The Good Luck of Right Now (25 page)

“Bless
you
!” a younger-looking nun yelled back, and then almost all of them waved.

“Father McNamee whispered the truth from beyond the grave,” I said to Max and Elizabeth.

“Is this a Catholic thing?” Elizabeth said.

I laughed, and suddenly I felt light—like I had let go of a huge dark secret hidden inside of me for so, so very long.

I was still scared about the future—but I felt sort of free too, because the greatest mystery of my life was no more.

I wondered if I’d been subconsciously hiding the fact that I had known all along, maybe to protect Father McNamee. Even as a young boy I would have understood that Father’s fathering me would cause a major scandal in our parish, and would have prevented Father McNamee from doing all the good he’d done as a priest since I was born—almost four entire decades of altruistic deeds he was able to do because Mom kept his secret. Maybe I was part of the whole cover-up too; maybe I just played along, pretending I didn’t know, when really I did. I’m sure Mom would have gladly played this game with me—and, come to think of it, she did, telling me that my father had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, and therefore was a Catholic martyr.

We had all played the game together.

“Maybe it’s a life thing,” I said to Elizabeth, and then I led them into Saint Joseph’s Oratory.

We took several escalators up to the main cathedral, called the basilica, which was gigantic and felt a little like heaven, if heaven were a modern-style cathedral.

“It looks like the inside of a fucking spaceship,” Max whispered, and I could see what he meant, because the concrete rose up into great arches and domes, and there was even a decorative UFO-looking silver ring suspended over the altar.

I looked over at Elizabeth, and her fists were clenched.

There were also wooden carvings of all the disciples, depicted as long, stretched-out giants—like what you might see reflected in a fun-house mirror, only wearing robes and the hairstyles of biblical times. We found my namesake Bartholomew quite easily, although he is labeled by his other name, Nathaniel. He is holding some sort of leaf, and his left index and middle fingers make the peace sign, the fingertips of which rest on his chin.

“These fuckers look like aliens,” Max whispered, and I had to agree, as they were elongated and skinny and otherworldly looking. “What the fuck does it mean? The disciples of Jesus carved to look like giant fucking aliens?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Father McNamee would have known,” Elizabeth said.

“Perhaps,” I whispered, and then we gazed at the other apostles, who all looked stern and stretched and wooden and dusty and even alien.

Yes, alien indeed.

I wondered how many prayers had been sent up from this building—up to heaven like we beam information up to our satellites now, when we are in our cars and need directions.

We wandered out of the basilica, down escalators, and into a great hallway of candles where you could pay money to light one for many various reasons, sending prayers up to Saint Joseph.

I made the requested donation, lit a white candle in a red glass cup for Father McNamee, and prayed to Saint Joseph, asking him to put in a good word with Saint Peter, petitioning to let Father through the pearly gates and into heaven, even though he had sex with my mother while he was a priest, drank himself to death, and never told me he was my father. Even still, he helped many members of our church over the years—and many nonmembers too.

Father McNamee was a good man
, I prayed to Saint Joseph, and meant it too.

So many other people and pilgrims were lighting candles and praying; some were crying. It felt like a holy place, and even Max refrained from cursing for a time, which I interpreted as a great sign of respect.

We walked by walls on which hung hundreds of wooden crutches and canes donated by people who had supposedly been healed by Saint Brother André, a simple uneducated doorman who had dedicated his life to Saint Joseph and inexplicably became a miracle worker.

And then we went to Saint Brother André’s final resting place.

His body is entombed in a shiny black marble box that sits under a brick archway. There is a painting of a red cross on the wall between the arch and the sarcophagus. In Latin, an inscription reads: “Poor, Obedient, Humble Servant of God.”

But Saint Brother André’s heart was not there.

I asked another pilgrim where I could see the heart, and she pointed me toward an information booth. The man there showed me where to go on a map that cost me two Canadian dollars.

We took another escalator up and climbed a flight of stairs to a room of dioramas—Brother André’s bedroom, a mannequin of him standing in his office, a mannequin of him standing next to a chair, all behind glass.

“He was so short,” Elizabeth said. “It’s hard to believe such a fragile-looking man is responsible for all this.”

“Yes,” I said in full agreement. Saint Brother André didn’t look like the type of man who accomplishes great things. He really didn’t. He looked nothing like you, Richard Gere.

And then—when we turned around—we saw it.

The very place Father McNamee wanted me to go.

Where Father McNamee first heard the voice of God.

Opposite the dioramas was what looked like a vault fenced off by iron. Behind the gate stood a gray pillar, on top of which sat a square glass box, lined with ornately carved stone. There was a human heart inside this box. The lighting inside the vault was red, so it looked like you were peering inside a giant’s chest—a giant wearing a great breastplate of armor that opened to reveal a heart encased in glass.

“What the fuck, hey?” Max said, ending his run of non-cursing.

“Do you think it’s real?” Elizabeth whispered.

“I do,” I said.

“Who the fuck cut it out, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to think about the act of cutting a human heart out of a dead body—trying not to think about Charles J. Guiteau’s dissected brain, preserved forever at the Mütter Museum.

“What do you think the aliens would think if they came down and saw this human heart on display?” I asked Elizabeth. “If they saw so many people worshipping around Saint Brother André’s heart, lighting candles and praying to Saint Joseph?”

Elizabeth didn’t answer, but squeezed my biceps through my coat and walked away.

Max nodded at me and followed his sister.

It was almost as if they knew I needed to be alone—and I understood this just as soon as they left me.

I stood and stared at Saint Brother André’s heart for a long time, wondering who he had been.

They say a million people came to his funeral and walked past his casket in the freezing cold of Canadian winter.

How did that happen?

What separates men like him from people like Max, Elizabeth, and me?

From the rest of the world?

Father McNamee would have said Brother André had faith—he just believed more than other people.

And I wondered if faith were not a form of pretending.

I also wondered what Father McNamee would have said if he were standing there at that moment with me, in front of Brother André’s heart—the place where he first heard his calling.

Would he have asked my forgiveness?

Would he have said he was sorry?

Would he have professed his love for me—his only son? Did he leave the church to finally claim me as a son and be my dad?

I’d never get the answers to these questions now, but standing there gazing at the heart of a miracle worker, I started to feel like it didn’t matter—that I was going to be okay somehow, in spite of how uprooted my life had become.

I found Max and Elizabeth on a large balcony of sorts, looking out over Montreal, which was breathtaking, and not just because it was cold outside—cold enough to freeze you from the inside of your lungs out to your fingers and toes.

“Thanks for coming here with me,” I said to Max and Elizabeth.

“No fucking problem,” Max said.

Elizabeth smiled politely.

Then we looked out over snow-covered Montreal for another few minutes as our breath slipped in and out of us.

It kind of felt like we were supposed to be there in that time and place—almost like it was predestined. It just felt right somehow.

I don’t know.

But maybe.

I thought about it and decided that I wasn’t going to attempt to answer life’s greater mysteries—especially given all I was dealing with presently—and so I figured it best to stick with the plan.

“Let’s go to Cat Parliament,” I said.

“Cat Fucking Parliament!” Max said, and then went back inside so he could exit the Oratory and hop into the Ford Focus.

“We can stay here as long as you’d like, Bartholomew,” Elizabeth said. “If you need more time—”

“I’m ready to go,” I said.

Elizabeth did something unexpected—she pulled a silver chain out of her coat pocket and put it around my neck.

“Another tektite necklace to protect me from aliens?” I asked.

“No. It’s a Saint Brother André medal I purchased in the gift shop,” she said, and then walked away.

I picked up the medal off my coat and studied it—Saint Brother André’s tiny wrinkled face etched in silver.

I missed Father McNamee, but I knew he’d want me to carry on the best I could—I was certain of that.

And maybe that good moment on the oratory balcony with Elizabeth was an inheritance of sorts.

It was a nice thought.

So I ran after Elizabeth—feeling more alive than I have ever felt in my whole life—and we headed for Ottawa in the Ford Focus.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil

16

I UNDERSTOOD OUR FORTUNE COOKIE MESSAGES BETTER THAN I HAD ORIGINALLY THOUGHT

Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

While sitting in the backseat of the Ford Focus, listening to the robotic woman navigate and watching the flat, white, empty land pass by, I became very tired—too tired to think about all that had happened, let alone try to make sense of any of it.

Somehow—even though Max kept yelling, “Cat Fucking Parliament!” intermittently—I fell asleep.

In my dream, I woke up and I was in my bedroom, in Mom’s house.

Mom and Father McNamee were standing next to my bed, holding hands.

“Is this a dream?” I said to them.

But they only smiled back, looking extremely proud.

“Are you two together in heaven?”

They just kept smiling.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” I said. “Please. Say something. Let me know that you’re okay, at least. Give me a sign.”

Mom pulled Father McNamee in a little closer, they looked each other in the eyes, and then they simply blinked out of existence.

“
Mom?
” I yelled, and tried to get out of my bed, only to find that I couldn’t. The blanket was strapping me down, binding my torso, wrapping me like a giant anaconda—I couldn’t even free my arms.
“Father?”

And then I was being shaken, so I opened my eyes and saw Max looking back at me from the passenger seat of the Ford Focus.

“What the fuck, hey?”

“You were dreaming,” Elizabeth said as she drove. “You were yelling.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and adjusted my seat belt.

“Elizabeth told me to fucking wake you up.”

“Thank you.”

No one said anything else, and I looked at my reflection in the window.

I felt so empty all of a sudden, so lonely—and I felt guilty, like maybe I hadn’t been a good enough son to Mom or Father McNamee, like I should have told them I loved them more when they were here, or I should have done more things—or maybe just
one
thing—to make them proud. And I wondered if my being a fat, unemployed, friendless man made them feel terrible about themselves, like their love had created this monster of a son who embarrassed them endlessly. The worst thought was this: Even if I managed to do something worthwhile with my life in the future, even if the miraculous occurred and I finally got my act together in some small way, Mom and Father McNamee were no longer around to see it. They had died knowing the Bartholomew of the past, and I was not happy with the Bartholomew of the past—not one bit.

Also, now that I knew Father McNamee’s first name was Richard, that I had misinterpreted Mom’s calling me by your first name, that Richard was an identity double entendre of sorts—at least in my life—I was finding it harder and harder to pretend that you, Richard Gere, were my friend and confidant. And so even though I am still writing you letters, I feel as though I am now writing to a dead person or a figment of my imagination—a fictional character—which also makes me feel like a gigantic moron.

Writing you and talking with you when you appeared to me felt so right before that now it feels doubly bad—knowing that it was all fake, that I had been mistaken.

Regardless of all that, I feel like I should tell you the rest of the story, maybe just because I need to tell
someone
.

When we arrived in Ottawa, we asked the GPS system to find us a hotel, and she was able to do that no problem.

There was a valet service, and we used it, so they gave Elizabeth a small piece of paper in return for the keys to the Ford Focus.

Elizabeth told me I’d have to use my emergency credit card that Mom had given me long ago, because the receptionist might ask for my passport when we checked in at the desk, and it would need to match the name on the credit card, which seemed logical, so I did as she suggested. We rented one room for the three of us and said we’d stay two nights. The whole time Max paced behind us, because he was so eager to go to Cat Parliament in the morning that he had planned to go to bed as soon as possible so that the night would pass more quickly.

“You’re all set, Mr. Neil,” the receptionist said, and then handed me two rectangular room keys.

We keyed into our room on the fourth floor, and Max immediately began to get ready for bed by changing into his PJs—which were dotted with cat silhouettes and had these words blocked in red across the chest:
THE CAT’S PAJAMAS
—brushing his teeth, washing his face, and then diving into the bed closest to the widows. “Time to fucking sleep,” he said.