onto the grounds, which were winter bare with patches of snow. I imagined Father Dugan out there walking in the trees past my window. I went back to bed and tried to continue the fantasy. I couldn’t come. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t pray. And I couldn’t get warm. When the bells started ringing I was overwrought and tired and in a panic about what to wear.

I felt chilled through. Damp. The way you feel when you’ve slept in your clothes. In the bathroom each of the seven shower stalls was already filled. No one looked at anyone else’s body. No one rubbed oils into their skin. Not like at the gym where part of the pleasure is watching other women dress. Smelling their different scents. It was freezing and we showered and dressed quickly.

The visit with Father Dugan was brief and disappointing. We discussed poetry. Yeats he didn’t read. Hopkins he said was a little too passionate and rash and it marred the poems. I agreed with him though I disagree. What I love is that passion. He gave me his copy of “The Hound of Heaven,” saying Francis Thompson was devout and one of the best religious poets he knew. I asked him about Herbert, but he kept going back to Thompson, an inferior poet, I realized even then.

Father Dugan said I should walk about the grounds, saying the Act of Contrition, meditating on my soul. Perhaps I could do the Stations of the Cross outside by the grotto. When I was leaving he asked my name.

“Theresa, Father. Theresa Spera.”

“Then your name means ‘hope,’” he said. “From the Latin, spero, sperare.”

“Yes, Father, I know,” I said. I tried to pull the hair back into my bun, which was coming loose. I’d learned that in fifth grade. When I’d told my mother, she’d laughed. “That’s a joke,” she said. “That’s a real laugh. Hope. Hope for the hopeless.” And then she started to cry.

“We must always have hope, my child.”

This all felt vaguely stupid. Despite my fantasies, I felt a fool calling this man “Father” and even worse when he called me his child.

“Thank you, Father,” I said. “I believe that.”

I really said it.

“You’re named for Saint Theresa,” he said.

“Yes, Father.” I hoped he wasn’t going to start in on Spiritual Housecleaning and my Interior Castle.

But he just nodded and went back to his book.

I started worrying about Mark and the fetus. It was too cold to go outside and though I thought it would be effective to be cold and suffering and walking the grounds all day, I couldn’t get myself out the door. Sarah would say I was losing my touch.

I laid in bed under the blanket and copied out “The Hound of Heaven” into my journal. I looked at versions of my own poem on the previous pages, but it didn’t seem right to work on it there. I walked around the halls, sat in the chapel, went to the lounge and bought a pair of wooden rosary beads in the bookstore. I tried to meditate on my soul, but I’ve never been able to picture the soul. I’ve always imagined it as shaped like one of those big cans of cured ham with the metal key they used to display in the windows of butcher shops. Except it was white, with black spots representing my sins. Whenever I try to think of the soul I see that can of cured ham with its metal key, sitting inside me, covered with blotches, and I can’t get any further.

At about 2:30 I ran into Chrissy, and went with her to Rosary Recitation. At least it killed an hour. I was starting to give up on the private retreat and went with Chrissy to the next group activity, called “The Rite/Right of Penance.”

Sister Judy talked about the spirit of forgiveness and led us through a meditation in which we all closed our eyes and imagined descending a series of stairs. We saw our names written on a large door down a long, dark hallway. The door turned out to be a Bible, and we were invited to walk into the pages and find ourselves. When she finished the meditation she put on a recording of a Beethoven quartet which seemed particularly grim. I opened my eyes to get a tissue and I saw that everyone around me was crying. I have to say, it was a pretty depressing place.

When it was over we all shared our thoughts and experiences of the meditation and after that everyone starting hugging and kissing. A lot of the women were using Al-Anon lingo, saying things like you are only as sick as your secrets. I was feeling pretty sick. I hugged Chrissy, but it was more for some kind of human contact than anything. I realized I hadn’t been touched in over a day. Chrissy smiled through her teary face and kissed me solemnly. Then we all did this kind of anointing ritual, dipping our fingers in bowls of water and blessing one another.

Father John came in to speak about forgiveness. Father Dugan stood to the side. I could tell he was a little put off by it all. Then the priests left and we did some more rituals with the water and anointing oils. Sister Judy said we were each encouraged to go to confession. Reconciliation, she called it. The sacrament of reconciliation. They’d changed the name. She said we could arrange a private appointment with one of the priests.

“For example,” she said, “just go knock on, say, Father Johnny’s door, and talk to him. Just tell him everything. He’s a good guy.” When she mentioned Father John, it seemed she’d given me a rather pointed look. But I already knew who I was going to see.

I arranged an appointment for 4:30, and waited out the half hour in my room. I was actually looking forward to it. I’ve always loved the idea of confession. The fact that you could sit in a dark box and tell someone who couldn’t see you, sometimes a complete stanger, a voice in a dark box, all the worst things about yourself and come out feeling pure and clean. Whole. The thing is, I never did. From the time I was seven and made my first confession, I never did. I’d listen to that whispering voice absolve me and I never felt pure, which made me think that there was something wrong with me—or something I wasn’t telling. And of course there were things I didn’t say, things that would take too long to explain, things I wasn’t sure were sins, but felt wrong—like the way I clumped the pillow between my legs and rocked on my bed thinking about Lassie and Timmy, whispering “Timmy, Timmy.” It didn’t fit under any of the Commandments. And so I always left confession thinking there was something other people felt that I was supposed to feel. Some people are fundamentally bad, Sister Dominica used to say. And I just figured I was one of them. That’s when I started pretending I felt pure. I’d come home smiling and sit quietly at dinner pretending I was at prayer.

I wanted to tell Father Dugan everything. About Mark and Yvonne, Brian and the fetus. How I felt like I was disappearing. Everything. I thought if I could say it all, all the things I couldn’t tell Eric, I would get it out of me. I would be blessed and forgiven. Washed clean. I didn’t think it would be wise, though, to tell him I’d been considering an abortion.

When I knocked at his door there was no answer. I waited a minute or two and knocked again. I knocked pretty softly, so maybe he didn’t hear me. I pushed the door open. Father Dugan was sitting in a swivel chair, back to me, facing the window. There was no confessional box. It hit me then that I was supposed to sit in that room and look at him and tell him everything. Without the partition screen. I couldn’t see how that made it any different from therapy. I thought maybe he’d keep his back turned and I would just stand there talking. I’d always knelt in confession, begun with the formal Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

“Come in. Come in,” he said and swiveled around to face me.

I must have looked terrified. The way Mark says I look whenever I see a dog. He says I look like a trauma victim.

“Sit down,” he said. He was definitely not welcoming.

“I’m not quite sure what to do, Father,” I said, moving into the folding chair opposite him. It was metal and cold through my jeans. I was about to start the Bless me, Father, when he asked when I’d made my last confession. This guy did not talk in terms of reconciliation.

I considered lying. “It’s been twenty-one years, Father,” I said. He looked disgusted. It was hardly the rejoicing welcome given the prodigal son. It was then I noticed his teeth. Perfect teeth. Evenly spaced. The kind of teeth you can floss easily, without getting the floss all stuck.

“I stopped going. I mean . . .”

I couldn’t think of what to say. Everything I’d thought of telling him went out of my head and the only thing I could think of was his perfect teeth and that I wanted to have an abortion. I tensed myself up so I wouldn’t blurt it out.

“I’m so hungry, Father,” I said. I still don’t know why I said that. How I let it slip through.

“What is troubling you, my child? What have you done?”

What have you done?

My hands came up around my neck. Yvonne’s scarf.

“I have stolen, Father.” At least that was a normal sin. Sixth Commandment. No, Seventh. I think the Sixth is about adultery.

“What have you stolen?”

“This scarf, Father.”

“Anything else?”

“Some clothes.”

“Are you needy?”

Well, yes, I wanted to say.

“No, Father, I am not.”

“What else have you stolen?”

“Stockings, Father.”

He was really having a hard time with that one. His hand went toward his lips, which were strangely full and sensual. I’ll bet anything he likes his teeth better than those lips.

“Anything else?” he asked.

I don’t know what made me tell him.

“And condoms, Father.”

“Excuse me?”

“Condoms, they’re . . .”

But I realized he knew what they were.

“Are you married, child?” He was looking at my hands.

“Yes, Father.”

And then it all came out. I told him about Yvonne and Mark, the affair, the fetus.

“Have you committed adultery?”

I thought of Brian. I didn’t answer.

“Do you know what mortal sin is?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Tell me what it is.”

I couldn’t remember if adultery was a mortal sin. I knew murder was, and missing Mass, but adultery they’d always skipped over in school.

“A grievous offense, sufficient reflection, and full consent of the will,” I recited. Third grade. Memory has always been one of my strong suits.

I think he almost smiled.

“Have you committed adultery?”

I knew that a sin was committed once you thought about it. I’d sinned in thought and word if not all the way in deed.

“I didn’t sleep with him, Father.” As soon as I said it, it was as though I’d screamed fuck in the room. All sorts of pictures came into my mind. Then I was thinking it was crazy that lying on Brian’s couch holding him was a sin but being shoved over a table ledge and fucked up the ass was not, as long as it was your husband. Or maybe it was a sin. If you liked it. I can’t say I’d really liked it. But I can’t say I didn’t.

“What you are saying”—he bit off each word and seemed to spit them at me—“is that you are thoroughly without integrity.”

“Yes, Father.” You are not my father you fucking asshole, is what I really wanted to say. “Yes, Father.”

His face stayed the same. He looked still and calm, but when I think now of his face I remember it as all twisted up.

Moe, I’d bet anything Moe is his favorite Stooge.

I couldn’t even cry. I thought if I cried he’d feel sorry for me and be a little more gentle. This was just cruel.

“You are cruel,” I said. I can’t believe I said it. “You are cruel and mean and I refuse to be manipulated by you.” I stood up. The last part made me think of Mark. What he’d said to me. I wanted Mark. I wanted to get out of this place. There was another whole night to get through and I just wanted to get home.

“Sit down,” he said.

I sat down.

“You are to go into the chapel and get on your knees. You are to say the rosary—the full rosary—seven times before dinner. Each time asking Our Lord for forgiveness. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Father.” My voice sounded little, like it was a seam of air seeping out of my mouth. I don’t remember how I got out of there.

I got to my room and closed the door. There was no lock so I pushed the desk against it. You are thoroughly without integrity. I put on my Walkman and blasted Blood on the Tracks until I couldn’t think anymore. It was dark outside. The bell started ringing for Mass. I heard the footsteps build as women walked quickly down the hall. I hadn’t eaten anything except an apple in two days and I was beginning to feel dizzy. The footsteps died down. When I was here in high school, my friend Helene had snuck into my room during the night. “Let’s get out of this creepy joint,” she’d said, as we lay under the covers, both doused in patchouli oil.

I threw my journal and books into a pile. I took my watch off the wall and put it back on my wrist. I stuffed everything into my leather bag and put on all the clothes I had. I kept the Walkman blasting. What’s good is bad what’s bad is good, Dylan was singing. I stood by the door holding all my stuff. I waited until it was quiet, then I moved the desk and left the room. I didn’t pass one person in the hallway but I could hear the dull petitions and responses coming from the chapel. I got to the front door and though it was bolted I let myself out onto the grounds.

It was dark. A dog was barking somewhere nearby. It might even have been two dogs. Dear God, don’t let the dogs be loose, I prayed. I walked toward where I heard cars on the road. Even with my terrible sense of direction it didn’t take long to find my way off the grounds and out to the road. I still heard the dogs. I prayed and prayed they wouldn’t be loose.

Several cars went by. There are no cabs on Staten Island. I stuck out my thumb. Puffs of air leapt out of my mouth as I breathed hard to stay warm. Within five minutes I had a ride. Before I got in the car, I threw the rosary beads into a clump of bushes.

“Merry Christmas,” the driver said, looking at me. He was young. Italian it looked like.

“What?” I took off my Walkman.

“It’s pretty cold to be out walking,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Where you going?”

“Ferry,” I said.

“You live in the city?”

I nodded.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ll drive you to the city. I got no plans. I got nothing to do. Just riding around, you know, thinking. You know how it is.”

There was a heart-shaped plastic picture frame hanging from the rearview mirror. A young woman’s face smiled out of the photograph.

“My girlfriend,” he said. “Debbie. She’s working tonight. We’re gonna get married.” He grinned. “You married?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You wouldn’t catch me letting my wife walk around on a cold night like this.”

I laughed.

We drove past a McDonald’s. “Listen,” he said, “mind if I stop for a quick burger?”

I shook my head.

“Want something?”

“No,” I said. He was getting out of the car. “Wait. Could you ask them for a plain roll? One that hasn’t been near any meat. And coffee. Could you get me a coffee?”

He smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Debbie’s like that. Always on a diet.”

I handed him some money.

“Get outta here,” he said. “It’s a Christmas present.”

I lay back against the headrest and waited. The heat was beginning to reach my hands and feet. He came back with the coffee and roll. I could smell his hamburger, but it was okay. The coffee was hot and good.

The night was clear. There were a lot of stars. We ate. We drove. He talked about Debbie. Inside an hour I was back on Spring Street at the loft.