Page 31 of Freaks
He stepped toward the large double bed and swiped something from its surface, stuffing it into his back pocket.
I canted my head to one side. “You trying to hide something from me, Mr. Marcosa?”
Leveling me in a pitiless stare, Fix shifted his weight from his right foot to the left, raised his glass to his lips again and drained its contents in one mouthful. “Yes,” he said.
Oh.
He was being honest, at least. But fuck that. After the past month and everything that had happened, he figured hiding things from me now would be okay? “Why?” I demanded.
“I’d have thought that was obvious. Because I didn’t want to see it.”
“I just watched you kill a man. Before that, I watched you electrocute a man in a bathtub. What could you possibly not want me to seenow?”
A hard, unyielding light flared in his eyes. He thought for a moment, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “All right. Fine. Here.” He reached into his back pocket and produced the mystery object he’d secreted away out of sight. He slapped it into my outstretched hand, and I stared down at the piece of stiff white fabric with a morbid kind of fascination.
It was a Roman collar.
A priest’s collar.
His.
“Richard must have forgotten to throw it out,” he said.
“Why would you want to hide this from me?” I asked slowly. “I know about your past. I know who you were before you started all of this.” I held up the collar, frowning at it, and then turning that frown on him. “This is nothing to be ashamed of, Fix. Just because I don’t believe in a higher power doesn’t mean I’ve judged you because you used to be a priest. Is that what you think?”
“No.”
“Then what? You’ve been acting weird since the moment we arrived. I don’t think either of us have the energy to be dancing around whatever it is that’s clearly bothering you.”
He sucked his teeth, his lips forming a pinched line as he looked down at his feet. “This place…a lot happened here. There are a lot of…memories.”
“I can imagine.”
“Most of them are difficult for me. My father was a hard man, Sera. And my mother was a bitter, unhappy woman. Being here reminds me of all the shitty, harsh words that were traded here. I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin within the walls. I don’t know myself here. And that,” he said, jerking his chin at the collar, “only goes to prove that point further. The man who wore that thing is a stranger to me. And I don’t particularly want to be reminded of him.”
A selfish thought occurred to me. A thought that would have dramatic implications for me if I were right. “Do you regret walking away from that life? Do you wish you were still a priest?” I’d asked that question in my head before. Wondered if he still talked to the god he devoted so much of his life to before that fateful day when he found Monica, lying broken and bleeding on the floor of that rectory.
“Of course not. But I—I missaspectsof that life. The...”
“Innocence?”
He gave a hard laugh. “Being a priest doesn’t afford a man any kind of innocence. Death. Deceit. Betrayal. Guilt. Lies. Every day it’s something new. People get to be their very worst when they sit down on a church pew. They know, when they walk out of the building an hour later, they’ve been forgiven for every terrible thing they’ve done, and all because they’ve taken a few moments out of their week to soothe their consciences and say they’re fucking sorry.”
“Then what?”
“I miss the idea of freedom. I miss being able to make plans. I miss the simplicity of it all. Knowing what my day is going to look like. I miss meeting people and seeing hope and kindness in their eyes, instead of hurt and anger. You spend so much time around hate, and greed, and people’s lust for revenge, and it begins to change you in irreversible ways. I—” He sounded like he was being strangled by the words he was trying to force out of his mouth. He sighed, frustrated, running a hand through his hair. Putting down his glass, he began to pace up and down at the foot of the bed.
There was more that he wanted to say. More that he felt hecouldn’tsay.
I stepped in front of him, holding out my glass of whiskey to him. “Looks like you need this more than I do.” He gave me a thankful look as he accepted the glass and drained it in one go.
“I miss the idea that I might be able to have a family one day,” he said quietly. “I used to hate coming back here. Fuckinghateit. My mother told me that would change at some point in my life. One day I’d bring a woman here and I would feel differently. I wouldn’t see a cage with high walls and bars at the windows. I’d see a place where I could build a life with someone. Where I could raise a family. She knew I’d end up leaving the church at some point, even before I did.” His smile was sour and strained. “And when I turned around and saw you standing there in the entranceway, Sera, that’s exactly what happened. I imagined a life here, for us, and…fuck. I wasn’t afraid of it. I always thought I would be, but I wasn’t.”
A heavy weight settled over me. Heavier than a ten-ton elephant sitting on my chest. I’d never given any thought to kids. I’d done everything in my power to not think about kids. My childhood had been so messed up and damaging that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend how I would care for a child and give it the life it deserved.
If I were smart and possessed a single ounce of common sense, I would have turned around and told Fix I was never going to have children with him. It was one thing to accept this kind of life for myself; I was old enough and tough enough to make my own calls, to weigh the risks, to assess what a life with him looked like, the dangers and the complications that came with it, and to take them on with a full knowledge of what the decision could mean. But a child couldn’t choose for themselves. They couldn’t weigh the pros and cons of a life with us as parents and sign up for it willingly. It wouldn’t be fair.
But then again, if things were to change. If there was any chance things were ever going to be more stable for us, would that make a difference? The question was too big for me to even begin picking apart.
