The Most Dangerous Thing

D oris gave Go-Go the spare room when he started wetting the bed last fall. Tim Junior raised a stink, of course, and Sean took his side, but she stood up to them, said it made sense because Go-Go has the earlier bedtime. It was odd because bed-wetting was never Go-Go’s problem as a toddler, if only because she was too tired to care much by the time he was born and her very nonchalance succeeded where all her effort never had. Wear diapers the rest of your life if that’s what you want, she told him once, but when you learn how to tie your shoes, you can change your own pants . At his own initiative, Go-Go was completely potty-trained at age two, a feat neither older brother could claim.

It may be his only accomplishment, Doris thinks as she gathers up the sheets one weekday morning. No one else in the household knows about Go-Go’s problem. She doesn’t want his brothers to have any more ammunition for teasing. As for his father- she can’t bear to think what he will do to the boy if he finds out. So no one knows except Doris. At this point, Doris isn’t sure if even Go-Go realizes he’s wetting the bed up to four times a week. Why would he? She does everything possible to minimize, conceal, the problem. There is a plastic mattress pad, at no risk of being discovered, since no one else in this household would ever strip his own bed, much less wash another person’s sheets. She checks Go- Go’s bed every morning as soon as the house is empty, washing the sheets if necessary, often doing all the household linens for cover.

Thank goodness they have a washer-dryer in this house. For the first six years of her marriage, they lived in a brick town house without any laundry facilities and only one bathroom. It was hard, especially after Sean was born. What if she had actually given birth to all the children that she and Tim Senior had conceived? She would have eight children now. They never could have afforded that. Did God know? Was that why God took her children? And of all the children God took, why had he given her Go-Go? Didn’t she deserve a sweet baby, a well-behaved little girl, someone who might take her side from time to time? She had prayed to St. Gerard for such a baby. Instead, she got Go-Go, and no one, not even his mother, could consider Go-Go an answer to a prayer. Still, for all his exhausting craziness, he was sort of sweet, too, the only one of her boys who liked to be cuddled and held. That is, he liked to be cuddled and held until his brothers teased him out of it.

Now Go-Go is all sour, no sweet. Crazy, sullen, sarcastic, more destructive than ever, at least at home. Strangely, his behavior at school seems to be getting marginally better, if not his grades. There is a new priest, Father Andrew from Boston, and he seems to think Go-Go is a good kid at heart. “High-spirited, but wasn’t I the same as a boy?” he asks in his Boston accent. Doris thinks Father Andrew is very good-looking. And smart. She almost wishes he were more worried about Go-Go, which would entail meetings at the school, with Father talking to her in that wonderful voice. He is so masculine . He risks the little kindnesses and sentiments that Tim Senior never attempts. Once, when Doris was arriving at St. Lawrence for altar duty, she saw Go-Go’s class in the yard, playing kickball. Go-Go kicked a magnificent home run, soaring, soaring, soaring over his classmates’ heads and when he trotted to home plate, Father Andrew rubbed his hand across Go-Go’s head, congratulating him. Later, at bedtime, Doris did the same thing. She had forgotten how soft her son’s hair was, how appealing, even when in need of a wash.

“Stop it,” Go-Go said. The next morning, his sheets were yellow again and she wanted to scream. She can’t. She mustn’t. She is all Go-Go has. Tim and Sean will be fine, especially Sean. But Go-Go needs her.

Sheets in the washing machine, she shuffles into the kitchen, but she doesn’t have the energy to face the breakfast mess. Tim Senior insists on eggs and bacon every morning, and how can she deny the boys a full breakfast when their father is having one? He has been out of work since the end of the holiday season, and there was a three-month layoff before that job. He should be able to find something, though, with his experience. Maybe not at one of the big department stores-he’s pretty much burned his bridges there-but at Robert Hall, Tuerkes, Hamburger’s. He says he’s looking, but Doris doesn’t know where he goes during the days, taking their only car. “I’ve got a lead,” he will say, and she doesn’t have the nerve to ask what sort of job interview leaves a man’s breath sour from cigarettes and beer. She has heard he’s hanging out in Monaghan’s over in Woodlawn. It’s a decent place as taverns go. He isn’t running around with women. She is pretty sure he isn’t running around with women. Sex isn’t that important to Tim. After Go-Go, there had been one more miscarriage, and Doris told Tim that she didn’t think she could take it anymore, that they had to be more careful, find a way to make things work while being true to the church. The miscarriages were harder than the pregnancies. He was very sweet about it, said it was OK, his needs weren’t that great.

Abandoning the kitchen, she takes a cup of lukewarm tea into the living room and turns on the television, catching the last bit of People Are Talking . Exactly, Doris thinks. People are always talking. That’s why she has to be vigilant, keep the family’s secrets. Go-Go doesn’t wet the bed, Tim Senior isn’t out of a job, they didn’t start raiding the boys’ college funds last summer to stay afloat. She misses the program Dialing for Dollars, which is off the air, killed by the state lottery. At least that’s Tim’s take on it. Hard to get excited about winning forty dollars, he says, when you could win thousands and you don’t have to sit around waiting for a phone call. Still, she misses it. Dialing for Dollars was her respite when Go-Go was little. True to his name, he was always in motion, and when his brothers were at school during the day, Doris never knew any rest. However, he would settle in with a bottle of juice to watch Dialing for Dollars with her. Go-Go was frustrated that the host, Stu Kerr, never called them once, but Doris held no grudge. It’s a big city, and Doris never wins anything, small or large. She remembers when Sean put together the fact that Kerr, beneath a wig and funny nose, was also Professor Kool on Professor Kool’s Fun Skool . Sean was outraged. That is, he pretended to be outraged about the principle of the thing, as he saw it, but he was really embarrassed to have been fooled. Sean doesn’t like to be wrong, ever. It’s almost a little unnatural, the one characteristic that makes her nervous for her otherwise most golden child. Only Jesus gets to be perfect.

The phone rings. For a second, she thinks it’s Stu Kerr, and she panics because she doesn’t know the count and the amount, but then she remembers the show is on only in her thoughts. She rushes to the kitchen, taking inventory yet again of the sink of dishes, the cast-iron frying pan filled with bacon grease.

“Mrs. Halloran?” It is Father Andrew’s lovely voice, but she doesn’t want him to know she recognizes it instantly.

“This is she.” She stands up a little straighter, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Where’s the curler that held the hair? She spots it on the drainboard.

“Father Andrew up at St. Lawrence. We have a little situation with Gordon.”

Doris appreciates the euphemism but knows it has to be bad for the school to call.

“He’s OK,” the priest says, rushing to assure her. He is so nice. “But you see, another boy brought a baseball mitt to school today, a birthday gift he wanted to show off. It went missing and we found it in Go-Go’s desk.”

“He isn’t a thief,” she says quickly. “He just likes… nice things.”

“He was also very forthright. Didn’t lie or pretend it was put there by mistake. Just said he admired it and couldn’t help wanting to touch it. Still-I thought it might be effective if we spoke to him together.”

Together .

“I would be right there, but we only have the one car and Mr. Halloran has it and-” She breaks down, begins to cry, which is as shaming as Go-Go’s thievery. It’s too much. Her son, stealing from a classmate. Her husband unavailable to her, and even if she could reach him, she would never dare ask for his help in such a situation. Tim Senior would probably take a belt to Go-Go for this offense, and Lord knows, a part of her has yearned to beat him, to scream at him, to shake him. Father Andrew being so nice-that makes it worse. The thing is, she would like nothing better than to drive to the school-after taking out her curlers, maybe a quick bath-and talk to Father Andrew. Men who give up women, as priests do, are so much easier to talk to. She can take him some cookies, store bought, and maybe he will make her tea on the little hot plate he keeps in his office. She is surprised to realize how much she has noticed in her visits there-the hot plate, the mug from Northeastern University, the photos of children, presumably his nieces and nephews, a large photo of what was clearly a family reunion in some