PENANCE BEFORE RECONCILIATION

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “AN UNSUSTAINABLE LIFE – The Book of Darwin“

Chapter 9: Penance Before Reconciliation

Darwin slams his bourbon glass hard on the living room table to better focus his glare. “What do you mean, what do I think?” he shouts. “I think it’s the stupidest damn thing you’ve ever done! And that’s coming off an impressive list of dumb-ass shit.”

Vincent calmly tosses back the last of his Sazerac and immediately sets about making a fresh one. “You’re just too screwed up and cynical to recognize a good adventure,” he says.

Darwin’s not willing to fall behind on either drinking or this argument, he downs the last of his bourbon and sets his depleted cocktail on the small ledge of the antique French hutch beside his brother. “Keep that happy thought,” he counters.

Vincent remains focused on bartending duties. “I do believe I most assuredly will,” he taunts.

Darwin watching his brother pour absinthe in his glass, twirl it around to coat the edges and then dump the remainder back in the bottle. He then adds three dashes of Peychaud’s bitters and around two ounces of rye whiskey. Once stirred, he adds a large ice cube shaped like a baseball embossed with the Cubs logo. He samples his Sazerac before haphazardly pouring bourbon in Darwin’s glass and tossing in a Cub’s baseball. He sets Darwin’s cocktail back on the antique hutch without looking up.

“Here’s the deal Sparky,” Darwin says as he picks up his bourbon. “You don’t seem to get that your world’s changed. You got a kid now and a family to look after. Your days of following the next adrenaline rush are over. You can’t be running off doing shit like this.”

“Shit like what?” Gwen interrupts, announcing her entrance from the kitchen unaware of the thick tension she’s carving into. The boys both turn to stare at their intruder in misplaced silence. She smiles at Vincent. “I don’t mean to dampen whatever fun you’re having but, your wife sent me out to get you. She needs your highly trained surgical skills to finish the gravy while she feeds Issac.” From the stern unforgiving way Vincent glares first at Darwin, then at her, Gwen gets a feel, not only for the room, but for her sudden need to add additional context. “Her words not mine,” she caveats.

Vincent downs half of his freshly made cocktail and starts for the kitchen. “Wait!” Darwin demands in a voice so booming with authority it freezes his brother. Darwin turns toward Gwen forgetting to tone down his emotions. “Tell me Gwen, do you think it reasonable for my dumb-ass brother, a man responsible for providing for his young wife and infant son, to be taking flying lessons?”

The last thing Gwen wants on Thanksgiving is to be dragged into whatever drama’s driving this bad blood between brothers. She looks at Vincent, then at Darwin, then back to Vincent trying to figure out what caused tensions to ratchet so high when just a few minutes ago when she was here refilling her wine, everything was fine. Gwen sees herself as a poster child for modern feminism. She is after all an independent woman living on her own in a city that’s increasing slipping into a chaos everyone sees but no one knows what to do about. Yet here she is hoping to avoid getting caught in a dispute between brothers, especially given that part of what her and Ilene decided around the time the turkey went in the oven was that moving to New Mexico to live in a mountain wilderness is something worth considering. It’s not that Darwin’s offered, but Ilene’s right, now that he’s broken up with Becky, if Gwen plays her cards right, maybe, just maybe, he might. “Well,” Gwen offers, “Ilene and I were actually just talking about that.”

“And?” Darwin prompts in a tone suggesting there’s only one right answer.

“I don’t personally have an opinion on the matter,” she states. But Ilene talks about it like it’s no big deal. She’s excited about the idea of hopping on a plane whenever they want to go wherever they want. She’s even already figured out what a flight to New Mexico might look like. She’ll fly from here to Springfield to refuel. Then over to Amarillo to refuel again. Then it’s up and over the New Mexico mountains for a glide down into Taos.”

Having just traveled nearly the very same route on his Harley, Darwin calculates the efficiency of Ilene’s plan relative to flying more directly over Kansas and across the southeast corner of Colorado before hopping over the Rockies. He quickly concludes Ilene’s right, refueling venues are more reliable along her route and given what happened in Tucumcari, that’s important. “Okay,” Darwin continues as the results of his calculation are still coming in. He hears what Gwen’s saying but is too agitated to listen to what she’s telling him. “Let’s just say in general,” he counters. “Take genius over there out of the equation; is it reasonable for a man with major responsibilities to do things involving significant risks that could wind up with him being dead?”

Vincent’s not about to let Darwin’s attack go unanswered. “You mean like someone having zero survival skills and deciding on a crazy-ass whim to winter in the wilderness at a place where countless people die every year from pigheaded foolishness. Maybe you get mauled by bears. Bitten by rattlesnakes. Clawed by mountain lions. Hunted down by a hungry pack of wolves. Die from heat stroke or hypothermia. Maybe you just get lost and die from being stupid; you wouldn’t be the first person to die of stupidity.”

Gwen looks at Vincent uncertain how someone she’s only known as being calm under stress could so rapidly escalate in anger. She looks toward the kitchen desperately hoping her sister can save her. When rescue’s not forthcoming, she looks back at Vincent, then again at the kitchen hoping, pleading for Ilene’s intervention.

“Well first off genius,” Darwin hammers. “Bears hibernate in winter, as do rattlesnakes. No one’s been eaten by wolves since they’ve been re-introduced and I’m pretty damn sure no one’s getting heat stroke in winter.”

“Oh yeah!” Vincent counters. “That’s because hypothermia gets you right after getting dead from being stupid.” Vincent takes another run at his Sazerac before adding, “statistically speaking.”

“Care to wager?” Darwin taunts. “There’s a dead pool back in Taos you can probably get in on. Current book has me not lasting till spring.”

“Hell yeah,” Vincent states. “Hook me up for a piece of that action.”

There’s a momentary ceasefire with both sides content to end things in a draw, that is until Darwin reignites the conflict. “The comparison isn’t even close,” he starts. “For one thing, I know what the hell I’m doing and I’m not responsible for a wife and baby!”

“Boys!” Ilene calmly but sternly interjects. She stands in the kitchen doorway holding Issac who’s attempting to suckle through her blouse. “Not on Thanksgiving.” With that simple and declarative statement, the conflict ends. Ilene smiles unsure what’s going on or why Gwen seems so relieved. “You have gravy to make,” she instructs her husband. She smiles warmly at Issac while gently caressing his head. “And I need to feed little Issac so his little tummy’s not in turmoil.”

Vincent walks to the kitchen without saying a word and Ilene follows. Gwen awkwardly stands in the living room unsure if she needs Darwin’s permission to be excused. “I ah, think I need to mash potatoes or at least some such something that requires me in the kitchen.” Forgetting about permission, she beelines for the door.

With Ilene feeding Issac, Vincent making gravy, and Gwen mashing potatoes, Darwin’s left to fix another bourbon. He considers the things he said to Vincent alongside the things he wishes he hadn’t and decides to move on. Staying angry is not really his and Vincents deal, they just move on. No excuses. No apologies. No need to re-plow turned-over dirt. They don’t keep score or plan retaliation. They never have. What’s the point? That’s how things have been since they were kids and like any close siblings whose parents live distracted lives, it just is what it is.

The thing about Darwin and his brother is that no matter how emotional stuff gets, no matter how physical it becomes, they never stay angry or let things linger because of a pact they made their first summer at Adventure Camp. Between counselors deriving joy for pushing them past their pain and punishing them when they gave up, and older campers bullying them when no one was watching, Darwin and Vincent built an impenetrable survival bond that became the basis of their pact. ‘No matter what happens,’ they vowed. ‘Or how it happens, we’ll always have each other’s backs’. That’s not to say the pact hasn’t been tested at times or strained over the years, even torn a time or two; but never has it ever faltered.

As Darwin pours his next bourbon over a fresh Chicago Cubs baseball, he resurrects one of the more memorable moments with Vincent when things could have gone horribly sideways had it not been for their pact. It was a night in high school when the two of them concoct the wildly stupid idea of crashing a south-side dance. Vincent had just broken up with his girlfriend, again, and was looking to prove to himself he didn’t need her. It’s impossible to have a story begin with a statement like that without the ending clearly foreshadowed; but there they were, riding the L from their affluent North Shore station near Addison and Clark, south, past the projects to the DP part of town. “Displaced Poles,” Darwin told Vincent when he asks. “DPs are people who just immigrated to Chicago and live in walled-off separation like medieval surfs.”

With each station stop, their bravado builds as they boast about yet to be realized romantic conquests. For North Shore boys who have been gifted the American dream, South Side girls who have to earn their dreams are intoxicatedly exotic, aloof, and most definitely dangerous, which only makes their daring more debonair. They couldn’t have been at the dance for more than twenty minutes when things went sideways. Vincent, always the smooth talking one, is dancing with a gorgeous honey with waist-long blonde hair and legs that go on forever from her super short skirt. She barely speaks English and talks so fast in Polish, Vincent can’t comprehend anything she’s saying. A later postmortem suggests, based on what happens next, that she’s joking about how her boyfriend doesn’t like her dancing with strange boys. Darwin manages to get Vincent out of the dance hall, but not unscathed and definitely only after moments when it seemed they’d ever see sunshine again. That’s how it is between them, how it will always be, which is why Darwin feels the harshness of his anger melt away like ice on the round edges of the baseball cube floating in diminishing bourbon.

“Excuse me,” Gwen interrupts. She glances back toward the kitchen for reassurance where Ilene, with Issac attached, is gesturing her to continue. She looks at Darwin startled to find he’s now staring directly at her, but oddly, she can’t really say he’s looking at her. It takes a little more muscle than she thought it should, but she finds the fortitude to continue. “Dinner’s almost ready and-” Gwen suddenly decides this plan her and Ilene cooked up is not gonna work. She starts her retreat to the kitchen, but her path is blocked by Ilene again gesturing for her to continue. With dignified retreat, not an option she has no choice but to follow through with their flawed plan. “Well,” she says through an unintended giggle she tries to hide, “the table needs to be set, and I can use some help.”

It takes multiple brain cycles for Darwin to process Gwen’s request. He’s not opposed to helping, it’s just setting the table doesn’t come up as a probable task in the context of where his mind is. “Of course,” he says snapping himself back to the moment. He sets his bourbon down and goes to the hutch to fetch the fine China Ilene inherited from Helen. As Gwen places brown-on-orange holiday themed dinning mats around the table, Darwin follows positioning a small plate on top of a larger plate in the center of each mat. Gwen next sets pre-folded cloth napkins on the right side of each plate while Darwin arranges the flatware, items Ilene also inherited from Helen. As he sets the small forks, he fondly remembers past Thanksgivings and his mom telling him ‘small fork, big fork, knife; outside in.’ She would then add, “something every young man of refinement should know.” Darwin’s glad Ilene gracefully welcomed mom’s dinnerware into her home rather than insist on starting her life with Vincent with stuff not pre-memoried.

With the last fork set, Darwin watches as Gwen takes her time properly aligning glassware. “How’s work at the library,” he asks in an effort to cut through the awkwardness of their silence.

Gwen looks up, “Huh?”

“The library, isn’t that where you work?”

“No,” she answers. “I work at a daycare.”

Darwin shrugs his shoulders not thinking much about it and not concerned he got it wrong. “Huh. For some reason I thought you worked at a library.”

An awkward silence builds in agonizing energy like steam in a tea kettle unable to escape. “I like kids,” Gwen finally bursts out unable to take the tension. After a moment that is again bubbling in silence, she continues unable hide being hurt Darwin doesn’t know that. “I work in a daycare because I like kids and it’s very rewarding. I read them stories and teach them things. I love playing games just to watch their utterly uninhabited joy. Sometimes I wonder why the more we grow the less we embrace the purity of joy.” She fidgets with a wine glass. “One girl, Jenny, I taught to play domino’s because she’s always counting. I love the way she diligently counts the dots on her tiles, then carefully figures out where one side might match an open tile on the board. She gets so happy when she makes a match.” Gwen stops abruptly to see if Darwin’s even listening and is pleased, he gestures for her to continue. “Jenny’s going to make a good scientist someday, maybe even an engineer like you.”

“That’s good,” Darwin says.

Gwen can’t decipher if his tone is dismissive or distracted.

“The world’s never gonna run out of a need for engineers,” Darwin restarts. “We’re like little beavers ya know, always busy, always building. Sometimes I think the worse form of torture anyone could inflict on me is to lock me in a room with nothing to do. I literally think I’d go insane.” Darwin considers his new life in the wilderness and why people constantly ask what the hell he’s doing there. Of course, he never truthfully answers, not because it’s none of their business, which it isn’t, but because he’s not willing to face that darkness. How unexplainable it is to tell someone you went into the wilderness to confront the very things you’re afraid to face. Now that Gwen’s poked his dragon, Darwin cautiously continues. Gwen instantly sees for the first time a burden Darwin keeps buried or at least, keeps only to himself.

“Sometimes,” Darwin says. “It’s not enough to build. Eventually the things you’ve built need fixing. Only, sometimes, things that can’t be fixed still need fixing. It’s a burden ya know, even a curse, if you buy into gypsy superstitions.” Darwin stares deep into Gwen’s eyes with a force so piercing she’s astonishingly unsettled. “Imagine if you can, that what you built broke humanity, how does one go about fixing that?”

Gwen has no idea what Darwin’s talking about but the way he talks scares her. She feels the need to say something, maybe change the subject, maybe somehow tone down the emotions, but certainly, not probe any deeper. Before she can interject though, Darwin continues.

“I built a snare one summer at Adventure Camp. Not some piece of shit contraption that barely pass counselor inspection like the other kids. When I build something, it has be top shelf. The counselors are impressed; say they never saw anything like it. One counselor even calls it a work of art. I’m so damn proud of how these two hands created something both functional and artful. The counselors had everyone set their snares out that night as part of our training in wilderness survival. The next morning mine is the only one with a rabbit. Again, the counselors are amazed, no one’s actually ever snared a rabbit before. I think the damn things were intentionally designed not to, but I’d made a few modifications because when I build, it has to function perfectly. The other campers are impressed, even jealous, but I’m sick to my stomach over the horror of what I’d done both at the realization of what my mind is capable of conceiving and what my hands able to construct. I’d become an artist without conscience, someone too caught up in what I’m capable of to consider downstream consequences. I’d become an instrument of death and that’s something I’ve never reconciled.

“Sure, Vincent and I hunt, but that’s different, we harvest from nature for food. That rabbit was a senseless death. He died for camp amusement and nothing else and the image of him stuck in my snare haunts me. That’s the lesson of the rabbit; that engineers, and anyone who builds, has a responsibility, even an obligation, to know the consequences of what they’re doing. It’s not enough to just build with a purpose in mind, you have to understand every conceivable distortion and bastardization of your work, every outcome and scenario, You have to ask yourself, is what I’m doing the wisest expenditure of my talent.”

Gwen’s not certain what Darwin’s rabbit story has to do with Jenny playing dominoes or Vincent flying airplanes, but his intensity is way beyond her comfort zone.

Darwin picks up his glass with purpose and takes a long pull of bourbon. “I would like to work in a daycare,” he declares to himself as he sets his glass down. “Maybe be a playground engineer where the worst I can do is build sandcastles that don’t last. That would bring me joy. In the real world though, we don’t get build playground castles so instead, we build things we think are for good only what we create winds up being evil.”

As emotionally dark as Darwin is, even while ratcheting up, he has some sort of spell on Gwen that won’t allow her to look away or run. She’s become a captive of his pain; an anguish she’s never experienced and never conceived Darwin being capable of. No matter how much she doesn’t want to, how much she doesn’t need to, she can’t escape looking into the darkness of his torment as if drawn by the wicked magic of his spell.

“There was a Priest at Saint Stans,” Darwin continues. “Father Madryski, he was the school counselor, at least he’s the guy you got sent to when you were in trouble. He had a kindness he couldn’t hide even when trying to discipline.” Darwin pauses to take a drink. “He had this expression he liked to use, one I probably heard a hundred times in his office, “penance before reconciliation,” he’d say. If you were sent to Father Madryski for something really serious, after he was done counseling, he’d say a prayer for you. I never knew what the hell he saying because it was in his hybrid mix of Polish and Latin, but I knew how it ended because he’d make me recite it with him: ‘mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.’ I looked it up once, it means through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. I didn’t understand or appreciate what that meant, but as my visits to his office persisted and the severity of my sins escalated, I eventually to come to acquire an understanding.”

Gwen mistakenly thought Darwin’s stare could not get more intense but now finds out she was wrong.

Darwin continues by answering the question Gwen didn’t ask. “That’s why I’m there, in New Mexico, for penance.”

Gwen escapes Darwin’s spell long enough to respond. “Huh?” Maybe she didn’t so much escape as she was paroled, she really doesn’t know if there’s a difference.

“You want to know why I moved to New Mexico to live off grid in the wilderness. Everyone wants to know. It’s my penance.”

“For what?” Gwen asks unsure if she’s ready or even allowed to know the answer.

Darwin takes a moment to assess his response. He’s never said out loud, even to himself, why he needs penance. Now he worries that uttering the words might make what happened at Berkeley more real, more consequential. He recalls the gypsy woman back in Poland and what she shared with Erik’s mom; ‘thoughts,’ the old gypsy said, ‘are like little pieces of fate you hold imprisoned. Be careful speaking them, it frees the fate you don’t want intervening in your life but if you don’t free fate, it only builds in strength so you must let it out.’”

Darwin stares at Gwen feeling the full weight of her unasked question compelled for the first time to answer. “The reason I need penance is for the things I’ve done. Dark things that will cause humanity’s demise.” There. He said it. Said it out loud. He’s released the forces of fate he could no longer hold in the prison of his soul. It’s Father Madryski’s fault, he’d always end his counseling sessions talking about how God needs you to share your burdens with him out loud. He’d say if you can’t admit your sins and transgressions to yourself, God can’t hear your prayers for forgiveness or be able to help you heal.

“What you’re saying sounds horrible,” Gwen reacts. “So horrible I’m sure it’s an exaggeration.” She only says that to console Darwin because while she may not know what he’s talking about, she can see in his eyes that what he says is all true. She doesn’t want to know anything else. Knowing more will only cause her to like him less and she’s already uncertain about that.

Unaware of Gwen’s turmoil, Darwin continues. “It’s why left California. I had to get out. It’s why I’m in New Mexico. In part for penance, in part to heal. Mostly to find forgiveness and figure out a way to fix what I broke. I don’t know how but neither does the beaver when his dam breaks, all he knows is he has to be busy placing sticks into the breach.”

Gwen’s experiencing Darwin on a never before known level. She always assumed because he’s a PhD, he’s a deep thinker, but she’s never seen him act anything other than light and silly. Then again, the only time they interact is during celebrations. Now, here stands this man she’s always admired and felt fondly about, revealing snakes down to levels of darkness even Dante was reluctant to expose. It’s terrorizing, yet she’s compelled to explore. “What about the reconciliation that follows penance?” she asks.

With his soul in full disclosure, Darwin’s not holding back. He’s about to launch into aspects of the reconciliation he’s working through when, in an act of divine intervention, the kitchen door flings open, and Vincent pops out holding a large platter that hosts a golden browned turkey with stuffing around the edges. He’s followed by Ilene carrying bowls of vegetables, potatoes, corn, and cranberries. After more trips back and forth to the kitchen, the table is set. Once Ilene has Issac in his bassinet, Vincent leads the prayer finishing with a moment of remembrance for Byron and Helen. As Vincent readies his carving knife to make the first incision, he looks up at Darwin grinning, “I’m thinking after dinner you and I take a little airplane ride. I’ll show you what I know, which hopefully will include remembering how to land.” He smiles with satisfaction that this is the final battle in the war he’s re-started. “You know what they say, a good landing is one you walk away from, and a great landing is when you can reuse the aircraft.”

Darwin bounces back with equal sarcasm, his darkness suddenly evaporated. “Absolutely we should! In fact, I’ll run over to Lenny’s and grab his shovelhead so you and I can zip down the Kennedy lane-splitting drunk drivers on our way to Midway. It’ll be a hoot.”

“Or” Vincent quickly counters, “and I’m just spit balling here, we could walk over to Murphy’s and watch the Bears kick the shit out of the Lions.”

“You boys can,” Ilene referees with pleasant consent. “But I’ll be expecting you straight back when the game’s over, I’m in the mood for Pinochle.”

“Yes ma’am.” Both boys concur with childish joy as they dive into their feast.