The Good Luck of Right Now (23 page)

It didn’t seem real.

Like maybe it’s just some unknown part of Philadelphia—or a known part dressed up as something else, like it was playing geographical Halloween, as crazy as that sounds.

Then, as Father slept, using the mini flashlight on my keychain, I wrote you this letter, trying to finish before it was time to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory, so that we might look at the preserved heart of a miracle worker and meet my biological father for the first time.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil

14

THAT IS THE MOST RATIONAL THING TO DO AT THIS MOMENT, GIVEN THE UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES YOU HAVE INHERITED

Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

When I woke up on the day we were supposed to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory and meet my dad in front of Saint Brother André’s preserved heart, Father McNamee was still sleeping, so I stared out our hotel window and admired the fresh snow cover that had fallen in the night. It looked like the city had been buried in fine white sand and was now pushing its way out again as various tides of morning commuters swept over the streets and sidewalks.

I smiled at my reflection superimposed onto the city in the window, felt a good lightness in my chest, took a shower, and then got dressed.

I let Father sleep for a time, as there were two empty whiskey bottles on the nightstand, although it was highly unusual for him to sleep past 6:30 a.m. no matter how much he had drunk the night before.

I was partly nervous to meet my biological father, but the larger part of me thought that my meeting him was completely impossible, and so I wasn’t all
that
nervous, because how can you fear impossibility?

Father McNamee hadn’t been acting very stable, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I was pretty sure the idea of meeting my father in Montreal was just the product of Father McNamee’s ongoing battle with madness. This was likely to turn out the same way our rescuing Wendy ended.

I did, however, allow myself to briefly think about the abstract possibility of meeting my father and decided that if this were ever to happen, say, in a parallel universe or something, I should probably be mad at him for leaving us, especially the boy me, who was quite impressionable and likely suffered more without a father than he would have if he had had a father—even a subpar father—and definitely for not giving my mom the fairy tale, because she deserved it; if any woman ever did, it was Mom.

Maybe I should be as angry as Elizabeth was with her mother—theoretically speaking—because what was worse, abandoning your son or making your daughter eat her pet rabbits? A tough call.

But in the real world that is my life, I wasn’t mad.

How could I hate a stranger?

How could I be angry with a man I’d never met?

Max called our room and when I picked up the phone, he said, “We’re ready. What the fuck, hey? Fucking breakfast? My stomach is fucking screaming, hey.”

“Father McNamee is still sleeping,” I whispered.

“Let’s eat without him. There’s a comple-fucking-mentary breakfast downstairs. Muffins and other breakfast items of that fucking nature. But there’s a fucking time limit on that shit, hey. It says so in the fucking brochure they leave next to the bed. Time is of the essence when it comes to breakfast in Cana-fucking-da.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

I wrote Father a note, letting him know where we’d be, so he wouldn’t wake up and be confused, and then Elizabeth, Max, and I had coffee and muffins downstairs in the fancy hotel lobby, sitting on Canadian-red leather seats.

“Today is the big day,” Elizabeth said.

“Cat Fucking Parliament is the big day!” Max said. “Hey!”

I nodded, glanced at the clock hung on the wall, saw it was after ten, and said, “I better make sure Father McNamee is up.”

In the hallway, outside our room, I knocked on the door loudly to let Father know I was coming in, and maybe to wake him up if he hadn’t risen already. Then I entered.

He was still sleeping.

“Father?” I said. “Father, it’s getting late.”

He didn’t wake up, so I shook his shoulder gently—and then it felt like I was suffocating.

Father McNamee was frozen.

It was as if he had turned to rock in the middle of the night, because he was cold and stiff and whiter than the freshly fallen snow outside.

Immediately, the rational part of me knew he was dead.

Part of my brain was sober and straight and functioning just fine.

But the irrational part of me took control and started to shake him more violently, yelling, “Father McNamee, wake up! We’re going to Saint Joseph’s Oratory today! Remember? You promised I’d meet my father in front of Saint Brother André Bessette’s preserved heart! You promised me a miracle! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! This isn’t funny!
Wake up! Father!
”

But he didn’t wake up, and the rational part of my brain still knew he wouldn’t, but the problem was that the rational part was now losing to the irrational part of my mind, and it was beginning to seem like the battle was a lost cause. Rationality was getting slaughtered and was outnumbered ten irrational thoughts to one rational, at least. I began to shake and cry and feel as though I was going to black out and—

Then, Richard Gere, you materialized at that very moment, and I don’t think I would have been able to get through that situation if you hadn’t.

You came.

To rescue me from irrationality.

You came.

You were dressed in the red-and-yellow robe of a Buddhist monk, and your eyes twinkled extra hard.

Bartholomew
, you, Richard Gere, said to me.
It was Father McNamee’s time. This is the way of the universe. Our lives here on earth are transitory. This is all as it should be. Breathe. In. Out. Repeat. In. Out. Repeat.

You demonstrated good breathing techniques here, elongating your spine, but I was too upset to breathe correctly.

“He was supposed to introduce me to my father today! Why would God bring us all the way up here to Montreal with the intention of introducing me to my father if He knew Father McNamee was going to die the night before he was to complete that task? It doesn’t make any sense! This makes no sense whatsoever! Father McNamee must have left a note of some sort outlining what I’m supposed to do next. There must be a clue here that will explain everything.”

I began searching the hotel room.

You will find no note, because there is none
, you said confidently.

“How do you know?”

Richard Gere knows everything about your life, Bartholomew, because Richard Gere lives at the heart of your mind, deep within, at the center of your consciousness.

“I don’t understand,” I said as I continued searching for a note from Father McNamee—going through his suitcase, the drawers of the desk and dresser, running my arms and hands under the bed—and found none. “I don’t understand! Why would God let Father die just a few hours before he was supposed to complete his mission? Before he was to introduce me to my real father? Why would God leave me all alone in Canada?”

You smiled the way Mom used to smile at me when I was a little boy and had asked her the type of question that puzzles children, but to which all adults know the answer—like, why do birds sing or why do trees look most beautiful when they are losing their leaves in the fall or why do we fight wars or why does eating ice cream give you a headache or why do people always laugh at me?

Are you alone? Are you not traveling with others?

I thought about what you were implying—that maybe it was all for a reason—but I didn’t say anything.

Are you familiar with Buddhist koans?
you, Richard Gere, said to me.

“No,” I said, even though I vaguely remember reading something about this at the library once.

In the West, people often mistakenly think of koans as riddles, tests of one’s intellect—something to solve. But a truer interpretation would be that koans are brief stories to meditate on—they have no answer. We cannot “solve” or “understand” these koans any more than we can solve or understand a shooting star or a lion’s roar or the smell of fresh dew on roses or the feeling of warm sand between our toes. We can only ponder all of these things deeply, and revel in the mystery. It is a mistake to think there is a correct answer or solution, but it is good to ponder all the same. The Dalai Lama would agree here. Trust me. He and I are friends.

“What does any of that have to do with Father’s McNamee’s dying just hours before he was supposed to tell me who my biological father is?”

You smiled at me as if I were a child.

Are you asking me to solve the koan? There is no answer, Bartholomew. None. But it is good to reflect upon the question that lives at the heart of your current story. I suspect you will reflect on it for many years, and this will make you wiser—it will enhance your experience of this current reality.

“So you’re saying that this story—what we are involved in right now—is a koan, something to meditate on, but it has no meaning?”

It has great meaning! It just has no answer.

“You’re confusing me!”

No, you are confused completely independent of my influence.

“What am I going to do?”

You are going to call an ambulance, Bartholomew. That is the most rational thing to do at this moment, given the unfortunate circumstances you have inherited. But first, take the money and credit cards out of Father McNamee’s wallet.

“What? Why?”

He wanted you to make this journey. You will need money to complete it. Trust me. This is completely acceptable. Father McNamee would want you to take the money and credit cards he had set aside for this journey and complete it in his honor. Search your heart, and you will discover that what I speak is the truth.

I searched my heart and it agreed with you, Richard Gere.

I saw Father’s wallet on the table.

Do it
, you, Richard Gere, told me, and I did, emptying his wallet, stuffing the money and credit cards into my pockets. And—

I saw something that made my heart leap, but also stunned me into a warm, deep calm.

Now hide the empty wallet in your suitcase so the police don’t see it
, said the voice in my head, but it was no longer yours, Richard Gere.

You were gone.

It wasn’t my mother’s voice or the angry little man’s.

Was it my own?

Regardless, I did as the voice commanded me to do, slipping Father’s wallet into an interior pocket of my suitcase that was somewhat hidden behind a stack of clean white underwear briefs.

Good
, the voice said.
Now call the front desk and tell whomever answers that you need an ambulance sent immediately
.

It took about fifteen minutes—during which I sat calmly on the bed, my mind blank, shocked into submission.

Father McNamee was pronounced dead immediately.

Two large men struggled to put his solid round body on a stretcher, but—with much breath and sweat—they finally got him strapped down, at which point they covered him with a white sheet and took him away.

Next, two local policemen interviewed me in my hotel room. One was tall with a mole on the end of his nose and the other was short with long sideburns. They both had freshly sharpened pencils and spiral-bound notebooks the size of bread slices, in which they scribbled furiously whenever I spoke.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Sideburns said.

“Unfortunately, we need to ask you a few questions,” said the Mole.

“And we apologize in advance if any of the questions seem disrespectful, given the circumstances, but we have to do our job,” Sideburns said.

I nodded.

“What were you doing in Canada with the deceased?” the Mole asked.

“We were on a pilgrimage to Saint Joseph’s Oratory. We were planning to visit Cat Parliament afterward.”

“
Cat Parliament?
” the Mole said, scribbling.

“In Ottawa,” I said.

The cops exchanged a glance.

“Pardon my asking, but is that a peeler joint?” Sideburns said, scribbling.

“What?” I said.

“A . . . um . . . a gentleman’s club. A place where you pay women to take off their clothes. Strippers.”

“No, Cat Parliament’s a place where feral cats can roam free. I think it’s near the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.”

The police looked at each other again while raising their eyebrows and then continued to scribble.

“Were you drinking last night?” Sideburns asked and pointed the eraser on his pencil at the empty whiskey bottles.

“I wasn’t. Father McNamee drank daily.”

“You found him dead this morning? Dead in his bed?”

“Yes.”

“Traveling with anyone else?”

“Max and Elizabeth are in the lobby. They don’t yet know what’s happened.”

“Would you like me to get them for you?” the Mole said.

I looked up at him, not quite sure why he had asked me that.

“You seem to be in shock,” Sideburns said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

I nodded.

That sounded reasonable.

“Max and Elizabeth, you said? Those are the names I should call for?” said the Mole, and when I nodded, he said, “Got it,” and left.

Sideburns walked over to the window and looked out.

“How do you think he died?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Looks like a heart attack, most likely. Maybe alcohol poisoning. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy results for the exact cause of death.”

“Why do you think he died?” I let escape before I could censor myself.

“Come again?”

“Why do you think he died? We were so close. He brought me all this way.”

“I don’t understand,” said the short cop with the sideburns, no longer scribbling my every word into his notebook.

I read his eyes and could tell he was worried, like maybe he was starting to become afraid of me—I’d seen that look many times before—so I didn’t ask any further questions.

“These things are always difficult,” he offered. “Maybe it’s best to leave the bigger questions for another day. A counselor might be better equipped to help you with that sort of thing.”