Stories

Dumb Love


Although Mother of Sorrows parish was almost completely Catholic, made up of Irish Americans, Mexican Americans, and refugees from various parts of ..-Eastern Europe, America is a missionary country, so our priests were always from Ireland. Now they are from Viet Nam, of all places. Our pastor was Father O Donnell, but we never saw him unless he wanted money for something. Even when he said Mass, the associate pastor gave the sermon. We knew when Father O Donnell mounted the pulpit, we were going to hear about money. He was purely an administrator, like Cardinal Macintyre, who only handled money, practiced racism, and built himself a lovely new modern church, St Basil's, in the Wilshire district in which to retire with Los Angeles' upper class. Now it is a Korean Catholic church, and my sister goes to Mass there every Saturday evening; actually she is a server. Cardinal Macintyre was not much different from our present Irish cardinal, except that racism is no longer fashionable. Anyway, the associate pastor was always fresh from the Ould Sod. Once they got more assimilated, they were transferred to nicer parishes. If we had churches in really poor neighborhoods, I don't know who administered to them. Anyway, one of these new priests' was name Father Mc Carthy. He could speak Latin, English with a brogue, unaccented American English, and Gaelic. The only time I have actually heard Gaelic spoken, Father Mc Carthy was speaking it. He used to come over to the yard at lunch and hang out with the little kids. The big kids played in separate yards. He could turn the index fingers of his two hands in different directions at the same time. All of my brothers were altar boys, and he would call the house when he needed a boy in an emergency. When we picked up the phone, he would say, This is Mc Carthy's bar calling for Phil. He was the only human being on earth who called my brother, Phillip, Phil.

I have always loved to read, and I had a long, lonely walk home from school, so I would prop a book up on the huge pile of books in my arms and read as I walked. I stopped at intersections like a person with blindness, listen for traffic, and when my ears decided it was safe, walk across the street. Once, I was walking home in this fashion. I stopped at an intersection, heard a car stop at the sign, and proceeded across without looking up. In the middle of the street, a car horn sounded. I jumped, dropped my books, and looked up. Father Mc Carthy was standing next to his car laughing away. Of course, I was in love with him. I was going into puberty; he was young, funny, new. I knew he could not love me, but I hoped I was special to him .Of course I hoped without hope. We all hope to be special to our crushes, no matter how hopeless those crushes are, and that's why we are furious and shocked when our beloveds carry on with someone else. To my mind, there are no morals or ethics involved. It's all pretty much normal human ego.

So I hoped I was special to my Man of God. One day, he came to our eighth grade class and talked priest stuff to us. He left. Most of the time, I don't much care what I am wearing, and we wore uniforms anyway, but this was a free dress day. I had on a hideous, fuzzy purple sweater my parents had given me with certainty of my delight. I did not expect them to know anything about me, and I wasn't surprised, said nothing, and sometimes wore the sweater. This was one of those days.

Later, in my daily visit to church after school, I ran into Father Mc Carthy in the vestibule. He stopped and said, Hello. Loathing myself for that sweater, I returned his greeting. Then he asked me a bunch of questions about the day's lesson. Of course, I had known the answers before he ever stepped into that room that morning, but I was paralyzed with mortification. All I could think about was that hideous sweater. I stammered in horror and confusion and frustrated love. He said , And I always thought you were so bright. That is the story of my first love