Tom Mendicino
Probation
© 2010
For Rachel Klayman and Casey Fuetsch,
who have been indispensable
A life is not important except
in the impact it has on other lives.
– Jackie Robinson
Playlist
“Oh Playmate, Come Out and Play with Me”
(Saxie Dowell)
“Nancy (With the Laughing Face)”
(Jimmy Van Heusen/Phil Silvers)
“The Patty Duke Show Theme”
(Sid Ramin/Bob Wells)
“Overture to The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte)”
(W. A. Mozart)
“Last Dance”
(Pete Bellotte)
“Surrender”
(Rick Nielsen)
“You’re the First, the Last, My Everything”
(Barry White, Tony Sepe, and Peter Radcliffe)
“Let’s Pretend We’re Married”
(Prince)
“Mame”
(Jerry Herman)
“White Christmas”
(Irving Berlin)
“What I Did for Love”
(Edward Kleban/Marvin Hamlisch)
“People Will Say We’re in Love”
(Rodgers and Hammerstein)
“Snowbird”
(Gene MacLellan)
“I’m a Believer”
(Neil Diamond)
“Top of the World”
(Richard Carpenter/John Bettis)
“The Most Beautiful Girl”
(Norris Wilson/Billy Sherrill/Rory Bourke)
“Cracklin’ Rosie”
(Neil Diamond)
“Well…All Right”
(Buddy Holly)
“You Never Can Tell”
(Chuck Berry)
“The Grand Tour”
(Norris Wilson/Carmol Taylor/George Richey)
“We’re Gonna Hold On”
(George Jones and Earl Montgomery)
“Sweet Jane” and “Head Held High”
(Lou Reed)
“Kiss Me on the Bus”
(Paul Westerberg)
“Girlfriend”
(Matthew Sweet)
“Casta diva”
(Vincenzo Bellini)
“Love to Love You Baby”
(Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder/Pete Bellotte)
“Help!” “Ticket to Ride” and “If I Fell”
(John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
“Love Me Tender”
(Vera Matson/Elvis Presley)
“I Love Rock N Roll”
(Jake Hooker/Alan Merrill)
“Suspicious Minds”
(Mark James)
“Little Saint Nick”
(Brian Wilson/Mike Love)
“Blue Christmas”
(Billy Hayes/Jay Johnson)
“Between Us”
(William Reid)
“Buddy Holly”
(Rivers Cuomo)
Priest
My lawyer knew what he was doing when he dressed me for my sentencing. He insisted I buy a new shirt, a button-down oxford, and new khakis, both two sizes too large. My neck barely anchored the collar, and my belt was useless. Outside the courtroom, he undid the knot in my tie and ordered a quick, sloppy Windsor. “Good boy,” he said, “pants and shirt straight from the dryer. Loafers run down at the toe.” I had done as I was told and slept in my blazer. “Pathetic.” He laughed as he led me into the courtroom.
Just as he predicted, the judge took pity on me, a big, forlorn old boy, so ashamed of my transgressions that it was obvious I was unable to lift fork to mouth these days. I blushed when addressed by the Court. His Honor recognized something familiar in me. A face he might pass on the golf course or at the wine and cheese reception on opening night of the new season at the Performing Arts Center. A face he was startled to see from high atop his bench, out there, adrift in a sea of teenage carjackers in nylon shell suits and crystal meth pushers with frizzy, gray ponytails. A blazing blue Brooks Brothers shirt surrounded by agitated jumping jacks who couldn’t sit still and pockmarked cactuses who dozed on the courtroom benches.
Probation. One year of counseling, no more arrests, and your record will be expunged. Next case, the People of the State of North Carolina versus…
My record.
Can they really expunge my record? I ask my lawyer. How do I know there won’t be some ominous criminal sheet stamped RECORD EXPUNGED dogging me for the rest of my life, forcing me to explain I’ve never been convicted of molesting children or raping old ladies?
Well, he says, you can always just pay the fine, forget about the counseling, and spend the rest of your life explaining why you were giving a blow job off Interstate 85 one hot summer night.
He’s got a point.
My counselor lives with three other priests in an old Queen Anne in Charlotte where he sees his private patients. I give myself plenty of time to find the place and arrive forty minutes early for our first session. He’s in the driveway, washing a restored 1966 Mustang convertible, stripped to a pair of running shorts, wet black hair plastered to his chest. I introduce myself. Andrew Nocera. The criminal degenerate. He shakes my dry hand with his wet one and tells me I caught him with his pants down, literally, and excuses himself.
I wait in the study, listening to the clock mark off the minutes. I finger the silk place marker in the missal on the desk and flip through epistles and gospels, hoping to stumble across a passage to enlighten me about my predicament. Maybe Jesus, dozing on the crucifix on the wall, would have a few words of encouragement if I could rouse Him from His nap.
My counselor saunters into the office. His biceps rip against his shirt sleeves and his neck muscles bulge under the Roman collar. Is it Andrew or Andy? he asks. He tells me to call him Matt. I tell him I’m old-fashioned and prefer to call him Father McGinley. Not necessary, he says.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
He sees me staring at his hands-the wide span between his outstretched fingers, the balls of his fingertips, the sharp black hairs, the clipped cuticles, and the flat buffed nails. He folds these anointed vessels together and waits for me to speak. Why am I entrusting my carcass, and maybe my immortal soul, to a Black Irish linebacker with a passion for emery boards? My lawyer was skeptical when I told him the counseling arrangements my mother had made. He was afraid of testing the judge’s benevolence, knowing the distrust of papists that persists in the glass and steel cities of the New South. He warned me about deep-rooted suspicions that the Romans would connive to circumvent the Court’s interest in my rehabilitation. No self-respecting judge was going to let me off with a few sprinkles of holy water.
But this time my lawyer was wrong. His Honor never raised an eyebrow. The Reverend Matthew J. McGinley, S.J., M.D., has an unrestricted license to practice medicine in the state of North Carolina, is fully certified in his specialty by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, is credentialed for reimbursement for his services by every major health plan, and is well known and respected by the Court for his work with the abused and damaged boys of the juvenile detention system.
And so, with the imprimatur of both Church and State, those well-tended digits are going to peel me like an onion. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’re going to find a rational, scientific explanation why a nice-looking, respectable, barely middle-aged man with a wonderful, loving wife and a glowing future-a man with a mortgage on a beautiful town house with a marble foyer and a stainless steel kitchen, his-and-hers fully loaded sports utility vehicles parked in the garage, linen and alpaca and cashmere stacked in the closets-would drop to his knees in a piss-soaked and shit-stinking toilet and take some burly, sweaty garage mechanic’s cock in his mouth.
Peel an onion and you find it doesn’t have a core.
He asks about my new career.
“Job,” I correct him.
“Do you like it?”
I tell him I sell display shelving to retail shops.
“Well, then you must know how to talk despite the fact you’ve given me every indication otherwise.”
“Nope. I just open the catalogue and point.”
“What would you prefer doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“Why?”
“Is this where you start asking me about my dreams?”