Something Bastien had said once in Mass clung to the edges of my psyche, fighting for dominance with my logical mind.
Love is war for some; it’s only in fighting for it that we can be sure we truly love something.
TWENTY
Bastien—one year later
“Padre Castaneda!” The littlest of the Martinez family sped to me, brown arms wrapping around both of my thighs and squealing at the top of his tiny little lungs.
“Morning, Santiago.”
“Santi, ven aqui!” His mother called him to her hip, a container of dried tobacco leaves in one arm. I greeted her in Spanish, setting a basket of food and toiletry items on the kitchen table.
She whispered a few quick orders to the boy, who I knew to be no more than six, before he plucked the basket of leaves from her arms and skipped off out of the door with it. Shirt off and dark skin glistening under the Caribbean sun, Santiago shrieked with a laugh before kicking pebbles at the small flock of chickens hovering around the front porch, one squeaking as it deflected the terror of a tiny boy.
Chipped lime-green walls and rickety wooden tabletops painted a vibrant shade of aqua opened up the small room, thin wispy curtains hung at the window and danced on the breeze, the sound of tropical birds and a child’s laughter a beautiful soundtrack to life in this tiny rural hamlet.
I remembered when I was new at Iglesia de Santa Maria. As I was doing rounds the first week I was reassigned, my heart heavy and growing heavier at the sight of the abject poverty of my new parishioners, I came upon Ms. Carmelita Dion y Martinez’s home. When all the others scattered around the tiny village and surrounding tobacco fields came across their new priest, they’d reacted with quiet reserve, politely taking their care baskets before nodding me on.
Or maybe it was that I hadn’t slept a full night in months, memories of my last hours at St. Michael’s rattling my brain to distraction.
But when Ms. Carmelita, as she insisted everyone call her, saw the pathetic sallow tint of my skin, she’d invited me in to sit at her table, fussing over me with herbs and tinctures before sliding a bundle of ground powder into my pocket and instructing me to take it in my tea each night before bed.
“Dos semanas.” She’d held up two fingers with a toothy grin before whisking the basket of provisions out of my arms and settling at the table next to me. She perched tiny Santiago on her knee as she peeled yucca, peppering me with questions about where I’d come from, why I’d left, and why my Spanish was so good.
A native son, she’d smiled deeply when she found out I’d spent my first nineteen years within thirty minutes of where we sat.
It was the first of many long conversations with the older lady as she tended one of her six children. She always made the sign of the cross and winked when she spoke of the ones no longer with her.
The Martinez family were my first warm welcome back to the island of my childhood.
It’d been a steady stream of serving God’s children every daylight hour since then.
And serving them served me.
Just as it always had.
Never had I been a martyr to this life. From the moment I was old enough to pay attention, I’d been drawn to all things steeped in the spiritual. In truth, as unorthodox as Ms. Carmelita’s rituals were, I soaked them up like a sponge. I cared not for what dogma instructed, but instead, how best to identify with my parishioners.
Perhaps that’d been the thing to get me into trouble in the past—becoming too close.
But I’d learned what lessons needed learning, and if I had to do it again, while I couldn’t promise I’d do it differently, I knew I could do better.
Not that I’d be given that chance.
I’d grown adept at adding color to the dull shades of life without Tressa.
It was foolish to rely on one person for all your sunshine anyway, I reminded myself ceaselessly.
While so much of what had happened at St. Michael’s was beyond our control, there had been situations in which it was only I who was culpable.
I should have known better.
I should have established better boundaries.
It was my responsibility to protect her, holy man that I fancied myself.
But another truth I’d had to come to grips with was that I didn’t feel so very holy, not in the moments leading up to our indiscretion, and in none of the moments following. I’d played the role, the collar at my throat like a lock and key reminding me of my place. I’d even had the brief thought that maybe whatever had been between us had stemmed from a rebellion against the rules I’d been so accustomed to.
It hadn’t taken me long to scrap that idea, though, the ache of our love still twisting my heart most hours of the day.
My only distraction was serving those who needed me to show up in an entirely new way.
A way that reminded me that things like stolen touches and forbidden tangles between the sheets weren’t the real world.
This was.
The world where kids went hungry and politicians worked for the greater good of themselves, not their citizens.
Ms. Carmelita and Santiago and all the people of Iglesia de Santa Maria had been my port in a stormy sea, the only thing left when my world was pulled out from beneath my feet.
The memory of my last few months at St. Mike’s had grown hazy at best, and by choice.
My time as a young seminarian with the Jesuits had taught me much, one of the most significant gifts, an unmatched ability for aloneness.
All that solitary time left my brain well versed in cataloging and compartmentalizing the details of my past.
If it was something that served me, which usually meant the greater good of those around me, it was worthy of my time.
If it left me feeling worse—sad or angry or resentful or with a pressing ache I felt like I might never relieve as long as I existed without her—then it was shoved into the back corner. It would be a terribly long and lonely life if I let missing her haunt me all my days, and even with all memories of her locked away, she still stole most of my sleepless nights.
The media onslaught following the day Casey Maniscalco left three backpacks on the steps of St. Mike’s was like nothing I’d seen with my own eyes before. I suspected he’d been the one sneaking around Lucy and Tressa’s cottage at night—but I didn’t have proof. Media crews flew in from not only other cities, but around the world, camping out on the steps and begging for any reaction at all. By the time the cardinal walked into my rectory two days later to inform me of my reassignment, effective immediately, the burden had grown greater.
But I still wasn’t sure if it was worse than opening morning Mass every day to throngs of rubbernecking newcomers.
The diocese had no doubt known what he was doing when he assigned me to this tiny parish, two hours outside of Havana and a million miles away from modern technology. When they’d discovered I’d had a security system installed without their prior approval—the very thing that’d helped police arrive sooner that day—they’d chastised me greatly. But it was worth it, and I’d do it again. Even with some preliminary digging I hadn’t been able to shake the idea that something was being covered up in St. Mike’s past. The inflated yearly stipend alone had raised alarm bells, and for that reason, I was determined to protect all of the souls of my parish, diocese be damned.
Rural living had proven itself more fruitful than my life after that day in Philadelphia ever could have been.
I’d found deeper meaning in my calling in Cuba, a place where I could be of more use.
A place that needed me as much as I needed it.
A place where Tressa didn’t exist.
TWENTY-ONE
Bastien
“You one of those pretend priests like the rest of them up at the monastery?” An old man eagle-eyed me from his seat at Ms. Carmelita’s table, back hunched over like he’d plowed a few too many fields in his very long lifetime.
“Shh, Padre.” Carmelita set a cracked bo
wl of arroz con pollo in front of him and continued to chastise as he took his first bite. “Never you mind about the boys up at the monastery. They do good things for this area, all of them.”
I chuckled to myself, thinking how he wasn’t wrong in his assumption. Secretive societies attracted people with secrets, and he was right to question me, at least in his world. Carmelita was still poking at the old man, but he wasn’t even listening to her anymore, his focus on the first heaping spoonful of rice and chicken. “Liberal bastards.”
She clucked at him once before scooping another heaping spoonful out of the pot on the rusted double-burner stovetop.
The aroma of the familiar dish of my childhood warmed up my insides, making me instantly glad I’d taken Ms. Carmelita up on her offer of lunch on Wednesday. My rounds usually brought me to the Martinez family home on Mondays only, but the smell of this traditional meal brought me back.
I’d spent most of my free time at Iglesia de Santa Maria in devout prayer. Knees kissing the bare floor with my eyes pressed to God, I begged for eternal forgiveness on a daily loop. My prayer the same. My heart still heavy.
I hadn’t even thought about arroz con pollo since Tressa had confessed to making it for the firemen if they chipped in at the St. Mike’s winter festival.
It felt like a lifetime ago, and still, the pain weighed on me.
I’d taken a few weeks off after leaving my parish in Philadelphia and went to Brooklyn to spend time with Cruz and his mom before coming to Cuba. In reality—it was perfect timing. He was growing increasingly worried over the health of his mother—my sister—and his girlfriend. Both were suffering and both needed him, but unable to be in two places at once and continue his college education at the university, he’d started to suffer his own breakdown.
Thankfully, I’d been able to spend time with my sister and relieve his burden simultaneously, and we’d spent long nights together talking about our childhood in Cuba, and even more about the nights leading up to our departure from the island. Her circumstances had been dire, and staying in our traditional family became impossible when she’d found herself pregnant out of wedlock with my nephew, Cruz. And only I knew the true circumstances surrounding Cruz’s conception. I think we’d both long forgotten that night by choice, but now that that sweet boy was grown himself, he had a lot of questions about his past. And I’d struggled to stay true to my vow to my sister before I’d finally caved and told him everything I knew on a pew in All Saints Catholic Church in Brooklyn one night.
And I’d felt every single one of my regrets even more deeply that night as he’d cried on my shoulder for pain inflicted long before his birth.
On many occasions over the years I’d requested the diocese send me into the city so I could be closer to help them out—his life without a father figure on the streets of Brooklyn was harder than it should have been—but our lives had taken different paths and the church had never posted me anywhere near them. He’d grown into a strong young man in all of those years, but that didn’t change the fact that church had taken yet another thing from me.
I’d asked her if she wanted to come back to the island with me, but she’d only smiled and patted my hand with a shake of her head. She’d never leave her son, she’d smiled and said.
She passed unexpectedly weeks later, just after my return to Cuba.
My heart had cracked wide, especially when my request to return to the States so soon was denied and I’d had to leave Cruz to bury his mother alone.
One of my many regrets.
“Sit, sit.” Ms. Carmelita gestured to one of the mismatched chairs strewn haphazardly around the round table, yanking me into the present moment.
“Anything inappropriate happen up at the monastery? I haven’t been up there in a while, but you can just see a face hiding secrets, eh, Padre?” He crinkled his old eyes with amusement. He was trying to rattle me, there was no doubt.
“I’m not sure I do know what you mean.” I nodded my thanks at Carmelita when she set the bowl of rice and chicken in front of me.
The smell overwhelmed me, mixing with my memories of her, a jackhammer of pain pounding its way into my brain as I squeezed my eyes closed and I willed her ghost away.
“The look of a hunter, eyes on his prey.” His old man eyebrows waggled.
Carmelita tossed a rag at his bald head, and he cracked into a loud laugh. “He’s not up at the monastery, you dirty old thing, you. This is Father Castaneda from Santa Maria’s.”
“Santa Maria’s?” His eyebrows shot up, seriousness lacing his usually amused features. “What’d you do to get yourself sent there?”
“Pardon?” I asked.
He shrugged, digging back into his bowl and continuing on through a mouthful of rice. “Only reason the diocese sends anyone to Santa Maria’s is for penance.” Another bite. “What’d you do wrong?”
“Oh, shut up, would you? He didn’t do a thing wrong, and you know it. Stop giving him the runaround and tell me, how’s the chicken?”
The old man’s face lit up with a grin as wide as I’d seen out of him, casting her a sideways look and bringing both of his fingertips to his lips. “It’s simply magnificent, my darling. Is that what you want to hear?”
He must have whispered something under his breath I couldn’t make out because her blush deepened to crimson, one hand at her ample bosom before she turned away almost coquettishly, a grin spreading her cheeks even wider.
Santiago chose that moment to burst through the front door, the sheets that’d been hung to dry when I’d come in now wrapped around his little body as he shrieked through the room, a tiny rat terrier jumping and running after him the entire way.
“Santi!” Carmelita bellowed, but it was too late. The boy and his dog were already long gone down the hallway and bursting out the back door of the small house. “That boy’s gonna give me a heart attack someday.”
“You spoil him.” The old man waved a hand at her, cleaning up the last spoonful of his food as he did.
“He’s my youngest boy. What am I supposed to do? No father to help me keep control of him, he runs around like an animal.”
Hearing their good-natured banter warmed my soul, the only time I’d had that in my own life, with Tressa.
I pushed her stubborn memory from my mind, forcing myself to dial in to this moment.
“A good strong hand, that’s what he needs.”
“So how about you come over and help me raise him more, Padre?”
The way his eyes turned icy for an instant at her words set my hackles on high alert.
Perhaps there was far more to these two than I’d initially thought.
“The sweetest rewards often await at the end of the greatest challenges.” I could hear Santiago and his dog outside, still shrieking and yipping.
Carmelita set a fresh bowl of piping hot rice and chicken in front of the old guy. But before she was out of his reach, he wrapped a thick arm around her, pulling her into his lap and tickling her with both hands. She giggled, cheeks pinking as he grunted softly in her ear. “You know I help you as much as I’m able, mi pajarita.”
I watched nearly stunned as they carried on like teenagers…in love.
Carmelita seemed to catch herself then, tearing out of the old man’s arms, his hand goosing her behind one last time before she was out of his grasp.
“Older you get, the more you need someone to control you.” She wagged a finger at him, smile still lifting her cheeks as she sat down again.
They exchanged a meaningful moment before I cleared my throat. “Looks like a lifetime of friendship exists between you two.”
“Feels like a lifetime.” The old guy grunted.
“If only!” Carmelita burst into a cackle. “Truth is it’s only been since Padre Juan was assigned to Santa Maria’s before he retired.”
A priest.
How had I missed that? Usually, I had an eye for picking out fellow seminarians.
“Assigned to Santa Maria’s, then
, eh?” I took my chance at a rib back. “How’d you manage that?”
He looked at me, stately dark eyes trained on mine.
“I expect, the same as you.”
* * *
An hour later, heart hanging heavier in my chest than it’d ever before, I excused myself until next week, thanking them for the company and hospitality. Their shameless environment of love and connection was on my mind as I headed off on foot, red dust under my boots and the sun setting low at my back. Dense tobacco plants grew full and leafy, dew already clinging to the tips as I pushed down the small drive that led to Ms. Carmelita’s house.
Once I’d reached the end of her little lane, I turned, hand in the air and waving before I looked closely in the dim light and found them in an embrace. Shadows of light played tricks on Padre Juan’s rough and callused hands pushing up the soft linen of Carmelita’s dress, her schoolgirl giggle carried on the wind to my ears.
My love for Tressa burned brightly that night.
So brightly, that by the time I’d wound my way the mile back to the tiny stone chapel of Santa Maria’s, I was keyed up, her sweet face the only vision in my mind. The soft angle of her cheeks and the upturned slant of her lips. How her dark eyes sparkled when she teased me.
So much like Carmelita’s did tonight with Padre Juan.
I pressed a hand to the physical discomfort plaguing my chest, looping my finger behind the stiff white collar at my neck and tearing it from my throat as soon as I crossed the threshold of my room in the rectory.
Heat rippled through me, frustration spiking in my veins as I thought of the way her hair felt running over my fingers.
Her honeyed skin sliding against mine.
The warmth of her body the first time I sank inside of her.
Angry tears crushed at my eyelids, my hands pushing through my short hair before I worked at the buttons of my clerical blacks, shrugging out of the fabric and leaving it on the floor.
REBEL PRIEST Page 15
