The Fifth Gospel(217)

            This is what we were made for.



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            I COUNT THE STEPS. I touch the new lock on the old door. I watch the new key as it turns. When I step inside, Mona and Peter look up with the same expression. As if I’ve come home too soon. As if I’ve woken them from a wonderful dream. Peter slowly crawls out of her lap to welcome me. The sight of him makes me want to hide my face and cry.

            “Peter,” I manage to say, “it’s bedtime. Please go brush and wash.”

            He looks at me and doesn’t argue. I’ve never worked harder to hide my feelings from him. Yet he senses them. His heart tunes automatically to the same frequency of sadness.

            “Go,” I repeat.

            I follow him and numbly watch him run the water. The cake of soap slips out of his hands, so I put it between his palms and hold his hands between mine as we lather.

            “Babbo, why are you so sad?” he whispers.

            From behind me, Mona says softly, “I don’t think he wants to talk about that right now, Peter.”

            But in the same mirror where Simon and I used to shave together, he watches me. Those blue eyes. My brother’s eyes. My mother’s eyes. In the photos on Lucio’s wall, even my uncle used to have those eyes.

            “Get in your pajamas,” I say.

            For a moment, as he changes clothes, he is almost naked in front of us. And the mother who has never seen him in underwear glances away. Around his thighs, briefly visible when he contorts himself to pull on his pants, are faint rings where the leg holes of his underwear fit snugly. I think of Simon’s bruise.

            He rushes into bed and turns to me. “Is Simon okay?” he says.

            But I tell him we aren’t going to bed. “Follow me.”

            When we get to the door of the apartment, he says, “Where are we going?”

            I motion for Mona to come, too. Then I lead them up the stairs to the roof.

            It is like standing on the deck of a ship at night. The ocean below us twinkles. Wash on a clothesline billows like signal flags. Across the channel is John Paul’s palace. Beneath us, like fishing boats, are the buildings of our village. Supermarket and post office. Autopark and museums. Rising above them all, white as baptism, is Saint Peter’s.

            Holding my son in my arms, I step almost to the edge of the roof, so that he can see everything. Then I say, “Peter, what’s your happiest memory here?”

            He smiles and looks over at Mona. “Seeing Mamma,” he says.

            She touches his cheek and whispers, “Alex, why are you doing this?”

            “Peter, open your eyes as big as they’ll go,” I say, “and look at everything. Then squeeze your eyes closed tight, and make a postcard in your mind.”

            “Why?”

            I kneel so that we’re at the same level. “I want you to remember everything you see tonight.”

            And I think: Because we may not see it very much anymore. Because this isn’t one of those times when we say see you later. This is a time when we say good-bye.

            With a quaver in his voice he says, “What’s wrong, Babbo?”

            “No matter what happens,” I whisper, “we’ll always have each other, you and I. Always.”

            Into this child’s life God has put only one example of love that never fails. I am it. From the bottom of my heart I mean those words. No matter what happens.