by Thomas Lynch
“We must take care of the caretakers, Adrian, minister to the minister—that’s what we are called to do!” said Bishop Maghee, and looking at his wristwatch, extended a hand for Adrian to shake.
“FOR FUCK sake, Adrian, what’d you say?” Father Francis Concannon was no stranger to the ways of bishops.
He and Adrian were sitting in the leather wingback chairs in the library at St. Michael’s Rectory the day after the Reverend Littlefield had been called to see the bishop of the Western Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church.
“What could I say? ‘He who sings prays twice’?”
“Of course you’re right. It’s like farting at skunks—trying to gainsay a bishop. The whores.” Father Concannon said “whores” to rhyme with “lures,” and added, “The fucking wankers…my own’s a dodgy client just like yours.”
The priest had made tea and was pouring it.
“I gave him all the ammo he’d need, what with the singing. And of all things, Beatles tunes.”
“The Pentecostals would call it talking in tongues. And brought the snakes in for you to fucking dazzle.”
THE REVEREND Adrian Littlefield, recently quit by his adulteress wife, recently angry and lonely and bone tired of the duties of single parenting, recently despairing, recently at wit’s end over his prospects, recently drunk, recently stoned, recently a patron of a topless-bottomless bar in Windsor, and only a matter of hours after having sex with his children’s babysitter, whose first name he could remember but whose surname had escaped him, had stood in the sanctuary under the massive stained-glass likeness of Christ his Lord and before the faithful congregants of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church on South Main Street in Findlay, Ohio, and, uncharacteristically lost for words, cleared his throat, opened his arms as Moses before the Red Sea, and raising his inexplicably grinning face heavenward, instead of commencing a sermon, sang out, off-key but enthusiastically, in evident praise and thanksgiving for all of his recent iniquities:
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
He stepped from behind the oaken pulpit, stationed himself in front of the altar, and smiling widely, raised his voice again.
And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see.
There will be an answer, let it be.
He was into the next verse though he wasn’t entirely sure he knew it, And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me… and might have even made some sense of all of it, but the Reverend Dr. Hinkston, his senior pastor, sensing something in his associate’s manner was terribly amiss, and worried that the eleven o’clock service was about to go seriously off-track, rose from his seat behind the pulpit and led the people in polite applause, then wordlessly, by nod and glaring, signaled the ushers at the back of church to pass the plates for the offering. A couple of spiky-haired teens dressed in black and emblazoned with tattoos and seated with their perpetually embarrassed parents, arose during Adrian’s brief solo and, thrusting their fists into the air, took up the chorus: Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be, while one air-keyboarded the piano chords and the other air-guitared the heavy bass notes of the refrain, all the while nodding their spiky heads furiously in time. Marilyn Rubritus, the unmarried and, it was rumored, heavily medicated daughter of the long-widowed Geraldine Rubritus, stood in the middle of the pew she and her mother had occupied quietly for nearly half a century, unknotted her long silver hair from the bun it had been in all her life, till it fell in quick luxuriant waves over the red cashmere sweater she always wore to church, and began to sway with the singing rhythmically, her arms outreaching and her palms upturned, her bony shoulders and skinny hips achieving a kind of tidal sway, and the look on her face one of ecstasy, the way you’d imagine young hippie girls at Woodstock years before. Cleta Locey, the organist, never one to be caught off guard, had taken up the tune, which of course she knew, while the Reverend Hinkston tried, from his side of the sanctuary, to eyeball her to quit and the ushers moved with the gilded plates up the aisles and everyone, reaching for their tithes and offerings, looked back and forth at one another wondering what it was they had just suddenly witnessed. It had lasted only a couple of minutes, but it was sufficiently outside the pale of their erstwhile church experiences that they knew something unforeseen and unplanned had happened.
“Did you see them,” whispered Adrian, still grinning like a simpleton, “the heavenly hosts?” as Reverend Hinkston led him to the vestry, while the bell choir, after a series of dagger looks from the senior pastor, and accustomed to playing for time, took up their rendition of “How Great Thou Art.”
After removing his stole and cincture and robe, and following the Reverend Hinkston’s directive, Adrian collected his children from their Sunday school classes, loaded them in the family Honda, and drove them home. He sang all the way home. And because he could not keep from grinning, Damien and Sarah grinned back at him. For the first time in months they all looked joyous.
“I TELL YOU, Francis, it was the closest thing to inspiration I have ever felt—the breath of God—as if I’d been suddenly loosed from the bonds of gravity and routine. Always before, I’d be trying to say something that’d touch their souls while they’d all be trying not to fall sleep. But this was different. I tell you, Francis, I felt alive and they looked alive to me. For the first time I looked out over that little sea of faces and saw them all as fellow pilgrims. Not fellow United Methodists, or fellow Christians, or fellow sinners. Just fellow humans in search of the way home. And I could see that what they didn’t need was another sermon. It’s as if I could see myself in them: hapless and lonely, holy and free, all of us somehow in it together, Francis, just trying to find our way, wondering if we’re ever going to make it.”
The priest nodded and smiled and sipped his tea while Adrian carried on.
“It was an apparition. They looked like innocents, Francis. Angels—every one of them. I tell you, I could see their wings. I could see them readying to take their flight, Cora Perkins, fat Bill Wappner, the grievous Fielding couple with their punk-rock twins. They just all looked so lovely to me—these people whose people I’ve been burying and marrying and baptizing. Poor Marilyn Rubritus, old Henry Richardson in his wingtips and banker’s suit, Art Geyer with his homely wife, the Morris sisters, just turned fourteen and fifteen, proud of their new figures, the way boys are suddenly watching them; Freda Chambers with her goiter and bug eyes, they all looked like cherubim and seraphim and archangels. And all I wanted was to tell them that everything was going to be all right. Everything would turn out fine—I could see it all, Francis—they’d all be just fine and flying again.”
“A beatific vision!” Father Francis said. “Was that some dope or what!”
“It wasn’t the dope, Francis,” Adrian said. “I think it started after Mary…what’s her name?”
The priest sat up in the wingback, set his mug on the side table, and leaned into the conversation.
“Mary De Dona? What about her?”
“Well, she came to me in the night. There was this dream and I just woke up and she was…there.”
“There?”
“Well, she was on top of me, and she was naked, and, well…”
“The beatific vision!” Father Concannon sat back, pressed his head into the high back of the chair, smiling broadly.
Adrian looked puzzled.
“A ‘pastoral’ visit!” The priest was evidently not surprised. “God bless her. Now there’s a woman with really priestly instincts.”
FATHER FRANCI
S Assisi Concannon explained to the Reverend Adrian Littlefield how, ever since she’d come to St. Michael the Archangel’s parish school, Mary De Dona had made known to him the depth of her devotions. She had expressed in a variety of ways her willingness to do whatever she could to assist him in his priestly mission. She had arrived in Findlay the year before to replace one of their retiring teachers. Little was known about her. She had answered their ad in the Ohio Catholic. She had her teaching certificate and was Catholic, or Italian at least, and parochial schools couldn’t be that particular since they paid a good deal less than the public schools. And she was wonderful with the children. That much was obvious from the start. They all loved her and all of the parents loved her and the other teachers all approved as well. Even the nun who served as principal of the school and was famously cranky and stingy with praise, spoke glowingly about Mary De Dona.
“We rented her one of the condos we’d made, in the former convent, off the parking lot. Just behind here. Can’t get nuns to live in them anymore. Well, couldn’t get nuns anymore, period. But Mary was delighted with the space, the stained-glass windows and tiny rooms, the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap on the woodwork. She moved in with her dog and easels and books and that was that.”
The priest recounted to Adrian how one night the winter previous, she had come to the rectory greatly agitated, with her huge black dog in tow and begging for a blessing on the beast.
“It was late and I was alone here, sitting up watching Hill Street Blues, and she said the dog wasn’t well, couldn’t sleep, and would I bless it. Of course I thought she’s some kind of a head case, out there in her bathrobe with red boots on and a stocking cap and the wind lashing and the snow piled everywhere. But I wanted to get back to the TV so I blessed the thing, a quickie, but blessed it nonetheless, and said I hoped that would do it, but she insisted I use some holy water. So before I know it, I’ve got the two of them—this huge dog and this tiny woman in her nightdress, standing in the vestibule of the rectory, dripping with the weather, and I’m off looking for holy water, with which I eventually drench the two of them—Dante, the dog, that’s what she calls it, and Mary De Dona—and bless them both in Latin for fuck sake and she’s shivering with the cold and I’m holding open the door for them, and she reaches up behind my head, stands on her tiptoes, and kisses me. On my own mouth! Then off she goes with goddamn Dante, shouting ‘Thank you Father, thank you Father’ all over the neighborhood.”
“I never knew you anointed dogs,” said Adrian.
“Well, we usually don’t, except on the feast of my own namesake. It’s coming up next week, in point of fact. We do cats and canaries, dogs and goldfish. We’ll bless, as the fellow said, ‘all creatures great and small.’ But she was in a panic, what could I do? And she told me it was a ‘Catholic’ dog. Couldn’t I see that by the white cross on its chest and its obvious piety—a fucking head case—still, harmless enough, is what I thought.”
“The next night she came over about the same time. She had a plate of brownies. She looked, well, done up, you know. She had some perfume on. She said that Dante had crawled into bed beside her and slept like a baby and she was forever in my debt and would do anything at all to repay the kindness. ‘Anything, Father,’ she kept saying with those eyes of hers looking up at me, ‘anywhere, anytime, anything at all, Father.’ I thought she was going to break into that James Taylor tune. I won’t say she made a pass at me, Adrian, but there is about Mary De Dona a generosity of spirit I’ve not encountered in our species before.”
“Did you have sex with her, Francis?”
“No, no I didn’t…really…couldn’t.”
“You’re a better man than I am then.”
“Not better, Adrian, just different.”
That his friend could be so tolerant of sin in general and yet so scrupulous in the observance of his priestly vows was at once both perplexing and impressive.
“So what did you tell her about me, Francis? That I was abandoned and desperate and horny?”
“I told her you needed a babysitter. I said that we needed a night out. And yes, I think I mentioned that you were on your own…and might have said something about loneliness. I’m not sure I ever used the word divorce. Nor did I say that Clare had left you, I’m sure I didn’t. Only that you were a good man, dealt a bad hand, and we needed a night off.”
“Well, I’ll have plenty of time off now, it seems.”
“The blighters,” Father Concannon seethed, “the fucking wankers.”
THE FLOWERS that Adrian Littlefield took to call on Mary De Dona were sunflowers. The vase that she put them in was fluted and blue. She stood at the kitchen sink, in her condo in the former convent, cutting the ends of stems, setting them into the vase, waiting for Adrian to think of something to say.
“You shouldn’t have. They’re beautiful.”
The black dog that had barked fiercely when Adrian walked up the porch steps and sniffed his groin and buttocks when he entered the house now lay on the floor at the woman’s feet eyeing Adrian warily.
“I wanted to say how very grateful I was—”
“Grateful?”
“For the other night.”
He wanted to tell her it had been like grace to him, the way she’d given herself, the way she’d come to him. It was free, abundant, unearned, a gift. Amazing grace, he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that she had saved his life and restored to him a sense of worthiness. He wanted her to know how damaged he had felt, after Clare had left him, after his marriage failed, how he’d been despairing and depressed and beside himself and how ever since the other night he’d been filled with an inextinguishable sense of general benignity, and that even though he’d been suspended by his bishop from all pastoral duties and hadn’t a clue what he was going to do next, he was certain he’d been changed for the better and immeasurably improved by what had happened between them the other night. He had rehearsed words to this effect but could not think of how to say them.
“I’m grateful too,” she said. “It was lovely. Do you want to do it again?”
“What?”
“Do you want to have sex with me again?”
There was such decorum about her speech, a daintiness, at odds, it occurred to Adrian, with the boldness of her question.
“Well, yes, but…Yes, of course I do.”
“Who’s watching your children?”
“Francis…well, Father Concannon. He’s taking them for burgers and a movie—The NeverEnding Story.”
“How very good of him.”
Mary De Dona set the sunflowers in the blue vase on the kitchen table, banished her giant dog to the back porch and the fenced yard, and took Adrian’s hand and led him upstairs to the tiny room that was her bedchamber. She closed the door behind them, lit a small candle on the bedside table, pulled the curtains by, and turned to face him. Then she slowly, wordlessly removed his clothing and just as slowly, wordlessly removed her own. Whereupon the two of them fell into intimate if predictable embraces, kissing and licking, touching and sucking, holding and beholding and savoring each other for all of an hour, then another. Then they bathed together in her tub. She dried his back and rubbed some scented oil on him, and let his hands rub some of it on her, and though they agreed he really should be going, that surely The NeverEnding Story would be over now, before he could bring himself to put his clothes back on, he fell to his knees and pressed his face against her, whereupon they took up their embracing in earnest again.
Stretched out on Mary De Dona’s narrow bed watching the ceiling fan slowly circling above them, Adrian could not keep from thinking about the latter days of Job, blessed by the Lord with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He thought he might see his children and his children’s children and die old and full of days.
“SEX WITH a generous stranger,” wrote the Reverend Adrian Littlefield, in the first paragraph of what would become Good Riddance, “is balm to th
e wounds of the broken hearted.” He searched that sentence for something wrong, at odds as it seemed with his religious training, but in his own ears it rang entirely true.
The visitations of Mary De Dona had been a balm to him.
“Divorce is not, it turns out, the worst that can happen. The sky does not fall. The clocks do not stop. The buses run on schedule. Life goes on. The world is full of possibilities.”
It was consorting with Mary De Dona—the illicit sound of which exited him—that made him certain of these things and emboldened him to write them down. Their copulations—from the Latin for “fastened together”—had restored his faith in divine providence. Fastened together with Mary De Dona was, he was certain, a state of grace. It always left him grinning and grateful, dreaming in all tenses and feeling infused with what he took to be gifts of a holy spirit. If he did not speak in tongues, the two of them no less spoke with tongues and fingers and mouths and hands, with the caught breath and perfect hush of touching, and all of the interlocking, interweaving, intersecting limbs and parts that had become the parties to their intercourse, such as it was. They hardly spoke. What more was there to say?
She came over on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the evening. She’d play with Sarah and Damien, help with their dinner and bedtimes, sometimes throw in a couple of loads of laundry and tidy the house, then make love to Adrian Littlefield, like any other household duty or routine chore. This too excited him, her matter-of-factness with him. Then she’d go home. On Saturdays, he’d arrange a babysitter, and go to the former convent where she lived, bringing fresh flowers and massage oil, eager to repay her lovely body for all of the kindnesses it had shown his during the week.
“I want to worship at the altar of your every pleasure,” he would whisper.
“Hush, churchman! On your knees! Come into the holy of holies,” she replied, with a come-hither smile, feigning sacrilege and shyness, taking him by the hand to her tiny room. “Light the candles, like a good altar boy.”
