Father McNamee said that Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, Satan, angels, and demons are all technically extraterrestrials, since they’re not “of this world.” But that’s all he would say on the subject of aliens. Well, except that he also said it wasn’t officially wrong for a Catholic to wear the special anti-alien tektite crystal, which is why I don’t feel any guilt, even though Mom probably wouldn’t have approved or understood the need. It was simply nice to receive a gift from a friend. If you can believe it, Richard Gere, this was the first present I have ever received from anyone except Mom. Life is really looking up.
I don’t think Mom believed in aliens, but we never did have a conversation about that.
This is also the first time I have ever left the Philadelphia area (if you count the South Jersey Shore as the Philadelphia area, and most do), and while it is exciting to be traveling north, about to leave the country even, it is also a little terrifying, especially because I am finally going to meet my biological father, who is supposedly alive and living in Montreal. Father McNamee has been in touch with him, which I will tell you all about shortly.
It’s been an overwhelming few days, and it’s taken me this long to organize my thoughts before I could offer them to you in any sort of order that would make sense.
After I met The Girlbrarian—Elizabeth, I mean—I came home that night and found Father McNamee kneeling in the living room, praying, which was an improvement, because he wasn’t drunk in Mom’s room or vomiting into our toilet.
When he opened his eye, it wasn’t tiny like a black snowflake, but began to suck like a whale’s blowhole again—and I knew that the storm in his mind had passed.
“I need a passport,” I said.
“What?”
“I need a passport.”
Father studied my face for a moment and then said, “How did you know we’re going to Montreal?”
“Montreal?”
“Montreal,” he said. “Yes. My hometown.”
“I’m going to Ottawa, not Montreal.”
“Ottawa?”
“Ottawa.”
“No, surely you mean Montreal.”
“Ottawa.”
Father McNamee looked perplexed.
“How long does it take to get a passport?” I asked.
“You’re not going to believe this, but . . .” Father McNamee reached into the pocket of his sweater and pulled out two passports.
“That’s a passport for me?”
“And one for me too. Remember when we got our pictures taken at CVS?”
He had said the pictures were for the church’s records. We went a few weeks before Mom died. I think I may have signed something too.
“Why do you want to go to Ottawa?” he said.
“Why did you get us passports?”
“It’s time for you to meet your father. He lives in Montreal.”
“My father was martyred,” I said. “Killed by the Ku Klux Klan.”
“That was just a placating bedtime story your mother told you so that you wouldn’t have to think about why you didn’t have a father all of these decades. That was her pretending with you. Protecting you. Your father is alive. And he’s agreed to meet us at Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal in front of Saint Brother André’s preserved heart, which is on display as a holy relic.”
“What? Why?” I said. “My father is really alive? You’ve been in touch with him? There’s a preserved human heart on display?”
I wasn’t sure which one of those questions was more absurd.
“Yes, Brother André’s heart is preserved and encased in glass, and your father is alive. We’ll meet him there because Saint Brother André was a great healer. And you and your father need to heal.”
I wasn’t sure I believed Father McNamee. I didn’t think my father was really alive. If he were, why wouldn’t he have contacted me before? Why would Mom have lied to me?
Mom never lied.
Never.
Especially about something so important.
Even the little man in my stomach was on my side this time—he didn’t kick or claw or anything but crossed his arms smugly and used the bottom of my stomach as a hammock, because we both knew that Father McNamee was mistaken.
“Tell me how you came to believe you are supposed to go to Ottawa, Bartholomew,” Father McNamee said.
I thought about Jung’s synchronicity as I followed Father into the kitchen, where he poured us coffee.
“So?” Father McNamee said.
I told him everything I told you, Richard Gere, in my last letter.
Father McNamee smiled when I mentioned Max’s theory about Arnie being an alien, and even though I could tell that Father didn’t believe Arnie was an alien, he didn’t say anything to the contrary or interrupt me in any way, which was nice.
(Polite listening skills really are rare, don’t you think?)
Then I continued the story thusly:
“When we arrived at Max and Elizabeth’s apartment, the first thing I noticed was the tint on the windows. They had put some sort of sticker sheet on every pane, so that each became a mirror and you couldn’t see in,” I told Father McNamee.
When I asked Max about the windows, he said, “Alien abduction protection one-oh-fucking-one.”
He opened the door and yelled, “Elizabeth! I’ve got fucking company. He’s been screened! You don’t have to hide! Fucking trust me!”
We entered into a living room space. There was an old plaid couch with some rips in the fabric so that you could see the jaundiced stuffing poking out. In front of the couch was a scratched-up wooden coffee table, under which was a braided rug whose colors had long ago been vacuumed away. The TV was very old—not flat and streamlined, but a huge cumbersome cube.