The Mirror Apocalypse

by John Ayang

  As he emerged from the glass doors of the terminal, he nearly bumped into Crystal, who was sent by her mom to look inside for him.

  “Oh, hi, Dad,” Crystal said and extended her arms for a hug. “We had circled the terminal twice, so I decided to come inside while Mom waited.”

  “Hi, Crysie,” Dr. Horacek responded, gathering Crystal into a warm bear hug. “Baggage claim is always a bore. I guess it’s meant to school one in the virtue of patience. How’s your mom?”

  “She’s right there, in the car,” Crystal replied, pointing to a Mercedes 350 Sedan with her mom inside, waving to attract their attention. The trunk of the car was remote-open as he approached and stuffed his luggage inside and closed it. He sidled to the front passenger seat, as Crystal was settling into the back, and was about to sit when he hesitated. A copy of the Houston Chronicle was on the seat and Barbara, all apologies, reached for it, but he beat her to it. He settled into the seat with his eyes glued to the front page of the newspaper, at the headline that caught his attention read in bold: FIRST IVF-CONCEIVED CATHOLIC PRIEST OUTED. The portrait of a handsome young man in suit and collar, probably in his late twenties, Dr. Horacek thought, appeared under the heading. He was intrigued, and before he could comment on it, Barbara began filling him in.

  “All Houston is agog with the news since yesterday,” she said with a note of excitement in her tone. “All the TV and radio stations couldn’t give enough news about the court proceedings that ended in the priest being exposed as having been conceived by IVF. I bought the paper on the way to the airport because I knew you might be interested in reading about it because Crysie and I were debating whether the doctor who sued the priest is the same as your colleague who worked with you during your internship with Georgeanna and Howard.”

  “I keep telling Mom that that is the same guy,” Crystal interjected. “His daughter, Edo-Mma, is my friend and classmate, and she has talked a lot about her dad, who is an obstetrician and gynecologist.”

  “I know everything seems to pan out that way,” Barbara continued, not really being tenaciously incredulous. “Being conceived at the Norfolk Hospital, and Dr. Eshiet claiming to have been part of the team that was responsible for the pregnancy, and….”

  “…in the year 1981!” Dr. Horacek, who was silently reading through the paper, suddenly interjected, sitting up. “Barbara, pull into that gas station. Pull in, please,” he all but ordered her. Barbara eased off the gas pedal and swung the car into the CITGO gas station, just before they were about to hit the junction where Airport Boulevard emptied into Sam Houston Tollway. “We did not work with anyone else at that period, at the Clinic, other than Elizabeth Carr, and you, Barbara Sanders!” Dr. Horacek said, a shade too emphatically.

  “What are you trying to say?” Barbara asked, creasing her forehead in disbelief and almost visibly shaking.

  “Mom, I told you,” Crystal said, barely able to suppress the excitement in her tone. “We may have found my brother without even having to search for him.”

  “Barbara, the couple mentioned here, the parents of the young priest, are the couple whose baby you gave birth to: Stephen and Hannah McCarthy.”

  “Well, I didn’t know their names,” Barbara responded, plaintively.

  “You were not supposed to know. Remember?” Dr. Horacek explained, “The deal was not directly between you and the couple. It was between you and the hospital and between the hospital and the couple.”

  “So, you mean…” Barbara said, haltingly. “This young man…I mean, the young priest…might be my biological child?”

  “All the arrows seem to point in that direction, Barbs,” Dr. Horacek said, looking distantly into space as someone stunned and lost in thought.

  “But…a priest?” Barbara asked rhetorically, still creasing her forehead, incredulously.

  “You are the biological mother of a priest?” Crystal followed the cue, also sounding incredulous. “And I have a brother who is a priest?”

  Barbara looked at Crystal, then at Dr. Horacek. Crystal looked at her mom, then at her dad. Dr. Horacek looked from Barbara to Crystal and back to Barbara, then started chuckling humorlessly, wearing the inane expression of someone stunned stupid. Crystal and her mom joined her dad, and, all three, looking stunned and stupid in the face, broke out into a silly, almost hysterical, laughter that lasted almost a whole minute. Then they calmed down and no one spoke for another minute. Then Dr. Horacek broke the silence.

  “And that is not all.”

  “What else?” Barbara asked, looking straight into Dr. Horacek’s face.

  “Never mind. Just drive. Let’s get to the house and I will tell you,” Dr. Horacek said and picked up the paper again to continue reading, still looking stunned. As they drove on, Crystal kept wondering whether other commuters on the road realized that the three of them in the car were the hidden, but big, part of the news dominating the Houston airwaves and print media just then. It was an uncanny experience to be simultaneously famous and incognito. She wondered, too, when and how she would meet her brother, and what that meeting would be like. She took out her phone and started a text message to Edo-Mma.

  The same day, the same time as Dr. Horacek was descending on the escalator to the baggage claims area to wait for his luggage, Fr. McCarthy rolled over on his side, in his bed, in his room, in his parents’ house on Hollow Wood Circuit, opened his eyes and squinted at the bedside clock. It was 11:30 a.m. It took him several seconds to be fully awake and realize that he wasn’t at the rectory at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church. He surveyed the room and noted that, being his old room before he left to study for the priesthood, and became a priest, nothing changed that much, except for a new chest of drawers that his parents had purchased a few months back, in case Fr. Cletus ever had occasion to stay for a few days. As he sat by the edge of the bed, as yet undecided whether to get up or lie back down, he knew that he would not use the drawers on that occasion because, of course, he was beginning to hatch other ideas in his head. He started to play back the events of the previous day, especially the courthouse session during which Dr. Eshiet pointed to their section of the court to indicate that his parents had conceived him via IVF, and the fact that he now knew from his mother that he was birthed by a surrogate mother. He wondered who his biological mother was, where she was just then, what she looked like, and to what ethnic background she belonged. He made a mental note to search for her in the near future, just to know who she was, once his life had calmed down.

  It was very quiet in the house. He got up and donned his bath robe to go downstairs, but decided against it and, instead, went to take a shower and get dressed. He remembered the Dean of Affairs’ instructions to seminarians: “As a priest, never be caught not well dressed.” He smiled, turned on the shower knobs, and tested the water for the right temperature.

  When Fr. McCarthy went downstairs to the kitchen, he realized that the quietness in the house was not for lack of other people’s presence. His dad was at the dining room table, quietly reading the day’s papers. His mother was in the laundry room, ironing kitchen linens and some clothes. He knew they were subdued, almost to the point of depression, due to the events of the previous day, so he decided to perk up the mood by being enthusiastic himself.

  “Good morning!” he called to his parents from the foot of the stairs. “Do I look handsome enough for a celebrity in that paper? I know I’m on the front page of the Chronicle and any other paper that looks to make money off of me.”

  “What else would you look like, if not handsome, Fr. Cletus?” his dad asked rhetorically, impressed at his son’s sense of humor. Then he added, “Seeing as you have enough offers stacked up to make you a millionaire, if only you tell your story, or, more accurately, allow them to tell it and make it sellable.”

  “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” Fr. McCarthy replied, half joking and half serious. “Who knows how much my liti
gation cost will amount to? Where are the offers?” he asked, picking up the Houston Chronicle to look at his portrait staring back at him. Above it was the bold caption, FIRST IVF-CONCEIVED CATHOLIC PRIEST OUTED.

  “Check the voicemail,” Stephen McCarthy said as he nodded toward the telephone in the corner. “You probably have the same number of offers, if not more, on your rectory phone.” Fr. McCarthy threw down the paper and headed for the phone, as its accompanying answering machine was blinking furiously. There were nine messages on it and he was about to press the play button to listen when his mother interrupted.

  “Good morning, Fr. Cletus.” Hannah appeared from the laundry room with a hamper of freshly washed and ironed linens and hand towels. “Are you hungry? I made you breakfast. It should still be warm because I put it in the oven.” She put the hamper on the kitchen table and proceeded to bring out plates and cups. Fr. McCarthy returned his mother’s greeting, but declined the brunch and opted for a cup of coffee, instead.

  “It’s almost lunch time, Mom,” he said. “I’ll just wait and have lunch. Jennifer left for work?”

  “Of course,” Stephen McCarthy responded, looking up with a smile. “Otherwise, she would’ve appeared from nowhere the moment you came downstairs. She can sniff every movement you make and track you down, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Fr. McCarthy replied wearily. “And heckle my poor life to death, for sport.” Deciding to play the voicemail later, he sat down and picked up the Chronicle again and began to read. Though he knew there wouldn’t be anything in it that he didn’t know firsthand, it was good to know how the media portrayed the story about him and what spin they were putting on it.

  “Fr. Cletus, what would you like to have for lunch?” Hannah interrupted.

  “Mom, you know my favorite. Just go ahead and cook it, please?”

  “Alright. Chicken alfredo with Caesar’s salad,” Hannah announced, as if to assure herself she hadn’t forgotten. She started moving about in the kitchen, getting items for lunch ready. The house fell silent again, as father and son sat quietly reading the papers and tabloids.

  Just as Fr. McCarthy suspected, the article had very little to say about him beyond the bare facts: the names of his parents, the clinic where he was conceived, and the fact that acting on the authority of the Church, he had denied Holy Communion to the Eshiets, sanctioning them for using the very method by which he himself was conceived, to conceive their child. The rest of the write-up was a poorly veiled excoriation of the Catholic Church for always being anti-science, and being too strict on issues of women’s reproductive rights. He read the article with disgust, but he couldn’t decide if he was disgusted with the media, the Church, or himself.

  After lunch, he announced his decision to go on a two-week vacation. His first choice was to visit the Holy Land and spend some time visiting the holy sites. But that evening when the discussion came up again at the supper table, Jennifer swayed him to let her take him to Rome and Venice. She had been there before and describe the enticements those places held well enough to get Fr. McCarthy to change his mind. Moreover, she had accumulated more than enough paid time-off to be away from work for two weeks and still have two weeks left to take later. Hannah and Stephen McCarthy forgot their sorrow and mused aloud on how the perennial battle between Fr. Cletus and Jennifer would play out without either of them on hand to make sure they were fighting fair. Getting the two to quit their mutual heckling of each other whenever they met was an impossible task. So, the elder McCarthy and his wife resolved to be content just playing referees. Jennifer and Fr. McCarthy, for their parts, were too excited and too busy taking inventory of all the places they would visit to give any thought to whether they would be fighting their usual fight or not. They talked far into the night. In the end, Jennifer took over the duty of calling and booking their flight first thing in the morning.

  Rome, Italy

  December 13, 2012

  CARDINAL FELICE WAS ushered into Pope Benedict’s private library by the pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, a young, sprite, and slender Bavarian, with piercing blue eyes, who was quickly rising through the ranks in the Vatican Curia. The pope was sitting at his desk, in front of a massive bookshelf full of books of assorted sizes and binds. A few papers lay to the left and right corners of the desk. At the center, slightly to the right, was a bronze crucifix, black with age, which had probably stood guard over many of the popes down the ages. Cardinal Felice remembered that it was there in the same spot that he last had entered the library to meet with the late Pope St. John Paul II. He had an errand to run for the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was the acting personal assistant to the pope. That was before Cardinal Felice was made the Archbishop of Galveston-Houston Archdiocese in the United States. Then, shortly thereafter, he was elevated to Cardinal. He thought the crucifix, though cleaned every day, was purposely left unpolished to darken with age so as to command reverence as an antique religious relic. The pope himself seemed to be staring at it as Msgr. Ganswein announced the Cardinal’s presence.

  “Felice. Umberto Pacino Cardinal, Your Holiness,” Msgr. Ganswein announced, then gave a slight bow and moved out of the way, slightly to the left.

  “Ah! Mio fratello, Umberto. Benvenuto. Mi aspettavo,” the pope, with a full smile, said in Italian as he rose and extended his arms in fraternal embrace of his former aid. Then he inquired, “How is Galveston-Houston?”

  “Grazie, Santita. Sono lieto di essere in vostra presenza,” Cardinal Felice responded in Italian to match the pope’s greeting. Then he replied, “Galveston-Houston archdiocese is doing fine at the moment, Your Holiness. But I must say, my coming before you indicates that we have an unusual problem for which we need immediate guidance. And I am happy to see my brother Cardinal and the Bishops present. I know I will benefit tremendously from their collective wisdom.”

  “Well, brother Cardinal, don’t raise your hopes too high,” Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, said, rising to greet their guest. “You may be disappointed to learn that we are at a loss, as are you. What we have heard is a novelty. Welcome.” He gave the fraternal embrace to Cardinal Felice. “But rest assured that we will work with you to arrive at a solution.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence. I am strengthened by the presence of the two pillars of the Pontifical Academy for Life,” the pope chipped in again. “Their research experience will certainly be of immense help.”

  “Thank you, Your Holiness. I couldn’t be more encouraged myself,” Cardinal Felice assented to the pope’s upbeat tone.

  The other five men in the library followed on cue, each taking turns to offer his fraternal welcome. Selected pillars of the Curia, so to speak, were present: Bishop Bernhard Fuller, the incumbent Prefect of the CDF; Bishop Jose Ignacio Paulo Borelli de Alonzo, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and, perhaps, the only guy with the longest name in the Vatican Curia, also referred to as the Vatican Canonist, or Vatican lawyer for short and, of course, the Vatican Spokesman; Fr. Federico Lombardi; Bishop Ignacio Caravaggio de Pietro, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life (Pontificia Academia per la Vita, PAV); and the Chancellor of the Academy, Monsignor Dagoberto Renzo. Each man went forward to extend his fraternal welcome to Cardinal Felice. All present were fully dressed in their official regalia. When they had taken their turns to give a warm welcome to Cardinal Felice, Msgr. Ganswein ushered him to the only empty chair in the room. They were all seated, and Cardinal Felice thought the pope looked slightly more aged than the last time he saw him. Of course, the stress of the office would have taken its toll over the years. The pope rose and began pacing the floor with slow, measured steps as he spoke.

  “This is indeed something very new and unique. Though it was a possibility all along, the surprising thing is that we didn’t see it coming,” Pope Benedict said. “If this scenario had come within th
e purview of the planners of the 2012 General Assembly of the PAV, it would have been thoroughly discussed during the ‘Management of Infertility Today’ session of the Assembly’s deliberations. So, it is very good that you have come, Eminence, so that you can have a voice in the solution to the problem. As you can see, I have all my advisers in the different offices here so that we can discuss the matter together and come up with the right directive for the people of God.”

  “Your Holiness, if I am not speaking out of turn,” Bishop Fuller said. “What this indicates is that the young man’s ordination was invalid. It means the very foundation of it was spurious. I think there should be an investigation to determine how the vetting process was done at the seminary he attended. How was it that the situation was not known before calling him to Sacred Orders? Maybe his ordination should be annulled, though it will be the first of its kind.”

  “You have a point, Bernhard,” the pope replied. “But let us look into those issues after things have calmed down and we are back to normal. Right now, the question is: What do we tell the faithful?”

  “That’s a pastoral question, Your Holiness,” Bishop Jose de Alonzo responded, raising his hand as though seeking permission to talk, but already presuming the permission by speaking, anyway. “But it is also, and primarily, a canonical one. Maybe we need to answer some questions first: Can the young man’s ordination be validly annulled? How do you annul an ordination?”

  “Probably the same way you annul a marriage,” Cardinal Bertone replied, suggestively. “Analogically speaking, an ordination is a marriage of the priest to the Church. Maybe it could be annulled on the grounds that all the conditions for a valid ordination were not met?” He ended on a rhetorical note.

  “And is the manner of conception of the candidate one of those conditions?” the Pope asked, pensively. “What was the manner of his conception? What did you find out from your inquiry?” Pope Benedict addressed Bishop Caravaggio de Pietro.