The Evening News (3 page)

Diana, the oldest, speaks for us. She says that it did not.

Our mother smiles. She sits with us. Then our father is with us. Bob cracks a smile, and everybody laughs. Alfie gives a bark. The seven of us sit closely on the sofa. Safe.

That actually happened, but not exactly in the way that I described it. I've heard my mother tell that story from time to time, at times when she's most uneasy, but she has never said what it was that she saw from the front windows. A good storyteller, she leaves what she has all too clearly seen to our imaginations.

I stand in the corner of this room, thinking of her lying now in the hospital.

I pray none of us looks at that animal's face.

The two seventh-grade girls came running to the playground, their pink cheeks streaked with tears, the pleated skirts of their navy-blue uniforms snapping in the wind. It was a windy Friday. Some of the children looked at the sky to see if it would rain. They gathered in loose bunches by the gate near Sister Immaculata, the sixth-grade teacher, her skirts swirling like a child's pennant caught in a stiff breeze. The black folds of her habit whipped away behind her, flapping toward the gate and the alleyway, now shifting as the wind shifted, as she turned to face the wind. Dry leaves and scraps of paper whirled in circles on the ground beneath the basketball hoops. Dust stung the children's eyes. Not even Patrick Riley, the tallest eighth-grader and captain of the basketball team, risked trying a shot against the wind. He sat on the parish basketball against the fence, flanked by his teammates who chewed their fingernails or stood, hands in pockets, turning into the wind like Sister Immaculata.

Gino Martini, a dark seventh-grader, knew he would have tried a shot. He stood near the players, fighting a yawn, his skinny arms folded across his chest. If he had the ball, he'd put it up. The ball would fall cleanly through the chain net, and everyone would cheer him. A yellowed sheet of newspaper rose suddenly in the air and slammed into the playground fence, spreading flat against the weave of chain link. Gino was
sleepy from serving the week's 6:45 morning Masses. He stared at a light-haired girl whose name he didn't know, watching how the wind pressed her skirt back against her legs. The blonde girl was pretty and stood all by herself, but Gino was shy and she was an eighth-grader. The only seventh-grade boys the eighth-grade girls talked to were the guys on the school team. Gino had wanted to be on the team, but his father insisted he work after school, to learn responsibility, the value of a dollar. His mother insisted he serve God by being an altar boy. He had to obey. But no one knew him. The pretty girl didn't look at him, and Mrs. Bagnola and Sister Bernadette walked past her toward Sister Immaculata, and Mrs. Bagnola looked at her wristwatch and shook her head. The wind blew. Traffic rushed by in the street. Someday, Gino thought, I'll be part of something wonderful someday. Then everyone heard the cries of the two girls who ran inside the fence bordering the playground, and the girls grabbed the arms of their teachers, and the children crowded around them, pushed by the wind.

“The church!” shouted Donna Pietro, sobbing against Bernadette's chest.

“He was there,” Maureen Ostrowski screamed, “he was there, in the church!” Her hands squeezed Mrs. Bagnola's arm.

“There now,” Bernadette said. She stroked Donna's dark hair. “Take deep breaths. You've frightened yourselves.”

“We—” Donna cried. “We didn't do anything, Sister!”

“All of a sudden he was just there!” Maureen said. “And he was bleeding!”

“Who?” Mrs. Bagnola said. Her hands grasped Maureen's shoulders and shook them until the girl's eyes steadied.

“Start from the beginning,” Sister Immaculata said.

Donna gulped a breath, then stared at the sky. “Maureen forgot her scarf, Sister, so after lunch we went to church.”

“During choir practice, Sister,” Maureen said. “This morning.”

“Maureen left her scarf up in the loft during choir practice.”

“It was my mother's—” Maureen stomped her foot. “And she didn't know I borrowed it.” She began to cry.

“So you two went to the choir loft—” prodded Mrs. Bagnola.

“We should send someone to the rectory,” Immaculata said.

“Not yet,” Bernadette said. She looked at Mrs. Bagnola, then at the two girls. “You went up to the loft?”

“We didn't do anything, Sister!” Donna said. “Then all of a sudden he was there.” She spread her arms and bent at the waist. “At the top of the loft by the stairs, just looking at us!” Donna again began to cry.

“Who?” Bernadette said.

“We thought he was Mr. Lindsey,” Maureen said in a low voice. She wiped her tears with her fingertips. Mr. Lindsey was the parish choirmaster. “But he didn't say anything when we said hello—”

“We said, ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Lindsey.' We only whispered.”

“—and then he turned, and his face was horrible and bleeding.” Maureen's lips quivered. She looked out at the street. “And he wouldn't move or anything. He just stood there, blood dripping from his face. We couldn't run because he was by the stairs. Donna screamed—”

“We both screamed, Sister.”

“—and then he wasn't there anymore, and then we heard someone making noise downstairs in the church.”

“Send a boy to the rectory,” Bernadette told Mrs. Bagnola.

Gino waved his hand and bounced on his toes. Since he served so many Masses, it was only fair. But Mrs. Bagnola's eyes looked beyond him over the crush of children. She motioned to Patrick Riley.

“—down the steps,” Maureen was saying. She held out her hand like she was grasping a railing. “And there were drops of blood on the marble—”

“Tiny drops of blood,” Donna said. She shook herself.

“—didn't step in them, Sister, because we were afraid! He was horrible, standing there by the stairs holding the door open like he wanted us to come to him. And behind him was the stained-glass window.” Maureen made the sign of the Cross. Around Gino some of the children crossed themselves too.

“I didn't want to get any of the blood on my shoes,” Donna said. “These are my only pair of good shoes!”

“It's all right, Donna,” Sister Bernadette said. “Your shoes are fine.”

“And in the window Jesus was looking down on us, pointing to His Sacred Heart. And all we could see then was that big window. All the colors. The bright light.” Maureen looked into the distance.

“I'll throw them away,” Donna said, lifting her feet. “Even if the blood just got on the bottom! I'll throw them in a furnace! They'll burn, won't they, Sister?”

“We'll clean your shoes in Mother Superior's office,” Bernadette said.

Mrs. Bagnola stepped forward. “This man, he didn't say anything to you or do anything, did he?”

The girls didn't move, then stared at each other and shook their heads.

“Thank God,” said Sister Immaculata.

Her words rippled through the children. Some girls nodded and grabbed one another's hands. Donna ground the bottoms of her shoes on the asphalt. Maureen held one arm at her side, her finger pointing to her heart. Then Mrs. Bagnola checked her watch and nodded to Immaculata and Bernadette, and Bernadette blew her whistle, and the children assembled in three lines that buzzed with talk. Sister Bernadette left the playground first, walking between Maureen and Donna, shrinking as she moved up the alley that led to the school. Already the little children were marching toward school from their smaller playground across the street. They sang a merry song as they
marched. Gino watched everything, standing silently in line, thinking maybe there'd been a terrible car crash and the man had smashed his face against the windshield, then run to the church looking for a priest who'd give him the Last Rites. Gino wished Mrs. Bagnola had chosen him to go to the rectory. He wanted to see the drops of blood, and if they made a trail. If the priests followed the trail they'd find the man and could hear his confession. A girl in the front of Gino's line began to cry. Maybe she got a cinder in her eye, Gino thought. Sister Immaculata's group walked from the playground. The wind was blowing up lots of dust. The man was most likely waiting inside one of the confessionals, and right now Father Manning was probably forgiving all his sins. The girl wept, circled by other girls. It wasn't a big deal. Just a man and some blood. A stray mutt ran past the children nearest the fence. Mrs. Bagnola shooed the dog away, and the wind blew and bent the heads of the children, and Gino's line began the march up the alley to the school.

That afternoon passed slowly. All the seventh-graders stared at the fifth row, at the pair of empty desks. Mother Superior explained that Donna and Maureen had been given the afternoon off. Hands rose in the air. Mother Superior said there would be no discussion, and when she knelt next to the wooden platform beneath Sister Bernadette's desk and took out her rosary Gino realized they'd spend the afternoon praying. The children knelt, as noisily as falling blocks, on the wooden floor. When Sister Bernadette returned to her classroom Gino tried to read her face, but the woman was as somber and unreadable as Latin. Gino's class prayed three rosaries: one for Maureen, one for Donna, the third for the bleeding man.

“It's an unfortunate incident,” Bernadette told the class. She stared at the clock on the wall. There were a few minutes before the bell.

“The church is a refuge for the sick and needy,” Sister continued. “The doors of the parish are always open. The priests receive calls at all hours of the day and night. Once, at midnight, a poor woman knocked on the rectory door because she had no food to feed her hungry children and she was tempted to go out and steal, and the priests gave her food. Another time a very rich man was driving around in his limousine thinking of committing the unforgivable sin of suicide, because you know wealth does not bring a person peace or true happiness, and the priests listened to him and gave him their blessing, and the man renounced all his earthly belongings and went on to live a life dedicated to Christ.” She smiled. “So you see, children, sometimes the church does have unhappy visitors, but God greets them all with forgiveness and love.” Then the final bell sounded.

The sky looked like it would rain. Gino thought about Sister's words as he hurried home. Maybe, he thought, there wasn't a car accident. Maybe the man was just an unhappy visitor. But then why was he bleeding? Gino hoped it wouldn't rain until after he finished his paper route. Why was he bleeding? He heard a bouncing basketball and saw Patrick Riley and his friends standing inside the playground. The boys were talking loudly. They didn't answer Gino's shy hello. He walked slowly so he could hear what they said.

“—all over the Saint Joseph's side aisle,” Patrick said. “Man alive, I couldn't believe it.”

“Those girls were awful lucky,” one boy said.

“Lucky?” another said. “Lucky ain't the word.”

“Nobody knows what he would of done if he'd of caught them.”

“He probably had a knife. Or a razor. Maybe a switchblade. He could of slit their throats.”

“Nah.”

“Sure. A strange guy bleeding all over the church? Whatdya think?”

“He sure wasn't there to make no Stations of the Cross.”

The boys laughed.

Patrick bounced the ball. “Father Pinky said he was some kind of lunatic. You know, out of his mind, not knowing what he was doing.”

“Rita Binetti and her friends were talking about him maybe being a saint or something like that.”

“I heard them. Felice Hernandez said maybe it was a vision. You know, like Our Lady of Guadalupe, or Lourdes.”

“Then how could he leave behind all that blood?”

“Visions can bleed.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, maybe the blood can cure you if you touch it.”

“Nah,” Patrick said. “He was a lunatic.”

“He could of been a miracle, you know. He didn't hurt them. He had them trapped up in the choir loft. All they got was a little scared.”

“Rita said maybe he was Jesus.”

“What's she know? Her brother is so stupid he flunked second grade.”

Gino crossed the street, thinking of the two girls. Donna scraping her shoes on the ground. Maureen holding her hand to her chest, like the window of the Sacred Heart. Maureen said she remembered the window because of the bright light. But it was a cloudy day. Gino looked at the sky. Maybe he
was
Jesus, Gino thought. And Jesus knew in His infinite wisdom that Maureen would forget her mother's scarf, and the girls would search the loft for it, and then He'd appear to them, right beneath the stained-glass window so they'd know, and He'd leave behind the trail of His Most Sacred Blood, and the trail would lead. … Gino stared at the sidewalk. The trail would lead to God the Father, of course. The boy walked quickly now, excited by his thoughts. Maureen and Donna were awful lucky to have been chosen, but like in all the other
visitation stories at first the people wouldn't believe them, and the priests and Church authorities would have to try to shake their faith. But in the end, after many miracles, everyone would believe them and the girls would be very holy, and after they died they'd be saints. Yes. Gino ran home now. He no longer cared if it rained. He wanted to hurry to the newspaper office to see if the news was on the front page. He'd believe in the miracle from the start. Yes, he would believe. No doubt. Already he believed.

His alarm clock woke him early the next morning. The sky behind his bedroom shade was dark. All the others were still sleeping, so Gino was quiet as he slipped his clothes off their hangers and then tiptoed to the bathroom to wash. He had time, he thought. He didn't need to rush. Usually the alarm would shriek for a full minute before he'd wake, but this morning he sat up in bed, aware, with the first ring. He was careful not to swallow any toothpaste as he brushed his teeth. He didn't want to break his Communion fast. Especially today, the first day after the miracle. In the kitchen he glanced at the clock, always set ten minutes fast so everyone would be on time. He left a note next to the bread on the table.
I WENT TO SERVE
. Slapping his pants pocket to make sure he had his house key, he grabbed his jacket. The front door lock clicked softly behind him.