1. Father
It’s not that I want to extinguish the boy’s belief, but his mother is always drilling into him—not to mention the nuns in that little school. Those textbooks with sketches of Christ Himself, glowing specter descended over a bloody car wreck on a snowy street, hands on the shoulders of paramedics. A family sprawled across the pavement in poses fit for chalk outlines or snow angels. Theology class is fine and good, but the text they use boasts all the subtlety of an email chain forward. Let’s be perfectly clear: the odds of a genuine theophanic manifestation is so near to none that one almost supposes, although I myself do not, that there actually is no—
At any rate, it is my work, a kind of side work I do because I can do it right, to take on for the diocese these borderline cases (I’ve yet to see one cross the border). To ascertain, medically speaking, the grounds—the lack thereof we all hope and assume (although just imagine if)—for conducting an exorcism on the girl who now pours tea for me and Nick.
Rather, there is also the question not only of if but what kind of haunt (spirit of health, damned goblin, scheming mother) might have her. Ever since that Linda Blair film came out, each new grindhouse take on demonic possession ushers forth disturbed parents with goo-spewing little girls and boys on bouncing beds, gurgling in half-learned Latin. It’s all too apparent when a patient’s projectile vomit is not a product of the devil but of holiday cheer and ipecac. A parent’s leftover bottle I spy in the cupboard. Leftover bright green St. Patty’s cake in the fridge.
This young girl, Marie, looks healthy enough. Maybe a bit odd, her manner of dress. Rather stuffy, blouse buttoned all the way to the white collar. Does her mother forbid too much color? She’s a little too old for that, isn’t she? More and more the smell here of fanaticism. For Christmas Nick had wanted that jacket, the one with the dragon picture stitched into the silk, and I’d been inclined to pick it up. A firm no (mother) on account of the flames dancing around the serpent, a tad too Hellish. We sometimes sit on his shoulders (at least for now, though things have not been looking up), whispering our contrary prayers in the boy’s ears. Maybe I’ll get it for him anyway.
He should see for himself what there is in this world—and learn to brace himself for what is in absence. That’s been my position all along, though I haven’t always fought adequately for it, his mother being the firmer one and getting her way. On this peculiar house call, I can teach him, though, when I peel away this all-but-certain facade. The scientific method, the unflinching crawl toward truth, no matter what it is, ultimately should—no, it does, lead to the Infinite. But until it is revealed, one should not sway too far from the center. Too far toward certain belief, with his mother.
Marie moves the kettle with practiced motion, arcing a stream of black tea naturally from the spout into the boy’s cup, her left hand keeping the lid tightly sealed. Mother is watching. Where is the father? How to tactfully raise this?
“Your son is a few years behind Marie, then?” she asks, soliciting what I’ve already just told her. Nervous? I wonder. Afraid? A cross—a large one, though no blood thank goodness—adorns her wall.
“Nick, tell Mrs. Kelly,” I say. And as soon as I say it, I regret it. I have to watch this tendency in myself to guide him too firmly, leaning onto the scale. That isn’t what I want for him—an inheritance of rigid scowls and stoicism, one of his mother’s accurate charges against me. But don’t I have to prepare him for the cons and the deceivers of the world? I don’t know how to raise him both sharp and gentle. But I am trying.
“Ten,” he says, eyes fixed on the girl. What has his curiosity?
And while Nick’s attention is on the girl—and mine on Nick—Marie crumbles to the floor, as if under some great weight, dropping her metal tray and kettle. Has the game started? Tea streams out across the rug, pooling in dark tones like some ancient thing escaping—a silly thought. A desperate strain in the girl’s eyes speaks, it seems to me, of fear of her mother. Where will the fissures surface?
“Oh, Dr. Connor, it’s just like before!” the mother says, running over to wipe splashed tea from the girl’s face.
“Excuse me,” the girl says, gathering it all up in her arms.
“Are you all right?” I ask, but then the mother is between us.
“Just you watch, Dr. Connor,” the mother says and before she can elaborate, the girl has fallen again, tray and empty kettle whipping free its last drops. We watch in silence, and it dawns on me what’s happening as I turn to Nick: the Stations of the Cross! Numbers 3, 7, and 9. This is possibly the perfect charade for Nick to see, as he played Jesus in a school production.
“Nick,” I say, but his eyes are fixed on the doorway to the kitchen until, on hearing another crash reverberate from the kitchen, he turns to me.
“Dad? Should we help?”
“No,” I say, but I realize I’m not sure even what he means by help. To help the girl gather the tray and dishes? To help the mother manage her child? To interfere in this strange performance? To rescue the girl’s soul from some spiritual burr gnawing at her heel?
“I think,” I say. “It’s under control. Someone’s control.”
The mother peeks around the corner of the kitchen to reassure us and bid us to enjoy our tea. Nick goes for a second scoop of sugar and my look stops him. He lifts the cup to his mouth (I’m watching now over the lip of my cup, sipping) and then cradles it without drinking.
“You were quite good in this role, too, Nick.” He looks to me, and I give him a two-fingered I’m watching gesture, punctuated at the end with a point toward the mother, presently emerging from the kitchen. Together we nod. I will not have to push.
Towel in hand, she dabs apologetically, dryly, at my pant legs. Making too much of this show, not even my boy is fooled. Marie returns after her, sits at the piano, and starts to play. Something baroque. Something I know I’ve heard in church.
Ah, I’d been so tense. Maybe bringing Nick here had been folly. Certainly his mother would not have approved, and it’s a rather extreme measure. But at this point I’ve got to fight for my relationship with him. And hasn’t it paid off? This Demon Mocking the Passion routine is a transparent sham, and my son sees through it. He smiles at me, knowingly. I sip from my tea, listen to the music, and close my eyes.
There’s no incense but I can smell it still from when I was a boy. Hymns in the church. The dark, lacquered wood of the pews.
That priest whose fingers slinked out from the vestments and spidered across my thigh. I’d run when I saw him. Stayed hours in the woods if he visited our home. I thank God, if for nothing else, for what was saved by those instincts.
Nick will have sharp instincts, too. And I feel whatever happens between me and his mother, an understanding exists between father and son.
Marie is still at the piano, but redness has formed around her collar. Down her face roll thick fingers of blood. She rocks gently, smiling, as her feet press at the pedals and her hands in perfect control roll along, depressing the keys. I can almost see the whole mechanism at work, moving together in unison to bring hammers upon strings. And at the core of it, thorned and red, this girl and—it couldn’t be but the thought flickers with possibility, a metallic glint in total dark—that which is so long unrevealed.
The mother gasps and crosses herself, and the sharpness of her breath, so much like a sob, tells me—just maybe—she has not set this up. Something aches between us.
Then, as if my own doubt has ripped open the fuselage of our family, sucking away our air and tugging at my son, I see Nick’s eyes—wide, mouth open—lured to the girl, lured toward belief and away from me. Lured by the notes like crumbs leading into woods. Lured by blood. And I am uncertain of all between Heaven and Earth except for the knowledge that I will lose my son.
2. Daughter
One two three one two three. Trinity divinity infinity. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme!
Ah, damnit, wrong. Do they hear the flub? Common time, not ¾. This is the chorale. Come, Mother, hear the watchman sing. You love this one, loved it together. It should fill and swell your memories of Father, revive your heart, and guide the feet to—argh, that sticky pedal. Guide my feet, Lord.
What on earth am I doing? Is this too much? That boy’s going to have awful nightmares after this performance. Didn’t expect him, I mean it’s not a social visit. What is this, take your son to the exorcism day? I think I’ve got the doctor on board, though. Essential. Sweat on his brow, eyes darting like a sight-reader. Good, don’t look too close in one spot. Now keep smiling. Even mother hasn’t seen this before, my best one yet, so she’s already down on her knees, going In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Daughter AMEN!
The name of the Father. I’ll be honest that I don’t know God. When Dad was sick, there was an awful lot of talk about God. Prayers, confessions, Holy beads and candles and me playing music just like this song. Mom cried a lot, and Dad, I guess he just seemed so weak, best I can remember, so maybe he had to believe for her. Maybe he could see something we couldn’t. I mean, being—what do they say? On death’s door or something. Maybe being together let them believe.
Hey, maybe if I start to moan like Glenn Gould they’ll think it’s the spirit moving through me. Or the devil, whatever. I can never quite decide.
Hmm hmmm hayyah Herr Jesu, Gottes Sohn! Hosianna! Hmm hmm hmm
Mother is crying again now, and I’m so happy because now she’s not crying because Dad is leaving but (and I know) it’s because she feels him again. How I know:
1. A Devil grips your daughter.
2. Ergo Gods and Devils are real.
3. Ergo, not only is suffering meaningful—Dad’s suffering and yours—but Dad is somewhere—somewhere we can go, too.
If she can feel that, if I can make her feel that, it’s real enough.
But now I feel the doctor at my side. His fingers are sliding around in my hair, what the hell. Shit, that’s not good. I’ll just pretend I don’t notice.
It’d be worse to be all nervous that he’s poking around in there, in my self-fashioned spirit crown of thorns. It just won’t do if he spoils it all. Mom back in her bedroom. Mom unwashed. Mom reading God is Not Great. (She’d hummed, spirit buzzing, when she’d dunked it in the trash after I’d shown her my pin-prick stigmata palms.) Ten fingers poking around at my scalp—now discord. I miss a note.
“As I thought,” the doctor says. And now so much blood is storming in my head I can almost hear it rushing down my face, and it’s loud enough I have to wince to catch words out of the rapids.
Razor . . . blade . . . cuts . . .
He knows he knows he knows. Damn! He probably heard the sloppy run there, too. Nervous fingers. But maybe it’s not too late. Mom and the boy, they might believe me.
But Mom. I glance over.
That look in her eyes. That look she’d gotten in church after Dad. Eyes like before a stormy wave crashes on a sailboat, when you know you’ve tried it all and you’re done done done. Wet eyes that just might dissolve my whole body down to a miserable slimy core.
And it’s this doctor ruining it all. Only a second ago I was sure I saw his lip quiver, was sure he’d been hooked, but now he’s poised to end the show. Stay unstable, please. Just be the double-minded man I need.
He’s shaking and his voice is different as he booms, “Mrs. Kelly,” like a ten-foot ogre judge. I don’t know if he’s scared or angry or both, and it’s making me the same.
“You wouldn’t know how your daughter’s scalp was cut, would you?”
While he’s not looking, I take my chance. If he’s going to keep looking around I’ve got to get the blade off me before anyone finds it. It would be the one thing to—
Just as I’m about to tuck the blade inside the piano bench, the doctor turns and, oh god,
I drop it. It sticks straight up in the carpet, so obvious it’s like there’s a stage light, and I gamble: not knowing where the thing will land, I swing my stockinged foot, and the blade tumbles between the boy’s shoes.
3. Son
Mr. Davids has tried and tried to explain time signature, but I just don’t get it. Not at all. He has this white wand he taps on the music stand. He rattles off numbers when he does it. But it’s like I’m hearing two different beats, and I just can’t sort one rhythm out from this other I keep hearing.
Every time I try to play these “Invention” things at practice, he’s always saying, “Good, good. But,” he says, because (I’m old enough to know this much) there’s always some kind of but in life, “let’s try once more from the top. I caught a few gremlins in there.” Gremlins is his word for mistakes. There are always gremlins when I come to lessons. There’s only three of us so if you’ve got any gremlins, he’s bound to catch ‘em.
But this girl Marie is playing with almost no gremlins.
She’s playing so great, but then my dad is mad (he gets like this now and then, especially when Mom is gonna take me out after church or when she was praying over the grave Dad dug for Benjy) and I think he distracts her. Then he makes her stop, which is a little much if you ask me, but she’s maybe sick or something and to say the obvious she has a whole buncha blood on her face! I’m just glad it’s not me because, trust me, you don’t wanna hear the voices at our house if I were running around bleeding on my shirt like that.
I’m shocked and then I don’t know, maybe because she looks calm and happy, like this is a good thing somehow, I feel a smile. It’s kind of pretty. Her hair’s this silver-gold and with the red, she could be a strawberry that’s still a bit sour.
I know Dad wants me to see something. But it’s all just totally weird. I don’t know what’s sad or scary or beautiful. So while he’s arguing with Marie’s mom (“I most definitely cannot put a word in with the church. I ought to call child services.”) I watch Marie real closely. She drops something. And her face says she’s not sick or possessed or anything like that but like she might get in trouble. And before my dad looks her way again (she’s stopped playing for a second) she kicks the thing over to me.
Sometimes I like to play my violin like a guitar. If you hold it up like one, it’s like a tiny version. It looks like that guy from the Beatles in my mom’s picture. (I think she cut my hair to look like his.) And I got a guitar pick even and I pluck away at it. Once I dropped the pick and Mr. Davids almost saw. He’s nice but if you make him mad it’s like he’s growling. But then my stand partner slapped her foot down on top and hid it. She slid it along under her shoe and, real careful, reached down and saved it. Which is what I do, before I even think about it, when Marie kicks the thing to me.
My dad and Marie’s mom move to the kitchen, arguing. I can’t understand everything they’re going on about (“Empty your pockets if you’ve got nothing to hide,” etc.), but I realize as I lift my shoe and see this razor blade on the ground that this is what they’re looking for. It’s sticky with blood, and Marie has stopped playing altogether. She’s looking at me. Eyes clear now, and for a second I think she’s almost saying, “Please.” It’s real sad in a way like (trying not to think about these times) at one of my school concerts. Mom was mad after Dad said he wasn’t going to see their friend anymore (“That damn fundamentalist quack” is what he calls their friend, and Mom says he’s a “Wise Man” so I can’t help picturing the Three Kings and their Three Ducks at the manger, only Mary and Jesus aren’t there), and I didn’t realize it until I was on the stage and saw them, but she wouldn’t sit with Dad. On the car ride they were sitting side by side, but the sound of their voices was what Mr. Davids calls staccato and very pianissimo and their shoulders seemed so far apart. It was like this one time (I don’t do stuff like this anymore but once) when Mr. Davids was mad about me and the guitar pick thing, I decided not to cover up my gremlins anymore, like screeee screeeee against the strings. And once you know what that sounds like, it’s really the worst. It hurts just remembering.
I saw them in the hall after they dropped me off. My stand partner was loaning me some rosin. It’s this rock-like fossil sap from Jurassic Park, but it’s for making the hairs on the bow sticky. It has to be sticky to get the music out. (It’s a little harder to fake notes, that’s the downside.) And there they were, loud-whispering something nasty at each other (it happens when we’re out, a lot) and there was that same look, like with Marie now, that “please” look. I started feeling like my concert was a stupid thing. Like not just some of my notes but the whole thing was fake. Something for them to tug-of-war over.
I can’t even remember if it was fun playing “Brandon Burg” or “Turkey in the Straw” because I knew they were out there under dark, hiding from each other. When we bowed at the end, they were on opposite ends of the auditorium. I didn’t know where to wave.
Marie sees the razor in my hand, so I wave at her. She waves her hands back, but not in the Hello way, more like Hey cut it out! Which is right because oh yeah, we’re hiding this razor. So I slip it in the breast pocket of my shirt—just in time because the parents are back.
That’s when Marie jolts. She pops up straight and opens her eyes real big. She looks at my dad, and then over at her mom.
“Mom?” she says. “What’s going on?”
“Marie?”
“Is this blood?”
“Oh honey.”
They hug, and Marie says she doesn’t remember after my dad and I arrived. Mrs. Kelly gets some blood on her face from cuddling and kissing Marie’s cheeks and forehead. It’s a little embarrassing and it kinda makes you lonely.
My dad gives this big sigh from his shoulders and walks up to them.
“Marie,” he says, kneeling and laying his hand on her shoulder. “This is important. A good Catholic girl will tell the truth. Even if her mother tells her to say something else.” Marie nods and instead of looking at her mom, she glances at me.
“Is anyone making you do something you don’t want to?” he continues. “Something you shouldn’t. Something dishonest.”
Marie shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m confused. And tired.” She looks to her mom.
“Maybe it’s enough for today,” her mom says. “Have you seen what you need?”
“All that I will see, I believe,” he says.
In the car I ask him what he will do.
“Nothing,” he says, looking at me through the rearview mirror. Mom makes me sit in the back until I get older. “Nothing happened that we can’t explain. Nor can I explain with certainty. They’re on their own in either case.”
I look up at the Kellys’ apartment. Marie and her mom are there, still all red. Two sour strawberries.
I ask if I can sit up front. I say I won’t tell Mom. This makes him say yes.
When we drive, it’s real quiet. I know one of these days they’re going to talk about what grown-ups call “the D word.” There’s going to be a lot of faking to cover the gremlins. But I’m good at faking, too. And I’m hiding something sharp.
James Sullivan is the author of Harboring, a novelette available July 2023 from ELJ Editions. His stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, New Ohio Review, Third Coast, Fourth Genre, Phoebe, and Fourteen Hills among others. In 2022, he was a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Connect on Twitter @jfsullivan4th.
Photo by RODNAE Productions