by Caryl Rivers
“Oh My!” Sean said. “Oh. Oh. OH!”
It felt really nice with him inside me; I felt I’d just like to stay that way for a couple of weeks–of course, it might be hard to do a lot of things that way, like go to the movies or pee. I could feel Sean’s weight on me, the sweet burden of his body, and then he started to move, slowly at first and then faster and then he said, “Peggy, I can’t—I can’t—I have to—Oh! Oh! Ohhhhhhhhhh!”
And his whole body shook and then he collapsed on top of me, still breathing very hard. I reached up and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, thinking this is how a woman feels with the man she loves: pleased and proud.
“Peggy,” he said, “you didn’t, you didn’t—”
“Oh Sean, it was really nice, it really was!”
“Nice!” he wailed. “I wanted it to be wonderful!”
“Was it wonderful for you, Sean?”
“Oh yes. Oh yes, it was!”
I twirled a lock of his hair around my finger. “I’m glad.”
“But you didn’t, you didn’t—”
“Yes I did, lots of times.”
“But that was before. I was too fast. I knew I’d mess it up.”
“You didn’t, Sean, honest you didn’t!”
“I did. Oh Peggy, I’m sorry!”
“Sean, I really loved it, really I did!”
“Yeah, but—”
And all of a sudden there was a sound. A door opening. “Sean? Are you in there?”
And there was a click and the room was suddenly flooded with light, as if it were God, looking on the void and proclaiming, “Let there be light!” Unfortunately, it was not God. It was Dr. Liam McCaffrey. There, in the doorway, stood the Nemesis of Smut, in the flesh. He was staring at us, and the look on his face was familiar. I recognized it from the pup tent.
Oh no, I thought, not again!
“Oh my God!” he said.
Same old dialogue.
When the light flicked on it hit Sean like a bolt of lightning and he leapt upright with a yelp, turning to face his father. It was an instant replay of thirteen years ago; there he was again, without his pants on.
“What is going on here!” Dr. McCaffrey demanded.
I made a grab for the covers and pulled them up so high they covered my nose. Sean stood there, staring at his father, open-mouthed. His father’s gaze traveled down to Sean’s crotch; the rubber dangled there, forlornly, the little nest of white liquid settled in the tip.
“Oh Sean,” his father groaned, looking at the condom as if he were staring at the face of Lucifer himself. “Sean, a-a-rubber!”
Sean grabbed a pillow with one hand and put it in front of his crotch. “Hi, Pop!” he said.
It was a gallant effort at nonchalance, but that is hard to achieve when you are standing there naked with a rubber dangling from your prick and a pillow in front of your crotch. That took a little more savoir faire than Sean was able to drum up at the moment.
Dr. McCaffrey looked at me the way Jehovah looked at Cain. “That girl. What has she done to you? That harlot!”
“Pop, don’t say that!”
“Mary Magdalene. Harlot.”
“Pop, don’t talk like that to Peggy,” Sean said, an edge to his voice.
“A bad seed. I knew it that day when she ravished you in the tent. Bad seed. Whore of Babylon!”
“I didn’t ravish him,” I said. “You can’t ravish someone when you’re five.”
“Harlot!” he shrieked. “Whore of Babylon!”
“Pop! Stop it!” Sean said.
But Dr. McCaffrey was warming to his topic. He was working up to the same pitch of frenzy he reached half an hour after the rubber chicken in some Knights of Columbus hall when he was decrying dirty movies.
“Whore! A clean Catholic boy and you despoil him! Whore of Babylon!”
“Pop,” Sean said, “Get out of my room.”
“Don’t you talk like that to me, young man!”
“Shut up and get out of my room!” Sean said. I’d never heard him talk like that to his father before. Dr. McCaffrey blinked.
“Get out of my room. Now!”
“Sean, don’t you threaten me!”
“Get out of here, Pop, or I swear—” Sean took a step toward his father. Dr. McCaffrey beat a hasty retreat back to the hall.
“Sean, you have to get up so early,” he said plaintively. Sean closed the door in his face.
Sean and I got dressed, quickly, and I wondered if some evil witch had been hovering over my cradle at birth. Some girls got fairy godmothers; I got a semi-crazed professional Catholic layman. Anytime I ever tried to make love to someone, he’d suddenly appear. There we’d be, my lover and I smooching away, and we’d see a puff of smoke and there would be Dr. McCaffrey, screaming, “Whore of Babylon!”
“Who the hell is that?” my lover would ask.
“Oh don’t mind him.”
“Harlot!”
“Who is he, anyhow?”
“My next door neighbor, the Nemesis of Smut.”
“Mary Magdalene!”
“Does he always do this?”
“Yeah, usually. Just ignore him. Kiss me!”
“Bad seed! Whore!”
“Uh, Peg—”
“Yes?”
“I think I have to go now.”
“But we haven’t even done anything!”
“Whore of Babylon!”
“Listen, Peg, it’s been swell, but don’t call me; I’ll call you.”
I struggled back into my taffeta dress and Sean zipped me up, and then he picked the car keys off the dresser and we went out the back door. We drove down to the park and Sean pulled me close and stroked my hair.
“Oh Peggy, I’m so sorry. I wanted it to be wonderful for you! I wanted it to be something you’d remember!”
“Sean,” I said, “I think I’ll remember it.”
“Don’t pay any attention to my father. He didn’t mean all those things he said.”
“Yeah, he did. It’s O.K. But one thing.”
“What?”
“Who is the whore of Babylon?”
“Beats me. Maybe it’s Jane Russell.”
And then I started to crack up, and he did too, and we laughed and laughed, nearly until we cried, and then we just sat together quietly, not saying anything. Time passed, and we sat there, listening to our heartbeats, just clinging together like two shipwrecked sailors holding onto a spar. Sean touched my hair, and my face, as if he was trying to commit them to memory, so he would never forget them.
“I love you, Peggy,” he said. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, Sean.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Oh, I do love you. And I love God too. I thought—I thought I had things figured out. Oh Peggy, I don’t know what to do!”
“I know,” I said.
“How can I leave you? How could I be a priest, and never, never—” He let the words hang in the air. “Oh shit!” he said.
We sat there, holding each other, and I wanted to say to him, “Sean, you forget about the priesthood and I’ll forget about the Pulitzer Prize and we’ll just run off together and love each other because I love you with all my heart, all of me, and all we’ll ever need is each other. Don’t go, Sean. Don’t go.”
But I didn’t say it.
For all the power of the force drawing us together, there was another pulling us apart. Like a pair of migratory birds, we were feeling within our breasts a signal, an urging, telling us that there were places we must go, things we must do, and we had to answer that call, not knowing where it would take us, or why. Sean had to find out for himself if it really was God calling him, flowing through his bones that golden morning; or if it was another voice, or simply the echo of a body exulting in being alive and young on a morning in spring. And I had to find out what I could do, what I could be.
But I wondered, as I
sat there holding him, why Sean couldn’t have God and me. Why did he have to choose? If giving up the kind of love we had made priests special to God, it took them away, far away, from the rest of us, who weren’t special at all. But maybe one day, I thought, Sean would find out that God didn’t want him. No, that was wrong. Maybe he’d find out that he didn’t want God—not in that special, splendid, isolated way.
And maybe then, he would find his way back to me. I had the feeling I’d be there. Not in Crystal Springs. But someplace.
I kissed him goodbye on the train platform in Crystal Springs the next morning. Dr. McCaffrey and his wife stood at the far end of the platform, pretending I didn’t exist. Who wants to say good morning to the Whore of Babylon?
“They let me write once a week,” he said. “I’ll write every single week, I promise.”
“I’ll write too. And listen, if the food is rotten and they show dumb movies, will you come home?”
“If you need me, Peg. I’ll come. If you ever need me, I’ll come. Even if I’m a million miles away.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Sean. I always will.”
“Oh Peggy—” he said, and he couldn’t say anymore. There was a mist over his cool green eyes. He picked up his bag, and he got on board the train, and when he found his seat he leaned out the window to wave to me. He kept waving as the train pulled away. I watched the train as it moved out of the station, slowly at first, and then faster, then getting smaller and smaller as it moved off into the distance, carrying Sean McCaffrey off to God.
I didn’t cry. I had discovered that some things just hurt too deeply for tears. I walked home slowly from the train station; it was a good three miles, but I wanted time to think, to put the pieces of my life together. I walked, not really seeing the landscape, and suddenly I realized I was in front of Immaculate Heart High School. But a very strange thing had happened to it. It had grown very small. Four years ago, when I walked into that building as a freshman, it seemed so huge it nearly blotted out the sun. Had it shrunk? Or had I grown taller?
I didn’t know it then, but in saying goodbye to Immaculate Heart, I was saying goodbye to a world that in a few short years would simply cease to exist. I would not have believed it then, because that world seemed timeless, stretched out beneath the sun as eternally as the Eternal City itself. But the Church we knew—Sean and Con and Mollie and I—was the last gasp of another age, the remnants of an immigrant religion of mysteries and miracles, saints and visions. It would be swept away by winds that had already begun to stir.
The building was deserted now, and the senior class had scattered. Mollie had left for Pittsburgh two days ago, and right now Con would probably be unpacking her things in a little apartment at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. And we’d never have a garret to bring our lovers to. Oh Con, don’t lose your dreams. Burn the candle at both ends. Be immortal, Con.
I thought of Davy, who had never lived to grow up at all. I guessed he had never wanted to; he was quiet, now, in the earth. The pain of living was already too much for him at seventeen. And, of course, I thought of Sean.
I pictured him in the little room I’d seen in a photograph of the seminary, a small, bare room with a crucifix on the wall. I saw him there, trying to be good, trying to forge the iron of his soul in the fires of the priesthood. Would he find peace and joy there? Sean, be happy. Whatever you do, wherever you go, be happy. Be happy, my love.
I walked on, and Immaculate Heart vanished in the distance behind me. I was going off to a world that was bigger and colder; one that didn’t care at all about St. Theresa, the Little Flower, or the miracle of Fatima, or Mother Marie Claire, or Saints Corner, or Marylike dresses. I wondered if I could survive out there. Dear God, did I have the brains, the strength, the will to make it out there? Was I good enough? Was I?
There was nothing to do but find out.
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