A few months after Angus and I moved in with Ma, I went up to the attic to get some extra bedding for Angus’s crib. Ma had told me where to look—all the way in the back, just under the eaves—and she was right. What she hadn’t told me, though, was that right next to the bedding were two large boxes, each marked neatly with masking tape. They were labeled BILL—CLOTHES.
I lifted the cover off the box, staring down at the pile of Dad’s neatly folded shirts. There was the camel-colored one he wore to work, usually under a black vest. It was soft and nubby, the collar worn a little at the edges. Under that was the dark blue one with the bleach stain on the pocket that he wore on Saturdays, when he puttered around the house. There were a few of his T-shirts, too—the old ratty ones, with holes in the bottom, and faded yellow stains under the arms. I was confused at first, not that Ma had saved his clothes, but that she had saved such crappy ones. There was the horrible black cardigan he’d liked to wear to church even though Ma begged him not to, the overly pilled V-neck sweater, even a faded bathing suit he’d worn to the beach one summer.
And then I smelled it. Old Spice aftershave, mixed with coffee and the lingering, almost indecipherable trail of pipe smoke. The scent drifted out from in between the materials, faint as air, strong as a fist. It made my knees buckle, the skin along my cheeks prickle with heat. I gripped the pile of T-shirts I was holding so hard that my hands turned white, and sat there for a long time, surrounded by the clothes and the smell of Dad, until Ma called up finally and asked if I was okay.
Now, when we get home from Friendly’s, I put a movie in for Angus, and head up to the attic. I haven’t been back up here since that day. But as I lift the box top, digging deep toward the bottom where Dad’s pants are, the smell hits me again—so hard this time, and with such insistence, that I stand up straight as if someone has just grabbed me around the shoulders. I can’t do this. What the hell am I thinking—taking my dead father’s pants to give to an escaped criminal hiding in a church? Even if it is James? What is wrong with me?
I reach down instead, and take the camel-colored shirt in my hands. I bring it to my face, close my eyes, and breathe in as deeply as I can. “Dad.” My voice breaks inside the shirt, lost among the folds, hidden deep against the buttons. “Oh God, Dad, what should I do?”
I honestly don’t know what happens next: maybe it is the familiarity of the smell again, or maybe I just want to believe that he’s around somehow. But something lifts inside, having said that, and a vague realization, as if he has heard me somehow, wherever he is, settles across my shoulders. A few moments later, it occurs to me that Dad wouldn’t mind if I took his pants right now and gave them to James Rittenhouse, who is sitting in a puddle of his own urine at the top of Saint Augustine’s Church.
That maybe, just maybe, he would do the exact same thing.
FATHER DELANEY IS straightening a pile of prayer booklets next to the statue of the Blessed Virgin when I walk in. He turns immediately, his lean face brightening. “Bird!” His voice is hushed as he walks toward me, his right arm outstretched. “How wonderful to see you here again!” He touches me lightly on the elbow and drops his hand again.
“Thanks.” I smile tightly. “I just thought I’d, you know, maybe sit and hang out for a while.” I adjust my backpack casually, hoping he doesn’t mention it. People bring backpacks to church, don’t they?
“Oh, of course, absolutely!” Father Delaney shoves his hands into his pockets, peers in at my face as if he hasn’t just seen me yesterday. “So how are you? How are things going?”
Oh God. Now he wants to chat. Couldn’t he have said something yesterday, when we were all leaving after the service? I step on my foot, clear my throat once, sharply. “Things are good. Thanks for asking.”
“What is it that you’re doing now?”
“Oh, just working.” I shrug. “You know, cleaning houses with Ma.”
“Wonderful. Wonderful. I’m sure it’s a huge help to your mother, having you on board like that.”
“Yes.”
“How about just for you? What’re you doing these days for yourself? For fun?”
Is he serious? What is this, some kind of therapy session? I wonder briefly if Ma has put him up to this, the way she got him involved in the sweater fiasco. “Um, you know. I get out. Meet up with friends and stuff.”
“Good friends?” The priest’s mouth is crooked into the tiniest of smiles; if it didn’t look so genuine, I’d probably ignore the question altogether.
“Good friends,” I concur. “Don’t worry, Father.”
He pats me on the back. “I’m not worried.”
“Well, you can tell Ma not to worry, then.”
He grins, deepening the lines on either side of his face. “I’ll do that. Go on in. I don’t mean to keep you.”
He’s an all-right guy, I think, sliding into one of the back pews. He was nice enough to Angus the other day. And there’s something to be said for sticking by Ma all these years—even if it’s just because he’s as crazy a Catholic as she is. Of course, he probably has no idea that it was him, more than anyone or anything else, who turned me away from this place. How, when he said at Dad’s funeral mass that Jesus was right there with him in the car when he died, I almost leaned over and threw up. It was an insult, really. A slap in the face, trying to comfort us with some bullshit line like that. I mean, think about it: Catholics believe that Jesus is God. And God is all-powerful, all-knowing, the creator of the universe. He can do anything. Anything. And this guy is going to stand up in front of a church full of people and tell me that this being, this deity who created atoms out of dust, who breathed life into the stars, sat by and watched as my father got his skull crushed against the dashboard of his car?
After that, I wanted nothing more to do with the whole crazy business about God. Besides, when I really sat down and thought about it rationally, who was to say there even was one at all? There were a million stories out there about Him, but no one had proof of His existence. No one had ever seen Him, had ever sat down and had an actual conversation with Him. There was no telling that we went up to some puffy-clouded heaven after we took our last breath here on Earth, or that some white-bearded divinity was going to meet us there when we did. If anything, it seemed it was people who had created their own version of God, stories that fit their lives somehow, gave meaning to their desperate, unanswerable questions. I was pretty sure that when all was said and done, the real truth was that no one really knew anything about any of it at all.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Father Delaney walk up the opposite side of the church. I watch his dark head move under the stained-glass windows—a moving comma against a sheet of color—until he disappears through a back door.
Then I stand up.
James is waiting.