I'M SORRY!

This year’s invitation was modest. A simple white card with black lettering advertising only an address and time, the date assumed common knowledge among anyone he’d care to invite. The previous year, his invite took the shape of a full page color image of him smiling blankly in the local paper of each of his invitee’s residence, with “I’M SORRY!” in bold Proxima Nova across his chest, so I expected a little more drama. I turned the card over, then using a pen to my right, I poked at the envelope, squinting as I half-expected to suddenly be facing down the barrel of a really small gun or something. Nothing.

I haven’t attended one of Waylon’s Fat Tuesday parties in years, not since the last one he hosted while still in minor seminary that resulted in six seminarian dismissals, one relocated to Alaska, and final flying off to the big seminary in the sky after hotwiring the Honda shared by all the Benedictines and trying to jump the gap between Waylon’s party barge and shore, landing flatly in between, bubbling down to the base of Lake Erie.

According to my brothers, his celebration has only gotten larger since moving to Colorado, becoming a near city-wide affair. Now that he and his family have transferred to Eastern Rite, the parties transitioned from Fat Tuesday to Forgiveness Saturday, taking place the day before Forgiveness Vespers which mark the beginning of his Great Lent.

There’s always been a thick veil of shame and competition in my family regarding Lent. On Fat Tuesday, we’d run downstairs to find my mom indulging in a breakfast of fudge and wine, reading smut and gambling, putting a cigarette out in a piece of chocolate cake and setting aside the rifle she’s loading for target practice on some stray cats later for just long enough to drawl, “I’m giving up breathing, now share yours.” We’d go down the line, all vying for that sparkling and invisible holier-than-thou crown, scoffing at those who clearly hadn’t prepared and are only able to spit out some low hanging fruit like “no candy or chocolate excluding Ovaltine” and not even attempting the obvious heavy hitters of “no TV” or “no winter coat.”

A few times we experimented with penances whose purpose were annoyance rather than humility. Once, I gave up speaking to Dave and spent 40 days using others as couriers for dumb messages. Another time, Harry gave up showering. But for the most part we stuck to battling for our golden spots in heaven. One year, my sister had cracked the code, declaring her lenten penance “a secret.” Nothing could be more severe than a secret, and for a few years we all kept our traps shut about our own personal penances, yet jumped to accuse each other of really giving up nothing.

Certain penances were thrust upon us by Mom and Dad, such as the standard fish sticks and tater tots on Fridays like every other Catholic family, but often they’d simply be my parents’ preferences under the guise of penance. I’d approach my mom carefully, like a scared cat, choosing a facade of indifference to not allow her any more of the upper hand than she already had, and ask for a ride, only to get an immediate retort that attending a movie on a Friday during Lent was a mortal sin, and besides, the Vatican just called announcing all 16 year olds must help their little brothers with their math homework and scrub the little rust outlines on the toilet seat hinges in addition to their fasting. “That’s not fair,” I’d yell, “I’m already giving up so many secret things!”

The end of Lent, particularly Good Friday, is practically our Super Bowl of self-flagellation, measured in tears shed while watching Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” A scribe was appointed before the viewing began, primed to record the exact moment an actual tear dripped down our cheeks (reins were tightened on what constituted “crying” years prior after the Great War over Watery Eyes in 2008) to later be plugged into a long and confusing equation that eventually calculated our current tally of Purgatory time, and then listed by rank accordingly. The winner prayed to save the souls of the losers, who prayed for mercy on themselves and the downfall of the winner, and we all went to bed early, side-eyeing each other, 4 out of 5 of us pretty worried if latter part of our “Now I lay me down to sleep” nightly prayer were to come true that evening.

Curiosity gnawed at me, but I had no intention of attending this year’s Forgiveness Saturday. I wasn’t sure the invitation would even be extended to the Connecticut branch of the family after the whole Christmas debacle left him with a hook for a hand after swatting desperately and determined against the confines of Krampus’ wicker basket, escaping but daring to snatch back the precious bell Ignatius and I rang. But, because Mom said she thinks he really misses that hand–“He says he’s always been ambidextrous,” she cried, “but he’s lying!”—she said if he invites me, I have to go.

I stopped on the way to his house for a suitable gift for the host, visiting two pawn shops and a highway fireworks stand before ultimately ending up at the army surplus store for a hand grenade whose decommissioning seemed questionable. The smell of sulfur filled the air as I approached his neighborhood, signalling that at least some of the Rotten Egg Brigade were still standing and causing the hairs in my nose to sting as I defensively pulled my hair up in a clip. There were already a few singe marks in his front lawn with their distinctive white gummy centers, so I quickened my pace as I approached the front door.

“THWOBYN!” Waylon slurred as he swung open the door, ripping a turkey leg from his mouth and chewing with his mouth open. He held out his other arm, dangling sweating pink and white and orange leis from its hook, “We’re collapsing days, you want Meatfare or Cheesefare?” He jiggled them impatiently.

“Uh, Meatfare,” I answered.

“Popular choice!” he declared and swung a pink lei over my head, landing against my chest with a thud. I sniffed, pulling a soft ring up to my mouth and taking a bite.

“Pepperoni?” I asked.

“The prosciutto went pretty quick! You also need one of these,” he said, stooping downwards to reach for something, revealing the chaos behind him. There were people everywhere. A group stood wearing robes and dramatically rocking back and forth like thermodynamic drinking birds, kissing a strange icon sculpted out of branches and rocks with each downswing. A chicken flew over their heads, and I followed its haphazard trajectory, my eyes landing on Waylon’s wife, who stood in front of the kitchen sink with his eldest son sitting beside her on the counter, both flicking bang snaps into the blazing fire engulfing the sink and clapping. My brother, Dave, must’ve gotten leave or simply went AWOL from his BOLC training, hanging upside down behind the pair in the doorway, doing sit up after sit up, swigging from two separate vodka bottles duct-taped to his hands. He waved. Someone nearby (upstairs, maybe?) was practicing the violin, ostensibly for the first time, echoed by the loud THWANG’s of an electric guitar, and my gaze flew over to the side of his living room near the staircase where four flat screen TVs sat perched on top of their boxes, covering parts of his wall-sized reliquary, each playing live-streams with red chyrons reading Vatican City, Istanbul, Palestine, and Mount Athos, respectively.

Waylon flung a second necklace over me, thumping against the back of my neck and weighing my head down. “Dude, what the fuck?” I asked, eyeing the jagged stones rendered beads via fresh holes drilled through their centers.

He tore the pepperoni necklace from my neck with his hook, whipping it up to his mouth and taking a bite. “You can have it back, you just have to ask!” he sang, lips smacking.

I grimaced at the bits of fat dripping down his mouth. “I’m good with the rocks. I got you this,” I said as I tossed up the grenade. He dropped several leis, now clearly beaded with assorted meats and cheeses, and caught it before it reached his carpet. “Oh shit!” he barked, pulling the pin. “Fire in the hatch!” he yelled, bowling the grenade down his hallway towards a group of teenaged girls shaving their heads and giggling.

“Wait wait wait!” I flinch, expecting a BOOM that doesn’t come.

“Too bad!” Waylon howls.

“Isn’t that where the nursery is!?” I asked, disgust and fear curling my lips. Waylon smiled.

“Oh the nursery,” he starts, “where you’d expect,” he spins around, revealing his two month old kicking his legs in the air, eyes bulging, suspended in a strange homemade harness sewn into the back of Waylon’s shirt, “this little guy?!”

“Are those cigarettes between his fingers?” I asked.

“Come on,” he said, “there’s some old friends here just itching to see you!”

I followed him to the backyard, where mixes of faces from both my family and his in-laws stand surrounding three pits, one roasting a pig, another a lamb, and the third a string of five petite monkey-like animals, their tails scorched to stand straight out. I narrowed my eyes, attempting to identify their species, when a peacock crossing my path lunged for my bandanna with a SQUAWK, tearing it from my head and flouncing away.

“I made friends with the zoo this year,” Waylon sneered. “You’ll get that back once one of the pits is cleared.”

We rounded the back corner of his house, where a ramp was fashioned out of an old boat hitch, several Home Depot 5 gallon buckets, a six foot ladder, and a spattering of white plastic lawn chairs, all bungee-corded together and leaning against his patio door. Waylon wedged a socked foot into the farrago, finding a foothold between the webbing of one of the chairs, and scurried up, gesturing to me to follow. I hesitated, slowly lifting a leg to mimic his exact route, as a thick slime suddenly slapped the lenses of my glasses, blinding me. I jumped from the chair, tearing my glasses off and smearing the egg whites across my shirt before glancing up.

“The next one’s gonna be on fire if you can’t scamper up here in the next minute!” Michael called down, dressed in his full royal regalia, with thick beaded necklaces intermixed with his cheese lei, a long black velvet tunic lined with intricate red embroidery, and a pointed striped hat atop his head.

“You got a clerical collar hidden under all that jewelry?” I cut back.

“Clock’s ticking!”

I slammed my glasses back on, spitting eggshell onto Waylon’s concrete patio before climbing up. Nearing the top of the boat hitch, I pitched my elbows into the roof gutter and swung my legs up onto the asphalt shingles, meeting a few familiar faces and some new recruits, all positioned around aluminum buckets of boiled eggs and cans of gasoline.

“Does Mom know you dropped out?” I asked Michael, feeling the eyes of the newest members of the Rotten Egg Brigade dart between me, Waylon, and Michael. The usual candidates of brain-washed young that find him magnetic; skinny, pale, all buzzcuts and insecurity. I used to feel bad for them, but they’re the ones wielding the flaming eggs.

“You know,” he drawled, “you’ve never officially been initiated.”

“I really don’t participate in this kind of thing,” I said, leaning to the side to ensure Waylon’s baby was still in place, my chin ticking with surprise to find him not only perfectly content, but shifting his body sideways towards one of the newbies holding out a lighter for his cigarette, puffing twice and flicking some ash into his father’s hair.

Michael rushed behind me, placing a still warm and wet brown egg, reeking of gasoline, in my hand and gripping both of my shoulders to position me in front of the slingshot stuffed into Waylon’s chimney, gently pushing me downwards to the finderscope fashioned to where the Y-frame meets. “Two miles east,” he said. “The nursing home.”

I squinted my left eye, unsure why I was even looking through the glass, and saw the neat little manicured lawn of the home, with spatterings of elders wheeling between bushes and sitting in front of the duck pond, thinking their thoughts and expecting nothing. Without thinking, I dropped the egg into the cradle and heard the click of Michael’s lighter.

“We want a hole in one, here, Robyn,” he said, glancing back at the brigade. “Say you’re sorry tomorrow…”

“And mean it,” the brigade finished. A hunched old man approached a woman knitting on a bench, the swing of his hips barely perceptible, holding his hands out to her, his lips mouthing “Come on.” She laughed and stood up, taking his hands, and they gently stepped back and forth together, dancing. I jolt back.

“I’m good, actually,” I said, pushing the finderscope away.

A smile spread across Waylon’s lips. “It always has been more of a boy’s club anyways.” He quickly wrapped his hook around the slingshot and yanked it out of the chimney, which was met with a universal moan across the brigade, and then jumped remarkably high and out and down the vent. “FOLLOW!” he echoed after me.

“Gimme a second!” I snapped back. “Don’t mind me, guys,” I said to the brigade, tip-toeing around them and looking for a soft place to land. The pile of knives was out of the question, and his bushes looked particularly spiky. I turned around to the backyard where Waylon’s brother-in-law was processing the peacock, mindlessly tossing the feathers over his shoulder, my bandanna tied around his forehead. I took a few paces backwards, then took off in a sprint, clearing the mess of iron spears and the flames from the pits, blinking at the monkeys one last time before landing in an explosion of teal and blue and green and black. I shook my head and sniffed before standing up, snatching the bandanna off the brother’s head, and making my way back inside, shoving Dave’s limp body to the left to pass through, and followed the scent of cigarettes to Waylon’s office.

He sat behind his large dark wooden desk, parsing through compromising polaroids of his guests, hearing me enter and stabbing his hook into a picture to hold it up for me to view. I took a seat across from him, getting a better view of my brother Harry smiling with two middle fingers in the air and thumbs hooked in the trigger guards of two handguns.

“Those may or may not match the bullets found in that drained water tower last year,” he laughed.

“No fucking way,” I said.

“Yes fucking way,” he answered, leaning forward. I could see the little hands of his baby reaching up towards the ceiling above him. “These parties are a great tool, a fantastic tool. I’ve outdone myself here, you have to admit.”

“I do admit,” I said, “you’ve always been pretty good at getting what you want.”

“And,” he threw a finger into the air, “I’m generous. Very generous.”

I drew my lips inward to a thin clam smile. “Yup, sure,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“Which is why, I want to give you these parties. Next year–they’re yours. You pick your friends, your victims, you gather them, you provide the space, you provide the tools for debauchery–I’ll help, of course–and you host. You can control. You really don’t have to do much, I’ll even let you borrow the brigade to get things started, and then the world is practically yours. They think the following 40 days atone for their sins, but you remember them, and you remind them, when the time is right.” His smile was sickly wide, but his eyes were flat and testing.

I blinked at him, twisting my mouth to the side in thought.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

“Wait, what?” his chin ticked in surprise.

“I’ll take it, I like control. Sounds fun.” I shrugged.

“No, you’re not supposed to–no,” he shook his head. “Well, whatever. That’s it, you failed.”

“What?” I asked. “I want the parties! I’ve got some enemies.”

“No, you failed,” he said, standing. “And like, almost nobody does. So, get out.”

I rose to my feet quickly and awkwardly, confused, and turned around, feeling his hook pressed against my back as he pushed me towards the door. “Can I take a pepperoni necklace for the road at least?”

“Fuck no,” he said. “Make sure you say you’re sorry tomorrow. And mean it.”