James La Bella
In the Rectory
Noah is looking at the picture frame’s reflection, rubbing a thin-tubed stick of wax, oil, and talc over his acne-sparkled face. Elif helps Matt zip the back of his makeshift cassock, trying not to notice the bony spine protruding through the back of his poplin shirt, while Bertram buttons his own robe—which is not makeshift or cotton—his thick neck beginning to spill over the collar. The picture frame contains a portrait of the Holy Mother. Noah’s concealer is one shade paler than his pink face. It makes him look dead.
The boys button. The boys fix. The boys put on their makeup. They avoid each other’s eyes and they work in silence. The reading for Sunday School was Judg. 19, which made Noah feel sick because of the ending. Last night’s news reported a cold pattern moving in from North Washington. This was welcomed by the weatherman; his white teeth were pointed, like they had been sharpened with a nail file.
“Did anyone do the reading?” Elif finishes closing the metal teeth of the zipper. Matt is bent, staring after a bird that looked like a cormorant (strange) passing plane-like by the smudged pane of glass in the window. The air smells hot, like piss and smoke, and Bertam imagines himself lighting incense in a Manhattan studio years later. He has the secret feeling he will relive this again. They all did the reading.
Noah caps the concealer’s tube, still looking at his reflection in the picture frame. He watched his Dad’s favorite movie last night and can’t stop thinking about Donna Reed, that dress she wore to the high school dance. He looked up the dress online, which was colorless in the movie and violet in real life. “It was weird.” Elif is looking at Matt but thinking about the Sabine Women. Noah feels his uvula with his tongue and unconsciously runs his hands down his khakied hips. Something feels wrong. Does he wish they were slimmer? He’s not wearing his cassock because he doesn’t want to get oil on the black fabric. On weekends, Bertram washes the vestments for National Honors Society hours. Matt straightens and sees spots.
“Do you ever think about it?” Elif means the reading; only Matt understands right away. The spots he sees are fading now like dying stars, the world righting itself again. Bertram prepares the thurifer, its soot-stained caverns. He thinks of coal mines, canaries, his father. Matt prepares a four-pronged bell on a thin terrycloth towel. Elif is winding a chord around his waist. “What it would be like?” He surprises himself. There are twenty minutes until the Mass will begin. Already the hum of churchgoers, like the rattling of a subway car, permeates the walls of the small house. Somewhere above them a plane passes, leaves a trail of screaming.
Noah holds his limp cassock. He can’t put it on. “To do it?” He smooths the fabric, eyes Father Kiernan’s satin stole. Bertram removes a box of matches from the drawer of the green side table. The first time he did this, he got a splinter from the dry wood. Reflexively, he cringes now, opening the drawer, thinking of it: the sliver of pine sliding in. The bird’s flown by again. It isn’t a cormorant.“No, to be—” Elif stops speaking, pretends to retie the chord. Two days ago, Matt got lost on a run. He turned down a street he’d never been on and just kept going.
“Some people fantasize about it.” Matt digs in a wicker basket for a surplice to cover his threadbare cassock.
“It’s common, I read online. Especially...” Noah touches his hips. Elif reties the chord a third time. Bertram begins to prepare the candles, odorless. There’s a TV upstairs somewhere. It’s been left on by one of the clergymen and is playing static now like keening, a low dull hum on a single note. The weatherman had fanned himself with his hand, speaking of the cold front. The sun shines like stage lights through the window-pane.
Matt glances at the vacuum-doorway of the priest’s quarters. He thinks maybe Father Kieran is just behind the door, listening in. It’s a suspicion he’s had mfor a while now. He thinks if the man is harsher than usual, it’s maybe because he had heard something bad, was listening. Catholicism is all about surveillance. Especially now. Bertram ate an entire bag of cheesy puffs last night, the Day-Glo orange powder penetrating his fleece pajama pants, maybe permanently. Noah, in one motion, takes off his polo and undershirt.
Matt and Bertram turn their heads away. Elif feels stuck. He moves his gaze carefully to Noah’s hard, brown shoes. There’s a scuff mark on the side of the right shoe from where he, unseen, had kicked the stone angel outside the church; it was two Sundays ago. The stone didn’t have a mark.
Bertram turned in an essay on Friday about a book he didn’t read; he couldn’t get his eyes to focus. “No meaning,” he had written. “None.” Noah puts the polo back on. Matt ties his chord, careful not to synch it too tight. He lets out a laugh. It withers, sounds like a yelp as it leaves him. Nobody turns to look. Elif holds a thick candle.
There’s a noise from Father Kiernan’s quarters. The boys turn their heads, as one, to gaze at the door. They will pretend nothing was said at all.