The Unspeakable (11 page)

Peter Whitmore, I say.

But the old apostle doesn't even look up, he's so busy. I announce myself a second and a third time. Then I do something that
surprises me, even in the dream. I grab Peter's hand. He stops and looks at me and I can see into his ledgers by now, which are completely blank. He's writing but nothing is going on the page.

I'm a priest, I say with pride.

And old Pete just bursts out laughing. And he just keeps on laughing until I wake up in a cold sweat.

Marbury had heard this dream before. I had it in seminary a few times and I told it to him, but he didn't see any significance in it, then or now.

He just said, “People laugh. Both in dreams and in real life.”

I watched our waitress circulate around another table. She probably had a whole routine down, talking to people, probing their inner workings, and then moving on. Like a game.

“Anyway, it's just your imagination. More likely your fears.”

“How is it, Marbury, that when Helen has a dream about finding a husband for her child you lend it credence, while my dream says nothing?”

“Don't be insulted.”

“I just don't understand it.”

“It's a stupid dream, Peter. That's all.”

“Maybe Helen's dream was the stupid one.”

He shook his head. “I don't think so.”

Marbury went on to explain why. He said that one of the nurses from the hospital in Wheelersburg, apparently suffering from nicotine withdrawal, braved the snow to retrieve an extra pack of cigarettes from her car. But the snow was deep, in large drifts, and she returned with frozen feet. Not frostbitten, though cold enough to cause her discomfort. She did her rounds anyway, limping and cursing, which continued with every patient until she reached Lucy.

Abigail was the first to notice it.

“Damnedest thing,” said the nurse. “I was taking her temperature when I felt it. Like a tingling in my feet. But everything's all toasty now.”

“What did she do?”

“Nothing, that's it.” The nurse shrugged and walked away, recovered.

Abigail looked at Marbury and smiled. But he wasn't buying it.

He said, “She's a child, not an oil burner.”

“Sure, a child of God. Something's not right with her, Father.”

Marbury said that he didn't know which way Abigail meant that, and he decided to hedge his bets by looking in on the child. Lucy was in bed, half propped up by several pillows that had to be folded twice just to create enough cushion for her head. She just stared off into space. No toys, no books, no television. No place for a child at all.

He circled around the room once to make sure she was actually awake, but he still wasn't sure. Lucy didn't say anything. Marbury said that he was about to leave when he heard her voice. She said it was cold. Marbury told her about the snow, which she couldn't see, and he talked about snowmen and sledding. But Lucy just shook her head.

“No, silly, it's cold.”

She held out her hand, which Marbury felt. Like ice.

“Cold boo-boo.”

“You're frozen,” he said, trying to warm her.

And then Marbury noticed it. A diabetic identification bracelet dangling from one of Lucy's wrists. It was so loose that had Marbury not caught it, noticed it at that very moment, it might have easily fallen off and got lost in the sheets.

“You'll need this,” he said, adjusting the bracelet tighter.

She smiled a thank you and tucked her hands under the sheets for warmth. And that was the last said about it.

But Marbury couldn't let it go. He kept thinking about Lucy and her mysterious injuries, now compounded by the fact that she was diabetic. And it made him angry.

He asked her, “Do you get many boo-boos?”

“I come here. Sometimes I fall.”

“How do you fall?”

“Jacob says I fall.”

“Oh, Jacob says.”

“Then I come here. But I get better.”

“Do you fall again after that, Lucy?”

“I fall and fall. Others fall too. Lots of boo-boos.”

“What happens to the boo-boos?”

“God keeps them. In his box.”

“He has a box?”

“It's big and yellow. Boo-boos go in there and live.”

“It must be a very big box, Lucy.”

“The biggest. For all the boo-boos.”

“What does Jacob think about the box?”

“Damn child.”

“He actually says that?”

“Damn child. Sometimes I fall.”

“And you come here.”

“I get better. Every boo-boo fits. Mommy's. Jacob's. Even yours.”

Marbury said that he must have given Lucy a quizzical look, for she pointed right to his chest. More exact, right to Marbury's heart.

“That one, mister. A really big boo-boo I see.”

Marbury closed his eyes for a moment, breaking the thread of his story. When he opened them again, he looked far-off and exhausted, as though somehow the plug had been pulled from him. He no longer seemed the vibrant, energetic man of only a few minutes before but old and worn out, like a man aging before my very eyes.

I asked him, “Did you alert the authorities?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The man was a monster. Surely you didn't let her stay there?”

Marbury struggled a thin smile.

He said, “Barris wasn't a monster. He was just a man.”

“Which means you did nothing.”

“You're missing the point, Peter.”

“I'm missing that you left a child where she shouldn't be.”

“She was safe.”

“Landing up in a hospital isn't what I call safe.”

But Marbury shook his head. “You need evidence.”

“Were you trying to find any?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't want to get involved.”

“That wasn't it. I was already involved. Don't you see?”

I felt my face get flush and my pulse was racing. Marbury looked at me, then placed his hand on my shoulder for comfort. But I didn't feel any comfort.

He said, “I was angry too. But then something happened.”

When I couldn't even muster up a response Marbury added:

“God boxed up my boo-boo.”

I was stunned. Marbury was past being just another priest for me, our history together, our friendship assured that, but I didn't know what to say. I was no longer just questioning the decisions that he made in Wheelersburg, I was questioning the decisions behind the decisions. His entire foundation.

But Marbury didn't care about that. He said, “Lucy was right. I had claws within me, tearing from the inside out.”

“You listened to a four-year-old?”

“I listened to God. Everyone has a boo-boo, Peter. Even you.”

I just shook my head.

“Don't worry about me, Marbury. I'm just fine.”

“Really? Then why do I feel you bleeding?”

Chapter 5

W
hat Marbury said to me, or what he was even suggesting, seemed presumptuous and I told him so. My own life had nothing to do with the story of his going to Pennsylvania and his voice fluttering about in the wind somewhere supposedly speared by God for purposes unknown. He might have pulled that years ago, trying to turn the tables upside down on me as though it were my fate in question, my very happiness, but he couldn't do that now. I was older.

Marbury, who had been staring out the window while I railed away with exactly this, turned to me. His eyes twinkled again, a fresh energy surging, or maybe the thought of a good fight.

He always loved a good fight.

“All I'm saying is this. My happiness isn't a condition to be debated.”

“Who said that it was?”

“You implied it. You were unhappy; now I must be too.”

“Are you?”

I diced up what remained of my omelet, cutting it into smaller and ever smaller pieces until I was left with only mush. The thought of defending my own mental state to Marbury seemed absurd, and not something I wanted to pursue. The truth was, I was neither happy nor unhappy but an odd mixture of both, an idea that Mar
bury wouldn't understand. For him, the world was divided into two camps with no separating ground, no gray at all. And sometimes all I felt was surrounded by gray.

“I'm pleasantly content,” I said.

Marbury smiled. It was the same smile that I remember from all those years ago, a smile bred from victories large and small. He liked to win, and living in those cramped seminary rooms, stifled with the many inconsiderations that we were forced to contend with, cold showers, poor food and such, battles were fought every day. Not that many of us joined him. We, I include myself as well, we endured the boiling hot classrooms, the old communion wine, the books with torn spines and covers, assuming that this was part of our newly chosen life.

But not Marbury. He spoke up, or if he didn't speak up he protested in other ways. Like the showers. Colder than the Arctic Ocean, our showers were the morning humiliation that each one of us detested but shuddered to resist. Nobody could figure out the source of the problem, cold water, whether from the plumbing or one arranged for us to overcome. Everyone complained of course, to themselves mostly, afraid that real complaints might lead to an obscure call somewhere or worse, a call to a town so small that the only showers left were cold ones.

Marbury laughed at us like sheep being led to the slaughter.

He said, “You want to blame the boiler but you shouldn't. Try Christ. He bathed in cold streams, why shouldn't you? Enjoy it, I say.”

And he did.

Much to my surprise and amusement, Marbury made a game of freezing in the showers. If the water was freezing, more freezing than usual, say like the temperature of liquid hydrogen, he would complain that they were too hot. He would yell to the Father Janitor to rush down more cold water, words that I heard myself. And the Father complied. Eventually Marbury used this tactic with everything.
If the soap smelled bad, as it often did, he used more. Or if the telephone was out of order he would say that he thought we should go without. The other seminarians, myself included, all thought that Marbury had lost his mind, or his will to rebel. Not that we were so brave as to demand better ourselves, cowards the whole lot. But we still fought, albeit quietly, with the contempt of a beaten dog toward his master.

Marbury observed this behavior from his perch. While we raced in and out of the showers at lightning speeds, Marbury lingered. He sang. He soaped himself languidly. He dawdled for as long as human skin allowed before turning blue or until he was told to put a move on it. It was a force of will that I later came to recognize, born from the pool hall, playing one perception against another. But it was something else. It was Marbury taking up the ultimate cross, which the rest of us spent time evading. For he loved the very thing that tortured him most, and by loving it, he transformed himself forever.

Weeks passed with this strategy. Then it happened. I was in the shower at the time, barely getting wet, when I felt it. A brief splash of warm water. It lasted for only a moment or two before surrendering back to the cold but that was enough. Hot water. Maybe this was meant to throw off Marbury, remind him that hot showers did exist somewhere in the world. I don't know. I do know that he never flinched. No reaction at all. Gradually more and more hot water arrived, especially when Marbury was showering. He just did his same old routine, singing and lingering and sometimes even yelling for more cold. Soon, I adopted his strategy as well. Others followed on cue, grinding their frozen teeth and singing until our showers began to steam over with hot water.

When I asked Marbury if he remembered this he just smiled.

He said, “Don't be too impressed with that.”

“Why? We had warm showers again. We won.”

“If they wanted to crush us, Peter, they could. Turn off the water and people would beg for showers. Any shower.”

“Even you?”

“I'd be the first one in line.”

I nodded. This wasn't the Marbury of twenty years ago, the cocksure kid who froze in the shower to make a point. This was another Marbury, a compromised man. Or a man compromised by the power of God, he might say, compromised of his freedom, or the perception of his freedom, by a force larger than the sum of all things. God was in control of all that was: of darkness and light, of cold and hot, and straddling these nuances, or even worrying about them, was an exercise in futility.

I said, “Then you've changed.”

“Haven't you?”

I couldn't answer that. Not honestly. For in the spirit of change I've seen people cast off their old selves with reckless abandon, shucking off skin and history in the pursuit of something new, which usually was, in Marbury's words, just the old recycled. And I was afraid of it.

“Change is natural, Peter. You can admit that.”

“Leaves falling from trees, that's natural. Reversing full course—”

“And you believe that I've done that?”

“Yes.”

Marbury just shook his head. “Then you don't know me very well.”

Our waitress came by and cleared the dishes. She balanced everything on one arm like in the movies, holding the swaying cups and plates. I saw her scramble into the kitchen, stopping first to pour coffee for a few truckers with her free hand. One of the men, a burly
fellow with a thick red beard, looked at me and stared. I stared back.

Marbury, noticing that I was watching something, turned around. The man was still staring at me, despite his friends laughing and cooing with the waitress. She slipped a long bang of blond hair behind an ear as she talked. Everyone laughed, including the man with the beard. He broke his gaze for an instant, just long enough to reach up behind her skirt and pinch her. The waitress squealed but the man only looked at me and winked.

I felt Marbury's hand.

He said, “This isn't the O.K. Corral.”