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July.
    He came to visit Mom often when she was sick and arranged for a church member to do all of the legal work required for me to own the house after she died, since she didn’t have a very good will. Father McNamee arranged for Wendy to visit once a week at no charge to me, because Mom left me with very little money. He also spoke so beautifully at her funeral, calling her a “Woman of Christ” (I wrote that in my notebook), and—because I have no other living family members—he drove me to the shore afterward and we walked the beach together to “get my mind off” her passing.
    “We’re just like Jesus and his disciples hanging out by the sea,” I said to him while we were strolling past cold whitecaps, and Father McNamee must have got some sand in his eyes because he started to rub them. I heard him whimper in pain as the seagulls screamed above. “Are you okay?”
    “Fine,” he answered and waved me off.
    The wind flicked one of his tears airborne, and it landed on my earlobe.
    Then we walked for a long time without saying anything at all.
    He spent the first night after Mom’s funeral with me too, in our home, and we drank more whiskey than we probably should have—Father McNamee doing three “fingers” for every one of mine got him red and drunk quickly—but it was good to have his company.
    Father McNamee has done so much for Mom and me over the years. “God sent him to us,” she used to say about Father McNamee. “Father McNamee was truly called.”
    A few years ago, I finally confessed the sin of masturbation to Father McNamee, and he didn’t make me feel shameful about it. He whispered through the confession screen, “God will send you a wife one day, Bartholomew. I am sure of it.”
    Shortly after that, The Girlbrarian started working at the library, and I have often wondered if this was God’s work. Again, we are reminded of Jung’s Synchronicity. Unus mundus .
    Now I pray to God and ask for the courage needed to speak to The Girlbrarian, who always seems to glow in the library the way Mary glows in the stained glass window whenever the sun shines into Saint Gabriel’s.
    But courage never comes.
    I pray for words, and those evaporate instantly whenever I see The Girlbrarian at the library and get so hot, it’s like my brain is boiling in my skull.
    Perhaps the you-me of pretending would have a better shot, but the thing is, I want The Girlbrarian to fall in love with Bartholomew Neil and not us, Richard Gere. You would win her over with a flash of your smile or a wink—it would be so easy for you. I want to win her affection, but my ways are slower.
    From what I have been reading about Buddhism, this desire is what keeps me trapped far away from enlightenment. But then I remind myself that you have a wife, and if Richard Gere the great Buddhist and friend of the Dalai Lama can have such desires, it must be okay for me too. Right?
    When this past Saturday’s Mass was over, Father Hachette would not let me speak with Father McNamee, nor would he let me into the priests’ chambers. “Pray for Father McNamee, Bartholomew. The best thing you can do is pray. Petition the Lord,” Father Hachette kept saying over and over as he reached up and patted my chest like he would pat a large pet—perhaps a Great Dane. “Just calm down,” he kept saying. “Let’s remain calm. All of us—one and all.”
    Maybe I was more upset than I realized. Although the angry man in my stomach was not trying to destroy my internal organs. It was a different sort of upset. I have a tendency to get agitated when I worry. Regardless, Father Hachette looked scared. People are often afraid of me when I get agitated or angry. But I’ve never, ever hurt anyone—even in school when people used to shove me and call me a retard.
    (The worst day of my life turned into one of the best experiences I ever had in high school, but taken as a whole, it made me feel very much like a retard. This beautiful girl named Tara