I stared at him blankly, finally managing to get out, “What will you do?”
“There may be a place for me in a little church near Springfield. It’s a farming town. I like the authenticity of that. I want to try it out.”
“You’re leaving Cambridge?”
“As soon as I can. I have to ask you a favor. Will you keep Birdie for me? I don’t want to leave her. And I don’t know where I’m going to live. Everything is going to be in flux for a while and…Will you?”
“Okay,” I said, still rocked by his news. “I’ve never had a cat.”
“Thanks, Brigid. I really appreciate this.”
James put the kitten in a carrier and toys and a bowl into a shopping bag, and then he walked me home.
For the first time, I felt awkward around James.
He was saying that he would notify the archdiocese in the morning, that he would tell the congregation the news on Sunday. I nodded, thinking that St. Paul’s Church would feel so empty without him. That I would feel empty, too.
When we reached my front stoop, James bent to the carrier and stroked Birdie’s face through the grille.
“You behave yourself, Birdie.”
He stood up and smiled at me, wrapped me in a hug, and said, “Thanks again, Brigid. You’ll be in my prayers.”
I felt that rush again, both exciting and frightening. I held on to him, feeling everything: the pounding of my heart, the tears in my eyes, the sound of his breathing, and the warmth of his cheek against mine.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I said.
“I hope so. Be safe. I’ll miss you.”
He kissed my cheek before releasing me and headed off up the street.
I climbed my stoop, holding the carrier with a crying kitten inside, and when I turned to look after James and wave good-bye, he had already rounded the corner.
He was gone from my life. Just gone.
Chapter 80
AS THINGS turned out, I didn’t have time to think about what James was doing in the next chapter of his life.
Birdie was a slippery, scampering handful. She thought my two-story house was built just for her and loved racing up and down the stairs, hiding in the laundry pile, pushing her tail in my face when I took to my laptop, and pawing the screen as my typing made the letters appear.
This orange pile of fluff made me laugh out loud, and at night, she slept on my pillow, right next to my face.
In the morning, Birdie woke me up by patting my nose and giving me a long, insistent meow.
“I get it, Birdie,” I’d say.
I would feed her, turn on Animal Planet, set her up for her day before getting ready for my own.
I loved my job at Prism.
The brisk two-block walk to work was an excellent transition from the stability of my home to Prism, which was the center of a storm from the beginning to the end of the day.
Prism’s clients needed medical care, psychological counseling, and breakfast, and everything we did for them had to be documented, filed, and printed out for the patient.
Over the next few months, my job responsibilities expanded, then doubled again. One of my grant papers got a hit, and we received a tidy windfall from an NGO. Four months into my employment, we opened a pharmacy in the empty storefront next door.
Our director, Dr. Dweck, was funny, expansive, and very loving. He used his platform at Prism to take our message about the dangers of drug use to schoolkids in our community.
“Synthetic marijuana isn’t marijuana,” he’d say. “It’s two percent marijuana, ninety-eight percent unregulated components, which is as good as a hundred percent poison. This is a high that kills, get me?”
I volunteered often to go with Dr. Dweck to these schools. It felt good being with young kids who laughed and sang, weren’t sick, dying, orphaned, tortured, or homeless.
Father Alphonse McNaughton took over at St. Paul’s.
He was a traditional priest who stuck to the book, and his homilies were solid if not inspirational. I was asked to help with church benefits, and I always said, “Yes. When?”
Along with my job at Prism, good works were bringing me not just peace but joy, too.
Kyle Richardson took me on as a client, and together we set up a private foundation. I thought Karl would have approved of my anonymously donating his money to Boston clinics for the poor. My “father” and I had no contact, but when I learned that he had been admitted to an in-house drug rehab facility, I made sure that whatever Harvard’s health insurance didn’t cover was settled anonymously from my account.
When I came home at night exhausted from the activities of the day, unrest settled over me, and sadness rolled in like high tide beneath a full moon. James and I exchanged a few texts, but they were so impersonal, I felt worse after writing to him.
I prayed. I wrote in my journal daily, adding new stories of individual lives to my collection of hundreds. I entertained Birdie, and she did the same for me.
But I still felt less than whole.
I knew what was missing. I wasn’t at the center of anyone’s life. I was really alone, and midnight was the loneliest time of all.
That was when I thought of Karl and the best of our times, which had been spent lying together in bed, our sides touching, our fingers entwined, telling each other about what we had each lived through and felt since saying good-bye that morning.
And I ached for our baby. My instinct to check on her at night was still alive, even though Karl and Tre were not.
So every night, I draped my orange tabby cat over my shoulder, and I climbed the stairs. We got into bed, and I thanked God for all the good things in my life.
I closed my eyes, and then a paw would tap my nose, a yowl would ensue, as another morning arrived.
Chapter 81
ON A dark January morning, a blizzard fell on Boston and wrapped it in a cold, blinding hug.
When I arrived at Prism, homeless people bundled in rags were piled up three deep against the storefront. There were no lights inside the facility, and no one was home.
Rob called me. He was stuck in a snowdrift on Pearl Street. I had never needed a key to Prism, and I didn’t have one now.
Louise, our nurse practitioner, had a spare, and she was on the way, but before she arrived, someone hurled a spanner through the glass of our new pharmacy. The opportunity to steal drugs was too good to pass up, and people poured in through the shattered plate-glass window.
I dialed 911 and was yelling to the operator that we needed squad cars, pronto, when a boy of about ten threw his arms around my waist and cried, “Don’t let them take Mommy to jail. Please.”
I hugged him back as people eddied around us and snow obliterated the curbs and hydrants along Putnam Avenue. Louise called out to me over the wail of sirens as she came up the sidewalk toward Prism, her head lowered against the driving snow. As squad cars streamed onto the street with red lights flashing, my phone rang in my hand.
“Rob? It’s a mess. But Louise-”
“Brigid. It’s James.”
“What?”
It was too much to comprehend in one second.
The boy broke away from me, Louise struggled with the door lock, dark figures scattered with bags of drugs in their arms, and cop radios snapped and crackled around us.
“James!” I shouted into the phone. “I can’t talk now.”
“Call back when you can,” he said.
It took all morning to sort out the chaos. Our clients were let inside. The young boy found his mother, and they came in for coffee and a good cry. Rob arrived by ten and shouted orders in the calmest possible way. When I finally got to my office, shed my coat, scarf, and mittens, I hit the Return Call button on my phone.
“James?”
“Everything okay?” he asked me.
“For the moment,” I said. “How are you?”
“Can you take a break for a day or so? I want you to see what I’m up to.”
“James. Tell me. What is it?”