A nurse’s station dispensing daily medications now stood where the coffee bar had served caramel lattes and nonfat mochas. The indoor playground had been converted into a comfortable sitting area where it had been assumed grandchildren would share details of the latest school grades earned or peewee sports trophies won. Most of the space previously designated for small group classrooms, a student center, an infant nursery, and the brightly colored “Kid Village” had been gutted and remodeled to accommodate the building’s growing population of senior citizens in various stages of despondency, debilitation, deterioration, or death.
As soon as he entered the building Matthew recognized a familiar image on the wall, an ancient icon of Christ holding a book in his left hand while the tips of three fingers pressed together on his right. If memory served, it had originated in the fifth or sixth century. Before he could place the date, however, the picture changed. A thousand tiny digital shifts morphed the icon into a less familiar religious symbol, a cartoon dove spreading its white wings against a baby blue background. It seemed modern, like a relic of the late-twentieth-century charismatic movement. Then another change, to Jesus dying on a cross. It reminded him of the crucifix that had hung behind the altar at the church his mother attended while still limber enough to kneel and lucid enough to remember the Sabbath. Next came the silhouette of hands raised in worship, facing a brightly lit stage.
Matthew noticed the receptionist just in time to escape another image change. He walked toward the middle-aged woman seated behind the kind of desk likely occupied by a security guard during weekday visiting hours. The sign-in list told Matthew he would be the first of the weekend. From all appearances, guards didn’t keep a flood of intruders from getting in. They prevented residents from wandering out.
“I’m here to see Richard Tomberlin,” Matthew explained. The woman appeared alarmed, frantically searching the desk for a volunteer manual explaining what to do if an actual visitor came by during her shift as a hospitality hostess. After thirty seconds of panic she remembered her manners.
“I’m sorry. Welcome to Chapel Hills. Did you enjoy the service?”
“Excuse me?” Matthew asked.
“Did you enjoy the worship service? It’s so nice when loved ones attend with the residents. They get quite lonely.”
“No, ma’am. I’m not related to any of the residents.”
She looked over Matthew’s shoulder to peer at a clock on the wall. “Of course. I’m sorry. The service doesn’t end for another fifteen minutes.”
He stood quietly.
“How can I help you, then?”
“Richard Tomberlin?” he repeated.
“Oh. You wish to see a resident?”
“No, ma’am. I’d like to see Richard Tomberlin. He works here.”
“Is he a doctor?”
“A priest. Or rather, a retired priest. I forget his title, but I think he’s some sort of counselor.”
Five minutes later the flustered hostess located the information Matthew needed and sent him on his way to find room 122—which, she explained, could be found just beyond the auditorium entrance. Approaching the doors, he heard an amplified voice within. The service was still in progress, but someone pushed the doors open nonetheless. A smattering of attendees walked or wheeled out in an apparent effort to beat the crowd to a lunchroom where, he would soon discover, everyone was simultaneously served.
Noticing an emaciated woman trying to navigate her wheelchair through the narrow passage, Matthew rushed over to hold the door for her. She moved past him without acknowledging his presence. He looked in her eyes, noticing the same forlorn gaze he detected in the other passing residents, a look increasingly evident on his mother’s face.
He remembered the words of Professor Vincent. We decay, Matthew. All the genetic screening and medical advancements in the world had not reversed a process that had been vexing the human race since the dawn of time. His mother would not improve. He too would age. He too would decay.
SPIRIT GOOD. BODY BAD.
“Matthew?” The voice sounded familiar. “Matthew Adams?”
Father Tomberlin looked much older, reminding Matthew how long it had been since he had taken his mother to Mass. Having received first communion and attended St. Joseph’s Parochial School during his elementary and junior high years made Matthew technically a Roman Catholic. But he was sure he had passed some sort of expiration date after nearly two decades avoiding church. Still, he had always liked Father Richard, his mother’s favorite priest, turned Matthew’s favorite teacher, turned whatever role he now served at Chapel Hills Residential Community.
“Father Richard?”
“Just Rick. That’s what everyone else calls me these days. Wonderful to see you again, my boy!”
Matthew smiled at the reminder of Father Richard’s pet handle for every student at St. Joseph’s. They had all been his boys, each craving affirmation from the closest thing most had had to a flesh-and-blood father.
“I appreciate you taking time for me.” He meant it. Dr. Vincent had a keen mind. But he might also have a damned soul. Father Richard, by contrast, still wore a clerical collar. Wrestling with a profoundly spiritual question had incited Matthew to seek a priestly perspective on the off chance God really did speak through the church.
“Let’s pop over to the dining hall before we get trampled in slow motion.” Music began in the background, signaling the benediction of a service that must end at noon. “I hope you like creamed corn and tapioca pudding!”
The priest’s laughter sparked fond memories for Matthew, who tended to take himself too seriously. When teaching junior high Father Richard had often cracked himself up in the middle of his lectures on topics like the imagination of J. R. R. Tolkien or the wit of G. K. Chesterton. None of the students got their teacher’s humor, but all of them relished his snorting guffaws.
During the fifty-yard stroll toward lunch Matthew caught up on Father Richard’s life. His retirement from St. Joseph’s. His year in Vatican City. His return to Colorado, where he was asked to provide specialized counseling to ailing seniors disguised as carefree retired church members. Because the facility housed residents from a broad spectrum of religious traditions, the Chapel needed a man who could cater to the particular spiritual needs of Roman Catholics. As it turned out, residents of any and every religious persuasion came to see him. All of them needed someone to talk to about the question that haunted anyone past seventy. The same question that had prompted Matthew’s visit.
“How’s your mother?” Father Richard asked as they took their seats at one of the small tables near the outer window.
“Not good.”
“Does she still attend Mass at Our Lady?”
Matthew had been refusing her requests for years. He felt an urge to confess his negligence. “When she can. Not often.”
Father Richard looked deeply into his former student’s eyes as if reading a story, requiring mere seconds to discern the plot. “Dementia?”
“Yes, sir. Worse by the day.” Matthew glanced around the room, spotting the wheelchair-bound woman he had helped at the door. He pointed. “Sort of like her.”
“How old now?”
“Seventy-seven next month.”
“Still living at home?”
A nod followed by a long silence. “I’m tired.”
“So you’re considering putting her here?” Father Richard assumed aloud.
“Oh no.” The possibility had never occurred to Matthew. “She doesn’t have that kind of money. I hire a parent-sitter when I can. We manage.”
“But?”
“But I think there’s a better option.” He hesitated.
“What kind of better option?” the priest prodded.
“We’re considering a transition.”
It was the first time Matthew had spoken the words to another human being. It felt simultaneously shameful and liberating, as when he had confessed impure adolescent thoughts to the same man two decades e
arlier. Now, as then, he hoped to receive absolution for what he knew was wrong but couldn’t help.
“She wants me to finish college. To become a professor.” The words rushed out as if trying to overtake the sin with validity.
Father Richard’s eyes narrowed at the thickening plot. “She wants to end her life?”
Matthew disliked the sound of the question. Too much clarity for a complicated decision.
“I think so.”
“You think?” No letup. “What did she say?”
Another urge to confess bullied by rationalization. “She said she wants me to teach college, to use what money remains for tuition.”
Two plates of unappetizing food invaded their privacy. Priest and confessor raised their forks, the sound of chewing filling the silence as Matthew awaited advice he hadn’t requested. He swallowed hard, opened his mouth to speak, then took another bite.
Father Richard turned his eyes toward something specific on the other side of the room. “Do you see the woman over there in the red dress?”
Matthew searched and found. “I do.”
“Her name is Carolyn. She came into my office last week after attending a transition consultation with her daughter. She closed the door and began weeping like a baby. I guess the family has hit upon some pretty hard financial times. I think her son-in-law lost a job. Something like that.”
Matthew looked back across the table. “She seems pretty healthy. Why would the daughter want her to transition?”
“It wasn’t the daughter who made the appointment. It was Carolyn. She wants to help them out by preserving as much of her estate as possible. She came to my office upset over her daughter’s reaction.”
“Was the daughter mad?”
“At first. They’ve always been very close. The daughter hated discussing the possibility of her mother’s death. But Carolyn insisted, so they made the appointment just to gather information, no immediate intentions of exploring the possibility. More like a remote contingency option in case Carolyn’s health deteriorated and elder-care expenses became cost-prohibitive.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Does it?” A slight edge invaded Father Richard’s customarily playful voice.
“Isn’t it wise to know your options?” Matthew asked.
“I’ll let you decide after hearing the rest of the story. Carolyn wept in my office because of what happened once her daughter better understood the transition option.”
He had Matthew’s undivided attention.
“Long story short, the daughter did a one-eighty. She saw Carolyn’s interest in a transition as the answer to a whole bunch of problems like mounting debt that threatened their ability to pay the mortgage. Not to mention her husband’s depression over the lack of decent job opportunities.”
“So the daughter changed her mind?”
“She did. But so did Carolyn.” Father Richard leaned back in his chair. “The daughter now seemed eager for Carolyn to transition. She thanked her mom for being willing to make such a heroic offer at the same moment Carolyn got a knot in her stomach like a condemned prisoner touring the gallows.”
“Wow.” It was all Matthew could think to say.
The priest took another bite of food to let the scene sink in.
“Carolyn wanted my advice. But she mostly wanted a shoulder to cry on. Imagine how she felt, her beloved daughter suddenly eager for Mom’s demise.”
“What’d you say?”
“I mostly listened while handing her an entire box of tissues one at a time. She grew up attending the Chapel so she wasn’t Catholic, but I read her what the catechism says anyway: ‘Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.’”
“Isn’t her dignity the point?”
“Yes, it is.”
Matthew sensed they were on different wavelengths. “What I mean is, doesn’t it grant the highest dignity to a spiritual being to free him or her from a decaying body? You know, go to heaven and all that.”
“Have you so quickly forgotten what I taught you in catechism class, my boy?”
Apparently he had.
“I quote the catechism again. ‘The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become a temple of the Spirit.’”
Matthew looked around the room. “Temple of the Spirit? More like a collection of shacks.”
He felt a warm hand on his forearm. “Look at me, son,” Father Richard said earnestly. “You need to convince your mother that a transition is not the answer. Tell her what I told Carolyn, that our heavenly Father feeds the birds of the air. I’m sure he can take care of an overdue mortgage payment or two.” A slight pause. “He can also fund a young man’s college ambitions.”
Matthew tried to hide his annoyance at the implication and give Father Richard the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the priest was ignorant, unlikely as it seemed, of the teachings of ancient Gnostics and modern professors like Dr. Vincent. Maybe he had been so busy tending parishioners and preparing high school lesson plans that he had overlooked a form of spirituality offering freedom from rather than imprisonment within failing bodies.
“I don’t know,” Matthew began. “I mean, she is deteriorating pretty fast. I’m not sure I can…”
“You can,” Father Richard interrupted. “You must. Transitions are nothing more than suicide by a different name. A mortal sin. Satan’s attack on the very image of God.”
It was then that Matthew realized his mistake. He should not have sought the advice of Father Richard Tomberlin.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Julia retreated to the guest room, eager to recover from one of the few fast-food meals she had eaten since graduating from college. She felt a rumble in her stomach, not from the grease, but from the conversation with Troy Simmons. It had been quite some time since an attractive man showed genuine interest in her that wasn’t motivated by alcohol or overheated hormones. She reprimanded herself for a spark of chemistry she could not allow.
You could never be with a man like that! Or could she?
Troy is another Kevin, stuck in the Dark Ages with archaic views of masculinity. Or was he?
Of course he is! How else could he attend a church filled with breeders and mindlessly parrot a creed written back when women were treated like property?
And yet she found herself mysteriously drawn to his quiet strength. Troy Simmons carried himself with an unforced, natural authority that invited a sense of belonging and safety Julia remembered feeling around Angie’s dad when they were teenagers.
Their conversation included none of the smooth one-liners or cocky self-obsession she had endured with other men. Troy had seemed more like an apprehensive adolescent trying to avoid missteps while talking to a cute girl. She found herself flattered by his nervous attempts, like the question he asked while they sat at the table waiting for Kevin and Angie to order their food.
“Do they harass you about being single too?”
“Who?”
“You,” he said inadequately. “I mean, your friends and family. Do they prod you toward marriage?”
“I don’t have a partner, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she answered, emphasizing the more acceptable word.
“Partner. Right. Sorry.”
The word marriage had fallen out of favor, especially in the glossary used by Julia’s editors, ever since cohabitation became the new normal. The mistake seemed to make Troy even more tongue-tied as he tried to make small talk with someone who held very different assumptions about love and sex.
Julia decided to ease the tension. “I don’t get much prodding. Although a few rogue readers have asked me to soften my critique of traditional unions.”
“Traditional unions?” he repeated. “You mean like Kevin and Angie’s?”
“I guess.”
“
What, specifically, do you dislike about it…er…them? About marriage?”
And so it went. During their early conversation Troy seemed to tangle or butcher most of his sentences. She found it infuriatingly charming.
Things got worse and better when Angie suggested Julia stand in line with Troy to retrieve three junior ice-cream cones, a task he could easily have handled alone. Despite Julia’s glower, Angie winked at her not-so-subtle matchmaking effort.
“I noticed you stayed seated during that last bit in the service.” Julia felt she owed him her thanks. “I couldn’t parrot the mantra so assumed I didn’t qualify. You?”
Troy winced at her choice of words. “I try to recite the creed, but I don’t have it down like Kevin, Angie, or the other members.”
“Have it down?”
“I usually stumble somewhere between ‘Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate’ and ‘right hand of the Father.’ And once I mess up the cadence I can never find an easy reentry.”
Julia heard herself laugh, happy to learn she had not been the only one faking it during the service. “But you believe it?” she asked.
“Most of the time,” he confessed. “I’m pretty new to Christianity.”
Julia reacted in surprise. She hadn’t expected Kevin’s closest friend to be a lapsed pagan. “How new?”
“You might say I’m still kicking the tires. I started attending Apostles’ Church with the Tolberts when I came to DC.” He looked quickly at his watch, mentally calculating backward. “About a year now. It’s quite different from the churches I visited with my grandma as a kid.”
“Tell me about it!” she agreed. “I expected something more like the church Angie bribed me into attending with her during high school.”
“I never took to Christianity before.” He looked away for a moment. “Wish I had.”
“Had what?”
“Wish I had taken to it. You know, went all-in. It might have helped me make better choices.” His voice sagged, the sound of a man living with regrets he would rather not describe. “How about you?”
Fatherless: A Novel Page 17
