Ash Wednesday

by Ethan Hawke

“It’s a habit. If you’re not careful, ninety-eight percent of your life will be habit. These young priests go around crossing themselves and thanking God twenty-four hours a day out of habit. They’d be better off doing it once, if they really contemplated gratitude.”

  “You’re right about that, sir. Habit’ll kill you.”

  “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to an old wooden chair in the corner. As I picked up the chair and moved it closer to his desk I accidentally knocked over a calendar hanging on the wall. It was a cheap jobby, like it came free with the purchase of something else. Each month had a photograph of a different kind of flower. I put it back to February. I didn’t know the name of the flower pictured, but it was a pretty yellow one.

  “So, why are you here, to check on me?” he continued sarcastically. “To make sure I’m still hangin’ in there?”

  “No. Well”—I smiled—“I mean, that’s part of it.”

  “I’m sure.” He grinned to himself.

  “I want to get married,” I said clearly, looking him straight in what I was pretty sure was his good eye.

  “Do you believe in God?” he asked immediately, in a resonant throaty voice.

  I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. The question was so unexpected.

  “I mean, why do you want to get married in church? Is your faith part of your life? Is it part of your relationship with each other?”

  “Not in any kind of spoken way, but she’s pregnant—you know?” I don’t know why I phrased it like that; it made us sound more pathetic than we were.

  “No, I didn’t know, but it is interesting nonetheless. Go on.”

  “Well, we want to start a family together and we want a blessing, you know? And we thought some kind of ceremony to mark it might give us courage, you know?”

  “Would you please stop saying you know? It bothers me. Assume I don’t know and proceed with the information.” He let out a giant cough. He was still intimidating. “If the blessing isn’t rooted in some kind of belief system,” he went on, “I don’t know how much courage it’ll give you, son.”

  “We haven’t figured out the whole God thing yet, but that doesn’t mean that in some part of us we don’t want to.” I was stammering. It was horrible to think he might turn us down. “What I mean is, the best part of me thinks about that—about God, I mean—but I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you I’m a practicing devout Catholic, ’cause I’m not.”

  “I understand that you are not a practicing Catholic. I understand that both you and your girlfriend are not practicing Catholics.” He said this with a real twinkle in his eye, as if the fact that I was constantly botching up my life amused him. I smiled back.

  “Do you ever pray?” he asked.

  “I usually don’t, not unless I want something real bad, you know?” I said it as a joke, but it came out making me sound like a blockhead. “The last time I prayed it was for the Knicks.” I smiled.

  “Who?”

  “The New York Knickerbockers—the basketball team.” I squirmed. My toes were still raw from playing ball in my boots a couple of days earlier. Blisters on your feet take a long time to heal.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, real slow and deliberate, as if I were all of a sudden even less intelligent than he’d assumed I was.

  “I’m joking, really.” I smiled again, but I could tell he wasn’t buying any bullshit. “Here’s the problem, sir,” I went on , shuffling my feet, unsure where I was going. “In many ways—in many of the most important ways I’m disappointed in myself. My life has never been in the service of anything except chasing after my own thrills, you know?” I looked at him for a sign of approval.

  “No, I didn’t know.” He shook his head.

  “Which has led me absolutely nowhere,” I said, and right then I started getting those rumbling twinges like I might cry. “I haven’t amounted to much, and to be candid with you I did intend to—it wasn’t from lack of desire or ambition. I think it’s lack of skill, really, or talent. You know?” I bit my lip. “I just don’t seem good enough at any one thing. And I struggle with that. But I know ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it.’ Right?” That was a phrase my dad would lean on all the time. “And I really love this girl and I see her as an opportunity, a window, you know?” I bit my lip again. “A chance to show up for something. Even if it’s a terribly humble goal, it’s one I might be able to achieve.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve been to confession?” he asked quietly.

  “Oh, Christ!” I accidentally said it out loud. I didn’t want our conversation to go there. All of a sudden I felt sure this meeting was gonna drag on for way too long. Christy was still waiting for me out in the parking lot.

  “A pretty long while,” I answered, trying to laugh as I said it. I wanted to get out of this room now. Coming here in the first place was just a sentimental idea. Sometimes I can be a real harebrain.

  “People think ceremonies like marriage, confession, confirmation, baptism”—he shifted his weight, uncrossing one leg while crossing the other, his bones making painful noises—“are just tradition and ritual, and certainly they can be. Indeed, they most often are. But”—and here he brought his fist up to his face, his eyes watery and intense—“they are meant to be something richer: an orientation, a return to center, a refocusing, a cleansing. And confession is the most misunderstood. Sin itself is not something you should feel guilty about; there is no punishment for, or disapproval of, sin. The sin itself is punishment. Are you following me?” He forced me to meet his eyes. “You turn away from the light, and darkness is the punishment.”

  He shrugged his shoulders like a little kid and then jammed his forefinger into his loafers, trying to get at an itch.

  “If you lie,” he continued, scratching, “you live life in deceit, and if you do that long enough you’ll come to see that there need be no penalties other than the ones you’ve created for yourself. Confession is not designed to alleviate guilt; confession merely indicates the desire for realignment. You understand?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  “To acknowledge the desire for light and honesty, that’s the point. It’s helpful sometimes to articulate things to yourself. You understand?” He said You understand? quickly, as if it were one word. I wondered what the big difference between that and You know? was.

  “You want me to confess stuff right now, is that what you’re saying?” I asked, my skin all goose-pimply and nervous.

  “I want to go to lunch,” he said, sarcastic, “but I am happy to sit here for a moment and discuss your spiritual life. Which is why I believe you came to me.”

  There was a long silence. Was that why I was here? I looked down at my feet. The Band-Aids I’d put on my blisters were all twisted and undone. I could feel them wadded up inside my boots.

  “I would love to be the celebrant at your wedding, James,” he said at last. “It would be my honor. But I want to know who I’m talking to now. I knew the boy you were, and I liked him very much, but I don’t know you as a man.”

  “I’ve gotten three girls pregnant in my life and had the—you know, subsequent abortions,” I said quickly, more as a challenge than a confession.

  “Uh-huh,” he mumbled. It seemed awfully bright in the room for this kind of conversation. I preferred those little dark booths. “What were their names?” he asked.

  “Um—ah, Lisa, Juliet, and um—ah, you know?”

  He shook his head.

  “Susan Morse,” I added quickly.

  “That’s pretty irresponsible of you,” Father Matthew noted simply. He hadn’t said it to be mean, I could tell.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve slept with a shitload of prostitutes as well,” I added, surprising myself.

  “How many?” he asked plainly.

  I’ve slept with strippers, prostitutes, married women, divorced women, a fuckin’
seventeen-year-old girl, two and three girls at once, mothers with their kids in the next room. I mean, seriously, I’ve been in some rooms where if you saw me there you wouldn’t like me at all. Sticking my fingers where they shouldn’t go. That’s the truth, and I feel like shit about it. The trouble is, you just follow one day to the next, and sometimes when you’re doing something it doesn’t seem as bad as it does later if you have to tell somebody you did it.

  “Five or ten,” I said calmly; of course, I could remember exactly. “Twelve,” I added, “but I don’t know their names.” I tried to smile.

  “And you regret that?” He paused, adjusting himself in his seat.

  I thought about whether I regretted it but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t have a ball while I was doing it. Calling the hookers and waiting for them to arrive was the most exciting part. I remember laughing hysterically with my friends as we’d recap our exploits.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looking at you and saying it out loud makes me feel kind of ashamed.”

  “You feel you should be sorry.”

  I nodded and looked down at the floor. I remembered my first time with a hooker. She was from Virginia and worked as a dental assistant in the daytime. I don’t know if that was true, but it’s what she told me. I couldn’t meet her stare after we were finished; I stood around in my boxers with my eyes glued to the hotel carpet as I handed her a hundred dollars. She put on her tiny items of clothing, went to the bathroom, called somebody, snorted a line of coke, and opened the front door, and I watched her shoes walk out. We didn’t say a word to each other. Immediately I went to the mirror and stared at my face to see if there was anything different about it. I felt lousy about the whole experience, but as soon as my buddy came in I started laughing. We did it again the next night.

  “I’ve done a lot of drugs, too,” I said spontaneously. “Snorted up a great deal of cocaine, taken methamphetamines, smoked heroin a couple times. . . . Just recently I was high on duty when I had to inform a mom that her son was dead. I felt bad about that.”

  “What was her name?” Father asked, looking away now, lightly breathing into his hands.

  “Anderson. Something Anderson,” I said, remembering.

  “It’s important to think about people’s names. You understand me, Jimmy?”

  I nodded, but I was pretty sure I didn’t.

  “Are you angry, James?”

  “What?” I asked. “No.”

  “Because I imagined that someday you might come to me, and I thought that when you did you would be very angry.”

  “What would I be angry about?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “Your father and mother. You were a great kid, but you didn’t have it easy.”

  “I didn’t?” I asked. My eyes started burning like a scorpion had stung them.

  “If my father killed himself I would be very angry,” he said quietly.

  “I love my dad,” I said, shaking my head no. My chest started to swell, and I knew if I took another breath I was gonna cry. “Why’s everybody always so mean to my dad?” I was getting a little pissed off. Whenever anybody asks me about my old man they’ve got this pitying glint in their eye, like I don’t understand something.

  “I liked your father too, Jimmy.” There was a long silence as the priest decided how to move the conversation forward. He was still sitting across from me at his old desk while I nervously patted my mustache. I tried to master my feelings, collect myself, and look up to meet his gaze. As our eyes met, I risked taking a breath and immediately I began to cry. At least two or three minutes passed as I heaved and sobbed in his uncomfortable wooden chair. Like a four-year-old, stooped over in my seat, I cried so hard I lost my breath. Father Matthew never moved or reached out a hand to comfort me. He just sat there patiently.

  “Can you tell me why you’re crying, son?” he asked finally.

  I had no idea. All I could remember thinking was how fucking exhausted I was with all my own bullshit. My life story held no interest for me any longer. I wanted to get married, to start clean, but memories hung on me with the weight of large sprawling dead branches.

  “It’s just . . . it’s just—” I had no idea what I was trying to say until I said it. “I’m so vain, you know? I can’t tell you . . . but I am. Incredibly vain. I look at myself in the mirror all the time and it makes me sick.” I cried some more, placing both my hands over my face. I didn’t know I could sob so hard.

  “What do you see?” Father Matthew asked. “Describe it to me.”

  “Weakness,” I said, covering my burning eyes with both hands.

  “I see a strong young man sitting before me. Everybody’s vain, Jim. Give yourself permission to like yourself.”

  He crossed his arms while we sat in silence for another moment. My head was still in my hands.

  “It’s all right to cry, son, it doesn’t mean anything important; it’s just natural.” Again for a moment he was quiet. “People think when they cry that something monumental is happening. But it isn’t. Emotion doesn’t mean much of anything.”

  I wiped my eyes, looked up, and took a long deep breath.

  “If you hear one thing I say to you today,” he went on, “I hope it will be this: It’s all right to be angry; you have permission. It takes an awful lot of energy to keep pretending you’re not.”

  After I got myself together, Father Matthew asked me to bring Christy in for an introduction. She could tell I was upset, it was obvious, but she didn’t say anything. Her hair was all frumpy from my knit hat, and her eyes were puffy, probably from napping. She spoke briefly to Father, with poise and dignity. Concerned she might say something offensive, I was extremely uptight, but of course he was more smitten with her in three minutes than he had ever been with me.

  “If you’re asking me why I want to get married, my answer is: Jimmy.” She spoke lightly, brushing her hair down behind her ears and straightening the buttons of her top. “Every time he opens his mouth I have absolutely no idea what he’s gonna say. He’s the most honest person I’ve ever met. He’s a quick study and rarely needs to make the same mistake twice.” She said all this without ever glancing over at me. “He really tries to learn, and does, and he makes me laugh, and the world’s generally a lighter place when he’s in my sight.”

  She crossed her legs. “I should tell you that when we first got together it only happened because my girlfriend Chance talked me into trying to loosen up and experience life a little more. I made a decision to have a one-night stand, and that night in a bar I met Jimmy. What can I say? He got under my skin.” Placing her hands on her chair and gripping the seat tightly, she added, “He’s the most emotionally strong person I’ve ever met. You can hang on him. He faces problems head on. He challenges me and listens to me. I’ve known him for a year and a half and I feel like I met him on Tuesday. Either that or maybe I’ve known him for ten thousand years, I can’t tell which.”

  Finally, she looked over at me, shrugged her shoulders, and brought her eyes back to Father Matthew. “And besides all that, he loves me. And when I feel his love I realize that I’m not sure if I’ve ever been loved before.”

  She smiled and continued with barely a pause. “When I got my wisdom teeth taken out I had a fever for like six days and could barely eat. And this lunkhead over here took care of me. He rented videos for me, he made me soup and fed it to me, he took off from work, he wouldn’t let me smoke, he read me the paper and rubbed my feet. I didn’t know he had that kind of behavior in him. It was like—I can’t explain it—I watched him put a banana in the blender to make me a shake—I’d been with him for nine months at this point—and it was like finding out your best friend knows how to fly and for some reason never got around to telling you. And I thought then, If I have a brain in my head I’ll hold on to him, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

  For a moment there was silence. Fathe
r Matthew held his gaze directly on Christy, expressionless.

  “I’ve told Jimmy this, but my whole life I’ve been looking for a still point. And I hope that Jimmy and I can be that point for each other.” She took a breath for what seemed like the first time since she walked in the room. “You know?”

  “Yes, I understand,” he said. He didn’t bust her chops about saying you know too much. Christy knows how to make an impression. She glanced around the room, taking in the piles of books and the general sloppiness. Her eyes were bright and green and I could tell she was enjoying this whole experience. In some way she felt she was defending me, and she liked doing it.

  “To be completely frank,” she added, looking over at me to gauge how far she could go, “as far as the church thing goes, I really wouldn’t care if it was a Jewish, Hindu, or Islamic wedding, but since Jimmy was raised Catholic, this seems as . . .”—she stumbled, looking for the right word—“elegant a place to start as anywhere else.”

  “You got yourself somebody here,” Father Matthew said to me. “The way she talks, I’m starting to like you.”

  I smiled insecurely.

  “When do you want to get married?”

  “Friday, is what we were thinking,” I said, my voice still a little froggy.

  “This Friday?”

  “We’ve got a baby coming,” Christy added.

  My head was still kind of blurry and thumping from the crying I’d done earlier, but I was proud of my girl and pleasantly embarrassed about all the complimentary things she’d said about me. I’d never heard her talk like that. Life ran hard in her; you could feel her pulse from ten paces. Fifteen people seemed to live inside that body.

  The old priest sent us out with a small Episcopal red cloth-bound book of common prayer. We were to study the various services, work on one suited specifically for ourselves, and call him the next day. He would check on the chapel availability. Then he gave us each a hug, which kind of made me laugh, and shuffled down the cathedral corridor.

  BREAKING BREAD