by James Morrow
“'Fraid not.”
“Too bad.”
At last the mattress to Stephen's left becomes free, and they climb on top and begin reifying the Doctrine of Affirmative Fertility. The candle flames look like spear points. Stephen closes his eyes, but the effect is merely to intensify the fact that he's here. The liquid squeal of flesh against flesh grows louder, the odor of hot paraffin and warm semen more pungent. For a few seconds he manages to convince himself that the woman beneath him is Kate, but the illusion proves as tenuous as the surrounding wax.
When the sacrament is accomplished, Valerie says, “I have something for you. A gift.”
“What's the occasion?”
“Saint Patrick's Day is less than a week away.”
“Since when is that a time for gifts?”
Instead of answering, she strolls to her side of the room, rummages through her tangled garments, and returns holding a pressed flower sealed in plastic.
“Think of it as a ticket,” she whispers, lifting Stephen's shirt from its peg and slipping the blossom inside the pocket.
“To where?”
Valerie holds an erect index finger to her lips. “We'll know when we get there.”
Stephen gulps audibly. Sweat collects beneath his sperm counter. Only fools consider fleeing Boston Isle. Only lunatics risk the retributions meted out by the Corps. Displayed every Sunday night on Keep Those Kiddies Coming, the classic images—men submitting to sperm siphons, women locked in the rapacious embrace of artificial inseminators—haunt every parishioner's imagination, instilling the same levels of dread as Spinelli's sculpture of the archangel Chamuel strangling David Hume. There were rumors, of course, unconfirmable accounts of parishioners who've outmaneuvered the patrol boats and escaped to Québec Cay, Seattle Reef, or the Texas Archipelago. But to credit such tales was itself a kind of sin, jeopardizing your slot in Paradise as surely as if you'd denied the unconceived their rights.
“Tell me something, Stephen.” Valerie straps herself into her bra. “You're a history teacher. Did Saint Patrick really drive the snakes out of Ireland, or is that just a legend?”
“I'm sure it never happened literally,” says Stephen. “I suppose it could be true in some mythic sense.”
“It's about penises, isn't it?” says Valerie, dissolving into the darkness. “It's about how our saints have always been hostile to cocks.”
* * * *
Although Harbor Authority Tower was designed to house the merchant-shipping aristocracy on whose ambitions the decrepit Boston economy still depended, the building's form, Connie now realizes, perfectly fits its new, supplemental function: sheltering the offices, courts, and archives of the archdiocese. As he lifts his gaze along the soaring facade, Connie thinks of sacred shapes—of steeples and vaulted windows, of Sinai and Zion, of Jacob's Ladder and hands pressed together in prayer. Perhaps it's all as God wants, he muses, flashing his ecclesiastical pass to the guard. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with commerce and grace being transacted within the same walls.
Connie has seen Archbishop Xallibos in person only once before, five years earlier, when the stately prelate appeared as an “honorary Irishman” in Charlestown Parish's annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade. Standing on the sidewalk, Connie observed Xallibos gliding down Lynde Street atop a huge motorized shamrock. The archbishop looked impressive then, and he looks impressive now—six foot four at least, Connie calculates, and not an ounce under three hundred pounds. His eyes are as red as a lab rat's.
“Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan,” the priest begins, following the custom whereby a visitor to an archbishop's chambers initiates the interview by naming himself.
“Come forward, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan.”
Connie starts into the office, boots clacking on the polished bronze floor. Xallibos steps from behind his desk, a glistery cube of black marble.
“Charlestown Parish holds a special place in my affections,” says the archbishop. “What brings you to this part of town?”
Connie fidgets, shifting first left, then right, until his face lies mirrored in the hubcap-size Saint Cyril medallion adorning Xallibos's chest. “My soul is in torment, Your Grace.”
“'Torment.’ Weighty word.”
“I can find no other. Last Tuesday I laid a two-week-old infant to rest.”
“Terminal baptism?”
Connie ponders his reflection. It is wrinkled and deflated, like a helium balloon purchased at a carnival long gone. “My eighth.”
“I know how you feel. After I dispatched my first infertile—no left testicle, right one shriveled beyond repair—I got no sleep for a week.” Eyes glowing like molten rubies, Xallibos stares directly at Connie. “Where did you attend seminary?”
“Isle of Denver.”
“And on the Isle of Denver did they teach you that there are in fact two Churches, one invisible and eternal, the other—”
“Temporal and finite.”
“Then they also taught you that the latter Church is empowered to revise its sacraments according to the imperatives of the age.” The archbishop's stare grows brighter, hotter, purer. “Do you doubt that present privations compel us to arrange early immortality for those who cannot secure the rights of the unconceived?”
“The problem is that the infant I immortalized has a twin.” Connie swallows nervously. “Her mother stole her away before I could perform the second baptism.”
“Stole her away?”
“She fled in the middle of the sacrament.”
“And the second child is likewise arid?”
“Left ovary, two hundred ninety primordials. Right ovary, three hundred ten.”
“Lord...” A high whistle issues from the archbishop, like water vapor escaping a tea kettle. “Does she intend to quit the island?”
“I certainly hope not, Your Grace,” says the priest, wincing at the thought. “She probably has no immediate plans beyond protecting her baby and trying to—”
Connie cuts himself off, intimidated by the sudden arrival of a roly-poly man in a white hooded robe.
“Friar James Wolfe, M.D.,” says the monk.
“Come forward, Friar Doctor James Wolfe,” says Xallibos.
“It would be well if you validated this posthaste.” James Wolfe draws a parchment sheet from his robe and lays it on the archbishop's desk. Connie steals a glance at the report, hoping to learn the baby's fertility quotient, but the relevant statistics are too faint. “The priest in question, he's celebrating Mass in"—sliding a loose sleeve upward, James Wolfe consults his wristwatch—"less than an hour. He's all the way over in Brookline.”
Striding back to his desk, the archbishop yanks a silver fountain pen from its holder and decorates the parchment with his famous spidery signature.
“Dominus vobiscum, Friar Doctor Wolfe,” he says, handing over the document.
As Wolfe rushes out of the office, Xallibos steps so close to Connie that his nostrils fill with the archbishop's lemon-scented aftershave lotion.
“That man never has any fun,” says Xallibos, pointing toward the vanishing friar. “What fun do you have, Father Monaghan?”
“Fun, Your Grace?”
“Do you eat ice cream? Follow the fortunes of the Celtics?” He pronounces “Celtics” with the hard C mandated by the Third Lateran Council.
Connie inhales a hearty quantity of citrus fumes. “I bake.”
“Bake? Bake what? Bread?”
“Cookies, Your Grace. Brownies, cheesecake, pies. For the Feast of the Nativity, I make gingerbread magi.”
“Wonderful. I like my priests to have fun. Listen, no matter what, the rite must be performed. If Angela Dunfey won't come to you, then you must go to her.”
“She'll simply run away again.”
“Perhaps so, perhaps not. I have great faith in you, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan.”
“More than I have in myself,” says the priest, biting his inner cheeks so hard that his eyes fill with tears.
/> * * * *
“No,” says Kate for the third time that night.
“Yes,” insists Stephen, savoring the dual satisfactions of Kate's thigh beneath his palm and Arbutus rum washing through his brain.
Pinching her cigarette in one hand, Kate strokes Baby Malcolm's forehead with the other, lulling him to sleep. “It's wicked,” she protests as she places Malcolm on the rug beside the bed. “A crime against the future.”
Stephen grabs the Arbutus bottle, pours himself another glass, and, adding a measure of Dr. Pepper, takes a greedy gulp. He sets the bottle back on the nightstand, next to Valerie Gallogher's enigmatic flower.
“Screw the unconceived,” he says, throwing himself atop his wife.
On Friday he'd shown the blossom to Gail Whittington, Dougherty High School's smartest science teacher, but her verdict proved unenlightening. Epigaea repens, “trailing arbutus,” a species with at least two claims to fame: it is the state flower of the Massachusetts Archipelago, and it has lent its name to the very brand of alcohol Stephen now consumes.
“No,” says Kate once again. She drops her cigarette on the floor, crushes it with her shoe, and wraps her arms around him. “I'm not ovulating,” she avers, forcing her stiff and slippery tongue inside his mouth. “Your sperm aren't...”
“Last night, the Holy Father received a vision,” Xallibos announces from the video monitor. “Pictures straight from Satan's flaming domain. Hell is a fact, friends. It's as real as a stubbed toe.”
Stephen whips off Kate's chemise with all the dexterity of Father Monaghan removing a christening gown. The rum, of course, has much to do with their mutual willingness (four glasses each, only mildly diluted with Dr. Pepper), but beyond the Arbutus the two of them have truly earned this moment. Neither has ever skipped Mass. Neither has ever missed a Sacrament of Extramarital Intercourse. And while any act of nonconceptual love technically lies beyond the Church's powers of absolution, surely Christ will forgive them a solitary lapse. And so they go at it, this sterile union, this forbidden fruitlessness, this coupling from which no soul can come.
“Hedonists dissolving in vats of molten sulfur,” says Xallibos.
The bedroom door squeals open. One of Kate's middle children, Beatrice, a gaunt six-year-old with flaking skin, enters holding a rude toy boat whittled from a hunk of bark.
“Look what I made in school yesterday!”
“We're busy,” says Kate, pulling the tattered muslin sheet over her nakedness.
“Do you like my boat, Stephen?” asks Beatrice.
He slams a pillow atop his groin. “Lovely, dear.”
“Go back to bed,” Kate commands her daughter.
“Onanists drowning in lakes of boiling semen,” says Xallibos.
Beatrice fixes Stephen with her receding eyes. “Can we sail it tomorrow on Parson's Pond?”
“Certainly. Of course. Please go away.”
“Just you and me, right, Stephen? Not Claude or Tommy or Yolanda or anybody.”
“Flaying machines,” says Xallibos, “peeling the damned like ripe bananas.”
“Do you want a spanking?” seethes Kate. “That's exactly what you're going to get, young lady, the worst spanking of your whole life!”
The child issues an elaborate shrug and strides off in a huff.
“I love you,” Stephen tells his wife, removing the pillow from his privates like a chef lifting the lid from a stew pot.
Again they press together, throwing all they have into it, every limb and gland and orifice, no holds barred, no positions banned.
“Unpardonable,” Kate groans.
“Unpardonable,” Stephen agrees. He's never been so excited. His entire body is an appendage to his loins.
“We'll be damned,” she says.
“Forever,” he echoes.
“Kiss me,” she commands.
“Farewell, friends,” says Xallibos. “And keep those kiddies coming!”
* * * *
Wrestling the resin baptismal font from the trunk of his car, Connie ponders the vessel's resemblance to a birdbath—a place, he muses, for pious sparrows to accomplish their avian ablutions. As he sets the vessel on his shoulder and starts away, its edges digging into his flesh, a different metaphor suggests itself. But if the font is Connie's Cross, and Constitution Road his Via Dolorosa, where does that leave his upcoming mission to Angela Dunfey? Is he about to perform some mysterious act of vicarious atonement?
“Morning, Father.”
He slips the font from his shoulder, standing it upright beside a fire hydrant. His parishioner Valerie Gallogher weaves amid the mob, dressed in a threadbare woolen parka.
“Far to go?” she asks brightly.
“End of the block.”
“Want help?”
“I need the exercise.”
Valerie extends her arm and they shake hands, mitten clinging to mitten. “Made any special plans for Saint Patrick's Day?”
“I'm going to bake shamrock cookies.”
“Green?”
“Can't afford food coloring.”
“I think I've got some green—you're welcome to it. Who's at the end of the block?”
“Angela Dunfey.”
A shadow flits across Valerie's face. “And her daughter?”
“Yes,” moans Connie. His throat constricts. “Her daughter.”
Valerie lays a sympathetic hand on his arm. “If I don't have green, we can probably fake it.”
“Oh, Valerie, Valerie—I wish I'd never taken Holy Orders.”
“We'll mix yellow with orange. I'm sorry, Father.”
“I wish this cup would pass.”
“I mean yellow with blue.”
Connie loops his arms around the font, embracing it as he might a frightened child. “Stay with me.”
Together they walk through the serrated March air and, reaching the Warren Avenue intersection, enter the tumble-down pile of bricks labeled No. 47. The foyer is as dim as a crypt. Switching on his penlight, Connie holds it aloft until he discerns the label A. Dunfey glued to a dented mailbox. He begins the climb to apartment 8-C, his parishioner right behind. On the third landing, Connie stops to catch his breath. On the sixth, he sets down the font. Valerie wipes his brow with her parka sleeve. She takes up the font, and the two of them resume their ascent.
Angela Dunfey's door is wormy, cracked, and hanging by one hinge. The mere act of knocking swings it open.
They find themselves in the kitchen—a small musty space that would have felt claustrophobic were it not so sparely furnished. A saucepan hangs over the stove; a frying pan sits atop the icebox; the floor is a mottle of splinters, tar paper, and leprous shards of linoleum. Valerie places the font next to the sink. The basin in which Angela Dunfey washes her dishes, Connie notes, is actually smaller than the one in which the Church of the Immediate Conception immortalizes infertiles.
He tiptoes into the bedroom. His parishioner sleeps soundly, her terrycloth bathrobe parted down the middle to accommodate her groggy, nursing infant; milk trickles from her breasts, streaking her belly with white rivulets. He must move now, quickly and deliberately, so there'll be no struggle, no melodramatic replay of 1 Kings 3:27, the desperate whore trying to tear her baby away from Solomon's swordsman.
Inhaling slowly, Connie leans toward the mattress and, with the dexterity of a weasel extracting the innards from an eggshell, slides the barren baby free and carries her into the kitchen.
Beside the icebox Valerie sits glowering on a wobbly three-legged stool.
“Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all humans enter the world in a state of depravity,” Connie whispers, casting a wary eye on Valerie, “and forasmuch as they cannot know the grace of our Lord except they be born anew of water"—he lays the infant on the floor near Valerie's feet—"I beseech you to call upon God the Father that, through this baptism, Merribell Dunfey may gain the divine kingdom.”
“Don't beseech me,” snaps Valerie.
Connie fills the saucepan, d
umps the water into the font, and returns to the sink for another load—not exactly holy water, he muses, not remotely chrism, but presumably not typhoidal either, the best the underbudgeted Boston Water Authority has to offer. He deposits the load, then fetches another.
A wide, milky yawn twists Merribell's face, but she does not cry out.
At last the vessel is ready. “Bless these waters, O Lord, that they might grant this sinner the gift of life everlasting.”
Dropping to his knees, Connie begins removing the infant's diaper. The first pin comes out easily. As he pops the second, the tip catches the ball of his thumb. Crown of thorns, he decides, feeling the sting, seeing the blood.
He bears the naked infant to the font. Wetting his punctured thumb, he touches Merribell's brow and draws the sacred plus sign with a mixture of blood and water. “We receive this sinner unto the mystical body of Christ, and do mark her with the Sign of the Cross.”
He begins the immersion. Skullcap. Ears. Cheeks. Mouth. Eyes. O Lord, what a monstrous trust, this power to underwrite a person's soul. “Merribell Dunfey, I baptize you in the name of the Father...”
* * * *
Now comes the nausea, excavating Stephen's alimentary canal as he kneels before the porcelain toilet bowl. His guilt pours forth in a searing flood—acidic strands of cabbage, caustic lumps of potato, glutinous strings of bile. Yet these pains are nothing, he knows, compared with what he'll experience on passing from this world to the next.
Drained, he stumbles toward the bedroom. Somehow Kate has bundled the older children off to school before collapsing on the floor alongside the baby. She shivers with remorse. Shrieks and giggles pour from the nursery: the preschoolers engaged in a raucous game of Blind Man's Bluff.
“Flaying machines,” she mutters. Her tone is beaten, bloodless. She lights a cigarette. “Peeling the damned like...”
Will more rum help, Stephen wonders, or merely make them sicker? He extends his arm. Passing over the nightstand, his fingers touch a box of aspirin, brush the preserved Epigaea repens, and curl around the neck of the half-full Arbutus bottle. A ruddy cockroach scurries across the doily.
