Free The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace by Martin Moran Page A

been waiting for, it happened!
But it passes as quickly as it comes, replaced by the sharp stab in the gut.
Shut the fuck up
. The stab that’s already becoming familiar.
    It’s late at night, early in the morning, when I’m all alone. That’s when I begin to feel the weight of worry. The shame like a blade sharpening itself against the core of me.
Bury it. Bury it. Dig deep and bury it
.
    At recess Tuesday, my first lesson since the ranch, I strum defiantly.
A hundred miles, a hundred miles, I can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles . . .
    “Your fingering is strong. You practiced over the weekend, didn’t you?”
    Her auburn brows are raised, such pleasure in her face. She couldn’t possibly imagine, could she? The chords that have been plucked over the weekend, the music I’m strung out on. And I have not the least problem. I look her in the eye with an easy smile and say, “Yes, Sister. I practiced.”
    It’s so much easier than I think it will be.
    Lying.

12
    A FEW MORNINGS LATER , I was sitting on the floor, on the gritty beige carpet of our front hall. Car pool was due any minute but I was moving slowly, lacing my boots. Dad stood at the hall mirror, wrestling with his tie. His blue tie with the tiny yellow typewriters all over it. His fingers fluttered around his throat, his hands racing the clock. Like everyone in the world, he was due at a desk.
    My eyes drifted up past the gold-framed poem my mom had nailed to the wall—
Go placidly amid the noise and haste
—to the crucifix hanging just left of the front door. A classic, foot-tall wooden Jesus.
    “We should take that down,” I said.
    Dad glanced at me for a second, his shaggy eyebrows taut, each rising to a sharp point—devilishly handsome. “Christ?”
    “No. The palms,” I said. “They’re dead.”
    “Burn them.”
    I looked up at the hairy fronds drooping around Jesus’s neck, dried and yellow like a ratty old scarf. I’d stuck them there myself nearly three weeks earlier, on Palm Sunday, the day we remember Jesus’s triumphant mule ride into Jerusalem. The Sunday before the Holy Thursday he’s betrayed and it all comes tumbling down.
    Three weeks, forever ago
.
    “Damn,” Dad whispered. I looked over. His lengths had gone wrong. Again.
    “Why don’t you use a clip-on?” I asked. “It’s easier.”
    “Clips are for kids. Didn’t you get a real tie this year, for your confirmation?”
    “No.” I yanked at my red laces. “Fake.”
    Dad dropped his head and examined how close the tips of his tie came to his zipper fly, considering, it seemed, whether to start all over. His necktie hung flat over his white shirt, then bowed way out, following the bulge of his belly. This paunch was new, sudden, as if one night he’d sneaked out and swallowed a basketball. The one that sat unused in the garage. His slim, Korean Conflict days were gone. Slumped there, head hanging, he looked like a big Winnie-the-Pooh. A friendly stuffed thing that wouldn’t go anywhere without being carried. I looked into the mirror where his bald spot glowed. A pink moon amid a dark sky. He lifted his face suddenly, and the reflection of his eyes caught mine in the mirror.
    “Since when do you wear your hiking boots to school?”
    I felt my face go hot. “Since now,” I said, tying a double knot. “Since I went to the ranch.”
    “That guy’s camp?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dad pulled apart his tie.
    “Your great aunt arrives today.”
    “Who?” I stood and stuffed my bologna sandwich into the top of my knapsack.
    “Your Aunt Marion.” I stepped over and both of us were in the mirror—junior and senior. His English Leather wafted over and attached itself to my clothes; the smell of him, I knew, would stick with me all day. “She’ll be at Grandma’s the next few weeks.”
    I studied the gentle father in the glass. His pale lips, his watery blue eyes, his large ears. I’d been doing this lately, spying on his face, searching for a familiar feature. A