John drove in through the gate and a minute or so later the van crossed the forecourt and pulled up under a canopy. The kids got out and headed for the back door of the kitchen, arguing and joking among themselves. For all of them Sunday was a special day, a day without ghosts.
Jerry Romero expressed everyone’s opinion. ‘Boy, we’re hungry.’
Hendymion Lee, a young man of oriental descent, shrugged his shoulders in reply. ‘So what’s new? You’re always hungry. I’m sure if you were the Pope, they’d have to give communion with slices of salami instead of the host.’
Jerry went up to Hendymion and grabbed his head in an arm lock. ‘If it was up to you, gook, they’d do it with chopsticks.’
They both laughed.
Shalimar Bennett, a black girl with funny spiked hair and the body of a gazelle, joined in the joke. ‘Jerry become Pope? He couldn’t even become a priest. He can’t stand wine. At his first mass he’d get so smashed they’d throw him out.’
John smiled. He lingered in the middle of the forecourt, watching them disappear inside the house. He was not fooled by that relaxed atmosphere. He knew how delicate the balance was, how in each of them memory and temptation were one and the same, until they could be transformed into just a memory. But what he witnessed every day was beautiful – the attempt at rebirth, the construction of a possible future.
Alone, standing in the middle of the forecourt, the sun directly overhead, John Kortighan lifted his eyes to the blue sky and looked at the house.
Joy had been built on the edge of that part of Pelham Bay Park that adjoined the Bronx, on a six-acre property facing the stretch of sea that wove its way northward like a finger poking into the land. The main building was a two-storey construction in the shape of a square C, built according to the architectural dictates that characterized houses in New England, using mainly wood and dark brick. The free side was open towards the channel and the green coast beyond it, which, by contrast, descended southward like a hand holding back the sea.
There was the entrance, facing the garden, which you reached via a porch in the shape of a half-octagon, lit by large glass doors. On the ground floor were the kitchen and pantry, the dining room, a small infirmary, a library, and the games and TV room. On one of the short sides, two bedrooms with a shared bathroom for those members of staff who, like him, lived permanently at Joy. On the upper floor, the kids’ bedrooms, and in the attic Father McKean’s room.
The long side faced the forecourt, where a second building had been built to house a laboratory for those who opted for more manual activities instead of studying. In back of the laboratory was the vegetable garden, which stretched as far as the western edge of the property, where there was an orchard. Originally the vegetable garden and orchard had been developed as an experiment, with the idea of supplying a distraction for the kids at Joy, allowing them to experience something physical, and at the same time rewarding. In a short time, to everyone’s surprise, the production of fruit and vegetables had grown until the community was almost self-sufficient. In fact, when the harvest was particularly good, a group of the kids went down to the market in Union Square to sell their products.
Mrs Carraro appeared in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘What’s this about eating without Father Michael?’
‘He’s been delayed. He has to say the 12.30 mass.’
‘Well, no one will die if we wait a bit. We can’t have Sunday lunch without that man.’
‘All right, colonel.’ John pointed to the inside of the kitchen, from which came the high-pitched echo of the kids’ conversation. ‘But you tell the alligators.’
‘They won’t say a word. I’d like to see them try.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
John watched as she disappeared from the doorway, her face set for battle. Even though Mrs Carraro was greatly outnumbered by the kids, he had no doubt who would prevail. John left the kids to work it out with their cook. She was an apparently gentle and submissive woman but on several occasions had demonstrated how determined she could be. He knew that when she made a decision it was difficult to get her to change her mind, especially if the decision favoured Father McKean.
He turned left and walked slowly along the side of the house, breathing in the air, which had a slight salty taste.
Thinking.
The sun was already hot and the vegetation was starting to explode with that silent green clamour that always surprised the heart and the eyes and knocked down the cold gray walls of winter. He reached the front of the house and set off along the garden path. He walked until all he had in front of him was the shiny tabletop of the sea and the green of the park on the other side of the channel. He stopped with his hands in his pockets and his face lifted to the breeze.
He turned again to look at the house.
Bricks and wood.
Glass and concrete.
Technique and manual work.
All human things.
What was inside those walls, whether of brick or wood, went beyond that. It meant something. And, for the first time in his life, he felt part of that something, regardless of the point of departure and arrival and the unavoidable accidents along the way.
John Kortighan wasn’t a believer. He had never managed to summon up any faith either in man or in God. And consequently not even in himself. But Michael McKean had somehow managed to open a breach in the wall that people had apparently built to keep him out, the wall that he had strengthened on his side in retaliation. God was still a distant, nebulous concept, hidden behind the obvious humanity of His representative. But in a way, even though John had never said this to him, Father McKean wasn’t just saving the kids’ lives, he was also saving his.
On the upper floor, behind the windows that reflected the sky, he glimpsed figures moving. Kids moving around in their rooms. Each had his experience, his fragment of life. Put all together by chance, like pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope, they made a vivid fragile image. Like all unstable things, it wasn’t easy to decipher but was surprisingly colourful.
He walked back the way he had come, entered the house by the main door and started upstairs. As he climbed, step after step, he let his thoughts wander.
The story of Joy was both very simple and very complicated. And as was often the case, its foundation derived from a tragic event, as if some plans needed to be born out of pain in order to find the strength to become reality.
John wasn’t living in the neighbourhood at that time, but he had heard about it from Michael, whose concise account had been corroborated by a couple of longer conversations with the parish priest of Saint Benedict.
It was …
a Friday and they were holding a funeral.
A boy of seventeen, Robin Wheaters, had been found deadof an overdose in a corner of the park on the other side of thebridge, at the junction of Shore Road and City Island Road. A couple who were jogging had spotted a body lying on the ground, half hidden in the bushes. They had approached and found that he was unconscious but still breathing. The ambulance had rushed him to hospital, but to no avail. Robin had died soon afterwards in the arms of his mother, who had been taken there in a police car, after she had contacted the police to inform them that for some unknown reason her son had been out all night. Nobody in the family had ever had the slightest suspicion that he had been involved with drugs. The cause of death made his appalling end all the more horrifying. The post mortem and the absence of marks on his skin had revealed that in all probability it had been his first time. Fate had decided that there wouldn’t be a second time.