Free My Secret History by Paul Theroux

water lapping the boat with a bathtub sound. For once I felt I was doing the right thing, and enjoying it, too! I was also glad that none of these women were paying any attention to Tina or me. I had never loved her more. It was because we were here.
    There were more songs. Mrs. Skerry sang “Galway Bay,” and Mrs. Bazzoli and Mrs. DePalma sang an Italian song that they said was about the sea, and I kept hearing the words
medzo mar
.
    There were rumbles of thunder from the direction of Revere, and a black cloud enlarged like a stain over Nahant.
    “We’d better start back,” Father Furty said, and then the sun was gone. He felt his way along the rail to the cabin, his shirt lifting and flapping.
    Passing me, he squeezed my knee and said, “Bad yes, evil no,”and winked at me. He had not squeezed me hard, but there was something in the pressure of his fingers that told me he was not well.
    We thumped the jetty posts twice, and flaked off some of our paint, while I was untying my clove hitches—for some reason, Father Furty was gunning the engine. Then we started away, the boat shimmying a little. At the wheel, Father Furty was wearing a crooked grin—perhaps it was because of the Fatima in his mouth. He was singing along with the radio.
    The women were clearing up the plates and folding the card tables.
    It did not seem to me that Father Furty was really steering the boat. It was more as if he was holding tight to the wheel to keep himself from falling. He sagged on it, rather than keeping it in a light steerer’s grip with his fingertips, as he usually did. He looked wildly happy.
    “Are you all right, Father?” I asked.
    He said, “I’ll bet she’s a joy to be with.”
    The harbor water began to smack and slop against us. The splashing over the rail I took to be a bad sign, and the girlish screams of the women made me anxious.
    “What’s that?” Mrs. Palumbo asked.
    “Probably Moon Island,” Father Furty said, and turned slowly—first his eyes, then his head—to watch it pass on the portside.
    I said, “Careful of that tug.”
    Accelerating, Father Furty said, “What tug?”
    But it was too late.
    There was no panic. Even as the side of
Speedbird
was being stoved in by the tug from
Blue Neptune Towing
, and the rails twisted off the decks, and the cleats sheared cleanly off by the shoulders of the tug—as all this was happening, the women of the Sodality shrieked and laughed, as they had when they’d been hit with spray that morning. They did not know it was a disaster—they may have thought it was part of all cruises, the really funny part. That was how much they trusted Father Furty.

7.
    Afterwards, the way people talked about it made it seem dramatic and dangerous—two boats crashing in the harbor, some near-drownings, heroism, chaos. But it was not that way at all. It was an embarrassing accident, we were towed into harbor by the very boat we had hit. It was humiliating, it was bruises and hurt feelings.
    Then I saw that there is a neatness about tragedy—it looks perfect, as false things so often do: fake blood in all the right places, pretty victims, stately burials and then silence. It is all glorious and conceited. But nothing is worse than disgrace. It is lonely and irreversible—a terrible mess. The loud snorting laughter it produces is worse than anguish. Having to live through a disgrace is worse than dying.
    All your secrets in a twisted form belong to everyone else—and you are in the dark. That was how I felt then, guessing at what was going on; and I didn’t know the half of it. Nothing truthful was revealed, but a version of events emerged. It was like a badly wrapped parcel coming apart—slowly at first, just stains producing rips and leaks, and then more quickly collapsing until it was all loose string and flaps and crumpled wrapping, and something dark and slimy showing through, and finally flopping onto the floor in full view, while people said, “Oh, God, what’s