“Can I eat a ball?” said Olivia.
“Not until they’re cooked.”
“Then can I eat a ball?”
“Then they won’t be balls anymore,” said Lillian. “They’ll be cookies.”
“I want them to be balls,” said Olivia.
“Either way,” said Ginny. “Let’s get them in the oven.” She dipped her hands into the bowl, rolled, dipped again. After she put the first batch in she closed the oven door triumphantly, then turned around. “You,” she said to Olivia. “Off the stool, and into the bathroom to wash up. The apron stays here.”
After Olivia had gone Ginny turned to face Lillian and said, “Lillian. If there’s something—”
“There’s nothing,” said Lillian shortly.
“But if there’s something.”
“Mom! There’s nothing,” said Lillian. “It’s summer. You live by a lake. I live in the middle of a suburban development. Tom’s working all the time. It’s better here, that’s all there is to it. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Ginny. “Okay.”
“But if you want us to go—”
“No!” said Ginny. “Of course I don’t want that.”
Quickly, industriously, Lillian began stacking the dishes and spoons and measuring cups and beaters in the sink, and then she ran the water very, very hot, and stood over the sink as it was filling up.
For a long moment she could feel Ginny’s eyes on her, watching her, but she just kept scrubbing at the sticky dough in the big metal mixing bowl, and she didn’t look up.
Olivia wanted to go with Lillian to deliver the cookies to the rectory for the bake sale, but Lillian preferred to go alone.
“To the side door,” said Ginny. “If nobody is there, leave them. But write a note.” To Olivia she said, “You stay with me. We’ll watch Dora together while your brother sleeps.”
“I don’t like Dora anymore,” said Olivia.
Ginny opened a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil, which she presented to Lillian. Lillian balanced the pen and paper on the container of cookies.
As it turned out she didn’t need the paper. The lady who kept house at the rectory opened the door. Lois Tolland. Lillian had gone to high school with her son, Tyler. Lillian tried to peer around her, into the rectory, looking for Father Colin. She asked after Tyler Tolland. He had moved to California with his wife and daughter, Lois’s only grandchild.
“Sort of takes your breath away,” said Lois. “When they leave you like that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lillian. And she was: you could see the disappointment scratched across Lois’s face. Lillian remembered Tyler only vaguely; he had been one of the quiet ones, not really tied to any group that she could remember. Once, in the cafeteria, he had tripped on a table leg and dropped his tray. That’s what she remembered most about him: mashed potatoes on his shoes, canned corn dripping down the front of his shirt.
“She’s ten now,” said Lois. “In a blink, she’ll be a teenager. And then what? Then I’ll never know her.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lillian again.
“Anyway, I’ll bring these back and put them with the others,” said Lois Tolland. “Tell your mother I said thank you.”
Father Colin appeared behind Mrs. Tolland then. “Lillian!” he said.
“Cookies.” She gestured toward the container.
“Ah,” he said. “This bake sale is turning into quite the extravaganza, with Lois here at the helm.”
Lillian squinted at him. She had noticed that it was difficult to tell when he was being sarcastic or ironic and when he was just being nice. She supposed that was the Southie in him; she liked that.
He clapped his hand on Lois Tolland’s shoulder, and Lillian saw the way that made Lois smile. Nice, she thought. Not sarcastic. That was the power a good priest had, to dispense comfort with a small gesture like that. She thought that must be a wonderful talent to have. Why didn’t she have that talent? Did she have any talents at all? She couldn’t think of any.
Father Colin was on his way to run an errand, he told Lillian. Perhaps she wanted to go with him?
“What sort of errand?” asked Lillian.
He had to buy something for his nephews. He had to go downtown, to the bookstore. He wouldn’t mind the company.
“I’m not sure,” said Lillian. But then she considered it. She had fed Philip recently. Olivia was happy with Ginny. Rachel, once she got out of bed, would be around too. And wouldn’t it be nice to get out for a while? “Okay,” she said finally. “The bookstore. Why not?”
She thought she saw Lois Tolland’s shoulders twitch.
Lillian thought that a priest would not carry a wallet, sort of the same way you figured the president of the United States would not carry a wallet. But Father Colin did; he placed his near the gearshift when they were in his car. The car was a tomato-colored Corolla of indeterminate age, and the seats were black and hot. Lillian had also not thought about a priest having a car, or going shopping. She told him that, on the way to town. “It’s just because all the priests I’ve known have been old,” she said. “I guess I thought you were all—”
“What? Free from earthly cares?”
“Something like that.”
He laughed. He had a nice laugh, louder than you would expect: brasher. “Not at all,” he said. “Not at all. Though that would be nice.” She watched his freckled hands on the steering wheel. His skin was like hers; she could see that it would not take kindly to too much sun. Rachel tanned easily, and Lillian had always envied her that. She thought about the day she’d seen Father Colin running on the bike path without a hat. She thought he ought not to do that too often, with that skin. She said, “Do you run a lot?”
Father Colin pulled up to a stop sign, looked both ways, eased ahead. “Most days,” he said. “The other day was unusual for me, though. Normally I go in the morning. Very early. Dawn, usually.”
They reached the downtown. “Go straight,” she said. “Then turn right in two streets. These one-ways will drive you crazy if you don’t know them.” Then she said, “Dawn?”
“I’m a terrible sleeper,” he said. “A complete insomniac. I’m always awake with the birds.”
She saw a pile of tourists heading toward a minivan. “There,” she said, pointing. “They’re leaving.”
Father Colin parked the car and turned off the ignition. They were out of the car now and walking toward the bookstore. “Dawn,” she said again. “Geez.” She had been about to say Jesus, but she amended it at the last minute. She followed him through the door, which he held open for her. Did Tom hold doors open for her? Truly, she couldn’t remember.
He bought three books: one about dinosaurs, one about fire trucks, one about spaceships. Three nephews, three books. That’s how he explained it. There was a coffee shop in the bookstore, and after he had paid for the books he headed toward it without asking her. It wasn’t until he had taken a place in line that he looked at her expectantly, and she said, “Iced coffee, I guess. Please.” She thought of Philip and calculated when she would next need to nurse him. “Half decaf,” she said. “Please.” She thought some more. “No, all decaf. Thank you.”
They sat. And how strange it was to be sitting across from this man she hardly knew, this man in the clerical collar. But at the same time how not strange it was, and that in itself was strange. She worried at first that she would have to cast about for something to say, but never mind about that: it turned out Father Colin was a talker. He told her about his brother, and his brother’s wife, Theresa. “She’s one of my favorite people,” he said. “She was a champion soccer player, a real star. Now she’s a nurse. But she’s still got this athletic way of moving: quick and dirty. She keeps those boys in line, let me tell you. Plus Seamus. She’s around death all day, and yet she’s got this vibrancy. Pure joy.”
Lillian couldn’t imagine keeping anything in line. She couldn’t imagine ever being described as vibrant or joyful. S
he felt a spark of envy for a woman she would never meet.
“I remember the nephews from the picture,” she said. “In your office.” She noticed the way his face shone when he talked about them, lit up from within. He said they reminded him of himself when he was their age, growing up in South Boston. He said in those days you played ball in the streets, and if you misbehaved you were as likely to be spanked by someone else’s mother as your own.
“Really?” she said. “I don’t think people spanked each other’s children in Vermont. I don’t think they spanked their own children.”
“Peace lovers,” he said, smiling. “In Southie, people did what it took. And we were no worse for it.” He remembered women standing outside their apartments in their nightclothes; he remembered thinking that was normal. That was normal, then, to them.
“I’ve never really talked to a priest,” she said. “One on one, like this. Except for confession. And that was a really long time ago.”
He smiled at that. “It’s not so different from talking to a regular person, is it?”
She considered that question. “No,” she said. “But I guess I can imagine you before you were a priest, maybe that’s why.” She looked down at the books he bought for his nephews. She could picture them running to the door to meet him, their uncle the priest. She could picture him taking the steps two at a time, opening his arms wide. Would they jump on him, wrestle him to the ground? Yes, she decided. Yes they would. And he would wrestle back.
She narrowed her eyes at Father Colin. “How’d you know, anyway? That you wanted to be a priest.” He raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair, and Lillian said, “You probably get asked that all the time.”
“You know what? Hardly at all.” He paused. “I remember the first time I realized I was meant for this.”
“Yeah?”
“I got beat up one day outside of school for being nice to this black kid. There was lots of racial tension then in Southie, lots.” He paused again and Lillian didn’t say anything, just let him talk. “So the next Sunday, I was kneeling at Mass next to Seamus, and I suddenly understood that I had something few people have.”
“What was that?”
“A capacity for forgiveness, I guess you could call it. Seamus didn’t have it, that’s for sure. He tracked down the boy who hit me and punched him square in the face. Two teeth came out.”
“Geez.”
“My mother didn’t have it. My father didn’t have it. They couldn’t forgive each other half the time.”
“But you could.”
“I could! Kneeling in the pew there, thinking about the boy who beat me up, I was filled with this—this is going to sound corny, I know, but it’s true—this sort of sensation. A warmth. A feeling that there was something bigger at work that I could be part of. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Wow,” said Lillian. She drank her coffee. His eyes were really very kind. They were so clear, such a light, pale blue, that she felt as though she could see right through them. Here was a man, it was possible, with no secrets, nothing to hide. “I didn’t know it happened like that,” she said.
“I don’t know if it does for everyone,” Father Colin said. “I can only speak for myself. But it did for me.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“Is it?”
“It is. I’m jealous of the certainty you feel. I don’t feel that certain about anything.”
“Now,” he said. He moved the ice around in his cup. “I’ve told you lots. You tell me something.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Something about yourself. Or your family. You have a lovely family. What does your husband do?”
As she told Heather later, the answer came unbidden. “My husband,” she said. “He betrayed me.” (And looking back on it, she thought it was a little too dramatic, the way she said it, a little embarrassing, but also there was some relief in it, in having the words out there.)
At that Father Colin sat back and made an awkward gesture toward her. “Sort of like he wanted to take my hand,” she told Heather. “Or pat me on the shoulder or something. But he didn’t, of course.”
“So then what?” said Heather.
Father Colin’s face took on an expression of gentleness and compassion. He said calmly, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Then, to lighten the moment, Lillian said, “But he’s also a software engineer. If that’s what you meant.”
“Ah,” said Father Colin. “It was, actually.” Then, after a pause, he said, “I’ve counseled many couples. And it’s amazing, the capacity for forgiveness people find—”
“Not me,” said Lillian shortly. She didn’t look at him when she said that; she fixed her eyes on the glass case with its rows of blueberry muffins and cranberry scones. She blinked hard. “I can’t forgive,” she said quietly. “I won’t. That’s why I’m here. I’ve escaped.”
“Perhaps not yet,” said Father Colin. “But after some time has passed—”
“No.”
After a moment Father Colin said, “Forgiveness is a very powerful tool, you know, Lillian.”
“I don’t really intend to find out.”
The moment seemed suspended in time and space, hanging like a bubble, and around her sounds became magnified. There was a clatter behind her as somebody dropped a spoon. Far away, a baby cried. She felt her breasts begin to fill. It wasn’t Philip’s cry, but sometimes her body didn’t know that. Eventually she said, “Have you?”
“Have I what?” He bent toward her.
“Ever had to forgive anyone? I mean as an adult, not the boy who beat you up.”
He was taken aback, she could see that. “Sure,” he said slowly. “Sure, I have. Everyone does, at some point, I think. I think it’s the way of the world.” His voice sounded odd. He was looking in her direction, but for the first time since she’d met him she had the feeling that he wasn’t really looking at her at all.
“Who?”
“What?”
“Who? Have you had to forgive. As long as we’re sharing. And how’d you do it?”
Father Colin paused and stared at his cup. “It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
He sat back. His face looked different. He began to talk. “There was a woman in my parish,” he said. “She lost a child.”
Lillian let him talk. She didn’t interrupt. Around them, the customers in the coffee shop came and went: women pushing baby strollers, tourists looking to get out of the sun, solitary people with books they’d just purchased. And Lillian and Father Colin sat. The woman, he said, had lost a child in an accident: an unspeakable tragedy. He, who had seen a lot of grief, had never seen grief like this woman’s. He counseled her. Week after week, she came to him, and she talked and he listened. It was work, he sometimes thought, that would have been more appropriate for a therapist than for a priest. And yet he continued. He thought that if he kept talking to her, if he kept listening, he would eventually be able to help her.
“And could you?” she said. “Did you?”
He shook his head. “Never. I couldn’t, because I didn’t know the answers myself. In the end, I believe I failed her.”
She had to resist the urge to put her hand over his. “I’m sure you didn’t,” she said. “What that must have meant to her, to have someone like you to talk to.”
He shifted. “Maybe. But still, I couldn’t answer her question.”
“What question?”
“About why things like this happen. How the death of a child… how that could possibly fit into God’s plan. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. And yet I felt like I owed her an explanation.”
She absorbed all of this. There was nothing, she thought, that could be worse than the death of a child. Her own troubles seemed tiny and insignificant in the face of this story; she felt herself grow smaller, like Alice in Wonderland shrinking. Finally she said, “That’s a terrible story. But that doesn’t explain
who you had to forgive.”
He looked surprised. He crumpled his napkin and put it inside his cup, then secured the plastic top. He smiled at her, but his smile seemed different now, more cloudy and impenetrable. He looked at his watch. “I think I should be getting you back,” he said. “I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“Okay,” said Lillian. She drank the last of her coffee. So he did have secrets, then. They wound their way through the tables and out the door. She supposed that everyone had secrets, no matter the open facade they might present to the world.
What a relief it was to be outside, even though they had given up the store’s air-conditioning for the heavy summer heat, and the relative quiet of their spot there for the mass of people on Church Street, with their ice cream and Kettle Korn and mammoth shopping bags.
When Father Colin pulled into the parking lot at the church Lillian was almost surprised to see her own car sitting there in the sun. It was as though she had been on a long journey to a foreign country, and she hadn’t expected to be back in familiar territory so soon.
“Really?” said Ginny the following Sunday. “Church? And to what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Nothing,” said Lillian. “Just thought I would go, that’s all.”
“There’s doughnuts after,” said Olivia helpfully.
“Good,” said Lillian. She was looking into the hall mirror, putting lipstick on with one hand and holding Philip with the other.
“Well,” said Ginny. “I don’t suppose Rachel—”
“No. But Stephen, maybe.”
“Maybe,” said Ginny. She sighed, then brightened. “I suppose it’s better not to question it, and just to enjoy the company.”
“Exactly right,” said Lillian. She put the cover on the lipstick with her teeth and snapped it closed, hard.
Rachel lay on the air mattress, listening to the sounds of everyone departing for church. She ignored the rustlings of Olivia’s waking up, her search for the pink T-shirt with the purple flowers, her return to the room to retrieve her orphaned sandal. With the exception of Jane, whose presence was so unobtrusive that Rachel had gotten out of the habit of counting her, Rachel was alone in the house. She ate a leisurely breakfast on the deck and then repaired to the den to read the paper in her father’s recliner. Before she started reading she turned on her phone, which she had purposefully kept off since Friday.
The Arrivals: A Novel Page 16
