26. Gerard
Gerard
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been…” Come on, Gerard, you can do basic math, can’t you? “… too long since my last confession.” He cringed and shifted on the uncomfortable seat in the wooden booth with the grated partition between him and Father Daniels.
When he’d arrived at the church early and saw folks kneeling in the front pews whispering their penance under their breaths, he realized Father Daniels was hearing confession. His feet moved before his mind had made itself up—that’s how he found himself fumbling for his script.
“It’s okay to guess, my child,” Father Daniels said.
It had to have been before We the Wells took off, so he estimated. “Seven years.”
“Seven is a holy number. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Rest now, my child, by laying down your sins.”
Confession would’ve been much easier if it were more like an ATM where you deposited your sins and out popped your penance.
He didn’t even know if he had the words to unpack his sins, let alone lay them all down, but he started where he thought he ought to.
“I’ve disobeyed my family by running away and disappearing from work. ”
Father Daniels made a sound that indicated he was listening.
“Since then, I’ve been helping out a criminal,” he said, stumbling over the word criminal.
Was everybody who committed a crime a criminal?
In the eyes of God, probably, but Gerard couldn’t link sweet Emory with his soft, unseen lips and a word as harsh as that.
“Sorry, somebody who committed a crime.”
“Were you an accomplice to the crimes committed?” Father Daniels asked.
“Oh God! No.” Gerard could’ve banged his head against the hard, thick door over his flub. “Sorry, now I’ve also taken the Lord’s name in vain. You can add it to the list.”
“I’m not keeping a list,” he said in a calm voice. “Go on.”
“I’ve been giving him a place to stay, food to eat—that sort of thing—until he gets back on his feet, or I have to leave. Whatever comes first.”
Father Daniels cleared his throat. “That sounds like the opposite of a sin to me. You are giving to someone in need. It is not your job to repent for someone else’s misdeeds.”
“Sure, right.” Outside the Ten Commandments, which he’d been required to memorize in childhood, he was fuzzy on what counted as a sin and what didn’t. Most times, it seemed entirely subjective. What was sinful to some was innocent to others, and vice versa.
“Anything else?” Father Daniels asked.
Gerard was certain in some churches if he brought up his kisses with Emory—another man—he’d be forced into a twenty-four-hour prayer lockdown to earn God’s forgiveness, but in other more progressive churches, it would be of little consequence.
Because everyone on Iping seemed accepting, and he believed he had nothing to feel guilty about, he held on to the kissing, kept it private.
“No, Father,” he said, then second-guessed himself when he feared he sounded too noncommittal.
His palms itched. And because Father Daniels was bound by the seal of confession, which, as a child, Gerard imagined as a slippery maritime mammal that priests had to visit every so often or be excommunicated, he added, “Actually, I’ve been lying about who I am since I got here.
My real name is Gerard. Sorry it’s not a good Christian name like James the Great. ”
A hush fell in the confessional for a moment. Heat cranked through the sanctuary, making this wooden box sauna-like. “True, Saint Gerard was not an apostle, nor does he have his own feast, but he was a saint all the same.”
“What was he a saint of?” Gerard asked.
“Expectant mothers. I say a prayer to him each time one of the women in our parish is having complications with their pregnancy. Saint Gerard always comes through. He was patient and obedient to God’s will.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. Thank you.”
After that, Father Daniels bestowed his penance, had him say the Act of Contrition, which was helpfully printed on a piece of yellowing paper tacked to the wall, and sent him on his way.
But before Gerard weaseled out of the confessional, Father Daniels added, “As part of your penance, I’d also like you to look up Saint Gerard.
See if you can learn anything that will inspire you on your journey of faith. ”
“You got it.” Worried that sounded way too casual to a clergyman, Gerard added a quiet amen.
During his solo audition, feeling lighter post confession, Gerard’s voice came out clearer than it ever had before.
His tone was bright, his pitch was perfect, and he suffered not a single wobbly note.
Regina’s mountain dulcimer proved the perfect aural complement to his honeyed tenor.
Without blazing stage lights in his eyes, he could see his audience made up of his fellow choir members, who sat at attention, smiling. He had no need for a click track funneled through an in-ear monitor, because his pure heart became the metronome to which he kept time.
At verse three, he closed his eyes against the room and centered himself inside the song.
While the hymn was an ode to God, he sang it as if it were dedicated to Emory.
Their kisses held a salience in his subconscious that he couldn’t shake.
He didn’t want to shake.
He wanted to let it out; he wanted to sing about it.
So he did, proudly, and when he concluded, there was a sweep of genuine applause throughout the nave.
The dedicated We the Wells fan base—the Wellies, as they called themselves on the internet—were apt to go wild for all performances, even if Gerard missed a cue or Garret sang off-key or Gavin broke a string and stopped playing.
Swaths of stans on the internet would come to their defense no matter what criticisms were flung their way.
At the beginning, Gerard had loved the legions of Wellies protecting him, but over time, he realized that they were loyal to a fault.
How could he ever grow or change when they wanted him to stay exactly as he was?
When even his haircuts made headlines, and his shoe choices caused discourse, he had to question if their devotion was really to him and his brothers, or to the product they’d become.
“There we have it, folks,” Regina said as Gerard took his seat in the pews.
“That’s everyone. Our votes will be anonymous.
I’m going to pass around small slips of paper.
Write your first choice down and fold it up.
Angie will come back around with a bowl to collect them.
We’ll tally at the end of today. For now, let’s look at Sunday’s selections. ”
For the rest of rehearsal, Gerard twisted every song into a love song, and every note into a tribute.
Hymns touted utter piety and eternal love as the only paths to redemption, but Gerard couldn’t abide by such strictures.
If religion was about a relationship with God, and relationships, in his experience, were ever-changing, how could God expect such fixed emotion from His disciples?
So rather than delivering his voice to God, Gerard projected Emory into the church and sang to him instead, making him seriously question if he could stick to his rule about serenading.
Once they concluded for the day, the coffee and doughnuts—of which Gerard helped himself to a glazed one with sprinkles—were passed out.
Regina went into the corner with the bowl of votes to count them, while the islanders huddled up and got to spilling the local gossip.
Daydreaming, Gerard mostly tuned it out for the first ten minutes until he overheard something he couldn’t ignore.
“I hear Sergeant Adye found someone down at the beach late the other night. A shady lookin’ character in a long coat, a face wrap, and sunglasses,” Jericho relayed in a gravelly tone that bordered on Boris Karloff.
“Is that what was going around in the community forum?” Angie asked. “With Kellen Jr.’s sleep schedule, I rarely get to check it, so when I catch up, I feel like I’m only getting half the story.”
“Don’t sound like there is a whole story,” Joe said through a mouthful of cinnamon sugar.
Gerard piped up. “What do you mean?”
“The report says the suspect disappeared while bein’ pursued,” said Edna the librarian, with shock written all over her face.
“How does a suspect just disappear on an island like Iping?” Angie asked.
Jericho chimed in again. “I read somewhere the fella stripped down and skedaddled. Right up and vanished into thin air.”
“Stripped down?” Angie scrunched up her face in apparent disgust. “First we had a thief, now we have a nudist running loose on the island?”
“Does anyone care to hear who got the solo, or should we continue discussing streakers in a house of the Lord?” Regina asked, rejoining the group.
Gerard’s heart rate accelerated, not because he was worried about not getting the solo, but because he was worried about Emory. Before this, everyone on Iping assumed Emory had left the island. Now, he feared a second hunt could ensue, and he didn’t know how he could keep Emory safe.
“And our soloist is…” The choir members slapped their thighs to simulate a drumroll. “James!”
Everyone patted Gerard on the back in congratulations.
His mind played a dirty trick on him by reminding him of the Nomey Awards.
In less than a month, he was almost definitely expected back in Manhattan to parade before the industry’s elite in competition for a trophy that could unlock a whole new career realm for We the Wells.
As hard as he tried, he couldn’t wall himself off from his old life, just like Iping couldn’t completely wall itself off from the rising sea. Would they both end up underwater?
Gerard caught Regina smiling at him, but in her eyes, there was a hint of something else. Concern, maybe? For him? For the disappearing stranger?
Either way, it was clear she knew something. Something big.
What Gerard wanted to know was what she planned on doing with it.