Ignatius lived with his father in a tall, gray house in Nordeast. He had four sisters, but when his mother started to get sick from the cancer, his oldest sisters Helen and Christine moved in with Auntie Will, and his older sister Margaret and his younger sister Anne with Auntie George. After his mother died, they stayed there. Ignatius wished he might have gone with his sisters to stay with Auntie George or Auntie Will, but he stayed with his father because, the aunties said, “a boy needs his father.”
His father worked at a lumberyard. He got up early in the morning and got Ignatius up with him, and made oatmeal and dry toast and cut a grapefruit in half for breakfast, and turned on the radio, which they listened to in silence while they ate. After breakfast, he would pull on a gray coat and gray hat, and made Ignatius put on a sweater and an overcoat, and they would get into the car and his father would drive him to school and then continue on to work. Ignatius was all alone after school, so he would walk over to the cemetery, and then he would head for home where he would wait until his father came home, usually after dark, and they would have a dinner of store-bought bread and oleo, boiled potatoes and vegetables, and maybe fried pork chops or chicken together. Then they would go to bed, and start all over again.
Ignatius never saw his father shed a tear after his mother died. He only became grayer and more silent, if that were possible. Sometimes Ignatius woke in the middle of the night to the sound of floorboards creaking, and when he got up to see what was happening, he found his father pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor, with a shot glass next to an open bottle of whiskey on the table. Ignatius knew enough to stay hidden in the shadows outside the kitchen doorway, and slink back into his room where he would slowly fall asleep to the sound of his father cursing at himself.
Sundays were the highlight of the week for Ignatius. Saturday nights, his father filled up the tub and made Ignatius take a bath in almost scalding water. After drying off, Ignatius would lay out his Sunday best on a chair in his bedroom: his dressy blue slacks, a pinstripe shirt with a collar, suspenders and a red bowtie that Ignatius could clip on, black socks and black shoes. Ignatius’ father made him polish the shoes, but Ignatius would have asked to do it even if his father hadn’t made him. It was the one thing they did together, each man polishing his own shoes. Ignatius liked the pungent scent of the shoe polish that filled the air when his father opened the can and started to smear it onto his shoe polish rag. His father’s face was full of concentration as he buffed the shoes with his brush.
Sunday morning they would eat eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice for breakfast, with the radio turned off. Ignatius’ father said that playing radio on Sunday was “against the Sabbath.” Then they would get in the car together and drive to church, where they would meet Auntie George and Auntie Will and the girls. They all took up almost a whole row. Then after the service, it was back to Auntie George’s for Sunday dinner.
Auntie George’s house was full of staircases and tall rooms and closets and wide windows letting in lots of light. It was always immaculate and the walls were all painted white, and Auntie George kept dozens of potted flowers in every room so it was like a great indoor garden. She had had three children, two boys and a girl. They were all grown up and gone now, but there were pictures of them in different nooks of the house. While Auntie George prepared dinner, Ignatius used to run around the house hiding in different places, studying the bookshelves, the pictures and the knickknacks. Dinner was consumed at a big table in Auntie George’s big, airy dining room. She sat at the head of the table, and dished big servings of food onto everyone’s plates, with an extra big heap for Ignatius’ father.
After dinner, the girls ran upstairs, while George cleared off the table and Ignatius’ father went to sit in the drawing room and read the paper and then fall asleep in the rocking chair. Ignatius helped his auntie with the dishes for a while, until she shooed him out of the kitchen. “A boy should play on a Sunday afternoon,” she would say, “Go find your sisters.” But Ignatius rarely found his sisters. Instead, he would run around outdoors in the big park across the street from George’s house. There were always a million secrets there for him to discover under the pine trees behind the picnic benches or in the nearby parking lot.
Shortly before sunset, George would call for him, and he would return to the house, where he found his father waiting to pack him back into the car. Sometimes he would get scolded for making his father wait, but Ignatius couldn’t help it. There was always a dreadful sinking feeling in his stomach when the sun began to sink lower in the sky on a Sunday afternoon. He wished he could somehow make it stop, make time stand still or even just stretch out. Going home was like going back into a dark tunnel. But now Ignatius had a secret that made that trip home into the darkness bearable, that gave promise to the coming week. That secret was a friend named Samael.