Page 275 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 263

9

December 25, 1963

Silent Night. I faced the music. Christmas at home was a show-
down game of chicken. Like Kennedy daring Khrushchev, I risked
announce into the oncoming headlights of all my parent’s friends: “I
quit.” Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful. On Christmas Eve, before Midnight
Mass, people still reeling from Jack Kennedy’s death stammered in
the snow outside my parent’s parish church and looked at my face,
looked at their feet, and started to say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” then stopped.
“I quit,” I said. Dashing through the snow. “The world is chang-
ing. Faster than you know.” They buried their heads in their fur
collars and scarves. “Even in Peoria.” I could never have preached
to them. I could never have warned them. Christmas was lights and
presents and “Yoo hoo, Santa.”
“You would have made such a handsome priest.” They looked at
me, really looked, perhaps for the first time, at the amazing invisible
boy, then said the same lines, all of them, the same lines: “Better to
find out now, courage of your convictions.” Chestnuts roasting. They
stared at me like some shape-shifter. Come and behold him. “Girls?”
they asked. “Who’s the girl?” They drew their daughters in closer
to them. Round yon virgin. They kidded me. “Now I don’t have to
watch my language around you.” Barump a bum bump.
My father’s best friend, the rich Mason, pulled me aside and said,
“Congratulations. You were always too good for that.” Everybody
knows. People took my hand and pulled me to them. “Now you have
to make up for lost time.” Jingle all the way. I was shocked they were
so relieved. Oh, what fun. Grown-ups who loved me had kept their
opinions quiet out of respect for my vocation. All is bright. They
breathed a sigh of relief, as if abducted, I had rescued myself.
They welcomed me back. Quitting made me one of them again.
For the first time in almost eleven years, I had no identity. I was not

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