Vatican Waltz

by Roland Merullo

  “What good will it do, to talk to somebody else, Father?” I’d argued. “What can somebody else tell me that you can’t?”

  “It’s not a question of good, Cynthia. It’s a question of your calling. How many times do I have to tell you this? You are being asked by God to do something. You have been given these special gifts. Believe me, I’ve heard the confessions of thousands of people in my life. No one I’ve ever met has had this kind of communication with God. It’s not something to fool around with. God doesn’t do things without a purpose. He’s pointing you toward something, and I’m not a good enough man to know what that something is.”

  I stalled and procrastinated. I kept telling him I had too much schoolwork, that I was too busy at home, but he knew the real reason as well as I did: more and more as the years passed, I hated making any kind of fuss about myself. The spells and visions were something I’d been living with for so long that they felt as much a part of me as my hair and hands, and it simply wasn’t in my nature to lift my head above the tide of everydayness. I was very much like my father in that way: he did his work and came home. He didn’t make any trouble, as if he believed that there were always snipers in the neighborhood and to lift your face above the wall everyone else crouched behind was to invite a bullet. But it was more than that. Most of my young feistiness—most, not all—had, over the years of visions and prayer, been rubbed smooth like a stone’s sharp edges in surf. I was borne along in a near-constant peacefulness. I watched chips of Lamb of God protests on the nightly news, wondering if any of the angry faces I saw belonged to the person who had killed my friend. I read about the movement in the paper, but anger like that—anger that wanted some sinful Other to rail against—felt as alien to me as loud music in a library. I didn’t want to add anything to the trouble on this earth. The last thing I wanted was fuss or confrontation.

  Still, in spite of my natural reticence and solitariness, after Father Alberto died I started to let myself think about the possibility of finding someone else to talk with about the experiences I was having in prayer. If I did make an appointment with the new monsignor, I thought, what was the worst that could happen? He’d yell at me, chase me out of his office, call me a lunatic, a mad egotist, a foolish girl. So what? Maybe Father Alberto had been wrong, and that kind of rejection was exactly what I needed. Maybe my “calling” in life was simply to be a good nurse and daughter. Wasn’t that enough?

  The spells went on and on, like someone who calls your house and calls and calls and won’t give up until you answer the phone. One night I was so buried in prayer that I stayed on the subway car after my stop—which was the end of the line—and the conductor had to come and shake me and tell me to get off before they made the loop and headed back to Boston. Week by week the spells seemed to take me further from ordinary life, to go on longer, to leave me with the stronger and more lasting certainty that I was touching another universe, a place where very different laws applied.

  At about that same time, one after another, Catholic churches in Revere were closing. When I was a young girl, there had been seven of them in our city. By the time I started my last semester of college, there were three. As the doors closed and the parishioners were sent elsewhere, as real estate signs went up in front of the stone-and-wooden three-doored buildings, the assignments of the priests were changed, too. St. Anthony’s was one of the three churches that stayed open; the empty spot created by Father Alberto’s death was filled by a Father Gerencia, who was from Chile. As I’ve said, after Monsignor Zanelli resigned, Monsignor Ferraponte, who’d been the pastor at St. Ann’s in Beachmont, had been made the monsignor and pastor of all three churches in Revere.

  Near Christmas of that year the visions changed. They intensified and became even more frequent, and with the new intensity, the message God was sending me began to take a clearer shape. That shape—so surprising, so strange—broke my neat bowl of contentment into three dozen ceramic shards. I tried to pretend to myself I was “hearing” it wrong, that my inner world had grown cluttered and noisy and God’s words had become garbled.

  Finally, when spring arrived, I couldn’t bear this new stage of things any longer and I called and made an appointment to see Monsignor Ferraponte. I was haunted by a new kind of impatience and irritation. I think part of the change and part of what prompted me to finally do something was connected to my feelings about Father Gerencia, our new priest. He was so small, spiritually, in comparison to what Father Alberto had been, his sermons so empty of anything provocative, original, or interesting to me. His whole demeanor on the altar and his tone in the confessional—cool and detached, a sacrament machine—was something that, to my own shock, I found difficult to respect. I still went to Mass two or three times a week—avoiding Father Gerencia when my schedule allowed it—and nothing could have kept me from the quiet hours of solitary prayer I spent there. But in the past, whereas I would leave a Mass said by Father Alberto exhilarated and deeply satisfied, I now left Father Gerencia’s masses feeling as though I’d showered with a sour-smelling body wash. He seemed to me to be going through the motions, like a mechanic changing a set of spark plugs, and I treasured the rite of the Mass so much that it felt almost sinfully wrong to me not to perform it with enthusiasm. Here you were, creating God’s body anew, reciting prayers that had been spoken for thousands of years by worshippers all over the world. It wasn’t something to be done in a lukewarm way. I don’t really blame Father Gerencia; that was just the person he was. He was…neutral, unimaginative, a kind enough, good enough man, but—and may God forgive me—it seemed to me that his understanding of the spiritual life was kept in a thin drawer in his head. There was no whole-body richness to it as there had been with Father Alberto, no risk, no real pleasure, no sense of awe.

  I was starting to feel my love of the Church unraveling like a blouse with a pulled thread. I still had my prayer life—more intense than ever—but the Mass, the most sacred rite of my faith, had started to lose its beauty and power, and that terrified and upset me. In a very real way, the act of attending Mass stood at the center of my life. It meant more to me than schoolwork or career. It was like anything else people look forward to for comfort and meaning—seeing their children, making love with their spouse, a favorite meal, a visit with friends, a run on the beach—not so much an addiction as one of the main pillars of my happiness. Father Alberto’s death had been like an earthquake; the pillar had cracked and become unstable. Every time I sat in the pew and listened to Father Gerencia’s flat voice pronouncing stale platitudes like “God is love, and because God is love, we must love one another as God loves us,” I could feel the pillar tilting and shifting, the life above it sliding down and to the side, more and more of my prayer time being occupied with a stony, dusty bitterness.

  So finally I made myself take out my phone and call St. Ann’s and ask for an appointment to see Monsignor Ferraponte. The woman I spoke with there told me that the nearest available appointment was three weeks away, a Wednesday afternoon, three o’clock. After that, it would be another month. Should she write my name in?

  Wednesday afternoons we had our regular tour of the wards at Mass General, not the best part of the school week to skip. But I knew that if I procrastinated any longer, I’d never do it, so I said yes, fine, and on the appointed day, just before three o’clock, I got off the train two stops early, walked down to St. Ann’s, and climbed the creaking wooden steps of the rectory.

  The woman who made the appointments at St. Ann’s was very much the opposite of my friend Matilda at St. Anthony’s (I think sometimes that people and places have a magnetic charge and that charge attracts certain kinds of people and repels others). I don’t remember her name; I just remember how cold she was and how protective she seemed of the monsignor. I walked up to her little window, the kind of glassless window where you pay parking tickets at the police station, and I said, “Hi, I’m Cynthia Piantedosi. I have an appointment at three o’clock with Monsignor Ferraponte.” />
  She looked at me as if I were a terrorist bringing a bomb into the building. She checked her book, saw my name, and told me in a wary voice to go and sit in one of the chairs and wait, the monsignor would be with me as soon as he was free. I stood there for a few seconds, until she looked up from her appointment book and made eye contact; then I felt my commitment to peacefulness breaking open and I said, “How about being a little more polite?”

  A shiver of nastiness went across her face. She pinched her eyes at me the way kids used to do in high school and said, “Yes, your highness,” and built a smile out of two parts meanness and one part private, closed-off world.

  I went and sat in one of the hard-backed chairs, sneaking glances at the receptionist. I’ve always been blessed with the ability not to care much what other people think of me. It’s a great gift, really, something that’s allowed me, over the years, to grow and change and not feel locked into the person I’m supposed to be in others’ eyes. It gave me courage, even in the rough waters of my teenage years, to listen to something inside myself, a small voice telling me who I was, what I should and shouldn’t care about, and it helped me ignore, to some extent at least, the rip currents of peer pressure and local opinion.

  But sitting there—I waited nearly twenty minutes, nervous and upset—I couldn’t help wondering if the woman was that cold to everyone who came through the door or if the fact that I’d been close with Father Alberto was known to her and had branded me, in that parish at least, as some kind of troublemaker. It was odd to think of myself that way. Until then, outside of the rectory at St. Anthony’s, I’d felt almost invisible, a shadow that slipped around the city unnoticed, a plain-faced Revere girl who rode the subway five days a week, blending into the plastic chairs and scratched-up windows, who could make sense of an anatomy textbook and start an IV and go out for a drink with friends and cook for her father and not cause so much as a ripple of upset on the pond of Greater Boston life.

  The squeak of rubber-soled shoes on linoleum—a hospital sound—knocked me out of my troublesome little daydream. Around the corner came a tall, trim, good-postured man in black pants and a black, long-sleeved shirt. We had never spoken before, but I recognized him from the times he’d come to St. Anthony’s for a holiday Mass. I stood and introduced myself. Monsignor Ferraponte shook my hand with his arm held out straight. I walked half a step behind him down the gleaming hallway, and then we turned into an office—plain as a boardinghouse room—and I sat in the chair he indicated.

  Monsignor Ferraponte closed the door with a soft click, then walked over to a chair opposite me, hitched up his pant legs by taking hold of the cloth between thumb and second finger just above the knee, and sat. From things I’d heard around St. Anthony’s over the years, I knew a bit about the new monsignor’s story—he’d been born in Cuba, he and his father and his sister had escaped on a homemade raft, venturing out in darkness toward the hope of freedom, drifting across ninety miles of shark-filled water. His mother had stayed behind, and his sister had died of thirst on the crossing. Despite those awful things, people said, he’d never lost his devotion to God, and, though he wasn’t allowed back into Cuba, he went to the Dominican Republic every winter and spent a month with poor children there, not just administering the sacraments but working alongside their families, building houses, running sewer lines, and so on. There were less flattering stories, too—mostly having to do with his less-than-kind treatment of altar boys and his affection for a group of politically powerful Lamb of God friends—but Father Alberto had told me not to pay attention to them, it was just rumor, gossip. “If he could ever get the stick out of his ass,” Father Alberto said once, in an unguarded moment, “Ferraponte would be a great priest.”

  Looking across the table at him, I tried not to dwell on that remark or on my theory of magnetism. It wasn’t easy. The monsignor had the posture of an offended state trooper. His eyes were blue blue, the top of his head bald, the hair to either side as black as his shirt and pants and cropped short. My father had a favorite expression for certain people, “If he smiled, his face-a she break,” and I was trying not to think of that either, as I looked at the monsignor.

  “How can I be of service, Miss Piantedosi?” he asked.

  What was the point of speaking to him if I couldn’t be fully honest? “I’m sure you know, Monsignor,” I began, “that Father Alberto and I were very close.”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded. “We were sorry to lose him.”

  “Yes, very sorry in my case. He was almost like a father to me.”

  “I understand he was your spiritual adviser.”

  “I never thought of him that way,” I said. “He was a friend. I went to him for confession, for years, since I was a young girl. We used to like to sit in the rectory and eat and talk.”

  The monsignor seemed not to be listening. “I’d be happy to take over that role if you’d like,” he said, “if that’s why you’ve come. I’ve heard a great deal about you and your prayer life.”

  “You have? How?”

  “Don’t be falsely modest, Miss Piantedosi, that’s not an attractive trait. You’re quite well known in these parts for your devotion to the faith. I understand you spend many hours a day in prayer.”

  I knew he was lying about the well-known part, perhaps trying to flatter me in the only way he knew, but I hid that thought and said, “I’ve had an urge toward prayer since I was a young girl. I can’t really help it.”

  “Nor should you.… Are you married?” he asked abruptly.

  “Not yet. I’m only twenty.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “No, Monsignor,” I said.

  “Lesbian?” he asked, the word bursting out of his mouth in a strange, snapping way, almost as if he were spitting or as if the gate that protected his thoughts from running out into the air had been blown open in a gust of wind and the word had leapt out before he’d had a chance to catch it.

  I was so surprised I couldn’t say anything for a few seconds. “No, no. I’m just a, I’m a shy person. I live with my father. I’m going to nursing school.”

  “All very good,” he said, “and forgive me for asking. We’ve been besieged lately with what I suppose you could call ‘protests’ from various women’s groups. Boston. Cambridge. They’re feminists. I can’t imagine what they want with us, really.”

  “I don’t think of myself like that. I mean, I’m not part of any group, not even—”

  “How can I help you, then?”

  I began to tell him in detail about my experiences in prayer, how I’d been having the spells since I was a little girl, how close I felt to God, and how I was trying to understand what direction He wanted me to go in. When I’d said almost the same things to Father Alberto, it had been a simple recitation of the truth; there, in that office, I felt as though I should mount a defense of every sentence.

  “Did Father Ghirardelli give you advice in this matter?”

  “I wouldn’t call it advice. We used to talk about it, he gave me some books—”

  “Which, may I ask? What kinds of books?”

  “St. Teresa of Ávila was the one I liked most. Interior Castle. I try to reread a bit of it every night. Even though I’m not really sure it’s so, Father Alberto said he thought I had a gift, a calling. He kept saying I should speak with somebody.”

  “Well, that’s fine, we can have regular meetings.”

  He started to say more, but I interrupted him. “Monsignor, I’ve been getting a particular message lately, in prayer. If I don’t tell you about it, I’d feel like I was being deceitful.”

  “Speak freely.”

  “It’s something strange…I feel,” I paused at that point, watching him. I’d realized, shortly after the “lesbian” question, that it had been a mistake, that I should never have come to speak with him, but I was there; it made no sense to pretend I’d come for some other reason, or to get up and walk out. “I feel,” I said, “that God is calling me to be a pr
iest.”

  The monsignor hesitated a second, then laughed. It was a high, sweet sound, tinkling glass. I watched him, and when he stopped laughing he said, “Would this be some kind of prank? A joke?”

  I shook my head.

  “But you’re a born Catholic. Surely you don’t need me to tell you that isn’t possible.”

  “I know that, Monsignor, yes, of course. And, believe me, it’s the last thing I want. I’m not a very outgoing person. I could never imagine myself doing what I saw Father Alberto do, what you do. But I’ve been having these very clear messages from God for months now, and though I keep trying to pretend they aren’t what they are, I’ve come to realize I can’t do that.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Very serious. Nervous. Worried you’re going to throw me out. But serious as I can be.”

  He shook his head, a shiver of disbelief. “The parish is in an uproar, don’t you realize that?”

  “About Father Alberto?”

  “Nothing to do with Ghirardelli. It’s the false allegations, the court cases. One or two bad actors, yes, we had them, but now you have hundreds of people making up stories of abuse, years after they supposedly occurred. This is really not what we need now, another troublemaker in the parish.”

  “I’m not a troublemaker. You have to believe me. I would never even be here unless I felt I was being given messages from God. I feel very close to Him.”

  “I’m sure you do, but that’s not the issue.”

  “Shouldn’t it be?”

  “Perhaps it should. But let’s examine the facts. You are, like me, a Roman Catholic. That means we live according to the rules of our faith. You know the position of the Church, don’t you? You understand it?”

  “I do, and I love the Church. I just feel so strongly that God is asking me to change that position. I think it might be part of the troubles the Church has been experiencing lately. I came to ask for your help.”