The Good Luck of Right Now (8 page)

“Why don’t you know about that? Why doesn’t
anyone
know about that?”

“I don’t know. If it’s true, you’d think it would be on the news.”

“It
is
true. You can look it up at the library. On the Internet.”

“You’d think Richard Gere would be promoting that more,” Wendy said, and then laughed. “That’s his thing, right? Tibet?”

I couldn’t believe that she brought up your name at first, even considering Jung’s theory of synchronicity. Her saying those two words stunned me. But then—once her meaning sunk in—the tiny man in my stomach was enraged; he kicked and punched my internal organs.

“You shouldn’t make fun of Richard Gere. He’s a wise and powerful man,” I said. “He’s doing good, important work. You wouldn’t understand. He’s helping people. Many people!”

“Okay, okay,” Wendy said and pulled out my binder from her bag. “I didn’t know you were such a Richard Gere fan. Jeez Louise.”

I wanted to tell her that not merely am I your fan, but you are my confidant. I wanted to tell her about the you-me Richard Gere of pretending, but I knew that it would cause me more trouble than it was worth. Wendy wouldn’t understand our correspondence. Wendy wants me to be a bird. And to go to her support group of age-appropriate people. But birds do not befriend famous movie stars and internationally known humanitarians.

Do not hate Wendy.

It’s not her fault.

She really does want to help me.

She just doesn’t know how, but it’s not her fault.

Wendy is only in her midtwenties—the age I was when I was arrested for letting the undercover cop prostitute rub up against my leg. Nobody knows anything when they are in their midtwenties. Think back to when you were that age, Richard Gere. Remember your time in New York and London when you played the lead in
Grease
? Your reviews were sensational—you were much more accomplished than Wendy is now—but could you have been able to advise me back then? No. So cut Wendy some slack. She’s just a young woman doing her best.

“Can I level with you?” Wendy said.

I nodded.

“I’m a graduate student.”

I blinked at her, waiting for more, and she looked at me like she had said all I needed to understand.

“You know what that means, right?”

I shook my head.

“It means I’m not a licensed therapist yet.”

I looked at her.

“I’m practicing on you. That’s why I don’t charge money.”

“Thank you.”

Wendy laughed in this very excited and surprised way—like I had told a joke. “Listen, I’m all for being honest with people. Going to group therapy would be good for you. Truly. It would help. You might even make an age-appropriate friend—maybe even have your beer at the bar. I really believe you should go. Truly. Truly. Truly. But I’m also
required
to convince you to go. I’m getting graded on this. All of my classmates have convinced their clients to attend group therapy already, and you’re starting to make me look bad. I shouldn’t be saying all this to you; I know that. But would you please just go to group therapy for
my
sake? So they don’t throw me out of my grad class? Would you do it for me? Please?” Wendy put her hands together like she was begging me. The bruise on her wrist jumped out of her sleeve once more, ugly as a cockroach emerging from under a floorboard. The tiny man delivered a swift kick to my kidney. Then Wendy raised her eyebrows and said, “Pretty please?”

“My going to group therapy would help you do well in grad school?” I asked. This seemed to put the idea in a different light—going to group therapy to help Wendy rather than to help myself. I don’t know why this made group therapy more appealing, but it did, maybe because I didn’t need help and didn’t want to waste my time doing something that wouldn’t help anyone.

“It would help
a lot
, actually. More than you realize. I’m not doing very well in school lately.”

“If I go to group therapy, will you do something for me?” I asked, because I suddenly had a good idea.

“Sure! Anything!” Wendy said, practically leaping from her chair.

“Would you maybe give me lessons on how to impress a woman?”

Wendy made a lemon face and said, “What do you mean?”

“I want to know how to approach a woman so that she might want to have a beer at the bar with me.”

“You’re elevating the stakes of your goal, Bartholomew.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s very good!”

She seemed really happy. She is such a child. So easily pleased.

“Can you help me?” I said.

“Who’s the girl?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling under those thin orange eyebrows. I made the heart constellation out of her freckles once very quickly. “I see how it is.”

“I’ve never been on a date before.”

“That’s okay.”

“You don’t think of me as a retard now that I’ve told you I’ve never been on a date?”

“I don’t think of anyone as a
retard
, because that’s a word that shouldn’t ever be used.”

I smiled.

“It’s an age-appropriate goal,” Wendy said. “I’m definitely in.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“How do I make it happen?”

“Why don’t you let me think up a course of action, and we’ll talk about it next week. We’ll fix you up and do our best to get you the girl, Bartholomew. I promise,” Wendy said. She wrote something down on a piece of paper, tore it out, and handed it to me.

Surviving Grief

Monday 8pm

1012 Walnut Street

Third Floor

Tell Arnold I sent you.

“You’ll go?” she said.

I looked at the piece of paper.

Surviving Grief

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

Just then, the front door banged open. Father McNamee was standing there, his face red with cold. “Has our dear Wendy talked you into throwing me out on the streets yet, Bartholomew?” he asked as he charged through the living room.

Wendy took a deep breath—and then she exhaled audibly through her lips. She stood, met Father McNamee at the kitchen entranceway, and said, “Why did you ask me to help Bartholomew if you don’t respect my opinion?”

“I respectfully disagree with your opinion,” Father McNamee said. “But I still respect it very much.”

“I don’t understand what type of game you’re playing here,” Wendy said.

Father McNamee chuckled and winked at me.

“I’m reporting your whereabouts to Father Hachette,” Wendy said.

“I no longer answer to the Catholic Church. I defrocked myself.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on, but I don’t like it! Not one bit!” Wendy yelled.

She punched her way into her floral-pattern trench coat, grabbed her bag off the kitchen table, and then stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

Father McNamee and I looked at each other.

Then Wendy stormed back into the house and said, “You will be at that meeting, right, Bartholomew?”

“What meeting?” Father McNamee said.

“Bartholomew?” Wendy said, ignoring Father McNamee. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said, but didn’t bring up her end of the deal. I didn’t want Father McNamee to know I was trying to woo The Girlbrarian. I don’t know why.

“Good,” Wendy said, and then she stormed out once more.

“She’s feisty,” Father McNamee said.

He reached up, squeezed my shoulder once, and then went into the living room to continue his praying.

I had no idea why Wendy didn’t want Father McNamee to live with me, nor did I understand why Father McNamee had asked Wendy to help me and then blatantly disregarded her opinions.

But I really didn’t want to think about any of that.

I sat in the kitchen trying to hear the birds, but they just wouldn’t sing on that day.

Wendy’s perfume lingered.

Apricot.

Lemon.

Ginger.

What was I going to do next, now that Mom was gone?

I kept thinking about you, Richard Gere.

In the biography that Peter Carrick wrote—on page 17, when he is discussing your relationship with Cindy Crawford, Carrick writes, “He [you, Richard Gere] admitted it was hard for him to make decisions and saw the process as something definite rather than transitory, a situation complicated because of his oppressive tendency to over-analyse.”

When I read that, I knew the you-me of pretending was no accident, because I have always been kept paralyzed by my obsessive thinking, which is why I began playing the you-me Richard Gere game when my mother got sick. When I was you, I didn’t have to think for myself, and this protected me from making mistakes. I wondered if you have ever played such a game, and then it hit me that you are an actor who plays this game all the time, right?

In his book
A Profound Mind
, the Dalai Lama writes, “To change our lives we must first acknowledge that our present situation is not satisfactory.”

It would seem that both Wendy and Father McNamee want me to change my life.

But I wouldn’t say that I am unsatisfied at all, especially since I have you, Richard Gere, to advise me.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil

7

HIS USE OF THE PLURAL PRONOUN MADE ME VERY SUSPICIOUS

Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

There was a knock at the front door the other night, and when I answered, Father Hachette was looking up at me through his round glasses, the white of his priest collar illuminated by the porch light. He said, “I know he’s in there.”

“Who?” I said, because Father McNamee had instructed me to “play dumb” if Father Hachette should come looking for him. The night before, when Father McNamee was very drunk, he called Father Hachette “the one left behind” and “the man with no eyes to see nor ears to hear.”

“I think you know exactly who I mean,” Father Hachette said.

“Sorry,” I said, and tried to shut the door.

“Okay, okay,” Father Hachette said. “Will you at least come outside and speak with me?”

I hesitated for a second, but couldn’t see the harm in speaking with him, so I went outside.

“Cigarette?” Father said to me as he lit up.

“No, thanks.” He knows I don’t smoke.

We both surveyed the street as he took a few puffs. It was cold, so no one was out on the stoops.

“Father McNamee is sick, Bartholomew.”

I immediately pictured the squidlike cancer attacking his brain. But I didn’t say anything, because I knew the probability of knowing two people with brain cancer was unlikely. Still, I couldn’t help having some irrational fear.

“He has bipolar disorder. Always has. But he went off his meds right around the time your mother passed.”

“He doesn’t seem sick,” I said.

“Do you know what bipolar disorder is?” he said, blowing smoke into the night.

“Yes.”

“What is it, then?”

I didn’t speak, because I wasn’t exactly sure. I had a general idea. But I’m not a doctor.

“It’s a chemical imbalance,” Father Hachette said. “Bipolar people sometimes have too much of the happy chemicals in their brain—which makes them feel as though they can do anything. And this can lead to erratic, impulsive, and dangerous behavior.”

I thought about Charles J. Guiteau killing President Garfield.

“These manic upswings are always followed by terrible downswings—fierce depressions. The bipolar person can become suicidal and dangerous. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Father McNamee is not depressed,” I said. “I’ve known him for a long time, and I’ve never seen him dangerously sad.”

“We took care of him when he wasn’t feeling well, Bartholomew. Sent him on retreats. Listened to him rant, made sure he took his meds. It was a great responsibility—and a tiresome one. Often it was more work than any one of us could handle. We had many resources through the church. I say all of this to you because—frankly—I think you’re in over your head. We are many, you are one.”

He was wrong, of course, because I have you, Richard Gere.

“I enjoy Father McNamee’s company,” I said.

“So you admit that he’s living here?” Father Hachette said and then laughed.

“I admit nothing,” I said.

Moron!
the little angry man inside me yelled.

Stay cool
, you, Richard Gere, whispered in my ear, and I imagined I could see you standing next to me. You were translucent, like a ghost. But then you were gone.

A noise came from inside the house—it sounded like heavy footsteps.

Father Hachette turned around, and when I looked at the window, the curtains closed very quickly. Father McNamee had been spying on us, and I thought maybe he wanted Father Hachette to know I was hiding him, because he was not being very secretive.

“Since he’s a grown man and he publicly defrocked himself, legally there is nothing we can do at this point,” Father Hachette said. “But I wanted you to know that when Father McNamee goes into a downswing—
and he most definitely will
—you’re going to need help.”

I nodded because that was the easiest thing to do.

“He’ll see rain when there’s only sun. He’ll become suspicious of people. He’ll be unbelievably gloomy and will start to yell at you, twist your own thoughts. That’s when you’ll know you’re really in over your head.”

“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t believe Father Hachette.

“I understand why you would be attracted to Father McNamee. His passion can be beautiful,” Father Hachette said. “Extremely beautiful. John the Baptist beautiful. Elijah beautiful even.”

“Beautiful?”

“Incredibly so. We’ve all been seduced by it over the years. Sometimes it even seems divine. And he can be quite prophetic—uncannily prophetic. We’ve all been attracted to his passion—pulled in.”

I remembered Father McNamee’s eyes sucking at me like whirlpools.

“Any questions, Bartholomew? This is a lot for you to swallow, I imagine.”

“Do you think God has stopped talking to Father McNamee?” I asked. “Is that why he left the church?”

“God speaks to all of us, but He says more to some than others.” Father Hachette flicked his cigarette butt onto the sidewalk and patted my chest again, like I was a Great Dane. “I’ve said all I needed to. You know where to find me, day or night. Right down the street at Saint Gabriel’s. Tell Father McNamee we miss him, okay?”