Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb Read Free Book Online Page A

confessional, I tried to ignore Geraldine’s and Rosalie’s stares. “Take a picture. It lasts longer,” I suggested as I passed by them on my way to the altar. I may have heard kissing sounds from one of them.
    Later that day, while we were conjugating French verbs, the school secretary appeared at the back door of our classroom. “Excusez-moi, mes élèves,” Madame Frechette said. “Yes, Mrs. Tewksbury? May we help you?”
    “Would you please excuse Felix Funicello for a few moments?” Mrs. T said. “There’s someone down in the office who wishes to see him.”
    Approaching Mrs. Tewksbury on what seemed like my “perp walk,” I felt the 66 eyes of my 33 classmates upon me. Out in the corridor, I asked Mrs. T who was waiting downstairs. “You’ll see,” she said. As I descended the staircases to the main floor, my mind raced with scenarios good and bad. Had a policeman come to deliver some grim news about my parents? Had my cousin Annette heard about me and come to St. Aloysius Gonzaga to make my acquaintance and, perhaps, to sign some autographs for my friends? Had a detective figured out that I was the one who’d awakened that bat and driven Sister Dymphna cuckoo? “They’re waiting in Mother Filomina’s office,” Mrs. Tewksbury said. “You can go right in.”
    I heard Monsignor Muldoon’s labored breathing as I approached the inner office. “Hello, Felix,” Mother Filomina said. “Come in. Have a seat.” She was behind her big desk, and the only available chair was the one opposite the Monsignor. I sat. He smiled, something I’d never seen him do before. He had littlepeg teeth, brownish from tar and nicotine, I figured. And little squiggly veins on his cheeks and in the yellowy whites of his eyes. And there were white hairs growing out of his nostrils. I was seated close enough to smell his blasts of butter rum breath, too.
    “The Monsignor has brought you a gift,” Mother Filomina said. “Wasn’t that nice of him?” My head bobbed up and down, as if jerked by a puppeteer.
    The Monsignor handed me a booklet, Aloysius Gonzaga, Patron Saint of Male Youth . There were veins on his hands, too, and big brown freckles. When he asked me if I knew much about the life of our school’s namesake, I shook my head. I took a quick glimpse at the cover. It had a picture of Aloysius Gonzaga the Boy Saint, his hands clasped in prayer, his head surrounded by a big halo that kind of looked like an electric hula hoop.
    “Have you anything to say to Monsignor?” Mother Filomina asked. I shook my head again. “No, Felix? Nothing at all?”
    “Umm…How come you’re giving me this?” When Mother cleared her throat, I finally caught her drift. “Oh. Thank you, I mean. Sorry.”
    The Monsignor said I was entirely welcome. “I think you’ll find Aloysius’s story inspirational, given what you and I talked about earlier today,” he said. “He might be just the kind of boy whose example you would wish to emulate.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Yeah?”
    Mother Filomina frowned. “Yes, Monsignor.”
    “Yes, Monsignor,” I repeated. On a Dragnet episode I’d seen once, Sergeant Joe Friday’s arrest of a murderer had been thwarted by the confidentiality of the confessional, but apparently no such privilege was extended to kids and/or French-kissers. I didn’t know how much Monsignor Magoo had told Mother Filomina about my confession, but I didn’t really want to know, either. “Can I go now?” I asked her.
    “ May you go now?” Mother said. “Yes, you may.”
    Back in class, I stuck Monsignor’s booklet in my social studies book, on top of the whoopee cushionI’d forgotten to give back to Lonny. Geraldine Balchunas kept looking over at me, so I made cross-eyes at her. Rosalie got up to use the pencil sharpener, even though her pencil was sharp already. (Unlike Sister Dymphna, Madame Frechette let us get out of our seats and go over to the sharpener without asking.) “Pssst,” Rosalie said, as she