Stained Read online

  “Then we’ll talk about what to do?”

  He nods his head.

  “I’ll be back,” I say.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  FORTY-TWO

  I’m sitting on a stool in chemistry, leaning against the lab table listening to Mr. Godin drone on about the fact that mass cannot be created or destroyed. My mother says that our thoughts are an energy that creates our reality. I am using my brain to will this disorganized, ragbag of a teacher to leave the speech and get on with his demonstration.

  I’m doing well in chemistry as well as in my other classes. High school teachers love any evidence of a warm body. And I’m less hung up on what other kids think of me now. I like spending time with Theresa, I like my new job waitressing at Joe’s on weekends, and I like feeling that I can pull top grades if I want to.

  So I pay little attention to the new boy from New Jersey beside me. He’s taken the only empty seat in the room, but my prediction is that he won’t sit there for long. Samantha Siviski has her eye on him. I couldn’t help but overhear her say in the cafeteria that she would definitely consider going to the Valentine’s dance with the new boy if he asked her. Within the week, New Boy will be sitting in the middle of the room with Samantha and friends, bumping the more quiet and studious Perry Jackson to the front with me. (Sorry, Perry.) I knew that talking with this kid would only prompt Samantha to speed up her effort to provide him with a clearer picture of the pecking order (Desirable Friends 101) here at Weaver Falls.

  I’m stunned, then, when Samantha tells this new kid, this Benny, that Courtney is absent today and that he’s welcome to her seat in the middle of the room if he wants it. “No thanks,” says new kid Benny. “I can see Godin’s zany drawings better if I sit here.”

  I look over to see if I’ve misjudged this guy. Maybe he’s a fellow fringe; maybe he’s a brainy chemist who chooses to sit in the front of the room. Benny looks up at me and smiles.

  My curiosity swells like a hydrogen balloon. I find myself turning into Calculating Soap Opera Spy I can’t help myself. I look for his name on activity lists. I eavesdrop on conversations. I follow him in the halls. What classes does he take? Where does he go during his free period? Has he made any friends? Does he play any sports? By the end of a week of spying all I know is that he’s an honor student, he’s considering trying out for the baseball team, and he’s shy. Seems like he would have been a sure yes on the Samantha invitation.

  He’s absent one day, and I realize that I’m incredibly disappointed. Spying on Benny has become my principal diversion. The next day he returns, and my heart does a wild, primal dance.

  When Godin begins to set up an experiment, Benny leans toward me. “Jocelyn, may I see your notes from yesterday?” he asks.

  I slide my notebook over, all the while silently repeating the sound of my name from his mouth. Of course he would know my name. He’s heard Godin use it half a dozen times. But the fact that he chooses to use it, like we’re lab friends or something, puts my poor heart into another thumping spin.

  Benny laughs a kindly laugh. “Your notes look like hieroglyphs. Tell me what they say,” he says.

  I laugh too and whisper my notes aloud, making them sound like poetry.

  FORTY-THREE

  I return to Gabe with leftover fried chicken and potato salad—food that was dropped off at the O’Neils’ house but couldn’t fit in the overflowing refrigerator and so got crammed into ours.

  Gabe is calmer. And ravenous. “I swore that I’d never become like my old man, Jocelyn.” He bites into the meat, tears the chicken off the bone. “But I know that deep down, I’m as fucked up as he is.”

  “You’re not your father,” I say, watching him eat.

  “Yes, I am. Look at me. All you’ve ever wanted is to be with me, and look how I treated you.”

  “You didn’t have to be with me. That was your prerogative.”

  Gabe stares inside the thermos of milk I brought him—as if it held the answers. “You scared me, Jocelyn. You seemed to like me so much. But I guess I’ve always known that there is something off about me, and I wanted you to see it too.”

  “I wish you could have just told me,” I say, and we both laugh.

  “You’ve got to come home, Gabe.”

  “I can’t, Jocelyn. I can’t ever come home.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Sure. After a week of hiding out in the woods—so that everyone in this county is looking for me, wondering what has happened—I come sauntering back to say, what? That I got freaked out because I’ve been screwing my priest?”

  “I think people will be sympathetic. Warren’s the adult here.”

  “Ha!” he shouts, and suddenly his force has come back. “Jocelyn, you don’t know shit.”

  “There’s no—”

  “Let me set you straight, Joss. This is my fault. I wanted to be with Father Warren. He was always so damn happy to see me. He would talk with me for hours, and he really cared about what was going on in my head. I wanted him to invent reasons for me to come to the parish house. Don’t you get it, Jocelyn? It’s my fault that he got turned on. I made it happen.”

  “That’s just your problem, Gabe. You think you’re in charge. But you weren’t the puppeteer here, Gabe. He was. He’s a priest! You should hear what he’s been saying to Benny. And I probably don’t even know the half of it.”

  “Benny?” says Gabe. “I thought, maybe.” But this information doesn’t seem to release him, it only makes him more depressed. He sets his cup down and lies back on the riverbank, looking up at the first stars.

  I lie back too and rack my brain for some angle that will convince him that coming home will work out.

  “Matthew and Timmy were here,” he says.

  I bolt back up. “They know?”

  “No. I hid out in the woods until they searched the house. Then I moved in.”

  I register a tiny pang of pleasure. He didn’t hide from me.

  “Jocelyn,” he says, “don’t you see? I can’t come home. No matter what I told them—even if I made something up—they wouldn’t be satisfied. There would be endless questions that I can’t answer. I know, I’ve gone through all the possibilities.”

  “You could tell the truth,” I say.

  “Do you know what that would do to my family?” Gabe asks. “My father can’t deal with this. He’ll call me a fucking fag. He thinks homos should be burned at the stake. He’ll disown me.”

  It’s amazing. I think, No matter how some people treat us, we still want their love.

  “And he’ll blame my mother,” Gabe says. “He’ll blame her softness and the way she puts all her faith in the Church. He’ll say she pushed me toward Father Warren.” He fiddles with a little cross at his throat, hanging from a piece of rawhide. Mine?

  “You’re strong, Gabe,” I say. “You can get through this. Your family will be so glad you’re alive that—”

  He sighs. “Don’t be so sure, Jocelyn. Who would you rather have living under your roof? An accomplished athlete, a good Catholic boy who, perhaps, died tragically? Or some kind of deviant who you don’t even really know?”

  “I would rather have you, Gabe.”

  Gabe rolls over and lowers his head to my shoulder. I wrap my arms around him, and we both cry.

  It’s hard leaving Gabe, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t hide out with him. He won’t come home.

  “Will you be warm enough tonight?” I ask. There’s a breeze coming off the mountains.

  He nods.

  “I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

  “Promise me again, Jocelyn. You won’t tell anyone? That’s the deal, right? I’m trusting you.”

  “Yes,” I say, pushing away the knowledge that this is wrong. It is so very wrong to keep this secret from the people who love him. But one more day might help us both to come up with a real solution. �
��Don’t forget that you made a promise to me, Gabe,” I add.

  He nods. He looks so tired. He’s going to sleep tonight, I think.

  “Okay, then,” I say, but I don’t move down the path. “Good-bye.”

  Gabe leans over and places his lips ever so lightly on mine.

  “Good-bye, Joss,” he says.

  FORTY-FOUR

  After our third date Benny asks me if I would like to go out to Headlock Pond. He is asking permission to go parking, I think, and against the better judgment of Theresa (“You don’t want him to think you’re easy”), I nod yes.

  When we get to the pond, however, he turns off the car and comes around to open my door. “I love this place,” he says, taking my hand and leading me down to the moonlit clearing.

  “You do?” I have seen Headlock only on the most scorching days of summer, when it’s crowded with families.

  “Yeah, I remember the day that Mom discovered it. She couldn’t wait to show us. And it was so, I don’t know, beautiful—it was like an omen, telling us that the move to New Hampshire was the right thing to do.”

  The cold air clings to my cheeks, but I have never felt warmer. We step onto the ice, which makes a distant moaning sound. I stop, paralyzed.

  “Don’t worry,” says Benny. “The lake always talks beneath the ice. But it’s been frozen solid for a month.”

  I shiver, and he stops to warm both my hands between his.

  “Look up.”

  I do. Tonight the sky is a well-loved quilt, threadbare holes allowing light in from other universes.

  “How does that sky make you feel?” Benny asks.

  “Small—tiny, in fact. But somehow significant.”

  “Exactly,” Benny says, wrapping his arms around me.

  I smile. I’ve just received an A on the test. “What do you think that feeling is?” I ask. My mother would tell me that it’s our memory—a memory that we’ve forgotten—that we are connected to all things.

  “I’ve gone to church all my life,” says Benny, “and in there I always feel inadequate. Like I’m never measuring up to the person God—or my parents—would want me to be. But out here I can feel God. Like he’s watching, like he’s on my side.”

  And you brought me here, I think. I want to tell him that I know exactly what he means. That I, too, have experienced that feeling. The feeling that one is ultimately safe and protected—even if it does not seem to be so in this world. But suddenly, I’m shy. Because one of the times that I remember knowing this, knowing this without a doubt, was when I was little and kicking my Mary Janes in church.

  FORTY-FIVE

  I rehearse what I’m going to say to Gabe as I walk down the path. I’ll suggest that we find a way for him to get to one of his brother’s or his sister’s home. He can hang out there, away from the press, until he’s had a chance to talk with his family. I’ve counted up my tip money, and I’m sure I have enough for him to take a bus to Boston. Theresa could take him to the station in Jefferson.

  Gabe isn’t outside when I arrive. Let him sleep, I think, but I can’t.

  My knock against the flimsy door makes more of a squeaking, tapping noise than a rap. Not a sound in return. No answer on the second knock either, and my whole body, limb by limb, turns to stone.

  The door creaks open with a push. No Gabe.

  The cans, wrappers, and tattered magazines that had been scattered two days before are now piled in the corner. Bile (or is it simply disguised hurt?) rises in my throat. I can’t help feeling tossed upon this heap.

  I dig through the rubble to find clues, a note, a picture drawn in the dirt. Did he leave me nothing? As I lift one of the cans I hear a clinking sound and investigate. Discarded with the trash is the gold cross.

  F0RTY-SIX

  “Well, that’s sexy” says my mother when I come downstairs in my prom dress. She’s being sarcastic. I’m wearing what she would call a granny dress, but so is every other girl this year. We’ve all chosen Gunne Sax dresses, and I think they’re romantic.

  I’m not sure my mother ever believed in romance. If she did, she doesn’t now.

  The dress has lace that begins at my thumbs, climbs up my arms, and cradles my neck. A ribbon ties up the bodice.

  As Benny leads me to his car, I tell him my mother’s comment.

  “Not sexy?” he says. “She has no imagination.”

  I laugh. “Good thing, I guess.”

  Benny smiles. We both know that this is a special night.

  The prom is held at the ballroom of the King Grant’s Inn in Keene. It’s the first time the prom hasn’t been in the school gym.

  Neither Benny nor I can dance, but we pretend, and the night feels magical. So magical, I imagine for a minute that I might be chosen as princess in the royal court. Theresa, Benny, and I are sitting at a table, waiting for girls to be elected.

  It doesn’t happen. Benny squeezes my hand as if to say, That’s not important. Not tonight. I smile at him—a knowing smile. When I look up, Gabe has left Bernadette with friends and is walking right toward me.

  “Hi, Theresa, Benny.”

  “Hey, Gabe,” says Benny, looking up.

  Gabe leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Joss,” he says, then walks away.

  “What was that?” asks Benny.

  I shrug.

  “Cattle branding,” Theresa mutters under her breath.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  I lift the cross from the rubble and tie the rawhide around my own neck. My anger toward Gabe melts. Into melancholy. When would I get it? It was never about me. Never.

  The soft earth springs up, supporting my steps as I head back home. I avoid the roots winding across the path, having traveled here too often to be tripped up any longer. When I reach the road, I see a figure coming out of the O’Neils’ gate.

  Father Warren.

  I’ll just look down, I think, pretending that I don’t see him walking back toward town, but he spends so much time trying to be visible—throwing back his shoulders, putting on his “I’ve just visited the poor O’Neil family” airs—that I am forced to walk past him.

  “Why, Jocelyn!”

  I begin to shake, but my mouth, which has been well trained at the Grill, creeps into a perverse smile.

  “Jocelyn, is something wrong?” His eyes meet mine for only a second and then rest upon my neck. “You’re—you’re wearing Gabe’s cross.”

  “No,” I say. “It belongs to me.”

  “But,” he says, clearly grappling with images in his own mind, “Gabe was wearing it—”

  “The night he disappeared?”

  His eyes register shock, and I see the question forming on his lips.

  “Yes,” I say. “I have seen Gabe, and he told me what happened. But he’s vanished again, and I’m scared. Scared for him and—and others. Others like Benny.”

  The priest wrestles for his next words, but I turn away—not in the direction of my own house, where I could crawl into familiar and silent corners, but toward the O’Neils’. He sees my resolve to do what I should have done days before.

  “Jocelyn, be sensible!” he barks. “Anything you say will hurt Gabe, will hurt his family. And who would believe you anyway?”

  I stop. A crow soars overhead, buoyed by nothing more than sky. “I can’t help it if they don’t believe me. I can’t let that possibility stop me.”

  “Jocelyn!” He reaches out to grab my wrist, but I step back. I don’t know what he sees on my face, but he drops his hand.

  “Father Warren,” I say, “I’m not sure I believe in the devil. But if I keep quiet, then I’ll be in partnership with you.” I breathe deeply. “And I couldn’t bear that.”

  I turn and stumble, but I catch myself and continue down the O’Neils’ walkway, knowing I will be the first stone thrown—the first rock in the avalanche.

  “And you didn’t come directly to us?”

  “Please, Mike,” Margo says.

  I shake my head. “I know that
I should have.”

  “Damn right you should have.” Mike’s face is red, his eyes huge. “Do you have any idea what this has been like for us?”

  “Jocelyn. Tell us again, about Gabe’s state of mind,” says Margo, leaning toward me. “What did he look like? Was he distraught? Do you think he’d do anything drastic?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m gulping for air. I’ve betrayed Gabe. I’ve added to his parents’ suffering. I may be the cause of—

  “When I get my hands on Warren, he’ll wish he’d never been born.”

  “We have to find Gabe,” says Margo. “We have to call the police.”

  “Jesus,” says Mike, cringing. “And what good would that do?”

  “They can help us find him. We have new information. Please, Mike.”

  “It would only make matters worse for Gabe. Don’t you see that? He could never come home.”

  “But, Mike …,” says Margo, reaching her hand out to him.

  He shrugs her off. “I’m calling the bishop,” he says. “That’s the first step.”

  “Jocelyn,” says Margo. Tears are running down her face. “Would you go get your mother for me? Please?”

  “Jocelyn.” Mike’s voice stops me. “You are not to say one word to anyone. You know nothing about Gabe. Do you understand me?”

  I’m paralyzed.

  “The boy you describe is not my son. Not my son.”

  Mom runs to be with Margo. I don’t know what to do. I pick up the phone and call Benny.

  “Can you come get me?” I ask.

  “Right now?”

  “Sooner.”

  I tell Benny that I’ve seen Gabe, that he may still be in town. We drive around searching for him. We get out and look under the railroad bridge. We climb up to the top of the bridge, and then we walk the railway.

  I call out Gabe’s name, thinking he might be hiding in the bushes, waiting. Benny walks behind me. I don’t want Gabe to know that anyone is with me.

  I think about Gabe being somewhere out there, alone. Alone? I walk back toward Benny and say, “Let’s go check the parish house.”