Do you believe that?
That in order for someone to win, someone else has to lose; and in order for someone to become rich, many others must stay poor; and in order for someone to be considered smart, many more people must be considered average or below average intelligence; and in order for someone to be considered extremely beautiful, there must be a plethora of regular-looking people and extremely ugly people as well; you can’t have good without bad, fast without slow, hot without cold, up without down, light without dark, round without flat, life without death—and so you can’t have lucky without unlucky either.
Maybe you cannot have Tibet without China?
Bartholomew Neil without Richard Gere?
Mom often used to say she was thankful when something bad happened to us, because it meant that someone else was experiencing good.
Like the time she lost her wallet and the week’s food money with it, when the pension check was still several days away. She said, “Well, we’re going to be a little hungry this week, Bartholomew, but whoever finds my wallet will eat well. Maybe they needed the money more than we did. Maybe the mother of a malnourished child will find our money, and the kid’ll eat fresh fruit this week. Who knows?”
Or like the time when Mom and I were eating dinner at a seafood restaurant to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. She loved soft-shell crabs cooked with ginger, and so we would always splurge on special events—like milestone birthdays—making a night of it, getting dressed up in our best clothes, eating at an expensive restaurant, using our emergency credit card even, which we never did regularly, because we didn’t have the funds and Mom always said that the interest rates could cost us our home if we weren’t careful. But while we were dining, pretending to be rich for a night in the restaurant situated on an old-fashioned boat docked in the Delaware River, while we were pretending that life was grand and wonderful and posh, that we were rich important people who, without a second thought, could order waiters to bring us food originally found underwater, a pack of menacing, degenerate teenagers broke into our house. They spray-painted disgusting phrases and pornographic images on the walls—things like BIG HAIRY COCKS! next to a cartoon of a giant penis and testicles covered in pubic hair, and CUM-STAIN SHITBALL over Mom’s headboard with an arrow pointing down to her bed, where one of these boys had done number two and then apparently ejaculated on top of his own feces.
It didn’t make any sense.
It was perverse.
Disgusting.
Horrible.
Beyond imagination.
They also clogged up all of the sinks and left the water on so that each overflowed. And they smashed every mirror, dish, and glass we owned. Squirted mustard and ketchup all over the couch. Poured milk onto the carpets. Threw circles of lunch meat at the ceiling so that it was dotted with bologna and ham and salami, which rained down on us later. Dumped our crucifixes into the toilet and pissed on our Lord and Savior.
Why?
I remember coming home from dinner, seeing the edge of the wooden front doorframe splintered, the door slightly ajar, and knowing that something horrible had happened.
It was like looking down and seeing a gaping hole where your stomach used to be and knowing your legs were gone—like Mom and I had somehow each swallowed a live grenade.
Once we saw the damage, Mom simply sighed and called the police, but they didn’t come right away, and asked only a few general questions when they arrived hours later, before saying, “We’ll file an official report.” Father McNamee, however, arrived within minutes of Mom’s calling him, armed with a phone book and several bottles of wine. He organized a dozen members of the church and a cleaning party began. The water was mopped up, the glass was swept away, the beds were washed and sanitized, and the walls were even painted over with paint and brushes someone miraculously found in our basement. Father McNamee washed our crucifixes in holy water, using a Q-tip to get in between Jesus’ spine and the cross, saying, “Lord, I hope you like your back scratched!” I remember the men and women of the church working through the night—drinking wine the whole time, talking, singing even.
It was almost fun.
When the sun came up, Mom cooked breakfast for everyone, and one of the neighbors brought over plates for us to use. Before we ate, as we all held hands in a circle, Father McNamee prayed and thanked God for the chance to prove that people are good and often take care of each other when the right sort of chance arises; he asked God to burn this night into our memory as an example of what true disciples of Christ are and can be when called upon—people who help their neighbors with compassion in their hearts and wine in their bellies, ready and willing to overcome any sort of ugliness (no matter the magnitude of the tragedy)—and then we ate like a family.
Mom and I had never entertained so many people at once.
When everyone left, Mom said, “Wasn’t that a beautiful birthday party!”
“How do we know it won’t happen again?” I asked.
“Didn’t you enjoy yourself, Bartholomew? I’d love to have another party like that. Such a treat having all those people here to celebrate my sixtieth birthday!”
“How do we know horrible thugs won’t break into our home again?”
“We don’t!” Mom said, almost like she wouldn’t mind if they did—maybe like she even wanted it to happen again. “We don’t know anything. But we can choose how we respond to whatever comes our way. We have a choice always. Remember that!”
I remember feeling scared—as if I couldn’t be like Mom and never would be. That maybe I was a bad Catholic. A subpar human being, even. That maybe even Jesus thought I was a retard. Because I found it hard to celebrate what had happened to us. I didn’t necessarily believe the clean-up party made up for the violation we were forced to endure.