by Blair Hurley
Make me Jesus wholly thine,
Take this wayward heart of mine,
Guide me through this world so drear,
Heart of Jesus, hear!
Beside her was Paul’s fine dark baritone and Marion’s hardworking soprano. The kids were singing, and she heard her mother’s sweet voice, the singing voice she had not heard in a decade. An altar boy swung by with thurible, intent on his task, smiling seriously, and then the white-crested priest took his place in the high pulpit.
“Joy to us on this day!” he said, beaming. Today was Easter, more sacred than Ash Wednesday, more ecclesiastical than Christmas Eve. Today’s sermon was the most important part of his job. “I want to talk about abandonment today,” he said. “I want to talk about the long absence of the Lord from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. I want to talk about the lonely times when people found themselves in places God seemed not to be. We’ve all been there. Doubt is part of the human condition. Doubt is when we look through all the corners of our lives and can’t seem to find the Lord’s presence. That’s a scary thought.” He paused, allowed himself a patrician look over his glasses. The audience stirred with laughter. It was a moment before Nicole realized that she was laughing, too. The easy, familiar cadence of his words! The relief of English, of the stories she’d grown up with, the words she knew how to pronounce! She leaned forward in the pew.
“We can see the evidence of the Lord’s love all around us,” the priest said. “We see the mother who loves the child. We see the brothers and the sisters, the husbands and the wives. We see people held together by the sacred bonds of love. But sometimes we forget to look at these things. We see only our own questions staring us in the face. We wonder, ‘Who could love me?’ Doubt is a potent force, but it is a childish one. We are like children, forever asking, ‘Why? Why?’ Parents, this must sound familiar.” Another benign gaze over the rim of his glasses, another ripple of laughter. “But the Bible tells us there is a time when we must put aside childish things. All our questioning shrinks before the enormous, immutable fact of God’s existence.”
The priest paused to let this sink in. The church was rich with quiet. “Today we rejoice,” he said. “Because Christ is risen again. Because the promise of our God—that death is only a temporary condition—has been fulfilled. Today the doors of heaven are thrown open wide. Today we break the iron chains of doubt. But this promise is only fulfilled when we believe, when we accept the gift of love that is given. When we take body and blood inside us.”
Nicole sat straighter. She cast a look behind herself: she could see a mosaic of human faces, all of them familiar in their still poses. Of course they wanted the same things she did. Of course they wanted the promise that sadness was not the inherent state of their lives, that the axle of the world turned on secret wells of joy. When you looked into the night sky, in the gaps between the stars, you needed something to be there. They had to believe it, the same way she did. She closed her eyes and let the words flood her, thick and sweet as syrup, oozing snug and airtight into all the hollow grooves of herself. “This is the day the Lord has made, alleluia,” said the priest.
And she and the congregation answered, “Let us be glad and rejoice in it, alleluia.”
“Let us pray,” said the priest.
Then it was time for Communion. They moved to the front pew by pew, shuffling past the altar and the five priests who now stood there, hustling with packages of crackers and wine. When it was her turn, Nicole found herself in front of the white-crested priest. He smiled—You’re new, he seemed to say with a waggle of eyebrows—and reached for her. She felt the old push and clasp of her head. The wafer was at her lips. For a moment panic seized hold of her. The priest’s hand on her head pressed harder. Almost against her will, she opened her mouth and took the wafer onto her tongue, swallowing it in a rough gulp.
She got back to the pew before anyone else did. There on the wooden seat was Paul’s phone; she figured it must have slipped out of his pocket. And there was a new message blinking on the screen. It said:
My pussy misses you.
She froze, closed the phone, placed it back on the pew with infinite care. Then the family was back, pressing in around her for the final prayer, the last song. Paul slipped the phone into his pants pocket. She looked at him quickly, then fixed her eyes forward for the rest of the service.
On the lawn, a brisk wind played with the priests’ surplices. Charlie and June drank orange juice from paper cups and picked the cookies they wanted. They were getting whiny, hanging on Marion’s arm, their small window of good behavior closing with waffles on the horizon. Nicole’s mother promised egg hunts in the park. She and Marion had been up late last night, dyeing eggs. “Come on, Nicole, I want you to meet our pastor,” Paul said, pulling her through the crowd. She stared at his pocket as he walked. The phone seemed to glow inside it.
The pastor was shaking hands amid a circle of churchgoers; Paul shouldered himself into the ring. “Father, I’d like you to meet my sister, Nicole,” he said. “She’s just moved to New York.”
“Of course, I saw many new faces today. That’s Easter for you. It brings all the Catholics out of the woodwork.” The father clasped her hand with both of his. “Welcome, Nicole, welcome. Did you enjoy the service? I know Paul was raised in the church, so I assume you were as well.”
“Yes, that’s correct. It was a lovely sermon,” she said honestly. The pastor was something out of a children’s book, with a kind-wizard twinkle in his eyes. She groped for the right words, the right tactful appreciation. “I haven’t been to church in a long time, but I’m glad I did today.”
The pastor smiled. “Tell me, do you still get a shiver when you hear Latin?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “The first language that God speaks to us with is the most powerful. It never leaves us. The Protestants got it wrong when they put the prayers in English. There must be a pure language of prayer in our lives. And Catholic magic is very strong.”
“You’re very wise, Father,” she said.
“And didn’t you miss spirituality in your life?”
Then Paul was shaking the pastor’s hand. “She’s been away far too long, Father.”
The priest leaned in now, squeezing her arm. “Have you confessed, my dear? It’s important, you know, before you take Communion. Start with a clean slate.”
The circle of churchgoers pressed in close, ringing her with their noxious goodwill. She tore herself free. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” she said.
There was a frozen silence. “There’s no sin too great—” the pastor said. Beside her, Paul glared. A ferocious silent message in his eyes: You’re embarrassing us.
She shook her head. “I left the church a long time ago. I’m a Buddhist.”
It was astonishing how a group of happy, welcoming people could become so cold so quickly. Now on their faces she saw the whole spectrum of emotion her family had shown: disappointment, smiling indulgence, disgust. Her mother was shaking her head. “You always have to make a scene. Why do you always have to make a scene about it?”
She stepped backward, bumping into someone. “Excuse me—I’m sorry—” She was trapped again. She elbowed and shoved. “Please—I’d better go.” She set off fast for the gate.
Paul cut her off while she was still passing the gravestones. “Come on, Nicole!”
She stopped, wiped her damp forehead in the chilly spring air. “What do you want me to do, Paul? Just tell me once and for all what you really wanted me to do when you had me move here. Tell me what I’m doing here.”
He hesitated. “You know what I want you to do? You want to do me a big favor, Nicole? Just shut the fuck up about Buddhism and channeling your New Age energy and good and bad karma and all that bullshit. Because I’m sick of it. Everyone’s had enough of all the bullshit.”
“Everyone?”
“Me, Marion, Mom, everyone. We’re all just waiting for you to figure out that leading an adult life is abo
ut making compromises and then living with them for the sake of the people around you.” Paul was no longer angry, just tired. “You can’t pretend that you’re still some seventeen-year-old who’s going to drop off the grid or be the next maharishi. We all figured that out eventually, but you can’t seem to understand.” Now his hands were on her shoulders; he was shaking her urgently. “You lied to me once, remember? You promised you were coming home, but you weren’t. I didn’t tell Mom and Dad because I thought you’d walk in the door and be okay. Please. Just find some guy you halfway like, have a couple of kids and go to yoga on the weekends, and stop turning everything into your own personal spiritual quest.”
She trembled. “You think you’re perfect, you’ve got life all figured out? I saw your phone, Paul. The text from—whoever. You act awfully self-righteous for someone cheating on his wife. You confess to that today?”
“It’s none of your business.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Mom’s given up on you, you know. She’s never going to forget how you threw us all away.”
They both looked toward the knot of churchgoers. Her mother was talking to the priest, her hand gestures expansive, apologetic. She wasn’t going to come over now.
Paul turned back toward Nicole, his face haggard. “I’m the one who wanted you to move. It was me, not Mom. I still think you can settle down and live a normal life.”
Nicole stared at her mother. Looked at her neatening June’s bow, encouraging her to stand up straight with the little gesture Nicole had grown up seeing her make. Paul was right. The realization sank in slowly: her mother hadn’t cared whether she came to New York or not. She didn’t care whether she had a job or found a man; she’d given up on her only daughter.
“But I still give a damn,” Paul said raggedly. “So just do me a favor and let this go.”
She tried to breathe, to stay calm. And then she couldn’t. “Fuck. You,” she said.
This was the part where he reached for her, sorry now, exasperated but contrite. “Come on, Nic.” This was where he’d hold her close and she’d weep and apologize. She’d return to the family, to the white fluttering lace and the purple banners, to the waffles. She’d stroll with them through the green park, hunting for eggs that Marion and her mother had stayed up dunking in cups of hot colored dye. And then she’d come back to the townhouse, with its creaking furniture, and eat lamb with mint jelly. And the day would march safely on into the unremarkable story of her life.
But no. She was not going to do that.
Instead, this was where he got hold of her arm, gripping with surprising force, until she had to thrash free, hissing, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” like some mental patient. This was where the churchgoers looked over uneasily and her mother simply looked away, done with her. At last she was free, running for the gates, hailing a cab, not looking back, except briefly, once, to see Paul at the curb with one hand raised. Either trying to stop her. Or trying to wave good-bye.
Jocelyn had invited her out for Easter dinner with friends, but she’d declined since she had to be with her family. Leaving the church, she’d called breathlessly. “Is it too late to come?” They were meeting in one of Manhattan’s giant ballroom dim sum restaurants.
As she’d crossed Canal Street, the sleek marble and glass of the Financial District had given way to low-slung apartment buildings, girded with crates of fish and knotted ginger, bubble tea and bodhi tree seeds. Buddhas were in the windows, fat, laughing, womanly, mysterious. Here, Buddhism was big business. Souvenir shops offered paper lanterns with prayers on them, fake jade, rosary beads, and sandalwood candles. Quan Yin statues thronged together on card tables on the street.
Their group filled up a round table; they were all talking in the loud, vehement voices of New Yorkers, making themselves heard in the general clamor. Around Nicole waiters in crisp red and black swept by with carts of stacked bamboo boxes, red lacquered bowls holding pale flesh-colored dumplings, chicken feet in glistening orange sauce. She was sitting next to Elliot, rubbing elbows with him while she cracked hot, brittle egg rolls. She remembered his fiery little red ears under the edges of his too-small fedora, the taste of him (beer and Altoids and ash). “Are you as bad with chopsticks as I am?” he asked. “I’m going to apologize for my table manners in advance.”
“All right, I’ll accept.” She was good with chopsticks, but her hands were still shaking.
“How’s the meditation going?” Elliot asked. “Reach a higher plane yet?”
“It’s going.”
Jocelyn had grabbed her elbow at the door. “Don’t let Elliot suck you into the vortex.”
“What do you mean? He seemed nice.”
“Elliot’s been dealing with a divorce for the past few months. He can be very moody. All of a sudden he starts spinning into a death spiral and he takes whoever’s nearby with him.”
But Elliot seemed sunny and sardonic today as he had before, eating the shrimp cakes two-handed, grinning and winking at his friends. Jocelyn smiled tolerantly when he reached over her to grab the last pork bun. The giant room was packed; theirs were among the few non-Asian tables, the language around them a flurry of Mandarin or Cantonese.
“This is good timing, coming here now,” said Elliot. “Or on second thought, maybe especially bad timing.” He was wrestling with a shrimp patty, trying to cut it with his chopsticks. “Wonder how many of these people are having their Easter brunch here. Lots of Chinese are Christian now, aren’t they?”
“I suppose,” said Jocelyn.
“You can tell by looking at them,” said Elliot’s friend Drake. Another hipster in red sneakers fond of cocaine.
Nicole raised her head. “How can you tell if someone’s been to church just by looking?”
“Like you, for example,” said Drake. “The stockings are a dead giveaway. And the shoes. Too fancy to be comfortable. You can always tell when a woman’s been to church.”
“I bet you’re nipping off to a temple right after,” said Elliot. “Cheating on Jesus with the Buddha. Or is it the other way around?”
She chewed a ball of rice in silence.
“You are cheating,” he said. “I see how it is. Got to keep the family harmony, right? Did you ever even leave the church? After the shit you gave me?” He laughed. “When the going gets tough—” He stabbed a dumpling with one chopstick and brought it to his mouth. “Where do you go? Running back to the fold.”
She wanted to tell him he was ridiculously wrong, simpleminded, judgmental, hopelessly reductive. But no words came.
“Excuse me,” she said, and hurried for the bathroom, leaving him smirking at the table.
In line in the narrow, dark hallway, she found herself behind the mother and daughter from the next table over. They spoke quickly to each other. (Or was it, she wondered, just that unknown languages always seem faster than our own?) The mother pressed her hand to the girl’s neck, smoothing her hair. Nicole stared at them and remembered her own mother touching her hair in the same way, the casual gesture of everyday love. She wanted to say a prayer for them, to protect them.
Jocelyn’s hand was on her shoulder; she had followed Nicole to the ladies’ room. “What an asshole,” she said. “I told you.”
Nicole nodded.
“Are you still teaching the meditation class?” Jocelyn asked.
Nicole looked into Jocelyn’s wide, thoughtful eyes, eyes that could pull the story of your life out of you. Jocelyn shook out her arm, and a bracelet slipped out of her sleeve and down to her wrist. Polished dark wooden beads, with one of glass. A red tassel. Then she knew.
“How did you meet the Master?” she asked.
Jocelyn stared.
“Was it in Boston?” Nicole asked. “Was it when you stopped doing drugs? Was he your Master then?”
Jocelyn looked at her, smiling in feigned confusion.
“Did he ask you to keep tabs on me, or did you do it on your own? Did you give him a weekly report on my activities?” There were so many questions to a
sk, but only one answer that mattered: It was Jocelyn. Jocelyn had told the Master everything. All her secrets. All her stories. Everything, everything she had been, everything she’d done, had been given to Jocelyn, and Jocelyn had given it obediently away. She could feel the Master’s hands on her again, his breath in her ear. When the Master had discovered that she was gone, he must have made the mental calculations: she’d gone and done what he thought he’d dissuaded her from doing. He must have called his old student Jocelyn, told her to mention Buffy, given her the right in. Why else would this stranger have befriended her? He was consuming her again; it was a kind of sex act, a brutal, stolen intimacy.
“Yes, he was my Master first,” Jocelyn said, so quietly that Nicole almost couldn’t hear above the cheerful restaurant din. “He asked. I’m sorry.” She sighed, shaking her head, and reached out to touch Nicole’s arm. “I wanted to hear. I wanted to be your friend. But I’m an old student of his. Did you think just by moving to a new city, you can get away from him? He’s here. He’s with you right now. You don’t ever break that bond.”
Nicole said, “I will.”
Jocelyn smiled, sharp and sad. “He has only to give the command, and you’ll come to him. He’s getting impatient. It won’t do any good to run.”
She ran in her rain-splashed stockings to the bus stop. She had left her coat behind, but it didn’t matter, she had to move now, had to get somewhere that Jocelyn, that her Master wouldn’t know. She rode the bus uptown, watching it gradually empty, the remaining riders blank-faced, either tired or shut up somewhere inside themselves. She watched her phone ring. A call from her Master. She let it buzz and buzz in her lap.
