Someone by Alice McDermott Page A

flush to his skin.
    “The beer’s still dry?” Gabe asked, and the young man laughed as if this were a great joke.
    “Oh yeah,” he said.
    “Good to hear it,” Gabe said. “Give my best to the others, will you?” He held out his hand again. “Nice to see you, Tom.”
    “Nice to see you, Father,” he said, and then quickly pulled his lips together. He did not literally bite his tongue, but it was clear he wanted to.
    Gabe raised his hand, a kind of absolution. “That’s all right, Tom,” he said gently.
    As we walked on, my brother explained that the young man worked at the brewery that had been part of his first parish. He sometimes came to the noon Mass. A lot of the workers there did.
    I said, “Oh yeah?”
    “Jeepers, it’s brutal,” Gabe said. He pushed his hat back. Ran a handkerchief over his brow. The soles of my feet had begun to burn, and a blister was forming at the back of my left heel. I felt my dress clinging to my shoulder blades, felt the tickle of sweat running down my spine. Gabe touched my elbow briefly to get me to cross to the shadier side of the street, but the heat was no better there. At a corner candy store he paused and asked if I wanted to duck in for a soda. I looked up, smelled the mingling odors of coffee and newsprint and stale milk, and shook my head no.
    When we reached the park, I was surprised to discover how far we had come, although by now my legs felt swollen in my stockings and the pain of the blister on my heel was making me limp. We found a bench just inside, covered in shade, and Gabe said, “Let’s sit before we head back.” He said it with an air of defeat, as if we had formerly agreed that we would not stop at all.
    We sat together in the sun-spotted shade. Gabe crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. I reached down to take off my left shoe, feeling the thin flesh of the blister pull away with the leather and the silk. There was blood on my stocking. It was late afternoon by now and the park was full of people looking for relief from the heat. Some had already found a spot on a stretch of grass. Others were arriving with picnic baskets. There were kids with baseball bats and mitts hanging, forgotten, it seemed, from their hands. Mothers with carriages. Men with their jackets off. Some in sweat-stained undershirts. My brother took off his hat and put it on the bench between us. He loosened his tie, reached into his pocket for cigarettes and matches. There was something clean, even cool, about the scent of the struck match, the first exhalation of smoke. I watched him as he drew on the cigarette again and saw how handsome his face was—the smooth stubble of his cheek, the amber glow of his skin and his fair hair. There was something lovely about the precision of his hairline at temple and ear, about the hinge of his jaw. His hands, too, were fine, long-fingered. They’d been wrapped in white cloth on the day of his ordination. They had placed the Communion wafer on my tongue. It had been a beautiful winter day, the day of Gabe’s ordination. My mother and I had ridden the train out to the seminary together. We’d gone straight to the hospital on our return so my mother could go up to tell my father about all we had seen.
    I opened my purse and took out my own handkerchief. I tookoff my glasses to wipe the perspiration from under my eyes. My parents had said, “We’re not so enamored with the clergy as some.” They had said, “A priest is a fine thing. But a family is, too.”
    Leaving the hospital that evening, my mother had told me, “Your father might have preferred to see him married.”
    With my glasses off, I looked to my brother once more, my eyes drawn, perhaps, by the movement of his arm, the cigarette to his lips, the suggestion, in my peripheral vision, of a blessing. Here he was again as I preferred him, the red gold of his hair and skin, the familiar blur of his profile seen through my distorted vision: the way I’d known him when