Back at Saint Gabriel’s, I said to Father Hachette, “Will you ask Father McNamee to call me this evening?”
“Sure. Sure,” Father Hachette said. His narrow face was the color of stop signs, and his few wisps of hair were blowing around under the heat vent on the wall. “Just go home and pray. I’ll have Father McNamee call you. Now off you go, Bartholomew. God bless you.”
I didn’t believe Father Hachette would do as I asked, because Father Hachette was not called by God in the same way that Father McNamee was—you can tell by looking into his eyes and by the fact that he doesn’t help as many people in the church; it’s not that he’s a terrible priest, he’s just not “truly called” like Father McNamee, or at least that’s what Mom always said—but even though I had that warm God-wants-you-to-do-something feeling in my chest, I went home anyway, figuring that Father McNamee would contact me eventually, because he has always been a regular visitor of Mom’s and mine.
When I arrived home, Father McNamee was sitting on the front steps. His white beard looked extra feral and his nose was shiny red. There were two brown paper bags to his left and a pizza to his right.
“Communion,” he said. “Will you break bread with me?”
I nodded, but I did not like the wild look in Father McNamee’s sky-blue eyes, which sucked at me like powerful whirlpools.
Something was off.
If he were a house, one of the windows would have been smashed and the door would have been ajar. It was like he had been broken into and robbed. I wasn’t sure what was missing just yet, and I knew I would eventually have to go inside Father McNamee and take inventory, if that makes any sense. I couldn’t imagine Father McNamee ever hurting me in any way, but I also couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about him—and that I should be careful. He had been compromised, as they say in spy movies and on TV shows about presidents and prime ministers and secret agents.
We ate and drank in the kitchen.
“The body of Christ,” Father McNamee said when he placed a mushroom slice on my plate.
Father McNamee didn’t take a slice for himself; he only drank his Jameson.
I tried to eat, but I wasn’t very hungry.
I was still trying to figure out what had been stolen from inside Father McNamee.
“The blood of Christ,” he said when he poured a finger of whiskey into my glass. “Drink.”
I took a sip and felt the burn.
He downed his in one gulp and his face reddened immediately.
Mom would have said he “had the blossom.”
“Bartholomew,” Father McNamee said. “Now that I’ve left the church, I need a place to live. I don’t even own the clothes on my back, technically. My rather well-to-do childhood friend is sending money, but it’s not a fortune. If you take me in, I can also offer you my prayers.”
“You’re really leaving the church? You’re really renouncing your vows?”
He nodded and poured more whiskey.
“Why?”
“Exodus.”
“Exodus?”
“Exodus,” he said.
“Like Moses?”
“More like Aaron.”
Mom had read me biblical stories as a child and I had gone to church every week for my entire life, where I often read the Bible, so I knew that Aaron was Moses’s spokesperson when he led the Jews out of Egypt.
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” I said.
Father McNamee threw back another three fingers of whiskey and poured himself a fresh glass.
“Do you ever feel as though God speaks to you, Bartholomew?” He searched my eyes until I looked down at my pizza slice. “Has God sent you any messages lately? Do you know what I’m talking about? Are you the answering machine recording God’s voice? Can you advise me? What has God told you lately? Has He sent you any messages at all—for me or otherwise?”
I thought about The Girlbrarian first—and then I thought about you, Richard Gere, and the letter Mom left behind for me. I wondered if your letter could have been a message from God, even though you are a Buddhist. (Mysterious ways.) But I didn’t say anything about you to Father McNamee. I don’t know why. Maybe because he looked like a broken-into house.
“I’ve watched you grow up,” Father McNamee said. “You’ve always been different. And you’ve lived the life of a monk, really. Always at the library reading, studying. Living a quiet, simple existence with your mother, and now . . .”
He looked out the kitchen window for a long time, although there wasn’t anything to see, except the reflection of the ceiling light that looked like an electric moon.
“Your father—he was a religious man. Did your mother tell you that?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was martyred. Killed for the Catholic Church by the Ku Klux Klan.”
“The Ku Klux Klan?” Father McNamee said.
“According to Mom.”
Father McNamee smiled in this very bemused way—almost like he was being tickled.
“What else did she tell you about your father?”
“He was a good man.”
“He was a good man.”
“You knew him?”
Father McNamee nodded solemnly. “He used to confess to me a long time ago. He was deeply religious. Tapped in. God spoke to him. He had visions. His blood runs through your veins.”
“And my mom’s blood too,” I said, although I’m not sure why.
Father McNamee had never spoken to me like this before, even when he was fall-down drunk. But Mom had often spoken of my father’s visions. She once told me that my dad would close his eyes so tightly that all he could see was the color red—and then he would hear the unknowable voices of angels, which he described as the high-pitched noise wind makes when rushing through leafy forests, only more musical and divine—and he could understand the angels.