Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,261

toxic damage caused to the body and mind by substance abuse represents a desecration of the natural to a perverse degree. Secondly, suicide is a crime. On some other occasion we might have a leisurely discussion as to whether suicide constitutes an ethical crime or a religious crime, but judging by the pain I see in the faces before me, I don’t think that anyone will disagree that it is a civic crime. His death cost all of you. You have been robbed of your ability to provide assistance, to tender compassion, to ask forgiveness.”

Father McQuail speaks quickly, in a kind of nasal bark. Before one sentence is complete, the next begins its tumble from his mouth. He gives the impression of being smart and sincere and in a bit of a fervor. One thing is for certain, he has everyone’s attention.

“But you know about your own pain. Let’s discuss instead what is a mystery. Let’s discuss feelings that are at risk of festering if left undiscussed. Let’s speak of the idea to which each of you is clinging, That those who fail were failed. You want to know, is it outside the realm of possibility that Jack was the victim of a crime of a magnitude equal to the one he committed? Not some gross solitary act, perhaps, but fine crimes, subtle crimes, crimes of omission.”

A new round of crying begins. It takes minutes for the crowd to settle down. “I didn’t travel seven hours to make anyone feel worse than they do already. I came because you are all assembled together just this once, and I embraced an opportunity. If anyone is too distraught to listen, you are welcome to take a walk around the block. It’s a beautiful day.” Father McQuail lifts the stem of a rose from the fence alongside him and inhales. He waits, but no one leaves.

“I don’t have to have known Jack to know that he was difficult. Mrs. Hanover, his grandmother, whom the boy is said to have resembled, is extremely difficult. Ours is a strenuous friendship. Some might ask, Why bother? Life is short, don’t work so hard. To me that is tantamount to saying, Life is short, don’t grow so much. If Mrs. Hanover is acerbic, she is brilliant. If she is self-righteous, she is uncompromising. If she is stubborn, she is trustworthy—if I am made irritable by the fixedness of her opinion, I depend upon the fixedness of her ethics. If she provokes me, she expects to be provoked in kind. If she questions my meaning, it is because, indeed, my meaning needs to be questioned.

“If my relationship with her were any less difficult—if she did not challenge me, did not test me, if she accepted me too easily, at face value, then she would not be a friend but an acquaintance. Certainly, at this level of intensity, one cannot have many friends. This is not a bad thing. Reduced circumstances are a consequence of truthfulness.

“I don’t have to have known Jack to see that he chose his friends carefully. Obviously he chose well. Surely he started out as all children do, giving what they hope to receive. An unfortunate misconception is that as we age, we need to move beyond the perfection of that childhood barter to something more abstruse. I am going to wager that Jack was terrified about making the transition into maturity that you all made with relative ease, that he claimed it was a compromise, and that he tested you—unfairly, no doubt. Some of you moved on, retreating to the safety of acquaintanceship. Terrified by your distance, your politeness—he removed himself in kind. He didn’t need narcotics to feel alien; he felt that way already. Narcotics confirmed his feelings and numbed them.”

Father McQuail paces absently in front of the Flemings. Elizabeth is shaking, trilling really, like a cold dog, and Mr. Fleming is slumped with his face in his hands. Jack’s mother’s head is like stone. She is a bust of herself.

“There are things that cannot be held to common external standards,” Father McQuail says, “because they possess an uncommon internal nature. To be kind, to be compassionate, to be a friend—if, in fact, it is a friend we want to be—we must struggle to look past outward manifestations in order to see the essence of what we admire.”

He rests an elbow on the lectern and looks out at us as if memorizing faces. “Being Jack’s friends, you’re probably resistant to simplistic analogies. However,