Page 226 - What They Did to the Kid

214 Jack Fritscher

Rector Karg, who had to believe what I told him the Jesuit told me.
Rector Karg was bound in conscience to believe me. His fundamen-
talism made him dangerous. He was a literalist trying to keep his
balance in a trickster world of spirit.
“You,” Sean O’Malley said to me, “are facing the world you said
you wanted to embrace.”
“I thought Librium was like aspirin. We have no newspapers, no
radio, and you didn’t tell me about it.”
“I knew what you needed.”
They all seemed to know what I needed.
“How did Karg find out?”
“I have to report any medicine I dispense.”
“You didn’t tell me that either.”
“I’m a Jesuit,” he said.
I actually short-circuited into laughs, big ones and small ones.
Ryan Stephen O’Hara, I thought, you do get yourself in fub duck
situations. In mortal danger of losing my vocation, I laughed, stand-
ing outside myself. Even fighting for elemental survival, I could not
walk into a believable grown-up version of myself, because some
grown-up was always standing in my way. My only strength lay in
my creative resistance to Rector Karg. Again I felt like a moviegoer,
watching myself act out the opening reels of my life done with smoke
and mirrors. What he saw was not me. It was what I let him see.
What I knew he wanted to see. What I knew he needed to see if I
were to save my vocation.
Finally, Rector Karg called me to his suite. “Your grades are
good,” he said. “Your faculty recommendations are high. You tell
me the Jesuit spiritual director says your interior life is progressing.
There may have been some circumstantial misunderstanding. Your
uncle, who is a priest not without influence, spoke up for you, both
as a priest and a relation. However, we have uncovered enough that
we can only encourage you to work to full capacity, that is, to full
responsibility of Christlike perfection.” He folded his hands. “If you
are concerned about your status, let me ask you, do you feel the grace
of God?”
“I do, Rector. I really believe I do. That I have all along. Even in
the depths of this trial.” I sensed he approved such dialogue.

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