She gets out of her car. The doors to the building are heavy and dark, but they glide open easily when she presses her hands against them. Inside, a woman at a desk looks up at her. She says who she is and is told to sit down. She waits in a dark, cool antechamber, twisting her gloves in her hands, and then the woman at the desk appears and informs her that Father Abernathy is indeed expecting her and is ready to see her. She stands, her chest suddenly heaving with anxiety, and follows the woman into an uncluttered office.
Father Abernathy is a man in his sixties, slightly paunchy, with white hair. When he stands to shake her hand, she notices that his skin, like hers, is mottled with pale pink blotches.
“Won’t you sit down,” he says.
“Thank you,” she says. She sits down.
“So, Mrs. Cooper, what can I do for you?”
She is quiet for a moment, and then she says, “Father, I wish to convert. I wish to become a Catholic.”
He drums his fingers against his desk. “What is your present religious situation?” he asks.
“I’m Jewish by birth,” she says. “Really, I’m nothing. I’ve never practiced.”
“And what is it about the Catholic faith that has drawn you?”
She looks at the floor. “It’s strong,” she says. “I need something strong.”
“Is there a particular reason you’re thinking you’d like to convert right now?”
She closes her eyes and says, “My husband is in love with another woman. I have cancer of the lymphatic system.”
Father Abernathy’s eyebrows just barely twitch. He is used, she knows, to the safe distance of the confessional.
“So you feel,” he says, “that the Church can offer you solace.”
“I feel the Church offers many things to those who have to be alone,” she says. She looks away from him, out the window at the vast lawn and her car beyond it. She feels, suddenly, impatient, longs to taste the host, to feel its subtle pressure on her palate, like a tongue depressor. She leans forward in her chair.
“Mrs. Cooper,” Father Abernathy says, taking off his glasses, “think about this for a while. If you’re going to join our church, you have to really want to. You are wounded, and Christ heals our wounds, but that in and of itself isn’t reason enough to do something as drastic as change one’s faith.” He leans closer across the desk. “Have you thought about counseling?”
Her eyes open wide, and she sits back.
“Yes,” she says. “I have. I have thought about it.”
He takes a piece of paper and a pencil from a drawer inside his desk. “I’m writing down for you the name of a friend of mine at Family Therapy Resources, on Claremont Avenue. Go and talk to her. Also, perhaps, talk to the rabbi at your synagogue, if you have one. Then, after that, if you still feel the Church is what you seek, come back and we’ll talk some more.”
He hands her the slip of paper. She stands. “Thank you, Father,” she says, slipping it into her purse and reaching for his hand. “Thank you.” Tears bud in her eyes. Perhaps he cannot understand, will never understand what she is feeling right now, perhaps no one ever will, and yet it won’t matter, because she does. She understands. Failure, yes. Embarrassment, yes. And pride. The things she has so rarely spoken of seem to fly about the room now; they are out of her; they can’t hurt her. She will visit the counselor or not; she will come back to Father Abernathy or not. It doesn’t matter. She decides. She, and no one else.
“It was like pulling thorns,” she says.
“Excuse me?” Father Abernathy says.
“I just meant—at first I was so embarrassed. I felt like I’d wasted your time and made a fool of myself. But I realize now you’ve helped me more than you can know. Thank you.”
He blushes. “That’s what I’m here for,” he says. “Listen, let me walk you to your car.” And taking her arm, he leads her out of the dark rectory, out onto the sidewalk. The sun is high and glorious, and she has to shield her eyes with her hands.
Through the car window Father Abernathy says, “God does hear us. Things will be okay.”
“Thank you,” Louise says.
Then he steps back, and she turns the key in the ignition and heads out onto the street. From the sidewalk, in his black suit, he waves. Why didn’t she realize it was so simple? Faith, that cheap radio, that wire creeping into the ear. Already she owns everything she needs. She waves back, pulling away from the green lawn and into that most glorious of skies, her sense of harmony nagged only by the itching starting up again under her clothes.
This was in late March, a week before she went into the hospital. She never told anyone except Clara.
Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude to Jill Ciment, for some specific and essential suggestions; John Herman, for acute editing; Andrew Wylie, Deborah Karl, and Susan Schorr, for support beyond the call of professional duty; and especially Gary Glickman, for endurance and faith even when I was at my most unbearable.
A Note on the Author
David Leavitt’s fiction has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the LA Times Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper’s and Vogue, among other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he is Professor of English at the University of Florida and edits the literary magazine Subtropics.
Also by David Leavitt
The Two Hotel Francforts
The Indian Clerk
The Stories of David Leavitt
The Body of Jonah Boyd
Collected Stories
Florence
Equal Affections
Also Available by David Leavitt
The Body of Jonah Boyd
It’s 1969 and Denny is on her way to the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Wrights’ plush campus house. Denny is more nervous than usual because she has recently begun an affair with Dr Ernest Wright, a psychology professor who happens to be her boss. Needless to say, Ernest’s wife Nancy doesn’t suspect dowdy Denny of seducing her husband and continues to treat her more like a servant than a friend. To add to the tension, the Wrights’ only daughter is having a secret affair with Ernest’s protégé, and their youngest son, Ben, is as delicate and insufferable as only a poetry-writing fifteen-year-old can be. Then there are the guests, Nancy’s best friend Anne and her new husband, the celebrated novelist Jonah Boyd. Their arrival will spark a chain of events that will change the family’s lives forever.
Clever and funny … He gleefully details the pretensions of the aspirational middle classes, with their cheese balls, kaftans and affected radicalism, and he’s perceptive about the lies and self-deceptions practised by family members’ Independent on Sunday
‘[A] modern comedy of bad manners’ Scotland on Sunday
The Stories of David Leavitt
This is a complete collection of moving, elegant and often witty short stories from one of America’s most respected writers. Here, David Leavitt covers a range of challenging themes such as illness, grief and betrayal with his inimitable graceful touch. He takes the reader from Switzerland to San Francisco, and from a young man’s attempt to contract the HIV virus to American tourists being startled by the local conventions in Italy. Bringing together Family Dancing (a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Prize), A Place I’ve Never Been and The Marble Quilt, this edition affirms David Leavitt’s mastery of the short-story form.
‘An astonishing collection … tender, funny, eloquent and wise’ New York Times Book Review
‘The emotionally engaging stories in this collection merit several readings and re-readings’
Boston Globe
‘Remarkably gifted’
Washington Post
The Two Hotel Francforts
It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon is the only neutral port left in Europe – a city filled with spies and refugees of every nationality, tipping
back absinthe to pass the time until they can escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, wealthy, bohemian and beset by all the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal’s neutrality and the world’s future hang in the balance, the hidden threads of their lives begin to come loose. This journey will change the four of them irrevocably, as Europe sinks into war.
‘One of his generation’s most gifted authors’ New York Times
The Indian Clerk
January, 1913, Cambridge. G.H. Hardy – eccentric, charismatic and considered the greatest British mathematician of his age – receives a mysterious envelope covered with Indian stamps. Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self–professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of solving the most important mathematical problem of his time. Hardy determines to learn more about this mysterious Indian clerk, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a decision that will profoundly affect not only his own life, and that of his friends, but the entire history of mathematics. Set against the backdrop of the First World War, and populated with such luminaries as D. H. Lawrence and Bertrand Russell, The Indian Clerk fashions from this fascinating period an utterly compelling story about our need to find order in the world.
‘Leavitt brings to life a world of maths and mysticism’ Observer
‘Excellent … His Hardy is a superb creation’ Daily Telegraph
The Lost Language of Cranes
When Philip falls in love with Eliot, he realizes it’s time to come out to his parents, Owen and Rose. But they are experiencing life changes of their own. Owen spends his Sunday afternoons in gay porn theatres, and as he and Rose are threatened with the loss of their longtime apartment, they must confront both his latent homosexuality and their son’s stunning admission.
‘Fascinating … Lingers in the mind’ New York Times Book Review
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Copyright© 1989 by David Leavitt
This electronic edition published 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Lines from W. H. Auden’s poem “The More Loving One,” © 1957 by W. H. Auden, from W. H. Auden: Collected poems, edited by Edward Mendelson, © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith, and Monroe Spears, executors of the estate of W. H. Auden, are used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Permission is granted by Alan S. Honig & Company to reprint lyrics from “Aldonza,” words by Joe Darion, music by Mitch Leigh, copyright © 1965, Helena Music Company and Andrew Scott, Inc.
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