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In fifth grade, Donald Miller very nearly wins the spelling bee. He gets second place instead, and the word he misspells is “rectory,” which earns him plenty of half-serious jibes from Father Flynn and one totally-serious rebuke from Sister Aloysius.
She says, looking at him through her half-moon spectacles, “You and I, Mr. Miller, are both perfectly aware that you are a better speller than anyone else in this school.”
It’s a compliment, but her voice is so severe that Donald doesn’t take it as one. He knows he should have won. The eighth-grader who beat him once asked Donald what the word “discipline” meant, and now that eighth-grader is going on to the county spelling bee, where he’ll no doubt disgrace the school by losing in the first round.
Donald tells himself he’ll never misspell “rectory” again.
Rectory.
The very next week it pops up in an essay for Religious Studies. Donald can’t help but feel this lesson is aimed at him; Father Flynn says,
“It’s come to my attention that this class’s understanding of religious terms may be a bit less than standard.”
And how could Donald not take that as a response to his abysmal loss in the school spelling bee? They’re given a vocab list of terms to memorize for a test on Friday. This list includes words like cassock (black robe) and surplice (white robe) and sacristy, which is hard to spell because part of Donald’s brain insists that since it’s a Church word, it should be spelled like Christ. Sachristy — like that.
He knows what a sacristy is, of course. He serves as an altar boy and the sacristy is the little room filled with cupboards full of cassocks and surplices and candle-snuffers and matches and wine. He knows what the rectory is, too — it’s where Father Flynn lives — but that doesn’t seem to help him when he tries to spell it.
After he turns in his essay, Father Flynn asks to see him after class.
“Rectory,” says Father Flynn when they’re alone. “Like rectum. R-E-C-T-O-R-Y.”
Donald stares at his feet. He says nothing.
“Do you know how you spelled it?” Father Flynn asks. He stares into the top of Donald’s lowered head and lets the silence drag out — then, finally, he shuffles the papers before him, puts on his reading glasses, and clears his throat.
“The same way you spelled it in the spelling bee,” he says. “Which is what, Donald?”
Donald shuffles his feet. His voice, when he speaks up, is soft and low.
“W-R-E-C-K,” he says, and then takes a shallow, fluttering breath before going on. “T-O-R-Y.”
“Exactly,” says Father Flynn. Once upon a time, he asked Donald to call him Brendan when they were alone. He’s never officially rescinded that invitation, but Donald doesn’t dare to call him that now.
R-E-C, he recites to himself. REC, like rectum, like Father Flynn says. REC, like recording. REC, like recess.
“I’ll remember from now on, Father,” Donald promises, and Father Flynn re-shuffles the essays with a soft, almost-inaudible snort.
“Be sure you do,” he says.
Once upon a time, at recess, Father Flynn — Brendan, then — took Donald aside and said, “Come with me, Donald. I need your help with the Communion wine.”
The words sent a thrill through Donald unmatched by anything else he’d ever experienced in life. It was partially the mention of alcohol; it was partially the fact that out of all the perfect little white boys playing basketball in pristine school uniforms, Father Flynn chose him.
And he didn’t just need help with an errand, it turned out. He needed advice.
“There’s simply too many choices,” said Brendan. His room in the rectory was filled with boxes, and inside each and every one of them was a sampler of different wines. He uncorked a bottle, took a sip of it, said, “I like this one, but it’s a little too sweet, don’t you think?”
And before Donald could comprehend those last three words, Brendan held the bottle out to him and wiggled it back and forth until Donald grabbed it with both hands and took a sip.
“Too sweet,” Donald agreed, though it didn’t taste sweet at all to him.
Over the course of an hour, long past the end of recess, Brendan opened wine bottles and passed them to Donald, and Donald sipped them and shook his head, and everything turned into a hot blur. His sweater suddenly seemed too heavy; the starched collar of his shirt was itchy against his neck.
At some point, Brendan stood and crossed the room, fetching an expensive-looking video camera from the bookshelf. He beckoned Donald over to him and Donald stood, stumbling on clumsy legs, the room spinning.
“You ever see a camera like this?” asked Brendan. Donald leaned forward, resting his chin without meaning to on Brendan’s arm so he could see the camera’s screen. There was a little word blinking in the corner: REC.
“Naw,” said Donald. He’d seen them alright, but only on TV commercials. Some of his classmates had cameras like that and shot home videos on them; the Millers were lucky to document their family once a year in the church’s annual congregation photos.
So when Brendan smiled and pointed the camera at Donald’s face, he smiled back. He felt that little thrill again — the thrill of a treat, something special. The same thrill he got when his dad took him to Dairy Queen after an errand and said, Don’t tell Mom.
“You look good, Donald,” Brendan said. “Hey, take that sweater off, why don’t you? You look hot.”
The next year, Donald loses the spelling bee again, and this time nobody pulls him out of class to lecture him about wasted potential. No one has lectured him since the day he came back from recess with his lips stained from wine and his collar askew. No one has lectured him since the last time he wore an altar boy’s black cassock.
Later, he sees an article in the newspaper about Father Flynn and strange stains on one of the perfect white boys’ cassocks, discovered by the boy’s country club Christmas-and-Easter Catholic father. He reads about how that boy took the Eucharist every Sunday with his father at his side, mouth open like a baby bird waiting to be fed.
Donald has been there. He’s felt the wafer dissolving on his tongue, sour and chalky. He’s let the wine fill up his mouth and wondered whose great idea it was to use white wine instead of red when it’s supposed to be Christ’s blood they’re drinking. He’s sat there on his knees with Father Flynn before him, swishing the wine around his gums, trying to figure out if it’s sweet or dry.
The article says this boy — maybe one of Donald’s former classmates — continued his stint as an altar server for two years after his father first smelled the white stains on his cassock and figured out what they were. The article says this boy’s own parents dropped him off at the rectory at odd hours for private training sessions with Father Flynn.
Dimly, Donald notes that the article has spelled “rectory” wrong.