by Lisa Samson
My father sat on an old black trunk in front of the house he lived in, apparently, with three other Jesuit priests who taught at Mater Dolorosa School in town.
I wouldn’t have known he was Brother Joe except when he stood, straightening almost to his full height (his back had buckled a bit near the top), he held himself much the same. His white hair glimmered with that peculiar pinkishness redheads get as they age.
Oh. Like mine.
I forgot that the years had stolen away my youth as well. But I was old, not ancient. Nevertheless, he looked eighty, not ninety-seven.
“This is Father Ignatius,” John said.
“Mary-Margaret,” he said immediately. “It’s been so many years. I was Brother Joe then.”
And, Lord help me, I couldn’t hide it. I wanted to get to know him, wanted to ease us into the truth of the matter, but then I realized, he knew. This wasn’t all a big coincidence. He knew exactly who I was, who John was. It was why he’d taken such an interest in John, had overseen his vocation as priest and physician. In fact, every year half of the expensive tuition at Mount St. Mary’s, then at Johns Hopkins, was always paid by “a donor who wished to remain anonymous.”
We thought it might have been someone from our parish on Locust Island, or even Gerald and Hattie, who, remaining childless, spoiled John just a bit when he went for several weeks each summer to Bethlehem Point Light.
Now I knew the truth. My father was John’s personal Sister Thaddeus. Oh, the fabric on God’s loom can get so complicated, it’s a wonder it just doesn’t look like a bunch of knots.
I walked forward, one slow step at a time. “I found out,” I said. “About who you really are.”
“How?” His pale skin bleached yet more.
“Jude left papers. I found them a couple of years ago.”
He rubbed his chin.
“What are you talking about?” John asked.
My father held out his hands palms up and thrust them toward me as if to say, “It’s up to you if you want to tell him.”
I turned to my son and squeezed his shoulder. “I doubt there’s a gentle way to say this, John. But Father Ignatius is your grandfather. He’s my father.”
John looked at my father, then at me. “You’re gonna have to explain this one.”
“It’ll take awhile to explain and I have a lot of questions myself,” I said.
“I’m sure you do,” my father said. “Jude never would tell me what you knew.”
“How did he figure out it was you?” I asked.
“It was when we were eating crabs together at your wedding.
He could see it in us. That’s what he said. And we sat on the shore and talked about it and the times and basic circum-stances—”He looked up at John. “Perhaps this is a conversation best left for a little later.”
I’d been upset with him for so many years, the raping seminarian, but standing here now with this old, old man, I didn’t have it in me to humiliate him. We needed a moment of truth and, finally, of reconciliation.
It was Jesus’s final prayer before he ascended and who was I to choose with whom I would be unified? Not to mention those pesky verses about caring for the sick and poor, and if anyone was sick, it was my father. His hair had obviously thinned out recently. He had a full, thick head of red hair even in his fifties. And his body seemed to have grayed and loosened at the joints like an old doll.
“All right. I’m here for a good while.”
John took one handle on the trunk and I grasped the other.
We lifted and walked my father’s possessions to the back of the Land Rover.
“Do you have more bags inside?” I asked.
“No. Everything fits right in here.”
“How can that be?” I opened the passenger door for him.
“Oh no, I’ll sit in the back.”
We did the back-and-forth arguing until he pulled rank. So, into the back seat I helped him.
“During my time at the mission on The Block, I saw what possessions and the need to possess do to people. I said once I left there, I’d pare down to just the necessities.”
John couldn’t seem to talk.
Finally, fifteen achingly quiet minutes down the road, he craned his neck around for a few seconds to look at my father. “Why did you keep it a secret, Father Connelly?”
“Oh, it wasn’t up to me to tell. I prayed many years ago that we would be reunited, but I knew, owing to the circumstances of Mary-Margaret’s conception, that it was up to the Lord if it was to be. I left it in his hands. I had to.”
John looked back onto the road. “Well, I have to say that a lot of things make sense now, but I wish I had known a lot sooner.” He honked his horn and waved at a group of schoolchildren walking down the road and hollered, “Ye-bo!” They waved and hollered back in kind. Their smiles stretched wide.
My father gripped the back of my seat and leaned forward. “Your son is quite the celebrity around here with all his honking and waving. They call him White Father in siSwati.”
John laughed. “Have you ever seen more beautiful children?”
“No,” I said. “Well, other than you. Although you were a little pasty.”
John’s laugh bounced around the vehicle.
“It’s that redhead skin,” my father said.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Most true,” John said.
And I belonged right there in that car, three generations of redheads. All pasty white, all part of a religious order. All with the same blood flowing through their veins.
John tapped the horn at another group of children, waving as he said, “Unfortunately, I didn’t get my father’s complexion.”
“You did get his eyes,” I whispered.
“Yes, he did,” said my father. “I’ve always thought that.”
How can a heart ache, yearn, and be filled with joy all at once?
So back to Jude and me. This is where it gets sticky.
The first school year ended successfully and my contract was renewed. We’d settled into a life of companionship and tender, procreationless love. But we were both zinging for one another.
I could see it in him and he in me. And our kisses told the true tale.
The day after school ended for the summer, we sat on the docks together. “Is life so bad now?” I asked him. I’d taken his hand and set it in my lap.
“No. It’s a good life.”
“Did you ever think you’d have a life like this?”
“No. Did you?”
I laughed. “What do you think?”
“I’m in a catch-22 now,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well”—he scratched underneath his jaw—“if I take the penicillin and live, you’ll have to stay with me until I die. And you won’t get back to the convent.”
“I wasn’t a nun, Jude, I was a—”
“You know what I mean. I know that’s the life you really wanted. So it would probably just be better for you in the long run if I forgo treatment.”
“But—”
He placed a finger over my mouth. “But you want a baby. I know you do.” He removed his finger. “Am I right?”
I could only nod.
“But if I take the medicine and give you that baby, I’m part of that bargain, and you may never get back into the order.”
“I want you now.”
“You mean when I die someday, you’re not going back in?”
“I didn’t say that. But I’m not wishing you dead, Jude. You have to know that. I want you to be healed.”
He sighed. “I know. But I want the best for you. And maybe that’s not me.”
I touched my wedding ring. “It’s a little late for that.”
“Maybe.” He looked out over the water. “I just don’t know.”
I could only trust what Jesus said. I knew something had to happen to throw him over the edge, but I would have never guessed what was to come. In fact, I was so mad at Jesus for
doing it that way, I didn’t see him for months and months. Finally, though, I understood. Jude and his past needed one more sail over the choppy bay together. I could only be there to love him as the storm passed over, raining fire and hail.
It was one of the hottest Julys I could remember when Brister stormed up the steps to our apartment and pounded on the door. We’d just come back from Wednesday night Mass and I was making tea.
“Oh my goodness, Brister!” I said after swinging wide the door. “What’s the matter?”
“Where’s your husband?”
“In the bedroom sorting the laundry.”
He headed in muttering, “Women’s work,” under his breath. “You ain’t going to believe this,” he yelled. “She’s back.D--- it, Petra’s come back to the island.”
The resulting silence roared about me. I’d rather he let out a string of expletives. Grabbing a broom and pretending I was sweeping, I moved closer to the bedroom door to hear the conversation.
Then, “Where is she?”
“At the house. She wants me to take her out to the light.”
“Take her. Dump her out in the middle of the bay for all I care.”
“You don’t want to see her first?”
“No.”
“Mary-Margaret?” Brister yelled. “How about you?”
“No, thank you.”
I heard the bathroom door shut and the shower begin.
Brister came back into the kitchen, hands on hips. “I never thought I’d see her again.”
“How does she look?”
“The same. Just older.”
“Are you going to take her back?”
“After what she did to her son?”
“You knew?”
“Not the whole time. After he ran away, I put two and two together. Then I kicked her out, well, kicked her stuff out any-ways. Here I’d beat Jude out of jealousy and she was doin’ that to him.”
I poured a cup of tea and held it out to him.
He took it. “I thought she just left, like she did the lighthouse, and I was a skunk to her, so why wouldn’t she have? But she went looking for him. I guess she never could figure out what he’d gotten into. She never would have guessed. She thought that boy was perfect, and around her, he acted that way.
Like the perfect son. The man she always thought she needed.”
He sipped his tea. “Petra wasn’t good at picking out men. She picked me and I ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.”
I would have laughed had it not been so serious.
He drained the cup, the hot liquid seeming to do nothing to his mouth and throat. “Better get her out there. I didn’t tell her where Jude is, or about you either. Told her I had to run to the drugstore for some medicated pads. That’s going to kill her, to think he’s married to somebody.”
Good, I thought.
“All right, Brister. Thanks for the warning. But talk to me before you talk to Jude about her again. I’ll ask him if he wants to hear anymore about it and if he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. He has the right to decide that.”
“I’m not going to argue with you on that one.”
Brister left.
The shower still ran. I took off all my clothes and joined Jude in the shower. He wept, sitting in a ball on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest. I cradled him as best I could, rocking him on the hard tile surface, the steam surrounding us in a heap, until the water went cold and I turned it off. We made our way slowly to the bed and I rubbed his back and neck and shoulders until he fell asleep.
My eyes opened around two a.m. I was facing the alarm clock, its face lit up from the inside by the orange light. Jude was kissing the curve where my shoulder met my neck and his hand caressed my hip and my waist, every stroke widening to include more and more of me.
I turned to face him, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling his face to mine. This is it, I thought.
There were no parlor tricks on Jude’s part, he didn’t pull fast moves out of a hat. He simply loved me with his body, and I loved him in return with mine. For all his experience, he’d never given himself away, and this he did. I hadn’t either, of course, so in that, we were on equal footing.
I forgot about the syphilis.
Later I asked him about that night, if he had forgotten too.
He said he did, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why; he just saw me there, thought, This is what love should be. You’re a fool if you don’t take it, and reached out. I didn’t tell him sometimes miracles are small and, to the naked eye, even a little insane.
The next morning I was scrambling some eggs for our breakfast as he unplugged the percolator and poured our coffee when I realized I held all the cards.
“I’ve decided what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
“I’m almost scared to ask,” he said.
“I’m not going to get the penicillin if you don’t.”
He set down his cup. “Mary-Margaret, don’t be so silly.”
“No. I’m serious, Jude.” I lifted the pan off the hot burner and set it on a cool one. “If I take the medicine and you don’t, I’ll be back to sleeping on the floor beside the couch. So I want you with me.” I pressed my body against his.
He sighed, cradled my face in his hands, and kissed me softly on the mouth. “I did this to myself, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Thank God,” I said, dryly.
He placed two pieces of bread in the toaster. “I know you better than to try and talk you out of your plan.”
This surprised me. “Are you calling me stubborn?”
“Yep. Think about it, Mary-Margaret. What have you wanted in life that you haven’t gotten eventually? You’ve always done what you wanted. You even convinced me somehow to marry you when I knew marrying you would be the worst thing for you.”
If he only knew. He never knew about my talks with Jesus. I never even remotely slipped in letting that out.
It was fine if he thought I was stubborn. People thought worse of me and will continue to. At least he didn’t think I had horns! At least he liked my artwork.
“I only did it because I thought I’d be dead in a few years.”
“Really, Jude? Really? You know syphilis can take up to twenty years to kill a person.”
“I figured mine was worse than that.”
“I don’t believe you. It was more than that and you know it.”
He set our mugs on the table, scratched his temple. “I think the worst thing I could’ve done was come up to you that day in the schoolyard,” he said.
“So you’ll get the penicillin too?” I turned off the burner and set the pan of eggs aside.
“You really want to live with me for the rest of my life, Mary-Margaret? Really? What if I go back to heroin, or my old life?”
“Will you?”
He cocked his head in the direction of the lighthouse. “Will you keep her away from me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been clean for a long time, Mary-Margaret. I’ve got good reason to stay that way.”
“Why did you marry me, Jude?”
“Because I just couldn’t resist anymore. It’s as simple as that.”
“I wore you down?”
The toast popped up.
“Mary-Margaret, you managed to succeed with me about something I tried to convince you of for years.”
I ran a hand down his arm. “You just wanted to sleep with me.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I just didn’t know any other way to tell you that I loved you. And really, back then, maybe I just felt it was safer that way.”
I took his hand. “That sounds closer to the truth.”
He turned his head and looked out the window. “Go ahead and make an appointment with a doctor. Let’s finish this business.”
The next morning Petra stood at our door and banged and banged, for three hours, yelling, “Judey! Oh, my lovely son!”
And other sweet phrases that made my skin crawl
. “Let your mommy give you a hug!”
We never did find out who told her where he was. Brister swore up and down it wasn’t him.
After she finally left, Jude had me go down to Brister and tell him he wouldn’t be coming on the boat for a couple of days.
I explained the situation. Brister said that was fine. And it was a good thing, because if he hadn’t, I would have just let a thing or two fly out of my mouth and it wouldn’t have been pretty.
She kept coming. Jude looked just plain spent, wandering around our apartment, sitting down, standing up, trying to read, doing the cooking, and smoking twice as many cigarettes as usual. At night, he sat up in bed and stared into the darkness until he fell asleep from exhaustion. Thankfully, he’d sleep through Petra’s morning barrage.
By the third day I’d had enough.
“This is ridiculous.” I slipped on the low-cut nightgown LaBella had bought for me for a wedding present and mussed up my hair. I slapped my cheeks to redden them and pinched my lips until they were red and swollen. By this time, Jude awakened, sat on the bed, whiter than an altar cloth.
I faced him, straddled his legs as he sat on the bed, and kissed him. “I’ll get rid of her for you. Maybe it won’t be for good, but hopefully she’ll get off our backs sooner or later.”
I truly felt in my spirit it was best to keep her from Jude for as long as possible. I wasn’t crazy. I figured she’d find her way to him eventually as evil finds its way into our lives no matter how good we are, and I knew he’d have to face her himself, but then, while our love was young and finally growing toward the sunlight, we didn’t need to have Petra around shadowing our life.
Should I have reached out to her? Well, sisters, I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll let you be the judge of that. But I was more worried about Jude’s ability to maintain a distant forgiveness than Petra’s need for repentance. And while both she and Jude were in God’s hands, Jude alone was given to me as my mate, my holy calling. I took my sacramental marriage vows seriously.
I yanked open the door, raised my arm along the door frame, and leaned against the wood, my hip thrust out to the side. “Can I help you?” I said, pretending to arrange my hair. I made my voice sound slightly sleepy and tried to go for a “just made love” tone, but I didn’t even know what that was. I think I nailed it, though.
