Outside Providence

Part the First

My name is Carter Straub.  I am writing this to show you where they went wrong.  Firstly, let’s get one thing straight – I am on trial.  I killed no one.  I stole nothing.  I hurt no one. Yet, I am on trial.  In truth I have been on trial for my whole life, though I am only eighteen. 

You see, I was never your typical golden child.  I was born into a society that was not meant for me.  It is easy now to see that I was not the problem.  Indeed the problem stemmed from the fact that I never fully coalesced into the society that I was expected so wholeheartedly to join.  I was no delinquent, mind you; I just happened not to respect their rules.  I didn’t accept their society, and thus their society didn’t accept me.

It is said that every good story has an unlikely hero, one that was born a hero – yet was incognizant of this fact until that crucial point of epiphany. They say that this hero, in a good story, will have at least one “sidekick”.  And finally for any good story, there must be an arch-antagonist. 

I never considered myself to be a hero, per say.

I was born in the throes of a Southern suburbia, Providence,  where the houses are so densely packed, and the walls so infinitely thin, that your neighbors argument becomes your own.  I was merely the towheaded kid that lived down the street, nothing more, nothing less.  I was never a hero, though I always dreamt of being one. 

When you are born into mediocrity, dreams of heroism are a dime a dozen.  My father worked a managerial position at the local tobacco factory, and so everyday he would come home smelling like a thousand smoking rooms.  He swore upon the Holy Trinity that he never touched the stuff, yet the good Catholic lived forever with the burnt butt of a cigarette in his hand.  I never put much stock in his religion, but I fear I’m getting ahead of myself. 

My mother was of a different stock.  She had dignity. She had class.  She had me at sixteen.  That’s Providence for you.  She lived life in the past, and though at first she would never say it to me, she really hated me.  It’s terrible to say, but I was merely a regret that she had.  To her I was the embodiment of the unyielding question: “What if…?”  What if she hadn’t shacked up in the backseat of his Monte Carlo , or was it the van?  Was he even my father?  It was so very unfortunate. 

            My parents were walking contradictions, and I only bring them up as a sampling of my suburban microcosm.  Staunch Catholics, who would get drunk on the Sacrament as soon as they would believe in Transubstantiation, they were true Holy hypocrites.  I learned from an early age, against my father’s best wishes, yet entirely through his music collection, that religion was not just the packaged version brought to you every Sunday opposite the football game.  Was I to truly believe that He inhabited that little golden cage that the priest placed on the altar with his impure and impious hands?  My parents thought so.

            As to dreams of heroism, I dreamt mostly that I could fly.  Freud would have told me that this signified the desired flight from my family – who mind you were only mine by an accident of birth.  I did greatly wish to rid myself of my family, and they of me, yet the plan never truly came to fruition.  My mother wished to send me off to boarding school, so that she might not be reminded every day of her mistake personified.  My father, who saw me as a dependent and an expenditure, was unwilling to spare the change that it would have taken to send me to the Parochial school that my mother was pushing for.  He wanted me to attend a military school, as it worked so well for him. 

            He served two deployments in Vietnam , yet he couldn’t show me how a compass worked when I was trying to get a badge for boy scouts.  He still wore his dog tags, and swore he had traumatic flashbacks like the disabled veterans did.  I don’t know what he was hoping to accomplish by saying this, but perhaps he was trying to illustrate to his bastard son that he was more of a man than those “loonies”, as he so compassionately called his fellow soldiers, who were down and out on account of the post traumatic stress.  He called me a bastard, though he refused to spring for the blood test to prove it.  As to the war, I doubt he ever shot his rifle, or even saw true combat.  He was a cook.  Truth be told, I think whatever flashbacks he had were due more to chemicals thirty years ago than war. 

            The dreams of heroism, like my suburban life, were not right.  When I could fly, I never went above the tree line, and it was seldom that I could get off the ground on my first try.  I could jump quite high, yet flight was sparse.  It was as if I was tethered to the ground by a long bungee cord.  It was long enough to allow for the feeling of flight, yet whenever you felt that you were flying, it would tear you from the air and deposit you firmly prostrate onto the ground of reality.  The reality was that I couldn’t fly, and I was forever tethered to and by my society.

            Like I said before, my parents were only a sampling of my suburban microcosm.  There were my classmates, who were no more open minded than my parents.  I was lucky, if in fact you could call my situation lucky, for I had both parents living together.  My friends extolled the virtues of a non-broken home, by reminding me how bad the situation was in their homes. 

            I had no “best” friend so to speak, because I didn’t really like my classmates.  They were blinded by the same ideologies as my parents; they were fettered by tantamount dogmas.  They were young, and so at least they had the capability of shedding the stigmas.  None, however, wished to do so.  They were content in thinking that there was a Heaven and a Hell, a right and a wrong; and that anyone who disagreed was wrong and going to Hell.

            But they were Honorable men!  As Caesar was honorable, so too were they.  In the early years I had no reason to doubt their honor or level of tolerance, for they were all I knew.  I never fully accepted what they told me, yet in truth I never knew why.  Why indeed!  I was always open to new ideas, yet in Providence new ideas were few and far between.  A black family moved in once, but they only stayed for four months.  I think the father was a dentist, but I could be wrong.  Maybe he was in the Navy.  Perhaps he was a garbage collector.  I was never really sure.  He would wave, and I would wave as my father drove blindly by. 

            “That colored family over there,” my father would say pointing, “they sure aren’t friendly.”

            To this my mother would reply, “Well Tom, what do you expect.”

            I was six or seven at the time, and so I never really knew what to “expect” from “colored” people.  They seemed quite nice to me, always waving and such.  I must have been looking for the wrong things, so I looked closer.  Through the eyes of a six year old, you can’t but see friendliness.  The man was friendly.  His wife was quiet.  The three kids always played together on the front lawn.  I was never allowed to play with them, though they seemed to be having a great time.  They moved out one day, post haste.  I think the whole cross incident was a little too much for them. 

            As a seven year old I had absolutely no idea what in the bloody hell was going on.  I saw how friendly these people were, yet my parents somehow were blind to it.  Even at seven I could tell that this color blindness was wrong, though I knew not how very wrong it was. 

            I was a very quiet kid.  In the beginning, I didn’t have anything to say.  I was just thinking about everything that did not quite seem right, and that was a lot.  As I grew, however, I kept quiet because I was tired of being told I was wrong, that the world was not the utopia that I thought it should be.  It would have been, I thought, if there were fewer people like my father. 

            I didn’t hold as fierce an indemnity towards my mother, though I suppose she did hate me.  She was not a holy hypocrite.  She just did not know any better.  Never was she able to view the world, because she was married before I was born – a shotgun wedding, if you believe it.  She therefore was naïve, and not ignorant.  There was a great difference between naïveté and ignorance, as I would come to find out.  When you are naïve, you have not experienced that which you are naïve about, and thusly cannot make a logical decision as to its credence.  You don’t have the chance to examine it, and accept it – or scorn it.  When you are ignorant, on the other hand, you have seen that which you scorn in some cases many times, and though you have had the time, you have never truly given proper time to examine that which you scorn.  Ignorance scorns that which the naïve are unaware.

            As my mother was, so was I naïve.  I tried to learn the truth about my Suburban life, but the fact of the matter was that I would never see the truth if I remained here.  Like the man I was in my dreams I wished so much to fly away, but I could only jump high and be pulled back to the ground with the force of an elastic dogma. 

            Like I said, I was a very quiet kid.  As the years went on, however I was less and less silent.  I began to see the light by noting the dark.  I always had a gut feeling about some things.  I can’t explain why, though.    I just knew that there was something wrong with my Suburban lifestyle.  I can now look back at the incident with the black family with horror, for now I am fully cognizant of what took place.  I try not to dwell on the past, yet here I am. 

            The dark, as I said, made me see the light.  If I had not realized that my father was a hypocrite, I never would have been able to shed the Catholic Church – but that’s an entirely different matter.  As I write this I consider myself non-denominational, though I don’t know how much that’s worth.  I was raised to believe many things, to shun many others.  Before now, I never understood why the answer “because it’s written in the Bible” never worked for me. 

            I was given a dollar every Sunday to put in the collection plate – four quarters, lest I place only one item in the plate.  My father was of the mindset that it looked better to place four quarters of a dollar, than to place that single, solitary, paltry dollar donation in the plate.  In the beginning I gave all of my money to the Church.  I did not know what the funds went to, but everybody else was doing it.  Everybody else…

            I hate that rhetorical question, “If your friends jumped off of a bridge would you jump off too?”  It leaves too much room for interpretation.  Was it a footbridge, like the one in Monet’s paintings?  Was it railroad bridge on which an express train was approaching fast; in which case I would have been a damn fool not to jump.  I never knew of anybody who got hurt jumping off bridges, except those intending to hurt themselves.  Would I jump off a bridge if my friends did so?  Probably not.  I hated heights, and as I said before – I didn’t much care for my friends. 

            The collection plate was less like bridge jumping, and more like lemmings.  I followed the pack, for I knew no better.  Never would you hear a lemming shout above the roar of his fellow rodent’s tiny paws, “Hey does anyone know where the hell we are going?” 

            As the years dragged on, and the mass became more hellfire and brimstone, I became more jaded to the Church.  Fortunately I didn’t have to wait for mass on Sunday for hellfire-brimstone sermons; for my father felt that he had been deputized by the Pope himself to deliver these tirades in his heavy Irish accent.

The accent was a funny thing, because it remained dormant until he was drunk.  It was like Freud’s board of guilt.  As much as he tried to push it under the surface, the accent would always come back.  Whiskey, I learned, was my father’s buoyant force.

            At age twelve, I had seen enough superhero movies and read enough comic books to learn that any good hero was self sufficient.  God, the saints, and the Virgin, all played menial roles in my books.  Moreover the books were fifty cents, and the church did not seem to be falling apart.  Doubting very much that fifty cents would damn me to hell, or cause the foundation of the cathedral to fall under its own burden, I applied half on my money to my dreams.  Reading those books gave me hope that there was a better world than Providence . 

Then the organ broke.

            By itself this was not earth shattering, but those faulty pipes would forever drive me away from the Catholic Church.  Monsignor Levesque addressed the congregation before the plate was passed, urging everyone to be extra generous because the organ needed fixing.  This was all well and good, and I decided that my comics could wait for a few weeks.  Then he said the words that made me realize why I never quite trusted the Catholic Church.  “The more you give, the more God will love you.”  Process that for a moment, but not too long.

            It took me the rest of that day and much of the next, to reason out what the Monsignor had just told me.  If I gave my dollar, and the man next to me gave two, God would love him twice as much as he loved me. Even if the ratio was not proportional in that manner, it was ridiculous.  What if the man gave a hundred dollars, yet beat his children – and not for the approved Catholic offenses – would God still love him more?  If the Monsignor’s logic was correct, he would.  His God was a cheap buy, and mine sure as the sky is blue and Hell is warm was not.

            That was my first epiphany.  Many more would follow, like a cascade, but the first one was the most important.  By seeing how misguided the Church was, I could see how hypocritical my Father was.  He believed in God as much as a pagan, but in case the Catholics were right, in case there really was a higher power, he wanted to be granted access into the Gates.  Besides, the Church gave him an excuse to do any number of otherwise inexcusable things. 

            I think that was one of the things I hated most about Providence .  The people there used their religion as an excuse.  Religion has been the cause of most wars, not the most recent, but most.  That’s a curious thing.  To see that my father used his religion as an excuse to live his life, was a powerful realization.  I could then see that his alcoholism brought out not just his forgotten accent, but his forgotten heritage. 

            My mother never much paid attention in church, she was to busy trying to forget about me, to busy thinking what might have been, to busy praying that it was all a dream.  Ah, but it was too real.  My father was false.  My mother was false.  My church was false.  It made so much more sense once I realized this.  I realized why I had never accepted my world, and why my world refused to accept me.  I was empowered.  I was silent no more.  I was sixteen. 

            From that point I was called a punk.  I was told that I didn’t respect my father.  This point made the Catholics especially sore.  It was the truth though.  I had absolutely no respect for him.  I didn’t see anything wrong with that, for he was not a respectable man.  It was clear to me, but they couldn’t quite see.  By “they”, I mean my entire hellfire-brimstone society in Providence .  It was good that I did not like them, because they sure as hell hated me. 

            “Carter, you are my biggest regret,” my mother confided to me one day, with her breath stinking of bourbon. 

            “I know,” I calmly replied.  I did. 

            “It’s not that I hate you…” she trailed off.  I didn’t know where she was going with this because as far as I could tell she wasn’t too fond of me.  “It’s just that…”

            “You hate me,” I said finishing her drunken sentiment.  “I know you do.  I’m fine with that.”  I don’t know what she was expecting.  Maybe she wanted me to break down and feel her pain, her life of regret, but I doubt it.  She didn’t hate me as a person, just the fact that I was alive.  I realize that this is a hard distinction to make, but it is an important one.  If we would have met on the street, we would have gotten along swimmingly.  But the fact that she thought I was the reason that her life was so terribly depressing, did not endear me to her. 

            “You’re fine with that?” she asked stuttering.

            “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

            “I…I don’t know.  It’s just that…how long have you known?” she asked, making less and less sense as she went.

            “You did leave me in the mall when I was nine.  And then there was that time with the peanut butter.” I was violently allergic to peanuts. 

            “Oh, right.” 

            With this she walked away.  It was just as well, I didn’t have much to say.  She tried to kill before, and I could have been bitter, but she did drive me to the emergency room – I think, though I couldn’t really see since my eyes were swollen shut.  I would have been bitter, had she been successful. 

            With my schism from the church, I felt no compunction to visit the cathedral on Sundays.  This further endeared me to the elders.  Father’s told their daughters to stay away from me.  I could have ridden a motorcycle down Main Street in full Hells Angel regalia, and they would have looked at me the same.  I just wasn’t like that.  I was not a bad kid.  I had wonderful manners.  I was an upstanding citizen, except my silent boycott of the Catholic religion.  I had never so much as stolen a piece of gum from a candy store, for that was morally wrong. 

            The irony of the situation was that their golden child was as tarnished as they came.  He had a reputation amongst his peers that I couldn’t touch.  Not that I wanted to, mind you.  He was addicted to everything you could think of, yet he threw the pass that won the game.  Mothers would ask their children, “Why can’t you be more like him?”  So they would do some drugs, get drunk, and then their mother’s would say, “I am so ashamed of you, why couldn’t you just be like him?”  The children would become confused, because they were following his example to the T, yet they were not being praised as he was. 

            He wore a large silver crucifix on his neck to remind everyone how pious he was, though the football games were conveniently located on the Sabbath.  No one seemed to mind when he missed the early mass, but when I was absent they checked to see if anything had been stolen.   He wrapped his truck around a telephone pole late one Friday night.  His blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit.  The police called my parents to see what role I had played in the untimely demise of their Christian soldier. 

            I never touched alcohol, though.  I had my reasons, and I don’t need to explain myself to you.  I saw what it did to my father, and I never wanted to be like that – never.  Moreover, alcoholism was what was expected of me.  I was the town drunk, who never touched a drink; the town bully, who never hit a kid up for his lunch money; the town vandal, who never so much as knocked over a trash can.  I was a good kid, and that rubbed them.  That rubbed them good. 

            I was never a full citizen of Providence .  I was much like the quarry at the edge of town in this regard.  One foot was fettered in Providence , while another extended into the next microcosm over.  Like the quarry, mothers told their children to stay away from me. 

Before Providence had a name there was an industrial giant who stole from the earth all that she was willing to give.  He made a hole in the rock so deep and so wide that it divided two towns.  The quarry had flooded shortly before its closing.  Apparently the proprietors were unaware of an underground spring which lay beneath the granite and limestone.  Rumor had it that the steam shovel was submerged beneath the waters.  However, on clear days atop the top of the rock face you could see the bottom of the crystal blue lake, and the shovel was no where to be seen.

The pool of the quarry lied within the boundary of the other town, and the great granite face was the demarcation of the beginning or end of Providence – whichever way you looked at it.  The wall was immense and sheer.  The understood boundary between towns and ideologies was seldom crossed, and even more seldom crossed for righteous purposes. 

I often made the steep climb up the hill to the granite face, if only to be one step closer to being away from Providence .  I would sit on the edge of the cliff with my feet extended over the crystal blue waters below.  A part of me would be free, while a part of me was still tethered to the ground – not being able to fly away.  Legs dangling over the edge, though, was as far as I could bring myself to go.

            Before I go on, I must make one thing implicitly clear.  I did not malevolently do things to anger my society.  It seemed, however, that my society was angered by nearly every thing I did.  It was a vicious cycle.

            So I wasn’t the golden child.  I could live with this.  What I couldn’t live with were those people who took it upon themselves to remind me of what a bad kid I was.  Here I was living in a catholic microcosm, and I had all but been excommunicated from the church.  The priests hated me in a Socratic manner.  That is to say that they thought by refusing to go to church I was supporting, nay fostering, delinquency in the youth.   There were times that I wanted to tell them all to go to hell, but I knew they would get there eventually with or without my encouragement.   So, I saved my breath. 

            When you are told that you are a delinquent for your entire life, the fact that you develop delinquent tendencies is not surprising.  I didn’t go around sacrificing cats or spray painting Wiccan symbols in store fronts, but like I said I became more outspoken – about things I believed in.  Aye, there’s the rub!

            I hate stupid people. 

            I once watched a march on Washington .  When asked what the protestors were marching for, on person said “I don’t know.  My friend asked me to come along.  Lemmings.  I give full faith to free speech, but the law does not grant freedom for stupidity.  In large crowds stupid people are dangerous.  The crowd seemed to forget that protests have a purpose.  In the sixties the people had a purpose.  Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll were only the back drops of the more important social movements of the time.  Martin Luther King Jr. was not killed because his friends said, “Hey Marty, wanna march with us?”  The man had a message, a purpose.  Mandella had a purpose.

            Granted I did not end apartheid, nor champion the civil rights movement in the sixties, but when I had something to say, I said it.  I tried to write for the school newspaper, and that was short lived.  The sponsor was a censor would make McCarthy blush, but I digress. The fact of the matter was, anyone who read the paper was not ready for radical change.  They had their God.  They had their utopian dream.  They had myopia.  My entire school was myopic, and I wasn’t about to waste the breath or ink to change that which was happy the way it was. 

If you send someone to save the world, you better make sure he likes it the way it is.  Superman loved the world and always wished to save it.  I was holding out for locusts.  Maybe a good plague would make Providence see the light.  It worked for the Palestines. 

If it’s not abundantly clear to you yet, I didn’t have many friends.  This was all well and good, because the ones I had in the past let me down far too much for their own good.  I tend to see the good in people.  I know what your thinking, after all that I have said, all the cynical remarks I have made, I tend to see the good in people.  Well, it’s the truth.  Can you imagine if I were bitter…

The friendships I had did not last long.  They never could see the light, as much as I tried to show it to them.  This being said, after the sixth grade I gave up trying to enlighten my peers.  I figured that if they still had not seen the light, that they were either ignorant, or happy.  Like naïve and ignorant were different, so to are ignorant and happy.  I learned that if you are ignorant you can’t truly be happy, because you don’t see all that there is to see.  Likewise if you are naïve, you can’t be happy – though there still is a chance.  I figured that this is why I wasn’t happy, because I didn’t know all that there was to know.  The truth was that I wasn’t happy because I didn’t have any friends.  I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t have anything that I was passionate enough about to fight for. 

But that all changed. 

Part the Second

            So now you know my history.  I wasn’t loved as a child, and all that stuff.  It’s true, I wasn’t loved, but I got over it.  I was happy being mad at my society.  It was all that I knew, and I was good at it.  I had plenty of reason to be mad at the society who called me a bastard, and by this time it was official. 

            It was my senior year.  I was eighteen.  Finally I could fly away like the hero in my dreams.  I could leave…but I stayed.  I stayed because I knew leaving now would be self defeating.  I knew that I had a no chance at success if I dropped out of school now.  Besides, what was one more year?  I had lasted seventeen. 

            As I said, Providence was a Southern Suburbia so steeped in Catholic dogma that it could kill a cat nine times over.  I therefore wished to fly as far away as I could, and this meant North.  I was accepted to Dartmouth in the fall and never looked back.  I was for once thankful that my dad made little money, and my mom was too depressed to work.  This meant that an Ivy League education was mine for free. 

            I didn’t hate everyone at my school.  My guidance counselor was a closet Episcopalian, and so he understood what I was going through.  He wrote a shining recommendation letter, and thoughtfully “edited” my others.  This was a stroke of luck.  My school was quite small, and though it was “non-denominational” – by court order – the Catholic stigma surrounded it like a venomous spider’s web.  I was getting out, and that was the important thing.  Praise the Lord! 

“Praise the Lord”, therein lies one of my problems.  I think that the Catholic faith must have astronomical advertising bills.  It was a conspiracy.  When something good happened it was “Praise the lord, my baby is healthy.”  When something bad happened it was, “Jesus H. Christ, you just killed a nun!”  How is Jesus going to help you now?    And if you sneeze, “Bless you.”  Well that depends.  Who’s blessing who here?  Is it the Monsignor’s God who’ll dole out love and penance by the nickel, or my God who…well isn’t a cheap buy!  The curses, the blessings, were never non denominational, never neutral. 

As my non denominational Catholic school was so small, the slightest change was like the apocryphal butterfly that caused a typhoon.  That cliché is all well and good, but what if the change was a typhoon and not the beat of an insect’s wing?

             Kate Silverman was a Jew.  A Jew!  Oh, how great the religion of Judea , a religion that placed as little credence in the Catholic Church as me!  She was the most amazing girl that I had ever met, and remains the most amazing girl to this day.  I met her in the middle of my senior year, and the first time I laid eyes on her I knew that she was different.  I didn’t know how, I just had a feeling in my gut – and it wasn’t the ulcer I had been nursing since ninth grade.

            She sat alone at the table in the cafeteria, with her brown paper bag.  I later would learn that even the bag was kosher, courtesy of her mother.  I sat down a table away, so that I could watch her.  As the time went on no one sat with her, and knowing how it felt to be an outsider I got up and joined her. 

            “Do you mind if I sit here?”

            “Oh, no,” she said looking up at me.

            “Are you sure that you are not saving these for anybody?” I jokingly asked pointing to the fifteen or so chairs that surrounded her.

            “No,” she said cracking a smile, “there all yours.” And so I sat opposite of her.  She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.  It wasn’t just that she was aesthetically gorgeous, which mind you she was, but she had an aura about her that made her glow with inner beauty.  I know it sounds trite, but there was something about that girl. 

            “My name’s Carter.  Carter Straub.”

            “Kate, Kate Silverman,” she said extending her hand towards me.  I shook it firmly, so as to assert my virility, but I think I crushed her hand.  She winced and drew her hand away quickly.  I was never good with girls, because I had not had a great deal of practice.  The ones I even considered dating were repulsive to me in some way or another. 

            “So, you’re new here.”  Suave, very suave.

            “Yeah,” she said, overcome by my Casanova like verbal approach.

            “Why did you come to Providence ,” I asked sarcastically, though I could have kicked myself for being negative, “I mean, not that it’s a bad town or anything.”  Oh great, now you’re lying to her Casanova.

“My dad got a job with a law firm, and I didn’t have all that much of a choice.  How long have you lived here?”

“I’m a lifer.”

“You make it sound like a prison.”

“What the Providence state penitentiary lacks in wrought iron bars, manacles, and barbed wire, is more than made up for by the inmates and the jailers.”  Well, at least I was staying positive. 

            “So it is like a prison?”

            “For some, I guess.”

            “For you?”

            “Like death row.”  She laughed.  This was a good sign.  I liked a girl who could laugh at her own mortality.  In my time here I learned that taking one’s life to seriously usually ends in premature death, and / or wishes of premature death.  I was actually enjoying talking to someone, for once.  And then the bell rang. 

            “Well it’s back to the grind,” I said trying to sound as upbeat as possible.

            “It’s been nice talking to you.  You’re the first friendly person I’ve met today.”

            “Oh, they can be nice…just as long as you are a Catholic conformist.”

            “So I guess I am resigned to being forever alone at that table.”

            My curiosity was now sufficiently piqued, and so I asked her, “What, you’re a nonconformist.”

            “And Jewish to boot,” she said walking away.  She was Jewish?  What’s Jewish?  I had no earthly idea what Judaism was.  Playing football, the coach does not taut the other team but points out their weaknesses.  Likewise, the Catholics didn’t much laud the Jewish faith, or the Protestant faith for that matter.   

            I dated a protestant girl once.  And with this act I could be sure that my father did in fact hate me.  As I went on with my years, the dynamics in my household changed.  My mother was amused by me.  In all actuality she was amused by the way I rubbed my father the wrong way.  She still hated me, though.  Nothing was going to change that. 

            Have you ever noticed that in some people there is a vein in the middle of the forehead that seems to become engorged and throbbing when that said person becomes agitated?  My father was one of those fortunate people, who wore a veritable mood barometer on their forehead.  It was wonderful thing, for me at least.  You see, my father always yelled at me, but seldom was he irate.  I could always tell which of his hellfire-brimstone tirades I should pay the slightest attention to, merely by the size of the vein. 

            “Carter you are a bastard, you know that?” he asked me as I walked through the door one Saturday evening to the smell of a blackened lung.

            “Hi, dad,” I replied, for this greeting was not unusual. 

            “Guess who I just got finished talking to,” he demanded in a detectable Irish accent.

            “God?”

            “You sacrilegious son-of-a-bitch,” he replied with the dignity and couth of a Belfast barkeep.

            “Not God, ok let me think…” I said quietly, though he heard me well enough. 

            “I just got off the phone with Christopher McIntyre.”

            I suppose I was meant to make a connection in my head as to where Christopher McIntyre fit in the grand scheme of things, yet I was at a loss.  The name sounded faintly familiar, maybe he was a relative.  No, he couldn’t be a relative; I didn’t have that many.  I gave up.  “Who, pray tell, is Christopher McIntyre?” I asked, mimicking his thick accent.

            “He just so happens to own that pizza place you and your whore girlfriend went to tonight.”

            Oh, that Christopher McIntyre…Well it all made sense.  That is to say that I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was going to go with it.  “My whore girlfriend?” I asked.

            “He,” his sentiment was interrupted by a hacking cough, “He said that he saw you with one of those St. Stephen’s girls.  Is that true.”

            St. Stephen’s was a local Episcopalian school – all girls, and by local I mean in the next microcosm over.  I had dinner with a group of the girls, because there were no seats in the small Italian restaurant.  The restaurant, A Taste of Italy, boasted “the most authentic Italian food you’ve ever tasted.”  Having Christopher McIntyre own the restaurant did answer why each dish was served with potatoes.  I didn’t even remember the name of the girl I sat next to, but I wanted to see how engorged the vein could become. 

            “Oh, you must mean Amy.”

            “Amy?” he asked horrified.

            “Yeah, I met her last Sunday, and we’ve been seeing each other since.”  This killed him, because last Sunday I had been too “sick” to go to church.  I had a natural body temperature of 100.7, give or take a degree, and because my mother never took notice of the trend, I could be sick all that I wanted.  I had my father convinced that there was a disease that came every Sunday.  And there was, the Catholic church. 

            “But…but…you…I thought…”  The vein had grown so big that he could not even complete whole thoughts.  I reasoned that this effect stemmed from two possible sources.  The vein could very well be impinging on the brain, or he could be loosing blood flow throughout the rest of his body.  “St. Stephens?” he asked in sheer desperation. 

            “Yeah.  There are some really nice girls over there, like Christine, Anne, Mary.”  I tried to pick the most religious names, and I think he picked up on the choices. 

As he rose from his chair, weighed down from the blood in his forehead, all that he could mutter was “protestant”.  I didn’t know what his problem was with her.  Amy, from what I could tell, was a lovely girl.  Though, having only said hello, I couldn’t be too sure. 

Protestant was bad enough, but Jewish!  I could think only of Kate, as I ate my steak.  It was too bad that she had come on a Friday.  If she had come earlier in the week, I could have had a date tonight, instead of eating overcooked beef.  Maybe I was reading far too into our conversation, but I got the feeling that she really liked me.  The bungled handshake did not even seem to dissuade her.  I wanted to call her, but I didn’t even know her number.  I reasoned, however, it would not be too hard to find a new Jewish family in Providence . 

As I walked down Main Street , I imagined looking from the air into a field of cattle and seeing a pure white cow in the midst of muddied black bulls.  My only problem with finding the white cow…rather Kate, would come in the asking of her whereabouts.  I couldn’t very well walk up to a total stranger and say, “Pardon me, have you seen three Jewish people walking around?”  I would not be very well received. 

I therefore began to think up an intricate plan, which involved a goat, The Bible, and a piece of string.  It would be hard to see my plan come to fruition, but it was the only way. That was until I heard an angel.

“Carter?” the angel asked me from behind me. 

“Who’s asking?” I asked, pivoting on my right foot.

“It’s Kate, Kate Silverman.  The new girl from school.” 

An angel indeed!  Do they have angels in Judaism ?  It was beside the point.  “Oh, hi Kate,” suave, very suave, “What are you doing downtown?”

“This is downtown?” she asked in a disbelieving manner.

“Yes it is,” I said laughing.  “Were you expecting, say, the Manhattan skyline?”

“No…well…I didn’t quite know what to expect from this town.”

“I have lived here my whole life, and believe me Kate, the town never lives up to your expectations.” 

“You’ve lived here your whole life?”

“All eighteen years of it, yes.”

“What is Providence like?”

“It’s like no other, Kate, no other.”  I began to explain Providence to her in a strictly objective manner, much like I have told you of my life.  We walked and she laughed, and I laughed, though what I was telling her was the honest truth. Main street ended, and we began to walk in circles.  Neither of us noticed, though, because we were having a swell time just walking and talking. I told her all that I could think of.  I told her about the school.  I told her about my mother.

“She doesn’t like you?” she asked, stopping dead in her tracks.

“Nope.”

“Is it that she loves you, and just doesn’t like you?”

“No, she pretty much hates me.  She says that I’m her biggest mistake.”

She gasped, “What?  That’s terrible.”

“No, that’s just my mom.” 

“What does your dad think?

“Think?” I chuckled to myself.  “No, he’s far to busy sermonizin’ and drinking to think.

“And you’re ok with this?” she asked touching my shoulder and looking into my eyes.

“In a manner of speaking.  I just got used to it.  I’m sure your parents have their own little idiosyncrasies,” I said moving on.

“Sure, my mom hates the look of her feet, but she doesn’t hate me.”  She refused to accept that I was fine with my situation.  “Your parents really hate you.”

“No, just my mom.  My dad really just doesn’t like me.” 

“Oh, well then,” she replied with a hint of sarcasm.

“Yeah.”

“Any reason why your dad doesn’t like you?  I mean, I can understand your mom…I mean, it’s a bad reason…but…I…” she said stumbling.

“I know what you mean.  Why does my father hate me?  It could have been because I sat on a pack of his cigarettes when I was eight, or maybe it was the fact that I forsook his religion.  Either one, really.  Or maybe the fact that he’s not my real father…  Yeah, that really rubbed him.” 

“He’s not your real father?” she asked, once again grabbing my shoulder and looking into my eyes.

“Nope.”

“Well then who is?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” I paused in contemplation, “though I’ve got my money on the Priest.”

“The Priest!” she exclaimed in disbelief.

“Why not?  He didn’t vow celibacy from birth.  Besides, he hates me like only a father could – forgive the pun.”  She laughed.  “What about your parents?” I asked.

“Well, they are far less interesting than yours, and I would venture to say a bit less hostile.”

“That’s good to hear; at least one of us has a decent home life.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far…” she said trailing off.

“What do you mean?”

“My family is screwed up in our own way.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

“One older sister, who is the quintessence of a golden child,” she said in a slightly derisive manner.  I could tell by her tone that she did not envy her sister’s role as a golden child, but was not pleased with the ramifications it wrought upon her.  “Do you have any, Carter?”

“No, my mom couldn’t handle making the same mistake twice.”  She laughed.  “What about your mother?  Is she a good mother?” I asked

“That’s really hard to say.  I love her, but she drives me crazy sometimes.”

“I know exactly where you’re coming from,” I replied.

“Do you mean to tell me that you love your mother, even though she says you’re a regret that she has?”

“As hard as it may be to believe, I do love my mother, as misguided as she may be.  The thing you have to understand, Kate, is that she doesn’t hate me as a person.  She just hates that my existence has denied her of her ‘rightful’ life.  It’s a hard distinction to make, but when I made it, I saw that I could love her.”

“You’re very forgiving.”

“I tend to see the best in people, and if I can’t see it initially, I’ll dig until I do see it.”  I could see that my charm was winning her over, though in the last few minutes I had been talking purely for the enjoyment of talking to someone – a sensation which I had never felt before.  “What about your mother?”

“Her sole purpose in life is to have me marry a nice Jewish boy.”  I groaned, though not audibly.  She was resigned to marry within her religion.  I knew this constraint far too well.  “I hate that, though.”  There was hope for me yet.  “What if I don’t want to marry a nice Jewish boy?”  The hope was gaining strength.  “What if I want to marry, say a Catholic boy like you?” Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!

“Wait a minute.  Before we go on, there is something you need to know about me.”

“Oh, no I didn’t mean I wanted to marry you…not that I wouldn’t…but I…but we…”  Her incoherence was touching.  She actually was fumbling over her words, for me no less!  I imagined this situation many times over, and never was it the girl fumbling over her words. 

“Calm down.  It’s nothing about the marriage remark.  We just need to be clear that I’m not Catholic.”

Relieved, yet strangely confused, “Well…” she paused to choose the right words, “what are you?”  The right words indeed.

“At this point, I could be anything.  I consider myself non-denominational.  It’s not that I don’t believe in God, I just don’t support the church.”

“If I may ask, Carter, why not?”

“Why don’t I…” I said, looking for clarification in the ellipsis, though I was truly pausing for time to formulate an answer.

“Why don’t you support the church?” 

I proceeded to tell her about my great schism, and Monsignor Levesque’s enlightening words about the bounty of God.  “So now you see why I don’t support the church,” I said ultimately.  I realized that my explanation had gone from the organ to the Monsignor’s remark to the collection plate to my view of life itself.  I too realized that my explanation not only had raised more questions in her mind, but it had also led us to the door of her home.

The house was huge.  I drank in the red brick along with the marble and the columns.  Though it was quite dark, the house was illuminated by the ethereal glow of florescent bulbs.  I could only see the portions of the home that were bathed in this light, and they were gorgeous.

I knew this house well; all the kids did.  This was the house I was going to buy when I made my millions. I was going to come back to Providence , buy the house, and show everyone that I was better than they were.  I didn’t embrace their religion, yet it was me who was living in the house at the top of the hill.  I didn’t embrace their schools, yet I was living in the house at the top of the hill.  I didn’t embrace their history, yet I was living in the house at the top of the hill.  I hated them, yet they would worship me.

“Well, I have to go now.  It’s getting late,” she said as she climbed the marble staircase.

“You live here?” I asked in feigned disbelief, for why else would she be ascending the private staircase.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“No, it’s just that I had no idea you were so…rich.”  Subtle, very subtle. 

“Do you hate me now?” she asked, descending the stairs back towards me.

I looked at her befuddled, for I could see no reason to hate her.  I might just like her, and thus I asked, “Are you any different than that girl I was talking to earlier?”

“No.”

“Then why on earth should I hate you?”

“I just was afraid that if I told you I was wealthy that you wouldn’t like me; or that you would like me for the wrong reasons.”

“I understand, but you have to understand that I like you because you are not like everyone else.  I like you because I can talk to you, because you can listen to me ramble and digress.  I like you because you are genuine and not some clone of a golden child.  You’re pretty cute, too.”

She laughed, a laugh of reassurement, but a laugh nonetheless.  “Thank you Carter.”  And with that she kissed me on my cheek and disappeared through the large brown double doors.

“For what?” I asked feebly as she left my sight.  So this is what if felt like to be weak in the knees.  I liked it.  As I walked, or more properly floated away, a shutter was moved aside, and from inside a pair of maternal Jewish eyes followed me for ten blocks or so, until I turned the corner.  And I never thought anyone could hate me more than my mother!

Part the Third

“Christ Carter, do you know what time it is?”

“ Eleven thirty-seven .” 

“Smart aleck.”

He had said all of eleven words to me, and already he had broken one commandment.  I had a pretty good idea that he was eying the neighbor’s wife too, but I had no hard evidence.  It was so very ironic that he was such a professing catholic, for he believed in the Catholic faith less than I did. 

You see, I hated the Catholic church.  My dad bore only apathy towards it.  Hawthorne once posed the question whether “hate and love be not the same at the bottom.”  I thought about this for a good week, and since I could ask no one for their advice, since their advice was an elocution of their indoctrination, I was forced upon the supposition that old Nathaniel was on to something.  He stumbled upon the basis to human emotions. 

Hate and love are intrinsically similar, if one can put aside – for the sake of comparison – the obvious perceived difference.  Both suppose a very high degree of intimacy and knowledge of the innermost heart.  I then wondered whether if my mother then did in fact love me under the guise of hate.  It was a lovely musing, but I was reminded in due course that she did in fact despise my very existence.

“Carter, did you have a nice night?” my mother asked as she continued to read the newspaper.  She would always ask me questions while she performed the most asinine tasks, and yet she would become so very ensconced in whatever she was doing that she would have no idea what I replied. 

“Oh, yes mother,” I said, my reply laced with sarcasm, “I met a lovely Jewish girl.”  I paused long enough for her to process the information, yet she had not heard a word I had said. 

She only heard the pause, and like a practiced cue she said, “That’s nice dear.”

I could very well have told her that Chicken Little had told me the sky was falling, and she wouldn’t have as much as told me to take an umbrella.  At times I cherished my mother’s oblivion, yet there was a certain void left by having no parents.  I needed someone to talk to, and yet there was no one.  In the beginning I talked to God, but I came to find out – or more properly Monsignor told me, that God was not listening to a bastard kid.  Those words shattered my youthful naïveté, as I was only six.  Moreover, it confused the hell out of me why the Monsignor was calling me a bastard.  In the end, he held an even fiercer indemnity towards me than even my own mother.

I left my mother to her metro section and walked down the darkened hall to my cubicle.  My house was quite small, and my bedroom was perfectly cubic.  It was an eight foot by eight foot by eight foot cell, lacking only the bars and gray concrete floors.  I had complained in the past about the size of my room, but now I loved the isolation.  Never did my parents enter my room, and if I were a deviant child I could have taken advantage of this.  As I was anything but deviant, except in the obvious respects, I created a pseudo inner sanctum. 

I had fish, and they were merry.  The aquarium sat atop my dresser and was the one dynamic aspect to my room.  The floors were immaculate, and the shelves dusted.  Nary would you see an errant sock lying next to the hamper, for this was my space and I would treat it with the respect that I…rather it…deserved.  I had many books on the shelves that I had borrowed from the school library.  Most people checked books out.  I borrowed.

I was under the assumption that War and Peace was never to be read at my school, and the fact that there were seven copies of the book was simply ludicrous. I therefore borrowed the least assuming volume, and returned it once I had read it.  There was no harm or foul, and I checked daily to see if there was a sudden run on copies of War and Peace, yet the six remaining volumes only served to gather more dust.

My room was darkened as I opened the door, though not all the way, lest I knock over my fish tank.  I reached for the light switch on the wall, though it had not worked for the duration of my stay in this room.  I hoped upon hope that someday there would be an earthquake making the wires would fall into place, whereby I could turn my light on without having to fumble for the pull-string. 

As I sat on my bed – since there was no room for a chair – I though about Kate.  She was quite frankly the most wonderful person I had ever met, though this distinction did not place her among the stars.  She had piercing light blue eyes, which I can only describe as jewel-like.  There was a slight hint of aquamarine in her eyes, and I could have very well spent my life looking at them, through them into her soul.

There was something about her that I could not quite put my finger on.  She was beautiful; this much was true, yet there was something more than sheer aesthetic beauty.  She had a good heart, from what I could tell.  I could talk to her, and I loved her for that.  I realize that it was purely infatuation, but infatuation or not, she had to be mine.

Courtship is an interesting experience, one that I hope never to experience again.  You shamelessly throw yourself to the sharks, and hope that she takes you hook, line, and sinker.  The trouble comes when she throws the hook, or her mother cuts the line as you are reeling her into the boat. 

Her mother was a piece of work.  I truly think that she hated me more even than my own mother.  She cursed at me through the giant bay windows of the Palladian home every time I walked her daughter home.  Kate refused to let me come inside the house when her parents were there, and she never explained why.  I imagine that she feared I would go running if I knew what her parents were like, but her fears were unfounded.

I don’t want to sound terribly selfish or insouciant, but I had come to a point in my life where I truly did not care what people said about me – or to me, for that matter.  Having lived everyday of your life being told on the one hand by your caring father that you are a bastard – in all senses of the word – and that you are your loving mother’s worst mistake tends to make you jaded.  Some serial killers began on the path of parental dysfunction, but there came a point in my life where I didn’t particularly care anymore.

Getting to this point in your life can be empowering or destructive, depending on how you deal with it.  If you let your disregard wallow in its own self defeat, thereby creating an ungrateful, arrogant, pompous, haughty human, you have failed.  If, however, you harness your sheer disregard for other’s opinions, others who have no business being opinionated, you will be hard pressed to fail. 

It took Kate three weeks to introduce me to her mother, though it was not by her own accord.  We were walking back from the movies where we had just viewed a generic love story about two star-crossed lovers whose fate brought them together.  It was a terribly contrived script, but I sat next to Kate for two hours.  This was reward enough. As I walked her home, I thought about the three weeks that we had been seeing each other.  I am ashamed to say that I had fallen for her.  Ah, but falling in love is just the start.  Getting back up, my friend, is the hardest part of all.

Kate and I walked up the front walk hand-in-hand.  I looked up to see if her mother was at her normal perch in the window, yet she was not.  I had been waving to her the last three nights, and each time I did her grimace grew greatly. 

“Your mother’s not at her post tonight, Kate,” I said joking to her.

“That’s too bad; I really think she enjoys your waving.” 

“I do what I can…Kate, when am I going to meet your mother?”  And like a contrived movie script, the front door swung open revealing her mother in a black dress, with the most exquisite pearls.  I think she intended to cast them before me. 

“Momma!” Kate cried out. “What are you doing up?  It’s very late.”

“Yes, it is,” her mother said with a heavy accent, which I had never heard before.  The woman stood in the threshold and stared at me for what must have been twenty seconds.  Her face was completely want of emotions, and this was admittedly quite intimidating. 

I thought it my duty to break the silence, and taking the initiative I said, “Mrs. Silverman, it is so nice to finally meet you, I’m Carter Strau…” she broke me off.

“I know who you are Carter.  Please, come in.”

“Oh, no momma, Carter has to get home.  Don’t you Carter?” she said looking at me intently.

“No, I have a few minutes before I need to go.”  Kate glared at me.

“Splendid,” her mother said. 

I don’t particularly know what I expected to see upon entering the home.  How was so large a house made an hospitable home?  It was clear to see that no expense had been spared furnishing the home, and I was struck at the beauty of the interior.

“Mrs. Silverman, your home is exquisite.”

“Why thank you Carter.  Would you care for something to drink? Water? Tea?”

“No ma’m.  Thank you though.”

“Oh, Carter, don’t call me ma’m.  It makes me feel so old.”

“Sorry, it’s just habit, Southern chivalry if you will.”

“And I thought chivalry was dead,” Kate said to her mother, who looked at her disapprovingly.  I could not tell what the dynamic was between mother and daughter, but I could tell that there was tension in the room.  I looked around the living room, and at the richly wallpapered walls.  The room was burgundy colored, and there were gold accents everywhere.  Kate’s mother had put so much work into decorating this home, but for what?  There were never any visitors, no other family to speak of, so why the elegance?  There was a piano in the corner, yet no one played.  There were framed pictures on the walls of the family in happier settings.  And there was the girl for whom I was falling, sitting across the room in agony on a burgundy ottoman, which matched the rug, the walls, and even the trash can.  It was hell.

I never had trouble talking to adults.  This was the case mostly because they never really listened.  When they did listen, they listened so very intently so that they might catch a slight pause or hesitation.  I knew that when they were listening most intently, they heard the least.  The situation I was faced with now, in the enemy’s drawing room, was different.  Though Kate’s mother was listening so very intently, she cared to hear what I said, even if it was only to add to her already lengthy list of reasons to hate me. 

“How do you like it here in Providence , Mrs. Silverman?” I asked to spur on conversation.

“It’s a quaint little town.”  She hated it, but then again she hated me.  “Carter, how long have you lived here?”

“My whole life.  And that’s why I am ready to get out of here.”  I could tell that the next question she wished to ask was how long had I been a Christian, but she withheld the inquiry.  She seemed to be so sweet, but I could tell by Kate’s reaction to her every word and movement that at any moment I could expect to be grasped by the throat and throttled by the hands of a Jewish matron. 

Our conversation was amicable for the next fifteen minutes.  I learned that Kate’s father was a successful lawyer, and her sister had married a lovely Jewish boy – her mother seemed to dwell on this point.  The conversation was unsettling, because I knew at any moment I could be caught off guard with the most off the wall question for which I was in no way prepared.  Then it came.

“So, Kate tells me that your mother hates you.”

“Momma!” Kate exclaimed jumping from the burgundy ottoman.

“W…wh…what?” I asked, fumbling for the words to either affirm or deny the veracity of this statement.  I could not believe that Kate’s mother had just said this to me.  Sure it was true, but for her to have the chutzpah to say this to me so matter-of-factly amazed me.

“Momma, how could you say that to him?” Kate asked, as if I was no longer in the room. 

Then I experienced something that I had never before seen.  I heard coming from Kate’s mother’s mouth a language not of this earth.  I did not know whether to reach for a dictionary or to wonder how life as an amphibian would be.  It only occurred to me much later that it was Yiddish.  I recognized only few words – words that any respectful human would not utter in front of a Jewish matron – and therefore I knew the commentary was not in the least bit positive.

“Momma, at least talk to me in a language I can understand.”  Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t understand.

“This language is your heritage Kate.  You cannot just cast it aside.  And for what, Kate?  Him?”  She asked, pointing to me violently.

“And what if I were to tell you that I loved him momma?  What would you say then?”

“I would say that you have forsaken me; that I have only one true daughter.”

“Are you so close minded that you cannot see how wonderful a person he is?”

“No Kate, what I see is that you have replaced the Star of David for the ones in your eyes; the ones he put there.”

I could see that Judaism was much the same as Catholicism when it came to open mindedness.  I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t more tolerant of different people, but I remembered that not all Catholics are ignorant zealots who cannot see the forest for the trees, and therefore that not all Jews are as close minded as Kate’s mother was. 

The battle raged on going from English to Yiddish to guttural screams and moans back to English, until finally Kate’s father walked in silently behind me.

“Judging by my wife and daughter’s dialogue,” he said pointing to the Kate, “I would venture to guess that you are Carter.”

“Yes sir.”  I was shell-shocked in the most literal sense.  Within the burgundy grandeur a Holy war was being waged.  It was a fight pitting good versus the evil, and by the sounds of things I was losing.

“I’m Anthony Silverman, Kate’s father.”  I rose to shake his hand, but he placed his hand on my shoulder, beckoning me to remain seated.  “She can sense movement.  It’s best that you remain very still.”  If I weren’t so damned terrified I would have laughed at his comment, but the muscles in my face seemed to be in atrophy. 

“Am I the cause of all of this?” I asked, though judging from the raised matronal voice I was. 

“Yes and no,” he said trying to calm me, “This fight was inevitable.  I’m just sorry that you had to witness it.”

“Does your wife hate me just because I’m not Jewish?”

“Well, there’s more to it than just your Catholicism…”

“Oh, I’m not Catholic.”

“Kate told me you were.”

“Well, I was, but I gave up on the Church.  It’s a really long story.”

“They usually are.”

“It’s funny, you know.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“If I had brought Kate to my house, my father would be yelling at me as vehemently as your wife.  It seems ridiculous to me that such strife can come out of a belief in a higher being.”

“That’s not the cause of this.” I looked at him, and I was at once completely confused.

“What is the cause then?” I asked.

“The cause, Carter, is the baggage that accompanies religion.  Zealots, like my wife, and by the sounds of it your father, carry secular views with their ecclesiastical ones.  The forefathers of our nation were on the right track when they separated church and state, but we have been to ignorant to see that this division is not meant only for the government.  There are certain things that religion should govern, and certain others that it should have nothing to do with.” 

I sat and marveled at his wisdom.  Never before had I thought of the dichotomy of church and state in this vein.  He was right; I was ignorant.  That didn’t change the fact that I was in love with his daughter, nor would it change the fact that his wife hated me.  I knew that he would never try to explain the schism to his wife, for that would have been suicide.  You simply don’t tell a zealot to tone down their zeal because it is based on faulty beliefs.  I had tried to tell my father that his zeal towards the Catholic church should be based upon an actual faith in God, and he took a swing at me.  Luckily drunken Irishmen have poor balance. 

“Kate,” her mother said throwing her arms into the air above her head, “I don’t know what I have done to deserve this disrespect.”

“Momma, it’s not disrespect.  I love Carter.  I’m your daughter, and I love you, too.”

“I have no daughter,” she said as she walked out of the room.  Remembering, however, that she indeed had a daughter whom she had yet to disown she screamed over the din of a slamming door, “except for your sister.”  It was anticlimactic, and Kate’s father laughed.

            Hearing the chortle, Kate leered at me, fully expecting that I was the cause of the disturbance.  As I was to frightened to move beforehand, Kate’s sudden metamorphosis into a leering phantasmagoric shade of her former self nearly made me faint.  It is not that I was a coward or a weak willed man, but the stare of a woman can make any sane man cower.  Seeing that it was in fact her father who was laughing – not her spared love – she turned to him and simply screamed in sheer frustration.

            “Carter, I am so sorry that you had to see her like this.  She can be quite charming, but she is quite stubborn,” Kate yelled the last word so that her mother could hear how her daughter felt.

            “Don’t worry about it.  My dad is just as stubborn.  At least your mother believes in her religion enough to defend it.  My father has lied for so many years about his religion, that I think he is beginning to adopt the spite and mortification of Catholicism.  It is as they say, ‘No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which of the two may be the true.’”

“Well said,” she said.

“It’s Hawthorne , but thank you none the less.  I think I should probably get going before your mother gets a second wind.”

“I think that is probably best…Oh, Carter,” she cried as she ran to embrace me.  She embraced me that she might never let me go, and I embraced her.  I felt at once that my love was not one sided, but requited. 

I said my goodbyes and told her father that it was nice to meet a man of such integrity and wisdom.  As I walked down the street I thought of only one thing.  She said that she loved me.  Granted she might have said this to spite her mother, but by the tone of her voice I very much doubted this. 

I knew why she would never invite me to meet her parents, and it was the same reason that I never brought her to meet mine.  My home was far less imposing than hers, and my father was far more revolting than her mother.  I knew that a time would come where I had to bit the proverbial bullet and introduce her, but that time – God willing – was far in the future. 

When I got to my house, every instinct told me to go through the back door into my room.  If I didn’t I would hear the monotone recording of “Dammit Carter, do you know what time it is?”  I knew well what time it was, yet the calendar on the wall lied when it read the present time.  Once I crossed the threshold of that door, I would enter a 1975 B-movie set, complete with The Dukes of Hazard playing in the background. 

I sat on the porch for at least an hour until there was only static on the TV inside.  As I sat there I thought about the situation in which I found myself.  At that moment I could not, for my own sake, grasp the tragedy of my life.  I laughed when I thought of how my mother hated me.  I had laughed for eighteen years.  I had never cried.  I was never happy, always sad.  Yet I laughed.  For the first time in my life I was happy.  Kate made me happy, and I sat sobbing on the porch in the midst of my mediocrity.  I knew I would find happiness, true happiness, outside Providence .

At the edge of Providence there was a limestone and granite quarry, which had not been in use since the fifties.  I came here quite a bit to think.  No one came to the quarry in the spring because the water was far too cold, and the air had yet to warm enough to warrant a swim.  I came often in the spring, if for no other reason than to be alone.  I never told anyone where I went for fear that they might follow and destroy the peace of the place.  I took Kate the fourth day after I had met her. 

We now came here often together.  We would sit upon the top of the limestone cliff, if one could call it that.  If one were to step off the cliff, he would fall into the depths of the lake.  Some adventurous kids had made a habit of jumping the two or three stories into the lake – if only to leap over the Providential boundary, but most feared the craggy stoop.  Those who feared the cliff never approached it, and never bothered the solitary boy who dangled his legs over the sheer rock face. 

When Kate and I came up here, the ills of the world did not matter.  It did not matter in the least that her mother hated me, nor that my mother hated me.  It did not matter that like Romeo and Juliet, our paths were star-crossed.  It did not matter that while within Providence we were both outcasts.  For that moment in the quarry, we belonged – if only to each other, and we were almost outside the limits of the city’s grasp.

I climbed the steep hill to the cliff alone the day after I met her mother.  I had not talked to her since, and to be honest I did not know what to say.  As I stood at the edge of the chasm, I was faced with a choice, which few face more than once in their life.  Where do I go from here? I looked into the pale blue waters of the lake below and marveled at its resolution.  I could not tell you how many times I had climbed the jagged hills of the quarry to reach this cliff.  I was forever caught upon the curves that life pitched to me.  Each time I stood here and stared at the waters below, I made a choice that would indubitably change the course of my life.  Like the apocryphal butterfly that caused a typhoon with the beat of her wing, each decision in some way molded the boy who stands before you today. 

So why was it that the decision which I was to make today different?  Why was this decision so difficult?  Whether or not I would leave was decided far before I was born; the only choice left to me was when and by whose accord I began my life outside Providence, and with whom I began it.  

I sat upon a large boulder that had been tossed by a mechanical hand years ago, and I tried to think about what to say.  Graduation was in two weeks, and I could not bear to think that I had such a short time left with Kate.  I had made the decision early in the year to run as far away as I could from my family, to start a new life at Dartmouth , but that was before I had a life in Providence .  I wanted so much to run away with Kate, to elope somewhere where Providence couldn’t find us.  I could just imagine the conversation that our parents would have, upon noticing our absence…

“Hello, Mr. Straub.  This is Arthur Silverman.”

            “What are you selling, ‘cause I don’t do any business over the phone?”

“Oh, no sir, I’m not a salesman.  I’m Kate’s father.”

            “Who?”

            “Kate Silverman, Carter’s girlfriend.”

            “Carter doesn’t have a girlfriend.” He called out to my mother, “Mary, does Carter have a girlfriend?”

            “Yeah Tom, I think her name is Katie, or something.  I don’t know.  Can’t you see I’m reading the paper?”

            “So be it.  What has my bastard son done to your daughter Arty?” my father so tactfully asked.

            “Nothing, I hope.”

            “Where did your barbarian son take my little girl?” Kate’s mother fanatically screamed at the phone in her husband’s hand.

            “Linda, would you calm down already.”

            “I will not calm down.  Our daughter, my daughter has been abducted by a damned Christian crusader.”

            “I am sorry, Tom, my wife is upset…”

            “You’re damn right I’m upset,” she screamed at her husband.

            “Like I was saying, my wife is upset.  Tom, do you have any idea where Carter and Kate might be right now?”

            “Well I can tell you one place were Carter isn’t.”

            “I guess that’s a start.”

            “He’s not at mass.  Hasn’t been for five years.”

            “Yes, and Kate missed Synagogue yesterday.”

            “Wait a tick.  You’re Jewish?” my father asked as only he could.

            “Yes, Mr. Straub,” Kate’s father replied impatiently, “I’m Jewish.”

            “So…that would make your daughter Jewish?”

            “Yes Mr. Straub, our entire family’s Jewish; has been for a couple thousand years.”

            “My son’s dating a Jew?”

            “And my daughter is dating a Catholic,” said Mrs. Silverman, who was on another line in the house.

            “Who is that?” my dad asked perplexed.

            “That’s…” Kate’s father began to answer.

            “This is Kate’s mother.  I just want you to know that I do not support my daughter dating your son.  I just hope that you have raised him right and he doesn’t try any…well you know.”

            “Yeah, well…I hope your daughter hasn’t turned my son into any more of a bastard than he already is.  Let me assure you that he doesn’t need any help. And furthermore, I don’t support the fact that Carter’s dating a Jew.”

            “Well, I never…”

            “I just don’t think it is right for someone to date outside their religion, that’s all.  It’s nothing against your daughter.  I am sure she is a very nice person.”

            “She most certainly is, and furthermore the fact that my daughter can date someone like Carter is simply amazing to me. A Catholic!” she swooned.

            This was the time where my father was meant to defend me and make Kate’s mother define more clearly what “someone like Carter” really meant.  Did she just not like me because I was Catholic – which I was not – or was it that she just didn’t like me?  My dad however was not of the school that defends his own progeny…well, not his directly.

            Taking the phone away from his wife, Kate’s father said, “Well, thank you for your help Mr. Straub.  I will let you know if we find them.”

            “No problem Arty. I just hope those two don’t go off and elope.  You know my religion.”   

            “Yes Mr. Straub, Carter told me all about your religion.  It was…nice to talk to you.  Goodbye now,” and with those words he hung up…

I dreamt this conversation, but I hoped in some way that it would see fruition.  It was not that I wished my father to blaspheme Judaism.  I merely wished to flee from Providence with Kate, and this conversation was a beacon of our flight.  I sat upon the rocky face and thought pensive thoughts, unaware of the beauty which surrounded me in the quarry.

“Carter?  Carter are you up there?” Kate’s voice echoed from the base of the hill.

“Kate,” I yelled back, “What are you doing here?” 

“Carter I need to talk to you,” she said as her voice became closer to where I sat.  I saw her straight brown hair before the rest of her, and I go up to help her climb the last few feet of the hill.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Carter, I’m sorry about last night.  My mother…” I interrupted her.

“Kate, you don’t have to explain your mother.  I know what it’s like.  Why do you think that you have never been to my house?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Because I am embarrassed by my family.  I am embarrassed that my father would say something so horrendous to you that you could never look at me the same.  I am embarrassed by the fact that neither of my parents know about you, despite the fact that I have told them every night that I had a great kosher time with my perfect Jewish girlfriend.  I am embarrassed because I have been all but excommunicated from my church, and this hurts because for the longest time I actually believed in what the church taught me.  I am embarrassed by the fact that I have the closest familial ties to the woman who tried to kill me twice.”

“She tried to kill you?”

            “Yeah, and that’s the only reason I believe in a higher power.”

            “Because your mom tried to kill you?” she asked sufficiently confused.

            “Because she failed to kill me, Kate.  When she was sixteen she had an abortion, and six months later I was born.  I lived, Kate, and the only reason I lived is because there is something greater than her, than you, than me.”  I was angry.  Not at her, but I was angry.

            “If you believe that, why did you leave the Church?”

            “Kate, they made Him cheap.  They bottled Him and sold Him to anyone who would buy.  They took the one pure thing, and tarnished it like the golden cage they keep Him in.”

            “Carter, I’ve never seen you like this.”

            “I’m sorry that you had to, but Kate I’ve been thinking a lot lately about us.”

            “What about us?”

            “Kate, where do we go from here?  I love you.  You are the only person whom I have ever felt any shred of an attachment to, and in two weeks you might leave me.”

            “Carter, I’m not going to leave you in two weeks.”

            “Then when Kate?  When does this fairytale end? Your mother hates me because I’m not Jewish; my mother hates me period; my father hates anyone who is not Catholic; and last time I checked I’m neither Catholic nor Jewish.  Thereby I’m hated by everyone, and accepted by none.”

            “Carter, stop it.  I love you, and accept you for who you are.  Can’t you see that we are essentially the same?”

            “How so?”

            “Both of our families are close minded.  Neither accepts another religion.  And for what?  For conformity’s sake?  Carter, they are ignorant.”

            She was right.  I knew everything that she was saying, yet I had never said it to myself.  It was very interesting to me, that until I had met Kate I was content with being discontent.  I had learned how not to care.  When, however, I found someone whom I truly cared about, I could no longer be content with my life.  It was the ultimate Hobson’s choice – either be content with never caring, or by caring be content no more. 

            “Kate, I know you’re right.  They are ignorant, but that still leaves us.  Where do we go from here?”

            “I don’t know?”

            “When I was younger, I used to sit up here and dream about flying away.  I always dreamt that there would come a day that I could finally grow wings and fly away.  I never grew those wings, though, and I am still here, dreaming about flying away.  I thought about running away a thousand times, and do you know why I stayed?  Do you know why I stayed Kate?”

            “No.”

            “I stayed, because I was always so scared that wherever I ran would be just as bad as Providence .  I stayed because I was so scared that there would be people like my father in every town I went, that I would see my mother’s face on every woman I met.  All that I had was a dream, Kate, and if ever I was to fly away and by doing so see that nightmare realized, I couldn’t have gone on.  But then I met you.  I realized that there was at least one decent person in this world, and I knew that at least part of my dream had come true.  I can fly away now Kate, because of you.  Yet because of you I can’t leave this place.” 

            I realized that I was crying, and my voice was wearing down and becoming rather coarse as I went on, yet I couldn’t stop myself.  I so wished to ask her to run away with me, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.  She cried too.  They were tears of sympathy, of empathy.  She knew how I felt, because she had felt it too many times before.  When her mother told her that she was to marry a nice Jewish boy, she died a little death, not because she did not care for the Jewish boys, but because in some way her future was decided for her.  Her future was decided before she left the womb, much in the same way that mine was, though her mother did not attempt to end her future before it began.

            “So Carter, what are trying to say?” she asked looking at me. “What do you want me to do?  Carter!  Look at me.”

            I then realized that I had not in fact been looking at her, but out across the quarry.  There was a mockingbird chasing a crow from her nest.  The mockingbird was so much smaller, yet she was protecting her young who could not protect themselves.  She was driven, and so was the crow driven from the nest.  Thinking about this very scenario, I knew that my own mother would have eagerly invited the crow to partake in her farrow.

            “Carter!”

            “Sorry, I was just…It’s not important.” I so wished to ask her to fly away with me, but I couldn’t bear it if she were to say that she could not go.  I had let myself fall for her, something that I had never done before.  Never had I loved someone as much as I loved her.  Yet I doubted her.  I doubted myself.

            “Carter, what are you thinking about?” she asked me.

            I broke down. “I hate this place Kate.  I hate that I do, yet I do none the less.  I hate that my parents hate me and that your mother hates me.  I hate the fact that our religion won’t let us be happy together.  I hate that in two days we will be free of this school, yet we won’t be any closer to freedom than when we met.  I hate that I can get lost in the paradise your eyes, but when I look away I see the haze of this place settling around us like a cancer.  I hate the fact that I let myself fall so hard for someone that I can’t see straight.  But I love you Kate, and I just want to get away from this place.”

            Then she said the words that I longed to hear, “So let’s get out of here.  You and me Carter, let’s just fly away.  That’s what you want isn’t it?”

            I couldn’t speak.  I looked at her, and I couldn’t speak.  For the first time in my life I couldn’t speak, and that was fine.  We looked at each other and all that was needed to be said was said by our eyes.  I know it sounds trite, but we understood each other so much so that there was no use for words.  This was good, because I was so happy I couldn’t speak.

            We resolved to run away the night of graduation.  We would have our diplomas, and there would be nothing our parents could do.  Kate had received a full ride to a college that was fifteen miles south of Dartmouth , and so we never had to return home.  In two days we would be free of Providence forever, but those two days would seem like an eternity.   We would leave, and the future holds what it may, case closed.

            As I sat with her atop the quarry’s stern face, I realized that my life had come to this point, and this point alone.  Everything that I had been taught to shun, to hate, had led me into Kate’s arms.  Every prejudice, every striking word of derision, drove me to love her.  My father, in attempt to guide me down the path to glory stumbled upon a less shorn one to happiness.  I didn’t know where we would go once we left. I knew only that I would be happy that it was not Providence . 

            I looked over the expanse of the man-made lake, and I marveled at its silence.  Kate rose, and in turn so too did I.  She took my hand, and we leapt from the cliff into the pool below.  Once a boy who could only extend his feet over the edge, I was at once able to leap over the boundary of the cliffs stern face, and untethered we fell.