THE SILENT VISIT

Michael Flannagin was a religious man.  His devotions in later years were both intensified and troubled by his sixteen-year old daughter, a slender, golden-haired elf, who had become the bane of his existence.  She argued about everything and, what was worse, asserted herself by being disobedient.  He had to reign over her with increased diligence, or give her up as lost.  To avoid the latter, he had sought council from his brothers and sisters, but, without exception, they told him he was too hard on her.  Her temper, however, was such a challenge that he had on many an occasion threatened to whip her.  His hand would move to his belt buckle, but when she saw that, she fled upstairs to her bedroom, and then his peace and fatherly love would return. 

When she finished eighth grade, he insisted she go to the Catholic high school, hoping that there she would get the religious instruction she needed to keep her from the graver mistakes of life.  She didn’t like it, little atheist that she was, but she adapted well enough.  Her father, however, paid for her acquiescence to the Catholic school with even greater distemper in the home.

     He was a hard working family man.  Although he earned a decent livelihood and moonlighted on weekends when he could, his large family consumed his resources as fast as he provided them.  What he wanted when he was home was to rest and watch television for a few hours before going to bed.  But always there was some struggle with his daughter.  Either he had to go himself to fetch her bodily from someone’s house, or he had to search for her at the mall or drag her from the streets.  Then would start her tantrums. These ended only when he lost his own temper and reached for his belt buckle.  Because he had to cope with these behaviors during his only hours of rest, his oldest daughter’s disobedience was an affliction.  But worse, it was a drain not only upon his present energies, but, in his imagination, a portent, as well, of future drains he already felt depleted by.

     From her point of view, however, life with her father was miserable.  He would not let her have boyfriends, prevented her from going out on Friday and Saturday nights, unless it was to the home of a girlfriend whose parents he knew and trusted, and he would not let her wear makeup—as every girl did by the age of sixteen.  But even worse, he insisted she go to church with him on Sundays, where he made a point of parading her in front of the sons of his friends.  When she complained about how obvious he was, he would say, “I’m doing my duty.  Someday you’ll thank me.” 

     She didn’t thank him.  She hated him when she had to shake hands with Jimmy Leary again and smile as though she were glad.  He was short, pudgy, white skinned, freckled, and shy.  But worse, he had big feet.  He was exactly the kind of young man she and her girlfriends described as “The Nightmare!”  Then there was Jerry Wishern.  His sister had become a nun.  Her father favored him because he regarded the family as devout.  Sometimes, in the morning before church, he would say, “Perhaps we should go to brunch with the Wisherns?”  To which she would respond, “I’d rather die.”  She thought the boy only a very thin cut above Jimmy.  He, too, was short.  But he was skinny, had too large a head, and was so plain she told her father she couldn’t keep an image of him in her mind.  And then there was Michael Macateer.  At sixteen he was already a man, with a man’s record of trouble with the law.  Had her father known the things she did about him, his blood would have curdled.  When she shook his hand, she had the feeling she didn’t exist, as though the shaking of hands for him were a theatrical improvisation, something he did as a performance in front of an audience—his parents.  And the non-descript others—Jamesy Donohue, Donald Corrigan, Richy Pugh; every Sunday, the ritual was the same.

     The high school was located behind the cathedral where they went to services on Sunday.  It was a very large four-story building, the upper two floors for the girls, the lower two for the boys.  All the teachers for the girls were nuns; the only exceptions were the man who staffed the computer lab and the teacher of the higher-level math courses, who also taught the boys.  Other than these, both of whom were as old as her father, Lynn Flannagin came into contact with no members of the opposite sex during the day.  Even when school was out, she had no opportunity to mingle, because, at her father’s insistence, her mother was always at the curb waiting in the car.  Thus, this shaking of hands and parading in front of the boys on Sundays was a tribulation.

One summery Sunday morning in June, a week before school was to let out, she noticed a young man she had not seen before.  He had black hair and was wearing black trousers, a black shirt, and a thin black tie, which was pinned to the shirt with a gold drop.  He was standing by himself in front of the church outside the circle of families, who were engaged in the usual ritual.  She noticed that he was looking at her.  She was in her tight yellow dress with the white collar and carried her white patent leather purse.  As she shook Richy Pugh’s hand, a thrill shot through her, causing her face to flush.  In the bright sunshine, she knew she looked fine.  She looked at Richy but didn’t see him, concentrating on the young man in her peripheral vision.  Richy Pugh noticed the oddness in her, and, cripplingly self-conscious, blushed himself and stammered “Good morning.”  Lynn Flannagin, however, was oblivious of the disconcerted Richard Pugh.  She cast a second sideways glance at the dark young man on the sidewalk, whereupon he flashed a divinely sympathetic smile, which engraved itself in her mind and heart.  Yet another glance confirmed the impression: he had rolled his eyes, as if to say, “Poor thing,” and smiled again.

     Herded as she was, the young man had no opportunity to intrude; but certain he had made an impression, he stepped confidently off the curb and strode away.  Lynn Flannagin watched him cross the street to see if he looked back and felt another stab of elation as he did, and she was sure he noticed.  She was sure of another thing, as well: she would see him again.  She didn’t know how it would happen, or where, or when.  Throughout the course of her well-guarded day, as she thought of him, she was sure it would happen and was determined to be ready when it did.  And for the sake of it, she prepared for insurrection. 

* * *

“Stop with your novenas,” Michael’s sister remonstrated.  “What did you expect, that you could shield her from the world?  She wants to have a life.  It’s time to let her be what she is.”

     “And what’s that?  She’s only sixteen.  She hasn’t finished school yet.”

     He was sitting at the head of the table.  It was Sunday evening and his sister’s family had come for supper.  They came to console him and to defend his daughter, who had taken the drastic measure of moving out of her parents’ house and into that of her aunt’s.  His brother-in-law kept his mouth shut.  But all the talk accomplished was to deepen the wound.  Michael’s brother and two sisters had taken his daughter’s side in the dispute that now raged in the family. 

Michael’s reaction to his daughter’s rebellion was to see a priest, but even the priest counseled him to let his daughter explore the possibilities of life.  The church, the priest told him, thinking he knew how to talk to one like him, teaches us that life is a gift bestowed by God, and that, as parents, we are only caretakers of that gift, and then only for a while.  He must respect his daughter’s right to use God’s gift according to her own lights.  But such talk was to no avail.  In the end, Michael had taken to going to church on Wednesday evenings to pray for his daughter’s soul, which he was sure was on the way to damnation, and losing hope that anything he might do could restore her.

     “Lynn is not a bad girl,” his sister said; “you don’t have to worry about her, so stop praying!”

     “You could make her come home,” Michael said.

     “Be glad she’s with us.  If I tried to make her come home, she’d leave us in a flash.  Then where would she be?  It’s you, you’re the problem, Mike, with your crazy ideas about how she should live.”

     “What’s crazy?” he shouted, “that I should want to protect my daughter from her own mistakes?”  His face turning red, he had begun to burst with repressed anger.  His sister stared at the half-carved roast in frustration.  “This guy she’s seeing?  Who is he?  Where did he come from?  What’s his interest in her?”

     “Calm down for Pete’s sake!” his sister demanded. 

     As he ranted, he waved his fork like a dueling weapon, making the children cringe and spoiling everyone’s appetite.  His sister pushed herself away from the table and rose.

     “He’s a nice boy,” she retorted, standing behind her chair, defending her niece.  “He likes her.  She likes him.  What’s the problem?  Get used to it. I’ll tell you what the problem is.  You don’t want to protect her, you want to control her.”

His face turned red as the center of the roast.  Throwing his fork on the table, he pushed his unfinished plate away.  Appetites were spoiled all around.

“Well, she’s old enough now you can’t do that.  You have to let her be,” she threw at him and walked out of the dining room.  The evening was in tatters.

     But that was not the problem.  He didn’t want to control his daughter.  Like all fathers, he wanted their lives to be such that he wouldn’t have to control her.  But if she behaved in ways that forced it on him, then the problem was real, and he would be failing his own daughter if he didn’t.  But no one in the family agreed.  They all sympathized with her.  How to be a responsible parent when all the odds were against you?  She was always trouble.  But in this moving out, now, she was really bad.  Couldn’t they see that?  It stunned him how bad.  His own mother, always complaining about her own brood, used to say when he was growing up, “The better you are to your kids, the swifter the kick.”  He felt kicked.

     He felt, also, the sense of ungratefulness a parent feels who has been abandoned by a child.  He stopped visiting his sister’s home so as not to drive his daughter away, though his wife went several times a week.  She, his wife, was weak and pliable.  Almost, she seemed to him to welcome the change.  In fact, a new tranquility had established itself in her home, and she felt the grace of it.  And so the days passed, and Michael Flannagin became a quiet man.

* * *

Lynn Flannagin’s life changed in all the ways she had hoped.  Her aunt and uncle were liberal with respect to her coming and going, and she saw her mother and her brothers and sisters as often as she wanted.  She had a boyfriend—not the dark-haired young man dressed in black whose interest in her did not outlast their first love-making—but another boy for whom she felt no real affection, but with whom she had regular dates.  Also, she left the Catholic school for the public high school, where she felt entirely in her element.  As time passed and her energies became more and more engaged with social life, she thought less and less about her father and thus less about the misery of her former life.

     But she could not altogether avoid thinking about him.  Although she never asked about her father when her mother visited, her mother would tell her about his changing moods and about the rising tribulations in his life, the details of which were the stuff of her own daily living.  He had become over the ten months since her leaving more and more untalkative and brooding, and not just at home.  These changes were affecting his work as well.  Her mother had learned from his friends that he had become inattentive on the job, and both mopey and uncooperative.  And worse, his friends told her mother they were worried he might get fired.

     Most recently, her mother told her that her father has not only been going to church every Wednesday evening but has been staying there long after the service is over.  She thought it was the isolation he wanted—that, and getting out of the house, which he no longer seemed satisfied in.  These changes in her father began to afflict her, finally—not so much for his sake but for the effects they were having on her mother. 

At first, she tried to ignore her mother’s stories.  It was easy to do, because her mother never told them as accusations, never implied that these changes in her father were her fault.  She told them rather as accounts of her own afflictions, as though mother and daughter were the closest of friends exchanging tales of the trials of life.  But it became less and less easy as her mother’s unhappiness became more pronounced.  She thought what to do.

     She was now in her senior year in high school and had a job which provided her with a nice income.  She would soon be eighteen, the age she always thought she would be on her own—as soon as school was over.  Then, the world would open to her.  But now she felt a tug, like she was being dragged back to the old claustrophobia of her father’s craziness.  She asked herself why.  She asked herself if she cared.  She did care, she decided, for her mother and her brothers and sisters.  But not for him.  When she looked inside for him, all she could find was indignation and resentment, that old feeling of rebellion which finally led to her escape.

     It was, therefore, with fear and trembling that she walked into the church one Wednesday evening after the service let out.  The faint smell of incense and the dimness hushed her natural liveliness.  She crossed the portico and stepped through the doors into the sanctuary.  At the far end, the altar stood solemn and quiet, its candles snuffed out.  One man was sitting alone in a pew a few rows from the front, looking as snuffed out as the candles.  She recognized him from the back. 

     She had not been to church since she left home.  Representing so many resentments and miseries, she had put the place out of mind.  It had become alien to her, as did her father.  She stood beside the holy water and by habit dipped her fingers in, but then she dried them on her jeans.  Lifting her head and sticking out her chin, she tried to make herself feel brave, and feel, as well, as though she were walking down the aisle of the high school auditorium.  She approached him, whom she dreaded to see.  When she got beside him, he looked up at her and instead of surprise, as she expected, what she saw on his white solemn face was barely a smile, as though he had been shaken from his meditation by the priest instead of her.   He did, however, slide down the pew a bit so she could sit beside him.

     She sat.  It was that simple.  They didn’t speak.  She could feel him look at her from time to time.  But she didn’t turn to him.  Most of the time, they both just stared at the altar.  It was agonizingly uncomfortable for her.  She couldn’t speak because words wouldn’t come, even though she had worked out in her mind what she wanted to say.  She wanted to tell him that he should forget about her, and that if he did, everybody would be better off, her mother and brothers and sisters, and him, too.  In her own mind, this was a sacrifice, one she felt almost saintly for making.  She had no idea how he would react.  But it was all beside the point, since she couldn’t make even one word come forth, not even hello.

     Michael Flannagin, on seeing his daughter suddenly appear beside his pew, felt his prayers were answered.  She looked lovely to him, more lovely than he had imagined her.  All he wanted was to look at her, and so he did, often, as they sat together.  He didn’t know what would come of her visit, or even why she came.  It didn’t matter.  She was there, and that was enough.  It was all he could do to keep the tears back. 

     They sat silently until she could stand it no longer; then, without warning, she rose, stepped out of the pew, turned, and walked away.  The relief she felt outside was so great that she gulped air, as though she had had to hold her breath the whole time.  It was a bad mistake, she realized.  She couldn’t talk to him, and that was all there was to it.  She wouldn’t do it again.  “No,” she said to herself, “not again.”  It was too terrible.

     Afterwards, her father had changed.  He still went to church on Wednesday evenings, but he seemed now reconciled to the way things were.  He put in more hours on the job and started to work on weekends again. 

     Lynn Flannagin, on the other hand, had no hope.  To avoid seeing her father again, she did not go to her high school graduation.  Instead, she packed her things and moved away with her boyfriend.