gizmo on it that turns a light on over the door. When the person is finished, and gets up off the kneeler, the light goes out. But I knew Harvey ’s timing and I waited for that prayer instead, because since the accident, I can’t kneel so good. And once I get down on my knees, I have a hard time getting up again. Father O’Brien once told me I didn’t have to kneel, but it doesn’t seem right to me, so now he waits for me to get situated.
Like I said, I was trying not to eavesdrop, but Harvey was going on and on about my mom, saying she was the reason he drank and swore and committed sins, and how he would be a better Catholic if there was just some way he could have the marriage annulled. I was getting angrier and angrier, and I knew that was a sin, too. I couldn’t hear Father O’Brien’s side of it, but it was obvious that Harvey wasn’t getting the answer he wanted. Harvey started complaining about me, and that wasn’t so bad, but then he got going about Mom again.
I was so mad, I almost forget to hurry up and get into the confessional when he started the Act of Contrition. Once inside, I made myself calm down, and started my confession. It wasn’t hard for me to feel truly sorry, for the first sin I confessed weighed down on me more than anything I have ever done.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I killed my father.”
I heard a sigh from the other side of the screen.
“My son,” Father O’Brien began, “have you ever confessed this sin before?”
“Yes, Father.”
“And received absolution?”
“Yes, Father.”
“And have you done the penance asked of you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You don’t believe in the power of sacrament of penance, of the forgiveness of sins?”
I didn’t want to make him mad, but I had to tell him the truth. “If God has forgiven me, Father, why do I still feel so bad about it?”
“I don’t think God ever blamed you in the first place,” he said, but now he didn’t sound frustrated, just kind of sad. “I think you’ve blamed yourself. The reason you feel bad isn’t because God hasn’t forgiven you. It’s because you haven’t forgiven yourself.”
“But if I hadn’t asked-”
“-for the Davy Crockett hat for your seventh birthday, he wouldn’t have driven in the rain,” Father O’Brien finished for me. “Yes, I know. He loved you, and he wanted to give you something that would bring you joy. You didn’t kill your father by asking for a hat.”
“It’s not just that,” I said.
“I know. You made him laugh.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. I was seeing my dad, sitting next to me in the car three years ago, the day gray and wet, but me hardly noticing, because I was so excited about that stupid cap. We were going somewhere together, just me and my dad, and that was exciting too. The radio was on, and there was something about Dwight D. Eisenhower on the news. I asked my dad why we didn’t like Ike.
“We like him fine,” my father said.
“Then why are we voting for Yodelai Stevenson?” I asked him.
See how dumb I was? I didn’t even know that the man’s name was Adlai. Called him Yodelai, like he was some guy singing in the Alps.
My dad started laughing. Hard. I started laughing, too, just because he’s laughing so hard. So stupid, I don’t even know what’s so funny. But then suddenly, he’s trying to stop the car and it’s skidding, skidding, skidding and he’s reaching over, he’s putting his arm across my chest, trying to keep me from getting hurt. There was a loud, low noise-a bang-and a high, jingling sound-glass flying. I’ve tried, but I can’t remember anything else that happened that day.
My father died. I ended up crippled. The car was totaled. Adlai Stevenson lost the election. My mom married Harvey. And just in case you’re wondering, no, I never got that dumb cap, and I don’t want one. Ever.
Father O’Brien was giving me my penance, so I stopped thinking about the accident. I made a good Act of Contrition and went to work on standing up again. I knew Harvey watched for the light to come on over the confessional door, used it as a signal that I would be coming out soon. I could hear his footsteps. He’d always go back to the car before I could manage to get myself out of the confessional.
On the drive home, Harvey was quiet. He didn’t lecture to me or brag on himself. When I was slow getting out of the car, he didn’t yell at me or cuff my ear. That’s not like him, and it worried me. He was thinking hard about something, and I had a creepy feeling that it couldn’t be good.
The next day was a Sunday. Harvey and my mom went over to the parish hall after mass. There was a meeting about the money the parish needed to raise to make some repairs. I asked my mom if I could stay in the church for a while. Harvey was always happy to get rid of me, so he said okay, even though he wasn’t the one I was asking. My mom just nodded.
The reason I wanted to stay behind was because in the announcements that Sunday, Father O’Brien had said something about the choir loft being closed the next week, so that the stairs could be fixed. I wanted to see the window before they closed the loft. I had never gone up there in the daylight, but this might be my only chance to visit it for a while. As I made my way up the stairs, out of habit I was quiet. I avoided the stairs which creaked and groaned the most. I guess that’s why I scared the old lady that was sitting up there in the choir loft. At first, she scared me, too.
She was wearing a long, old-fashioned black dress and a big black hat with a black veil, which made her look spooky. She was thin and really, really old. She had lifted the veil away from her face, and I could see it was all wrinkled. She probably had bony hands, but she was wearing gloves, so that’s just a guess.
I almost left, but then I saw the window. It made me stop breathing for a minute. Colors filled the choir loft, like a rainbow had decided to come inside for a while. The window itself was bright, and I could see details in the picture that I had never seen before. I started moving closer to it, kind of hypnotized. Before I knew it, I was standing near the old lady, and now I could see she had been crying. Even though she still looked ancient, she didn’t seem so scary. I was going to ask her if she was okay, but before I could say anything, she said, “What are you doing here?”
Her voice was kind of snooty, so I almost said, “It’s a free country,” but being in church on a Sunday, I decided against it. “I like this window,” I said.
“Do you?” she seemed surprised.
“Yes. It’s the Mary Theresa Mills window. She died when she was little, a long time ago,” I said. For some reason, I felt like I had to prove to this lady that I had a real reason to be up there, that I wasn’t just some kid who had climbed up to the choir loft to hide or to throw spitballs down on the pews. I told her everything I had figured out about Mary Theresa Mills’s age, including the birthday part. “So if she had lived, she’d be old now, like you.”
The lady frowned a little.
“She was really good,” I went on. “She was practically perfect. Her mother and father loved her so much, they paid a lot of money and put this window up here, so that no one would ever forget her.”
The old lady started crying again. “She wasn’t perfect,” she said. “She was a little mischievous. But I did love her.”
“You knew her?”
“I’m her mother,” the lady said.
I sat down. I couldn’t think of anything to say, even though I had a lot of questions about Mary Theresa. It just didn’t seem right to ask them.
The lady reached into her purse and got a fancy handkerchief out. “She was killed in an automobile accident,” she said. “It was my fault.”
I guess I looked a little sick or something when she said that, because she asked me if I was all right.
“My dad died in a car accident.”
She just tilted her head a little, and something seemed different about her eyes, the way she looked at me. She didn’t say, “I’m so sorry,” or any of the other things people say just to be saying something. And the look wasn’t a pity look; she just studied me.
I rubbed my bad knee a little. I was pretty sure there was rain on the way, but I decided I wouldn’t give her a weather report.
