Embracing Darkness

by Christopher D. Roe

  “Phineas?” a voice called from within. “Is that you, boy? Is it really you?”

  The priest took it upon himself to open the front door, which he apparently knew would be unlocked, picked up his satchel, and entered. An old man appearing to be in his eighties and hunched over walked toward the front door, navigating with the help of two canes.

  “Can it really be you, my boy?” Dr. Robert Poole asked again.

  “It’s me, Pop.”

  “Well, come here, son, and give your old father a hug and a kiss.” said the relic, sounding elated.

  Father Poole obliged the old man and, walking the rest of the way to him, leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.

  “It’s been a long time, Pop,” said Phineas.

  “Too long,” replied the old man, “but I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally see you.”

  Just then Robert Poole noticed Jessie standing by the front door. His eyesight was poor, but Robert was able to make out her small frame and young face, recognizing her as a young girl in her teens.

  “I see you brought a friend with you,” said Dr. Poole. “Reminds me of the days when we helped girls her age who were in trouble.”

  Father Poole took the old man by the arm and whispered in his ear, “I need to talk to you, Pop.”

  “How’s that?” Robert Poole shouted back at Phineas.

  Jessie didn’t know what to make of all this. To her it seemed that Father Poole had brought her to his childhood home so she could meet his dying father, perhaps as a lesson in leading a righteous and long life.

  With the help of his son, Robert limped back into the living room and eased himself down onto the sofa, where his wife had spent most of her time many years earlier. Father Poole sat on one side while Jessie sat on the other. Robert Poole took a Lucky Strike from the cigarette box on the table along with a match that was lying next to it. With a shaky hand he placed the cigarette between his lips, ran his fingernail against the head of the match, and lit up.

  “Now,” the old man began, “what brings you two here?”

  “Pop,” Father Poole said in a loud voice so that he wouldn’t have to repeat anything. “Jessie is a ward of mine. She’s been living in my church since her infancy.”

  As Phineas said this, Robert smiled, nodded his head gently, and turned around to face Jessie. He patted her on the thigh with the same hand in which he was holding his cigarette. “I hope my son is good to you, dear. You seem like such a nice girl. A bit young for him, but a nice girl nonetheless.”

  Jessie frowned and turned away from the old man.

  “Pop!” shouted Phineas, and Robert Poole slowly turned back to his son. “That’s not it at all. She’s a child, and I’m a priest. Things like that don’t happen between people like us!”

  “Nonsense,” said Robert Poole. “A man is capable of anything, Phineas. Didn’t I teach you anything about life and the choices a man makes?”

  “Yes, Pop. You taught me all that from an early age, perhaps too early, but now is not the time to rehash the past. We need your help.”

  As Phineas related the entire story of the last few months, Robert Poole hunched forward, taking an occasional drag on his cigarette and absorbing all the information. When Phineas was done, Robert leaned forward, put as much of his weight as he could on his canes, and tried to force himself up. Jessie and Father Poole each grabbed an arm. The old man groaned as he rose and attempted to straighten his upper body.

  “I thought you were out of that business, Phineas,” said Robert Poole coldly. “Isn’t that the whole reason why you became a priest? Isn’t that why you’ve shunned me all these years, because of the very thing for which you now claim to need my help?”

  “You can do an abortion?” asked Jessie, stupefied.

  The old man cackled loudly.

  “Pop, this girl needs your help. I’ve been out of the loop for so long that I don’t know where else to turn. I know you haven’t done this kind of thing in a while, but I was wondering whether maybe you knew anyone at the hospital who could help us.”

  The room fell silent as Robert Poole turned slowly to face his son. The scraping of his two canes against the unpolished wood floor in the living room at 35 Faulkner Street made Jessie feel so uneasy that she began to get nauseous again. She walked over to a window and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Robert Poole bitterly. “I haven’t worked at or spoken to anyone in that hospital for over twenty years. I don’t even think there’s a single person I know who works there. You need to be in the hospital to have all the right connections; you need to know people well enough to the point where they’ll stick their necks out to help you with something like that. I haven’t been a part of that circle in years and years. What made you think I could help you, boy? And why is it that you come to me now, old and sick as I am, after years of staying away? Is it only because you need something from me?”

  Robert Poole then limped toward Jessica. “Look at her,” he continued, “someone you know and love. It’s only now that you recognize the necessity of the procedure and its importance. When it was all those girls you didn’t know, they were simply lumps of flesh from whom we removed their fetuses. And when you finally realized through religious indoctrination that this was what the zealots called a sin, you denied future women and young girls the right to be free of an unwanted pregnancy. What has changed now, Phineas? What makes this okay now when forty years ago it was so terrible a thing that you denied the existence of your own father and cut me off without another word? You are a hypocrite. What’s worse, you are untrue to yourself. Look at her. LOOK! I did what I did because of the compassion I felt for those girls, the same compassion you feel for this girl. I pitied your own mother. I mean your real mother, Edith Fisher, the one who bore you. I offered her my services because she came to me hurt and betrayed, not by me, the man who’d planted his seed in her, but by your pernicious sham of a mother. I offered Edith a way out. I gave her that option, but she wanted to have you. And have you she did, along with… .”

  Father Poole, who’d been staring at the floor in shame, looked up at Robert Poole as the old man stopped his tirade. The priest walked slowly toward his father. “Along with what, Pop?” asked Phineas.

  Jessie approached Father Poole from behind and tugged at his arm. “Come on, Father Fin,” she urged. “Let’s just leave.”

  “No,” replied Father Poole. “Not until I hear the rest. Go on, Pop. She had me along with what?”

  Robert Poole brought his face up to the ceiling as best he could. “Forgive me, Edith,” he intoned. “Forgive me.”

  The old man dragged his canes around slowly, the sound again causing goose bumps on Jessie’s skin. What Robert Poole said next was inaudible to both of his guests, so he was forced to repeat himself: “I said, along with your twin sister.”

  “I have a twin sister?” replied Father Poole after a long pause, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “But how can that be? Mother never said… .”

  “She kept it hidden. She forced Edith to agree to give up the baby girl, another part of her master plan.”

  Robert Poole sighed deeply and looked around for a place to sit. Father Poole and Jessie went to his aid and guided him to a chair that stood against the wall adjacent to the couch.

  “Edith wanted the little girl, but circumstances being what they were she couldn’t keep the child. Her husband would have killed her had he found out she was sleeping with another man. So she agreed to keep the baby girl a secret. She never did want me to tell you because she thought you’d resent us for it, even though I thought about telling you that day at the seminary. Somehow I thought, angry as you were, that you’d understand that it had to be done, given the situation.”

  “What happened to the baby?” asked Jessie.

>   “I took the child to the orphanage in Exeter, and that was the last I saw of her. I never found out whether the child was adopted. I don’t know what became of her.”

  “But she was your own flesh and blood,” said Phineas angrily. “Surely you cared about what happened to your own daughter.”

  “And what good would that have done, boy?” snapped Robert Poole. “She’d still be lost to us. The heart doesn’t grieve for what the mind doesn’t know.”

  Phineas walked back toward the front door, ready to leave 35 Faulkner Street for good, but he remembered who he’d brought with him and the one thing he needed to do more than anything else at that moment.

  “I’ll do it myself then,” Father Poole called from the foyer.

  “Are you sure, Father Fin?” Jessie asked. “I mean, do you remember how? And aren’t you against this kind of thing anyway? You’re supposed to be a priest.”

  “I don’t want a child born only to be abandoned,” replied Father Poole, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears. He returned to the living room and added, “Like my sister.”

  Robert Poole nodded, and then said, “Everything you require is still out back in the shed. It’s been carefully stored all these years and should be as good as new with a quick sterilization.”

  Phineas knelt down and picked up the satchel he’d brought with him. “I brought something to put it in once it’s all over,” he remarked.

  Robert Poole limped over to the kitchen window, where he watched his son walk out to the shed with Jessie.

  Twenty-Seven

  Armageddon

  The bus ride back to Holly was uncomfortable for Father Poole and Jessie, more so than the one they’d taken to Portsmouth a few hours before. The sky was now overcast; it was almost dusk; and the temperature had plummeted fifteen degrees from its high of the day.

  “I can’t believe you brought it with you,” said Jessie, a hint of anger and resentment in her voice as she peered down at the satchel that contained her tiny, dead fetus.

  “I want it buried in a place that means something to you,” said Father Poole.

  “Why?” she snapped. “It’s not like it meant anything special to me while it was alive.”

  “It was your child, Jessie, your own flesh and blood.”

  With all the emotion at 35 Faulkner Street, Phineas had forgotten to say a prayer for the thing that would never be a baby and for his own soul that now, he believed, was in peril once again. He took from his breast pocket a little box, opened it, pulled out a set of rosary beads, and began praying.

  Jessie leaned her head against the window and also closed her eyes but for an entirely different reason. She was holding back tears and still hurt. It was as much emotional as physical. Besides her body’s aching from the procedure, her heart ached from what Father Poole had told her: “‘It was your child, Jessie, your own flesh and blood.’” Her heart ached as well for Billy, for now she believed she’d never see him again. And it ached from the constant fear she’d felt since her attack. All the while, Jack White’s face kept appearing in her mind.

  In her state of emotional turmoil Jessie thought about Sister Ignatius with immense fondness, recalling how the nun had been an anchor of protection and security in her life. She particularly remembered, though why Jessie couldn’t say, one time when she had succeeded in climbing the maple higher than any of the boys. Sister Ignatius had heard them cheering and screaming Jessie’s name, so she ran outside to see what all the commotion was about. When she saw Jessie up so high, Sister took it upon herself to climb the tree halfway and demanded that Jessie get down before she made the girl’s behind black and blue.

  “God, I miss her,” Jessie muttered.

  Father Poole stopped his praying and smiled because he knew to whom Jessie was referring. “I know, sweetheart,” he said, gently tapping the back of her hand. She didn’t shy away from his touch anymore. “I do too,” he added.

  Jessie wiped away the rest of the tears. “I need her now more than ever. Why can’t I see her?” she asked in a shaky voice. “You know how much I love her, Father Fin, and you won’t let me see her.”

  Father Poole hunched closer to Jessie and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. “Because it’s the way she wanted it,” he told her. “She’s so sick, Jessie. You’ve no idea how bad it is, and I have to respect her wishes. She doesn’t want any of you children, you especially, to see her this way.”

  “What way? I don’t even know what’s wrong with her. All you said was that it might be cancer, and that was months ago.”

  “It is cancer,” the priest said at last, hesitating to finish what he’d intended to say. “Brain cancer.”

  Jessie immediately put her hand to her mouth, the tears flowing even more abundantly now. “Oh no,” she sobbed softly to herself. “I didn’t know you could get it in… .”

  Father Poole nodded and reached over to hug her.

  “How?” she asked, appearing almost inconsolable, as other riders on the bus began taking notice. Noting this attention, Phineas removed his hands from Jessie’s shoulders and sank back into his seat.

  “Jessie,” he said. “I need you to keep your composure. Cry all you want, but wait until we’re back home. We’ll be there in a matter of minutes.”

  She didn’t say another word to the priest until they arrived at the bus depot.

  Father Poole gave Jessie the satchel. At first she jerked back, repulsed by the bag’s contents, and refused to take it, but he forced it into her hand. “Just bring it up to the rectory and leave it some place where no one will find it,” he told her. “Put it in my office if you must, but don’t let anyone know its contents.”

  She nodded passively and then asked why he wasn’t coming back up to the rectory with her.

  “I’m going back to see Sister,” he replied, “and I might be spending more time with her now that she’s… .”

  “Now that she’s what?” Jessie said, sounding almost frantic.

  “She’s what they call terminal, Jessie.”

  “Terminal?” she said, frustrated that she didn’t understand the word. “Then take me with you!”

  “Absolutely not. Why, she’d never forgive me!”

  “Father Fin, I would never forgive you if you didn’t let me see her one last time.”

  The priest thought for a moment, but no words came that could explain the situation’s delicacy. He wanted to respect Sister’s wishes, but he also knew that Jessie had grown into an intelligent, headstrong young woman who always spoke her mind. Furthermore, he hated the distance that had arisen between the two of them since Jessie’s rape.

  “Alright, my love,” he said, hugging her. “I’ll talk to Sister when I see her tonight. I’ll make her understand how important it is that you see her, but I should warn you that her appearance has changed. Her hair is thin, and she’s lost a lot of weight. She won’t be how you remember her.”

  “The last time I saw her,” Jessie replied, “she looked pretty much like what you’ve described.”

  “It’s much worse now.”

  I’ll be ready for anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Jessie inhaled deeply and nodded, fighting back her emotions. “Yes, Father Fin. I’m sure.”

  When the priest told her he’d be back the next day, possibly before nightfall, and to be sure that everyone minded what Mr. White said, Jessie made her opinion known. “Father Fin, we keep telling you over and over that there’s something wrong about this guy.”

  Father Poole shook his head and frowned. “Dear Jessica, how many times are you going to come to me with this report? The man is not dangerous. I’ve left him alone with you all before, and nothing bad happened. The sky didn’t fall down. The place didn’t burn to the ground. None of you died.”

  At that moment Jessi
e thought of Sue Ellen and Ziggy but then figured that he was right. Ziggy hadn’t died while Father Fin was away. “So I guess we just have to accept it,” said Jessie. “Jack White’s not going anywhere, is he? He’s going to stay with us for good?”

  “Yes,” answered Father Poole, turning to see what time it was by the big clock on the station wall. “Listen. My bus leaves in two minutes, and I have to go. Please, Jessie. I’ll speak to Sister for you. In the meantime bring that bag up to the rectory and put it in a safe place. And please don’t give Mr. White any grief. I know none of you understand him, but I do, and I’m the one in charge. I take people in who need me, just like your brothers. They needed me, and I took them in. I love Zach… that is, I love Jack, just as I do all of you.”

  Jessie didn’t make anything out of Father Poole’s slip of tongue.

  The priest kissed Jessie on the forehead, hopped on his bus, and was soon bound for Exeter.

  Although the orphanage in Exeter was not more than a half hour’s walk from Holly, Father Poole decided that, because it was getting dark and growing colder by the minute, it was worth the twenty-cent bus fare to lie back and snooze before arriving there.

  While on the bus he reflected on what Jessie had just said about Jack White, but Father Poole knew that this was a special man who needed to be understood by someone. Then he thought of Ellen, loaded up on morphine and alone in her room until his arrival. He wondered what her reaction would be when he told her that he had divulged to Jessie the nature of her illness. He knew that Sister would be angry with him, but Father Poole was in the business of trying to please everyone at the expense of his own happiness. Such was part of his atonement for the sins he’d committed years earlier in the shed.

  Phineas then thought about what his father had confessed about his having a twin sister. Father Poole had been so concerned about Jessie while performing her abortion that he’d forgotten about the other big shock. Now that he remembered his father’s revelation, the priest couldn’t get it out of his head.