The Opposite of Hallelujah (19 page)

“You went to church?” I asked, taken aback.

“I had to go sooner or later.” She sighed. There was clearly more to the story, but I didn’t feel like it was my place to ask. “He looked pretty sick.”

“I’m sure he was.” It was my turn to sigh. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Really?” Hannah looked straight at me now. “It seemed like he was.”

“Well, maybe. We haven’t talked about it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” I stared at her. There was so little in her face for me to see. I’d never found someone as inaccessible as Hannah. Did she want Pawel to be my boyfriend? Did she care one way or the other? I couldn’t tell. “Is that it?”

Hannah nodded. “I just wanted to let you know.”

“That Pawel was hungover this morning?”

“That he was well enough to go to Mass.” Hannah smiled her enigmatic smile and left the room.

Pawel called me after church. It was wonderful to hear his voice; I’d started to convince myself that the previous night had been just a drunken hallucination, brought on by too much beer and too much wanting.

“So how are you feeling?” I asked after the usual pleasantries.

“Like death,” Pawel groaned. “And your family saw me in church! Insult to injury.”

“Did they talk to you?” I asked, horrified.

“Your sister did,” Pawel told me. “In the vestibule, while your parents were talking to the priest.” I wondered if it was Father Bob. There were a couple more priests at St. Robert’s, including one I called Father Boring; he always seemed to do the holiday Masses, and as soon as the homily started I could feel my eyes begin to
droop. I couldn’t help it; it was a Pavlov’s dog–style reaction.

“God, I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. She’s nice. It was weird, because all I know about her is that she was cool enough to drive us home at two in the morning and not tell your parents about it,” Pawel said. “And that she was in the Peace Corps.”

My chest tightened up. “Did she … talk about that at all?”

“Nope, didn’t come up. Would it be okay if I asked her about it sometime? You know, once the gut-wrenching humiliation of last night wears off.”

“So in, like, two or three years?” I asked, sidestepping the question.

“I was pretty wasted, huh?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “But I wouldn’t worry about it so much. Everybody was pretty wasted.”

“I’m glad I kissed you before we played flip cup,” Pawel said.

“Oh, did that happen?” I teased.

“Ha-ha, very funny.”

“It’s kind of hard to hear you,” I said.

“Because I’ve buried my head into the pillow and I’m not moving until it stops pounding, which could be never,” Pawel moaned.

“So what did you and Hannah talk about?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“She just asked how I was doing,” Pawel said. “It was mostly ‘hi, how are yous.’ She seemed kind of …” He didn’t finish the thought.

“Kind of what?” I asked.

“Awkward. I figured that was just because what do you say to your little sister’s boyfriend after carting his ass home piss drunk at dawn?”

Boyfriend
. “Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. Maybe I should’ve reassured him that Hannah was always a little awkward, regardless of the situation, but that just would’ve invited more questions.

“That was a test, by the way,” Pawel told me.

“What was?”

“I called myself your boyfriend and you didn’t flinch.”

“How do you know I didn’t?” I said. “You can’t see me.”

“I can tell,” he said.

“Was I supposed to flinch?” I asked.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t,” he said.

“Then I passed?”

“You did. A-plus, Carolina Mitchell. Top of the class.”

“You want to be my boyfriend?” I confirmed.

Pawel’s voice got quiet. “I do. Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely.”

Dear St. Catherine
,

When I went to confession this week, I told the priest everything about Sabra. It isn’t like he doesn’t know, because everybody knows. It was in the paper and everybody at school was talking about it, the teachers and the parents and the students. God knows. He was there with us—at least, I hope he was. Everybody knows. But it took me six months to go to confession, which I know makes me a coward. I’ve been carrying this sin around on my shoulders and I was afraid to tell the truth. Why is it so hard to admit to something you’ve done if there’s nobody left to tell?

It was Father Dawson in the confessional on Saturday. I hadn’t taken confession since my first confession in fourth grade, so I didn’t remember how to do it. I asked Mom to drive me to church specially, and at first it made her worried, I think. She asked me to please talk to her first, so I told her it had to do with Sabra, and she didn’t ask any more questions. The therapist in the church office, Mrs. Lang, says that no matter what, I should always be encouraged to talk about Sabra, although this is the first time I’ve really wanted to. Mom drove me to church and waited in the car, like I asked. She wanted to come inside with me, but I asked her not to
.

Father Dawson isn’t a priest I know personally. He’s very old and usually just stays at the rectory, but I guess he decided to hear confession. It doesn’t take very much work, maybe it’s good for him because he gets to be helpful but all he has to do is sit and listen. So I confessed to him and he said the strangest thing. He said, “Child, you don’t need any absolution. Go home and thank God for your health and pray for the soul of your friend.”

I told him that I needed a penance and he refused to give me one. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. I didn’t want to correct him, because you don’t correct a priest. So I just thanked him and left the confessional. Mom was sitting in the pew right outside, not close enough to listen in. When she saw me, she smiled and told me that she had her own confessing to do, could I please wait for her in the vestibule? So I did. Then we drove home together, and I didn’t ask her what she had confessed, and she didn’t ask me. I wonder if she got a penance
.

Sabra
. That name again. This letter had been more illuminating than all the ones that had come before it. Clearly, Sabra had been a friend of Hannah’s, and she had died. It seemed like Hannah held herself responsible, but the priest had told her it wasn’t her fault. So which was it?

I went looking for my parents and found them in the kitchen, working on dinner; Mom was wrist-deep
in hamburger meat and Dad was at the sink, peeling potatoes.

“Meat loaf for dinner,” Mom said, patting and molding the pile of hamburger. “Can you preheat the oven to three-fifty, please?”

“Sure.” I set the temperature on the oven and then went to the fridge for a soda. “Can I ask you guys a question?”

“Of course,” she said, placing the meat loaf into the pan she also used to make banana bread, and going over to the sink to wash her hands, bumping Dad aside with her hip.

“What’s up?” Dad asked, stacking the peeled potatoes into a pyramid.

“Who’s Sabra?”

I saw Mom’s shoulders tighten up. She didn’t turn to look at me right away, just shut the water off, shook her hands free of droplets, and wiped them dry on a kitchen towel. I saw Dad dart a quick glance at her face, then focus all his concentration on the potato pyramid, as if he hadn’t heard me at all.

Finally, Mom faced me. “How do you know about that?” she asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “I want to know.”

“You should really ask Hannah,” she said, going to the fridge and getting out a bag of fresh green beans. She dumped them onto the large glass cutting board
and started snapping off the ends, ferociously, as if they’d committed some heinous crime. Dad went back to his peeling, pretending not to listen. “That’s her story to tell.”

“I want you to tell me.”

“I really can’t, sweetie,” she said, her voice wavering. “Hannah would be upset if she found out you heard it from me first.”

“Why?” I couldn’t ask Hannah without telling her how I knew to ask in the first place, and I was sure that the breach of privacy wouldn’t sit well with her. Better to learn from Mom and Dad and never have to discuss it with Hannah at all.

“It’s a very sensitive topic,” Mom said. “We haven’t talked about it since before Hannah was in high school.”

“Do you think it has something to do with … you know.” I waved my hand euphemistically, and it was a testament to how much we all had to tiptoe around the subject of Hannah’s vocation that my mother got what I was saying immediately.

“I don’t know about that. It was a long time ago,” Mom reminded me. “Hannah has always been a very pious young woman. I hardly think …” She let the words die on her lips and hesitated, as if she was really thinking about it for the first time. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “You could ask her that, too.”

“Dad?” I asked in my sweetest voice. My father had always been the soft touch of the family. For the first time
since I entered the room, he turned to me and opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something but did not yet know what.

“Evan!” Mom’s tone was sharp and unyielding.

Dad shook his head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Your mom’s right.”

“Okay. Fine.” I had to drop it now. Mom looked so sad and adrift I knew I couldn’t press harder without hurting her. “Do you need help with something?”

Mom shook her head. “No, honey. We’re all set in here. I’m just going to sit in the family room and watch some TV while the meat loaf cooks.”

“I’ll watch with you,” I said, walking over and putting my arm around her shoulders. “Is there anything good on?”

Later, in my bedroom, I cracked open my laptop and pulled up Google, then typed the only things I knew about the situation into the search box.

SABRA MEMORIAL DEAD MAPLE GROVE ILLINOIS ST. ROBERT’S

To my complete and total frustration, nothing came up that was in any way illuminating. There was a Wikipedia article about a massacre in Beirut (not it), an
alumni directory for the comparative studies department at Ohio State (not it), and a list of scholarship recipients for a society devoted to radio personalities (definitely
not
it). Sabra wasn’t a common name, but nothing I typed in to try to clarify the situation (even my own sister’s name) helped bring up anything even remotely related to whatever had happened to inspire my sister to write those letters back in 1997.

I shut my laptop in annoyance after accepting that nothing on the Internet could help me. It wasn’t a total surprise; most of the local newspapers didn’t even have online article archives that went back further than the year 2000, ditto with obituaries and memorial notices. But I couldn’t believe there wasn’t
anything
.

I was too nervous to ask Hannah about it; I didn’t want her to know that I had been going through her things, secretly investigating a part of her life that she obviously wanted kept private. So I did the only thing I could think of: I looked for another letter, and found one, this time scribbled on half a piece of loose-leaf binder paper that was torn at the bottom.