Free The Dark Path by David Schickler

him is his love for my mom.
    It is storybook strong, their love. Growing up, I saw it each night when my father got home from work. After removing his coat he would pull my mother to him. Closing his eyes he’d hold her tight and groan, sometimes for minutes, and I could hear in those groans his letting go of the world, of everything outside him and her. He occasionally threw in hammy growls to make us kids laugh if we were watching, but I knew that those groans came from his soul, and that those embraces recharged him.
    That’s marriage
, I thought, watching.
If I ever have a wife, that’s what I’ll have
.
    Now as I stand at the gates and watch my parents walk toward me, I’m wondering,
Will I groan like that for you, Mara? Will you Walk Forever by My Side?
    I take my parents to my dorm room. While my mother gets on the phone to make us dinner reservations, I play for my father the Joan Armatrading song “The Weakness in Me.” It’s on a mix Mara made me and I’m trying to drop hints to my father about the new path my romantic life has taken, a path full of, if not weakness, then helplessness on my part.
    â€œIt’s a powerful ballad, huh, Dad? She’s having a hard time choosing whether to take a certain lover.”
    My father looks confused. “Who is having a hard time?”
    â€œThe speaker of the song,” I say.
    â€œWhy do you call the speaker ‘she’?”
    â€œI guess because Joan Armatrading is a woman.”
    He frowns. “Who is Joan Armatrading?”
    â€œThe woman singing the song.”
    â€œI think you mean
John
Armatrading.”
    â€œUm, her name is Joan,” I say. “This is on a mix tape, so I can’t show you her picture on the album, but—”
    â€œThat is a man singing,” my father says.
    â€œShe has a deep voice,” I say, “but she’s definitely—”
    â€œDavid.” My father uses his end-of-discussion tone. “That. Is a man. Singing.”
    Hints are not working.
    So I decide to tell my father the flat-out truth about Mara and me. I wait till I’m home in Rochester for Thanksgiving. One night when he and I are in the house alone, I go into the living room where he’s watching television. I turn off the TV and face him. My palms are shaking.
    He’s lying on the couch, but when he sees my expression, he sits up. “David, what’s wrong?”
    â€œDad.” I swallow. “Dad . . .” I stop talking. It seems like enough that I’ve affirmed who he is in relation to me.
    â€œDavid, for God’s sake,
what
?”
    â€œI’ve been sleeping with Mara. Having sex with her.”
    He looks surprised and mad and worried for me all at once, the way he did the night I barreled his Pontiac into a telephone pole. “David, we’re Catholic! Catholics stay chaste until they’re married!”
    â€œI . . . I know that, I just—”
    â€œOh, son, we’ve got to get you to a priest.”
    I want to talk to you
, I think.
    â€œYou need absolution.”
    I look at his feet, three sizes bigger than mine. He wants to send me off to a rote sacrament, but I want to explain about Mara, and her laugh, and the smell of the skin over her ribs.
    â€œAll right, Dad,” I agree.
    I go to confession that weekend and receive absolution from Father Harris, a priest our family knows. He’s short and quiet and known for having a gift of healing, and I ask him why people shouldn’t have intercourse before marriage. Father Harris blinks his peaceful eyes. He’s pissing me off because he lives on some island of calm thousands of miles away from me and the rest of us.
    â€œBecause it is not God’s will for us,” he says.
    I nod vaguely, thinking of Mara’s slender thighs, planning the kisses that I’ll give those thighs soon.
    â€œAll right, Father,” I say.
    I get back to Georgetown two