All the economy cars were gone by the time I got to the rental counter, so instead of the modest compact car I chose online, the eager and delightful clerk gave me a fancy SUV for the same price. I could think of only two circumstances when the free luxury upgrade would feel like a burden: driving to a climate change protest and visiting my hometown. Rolling up to my mother’s house in a car with a sticker price higher than the neighborhood’s median income was going to make the lace curtain Irish jokes even lacier.
While on the shuttle from the rental headquarters to the car pickup, I checked the Sonny Icarus email. As the inbox loaded on my phone, I pushed past the guilt of engaging in such a base endeavor while I was on my way to my father’s funeral. No matter how innocent my intentions, there was something about looking at Craigslist that made me want to sheathe my eyeballs with condoms. Regardless, my heart raced when I saw a response to my post.
“I’ve hoped for so long that it is hard to tell if this is real. It’s like I’ve walked into someone else’s dream. I so cherish our friendship that I have hidden my true feelings for fear it might jeopardize what we already have. Our circumstances always kept us apart, but close enough for me to know that you are all I’ve ever wanted. Even if it’s not you, it feels so good to write those words, read them, and know that it feels true in every cell of my being. I want us to share our thoughts and hopes and to hold your hand as we walk together through life. When you look into my eyes and smile, I feel as if I’ve known you for a thousand lifetimes—like I’ve been waiting that long for us to be together. I’m glad the waiting is finally over.”
A tear welled in my eye as I read the response. Holy shit. That was beautiful, I thought, hit with the realization of how truly alone I’d been feeling.
I never imagined Hunza capable of words like those. It surprised me to no end. It made me reconsider my disbelief in fate. Paul was right. There’s no doubt that I was physically attracted to her, but maybe there was more to it, to us, than I imagined. My heart quickened and my face warmed. The rush made me feel even more guilty. I was on my way to my father’s funeral, but my thoughts dwelt on earthly pleasures. There’s a special place in hell for thinking this sort of thing under these circumstances, I thought as I imagined my father sitting on the shuttle next to me, watching me blush like a schoolboy who just got caught passing love notes.
Being raised Catholic, it’s hard to know which dayto-day thoughts are normal and which were planted by nuns. I was torn. He’d want me to be happy, wouldn’t he? I wondered. I decided not to judge my emotions, but just try to experience them as they came. It was going to be a hard week, and no amount of second-guessing myself was going to make it easier.
I took my father’s old winding route to New Bedford. I drove through the patchwork of suburbs that sprawled south toward Cape Cod. There was something reassuring about the resilience of all the mom-and-pop roadside taverns, clam shacks, and roast beef sandwich shops that marked the way—even the ubiquitous Friendly’s ice cream parlors and Dunkin’ Donuts felt like greetings from old friends. The expressway would have been quicker, and would have taken me past the Boston Globe building—my Mecca—but it lacked the nostalgia I was craving. On the backroads, I could drive slowly and keep the windows rolled down in the land yacht. There was a magic quality to the cool damp New England summer morning air.
Being up and out that early reminded me of being a paperboy when I delivered the Globe and Herald. The papers were both broadsheets back then. They were dropped in stacks on the sidewalk in front of my house, bound by wire, and they always smelled of fresh ink. I was supposed to count them out, fold them into thirds, and fasten them with rubber bands before starting my route, but I always began by throwing the stacks in my bag where I kept my wire cutters. I would cut the wire, then fold them as I approached each house. At first, the bag took all my effort to lift, but it got lighter quickly as I ran through the rows of small capes and the rows of double-decker homes. The Pulaskis wanted their Globe on the front porch—the Mookas had a special holder under their mailbox and always gave me cookies when I came to collect their bill. When dogs still roamed freely throughout the neighborhood, the Houldens’ mutt, Hondo, used to run alongside me, wagging his tail. I could still remember the sound of his nails clicking rhythmically against the pavement. I loved that dog.
I stopped in Abington and got a medium regular at the Dunkin Donuts across from the used car lot. “Regular” meant the “normal” amount of cream and sugar, which was almost enough cream to stop your heart and enough sugar to give you diabetes. It was tastier than I remembered. I had to check the navigation on my iPhone to make sure I was still heading the right way. I was at a junction where my father would have taken a serpentine “short cut” to avoid a few extra traffic lights. I was getting close enough to home that my nostalgia began to wane—it was being replaced by the foreboding of my adult obligations. I got jittery. It was hard to tell if my tremors were a response to the caffeine and sugar or my proximity to my family. As I drove closer to my old neighborhood, I could feel myself regressing. Each click of the odometer stripped another layer of veneer from my denial until all that was left were the raw emotions of an insecure child.
Welcome home, I thought.
I cringed as I turned onto my mother’s street. The SUV seemed to grow bigger and fancier against the modest cape style houses that marked the edge of my old neighborhood. I felt pangs of Catholic guilt. I imagined the nuns who taught my Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes shaking their heads and making “tsk tsk” noises as I drove. Had I bought the extra insurance, I would likely have just driven this ostentatious display of gluttony and pride straight into the ocean. Always buy the extra insurance, I reminded myself as I took a deep breath and accepted my fate.
Basketball shoes dangled from the telephone wires that hung across the last intersection before my parents’ block. They brought back wonderful memories of playing basketball with great friends during summer days that stretched into long summer nights. “Raising your sneakers to the rafters” was a tradition that went back to at least the late ’50s. In my day, we couldn’t retire our sneakers—almost exclusively Converse All-Stars, also known as Chuck Taylors—until we could poke a finger through the soles. The shoes that dangled above me as I passed the intersection were at least $150 new and still looked like they had $90 of life in them. They were in better shape than Murphys’ double-decker house, whose porch had begun to sag from age and neglect. I had arrived.
I parked across the street and sat for a few minutes to collect my thoughts and admire the old house. My dad always kept it looking good, right up to the end. It was a little weathered, but it was still the best-looking house on the block. I saw the living room curtains move. I’d been spotted and knew I couldn’t sit long.
The front door was propped open, which meant my mother was getting a lot of random visitors. No one who knew us ever came through the front door—it was old and swollen, hard to open and harder still to close. It was the original door from when the house was built in the late 1800s and it still had the original hardware. The key looked like something out of a Dickens novel: a long rod with teeth that looked like, well, actual teeth. The key was needed to lock the door from either side, so it remained propped in the inside keyhole at all times. That door would likely remain cracked open until the mourners stopped visiting.
I grabbed my bag and walked along the driveway to the back porch. The Kochers and Staids were in the kitchen with Derrick, making room for all the food brought by well-wishers. Mrs. Costello brought by a pan of her eggplant parmesan. The Cronins brought a shepherd’s pie. The Figueroas brought a cold cut platter, bulkie rolls, and some Portuguese sweet bread from their deli. Boxes and bottles of wine, cases of beer, and two-liter bottles of soda lined the Formica countertops. Before I even got through the door, I was greeted by the smell of cinnamon buns warming in the oven and coffee percolating on the stovetop.
I placed my bag in the sunporch and stood by the door in the kitchen. Nobody noticed me as I stood by the threshold for a second or two and watched Mr. Staid and Mr. Kocher pack beer into our ancient metal ice chest as their wives portioned shepherd’s pie and eggplant parm into Tupperware containers.
“We should probably just freeze this whole thing,” said Mrs. Staid as she turned to look toward the freezer in the back hallway. She gasped when she saw me. She put her hands to her cheeks, then they moved to her lips as her eyes welled. “My God, Mikey, you looked just like ya fath’ah standin’ the’ah.”
Everyone stopped. There was a pause as Derrick and the family friends adjusted their social filters to account for the outsider. Their shit talk would now be strained though passivity or cloaked in humor. The adjustment was slow. I nodded to Derrick, but he just leaned against the countertop and looked as if he was sizing me up for a fight. His eyes were dull and faded against his ruddy skin. I wondered how long he’d been drinking heavily again—weeks, months, or longer.
Since my freshman year at college, my return home always felt like a social experiment on how long it takes to assimilate back into New Bedford life. My dad always helped with the transition. He was the center of our universe. He was the guy we all had in common, but now he was gone, and we were standing around in his kitchen.
“Get ov’ah he’ah and give me a hug,” Mrs. Staid finally said as she opened her arms. “I’m so sorry about ya fath’ah, sweetie.”
“I knew it wasn’t Jake, because his ghost would’a wanted to be clos’ah to the booze,” said Mr. Kocher as he offered his catcher’s-mitt-sized hand and squeezed my knuckles like they were marbles in a sack. He was a massive human being and kept himself in great shape for his age, for any age, honestly. Him and my dad were friends from the neighborhood. They went to school together since first grade, were co-captains of their high school basketball team, and were best men at each other’s weddings. Bill and his wife Sandy were Derrick’s godparents, which in the Catholic Church is a pretty big deal. When I was a kid, my mother confided, with the aid of quite a bit of alcohol, that “God chooses ya pa’ah’ents and gives them the wisdom to choose ya godpa’ah’ents. For Derrick, your fath’ah chose Sandy Kosher and her drunken pet orangutan.” My mother never liked Bill.
“True enough,” I said with a laugh, trying not to wince as my knuckles popped and stung with pain. “It looks like the neighbors brought enough food for the next six months.”
“You won’t go hungry, that’s for sure,” said Joe Staid, who moved to New Bedford from Connecticut in the ’70s and never adopted the accent.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked.
“She went to take a show’ah a little bit ago,” said Sandy Kocher. “I haven’t seen h’ah since. She may have gone to lay down for a bit. I’ll go check. And Bill, get the kid some coffee f’’ah Christ’s sake. He just flew across the freakin’ country. He must be ready to fall down—and take those cinnamon rolls outa the oven. Derrick, get ov’ah he’ah and hug ya broth’ah! What the hell’s a’ matt’ah with you two!”
Bill took orders from Sandy like an Army private from a general. He slapped me on the shoulder on his way to the coffee pot. It felt like I’d been hit with a side of beef. “Hey, it was a blow for us all, Mikey. They don’t come any bett’ah than ya fath’ah. Ya handlin’ it, okay?”
It was an odd way to describe the mourning process, and before I could think of a decent response, Bill had moved on. Derrick walked over, switched his coffee mug to his left hand, then threw his right arm around my shoulders. “Ya home now,” he said and went back to his place against the counter. It felt more like a threat than a greeting. The Staids were warm and welcoming, as they always were. They were sweet people. Bill handed me a mug of watery coffee. “How do ya take it? Black? Well, you know whe’ah everything is.” He went back to loading the cooler. “Ya probably used to bett’ah coffee out whe’ah ya from now. Anyway, that’s what we drink he’ah.”
And so it began: the first not-so-subtle snob jab was thrown in less than three minutes and came before I even got to say hello to my mother. “Black is great,” I said as I walked toward the dining room. “Thanks, Bill.”
“Good to see ya, kid,” Joe said in his reassuring way. “Wish it was under better circumstances. When’s the last time you were back? It’s been a while.”
“It has been a while. Too long.” I smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Staid, for being here and helping my mother out like this.”
As I passed the threshold between the kitchen and dining room, the floorboard creaked so loud it made me look under my foot to make sure I hadn’t killed an animal. My mother sat undisturbed at the dining room table. Her eyes were closed, her head was bowed, and her chin rested atop her knuckles. A crucifix dangled in the triangle created by her elbows, the table, and her folded hands. Her right thumb dutifully rubbed against a rosary bead as she worked her way from prayer to prayer—the Apostles’ Creed, Our Fathers, Hail Marys, Fatimas, Hail Holy Queens—recited silently, repeated, and supposedly counted by Jesus, Mary, and the saints. Her lips moved as she rocked forward and backward ever so slightly. Sandy Kocher stopped rubbing my mother’s back to bring her index finger to her lips, as if a decade of marriage to a Jewish woman undid forty-four years of being my mother’s son. I knew better than to interrupt my mother while she was praying. There was nothing short of a manifestation of the Blessed Virgin sitting criss-cross applesauce on the dining room table that could distract her from completing the Rosary.
I headed back toward the sunporch to collect my bag and bring it to my old bedroom. I took an extra long step as I passed back into the kitchen. The floorboards creaked slightly less. When I got back to the kitchen, the men were cracking their first beers of the day. They were admiring the results of their tidying and organization, and they had decided to celebrate their successful efforts. Their Budweiser cans were embellished with the colors of the American flag, adding a dose of patriotic zeal to the scene that would have made Norman Rockwell blush.
“Cold one?” Bill asked without bending toward the cooler. He thought he already knew my answer.
“But they ain’t so cold,” joked Joe Staid.
“Absolutely,” I said, to his surprise. The last thing I wanted was a beer, but it couldn’t be worse than the coffee I poured down the sink. It had been years since I drank a Bud, and longer since I wanted one. But if this week was going to be tolerable, I needed to expedite the assimilation process.
Bill handed me a beer. The can was wet from the ice, but not cold. I popped the top and sipped off the foam. “Mum doing alright? Considering?” I asked Derrick as I leaned against the counter next to him. It took all my concentration to keep from wincing as the taste of warm beer washed across my palate. Derrick responded with a shrug and a grunt. He may have been about to say something, but Bill chimed in, as he was prone to do.
“Well, ya know, we ‘ah all takin’ it pretty hah’d,” Bill said. “Ya moth’ah’s got the church and that’s keepin’ h’ah steady. But aside from that, it’s been a tough couple of days. They don’t make them like ya dad anymore. Ya know?”
I nodded and waited for someone else to talk.
“How was ya flight?” asked Maryanne, who stood by Joe’s side.
“Ah, not too bad,” I said. “I was hoping to sleep more, but we all know how that goes.”
“I’ve nev’ah been on a plane befo’ah,” Maryanne said, and blushed. “Can you believe that? A woman my age. Well …”
“Well,” said Joe, stiffening a bit as he put his beer on the counter. “We should probably let you get settled in. You must be exhausted.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine, really.” I was concerned that I had inadvertently offended the Staids, possibly the single nicest couple in the world, and my only immediate allies. My mother had started her marathon prayer session as soon as she saw me through the living room curtains, Bill Kosher already knocked me for liking decent coffee, and my own brother greeted me with all the warmth of an iguana. I walked through the door feeling like I had nothing but enemies—I couldn’t afford to insult my only friends. “I find it’s better to stay awake until my normal bedtime, you know, ignoring the time change—it helps me fall back into my natural rhythms. It helps prevent jet lag.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want to get in the way of that,” said Maryanne. “Ya rhythms and whatev’ah.”
“I don’t think my dad would approve of you leaving before you finished your beer,” I said to Joe as I raised mine for a toast in a last-ditch effort. “I think he’d call that alcohol abuse.”
Bill raised his can with a chuckle. Joe recovered his and joined us.
“To Jake!” said Bill.
“To Jake!” we echoed. And we drank from our patriotic cans.
“Will you join us, Maryanne?” I asked, to her surprise.
“Oh, I know whe’ah ya moth’ah keeps the Bailey’s—maybe I’ll put a little in my coffee,” she said as she hurried to the pantry.
“My father would approve. I’m certain of it,” I acknowledged.
My father once told me that he could never fully trust someone until he shared a drink with them. He’d followed up that statement with a racist diatribe about Muslims, which I shan’t repeat, but I assumed that Bill, Joe, and Derrick held similar beliefs about drinking and trust, and unfortunately, probably, also about Muslims.
It was confusing to feel responsible for being a gracious host in a home where the guests felt more comfortable than I did. We drank warm, weak beer and I pondered things to say that would help me gain their approval. I wanted to be one of the guys, to feel like I belonged in the life my father left behind. I loved my father deeply, but I couldn’t help questioning if I was mourning him or the loss of a relationship we’d never had. I would miss our talks about baseball, sure, but what tore my heart out was thinking that he never really knew me. I was worried that Ben and I were heading in the same direction. That thought caused a lump to swell in my throat and tears to well in my eyes. Bill patted me on the back and told me things would be okay.
I smiled and nodded.
In that moment, my mother launched herself from the living room like she’d been possessed by the spirit of Babe Zaharias. She took my beer can from me and in a fluid motion shoved it into Bill Kocher’s chest, showering him with Budweiser. Joe slid out of the way just in time to avoid the beechwood-aged fallout. Maryanne instantly looked guilty and poured her Bailey’s and coffee down the kitchen sink before it ever reached her lips. My mother took my wrist, pulled me toward the sunporch, and grabbed her keys that hung from a hook screwed into the doorframe. “We’ve got a few things to do,” she said without looking at anybody. “See ya’selves out. Derrick, we’ll be back in a while. Don’t fo’get to push the front do’ah closed when you leave, and we’ll see you tonight for dinn’ah.”
“Where are we going, Mum?” I asked.
“It’s not too late f’ah you,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m not going to just sit by and watch you go down the wrong path.”
“Oh Jesus,” I said, and continued to follow her out the door. She had a distant look on her face that my father referred to as “drifting.” It was relatively common during stressful times, but could also be triggered by something as trivial as learning I’d bought Ben a skateboard, or that I’d gotten a speeding ticket. When she got like this, it was hard to know if she was looking at you or if she was looking through you. At times, she believed she heard voices answering her prayers. The voices came in the form of assurances that Ben would do well in school or not fall and break his neck at the skatepark. She’d always tell me when her prayers were answered so that I wouldn’t worry.
Not worry that my mother’s hearing voices? Definitely not. Nope, I’d think.
On very rare occasions, the voices came as warnings, like when I got married to a Jewish woman in a civil ceremony, or when she caught me masturbating to the 1983 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover. These offenses demanded severe and immediate intervention to spare my soul from eternal damnation. There was nothing but the passage of time that could help her drift back to reality. Fighting her would only make it worse, so I just went with it and wondered from which mortal sin I was being saved from now.
Bill watched though the kitchen window as we walked up the driveway. He was giddy as a schoolboy watching the principal pull a bully down the hallway by his earlobe. “You go beat some God into him, Adeline. Take ‘em behind the woodshed and beat some Jesus into that boy!”
Bill and Derrick doubled over with laughter as my mother dragged me to her car. Bill looked to Sandy for approval, which he did not find.
“Grow up.” Sandy slapped him across this shoulder. “I swea’ah to God, it’s like I’m mah’ried to an 80-year-old toddl’ah.”
Neither of us said a word as my mother pointed her Plymouth Sundance in the direction of St. Anthony’s church. She’s bringing me to see Father Francis, I thought. She had been encouraging me to call him since the divorce. We never really talked about what happened between Sarah and me. She just told me to pray, call her priest, and wear the St. Jude pendant she sent. “He’ll be able to help you,” she kept saying, until one day I finally lost my patience.
“With what?” I finally asked. “Is he a more powerful wizard than St. Jude?”
She yelled at me for making fun of her saint, her priest, and her religion. I’d said it out of frustration with what felt like automated responses from her, time and again. For ridiculous explanations of canonical law and mortal sins, press one. For a rundown of the various illnesses plaguing distant friends and relatives, press two. For small talk or other queries, stay on the line and someone else will get to you.
As she drove, her head bobbed and twisted the way it would when she silently pleaded with St. Jude or rehearsed a difficult conversation. I imagined she was running through her plan to force me to recite The Four Marks of the Church. If I’d just say, “I believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” in front of her, she’d know my soul was secure. There was no way for me to prove, or disprove, my mother’s beliefs. I just didn’t share them. My father always told me her faith brought her comfort, but all I ever saw in her was fear and insecurity.
We parked in front of the rectory hall. She opened her door before the motor had completely stopped running, then hesitated. I thought maybe she was coming out of her stupor.
“And don’t you call Fath’ah Francis a wizard!” she snapped. “I don’t want him thinking that I raised a heretic.”
“I’m a heathen, Mum, not a heretic. I don’t believe any of it. And if I get the sense that he put you up to this, I’ll call him something much worse than a wizard,” I replied as I opened my door. I was just as eager to talk with Father Frank as she seemed to be. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But if any of this was his idea, I was certainly going to let him know my feelings on the matter. I stormed up the stairs to the rectory hall and rang the bell. The sense of purpose that radiated from her as she dragged me out of the kitchen dissipated as we stood waiting for someone to answer the bell.
We were escorted to a side room off the foyer and asked to wait. I sat in a cozy leather high-backed chair as my mother fidgeted, pacing in an erratic pattern on the oriental rug that stretched across the center of the room. The air was still and smelled like abandoned books. Dust floated and sparkled as it drifted through the streams of sunlight bordered by darkly stained window frames. The sun had risen above the church, cleaved by the steeple. I noticed the humidity for the first time since stepping off the plane. It made my shirt stick to the middle of my back. I adjusted my position in an attempt to free the damp patch of skin. A heat bug screeched, which startled my mother.
“It’s getting hot,” I said, realizing these were the first words my mother had actually heard me say. She had begun her transition back to the corporeal world. It was as if her body was reacting to the strain of becoming material. I stood from the cozy chair and went to her. She seemed as though she was brimming with shame and worry. All at once, I felt the gravity of our situation. My father was dead. My mother and I responded to this in very different ways. To my mother, his death was the beginning of a well-articulated sequence of events that would bring him either bliss, torment, or an indefinite stay in Purgatory. For me, his death ended my lifelong quest for paternal approval and unconditional love.
She felt responsible for his soul, and Derrick’s, and mine. It’s hard to fathom the enormity of concepts like eternity, permanence, and death until you feel you are personally answerable for a loved one’s soul.
“I shouldn’t have brought you h’ah, Michael,” she said without looking at me. “This isn’t right. Fath’ah Francis is going to be very upset with me. We should go. We should go, now.”
“It’s okay, Mum,” I said as I moved close to her and took her arm. “He’s a priest. It’s his job to understand and forgive. If he’s anything like you’ve explained, then that’s what he’ll do.”
“Let’s go,” she said. Her words were intended for me, but they were not directed at anyone. Her eyes resembled those of a wild animal captured in a net. I put my hand on her shoulder and felt a wave of recognition wash over her. She finally seemed to notice that I had arrived at home and was standing before her, flesh and blood. She was confused. I knew I should feel compassion as she struggled to parse what was real from the intricate constructions of her mind. I tried, but mostly I pitied her for not being able to see the reality that I occupied, and I resented her for not seeing that I also struggled to find my place. The struggle is universal. As quickly as her eyes focused on me, they darted away.
Where were you? I wondered.
The blood drained from her face as the loose floorboards in the foyer squeaked, announcing the approach of Father Francis. The humidity swelled the door snuggly against its frame and it brayed as he pushed it open. Each harbinger of his arrival caused my mother to enter into a deeper state of anxiety. It was confusing to see her turn gaunt as he stepped through the doorframe. What purpose could all this fear serve?
“You must be Father Francis,” I said, with a tentative smile. He was pleasant looking, thin, with sandy blond hair, slightly pointy features, and sad eyes. He reminded me of Bing Crosby in The Bells of St. Mary’s.
“And you must be Michael,” he said as he extended his hand. “I’m sorry for the loss of your father.”
“Thank you,” I said. My mother was still fidgety. I put my hand on her shoulder once again. “My mother has told me a lot about you. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. You’ve had a big impact on her life.”
“A positive one, I hope.” He smiled. He was listening carefully. “Your mother is one of our most faithful parishioners. Are you getting along alright, Adeline?”
She nodded and tried to talk, but had trouble getting out the words. He took her hands in his, preventing her fingers from winding in knots.
“He’s in a better place now, Adeline,” said Father Francis. “I’ve been praying for him. He feels no pain or want, only God’s love.”
And with that all the visible signs of fear in her were suddenly gone. The tension released from her body. Those were the words she needed to hear. It was like watching an addict get her fix. She wanted to know she’d see her family again in a place where we’d all be perfect. The place where her family would be together, safe, happy, and obedient. The blood returned to her face, and she glowed with the radiance of hope that we would all share a love that is without want, without need, without pain, and would come without effort.
He is a powerful wizard, I thought. My mother was torn to pieces, but with a few magic words, he put her back together. I envied the type of faith that could bring this kind of immediate comfort, comfort in an outcome for which there was no evidence.
Father Francis asked if I would speak at the funeral mass. I didn’t think that would be allowed. I was forbidden to take Holy Communion since the divorce, yet he was willing to hand over the pulpit and turn me loose on his congregation?
Despite my cynicism, I liked Father Francis. He had lived his whole life since Vatican II and seemed to seriously believe that Earth was round. He was more like the black-and-white movie priests that I grew up watching in old movies than the distant, hungover ones who typically tended to the flock at St. Anthony’s. Those ancient priests who resented the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and lamented that they had to face their parishioners and speak to them in a language they understood.
“Well, I’m glad you stopped by,” said Father Francis. “If there’s anything else you’d like to talk about or if you just want to get something off your chest while you’re here in New Bedford, Michael, please don’t hesitate to be in touch. You can always find me here.”
“Thank you, Father,” I said. “I can see why my mother speaks so highly of you.”
“Your mother’s faith is a gift,” he replied as he walked us to the door. “And it’s parishioners like her that make me look good in front of the Archbishop.”
My mother gave him I-bet-you-tell-that-to-all-the-girls eyes. I, on the other hand, wasn’t sure if I had just made a new friend or if I’d been sold something. I guessed I wouldn’t know for certain until I had a beer with him or received a bill.