Chapter 14

On Sunday, he went to ten o’clock Mass, seeking solace. Church didn’t always offer solace but he went anyway, always hopeful. He sat in one of the back pews so he could watch people come in, watch the way they genuflected before entering the pews. The older the people were, he noticed, the more they sort of bobbed up and down gently before they settled in with their rosary beads. They managed never to hit the floor with their knees, only grazing it. Arthritis, probably. His grandmother had arthritis in her left knee and she said it wasn’t any fun. He’d suffered a torn cartilage while playing soccer, so he appreciated what a wacko knee was like. He liked the way the light hit the stained-glass windows, sending shafts of color spraying over the congregation. He liked the way the church smelled, a mixture of incense and the flowers that decorated the altar. He kept a close eye on the altar boys, checking to make sure they knew all the right moves. He and Patrick had each had a turn at being altar boys. Now, he’d heard, they had girls as altar boys in some parishes. Boy, the world she is a-changin’.

Sometimes, even at his advanced age, he still felt an overpowering urge to laugh that hit him only in church. He didn’t know why. The desire had been more acute when he’d been four or five and new to the ways of the world. He remembered thrashing around in the pew, restless, not sure why he was here in the first place. He’d checked out the missals tucked in the rack, checked out the people sitting in front of him, and wanted to touch those people with one finger, as light as a spider. He had envied kids he saw surrounded by siblings, all of them in their Sunday best, their faces shiny with soap, their clothes crisp and new. He remembered watching them wistfully, the families of five, maybe six or more, kids, watching while the parents carefully spaced the kids, inserting themselves between the ones more apt to fight with each other, making warning faces at the livelier ones, telling them to behave. It was then, and only then, he regretted being an only child. Most of the time, he thought it was fine.

He could always tell the parochial-school kids from the ones who went to public school. The parochial-school kids were much better behaved, and when they went up to receive communion, their hands were always neatly folded, with the fingers interlocking, their eyes cast down, and they didn’t chew the host the way the public-school kids did.

This morning a little kid of about two sat in front of him, trying to stare him down. The kid wore Oshkosh oyeralls and a red baseball cap, and had the most unblinking stare he’d ever seen. He tried making a couple of funny faces, hoping to break the kid up. No luck. The little weasel didn’t know how to smile.

The sermon lasted twenty-one minutes. He timed it. Each time Father McDuff paused to collect his thoughts, he thought for sure it was over. Then the priest got his second wind and plunged onward, always onward. An old nun had just died. Father McDuff said she was a very holy woman, a member of a cloistered order who never left her cell, never went beyond the walls of the convent. She spent her days praying. She had loved God and man, the priest said. She was filled with love. He wondered why the old nun had never gone out into the world to tend to the sick, the needy, and the poor, who needed all the help they could get. If she had, she would have been using her love to the greatest advantage. Or so it seemed to him.

“And now will you please offer one another the sign of peace?” Father McDuff asked. This was the part he hated. He came to church to be alone with his thoughts, not to shake hands with total strangers. Once, he’d tried standing with his arms crossed on his chest, looking straight ahead, pretending he was deaf and/or dumb. But an old lady with a tipsy hat crouching on her blue hair had given him a nudge with her sharp elbow and said in a bossy way, “Shake hands, young man. I don’t like it any better than you do, but shake hands, if you please. The sign of peace, if you please.” She looked like a troublemaker, so he did as she instructed him. From that time on, he didn’t fight it. He shook hands with every Tom, Dick, and Harry anxious to be in on the peace giving, even if the guy might go home after church and kick the dog down the stairs for laying a couple of turds on the new rug.

“Peace be with you,” he said. He shook hands to the left of him, to the right of him, and when he grabbed the little kid’s hand and shook it, the kid let out a startled yelp and burst into tears. The mother shot him a baleful glance as she soothed her baby, probably thinking he’d stuck the kid with a pin. Or with a machete he happened to keep in his pocket. To escape her indignant gaze, he turned to shake hands with whoever was behind him.

“Peace be with you,” he said.

Sophie! It was Sophie, hand out, a bemused smile on her face. He grinned and shook her hand so long she pulled it away from him, as if anxious to have it back. It was the first time he’d touched her. Her skin felt hot and dry. He felt the blood rush to his ears, warming them, turning them bright, the same color as a maple leaf when the frost hits it. He turned back to face the altar, flustered, heart pumping violently. He tingled all over. Sophie at St. Raymond’s! Wonders will never cease.

Pull yourself together, he told himself sternly. Now’s your chance. Church was a nice neutral ground, unlike school. When Mass ended, he skinned out fast and got his bike from the rack in the parking lot to push it around to the front where people mingled, gossiping cheerfully, giving Father McDuff compliments on his too-long sermon. He didn’t really think Sophie would still be there but she was, standing in a group of girls.

He walked slowly in her direction, pushing his bike. When he looked at her, she was looking back at him.

“I didn’t know you went to St. Raymond’s,” he said, starting the conversation off in a brilliant manner.

“I don’t. I’m here with a friend.”

“Well,” he said. Pause. “How’d you like the sermon?”

Sophie met that head on, her expression aloof, eyes wary.

Please God, he prayed, I need help. Put some clever words in my mouth and I’ll follow you anywhere, God.

But Sophie had turned back to continue the conversation he’d obviously interrupted, as if she hadn’t heard him, or, if she had heard him, hadn’t understood.

“You know my father,” she said, rolling her eyes. The girls she was talking to laughed and rolled their eyes back. “He went around yelling that he was calling the cops if I got any more letters like that one. I don’t know what he thinks the cops can do. Probably stake out the post office or something dumb like that.” Sophie threw the crowd into stitches with that one.

Tim was pretty busy with his dialogue with God and didn’t really take in what Sophie had said, until he thought about it later.

Please God, if you make me look good now, I’ll owe you one, he was thinking.

“What’d the letter say anyway?” a girl asked. “I mean, what was so bad about it?”

Sophie shrugged. “It was kind of weird. I mean, it was just sort of crazy. Full of words I didn’t understand, old-fashioned stuff. Things people don’t say these days. If you know what I mean.”

Her friends’ faces remained blank. Obviously they didn’t know what she meant.

“I couldn’t tell if the person who wrote it was serious or just pulling my leg, you know?”

Sophie shook her head. “But, I don’t know. Every time I read it, I feel different. Like it’s weird one time, then the next it’s sort of, I don’t know, sort of grabby. It grabs me. Just when I start getting mad, something makes me hang in there, waiting for what’s coming next. Then I get mad again.”

Now he was frozen to the spot he stood upon, a dopey smile on his face. Letting her words sink in.

“You’d have to read it to know what I’m talking about,” Sophie continued. “I’ll bring it to school tomorrow to show it to you all. That is, if my father hasn’t taken it to the police station so they can check it for fingerprints.”

Collective peals of laughter were so uproarious, people turned to stare, wondering what was so funny.

Fingerprints! Boy, lucky thing he’d worn his mother’s gloves. It just showed it paid to be careful. There was no way they could trace that letter to him. Unless they grilled the friendly postman he’d given it to. Would the postman remember him? Upon cross-examination, would he knit his brow and say, “Well, there was this kind of weird-looking kid who told me he didn’t want her to know who sent the letter. Kind of a criminal type he was, now that I think about it.”

Would that happen? No. Impossible. He had a forgettable face, didn’t he? Besides, what crime had he committed? None.

A big white car pulled up and Sophie and her pals got in. She didn’t even say good-bye.