“She lives on through you,” Father McNamee said. “Your mother. That’s true.”
When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything else, I said, “Do you really want to live with me?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“God told me to do something a long time ago, but I’m only getting around to it now. Mostly because God is giving me the silent treatment at the present moment.”
“What?”
“Am I not speaking clearly?”
“No. I mean, yes,” I said. This was a lot to take in. “What exactly did God tell you?”
“‘Defrock yourself and live with Bartholomew Neil.’ Again, it was a long time ago. I think God is mad at me, because I didn’t listen.”
I shook my head. God would never speak to Father McNamee about me. What he said was not true. Father McNamee was just trying to make me feel better. Telling white lies. Pretending. Including me in his calling, because he knew I am not called and felt sorry for me.
“You look surprised, Bartholomew. God speaks to people all throughout the Bible. He’s always talking to people.”
I stared at my mushroom pizza slice and thought about how far Father McNamee had fallen. I began to worry that the squidlike cancer was now attacking his brain too.
“You have nothing to say to me, Bartholomew? No word from God? Nothing?” He looked up at me, raised his whiskey glass, and said, “So?”
“Why would you want to live with me?”
“I think God has a plan for you,” Father McNamee said. “Unfortunately, God no longer speaks to me. So I don’t know what exactly that plan might be. But the good news is that I’m here to help you carry it out, if you’re game.” He took another shot of whiskey and said, “So what’s the plan, Bartholomew?”
I just looked at him.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he said, tilting his head sideways and squinting at me through his bushy white circle of beard and hair. “God hasn’t spoken to you lately?”
“I have no idea.”
“None at all? Not even a suspicion? An inclination? A feeling? Nothing?”
I shook my head and felt embarrassed.
“You’ve heard no calling?”
“Sorry,” I said, because I hadn’t heard anything remotely like a calling.
“Then I guess we wait,” he said. “And I will pray. God may no longer speak to me, but maybe He’s still listening.”
“Forgive me, Father, but are you serious about all of this? This isn’t a joke?”
“No joke,” Father McNamee said.
“Are you really leaving the Catholic Church?”
“I have officially defrocked myself. I’m not leaving—I’ve left.”
“Can I still confess my sins to you?”
“Technically, no. Not as a Catholic. But as a man, certainly.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I drank my whiskey.
It burned.
Father McNamee drank half the bottle before he passed out on the couch. I sat in the armchair and studied him. His forearms were thick and he had a great belly, but he was solid all over and not jiggly like a fat man. He was like a potato with a head, arms, and legs. His beard made him look like Santa Claus. And his skin was rough and pocked and used-up raw—like he had lived a hard full life of service, gardening in the vast soil of men, harvesting souls.
Potato skin.
A giant potato.
“Irish,” Mom had often called him. “Father Irish.”
I placed a blanket over Father McNamee, and he began to snore loudly.
Upstairs I wrote as much as I could remember in my notebook, and I wondered if Father McNamee really believed that God had a plan for me now that Mom was gone, or was he only drunk. I stayed up most of the night thinking and wondering.
In the morning I found Father McNamee kneeling in the living room, praying. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I put on coffee and fried eggs in butter and hot sauce. I also sliced and fried a few pieces of scrapple, because it’s good for hangovers. Father McNamee always ate scrapple after a night of drinking Irish whiskey. I know because he had spent many nights on our couch. Mom used to cook scrapple for him.
“Morning, Bartholomew,” he said when he took his place at the kitchen table. “You don’t have to cook for me, you know. But thanks.”
I served breakfast.
We drank our coffee.
The winter birds sang to us.
“Good eggs,” he said.
I nodded.
I wanted to ask him about God’s plan for me, but something held me back.
“So what exactly do you do all day around here, Bartholomew?”
“I often go to the library.”
“What else?”
“I write in my notebook.”
“That’s good. What else?”
“I listen to the birds.”
“And?”
“I used to take care of my mother.”
“Your mother is no longer with us.”
“I know that.”
“So what will you do now? What will we do today?”
I hadn’t a clue, so I just looked at him, hoping he would tell me. But he only focused on his food, and by the time he was done, his white beard was striped like a candy cane with hot sauce.
“God still hasn’t spoken to you yet, has He?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“God can be a bastard like that.”
Father McNamee went into the living room and got down on his knees. He stayed that way for hours. I started to worry that maybe he was dead, because he was still as a rock.