The Fifth Gospel(209)

            I hold myself together. But I can’t even look at him.

            Diego inspects his hands. Quietly he says, “Come with me.”

            He leads me out of Lucio’s office and into a room I have almost no memory of. My uncle’s bedroom.

            “Maybe it’s best,” he says, “if you wait for His Eminence in here.”

            He closes the door after himself. And it takes me a moment to understand what I’m looking at.

            The hospital bed is angled up, surrounded by medical devices and trays of pills. There are three large vases of flowers and a standing wardrobe. And otherwise, in this sprawling bedroom nearly as big as my apartment, there is not a single other thing except what hangs on the walls. Mementos cover every inch of space like icons on the wall of a Greek church. I see a photo of Lucio at his consecration. A newspaper article about a piano concert he gave as a young man. But every other framed object is of us.

            My mother when she was young. My parents at their wedding. I cover my mouth, seeing two entire rows of Peter. Beside them are corresponding pictures of me: at baptism; on my name day; being held in my mother’s arms. My ordination. Winning my seminary prize for gospel studies. We are half of my uncle’s waking world. We, who never seemed to mean anything to him.

            The other half is Simon. Two entire walls, floor to ceiling, filled with pictures. A toddler walking through the Vatican gardens, holding Lucio’s hand. Riding a tricycle in Lucio’s dining room. A baby in his proud uncle’s arms. In that picture is something I’ve never seen before: my uncle truly smiling. Then comes every stage of Simon’s priesthood. Academy milestones. Nunciature posts. And, finally, an empty frame containing nothing but a silk skullcap. It is amaranth red. The color of a bishop.

            My eyes return to the hospital bed. To the platters of plastic vials and the breathing apparatus. Only when I hear the door open behind me do I turn.

            Lucio hobbles in on his cane. He bears no resemblance to the cardinal who tried to save Simon’s life from the witness table. He struggles to make it to his bed. Yet he waves Diego away and stops when he’s beside me.

            “Uncle,” I murmur, “I found his cassock in my apartment. I found the gun case.”

            His eyes fall. They seem so tired.

            “You knew?” I say.

            He doesn’t answer.

            “For how long?” I ask.

            “Two days.”

            “He told you? Even though he didn’t tell me?”

            And yet, seeing everything on these walls, I begin to understand why he might.

            Lucio removes his pectoral cross and places it in a small jewelry box by the bed. “Alexander,” he says, “you know better than to think that. Your brother never confides in me. His only family is you.”

            He moves the four-legged cane so that he can reach a tube of ointment in a drawer. Each hand struggles to rub the medicine into the withered joints of the other.

            “Then how did you know?” I say.

            “Would you mind opening that for me?” he says, gesturing at the wardrobe.

            It’s filled with old cassocks and the smell of mothballs.

            “See it there?” he says.

            “Which one?”

            Then I realize he isn’t talking about the cassocks. He’s talking about what’s behind them.

            Propped against the back wall of the wardrobe is a giant photographic enlargement of a page from the Diatessaron. The one Simon took down from Ugo’s exhibit.