“Very much.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m sorry you had to eat your pet rabbits and were abducted by aliens.”
She sat down on a bench, and I sat next to her.
We watched the snow dance its way down from the sky and onto the river.
I thought Elizabeth would look up into the night, trying to spot UFOs, but she never lifted her chin even once.
She wasn’t interested in UFOs that night—nor was she interested in talking about aliens.
From watching movies, I knew that this was the time to put my arm around Elizabeth, and my heart was about to explode, just thinking about the possibility of having my arm around another human being, our ribs touching through our coats.
But I didn’t put my arm around her.
We just lingered next to each other on the bench until our hats were covered in white snow and our noses were red.
When she stood, I stood.
We walked back to the hotel in silence, leaving two sets of footprints that would shortly be covered by new accumulating snow and then shoveled away, erasing all evidence of our walk through Old Montreal together, and I thought about just how many millions of people had had significant small, quiet moments in the city of Montreal—moments that were so important to the people having them, but insignificant to everyone else who had ever lived.
Elizabeth opened her hotel room door with the plastic key card and then said, “Good night, Bartholomew.”
“Good night,” I said, standing in the hallway.
She looked up into my eyes for a long time, with her hand on the doorknob and the door slightly ajar.
Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out another tektite necklace.
When Elizabeth held up the leather loop, I lowered my head; she placed the necklace around my neck and nodded.
I nodded back.
“Max wanted you to have that, once you worked up to it. You have,” she said and then went into her room.
It was funny because two tektite rocks didn’t really feel like anything, but I noticed the weight of three.
Three wasn’t too heavy, but palpable.
It was a tipping point.
I stood in the hallway for a time, wondering why—after spending the entire day with three people—I felt so much lonelier than I had ever before in my entire life, and yet I didn’t want to go into the room with Father McNamee.
I wanted to be with Elizabeth—just to sit next to her silently for another five minutes would have been divine.
I also wanted to be by myself too, which was confusing.
Somehow I ended up all alone on the roof of the hotel, next to the steamy pool that was now lit, glowing blue and wondrous.
I looked out over the city and wondered if my biological father was really out there, somewhere in Montreal.
I looked up and wondered where Mom was.
I sat down on a chair and felt the cold on my face as I watched the snowflakes evaporate instantly, the moment they hit the warm, blue, chlorinated pool water—and I wondered if what I was witnessing could be a metaphor for our lives somehow, like we were all just little bits falling toward an inevitable dissolve, if that makes any sense at all.
I rested there by myself for what felt like hours, feeling like a snowflake the second it hits a heated pool—wondering if that could really be our whole life summed up in the grand scheme of the universe.
Even though she hadn’t appeared to me, I talked to Mom for a time, telling her everything that had happened—asking her if my father could still possibly be alive—but the only answer I got was the noise of street traffic rising up from far, far below.
When I keyed into our hotel room, Father McNamee wasn’t snoring, but sleeping peacefully, so I tried to be extra quiet and didn’t turn on the light. The room reeked of whiskey, which meant Father McNamee would be hung over again in the morning.
I lay down in my bed and thought about how I was in Canada—how strange that seemed—as I stared at the ceiling.
Canada, eh?
It didn’t seem real.
Like maybe it’s just some unknown part of Philadelphia—or a known part dressed up as something else, like it was playing geographical Halloween, as crazy as that sounds.
Then, as Father slept, using the mini flashlight on my keychain, I wrote you this letter, trying to finish before it was time to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory, so that we might look at the preserved heart of a miracle worker and meet my biological father for the first time.
Your admiring fan,
Bartholomew Neil
14
THAT IS THE MOST RATIONAL THING TO DO AT THIS MOMENT, GIVEN THE UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES YOU HAVE INHERITED
Dear Mr. Richard Gere,
When I woke up on the day we were supposed to go to Saint Joseph’s Oratory and meet my dad in front of Saint Brother André’s preserved heart, Father McNamee was still sleeping, so I stared out our hotel window and admired the fresh snow cover that had fallen in the night. It looked like the city had been buried in fine white sand and was now pushing its way out again as various tides of morning commuters swept over the streets and sidewalks.
I smiled at my reflection superimposed onto the city in the window, felt a good lightness in my chest, took a shower, and then got dressed.
I let Father sleep for a time, as there were two empty whiskey bottles on the nightstand, although it was highly unusual for him to sleep past 6:30 a.m. no matter how much he had drunk the night before.
I was partly nervous to meet my biological father, but the larger part of me thought that my meeting him was completely impossible, and so I wasn’t all that nervous, because how can you fear impossibility?
Father McNamee hadn’t been acting very stable, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I was pretty sure the idea of meeting my father in Montreal was just the product of Father McNamee’s ongoing battle with madness. This was likely to turn out the same way our rescuing Wendy ended.