Nocturnal

The Morning News

The buzz of an alarm clock brought Rex Deprovdechuk awake. He’d been dreaming a great dream that made him feel wonderful inside; he tried to capture it, to lock in the memory, but it slipped away. The nice feeling faded, replaced by the aches of his body and that pain in his chest.

Rex felt so sick. He just wanted to sleep. Wanting to sleep during the day was nothing new — he routinely dozed off during second-hour trig class — but this was different. He’d been hurting for days. His mother wouldn’t let him stay home. He dragged himself out of bed. He blew his nose on some crusty Kleenex he’d used the night before, then shuffled out of his tiny bedroom into the hall.

The hallway ran the length of the floor, a blank wall on the left, five doors on the right. The wall held old framed pictures from a time Rex barely remembered — pictures of his dad, of Rex when he’d been really little, even pictures of his mom, smiling. He was glad for those pictures, because he had never seen her smile in person.

Rex walked into the toilet room. The room was barely wider than the toilet tank itself. Wasn’t really a bathroom, because it just had the toilet and a sink. The next room down had the bath — and no toilet — so Rex called that the shower room.

He took care of his morning business and was headed back to his bedroom when he heard it.

From down the hall, a voice on the TV made him stop. Not the voice itself, but the name the voice had spoken — a name both from Rex’s unremembered dream and from his unforgettable past. He wiped his hand across his runny nose. He turned around and walked down the hall, past the shower room to the living room, which was just inside the front door.

He entered quietly. His mother, Roberta, was sitting in her chair that faced the television. The screen’s glow shone through her wiry hair, silhouetting her skull.

Rex stood there, waiting to hear the name again, because he’d just dreamed about that name, dreamed about that man. And he’d drawn a picture of that man just last night, before he went to bed — he had to have heard it wrong. But he hadn’t.

“… Maloney was a longtime priest at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, until he was caught up in a sex-abuse scandal and removed from that post. Maloney served a year in jail and was on probation. San Francisco chief of police Amy Zou said in a press conference this morning that the force is working to gather information on Maloney’s murder, but that it’s too early to make assumptions about the killer’s motives.”

“Father Maloney’s dead?”

Rex said the words without thinking. Had he thought, he would have quietly walked away.

She turned, leaning over an armrest to look back at him. The television’s light played off her pockmarked face. A cigarette dangled from her skinny fingers. “What are you doing in the TV room?”

“Uh, I just … I heard Father Maloney’s name.”

She squinted. She did that when she was thinking. She nodded almost imperceptibly. “I remember the lies you told about him,” she said. “Dirty, filthy lies.”

Rex stood there, motionless, wondering if she’d get the belt.

“Finish getting ready for school,” she said. “You hear me talking to you?”

“Yes, Roberta.” She didn’t like it if he called her Mom or Mother. When he’d been little he’d called her those names, but sometime after his dad died she told him to stop using them.

Rex quickly walked out of the TV room before she could change her mind. Once out of her sight, he ran down the narrow hall to his bedroom. His room had a bed, a little TV with a video-game console, a dresser and a small desk with a stool — the sum total of his existence. He threw on his clothes and grabbed his backpack, remembering to get his notes for Freshman English off the floor as he did. No time for a shower; he had to get out of the house before Roberta thought of a reason to get mad at him. He hoped he didn’t smell like pee — some bum was using the alley outside Rex’s window as a bathroom. Not that it really mattered; sometimes Roberta wouldn’t let him shower at all.

Before Rex left, he picked up the drawing sitting on his desk, the one he’d made last night. The picture showed a much larger Rex, a Rex with muscle-bound arms and a big chest, using his bare hands to snap Father Paul Maloney’s left leg. Now Father Maloney was dead. The drawing made Rex feel funny. Funny, and wrong.

Rex put the drawing in the desk’s drawer. He closed it, then looked at it to make sure no part of the drawing stuck out.

Time for the long walk to school. Rex prayed he could avoid the BoyCo bullies.

Father Paul Maloney was dead, and that was awesome. Maybe, for once, Rex could make it to school and back without getting his ass kicked, and the day would just keep getting better.