Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (9 page)

"I can't say that I know her," she said. "But there are more than forty-thousand students at Michigan."

"Right," I said.

"You do know that we also have a satellite campus in Dearborn?" Janice said. "It's closer to your house. And it also is a little less overwhelming than this place. It's huge here."

"Right," I said.

As I was packing up my backpack, Janice said, "What do you think your concentration will be, Michael?"

"Concentration?" I said. "I think it will be pretty good. I concentrate pretty well."

"No," she said. "That's what we call a major here—a concentration."

"Right," I said. "Philosophy."

"Oh," she said. "Wow. I sub-concentrated in philosophy. Who is your favorite?"

She was killing me.

"Um, I like most of them. It's hard to have a favorite," I said. My mind was blank. I couldn't think of one major philosopher. Finally, I managed to croak out the name Marx.

"Fabulous!" she said.

I pretty much ran out of there to avoid more conversation.

"Best of luck," Janice called after me. "I'll be rooting for you. And remember, we offer campus tours every Wednesday at noon."

I'd noticed, in recent months, a tendency for people to root for me. I wasn't exactly sure if this was because I was somehow charming and endearing or that I had a wimpy patheticness that encouraged people to cheer me on, like some wheezing last place finisher in a marathon.

The reason I had told Janice that I was interested in majoring in philosophy was because that summer I was taking something called Introduction to the Great Philosophers, which was taught by a friend of Father Mack's.

Father Mack was an old high-school friend of my mother's, and he'd been transferred back to a parish just outside Detroit. He came over a lot on Saturdays to do things around the house or take my mother out for pie and coffee. He was the kind of guy who had trouble hearing the word
no
. If he came over and offered to cook us hamburgers or replace the bathroom sink, there was no turning him down. When he encouraged me to take the Great Philosophers, I knew I had no choice.

It was Father Mack who'd found me the job as a lifeguard at a private swim and tennis club in Livonia, where his brother Stu was on the board of directors. Mack had five brothers, all of them rich, all of whom had followed their father into real estate development and construction, and all of whom, like Stu, served on many boards and committees and could get you just about anything you needed in the tri-county area.

Burton Farms Club was tucked away in a tree-lined neighborhood, far from any main roads. The members were rich, but not wealthy rich, just the kind of people I thought were rich back then—people with two cars, three full baths, four bedrooms. I didn't realize how rich people could really be until later in life.

Nobody paid much attention to me. Some of the young suburban mothers would drink too many wine coolers in the late afternoon and flirt with me, and I liked the attention. Every so often, on weekends, some pale, flabby businessman on the board would tell me that a toilet was busted or that the stripes on the tennis court needed repainting and I had to fix things like that. Still, I couldn't imagine easier work than hanging around with girls in bathing suits or flirting with bored and tipsy young mothers, while I sat in the sun, watching the pool. That is, it was easy work until the kid died.

THE MOTHER OF
the dead child was named Holly. She asked me to drop her off at the place she worked, Burton Oaks Day Spa and Salon. She was a massage therapist there.

"My mother went there once," I said. "She won a gift certificate at a raffle at church."

Holly nodded. She had big eyes and her shoulder-length red hair, which had been wet from swimming, had dried into a mess of tangles and was sticking up in places, like the hair of a little kid who has been in the pool all day. This made her look younger than me, but when I took a moment to look at her watery eyes—a shiny medley of green and gray—I could see faint lines in her skin. She'd been crying so much that her eyes were puffy and her nose was raw and red. It didn't matter, I suppose, how old she was: she had a kid, a dead kid, and whether she was twenty-three or thirty-three, she knew and felt things I couldn't understand. It was something I should have seen then.

"One of the girls here will take me home," she said.

"Good. I don't think you should be alone."

"I won't be alone."

I almost asked her where the boy's father was, but I stopped myself. If he were around, he'd have been at the hospital. I was glad I stopped myself. It seemed one of the few mature moves I'd made in my life.

"Thanks for the scrubs," she said. She was still wearing them. They made her look a little like an inmate.

"I'm sorry," I said when she opened the door.

She was crying again. She just waved and closed the door.

I didn't go back to work that afternoon, or ever again. I was through with lifeguarding. I got home at six o'clock, a few hours earlier than anybody expected. Kolya was spending the weekend with a friend's family Up North. The living room was empty. I stood in the doorway for a while, trying to process the day. Just then, down the hall, Father Mack emerged from my mother's room in nothing but a white towel. His chest hair was matted and damp.

"Oh, good Lord, Michael," he said.

"What?" my mother said, coming out of the bedroom too. She was wearing a short black robe I'd never seen before. In the hallway's dim light, she looked closer to my age than her own, her face flushed red, her dark hair messed up and hanging straight down the sides of her face.

"Oh, hello," I said. I waved and went into the basement.

Later my mother came downstairs dressed in shorts, a blue Michigan sweatshirt, and sandals. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She still looked so young. Her face had changed some, but she looked basically like she did when I was very young.

"We were going to tell you," she said.

I exhaled and stared at the ceiling for a while.

"He's leaving the priesthood," she said.

"I'd hope so," I said.

"I didn't plan for this," she said. "But I'm not sorry it happened."

"That's nice for you," I said.

"In fact, Michael, I'm very happy about it."

"A kid died at work today," I said. "While I was on duty."

"Oh, Michael," she said.

OUTSIDE EVERYTHING
was clouded by the haze and humidity. I stayed inside. We didn't have air-conditioning, but I had moved into the basement after high school and my bedroom was cool. I couldn't get very good reception on the television down there, so I was reading a lot. On the last Monday of every month, the Livonia public library had a book sale to clear out old and damaged books. For four dollars, you could fill a shopping bag. Sometimes I filled two. I didn't know what I was picking up, but I was willing to read anything. Some of it was hard to judge, I mean, if it was any good or not, because the books had those blank library bindings and there were no quotes on the back covers. I stuck to the literature and philosophy sections. At night, I listened to Ernie Harwell call the Tigers games on WJR. I was always awake for the last inning. I didn't sleep or eat too much. I knew exactly how Manny Holloway would have sounded when he was alive. I heard his voice anytime I tried to go to sleep. I dreamed about his mother a lot. I saw her in her bathing suit, wrapped in the blanket in the waiting room, with nobody she really knew around her.

FATHER MACK WAS
at our house more and more. Or Mack. He asked us to stop calling him Father, but I still did. He'd quit wearing his black shirt and clerical collar. He looked flabby and older in a T-shirt and khaki shorts. He started to go to his family's office in Southfield a few days a week. He would tell us at dinner about some of the construction projects his company was working on, and then sometimes his voice would trail off, as if he had completely lost interest in his own story.

Mack was lucky: his father had made him a partner in the construction business years ago, though Mack had never really done anything, and had never collected any of his profits. His father hadn't been a religious man, and always believed that his son would eventually give up on the Church.

"He's eighty-three years old," Mack said one night when Kolya asked about his father. "And he's happy as hell that before he dies he gets to see my vocation fall apart. He said, 'I finally beat God. I got his Son, but he didn't get mine.' Then he laughed his ass off."

Mack had had a few beers, and he pointed at Kolya with a fork.

"He never believed I could hack the life of a priest," he said. "I guess he was right."

My mother put her hand on Mack's shoulder, as if she was reminding him not to talk too much about his situation. He looked at her, then looked at us, then attacked his pork chop with his knife.

Still, in general, Mack was a pretty happy influence around our house. He didn't have very many possessions and it only took him a couple of hours to move in.

"You're not wasting any time," I said to my mother. "He's just coming right in, huh?"

"Michael, what do you expect? Do you think he can drop out of the priesthood and hang around the rectory until he has a place to stay?"

Mack had started working out, and would always ask me if I wanted to go jogging with him. I never did go, but Kolya, who was fifteen now and taller and faster than me, had started to get interested in sports, and he would run with Father Mack. I was glad Kolya had some older guy as a role model. I wasn't up for it that summer.

One afternoon, after a run, Father Mack came downstairs and tried to talk to me about Manny.

"Michael, you didn't cause that boy's death. You witnessed it. It's not your fault."

"I was the lifeguard," I said.

"It was God's will," he said. "Who knows the mind of God?"

"Oh, knock it the fuck
off!
" I said. "Come on, Father Mack."

"Mack."

"Whatever."

"What?"

"You heard me," I said. "If God wanted that kid to die, he's nothing but a big fucking bastard!"

"Michael, that's not a very mature response," he said. "But it's an understandable one, I suppose. You know, that is why I suggested you take the philosophy course this summer—"

My mother called down the stairs. "What are you guys talking about down there?"

"We're fine," Father Mack said. He looked wounded.

I reached over to my nightstand and picked up a book. I handed it to Father Mack.

"Nietzsche?" he said.

"Yeah," I said. "Have you read it?"

He smiled and exhaled through his teeth:
sheesh,
said his breath,
sheesh.

"Yeah, I've read it," he said.

"
I WANT YOU
," Professor Donovan said, "to spend the class period freewriting."

Most of the class moaned. It was obvious that a day of freewriting meant that Donovan had nothing to say, but felt too guilty about it to just let us go home.

"I want you," Donovan said, "to consider a moment when you have faced a philosophical crisis in your own life. I want you to write about the philosophical questions that arose, and to discuss the philosophical conclusions that you arrived at, or the lack of a conclusion for that matter."

Most people groaned a little more and got out their "journals," hardbound black notebooks that Donovan had passed out at the beginning of the semester, and started to force themselves to write something. It was easy for me to write something:
While I was lifeguarding this summer some little kid died.

I never minded freewriting, and I just did my best to tune out the other students, some of whom were still complaining. Inevitably someone asked, "How long does this have to be?"

"It's finished when it's finished," Donovan said.

"Are we supposed to write something like, 'To be or not to be?'" somebody else asked.

Randy Gardener, who always sat next to me in the class, not because we were friends but simply because he had been a few years behind me at Maple Rock High and knew my name, said, "Bud or Bud Light?" He slapped my arm. I glared at him and he said it louder. "Bud or Bud Light?"

The class started cracking up.

"Shut up and write!" Donovan yelled. Everybody laughed harder. I felt bad for Donovan. When he returned the journals during the next class period, he'd written, "Complex and thoughtful—A. Nice work." I showed the assignment to Father Mack. Not that I cared what he thought or anything, but I also wanted to show him I wasn't a complete fuckup.

"Good work," he said. "I'm impressed. Bob Donovan is a tough teacher."

***

I BORROWED
Father Mack's old Buick Skylark one morning—he let me use it whenever I wanted, since he was driving a new company car, a red BMW, his mid-life crisis car, he called it—and drove into Livonia to the strip mall that housed the Burton Oaks Day Spa. I wanted to see Holly. I wanted to see that she was okay, or at least almost okay. I wanted her to see me and forgive everything or see me and blame me for everything and beat me with her fists. I didn't want her to be neutral. That would be too much.

I walked into the salon. A few women in sundresses sat in the waiting room. The receptionist behind the front counter was dressed in a black suit. The place smelled heavily of woodsy soaps and flowery lotions. I thought I heard the sound of water bubbling. A ponytailed woman in black baseball cap, black spandex, and black sports bra walked into the place, drinking from a giant bottle of water. She was so thin her ribs were pretty much right out there. She looked unhappy to see me standing in front of her. She huffed behind me, waiting to talk to the receptionist. The receptionist was about nineteen. Her skin was almost orange and her hair almost white.

"I'm here to see Holly," I said. "If she's available."

"Do you have an appointment?" the orange girl asked.

"No," I said.

"She's not here today," the orange girl said. "Monday is her day off this week."