Mikael Pacioli

Two Months.

“Hello, Mikael. I was waiting for you to call. I’ve just been going through the books of medicinals. Do you remember where we put the short volume on watercress?”
As always, his father’s voice was like water to Mikael’s parched soul. F. Pacioli waited patiently at the other end of the line for an answer. None came immediately, then, as a torrent, rushed:
“They hate me here.”
At his desk in the small study that faced the back gardens of the house, ever shaded by the red alders, Father Pacioli froze and spun his chair away from the view.
“What do you mean, Mikael?” he asked, hesitant to make one statement or the other for fear of triggering the querulous caprice of his distant son. Hormones, the doctors had told him. Don’t take it personally - he doesn’t mean it.
“I mean - “ Mikael hesitated, and Father Pacioli realized then that it was not in Mikael’s words where he found truth, but in his silence - in those frightened, creeping-mice pauses that he placed between words, as an animal on whom a searchlight had abruptly been shined. This silence was a serious silence; it was the unintentional breed that were birthed unwittingly from deep thought.
“I mean that I don’t fit in here. They’re - mean.”
“The administrators?”
“The other carriers.”

In sending Mikael away, this had been Father Pacioli’s greatest worry. Not that his son - who he loved and had trained up well and taught carefully the meaning of words like ‘patient’ and ‘obey’ - would be singled out cruelly by his sovereigns, but that he might be targeted for his inexperience by his peers.
“I don’t think they mean to be malicious,” Mikael began, cautiously. “They are just…careless. But I hear them talk.”
“About what?” F. Pacioli asked, quietly, wanting not to intrude on this expulsion of pain.
“Me.”
There was silence.
“Why you, Mikael?”
“I don’t know.” he blurted, honestly, then took a moment to revise his answer. “Because I’m there, I suppose. Because I don’t have any protection. Because I don’t have many friends.”
“Mikael, you promised me that you would try - “
“I am trying!” Mikael snapped. “But I just - not every day. I can’t do it every day.”
Father Pacioli listened and felt his heart swell with hurting and love for Mikael, who, even at twenty-six, retained that sincere heart that had won him a permanent place at St. Xavier’s so long ago.
“Well,” he said, slowly, “All of us do what we can. We can only do what we can.”
Across the line, Mikael shrugged.
“Well. I suppose it’s not enough.”
Mikael paused again, and it was one of those serious pauses, those open pauses, those pauses that say I am in pain and cannot fill this space between us.
“I just don’t want to do it anymore.” he said, finally, and because Father Pacioli was his father, he could tell that there were almost tears in Mikael’s eyes. F. Pacioli sensed that this was not the time to probe - answers would come. “I’m scared.” Mikael admitted, more openly than his father had expected. “I’m afraid I can’t do this.”
It was at times like these that Father Pacioli wished desperately to be granted the gift of insight. Why should this happen to Mikael, his sweet Mikael? Why should this happen to the only child of St. Xavier’s, to the desperate orphan who had come in from the rain with nothing but the clothes on his back and in his good heart, brought sunshine to the darkest days at the abbey? Why him? Why Mikael?
Father Pacioli quieted his heart; these things were not his to know. These things were in the hands of the Father, and no one else.

Mikael rubbed anxious eyes with the back of a scribbled-on hand. Take G-7 Form to Dawkins 102, its forgotten assignment read. Father Pacioli mulled over his thoughts for long, silent minutes while a robin picked at an insect at the roots of his rhododendrons.
“Mikael, what can I do?” he asked, finally. “In what way may I help you?”
Mikael rubbed his knuckles together, liking the bumpy feeling that distracted him from the sickness in his belly.
Get me out, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t kind; that wasn’t kind and it wasn’t fair, because his father had no more wanted to leave him there than Mikael had wanted to stay. There was no greater freedom on the other end of the line; Father Pacioli was as trapped in this as he was.
“That’s alright, Father.” he said instead, his voice suddenly restored to its robust normality. “There’s nothing that I could ask you to do. Just listening is enough.”
Father Pacioli heard this, and felt a concern that he did not express.
“Well,” he said, slowly, acceding to a point on which they did not agree, “I am always here to listen.”

~:~

"So how did they think it’s going?" Thad asked, discreetly poking the oddly-colored slab of meatloaf on his plate. Blake returned with a dish of something green and served that onto Thad's plate, then his own.
"OK, I guess. I mean, the point has been to intimidate him and I guess it’s working."
Thad raised an eyebrow.
"And that's supposed to help? This intimidation thing?"
"Preliminary experiential behavior correction." Blake responded. "And it’s supposed to make him more invested in his growth, in his development. Help him adjust more quickly.”
“And that’s supposed to help?”
Thad asked, skeptically. Blake shrugged around a mouthful of green whatever-it-was and chewed slowly.
"It’s weird, but if it makes it easier for them..."
Thad took a bite of the meatloaf and decided that it was at least better than Blake's previous attempt.
"And do you think that?" he pressed. "That it makes it easier for them?"
Blake shrugged, and in a careless moment, answered honestly.
"Nothing can really make it easier for them."
Thad paused in his meal and looked closely at his carrier wife’s face. There were lines there that he hadn’t seen before; there was a gauntness in the cheeks that worried him. Blake seemed embarrassed, either by his words or by the scrutiny, and so afterwards, he added, "But I don't know; I’m not a carrier therapist.”

Thad ate his meatloaf and didn't press any further on that topic. There were other, equally uncomfortable points to be brought up.
"Your stepmother called."
"About dinner? I know - he called me, too."
Thad took a forkful of green goo and tried to gauge Blake's mood and reaction to this.
"And?"
Blake sighed.
"And what? We have to go. It's not like there are many real options."
Thad agreed with a shrug.
"We could make excuses."
"What kind of excuses? My father is a top-of-the-line bullshit detector. If he gets the feeling we're lying to him…well, hell, then we might as well not go at all and just fight the war all out."
Thad was silent for a moment, then suggested, cautiously,
"We could say you're feeling sick."
Blake froze mid-bite and set his fork back down on his plate.
"No." he said, taking a drink of water. "No, I don't want them to think that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not true, that's why not. And I don't see the point in getting them all excited, getting their hopes up..."
"It's been a year." Thad pointed out. "I'm pretty sure their hopes are already up."
Blake flushed a dark red.
"It's not…right."
"OK." Thad said, and drank some of his wine. Then, after a moment, added, "But it could be right, couldn't it? Soon."
Blake didn't say anything, but Thad noticed he seemed to find it difficult to finish the rest of his meal.

~:~