It is the Feast of the Assumption, and everyone is busy with chores. In the narrow stone halls filigreed with late sunlight there is laughter amidst the bustle. Duncan and Julie are walking the hall from class when Brother Canice gambols toward them, squeezing between the bodies of pressing, pushing children. The bells are oddly silent and Duncan wonders if he should remind Brother Canice that it’s time to sound them for prayer. His cheeks are crosshatched with small scratches from shaving. On his neck he’s applied small bits of tissue paper to the larger cuts and they’re spotted with blood.
Hello, Duncan, he grunts. Hello, Julie.
Hello, Brother Canice, Julie says. How are you?
Oh, good, good, but it’s a mad day, he says, absolutely mad! And he glares about the hallway at the children pushing around him. I just don’t understand all the fuss, all this rushing about. I mean what on earth is going on?
But isn’t it always this way on the Assumption?
The Assumption?
Brother Canice sucks on his teeth and considers this, looks from Julie to Duncan, and then seems to come to some manner of decision. Duncan! he says suddenly, as if just remembering something, and as if Duncan were at the far end of the hallway and not standing directly in front of him.
Yes, Brother?
Father Toibin wants to see you. You can find him in his office. And don’t dally, what with all this commotion I forgot he had asked me to find you directly after breakfast this morning.
Aren’t you going to ring the bells this morning? Julie asks, and Brother Canice stares at her until they can both see alarm rising slowly in his eyes. The bells, he says softly, like an echo of Julie’s voice, and then grasps the hem of his robe and races down the tile toward the campanile.
On a cushion placed upon the high sideboard next to Father Toibin’s desk, the cat with the green eyes shudders as if it is dreaming and then stretches languidly. Bits of its hair swirl in the thin feathery light cast by two table lamps.
We are all worried, Father Toibin says, and he opens his hands toward Duncan, a gesture to include, Duncan assumes, all the children in his care.
We are all worried when we feel we might not be as attentive as well as we might. Sometimes we become distracted ourselves and are not always mindful of what it is to be a child and the pressures and forces that they feel. If there is anything bothering you, Duncan? You can tell me.
On the mantel, a clock of black polished ash ticks slowly as if it needs to be wound.
Your mother, I know, loves you and misses you very much, but often parents can be misguided by their own wishes, selfishness which is only brought about by love, really, and they fail to see what is best for their children.
Duncan struggles with Father Toibin’s words, and then he struggles to retrieve them. My mother? he thinks, did he say my mother?
We all want what is best for you. Do you understand that?
Father Toibin, my mother?
Father Toibin’s voice falters, but even without the words, he attempts to soothe; Duncan is a small boy reflected in shadowy miniature upon his dark pupil: This is your home for as long as you want and for as long as your mother and we think being here is in your best interest. Do you understand that? Do you?
Father, excuse me, but you said my mother?
Yes, yes. Of course, your mother. Father Toibin frowns, pushes a letter across the desk at Duncan, and, momentarily distracted, waves at the window where a red clay road curls into the north—the same road upon which he and Billy returned from Stockholdt.
She’s coming to get you.
Duncan holds the letter in his hands as he would the Psalter at Mass, with a sense of the mysterious power of the words on the page before him. He stares at the now-familiar handprint and imagines the letter open upon a table for days before it is sent, and he sees the writer, his mother smelling of guiacol and lily of the valley with her head bowed and her long hair brushing the tabletop, a cigarette smoldering in a glass ashtray, a thin tendril of gray smoke twining toward the ceiling, considering the words over and over again, and wondering if she should send the letter—forever damning herself to him—or tear it up so that no evidence of it or him remains; he imagines that she hesitates, falters, and, finally, succumbing to forces that he may never understand, gives in.
Maggie Bright
34 Divisadero Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
August 3, 1981
Dear Father Toibin,
I have always wanted to do what was best for Duncan and until recently, it seemed in his best interest—and both yourself and Dr. Mathias agreed—that he remain at the monastery in your care. However, given your most recent update, I feel he is ready to come home. I have been separated from my child for too long, and I believe he can and will thrive in the home I provide for him. I am now gainfully employed, have savings in the bank, and close family and friends who are eager to embrace Duncan with love and affection. He will not want for love.
I shall be driving from San Francisco the day after tomorrow, and, after spending some time with friends in Nevada, plan to be at the monastery midday of August the 29th. I would like Duncan to be made aware that I am coming, and that he be prepared to come home with me. I know that, at first, it will not be easy, and that there will be a period of adjustment for both of us, but I am his mother, and however difficult this adjustment might be, it can be nothing compared to what it has been like not to have him here with me all these years. Of course you know something of this from our discussions. There has not been a day or night that I have not thought about my son, and dreamed that he was home with me.
With the blessing of God, I will see you both soon.
Sincerely,
Maggie Bright
Through Father Toibin’s office window is everything Duncan knows: harrow-ribbed green pastures, still as a painting, and, at a great distance, ashen smoke plumes along the Iron Range, and men walking on the steeper hillsides beating the furze where blazing stars, goldenrod, and asters bloom, and beyond them the striated ridges of hardwood: red maple and pin cherry. Everything I know. And now, his mother coming to get him. Just like in his dream.
Father Toibin is still talking. He’s worried about how such a visit might affect him. Would he like to see her? Is he nervous? Excited? Scared? How does he feel about leaving the Home? Has he been sleeping? How are his friendships with the other children? Brother Canice has had nothing but praise for him, but Father Malachy has mentioned his withdrawal, his recent lack of participation in events, and he is worried because—
But Father, my mother, Duncan says. My mother. I thought she was, I mean, isn’t she … dead?