by Ann Bauer
“This is the problem with being human,” I told her. “We’re given incentive to do all the wrong things.”
“Exactly!” I could feel the wind of her vigorous approval and watched the calm settle in the valleys of her face. In the confessional at St. John’s I’d been unable to see, contained in the privacy of my own little upright coffin box. This was better, talking to people up close. But also confusing in that the rules seemed to disappear.
“I was elated for about a year, as if I’d awakened from a bad dream. You know how you think, Oh, I’m so glad that wasn’t real? That’s how it was. I kept telling myself I couldn’t have stayed even if I wanted to; I never belonged in that family. Then Christmas came, and it was like this door opened.”
Madeline looked at me. Her gaze was naked and afraid. “Do you know what I mean?”
I could not answer but simply sat, silent, remembering. Every Christmas I could recall, that door had opened widely: for me, for my parish, for the entire city it sometimes seemed. Sadness poured from some endless spring, infecting the people of my congregation, leading them to kneel before me and go limp. I was for the entire month of December patching together souls and sending them back to their lives still bleeding. I could see sadness leaking from them like drops of icy, gray rain.
And between ministering to those other souls, during this season I confronted my own yawning door. There was something about the silence of snowfall; it sent me right back to the streets of my youth. I would see the same skinny boy, hunched in his jacket, walking alone in the dark. Over and over I would dream of him alone in his bedroom, back against the chipped blue wall, heart beating so fast he was struggling to breathe.
I don’t know how I would have responded, but just then, the bell over the shop’s door chimed and a woman entered, roughly Madeline’s age but dressed in jeans and clogs, her long graying hair pulled back in a clip. She clopped into general fiction, and I rose—one hand extended, palm flat. The beginning of a benediction.
“Please stay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
My customer was standing in J–M, scanning the shelf, her body alert and tense. I’d been at the bookstore only two months, but I knew what this meant. It was a situation that had to be handled delicately, depending upon the disposition of the woman herself. Some were furtive, whispering their request. Others opened the book to read right there, crowing and hooting, backing helplessly into cartons and stacks.
“May I help you?” I asked, and she turned suddenly, as if I were a cannibal on her stairs. Definitely a type-one woman; she’d need to be nudged.
“We have some of our more popular books on display in front,” I said, nodding toward the table of ladies’ sex thrillers that Oren told me accounted for 60 percent of his sales and had probably saved him from bankruptcy for two years running. The woman blushed and muttered something that could have been “thank you,” rushed to the table to pick up a book with silver handcuffs on the cover, coughed noisily as I processed her credit card, grabbed her plain paper bag, and left.
When I returned, Madeline was grinning through her tear-stained face. “Poor baby,” she said, chuckling. “Probably hasn’t been laid in years.”
For one panicked moment, I thought she was talking about me. But I recovered quickly, clearing my throat and finding my pulpit voice. “People come here seeking solace for all manner of things.”
“I suppose.” Madeline looked at me, wary but also amused. The shamed, apologetic woman of only a few minutes before had vanished. “What is it that makes you such an expert? Why am I sitting here telling you my life?”
I leaned back in my chair. Doubt. This second phase of penance had come quickly to Madeline, but I could tell already she was smarter than most of the strangers who poured out their lives.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just seem to understand these things.” Then I shrugged, a gesture I’ve adopted only since coming to the outside.
There was a stretch of silence, and I thought Madeline might have moved on in her mind, deciding this was ridiculous, talking to a stranger about her past. But when she stirred, she did not gather her things and leave. Rather, she went on, “It was temporary, that first feeling I had about Cassidy. It went away right after Christmas. Then the next year, it came back. I ignored it, and it went away again. But now this year …” She paused and looked at me for assistance.
“It’s not going away?” I supplied.
She shook her head. “Nope. And it’s late February. Every day I wake up and expect it to be gone, only I feel worse. Less like the person I intended to be. It’s, um, sticky. Sometimes …” She paused for a moment and when she spoke again I had to lean in to hear. “I think I’m going crazy. We’re all alone: just me and this ominous thing in my head.”
“Did you try contacting Cassidy?” I asked.
“About two weeks ago,” she said, nodding. “She has a new mom. Kevin’s on to wife number three, would you believe?” Madeline snorted, and I saw, as clearly as if the devil were waving a flag, where her guilt was all stopped up.
“Cass said …” she swallowed. “She said they’re a real family now. Mary—that’s the wife’s name—helps her. Mary understands her. Mary would never …” Madeline swallowed hard. “Mary would never disappear the way I did. I asked Cass if we could meet sometime for lunch, and she said no, that she had no reason to see me. I’d been a terrible mother, and she was glad I’d left. But it wasn’t nasty, the way she said it. It was just …” A look of pure terror crossed Madeline’s face. “True,” she said.
“You know the answer,” I said softly. “Cassidy is happy now. She has a new family. You can’t disrupt that.”
“Oh, I know. Only …” In the background the hot pot burbled, reminding me that I’d forgotten to switch if off. A cello suite played on the stereo. And Madeline crumpled into her chair, a pile of designer clothes crowned with hair. “It means I never get out of this. Cassidy won’t forgive me. I’m here forever. I’m stuck.”
I thought about how often in my life this had happened: I would listen to the story someone told about selfishness and wrongdoing, and mostly I would be thinking, You do not deserve absolution. Sometimes, in my own dark heart, I would lobby for those people to suffer more. It would be tempting to banish them from my church.
Once, when a parishioner confessed to having gotten drunk in college and beating up a homeless man for no reason other than boredom, I’d sat clenched with the desire to rip open the door of my little compartment, then his, and strangle him in the aisle with my knee to his neck.
“What bothers you most?” I asked now, looking—as I’d learned to do—for the way toward God.
Madeline raised her head, and oddly she looked as if her face had been washed clean. If she’d cried off her makeup, I wondered, where had it gone? And how did her bare skin make her appear both older and younger than before?
“I think about her, Cassidy, going to bed on those nights after I left. Lying there, waiting for me to come back, maybe crying. Realizing that another mom had left her.” No self-pity, little drama. I softened. Madeline, despite her confession, was good.
“But Cassie’s doing well now,” I said. “In fact, she’s better off than before. It sounds like she has a wonderful stepmother, and your leaving—as badly as you may have done it—had to happen in order for Mary to come into her life. For Cassidy to have a stable, happy family, which you and Kevin couldn’t provide.” Madeline blinked as if she were awakening. Damn, I was good.
“You can’t change the past, but even if you could I might argue in this case that you should leave well enough alone. You will never know what caused your ex-husband to seek this woman out. It may even have been related to something you did or said.”
“Is this an it-was-meant-to-be lecture?” Madeline asked, her tone wary, and I struggled not to laugh.
“Hardly. That’s a philosophy for radio ministers and embroidered pillows. What I’m saying is, if you wouldn’t change things
for Cassidy now, you need to move forward. Take this lesson, learn from it. Be better. And move in the only direction that’s available to you.”
Madeline was rapt. And why was she listening to this from a bookstore clerk? Because she so desperately wanted what I was offering. That’s the only answer I have.
“That makes sense,” she breathed, alive now and re-inhabiting her clothes. “But how do I get Cassidy to see it?”
“You don’t. You leave Cassidy alone, because going forward you’re going to do what’s right for her.”
“But …” I watched her struggle, looking at her hands. “I want to be forgiven.”
“Done,” I said. “I forgive you. And God already forgave you, long ago.”
Finally she looked skeptical. Angry, even. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not that easy,” she said, reaching for her handbag and beginning to rise. “You can’t just forgive me. It doesn’t work that way. You don’t speak for God.”
I leaned back in my chair and stared at her calmly until she stopped and sat back down. “You’d be surprised,” I said.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
Dear Isaac—
How’s Austin? I imagine it’s all warm and dusty with gorgeous men in cowboy hats dancing to country music in the streets. I’ve never been to Texas in my life but if we get one more blizzard, I swear I’m going to fly down and plant myself in your guest room—maybe find one of those country-western guys. Though I probably won’t be able to get on a plane because every time you turn around this year O’Hare is closed.
Speaking of men, I met an interesting one today. I cried in front of him within ten minutes (and by cried, I mean bawled) in the middle of a bookstore. Do you see what’s happened to me since you left??? I have no one to talk to or go to movies with. I have to play dragon lady all the time. It’s lonely! Damn you and your baby-seal-killing oilman boyfriend. How is Foss, by the way? If I come down, will he explain fracking to me? Never mind, I don’t really want to know.
Work is a horror show. (Are you sure you don’t want to come back?) We were runner-up on the Prudential pitch, spent about $150K that I personally signed off on. Then they went with Razorfish, which I kind of knew all along they would. The venture capital guys are really pissed! Saatchi was all set to buy us if we got Prudential and a piece of Toyota, but now they’re backing off and I’m going to have to fire maybe 12%. Your old pal, Scott? First to go. Don’t tell him, or I will have you killed.☺
‘Cause, sweetheart, I have this crazy idea for how I might be able to get us back on track. And it could be a cash cow if it works. But I’ve had a few drinks, and it’s possible I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize this was the dumbest drunken scheme ever. I’ll write and let you know. Right now, I need to get in bed with my Rabbit.
I still hate you for leaving.
Love,
MMM
II
I WOKE AT 10:22, THE MORNING AFTER MADELINE’S VISIT, TO THE sensation of my brain pulsing like some dark star and threatening to detach itself from my head. I rolled to the side of my bed and lowered myself, moving as carefully as a bomb squad, to kneel on the floor. It was a familiar position, one that gave me comfort. So I paused there, hands clasped on my sheets, eyes closed, head bowed.
When I was able, 10:31 by the clock, I staggered to my feet and into the bathroom, where I took three aspirins and drank seven glasses of water straight from the tap. Hangovers are half dehydration; this I knew from long-ago experience. But the rehydration took time, and if you rushed it, you risked getting sick and having to start all over. I swayed, holding my cup of water, peering into the mirror as I sipped.
This morning I wore the vestments of the down-and-out: boxer shorts and a dingy white T-shirt. A pair of black socks would have finished the look, but my feet were bare, stiff as frozen fish on the icy tile floor. Craving punishment, I removed all my clothes and stood shivering in front of my naked reflection, examining what I saw.
My hair was going gray at the temples, across my tattooed chest, and between my legs. I found this both strange and amusing. I was beginning to look like a man of experience when I was, in fact, just newly born to this world.
The day before I’d talked to Madeline about her stepdaughter. And I’d done what I always do, dispensing wisdom as I understand it, closing my eyes and reaching for the right thing to say, telling her what I believed would bring her closer to God. We’d still been there, she and I in front of the fire, when evening had fallen and closing time had come. I’d risen from my chair to lock the door and put out the sign.
“Do you have time for a drink?” she’d asked in a throaty voice. “I’d like to repay you for everything you’ve done.”
I’d turned to look and had met her endless eyes. Had I been hoping she’d meant something else? In truth, I had. There was something about this woman—her dark hair and strange face—that bewitched me. And do not think that a man who’s been mostly celibate loses his ability to judge; rather, I’d become more selective during those dry years, more aware of the women who possessed some denser light than others. This one had a holy spark—flinty, yes, but real.
“I’d like that very much,” I’d said, turning my back to her as I’d hurried through my paperwork, using a pencil to mark the total (a pathetic $54) and securing the receipts with a rubber band.
We’d moved down the street to a bar where Madeline had insisted on buying Bombay martinis with her American Express. It was lucky, I’d thought foolishly at the time, that the sacraments had kept me drinking alcohol despite my twelve-step cohorts constantly demanding that I come completely clean. What is a priest without his chalice of wine? I had said. A lonely ex-cleric without the comfort of his very cheap Scotch? I might ask my fellow addicts now.
“You were a priest?” Madeline had repeated at least four times when I’d told her. “A real priest? That’s … extraordinary.” Her eyes had looked, impossibly, even wider than before.
I’d described to Madeline how I’d left the church—omitting the part about my breakdown on the altar one Easter morning—and settled into a life of authentic poverty. No more housekeeping service, no more daily delivery of flowers, no more regular supply of clothing courtesy of the Cardinal’s secretary.
“I haven’t dressed myself since the early nineties,” I’d joked. (This was one of my standard lines.) “Which I’m sure explains quite a bit.”
She’d laughed and rested one small unmanicured hand on my thigh, while raising the other to order another round. The gin had done its work and I’d warmed, becoming more the smooth-talking kid of my distant past, relating my entire history as if it were one of those droll, English comedies—all mix-ups and low stakes. My descent, which I’d downplayed out of manly pride, had in fact been dramatic. A squalid apartment and a minimum-wage job. Canned soup and ramen noodles that weren’t exactly good for my blood pressure. No health insurance, no pension, no work history—nothing I could list on a form, anyway.
“So you’re working a minimum wage job while you dispense advice and grant forgiveness to people like me on your own time?” Madeline had been gazing across the empty bar as Barry Manilow crooned over the sound system. “But there’s no compensation for any of it. You live without any of the things you used to enjoy when you can perform this great service. Why?”
Because people like you come to me and lay their guilt at my feet as if it were a rag-wrapped orphan, I’d thought. Because I have a bizarre gift for forgiveness—or perhaps a deficit where blame is concerned.
This was what I’d wanted to say, what I probably should have said. Unfortunately, I’d been at this point too drunk.
So I’d bobbed and shaken my head, more to sharpen the blurry, levitating Madeline before me in the booth than to attempt an answer. It hadn’t worked; she’d kept rising. But she’d taken my helpless gesture as a sign.
“Nothing! You receive nothing in return for your help, for your work and experience and … and … c
ompassion. That’s wrong. Wasn’t that church of yours passing around a basket, asking people to kick in every time you gave out a what-do-you-call-it? A benediction?”
“Well, sort of.” It hadn’t seemed the right time to critique her liturgical knowledge. Madeline was ordering yet another round of drinks.
“Listen, Gabe. No one else is doing this on a volunteer basis. Think of the Catholic Church. Do you think the Vatican bought all that art by hearing people’s confessions for free? Isn’t it the wealthiest state in the world, or did I just make that up?”
I’d assumed it was the booze, plus Madeline’s relief, that had made her talk that way—drunkenly framing my spiritual work in transactional terms. Tomorrow our conversation would be forgotten, evaporated along with her guilt. I’d been keeping track, and she’d had enough to drink that I could not in good faith have touched her even if she’d ripped open her clothes, laid herself on the table, and begged. So after draining my fourth Bombaytini I’d stood with difficulty, lied that I had an early morning, and tottered out the door and up the block to my lonely cell where I’d dived headfirst into bed.
But when I dragged myself through the door of Brooks Books that afternoon to begin my shift, I was told that Madeline had been calling the store repeatedly and with growing intensity since before nine o’clock.
She, apparently, was more practiced in the ways of gin than I. After Oren left to run his errands, I listened to the first of the voicemail messages. I’m looking for Gabe McKenna. Madeline’s voice was crisp and bright. As per our conversation last night, I’d like to get some time on the calendar. Please call me with your availability, she’d chirped with no audible hint of headache. She left her number and signed off with a cheery, Later! I hope.
It was an unusually busy day, and I actually had a burst of customers (a burst being five) that consumed quite a bit of my time. One older gentleman wanted avidly to discuss the meaning of The Plague, though I assured him existentialism was not my area of expertise. Yet he insisted, droning on about the “universal condition” in professorial tones.
