Churches

Back then, I spent my hours at church studying the trails of His varnished blood and the seepage of His emaciated gut. The crucifix hung high above the celebrant’s chair, and the ribs looked so sharp they could cut. The thickness of my own stomach heaved against my belt. My collar squeezed the muscles of my dense neck. I was large, my body swelling suddenly that spring. I hated my clothes, the way they couldn’t keep up, their constant rustling and disorder, but I hated being naked even more, feeling the air all over, seeing myself in the mirror. I learned to doubt myself while staring at His quiet, wasted figure.

At school, we were told that He bled from His back as well. We couldn’t see the lashings, but they were there, weeping. The priest told us never to forget, and I couldn’t if I’d wanted to. I had dreams, sometimes, about the skin pulling apart. I had other dreams, too, where I felt my body pressed upon, my sweaty legs gripped and held. I woke from them excited and disgusted.

My friends and I joked about the cloth at His groin, how it seemed barely to hold on, what was under there, if the soldiers had left that part of Him alone. But we didn’t talk about our jealousies, how we’d all fantasized a similar moment, our clothes falling away, someone else there to witness us, someone else wanting to see.

We’d met in driver’s ed but got to talking later on. We were both seventeen, experts on the T, and only just getting around to a license. On the first day, the teacher made us go around the room and say what we practiced with. I described my parents’ boxy Volvo and its cracked leather seats. Some people nodded when I said it was a stick shift. The driver’s-ed car was an automatic, and it drove like a lawnmower. The girl’s parents drove a Buick. She said it was like steering a boat, that you had to leave time and lag for the turns.

I always came straight from school, so I wore my uniform, except for the tie, which I coiled up and stuffed deep into my backpack. I’d unbutton my oxford and show my undershirt. I had a chain, too, with a cross, that my parents had given me that year for confirmation. I wasn’t confirmed just yet, but they hoped it would mean something to me, the fact that I’d gotten it early. I liked the gold links, which were flat and lay on my chest loose and easy. But I thought the cross was too small, and sometimes it made me itch. I had trouble getting used to it. I always knew exactly where it touched the skin.

I liked her legs. In class, I tried not to stare. They were thick, and she wore boots with her skirts, thick-heeled Doc Martens. I don’t think she ever caught me looking. She often had to push back the driver’s seat in the practice car, even if the instructor had just been driving. She and I drove together a few times. She was careful but not afraid. We drove by a church once and I told her that’s where I went on Sundays. She was Catholic too. She was heavy on the brakes and apologized. The teacher kept his cool. He scribbled on a notepad, the kind reporters use. As she merged back into the flow of traffic, I said, “I was baptized there.”

I think I might have actually prayed to see her elsewhere, to run into her on the street, and then, miraculously, I saw her on a Saturday night at a house party in Brighton. We floated around one another. I sipped a beer and stayed close to my friends. I pointed her out. Someone said she was tall. Someone said she had great hair. He said it twice. I told him he should see her eyes in a rearview mirror.

We finally met by a window, and at first we talked about cars, cars we wished we had. I wanted a convertible, and it didn’t matter who made it or where it came from. She said that was tricky, and I think she meant stupid. She said people spat into convertibles all the time, just because. She wanted a Saab because her aunt had one. Her aunt, she said, took corners like a madwoman.

Then she told me she lived nearby. I said I wasn’t far either. She asked about the Volvo, how it was to drive a stick shift. She was being sincere. I told her the truth, that I was still terrible at it. My father and I sat in the car, and he made me pull in and out of parking spots. Other than that, he wouldn’t let me go beyond second gear. He was adamant about the process. He said all the other gears were easy after you mastered the send-off. The girl asked me if we could go on a walk sometime. I showed her the car key in my pocket. My father let me carry it around as encouragement. I asked her if she wanted to try.

We walked to the parking garage where my parents kept the car. It was late, but the man in the booth was still there, so I told him that I’d left something in the trunk. He didn’t care, but I was glad to know he was there. I let her drive first. She put on her seat belt and moved the hair out of her face. She knew to press the clutch, but she forgot about the hand brake, and the car jerked until we both remembered and let it down. We laughed nervously, and it was then that I knew that we might be easy together. Then our hands touched, colliding over the stick. They kept touching, and neither of us mentioned it. I’d gone to church all my life. I was supposed to get up and leave, to keep myself, but we were alone, which was a rarity at that age. We kept saying things about the imaginary cars we’d drive someday, their color and the sounds the engines would make, the preset stations we’d program into the radio.

She was a natural at the release. She could let the gears out slowly and smoothly. She wore tight black jeans, and I could see the muscles around her knees. She asked me how she looked. I said she was a born killer, but she needed a pair of sunglasses to finish the look. She laughed and I didn’t have to explain myself. It was early April, and the weather was still cold, so we had the blower on high. The hot air poured over our faces. Her hair jumped at the ends, running in waves. She struggled with the gas, and she kept turning the wheel without knowing it. Once or twice the car came close to its neighbor. She started to sweat. I saw a dampness spreading along her upper lip. She touched her mouth and told me to drive.

The seat was warm from her body. I looked at the mirrors and twisted them all around. I tried to figure out what I was seeing. It seemed important to ignore her as I worked, so I pretended she wasn’t there. I let the clutch out fearfully. At first, the car went forward. She laughed. Wrong direction! I shifted, and we could hear the gears changing, the bones of the gearbox. In the mirrors, everything looked right. I fixated on the rearview, and I let the clutch out. I wanted to push the car back in one try. The Volvo rolled. I held the wheel and we inched backward out of the space. She said, “Yeah.” I turned the wheel until we were perpendicular to the parking spaces. We were in the lane. The exit was ahead and to the right. I was ready. Instead, I turned the car around. Now I could feel her eyes on my face. She was watching me concentrate, quiet and respectful, and I managed, somehow, to back the car into its spot. The engine never stalled. I put the brake on and turned the car off. I felt my face, which was steaming from the blower. I knew my cheeks were red. A trace of fog rimmed my glasses. I was sweating. I looked at the girl and tried to smile. She reached out and ran her thumb across my cheek.

We only kissed at the start. It was very slow. I wanted to touch her stomach, and she let me, but when I felt the curve of her hip bone, I was suddenly ashamed, and I put my face into her neck. Still, I didn’t stop her from messing with my belt. My fingers traced her waistband. She pressed against me, and that was enough to carry us into the back seat. She pushed my pants down and took off her own. I couldn’t understand the temperature of her body. I thought she should be dying, she felt so hot. We barely had room, but she climbed on top. Her face was against mine, so close we didn’t look into each other’s eyes. She breathed faster and faster. I was scared, and she seemed to know this, taking over. Whenever I thought of kissing her, the fear magnified. It was another person in the car, and I hated myself for feeling it. She pulled her underwear aside, and I told myself I could outlast the fear. She brought us together, and I asked, “Is this okay?” and she pulled my head into her chest. I could smell the detergent in her clothes, and I could smell her sweat, and I could smell the powder of her deodorant.

She moved in a rhythm, and I bit my lip. It felt good and strange, even though the fear lingered. Somehow I knew I wouldn’t touch it, that it would stay. But soon my jaw locked and the rest of me shook. She kept going until she didn’t, out of breath. I said sorry because I was suddenly very tender, full of aches and red with shame. I tried to untangle my pants, to find the belt and its tongue. I wanted to cover myself before I looked at her, before we started talking again. I didn’t know her any better now. I didn’t understand her any more than a stranger. Our bodies were slick as we pulled apart, and I worried about the car, checking the leather with my hands, touching for the awful evidence. I apologized again, and she told me not to worry. She said we should have kissed for longer.

We walked back to the party holding hands. Mine were clammy, as if licked by a dog. I was newly awake. My legs felt different. They wanted to stretch out. Inside the house, she told me she was thirsty. She needed water, not beer, and she said to meet her by the stereo, next to the low, thumping speakers. She had to use the bathroom, but she’d be right back. I needed her to come back, so that time would keep moving. We hadn’t made our way to the other side where you were a person in the world again. I was still imagining the return. I felt marked, like I had a fresh cut on my face, something leaking. I wanted us to talk backward, to confess, again, which roads we were afraid to drive, like the Tobin or the interstate north.

My friends found me. Someone asked me where we went. I shook my head, and their mouths broke open. They grinned with their straight and crooked teeth, waiting for me to spill. I hadn’t ever really known what a secret was for. I rarely lied, though I sometimes kept things from my friends and my family. I didn’t believe that what happened to me was that important. But it wasn’t a competition, not usually, even when we talked about girls. We knew our various histories, the simple kinds of forbidden knowledge, the kissing and the groping, and we were all still learning, if we were learning anything at all. We were mostly afraid, both terrified and excited, and the fear kept us awkward and quiet, at least back then.

So, I waited them out, and they eventually left me alone, too afraid to talk about something they’d never known themselves. And then I saw them, as I stood by the stereo speakers, moving in and out of the faces of other girls, circling one another, seeing what was possible. I couldn’t help them. I had no other word for regret.

I waited for the girl from driver’s ed to come stand with me by the window, but she never did. I imagined her still in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, enduring a kind of loneliness. I told myself it was worse than what I felt. I turned the music up on the stereo. The noise could be a drug, and I tried to dance with it, but then I felt my jeans against my skin, all my skin, and I had to leave, saying goodbye to no one.

We laughed nervously, and it was then that I knew that we might be easy together. Then our hands touched, colliding over the stick. They kept touching, and neither of us mentioned it. I’d gone to church all my life. I was supposed to get up and leave, to keep myself, but we were alone, which was a rarity at that age.

I thought I knew where I was going, to the church I visited every Sunday for confession, Mass, and confirmation class. I only had to circle the neighborhood for a few hours, then the light would come up and the doors would open. I did just that, and when the sun broke and the steam rose from the pavement, I jogged up the steps of St. Sebastian’s. Most of the doors were still locked, but the eastern entrance was open. I liked thinking about churches in other towns and cities, how a person could just walk into them. They were always dark inside, like a cave, until you crossed into the sanctuary, where the roof floated and you felt all the space above your head. You knew you were on the ground, that you walked on the earth. I expected to see the white-hairs crowding the kneelers, and I was surprised to hear singing. A choir warmed up their throats, but none of the sounds worked together. Everyone was still on their own.

I watched the door to the sacristy. When it was time, the priest would shuffle down the side aisle, in and out of the light of the stained-glass windows, toward the confessional. He’d hang a wooden cross on a hook to the right of his curtain, and then you’d know he was all ears. I was patient. I hid myself behind a column, crouching down into the shadows. I didn’t want the priest to recognize me. I waited until he’d sat alone in the box for ten minutes.

Inside, I ran through the script, leaning close to the screen because I was aware, for the first time, of the light brightening the edges of the curtain. When I squirmed on the bench, the box rattled. I was convinced that everything I said was spilling out.

“Can you speak up?” the priest said.

I said, “I was at a party last night.”

“You were drinking?”

“Yes.”

“I can smell it on your breath. You don’t sound old enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know it’s hard to resist,” the priest said. “But now you’re messed up, am I right? You’re not yourself? You must feel strange.”

I said, “I do.”

“A hangover is about coming home. The alcohol pulls you apart. It doesn’t feel good stitching it all back together.”

“I’m sorry about my breath, father.”

“A cold shower,” he said. “The colder the better. See how much you can stand. But that’s later. You’re here now. That’s good. Maybe sit at the back for today. I don’t want you fogging up the regulars. That’ll only make it worse.”

“I met someone,” I said.

“At the party?” he asked.

“A girl.”

He was quiet. I heard his body shifting. I felt his presence grow. There could not have been, but there was the shadow of his face across the screen.

“What happened?” he asked. “Is everything all right?”

“We were alone together,” I said.

“Is this about something else?”

“Yes,” I said, but then my mouth closed and wouldn’t open again. I touched my face and pressed my fingers into the heat of the flesh under my eyes. I leaned away from the screen, and the stench of my body rose up. Not only my stale breath, but also the musk from my armpits. I dropped my chin and felt the sweat gathering around my neck, the collar of my T-shirt sopping it up.

The priest said, “Tell me what happened.” He waited, and when I said nothing, he asked, “What was her name? Tell me her name and we can pray for her.”

I knew her name. I’d heard the driver’s-ed instructor say it when taking roll at the start of every class. He’d said it in the car when riding along in the passenger seat, whenever she was about to make a mistake. He’d shouted it once or twice. I had her name inside me, and after the hour together in the parking garage, I’d buried it inside the cave of my chest. Even after everything came to an end, after checking the leather, after fixing our clothes, after holding hands, I didn’t say her name. The fear returned and wrapped itself around my throat. It wanted me to talk. For a moment, I was tempted to give in and tell the priest, because I could see, suddenly, how a name became a curse. I could make her a thing that had happened to me.

“I didn’t get her name,” I said, and then the priest surprised me. He said my name, which I couldn’t believe. He spoke it gently, and I knew he was sticking his neck out for me, breaking some vow so that I might feel looked after, known, safe enough to confess. But his voice came through the screen as a poison. He was using love the wrong way, tempting me. When the priest said my name again, it was a terrible noise, so I ran from it.

I came home feeling like a stranger. I stole into our townhouse like a thief, like a prodigal son, like a worm. I twisted the key in the lock slowly, avoiding the dead bolt’s hammer, and I pulled the door back timidly, as I would a sheet covering a corpse. I kept my ear to the gap, listening for my parents. I prayed they were, as they always claimed to be, sleeping in. They took Communion on Saturday night, refusing to change their schedule just because I had to attend on Sunday morning. They said it would be good for me to go alone. I could practice being an adult, facing God in my own, particular way. That was when they gave me the gold cross, which, at that moment, dangled under my shirt making a sound like ice in a glass. It was loud to me, so I pressed the cross against my chest and stepped into the foyer. I shut the door softly and stood still.

My parents’ room was just down the hall, near the back of the cramped house, and I heard them there. They were touching each other. They were kissing. I heard the rustling sheets. The bedframe moaned. They thought they were alone, and in that emptiness, they let themselves go. They weren’t loud, but they moved the air. I could have climbed the stairs to my bedroom, but I was afraid of the creaking wood. I didn’t know what I’d tell them if they discovered me exhausted and mute in the hall, so I sat on the bottom step and waited.

When it was over, their voices bubbled up, and I thought of the moment after Communion when the music has stopped, when the priest cleans the altar: The patens clatter, and the cruet, full of holy water, knocks against the lip of the brass chalice. Each vibration rings in the passing silence.

At first, my parents whispered, and then they spoke at a normal volume, but their voices were charged, as if everything they said was a revelation. I can’t remember what they talked about, but I’d never heard them speak to each other like that before. And they kept going, talking and talking, coaxing forward their stream of words and the noise they made.

What did my parents know that I didn’t, that I wouldn’t know for a long time? The whole body hears. A name is a vibration, a wave that passes through the skin.

Someone stepped down from the bed, and I heard their footsteps approach the door. Maybe it was my mother going for her robe, or worse, my father getting up to use the bathroom. Maybe he was about to open the door and step naked into the hallway, still thinking, still believing, that the two of them would be alone for another few hours. The knob twitched, the wood rattled, and the door cracked. I heard my mother’s voice. She said my father’s name. He shut the door, and his flat feet stomped back to the bed. My mother laughed again, and I was saved.

I felt like a coward. I wished I hadn’t been afraid the night before, and I wished I wasn’t afraid just then. I wanted to walk with big, heavy footsteps and not give a damn about the questions my parents would ask with their intense and curious eyes.

And I wished that just once I’d looked her in the eyes while she held me and I held her. When we were kissing, she ran her fingers across the back of my neck, playing with the chain of my necklace. She tugged on it with her thumb, dragging the cross up and down my chest. I wished I’d stopped us then and told her how the cross was brand new, that I’d just gotten it. I might have taken it off and let her hold it. I might have placed it in her hands like a gift.