The Risk Pool

times, rotating the bottle again and again, making me wish I had something to read too. My mother left the salad she was tossing in order to hand me the corkscrew along with a scalding look. Working on the bottle, Father Michaels appeared to regain his composure. He thanked me for handing him the corkscrew and I felt like thanking him for thanking me. “Ever see one of these in action?” he said.
    I hadn’t. The corkscrew’s presence in the utensil drawer had always perplexed me since it was the only item in there that was never used. Father Michaels used the pointed tip to cut the outer wrapping and expose the cork, which he then extracted so deftly I was surprised. His movements on the altar and even in the sacristy always seemed clumsy, as if he were remembering what he was supposed to do at the last second. No matter how many times he wore certain vestments, he could never seem to remember where the clasps were and would circle himself trying to locate them like a dog chasing his tail. I’d never seen anybodyremove a cork from a wine bottle before, but I doubted anybody could do it more gracefully.
    He was examining the cork when my mother came in and said “Gentlemen?” She seemed to have regained her composure too.
    When Father Michaels presented her with the bottle, he said, “I hope it doesn’t clash with what you’ve prepared,” and my mother laughed like that was about the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
    All things considered, I thought dinner went quite well. Our small kitchen was overheated from the oven, but with the back and front doors open we got a breeze. My mother apologized for the casserole, but the priest wouldn’t hear of it, and pretended to read from the back of the wine bottle that it was a perfect complement to red meats, pasta dishes, and hot dog casseroles. He praised my mother’s oil and vinegar dressing, claiming that most people showed neither judgment nor restraint when it came to vinegar. I was given a small glass of wine. To everyone’s surprise, Father Michaels turned out to be a wonderful conversationalist and when he found his stride there was no need for anybody to talk who didn’t want to. He also stopped perspiring. He told us how he had worked as a waiter and busboy in a big New York hotel on vacations before entering the seminary. He had many interesting stories to tell, and listening to him you had to remind yourself that he was a priest. My mother must have had the same reaction, because after a couple glasses of wine she relaxed and even smiled over at me with something like her usual fondness. Before long, the casserole dish had been scraped clean and two lonely Bermuda onion rings swam in the bottom of the salad bowl. And then, as if the evening hadn’t been strange enough already, Father Michaels suggested I go outside and play ball against the side of the house while he talked with my excellent mother about some little matter of business. I hadn’t said two words during dinner, but I was still surprised to discover my friend considered my presence dispensible to the social equilibrium. My mother looked surprised too.
    But I grabbed my mitt and rubber ball and went outside. The foundation of our house was stone and perfect for throwing grounders. There was only one more week of fifth grade, then a whole summer of I did not know what. I doubted you could justcatch grounders for three whole months. If my father had been around, we could have gotten Wussy and gone fishing, and that would have accounted for one day. As it was, I wondered what would become of me.
    From where I threw the ball against the side of the house I could see diagonally in the kitchen window, but the late afternoon light reflected off it, and only the outline of Father Michaels’s back was visible. Occasionally, though, I heard my mother laugh.

5
    And so the rectory became my second home, much to the satisfaction of everyone except the old Monsignor, who took no pleasure in having even such a quiet boy on the church grounds. My presence continued to surprise him when we encountered one another on the lawn between the rectory and the church, and I could tell that he would have liked to run me off the way he did the other boys who occasionally climbed the chain-link fence on a short cut to the ball field. I never caused him any trouble that I know of, but he always looked at me suspiciously, and if I happened to be carrying my rubber ball, he reminded me that stained glass windows