“I’d see Ed Crowley and I’d think, That’s it, I’ve got to confess,” he said. “But then I’d think about you and the baby. How could I do that to you? How could I tell you? How could I leave you to bring up a baby on your own? I thought about our leaving Sydney. But I knew you wouldn’t want to leave your parents, and anyway it felt wrong. It felt like running away. I had to stay here, where at any moment I could run into Janie’s parents and know what I’d done. I had to suffer. So that’s when I had an idea. I had to find new ways to punish myself, to suffer—without making anyone else suffer. I had to do penance.”
If anything gave him too much pleasure—pleasure that was solely for him—then he gave it up. That’s why he gave up rowing. He loved it, so he had to stop because Janie never got to row. He sold his beloved Alfa Romeo because Janie never got to drive a car.
He devoted himself to the community, as if a judge had ordered him to do so many hours of community service.
Cecilia had thought becoming a father had been what made him so community-minded. She thought that was something they had in common, when in fact, the John-Paul she thought she knew didn’t even exist. He was a fabrication. His whole life was an act: an act for God’s benefit, to let him off the hook.
He said the community service thing was tricky, because what about when he enjoyed it? For example, he loved being a volunteer bushfire fighter—the camaraderie, the jokes and the adrenaline—so did his enjoyment outweigh his contribution to the community? He was always calculating, wondering what else God would expect of him, how much more he would have to pay. Of course, he knew that none of it was enough, and that he would probably go to hell when he died.
He’s serious, thought Cecilia. He really believes he’s going to hell, as if hell is an actual physical place, not an abstract idea. She went to say Thank goodness for eternal damnation! but she didn’t. He was referring to God in a chillingly familiar way. They weren’t that type of Catholics. They were Catholics, sure; they went to church, but for God’s sake, they weren’t religious. God didn’t come into their day-to-day conversation.
Except, of course, this wasn’t a day-to-day conversation.
He kept talking. It was endless. Cecilia thought of that urban myth about an exotic worm that lived in your body, and the only cure was to starve yourself and then place a hot dinner in front of your mouth, and wait for the worm to smell the food and slowly uncoil itself, sliding its way up your throat. John-Paul’s voice was like that worm: an endless length of horror slipping from his mouth.
He told her that as the girls grew older, his guilt and regret had become almost unendurable. The nightmares, the migraines, the bouts of depression that he tried so hard to hide from her were all because of what he’d done.
“Earlier this year, Isabel started to remind me of Janie,” said John-Paul. “Something about the way she was wearing her hair. I kept staring at her. It was terrible. I kept imagining someone hurting Isabel, the way I . . . the way I hurt Janie. An innocent little girl. I felt like I had to put myself through the grief that I put her parents through. I had to imagine her dead. I’ve been crying. In the shower. In the car. Sobbing.”
“Esther heard you crying before you went to Chicago,” said Cecilia. “In the shower.”
“Did she?” John-Paul blinked. “I didn’t realize.”
For a moment there was beautiful silence as he digested this.
Okay, thought Cecilia, we’re done. He’s stopped talking. Thank God. She felt a physical and mental exhaustion she hadn’t experienced since she went through labor.
“I gave up sex,” said John-Paul.
For God’s sake.
He wanted her to know that last November, he was trying to think of new ways to punish himself and he decided to give up sex for six months. He was ashamed that he’d never thought of it before. It was obviously one of the great pleasures of his life. It had nearly killed him. He’d been worried she might think he was having an affair, because obviously he couldn’t tell her the real reason.