by Andrews
I don’t recall what happened after that—more questions from others, mercifully not directed to me—and then it was over. While I felt stressed at having been cornered, I felt freer at having spoken my mind in an unguarded way, as if to tell Vivienne Wilde, do what you will with this information. I’m saying it in the presence of others so you can’t misconstrue and misquote.
We stood for a moment at the front of the room and thanked people for coming. Vivienne lingered not far from me, while Professor Gladys Irons, her gray-splashed, wiry hair sticking out as if in shock, rushed me like a linebacker.
“You were caught off guard. That liberal, crazy woman who writes terrible things about the school jumped you. Jesus was man, but not man in the carnal sense. But you looked wonderful.” Gladys eyed my outfit and drifted away, leaving me morose at being her personal poster child, thanks to Vivienne— another reason to hate Vivienne.
And like a spirit summoned in the night, she stood before me looking out of place with her golden hair and her perfectly lined orange-red lips framing her ungodly beautiful mouth. Where in hell did that thought come from, I wondered.
“Good answer,” she said.
“Glad you approve. Any reason in particular that you’re here?”
“Yes, I’m completing a follow-up work in my series called The Untruths, and I’m focused on religious beliefs. This conference provides background for that subject. And by the way, if you had given me a straight answer the other day in your office, I would have put that in the paper instead.”
“I see. Short of an answer you want, you make one up?”
“You said Emerson’s suicide was an indication that he wasn’t cut out to be a priest.”
“That was a private conversation, not an official interview, and I didn’t say suicide was a natural-selection process for priests.” I was building up steam now that I had her in front of me. “Did you ever stop to think that what you printed might offend his family?” I started to leave, then whirled back to face her. “And I said nothing to you about wanting to be chancellor of Claridge.”
“But you do.”
“And you’re a psychic in your spare time?”
“I’m psychic enough to know you could be chancellor, if you would get out of your own way.”
“If you would get out of my way, I would greatly appreciate it.”
I turned, determined this time to desert this annoying woman, but her high heels clattered behind me.
“Why have you sold your soul to them? You used to rail against the very institution to whom you’re now in bondage.”
What does she know? I faced her. “I want you to stop quoting me or Claridge in the press unless we’ve both agreed to what you’re going to say.” I glowered at her and for a moment thought I could see the innards of her brain clicking like castanets.
“Then you’ll have to talk to me and stop taking me on PC tours of the campus. You’ll have to spend time with me…to educate me on your viewpoint.”
“I have no desire to do that.”
“This isn’t about desire—at the moment,” she said. My heart slammed against the wall of my chest as if trying to escape and avoid capture. “It’s about one hour a week.”
I was angry and nervous over the physical reaction she produced in me, despite my desire to dislike her . Keep my enemies close to me. If she gets too close, there’s an even greater chance she’ll use something I’ve said against me. She strikes me as a woman who won’t be ignored, and pushing her away might create worse press about Claridge.
Her head tilted at an angle, and she stared at me. I was becoming dizzy under her gaze. “Hello?” she said in response to my silence.
“All right, but—” I felt pressured to accept, or maybe that was an excuse because I wanted to accept.
“Fridays at three at your place.”
“See you next Friday.” I felt hypnotized.
Chapter Seven
The rest of the conference was a blur. I couldn’t stop thinking about our upcoming meeting—how I should prepare, what I should say, what I should never say, and what I should wear. When that last thought crossed my mind I laughed out loud. I hadn’t worried about what to wear in years.
Gladys Irons took advantage of my internal conversation, sneaking up on my left side and beaming at me as if I were a bundled newborn, then whispered a personal favor. Dr. Bird was feeling ill and needed someone to take his place in the breakout session. Gladys took charge of me, towing my arm ahead of my body as she yanked me down a small hallway to a room of about thirty people and plunked me down in a chair at the head of the room next to the gypsy professor, who was already engaged in dialogue with a member of the audience, making me feel like I’d crashed a private event.
“Virgin Birth,” Gladys stage-whispered. “That’s what this is about.” A previous question had apparently prompted the gypsy woman to launch into the dissection of Mary’s virginity.
“Helvidius’s argument for a woman’s vagina being a good thing centered on his belief that Joseph had to have touched Mary in order to impregnate her. Incensed, church father Jerome promptly wrote The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary in 383 a.d. and claimed Mary’s hymen was unruptured by the delivery of Jesus. Verification requiring the ultimate religious pilgrimage, I would posit.” She clearly loved the ripple of laughter.
Gladys could not have looked more shocked and busied herself with eyebrow raises and hand signals to me. When I proved too dense she stood. “I would like to ask the Reverend, Dr. Westbrooke to comment on the Virgin Birth, so central to Christian belief.”
Heads swiveled to stare as I mulled the fact that my co-panelist was historically correct. However, the church didn’t always share my personal beliefs, so there might be fallout from any ad hoc comments.
And then there was Gladys, staring at me, begging me to rebut the profane gypsy.
“Masters and Johnson completed a study”—Gladys’s eyes widened at the mention of the two famous sex researchers—“that pointed to religion as a source of marital-sex problems. In fact, we know that sometimes couples don’t get married because of conflicting religious beliefs. I would submit that it’s not whether Mary was a virgin, but whether Mary as a complete human being, a dynamic woman, adds meaning to our lives. Would she have less meaning if she was not a virgin or, conversely, more meaning if she were? Virginity, like so many other data points on the religious road map, is just one more divisive factor keeping us from being fully integrated.”
I looked up to see Vivienne Wilde standing in the back of the room.
She looked stellar, and for a moment I lost my train of thought.
“Are you saying, as an Episcopal priest, that you”—a middle-aged man spoke as he rose from his seat—“don’t believe in the Virgin Birth?” Gladys’s eyes bored a hole through me.
“I’m saying that it’s not relevant to our inexorable belief in Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary, whose sexuality rests with her…and is none of my personal business.”
Laughter and a tiny smattering of applause. No more questions came my way, and the small event broke up without much comment except from Gladys, who thanked me for stepping in. “Although I don’t think those would have been the views of Dr. Bird, they were interesting.” She said the word carefully, as if making up her mind right then whether to keep me on as her born-again ally. “A nice twist, I think.” She walked off satisfied, I assumed, that my answers reflected her beliefs.
Looking back to the far wall, I saw no sign of Vivienne Wilde and was hugely disappointed. I then questioned my own sanity. I should be delighted she’s gone. Suddenly tired, I wanted to pack and get away from the madness of the conference. A hand on my arm turned me gently.
“Dinner and a drink sound good. Join me?” The gypsy theologian’s colorful silk shirt hung from her arms like the wide wings of a jungle bird. “Lyra Monahan.” She took my hand and, without thinking, I said yes to her invitation and asked whether she preferred the roof restaurant or the less formal one down
stairs.
“I prefer getting the hell out of here.” She grinned. “I have a car. Come on, I know a great place.” In the distance I spotted Gladys bearing down on me again, and I was delighted to be outstripping her as Lyra and I headed for the door.
Within minutes we sailed out of the parking lot in her Saab and across town to a small side street with lots of quaint restaurants. We barely spoke during the drive, taking in air like suffocating fish.
“This work for you?” she asked as she pulled up in front of The Grapevine, its trailing tendrils cascading down and through the metal lattice that framed the outdoor eatery.
“Perfect,” I said, thinking about Vivienne Wilde and the way she said that word, and not really caring about food. In fact, lately I seemed to be almost out of my body, performing day-to-day activities like a specter inhabiting someone else’s humanity. I chalked the sensation up to being bored with just about every topic on the planet and more bored with its inhabitants. How could I have ever thought I would make a good priest? I have little sympathy and certainly less love for the vast majority of the world I serve. But then that’s the key, isn’t it? Doing one’s duty whether one likes it or not? If people feel good about the space you take up on earth, you can feel good about yourself.
I was slightly distressed to learn that Lyra was one of those spotlight diners. She asked the waiter questions, determined ingredients, customized what she wanted, and changed her choice of entrée several times, making herself the center of culinary attention ten times longer than necessary. I only hoped she didn’t eat as slowly as she ordered.
When I pointed to a dish on the menu and ordered within seconds, she frowned. “You don’t worry about what goes into your food?”
“I only worry that I won’t get any.”
She laughed, somewhat shy now, and admitted to being a pain when it came to ordering. I liked her better for her candor. Midway through her meal of hummus and tabouli and fresh pita bread, Lyra stopped long enough to grill me.
“Why in the world did you become a priest?” She was apparently unconcerned with invading my privacy when we barely knew one another.
Because it pleased my father. Because I was so brokenhearted there was nothing else to do. Because I wanted to fight the beast from within. “Perhaps to find out the truth about God,” I said.
She studied me more closely. “And what truth did you learn?”
“That God created man in his own image and man re-created God in his—because mankind loves to be in fear of something.”
“Yes, the God we’ve cast performs in the ultimate horror flick. Watches us unseen, hunts us down, judges us by his standards, and condemns us to eternal flames. Ahhh!”
“What happened to love?” I asked.
Her eyes softened. “We’re more afraid of love than we are of God, so we’ve tried to make love evil and scary simply because we have no control over it. Love happens or it doesn’t, but it’s as biologically involuntary as…an erection.” I blinked, amazed, and she laughed. “I’ve always envied men that. If they’re ever in doubt about what they’re feeling, they merely have to look south.”
“Do you say these kinds of things to everyone at random?” I grinned at her.
“Just people I sense are kindred spirits. You have a very conservative background, being at Claridge and a priest, yet on the panel you leapt forward with liberal remarks. Who you appear to be provides great cover for what you have to say. Terrific. I mean, look at me.” She stretched her arms wide, causing a waiter to dodge her. “What you see is what you get. Are you married?”
When I didn’t answer she rattled off, “Divorced? Gay?”
I felt my face flush again. “You’re delightfully odd.”
She laughed at herself. “I suppose I am. Forget I asked the last question. I can see from the look on your face that you don’t know what you are.” We both laughed at her silliness. “I’m a lesbian.”
Good grief, I’m in a gay vortex, I thought. I hadn’t pegged her for gay and now she was outing herself over hors d’oeuvres.
“I’ve had affairs all my life. I try never to have them with students but I can’t say I’ve always succeeded. I live alone now with my cat the Virgin Mary—”
“You named your cat the Virgin—”
“She had a litter and I, to this day, can’t figure out how, since she’s never out of the house, so of course I fell back on Immaculate Conception.” She laughed again, and this time I couldn’t stop giggling and drank more wine when she offered it.
She invited me to join her for breakfast on campus but I declined, saying my plane would be leaving midmorning.
A pause ensued that seemed longer than the entire meal. “We have a mutual friend. Jude Baker.” Her tone was one of admittance.
My mind flashed on the odd coincidence that I’d just seen Jude Baker in the café in Chicago after saying good-bye to my father, having not seen, or thought of, her in years. I was struck by the oddity of someone talking about her.
“I stayed with her on my way to New York and she told me about you. In fact, she tried to get you to go out with us.”
I sank back in my chair, now understanding why this woman was so comfortable in my presence. She undoubtedly knew a great deal about me through Jude.
“So yes, I do have an advantage over you, Reverend Westbrooke.”
“So it appears.” I wasn’t too happy about this turn of events. I didn’t want people talking about me or my past or using the two to draw conclusions.
“She said you were a brilliant strategist when it came to winning religious battles and suggested that I see if I could get you to join C3—Change the Catholic Church.” She explained how she planned to effect change as it related to women’s rights and found it abhorrent that the church taught poverty-stricken families that it was a sin to use birth control. Without blinking she blamed the church for the spread of HIV because they told families they couldn’t use condoms. “It’s just so ridiculous that guys in dresses, living in a marble palace, on the backs of the very people they purport to care for, make those people’s lives more difficult and dangerous in the name of God.”
“Your name is being scratched off the pope’s Christmas card list with a chisel as we speak,” I said. A great deal is wrong with organized religion, but if the church does nothing more than give people hope and a place to turn, that’ s more than they had to start with. Immediately after that fleeting thought, a conflicting one crossed my mind. Did I really believe the church helped or was I conditioned to believe it? Had even my private thoughts been brainwashed—my inner voice silenced?
“A connection to a Higher Power, I think the world needs it,” I blurted, putting an end to my internal dialogue.
“Does the world need it or is the world taught that it must need it or go down in flames?” She echoed my doubts.
“We all need a connection to love.”
“On that I would agree.” She gave me a provocative smile and I felt the conversation becoming personal. “Jude said after the incident with Jeannette you gave up everything.”
“I’m surprised my rather mundane private life has kept Jude interested all these years but—”
“Truce. I’m like that. I’m behaving as if I’ve known you for twenty years and that today we need to get to the bottom of what’s bothering you. When in fact, I’m what’s bothering you.” She gave a raucous laugh.
“So you teach women’s religious studies.” I tried to break up the energy and shift her focus.
She explained that her academic interest focused on women in the early Christian era but that their beliefs and writings were hard to unearth, buried in paternalistic chronicling. As a result, women were marginalized to near extinction. Outside the classroom, she engaged in C3 to change modern-day women’s views.
“So you’re after the Catholics, the Mormons, and then the Baptists. I hope you save us Episcopalians for last.”
“You do yourselves in by chanting ‘for I am but a
lowly worm—’ How demeaning is that?”
“Don’t throw out the entire Psalter when the poetry is so beautiful.
‘For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his faithfulness endures from age to age.’” I defended the faith.
“You’re a romantic.”
“When we celebrate mass, we imitate all our European ancestors who for centuries stood in drafty, cold stone church buildings and chanted the very same words we say today. I find comfort in that continuity,” I said.
She smiled as one might at a naïve child. “Because there was no PA system in those old European cathedrals and the only way the priests could keep their attention was to get them to memorize phrases and regurgitate them.”
Our sparring was wearing on me, and I didn’t find the conversation nearly as exciting as my debates with Vivienne. I made a lame excuse about needing to get to bed early for my upcoming flight. She let me pick up the check. We drove back across the bridge to our hotel and parked some distance from the entrance.
As we strolled across the parking lot she said, “I’ll tell Jude I finally met Westie. Here’s my number. Call me when you’re in San Francisco.”
“I enjoyed meeting you,” I said, thinking she was smart and interesting but not nearly as attractive as Vivienne Wilde, and when that thought crossed my mind it startled even me.
The breeze was balmy and caressed my skin, lulling me into sensual thoughts. Lyra must have sensed my energy shifting away from her because she suddenly stopped and looked me in the eye.
“Okay, you’re not going to call me, I can see that. You’re all wound up in your shorts trying to figure out who you are, so how about this?
Give me your cell-phone number.” I rattled it off and she jotted it on the back of one of her own cards. “I’m going to call you the next time I’m in Chicago and take you to dinner.”
Her directness made me laugh. “Great.”
“Great,” she echoed, and gave me a quick hug. “By the way, did you read Benny Shanon’s study stating Moses was high on drugs when he got the Ten Commandments and saw the burning bush?” I rolled my eyes in response and she grinned. “Hey, better said by a Jewish theologian than a lesbian scholar—burning bush for me takes on a whole different meaning.” She winked before turning and heading for the lobby.
