It seems, now, that I should have seen trouble coming. But Art had been a priest for twenty-five years; moreover, he had never been anything else. I understood that his life lacked certain kinds of human closeness, but then so did mine. I’d recently placed a down payment on a studio apartment, a large sunny room at the top of an old row house. In Philadelphia it was all the space a high school teacher could afford, and all I could imagine needing, a concrete commitment to the path I’d been following quietly for years. I’d tried marriage—briefly, disastrously—and was divorced with a slice of wedding cake still in my freezer, awaiting our first anniversary. It had long appeared likely, and at last seemed decided, that I would always live alone.
Was it my own loneliness that made Art’s invisible? I wouldn’t have said he was unhappy being a priest. I was present the Sunday he gave his first homily and I can still remember his ease at the pulpit. Years of parochial schooling had overexposed me to sermons, but Art’s were unlike any I’d heard. His style was gentle and humorous, slyly persuasive. He was so thoughtful and engaging that I might have listened to him anyway, even if he weren’t my brother. His new life fit him. Singing the Kyrie, he seemed to glow with a deep contentment, his rich tenor filling the small chapel, his eyes closed in prayer. Unusual, and gratuitous, to sing it in Latin: I understood this was a private gift to my mother. I turned to look at her sitting behind me, her eyes full.
How alive he seemed to me then, how exhilarated by his first baptism, first wedding, first midnight Mass. But these are old memories. In recent years he scarcely spoke of his work. Our conversations revolved around family news, the aches and illnesses of our aging parents, Mike’s marriage and the births of his three sons. Art never expressed regrets, not explicitly; but of course he had them. Show me a man of fifty who doesn’t regret the lives he hasn’t lived.
I read over what I’ve written—of course he had them—and am ashamed of myself, the words seem so smug and facile. How easily I dismiss his sorrows, the griefs and losses that haunted him. The truth is that I loved Art, and that I failed him, in ways that will become clear.
For the first few months I tracked the scandal. Soon the reports referred to Art’s case only in passing, and I realized that the story was much larger than my brother. At minimum it involved the entire Boston Archdiocese, hundreds of victims, dozens of priests. Day after day, until I could swallow no more, I ingested the queasy details, nicely organized in timelines and bullet points. The reporters didn’t strike me as biased, and one could hardly accuse them of laziness. One persistent fellow dogged my poor parents for months. I don’t believe, as my mother still does, that the press set out to make Art a monster. The accusations themselves were monstrous. And the evidence either way—of his guilt or innocence—was very slim.
And whose fault is that? a small voice asks me. It isn’t God’s voice or my brother’s, but the voice of my own conscience, which I have ignored successfully for some time. I have kept Art’s secrets. My excuse until now has been loyalty. Art asked that I tell no one, and I have kept my word.
Two years have passed since the events of that spring—a calendar spring, equinox to solstice; three months that, in New England, can feel like summer or winter. My parents still live in Grantham. On the surface their lives are unchanged. But my mother no longer attends daily Mass, or cleans the church rectory or pours coffee at parish dinners. On Sundays she sits alone in a rear pew, her head bowed. (My father won’t set foot in a church, but that’s nothing to do with Art. He hasn’t been to Mass in years.) Kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, Ma prays only for her Arthur, that God in His mercy will forgive whatever he has done.
Lately I visit Grantham without seeing my parents. I’ve never done this before, but then I’ve never had any reason to go back beyond guilt and a vague sense of obligation. Now I sleep on the foldout couch in Mike’s finished basement, waking at dawn when my three nephews clamber down the stairs to play video games at high volume. I pay visits to Art’s former church and rectory, and to those who knew him at that time: the church council; the parish housekeeper; the few diocesan priests willing to talk to me, only one of whom Art might have called a friend. We meet away from their rectories, at Dunkin’ Donuts outlets deep in the suburbs, at diners, at bars. It is a function of my upbringing that I find it unsettling to drink with a priest. Certainly my mother would be mortified at the thought. Recent events have done nothing to dim her admiration of these men, and yet her encounters with them—at Legion of Mary bake sales, the annual Christmas luncheon of the local Catholic Daughters of the Americas—are fraught with anxiety. Three years ago—just before Art’s disgrace—she attended a celebration of his silver jubilee. She beamed with pride through the anniversary Mass. Yet according to Mike, who sat beside her, at the dinner afterward she was nervous as a cat. Introduced to a series of friendly men in clerical collars, she flushed and stammered, stricken with embarrassment.
What she fears—I know this—is exposure. Of her own sins, real or imagined; her and my father’s secret shames. After I have told Art’s story, it’s possible, likely even, that she will never speak to me again. Foolishly maybe, I hope otherwise. In my fantasy we sit together in her quiet kitchen, just us two. I open my heart to her and lay it on the table between us. I am still child enough to wish it were possible, adult enough to know it isn’t. We are too much ourselves, the people we have always been.
THE BIBLE offers four accounts of the life of Jesus, told by four different writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. God’s Beatles wrote in different languages, in different centuries. Each saw the story in his own terms. Matthew had a particular interest in Jesus’s childhood. Mark cared mainly about the endgame, the betrayal, crucifixion and death. Only Luke—who never met Our Lord—mentions the two famous parables, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. John’s gospel is full of miracles and revelations, the raising of Lazarus, its own charmed poetry. I am the Light of the world. I am the true Vine. Abide in me.
The story of my family likewise changes with the teller. Ma’s version focuses on the early years. (Each year at our birthdays we were treated to our own nativity stories—Art the preemie, Mike the breech birth, myself the induced labor—as though she were trying to decide, once and for all, which child had caused her the greatest misery in coming into the world.) Mike’s gospel is terse and action-packed; like the apostle Mark, he cuts to the chase. Clare Boyle’s tale, if she’ll tell it, is full of innuendo and hearsay. Like Luke, she merely repeats what she’s heard.
Art was our apostle John.
For most of my life, I have refused to take part in the telling. In some way this was an act of rebellion. I was eighteen when I moved away from Boston, and I’d had enough of the McGann family lore. But recent events have changed my thinking, and I offer here my own version of the story, a kind of fifth gospel. The early pages borrow heavily from other accounts. The miracles and revelations will come later, the stories never before told.
So, to those who remained loyal to my brother, and those who didn’t: here is his story as far as I know it, what Art told me at the time and what I found out later, and what I still can’t verify but know in my heart to be true. In many cases I have re-created events I did not witness. There was nothing sophisticated in my method. I simply worked out what certain people must have said or felt, a task made easier by the fact that the two leading men were my brothers—one who confided in me, if belatedly and selectively; the other so deeply familiar that I can nearly channel his thoughts. This isn’t as extraordinary as it sounds. It’s mainly a function of his consistent character that in any given situation, I can predict, with dependable accuracy, what Mike would say and do. As for the other actors in the story, I have done my best, relying occasionally on the memories of people who may have reason to mislead me. Where their recollections seem dubious, I have noted this. In the end