The Darker Side

'I love you too.'

She drew the curtain closed.

MICHAEL AND FRANCES WERE SIXTEEN when everything changed. There was no evidence that their world was about to come crashing down around them. The world--and God--were strange and cruel like that. This was something Michael had always known and accepted, until it happened to him. They were asleep when the sound of voices woke Michael up. He glanced over and saw that Frances was still sleeping. Years later, he'd wonder why he'd been awoken. He'd come to understand that God had called him from sleep, because God had a plan. The voices weren't loud, but they had a sense of urgency to them. The fact of them was strange; it was 2:00 A.M. Father went to bed at 9:30 and woke up at 4:30.

Michael stood up and went to the door. He put his ear to it as he had done so many times to the wall of the confessional booth. He closed his eyes, and he listened.

One of the voices was female, and strangely familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. The other belonged to his father.

'They don't need to know!' his father whispered. 'There's no reason. This was our sin, our secret. They're fine, they're healthy, and they both plan to lead holy lives, devoted to God. Why burden them with this now?'

'God spoke to me, Frank. I've spent the last sixteen years praying to him, asking him for forgiveness. I have calluses on my knees from praying. He finally answered. Do you know what he said? He said just one word: truth. I heard it in my heart, clear as a bell. God is love, Frank, remember? Love can only come from truth. I agreed to hide this in the beginning because I was ashamed. I was certain God would never forgive me. But he spoke to me, he told me he will forgive me. All I have to do is obey him, to tell the truth.'

'You're hearing things! Do you really think that God would want you to ruin their lives by telling them the truth, by telling them you are their mother?'

Michael's head shot away from the door like he'd had his ear pressed against a hot iron.

What had he said?

Mother. The word was mother.

How many times, in early years, had they pressed Father, had they asked him about their mother?

She died in childbirth, he'd told them. She's with God now, she's the reason I joined the priesthood. Let her be.

One day they stopped asking, but they never stopped wondering. And why did her voice sound familiar?

'What is it?'

He started in the dark. His twin stood behind him. He realized he was shivering.

'Michael?'

She put her arms around his waist and hugged herself to him, cheek against his shoulder blades. He continued to shiver, but even in his fear he was aware of her small breasts against his back. He chastised himself in silence. Lust is the devil's work, and the devil is tireless.

'F-father is arguing with someone. A woman. I heard him say she's our mother.'

He felt her stiffen against him.

'What?'

He wanted to turn around. He wanted to turn around and tell her to forget it, they should go back to bed and wake up the next morning and realize that it had all been a dream. He couldn't turn around right now, though. She'd see his lust.

The devil is tireless . . .

'I heard him. Listen.'

She continued to clutch him as they strained to hear. He marveled at the dexterity of Satan. Michael was terrified of what they might hear, angered at what they'd already heard, he was a little bit dizzy, he was trying to hear more but didn't want to hear more, and through it all, he was never unaware of those small breasts against his back, the hint of what might ( just might) be her nipples. Lucifer could walk and chew gum at the same time, no doubt about that.

'I forbid it!' Michael's father raged in a whisper. Silence.

The woman's voice was calm, sure, certain. He still couldn't quite place it; the whisper was disguising it.

'You can't forbid me to do what God's ordered, Frank. I am their mother, and God has said it's time they knew everything.'

Michael knew something was very wrong when Frances gasped. She buried her face in his back and moaned. It was a sound of horror. Her arms left him and he felt her back away. He turned around and saw that her face was milk-white, her eyes so wide he thought they'd pop out of their sockets, her fist stuffed in her mouth to stifle her moans. She pointed a shaking finger at the door, but couldn't seem to say anything coherent.

'Frances? What is it?'

She pulled the fist from her mouth. He was shocked to see that she'd bitten it hard enough to draw blood in places.

'Her . . .' she whispered, still horrified. 'Don't you recognize her voice?' She began to pull her hair. Some of it ripped away from her scalp. 'Don't you recognize her voice?'

Michael grabbed her wrists to keep her from hurting herself more. He'd always loved her hair. Other than her eyes, it was the thing that made her the most beautiful.

'Frances! Get hold of yourself!'

She yanked her wrists out of his grasp and sat down against the wall. She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her forehead against them. She began to rock, back and forth.

'Go and see. You'll understand.'

He could barely hear her.

But something was starting to swim up from a very deep, very dark place. Something that caused a greasy sweat to break out on his forehead.

He took a last look at his twin and opened the door. He padded down the hall toward the voices, which were coming from the chapel. The sweat was really coming now and he started to run, because that dark thing was swimming with a vengeance, and he wanted to get there before it broke the surface, so he could prove it wrong, wrong, wrong . . .

He burst into the chapel barefoot, in his underwear, covered with sweat and shivering like a naked man in a snowstorm. The thing burst through the surface. Laughing.

Do you see? it asks. Do you seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hee hee hee hee?

He did see. He saw his father, the great and honorable Frank Murphy, standing next to the woman who'd said she was their mother.

The woman was a nun, and he knew her well.

Aunt Michelle.

39

'MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER HAD BEEN BROTHER AND SISter, twins like my sister and I. They'd lain together and the result had been us.' His face is sad, somber, grave. 'They conspired to hide my mother's pregnancy. It wasn't so hard. They were both eighteen. They'd gotten drunk and had let the devil lead them.

'How do I describe what that was like for us? The two people we respected most in the world had spent our lifetime lying to us. Our birthright was incest. We were the result of the forbidden coupling.

'I asked my father, that night, if he'd ever confessed this sin to another. He said that he had not.' Murphy's expression is incredulous.

'Can you imagine? He'd kept his sin to himself, had consigned himself to hellfire. Why? To protect us? No. Any priest he'd confessed to would have kept his secret. He did it because he was ashamed.

'Of all the things I learned and heard, that was the one that was unforgivable to me. Not the incest, though that was bad enough. Not the lying to my sister and me, I could even understand that. The one thing I could not forgive him for was his deception of God.

'They told us they'd devoted their lives to God and had raised us to fear God as penance for their sin. I couldn't hear this, couldn't see past that most basic deception.