Page 129 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 117

was measured exactly into the defined peri ods of the liturgical year,
we lost all sense of real time and urgency.
How many boys were hiding family scandal at home?
Mike, free of being a priest, felt freer to confess to me, because
he said I had a true vocation.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “The year after the divorce,
you remember Julie went to Madison for a rest.” He stubbed out
the last of his smoke. “There was no nervous break down. Just some
blond Scandinavian guy from one of the tourist lodges. Damn, I’m
out of cigarettes. Why don’t you smoke?” He patted all his pockets,
then settled back into the creaking wicker chair. “I’m out. Anyway,
one night that winter, while you and I were holy little high-school
sopho mores at Misery, Julie came home all beat up. She’d told this
Scandinavian social director she was PG with his kid and he slapped
her up all alone outside the cheery lodge, right in the street. Left
her in the snow. A great melodrama, but no hero saved her and that
spring, late, she had the nine-pound nervous breakdown, and it was
adopted. Doc hauled the guy into court, quietly. He was fined or
something. That pushed Doc and Julie even farther apart.”
“Mike, come on. Enough’s enough.”
“You don’t believe it. You think it’s Peyton Place.”
“You say it, Mike. I believe you.”
“God’s truth,” he said.
“But it doesn’t explain you, just them.”
“They’re the easiest part,” he said. “What happened to me even
Rip and Kenny...like...don’t know. There’s Barbara.”
Barbara? Oh, no; but, of course. Why not? Somewhere in all
this muck lurked a Barbara. My grade school had been driven crazy
by the sudden bloom of sweet little Barbara with the pointy chest
the mothers said was prematurely developed. The priests at Misery
continually warned us there would always be a Barbara.
I felt sorry for girls blamed for boys’ bad thoughts.
I felt sorry for boys driven crazy by girls.
I didn’t like playing at being Father Confessor. The priests
warned us that penitents always try to confess with too much detail.
Don’t let them. You’ll only hear things you’ll try not to think about
later, or, worse, their sins will become your tempta tions.

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