This Magnificent Desolation (8 page)

They change sides and Duncan steps up to the plate, scrapes the
dirt with his bat, and stares out at Billy. Billy is wild with his pitches and most of the kids are afraid of getting hit by him, even though Father Toibin has warned him to slow it down and take it easy, and they stand way outside the box when they come to bat; Duncan has already struck out twice against him, chasing balls spinning crazily downward into the dirt. This time, though, he wills himself to get as close as he can to the plate and to have patience. He whispers to himself: If it's low, let it go.

Billy throws the baseball from an exaggerated windup and Duncan watches its dirt-sullied cover and its red stitches as it revolves slowly through the air, growing larger and larger like something the astronauts might see from their windows as they hurtled through space in their orbit about the moon. Duncan brings his arms forward, uncorks his weight from his back leg and through his twisting hips like Ted Williams. He sees the ball strike the bat, feels the pleasing tremor in his hands, and then it is gone, past the infield and rising high, high above Julie's head. Julie throws her glove up into the air as it passes but the baseball is still climbing into the sky and she turns to follow the other children's gaze, watching as the baseball rises higher and higher until it is merely a white pinprick in the sky, visible only because of the gray cloud beyond it. At the point at which the height of its arc seems imminent and its trajectory will curve and the baseball will fall back to earth, it continues, shooting upward into those low churning clouds and then rising beyond their ability to see, and is gone.

The children stand, mouths agape, looking up at the sky. A breeze pushes at their shirts and jeans. A spattering of warm raindrops spatter their upturned faces and then there is heat as sunlight flickers in bright splinters from the clouds churning toward the east. The wind sounds in Duncan's ears like waves upon a beach. When he moves his neck, the muscles and tendons creak and crack. Within the clouds strange trembling, violent thrustings, seem to occur—gray shapes flitting back and forth, the vague suggestion of limbs, arms
and legs and wings, hands, and of faces pressing and pushing and contorting against the body of the clouds themselves, as if they were merely diaphanous thin-skinned bellies.

As the clouds move, they pass between shadow and light. Disgusted, Billy spits into the dirt and steps off the mound. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his Russian wool cap, tugs it roughly down over his wrinkled head. Julie's black hair flows back from her neck and whips about her thin neck. When she looks at Duncan, questioningly, hair finds its way across her eyes and into her open mouth. Duncan shrugs and turns, grinning, as the children from his team clap and pat him on the back.

Together the children pick up baseball mitts and bats, pull sweatshirts over sweat-dampened T-shirts, and, talking among themselves, allow Father Toibin to march them in staggered columns back to the Home. A young novitiate with olive skin and the dark shadow of stubble on his cheeks and jaw accompanies Duncan, Billy, and Julie down the hill. We must have lost the ball in the sun, he says. Hell of a hit, Duncan.

Duncan knows that they didn't lose the ball in the sun, but he smiles anyway and says thank you. From their height on the hill he looks at the fields falling away so steeply below them to the Home that they—all of them—might have been tumbling from the clouds. Like angels.

In Father Toibin's office Duncan sits in the large leather-backed chair and looks at the way the light gleams off the rosary beads Father Toibin fingers in his hands. The large sleeves of his hemp-brown robe work their way forward, covering his hands, and he grunts, rolls the sleeves up, pushes them back to his elbows. His forearms are thin, freckled, and thick-tendoned, as Duncan imagines a miner's would be, someone who ate little and yet worked hard: sinew and muscle tightly bound to the bone, a hard, angular body shaped by malnutrition, wasted lungs, and grueling, contorted working spaces. When Father Toibin holds things, the tendons clench and unclench, rise up on his thin arms.

It is a large, high-ceilinged, sparsely decorated room. At the front of it, high upon the pale terra-cotta wall, a wooden cross blackened with age, which, like a sundial, sunlight moves across throughout the day. A beetle knocks in the wall and the room suddenly seems very small.

Are you okay, Duncan? Father Toibin asks, and Duncan nods, looks back down to the letters in his hands and reads them again, as if he might find something more in them. There are eight in all, written on blue-lined stationery. The older ones have yellowed slightly, and the envelopes he pulls them from are dry and translucent. The paper smells of bourbon and stale cigarette smoke and there is a perfume also that in the manner of camphor, storax, and cascarilla—the burnt and smoking incense of Mass—he finds comforting, and yet these are smells that he cannot associate with the image of the woman he has in his head.

His mother has very little to say other than to ask how he is and at other times merely to note that a small check is enclosed and that she will send more when she can. In one of the oldest letters, there's an article from
Opera
magazine praising one of her performances, but no picture of her, and on the bottom, scribbled in the margin in perfect cursive:
So that you know who I was, love, Maggie
. Duncan tries to fight his disappointment and frustration but feels it pressing at him, falling leaden in his stomach and leaving it hollowed-out. Father Toibin was right in telling him not to have false hope or expectation, but that doesn't make it any easier. He wants to smile and assure Father Toibin that everything is fine, that it is exactly as he said it would be, and now he can move on.

As if sensing this, Father Toibin looks at him and Duncan sits up straight in the chair and smiles, and though it is forced—he feels on the verge of crying—he hopes he can convince Father Toibin otherwise.

Thank you, he says and pauses briefly, waits for the emotion filling his throat to pass. Thank you for showing me her letters.

What is it, Duncan? I know this is hard. What is it you're not letting me see?

Duncan stares at the strange, unfamiliar handprint, at her name, which until this moment he has never known, and the place where she once lived, had lived for years without him.

Maggie Bright

34 Divisadero Street

San Francisco, CA 94114

Nothing, he says. He shakes his head, but then has to lower it so that Father Toibin can't see his face and then Father Toibin is at his side and he rests his head against his shoulder and lets the tears come, for somehow now it does feel inevitable and irresolute: He has no power to alter or change the present or the past. His mother left him here for a reason, because she no longer wanted him, and nothing in the world, not prayers—no matter how much he prayed—or hope, would ever change that.

After Saturday collation the Brothers direct the children to clear the table and wash and dry their plates in the kitchen sink. There is the clatter of tin cups and plates and the thumping bilge pumping of children submerging hollow vessels in the basin. The children and Brothers move about in seeming bedlam, each driven by the instinct of the ritual and the night to come: the voiding of bowels and bladders, the washing of face and brushing of teeth, the farewell to friends until morning, and the hurdle into cold, dank beds; the preparation of the priests' meals in the refectory, the first bell for the Hours of the Holy Office, and, at last, solitude for divine reading and prayer prior to Vigil in the deep leagues of the night that descend upon the plains. Pretending to be industrious—Duncan scrapes the remains of his apple crisp into a slop bucket to give to the local farmer's sow and her piglets while Julie makes a show of collecting a handful of cutlery—they slowly make their way into the Brothers'
lounge, hide behind the couch, and wait for Brother Canice to arrive and turn the television to
The Movie of the Week
.

Julie is drawing in her pad and Duncan is rereading Father Toibin's dog-eared copy of
The Collected Works of Douglas Graham Purdy: Tales of Horror and the Macabre.
Dishes are clattering in the dining hall and from the chapel comes the sound of kneelers banging against the gouged and scarred pew backs. There is sound of glass shattering and sandaled feet running on carpet. A Brother hollers and Duncan hears more breaking glass. Listening, Julie is suddenly breathless, her body rigid. She grasps Duncan's hand, pulls him to his feet.

Quick, Duncan. It's Billy.

In Father Toibin's office chairs lie overturned, and a decapitated bust of Brother Dianmianco rests, as if placed there, against the baseboard. A hole in the wall reveals the plaster lathes, pale as exposed ribs. Burly Brother Brennan and two male nurses have surrounded Billy, who is brandishing a wickedly gleaming candelabra. The candlesticks are scattered across the floor. Above one of the nurses' brows a cut bleeds profusely.

The room is cold. Through a smashed window the wind blows: white lace curtains flutter and flap loudly against the window frame.

Fuckshit, mother fuck you! Billy shouts. I'm not going to St. Paul. I'm not going to fucking St. Paul!

The Brother and the nurses circle Billy, and when they come too close, he swings the candelabra and hollers all the louder and Duncan imagines his voice echoing out into the night and carrying all the way to Stockholdt. Fuck you, Billy says and swings the candelabra at a nurse who steps toward him. Fuck you, Billy says, you ass-wipe. You pissing asswipe fuck SON OF A BITCH!

The nurse with the cut over his brow is intent on getting Billy now, and the others seem tired and eager to have this over with. Duncan knows they no longer see a small, sick boy before them, and it is just a matter of time before they rush him. If they grab him, they'll disconnect his shoulder, they'll snap his collarbone, they'll
fracture his arm, they'll crack his ribs and shatter his spine; the bone shards will pierce his lungs and his heart: He'll implode. They'll break him.

Duncan imagines all the small, fragile, tender bones of which Billy's body is made, shattering into a thousand crystalline pieces and, in the reverse of the glass window, exploding out into the night and scattering upon the snow.

Don't touch him, Duncan screams. You'll hurt him!

Father Toibin holds Duncan tightly as the Brother and two nurses rush Billy. It's all right, Duncan, Father Toibin says. It's all right. They know to be gentle.

Billy swings the candelabra and it slips from his hands and arcs, rotating through the air like a glittering guillotine, gleaming bronze, before striking the Brother, who utters a muffled grunt and wraps Billy up in his arms, and then all four tumble to the floor with such violence that the boards shudder with the impact.

Standing in the shadows beyond Billy's bed, in the Home's hospice, Duncan listens to the furtive noises of the night all around him, the creaks and groans and abrupt muffled cracks as stone and wood rises, settles, and rises once more, as if they are aboard some great galleon tossed upon the sea. The wind sings in the eaves and skitters upon the roof, hurling rain or hail. Trees scrape the glass and tap the leaded panes as if to gain admittance.

At times, Billy cries out in the night, and Duncan goes to his bedside and strokes his brow softly until he sinks into a deeper sleep, and then Duncan returns to a dark angle of the room, and waits and watches.

A young novitiate walks the hallways, and as he makes his rounds—dimming lights, attending to a whimpering boy or girl, scolding perhaps another who refuses to sleep and is disturbing the others—he always stops by Billy's bed, which is the closest to the doors and so is
always cast in a meager slant of light. And Duncan watches the silhouette of the novitiate as he stands over Billy, leans an ear to Billy's face and then a hand tenderly upon his belly to make sure that Billy is breathing.

When the novitiate is gone, Duncan sinks against the wall, pulls his blanket about his waist, and watches through the night, counting the bells until dawn. In this way he makes sure that nothing can touch Billy. He does this for nights, then weeks, losing sleep, and gradually he understands the helplessness that parents must feel when they come to the unacceptable yet undeniable realization that they cannot protect their children despite their best efforts. And that in the end, everything is in God's hands. Perhaps some parents realize this at the moment of their child's birth and immediately flee. The overwhelming reality of heartbreak and loss is simply too much to consider yet alone bear.

Tonight Billy has been tossing in his sleep, calling out the names of people, doctors perhaps from St. Paul, or family and friends that he remembers. A nurse comes shortly after Vigil has begun and gives him a sedative. From his corner in the shadows, Duncan listens, and when Billy is calm and his breathing has deepened, Duncan makes his way to the bed. He must tell Billy something that he's been putting off but that he's known he would do ever since Father Toibin showed him his dead mother's letters.

For a moment he sits on the edge of the mattress and looks at him. I'm leaving, he whispers to Billy, who is now snoring slightly. The dim lamp flickers and casts a soft, silvery light along the edge of his pajamas. Duncan touches Billy's shoulder and stares at the back of his head, his small, wrinkled cauliflower ears.

I may be gone a while, but don't worry, I'll come back—I promise. Please tell Julie goodbye for me. And look after her until I get back.

Duncan pauses, trying to think of something else to say. A pleasant heat pulses from the pipes; children sigh and turn contently in
their sleep. For a moment he considers crawling back into his bed. His head begins to nod and he closes his eyes, and then a hoarse, cotton-thick sobbing from beneath the blankets startles him awake.