How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

I stop by the marble holy water font. Press a finger in the damp yellow sponge, like I did when I was a kid and St. Matt’s felt like home. Now it feels like a stop on a long trip somewhere else. Until this summer that thought would have made me sad and scared, but now I can’t wait to see where the road turns next.

I just wish Abel was in the seat beside me.

***

My parents are out on the Funfair field behind St. Matt’s, wearing matching sweats in my high school colors and hauling the ring toss platform together. Normally this is where I’d jump right in, grabbing a corner of something heavy and tacking up signs and testing extension cords. Two things stop me: the fact that they possibly want to wring my neck, and the fact that Father Mike is sitting on a stool by the ticket booth, tuning his guitar and blocking my way.

I shove my hands in my pockets and squeeze Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim, trying to absorb what I need. Control from Sim. Bravado from Cadmus. The rock in my throat shrinks down to a pebble.

After a minute, my legs start to walk.

“Brandon. Welcome back.” Father Mike doesn’t get up when he sees me coming. It’s a sly calculation: assume friendly nonthreatening pose, let the lost sheep come to you.

“Hi.” I nod. Neutral smile.

“Trip okay?”

“Yep, it was fine. Thanks.”

“Your mom and dad thought you might show up today.” He plucks the A string on his instrument‌—‌a haggard old thing with a GOT GOD? sticker on it‌—‌and twists the tuning peg. I think of the first time he passed me a guitar, showed my fingers how to shape the C and G chords. “I know they’ve been pretty worried. They’ll be super-relieved to see you here safe.”

“What’d they tell you?” I square my shoulders like Cadmus.

“Well, they‌—‌”

“Actually, it’s all right. I don’t want to know.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

“I’m go

“Want me to come along? It might help.”

“No. No thank you.” Sim takes over: smooth and composed. “I can do it alone.”

“Sure, sure. I know. That’s fine.” He smiles that old I’m-just-a-dude smile, and my shoulders go soft. I’m not Sim or Cadmus anymore. I’m a kid, whispering fake sins to him in the face-to-face confessional, his mellow voice calming my jittering leg. hey_mamacita’s mean Father X caricature pops to mind, and my face heats up. It’s easy fighting villains with daggers for teeth and crosses that shoot hellfire. But he’s not Father X, or Xaarg. He cares about me, the way I hope my own father still does.

“Hey Brandon?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me a few minutes later on. Okay, bud? I’d like to talk to you.”

I pause for a second, the fight draining out of me, and then a whole vanload of kids in matching St. Matt’s Elementary t-shirts come rushing over. They’ve got all the usual grade-school-music-class instruments with them‌—‌triangles, egg shakers, jingle bells, probably the exact same ones I played at some point. Father Mike gives them a thumbs-up and a distracted smile. He won’t let me walk without an answer.

“Sure,” I mumble. I’m watching the kids. Pigtailed and sneakered, trusting and open. “I guess.”

“Awesome. Meetcha back here.”

I walk away. I walk fast, but his voice travels. “Hey, guys!” he’s saying. “How’re my SonShiners today?‌…‌Yeah? Let’s try that a little louder!” He starts strumming the opening bars of that cutesy “Whatever God Wants” song that still gets stuck in my head; I don’t want to glance back, don’t want my brain to sing along. I look for something else to focus on. I find it across the field by the popcorn stand.

My parents, standing side by side with their arms around each other. Like instead of waiting for me to cross the field and catch up, they’re watching me walk away.

***

We sit at a weathered picnic bench that’s survived about fifty St. Matt’s Funfairs. The bench is etched with decades of graffiti: BILL N SUE, KEVIN + KAYLA 4EVR. I trace the old names and promises, sca

Judging from past battles with Nat, I thought Dad would come down on me like the hammer of God. But he doesn’t even seem angry. It would be easier if he did. He seems remote and unsettled, like an alien’s replaced his son and he’s approaching with caution, trying to figure out what this new thing is capable of.

“Did you remember to clean out my refrigerator?” he finally asks me.

“We did.”

He ignores the we. “And did you empty the tanks?”

“Yes.”

“The black and the gray?”

“Yeah. I returned your camping stove, too. It’s back in the garage.”

“I hope it’s clean. If you let grease and food particles build up it can‌…‌”

He keeps going. The checklists and lectures might go on until sundown if I don’t do something. I squeeze Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim.

“Hey. Guys?”

“I wasn’t finished,” Dad snaps.

“Greg. Let him talk,” says Mom.

Dad bites his lip and taps the table with his fist. I take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry I lied,” I tell them. “I’m not sorry for what I did, or for anything that happened on the trip, but I’m sorry I lied. I’m not going to do that anymore. And I’m sorry I called you backwards.” I catch Mom’s eye. “Really.”

Mom nods. Dad’s eyes are shiny. He scrapes a splotch of dried mustard off the table with his thumbnail and blows the yellow dust away.

“So that’s all?” he says.

“I guess. For now.”

“We’re glad you’re home safe,” says Mom. “Right, Greg?”

“I‌—‌”

Dad just sighs. He looks like he wants to say more, but I know it’s not going to happen. Not today, not here. He drums at the table a couple times and then he gets up slowly and scuffs away, his ancient sneakers kicking up sad little puffs of fairground dust.

Mom watches him go.

“You were‌…‌safe, weren’t you? You and‌…‌” She clears her throat. “You and him.”

I blush. “Yeah. Of course.”

“That’s the most important thing. I don’t care what you’ve heard‌—‌”

“Mom, I know. I know. You don’t have to worry.”

She exhales, long and slow. We sit there for a complicated minute.

“Your dad just‌—‌doesn’t know what to say.” She says it like she’s apologizing for him, like she’s got no problem with this at all. I watch him fix a game booth, pounding nails into loose beams. I wonder if it’ll be like this all the time now, if I’ll come home from college and he’ll ask me if I’m passing my tests and keeping the bathroom clean and locking the doors at night, and then go off to the basement and start snipping his bonsai and hammering birdhouses together until I go to bed, and the danger of looking me in the eye has passed.

Mom, softly: “Are you in love?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

“I want to know.”

I squirm in my seat. “I screwed everything up.”

“You did?” Her eyes get big. It’s cute.

“I tried to get him back. Sort of.” I trace a heart carved deep in the bench’s center slat. This is so weird. “But I don’t really know how. I think it’s too late.”

“Oh.” She sighs. “Honey.”

A cursor blinks in the conversation. She looks like she wants to give me advice, the way she gave Nat advice before Nat shaved half her head and stopped listening, but I know she can’t. Especially not here, with the big gold cross on the St. Matt’s spire looming above the trees. She’s probably doing the math: Give your gay son love advice = twelve and a half years in Purgatory.

There’s nothing much else to say. I reach in my back pocket, pluck out the rolled-up David Darras head shot. I push it across the table to her.

“He couldn’t sign the TV Guide, but I got this.”

She smiles a thank you‌—‌not because of the autograph, but because I’ve changed the subject.

“I forgot I asked you,” she says. Her glossy fingernails rake the rubber band off and the picture unrolls.