I stared at her neck, her tangled hair, her limp jacket, her droopy slip. She was kneeling, and so I knelt. I was praying to her; I hoped she was praying to me.
The priest appeared with two altar boys hurrying beside him. He busied himself at the altar, muttering in Latin, the boys replying. He opened and closed the tabernacle, he fussed with the chalice, he smoothed the linen napkins. At the consecration one boy shook the hand bells and Father Staley shuffled the host and snapped it apart with his scaly fingers and said, “Hoc est enim corpus meum, ” and I thought, This is my body, Evelyn.
The host was not bread anymore; it had been transformed into the body of Christ, as the wine sloshing in the chalice had been made into blood. Father Staley was leaning on the altar, his elbows on the marble, eating and drinking, chewing body, swallowing blood. I knew what was happening, I had half believed it because there was nothing else to believe. But now I believed in Evelyn Frisch, body and soul.
The way she knelt and prayed in a posture of struggle seemed to show that she was trying to believe, praying for strength. I was also kneeling, but I was not praying anymore, I was thinking: It is so hard to believe in God, and harder still to love him, or Christ the criticizer. It was so easy to love this skinny girl, who was full of life and yet frail, dressed poorly, probably in hand-me-downs, and yet her clothes attracted me. And half Jewish was alluring too; she was odd, exotic, didn't really belong here, and although she had never looked directly at me, she knew exactly where I was. We were together in church, worshiping together, worshiping each other, amid the watery flicker of lighted candles.
“On this Easter vigil, the burial of Jesus, we light a candle to signify Christ's passing from death to life,” Father Staley was saying in his sermon. “God is love, and if your soul is pure, you too can have eternal life.”
The candle flames were a nice part of the ritual that day, the warmth, the fire, the light, the dripping wax on the knob of the candle stump. And as I knelt she sat back in the pew and her head was against my face, her sweet soapy hair-smell in my nose and mouth.
I did not want eternal life. I had no idea what the words meant. What I wanted most of all was this, an hour in church with Evelyn Frisch, even if it meant I had to betray Jesus and be a sinner. She was love.
7
On Easter Sunday at eight o’clock Mass she glowed in a pink and white dress, wearing cream-colored gloves and a white hat with a gauzy veil over her face and the same scuffed shoes and falling-down socks. We were in the same pew, about ten feet apart — three people between us — but still I could see just beneath the hem of her Easter dress the same scrap of lace-trimmed slip like a lovely sin.
The day was warm and the sun so bright even the stained-glass windows poured bars of reddish light into the church.
People sang, their voices raised, their prayers flying up to Heaven.
I murmured earnestly but I knew that my prayers were not rising. I was glancing at Evelyn Frisch and not at the altar, imploring her, so that she would be kind to me, so that she would want me. I venerated her, I prayed to her, and all that I wanted from life was that she, or someone just like her, would want me.
I was frightened at the thought of seeing her outside, and perhaps having to speak to her, in the larger harsher world of light and air. I understood Judas — why he was tempted, why he gave in, why he was lost long before he betrayed Christ.
After the service, people left quickly, noticing each other’s new clothes. I waited, I looked around, and seeing that the church was empty except for us, I slid a few feet toward Evelyn Frisch. She slid toward me until we were close enough to touch — her thigh against mine. I let my hand stray until I could take hold of hers. I asked a question with my shy fingers, and she answered with her hot damp fingers, and we sat there a long time, holding hands and not looking up.
II. Pup Tent
TO CONSOLE MYSELF at night when I was small, I used to prop up my blanket in bed, pretending I was in a tent in the wilderness. I crouched inside with a flashlight, reading. Only then could I get to sleep. I was nine, then ten. I dreamed mainly of monsters, lumpy potato men or wild children with bucketlike skulls, a huge particular woman in a cone bra, and bunny-faced girls in snug panties. I was naked and fleeing in all my dreams. Maybe it was the books I read—Trap Lines North, Campcraft, horror comics. I wanted to sleep outside the house. I thought: I’ll camp in the yard first, and later I will go to the ends of the earth.
My parents were confused by my books and hated the horror comics. “Those things belong in the trash. Why don’t you read Penrod and Sam?” I was so closely peered at I couldn’t think straight. “Get a haircut!” “Wash your hands!” “Elbows off the table!” I felt lightheaded and helpless, like the tickle that teases your scalp the second before your hat blows off. Ever since Louie was born I had wanted to leave, and I was saving up for the journey. My books were my banks: I hid dollar bills, some between the pages of Rich Cargoes, some in Treasure Island. Eight dollars toward the voyage. I never bought anything new, always looked for bargains.
The confidence of my parents’ friends made me gape. The loud woman who said “Is this thing an ashtray?” as she mashed a cigarette butt into a good saucer. I had no obvious confidence, only shyness. I sensed I was a sneak, but sneaking gave me some of the freedom I needed. The aromas of perfume and cigarette smoke, the sight of red lipstick on that cigarette butt, aroused me, but nothing aroused me more than being outside the house alone.
One of my pleasures was to take the electric car, the ten-cent trolley, to Boston and walk past the wharves, the ship chandlers and outfitters and nautical supply stores, that lined the ocean side of Atlantic Avenue. The wind off the harbor had the smell of kelp and the sea. In the window of Bliss Marine was an old diver’s suit — a brass-domed helmet with a round goggling face of glass and breathing tubes, canvas arms and legs, heavy boots, and a belt of lead weights. The stores that attracted me most sold army surplus from the war. The war had been over for only five years and much of the equipment was new-looking — C rations you could eat, unused ammo boxes, polished leather belts, smooth helmets, gleaming bayonets.
Seeing these objects convinced me I could defend myself in battle, travel a great distance, survive hardships, endure severe heat or cold, even gunfire and enemies. I could live life in a foxhole or in the north woods.
They were piled on counters — tin mess kits, canteens, water bags, rucksacks, web belts, pistol holsters, flares, traps, goggles, field jackets and ponchos — all of them very cheap and most of them stenciled US Army. Gas masks too, and sterno stoves, German helmets looking wicked with upturned edges, sleeping bags, combat boots, jackknives, hatchets, khaki metal flashlights with dents in them. The things that interested me most were faded, scuffed, beaten up, “war-torn.” I looked for traces of blood on the bayonets.
“This has seen some action,” the salesman would say, turning over a holster or a worn canteen, and I could imagine gunfire, a muddy trench, Nazis, General Tojo's buckteeth. Most of all I imagined survival, making it through a dark night, watching the sun come up, being alone and self-reliant, like a fur trapper or a Canadian Mountie or a GI. I was a woodsman, alone in the forest, living in a tent.
Of all the tents, the cheapest and best was the pup tent. This was a model of simplicity that matched the lines of a church roof, steeply angled, with a ridge and guy ropes, supported by two poles and a clutch of tent stakes. A fly of two flaps was the door. Army surplus, ten dollars.