by Ann Bauer
It was late May now, and suddenly the earth had turned warm and wet. I wore a pair of plaid boxers and a white crewneck T-shirt from the package that Jem and I had bought at Kmart when I first arrived. My feet were bare on the linoleum as I moved around the kitchen, measuring out coffee and putting water on to boil. Standing, waiting, with a mild breeze coming through the windows, I pictured Madeline. Her small, bare yet regal body and solemn eyes. My thoughts were fierce and hot, filling my head as I recalled each detail of our last night together.
This was my morning ritual. It was the only time I allowed myself to indulge in memories. But during the time it took for my coffee to be ready, I let myself go there and sometimes even whispered aloud as if Madeline could hear.
I’d devised this habit to avoid the dissonance I felt about bringing her into my new life. She didn’t belong here. I had vowed to leave her in the past. But the pre-dawn hours were mine alone, and I knew from experience that a craving denied would only rear back up. So I gave myself this pardon each morning to close my eyes and let myself imagine her mouth on my face, my body, the marks on my chest.
When the teakettle whistled, it woke me like a hypnotist’s snap of the fingers and I put the memory away. With the first sip of coffee I came back to my real life, the one I’d chosen. I took my cup and walked back through the living room, where Jem’s bike stood against the window, outlined in a faint gold light.
On the desk were the papers of incorporation I’d been going over last night. Jack’s signature was on the top sheet, and there was a small yellow tab marking the place where I was to write mine. I’d read everything last night, suspicious of all the passive legal language, then had called my brother one last time to confirm that he meant what he said.
“I swear to God, Father,” Jack had said. “I’ve already talked to the Catholic Charities out here. There’s a social worker in Quincy who has some kids coming out of their … I don’t know what you call it. But it’s a school they go to after high school, when there’s nothing else for them to do.”
“And Inga’s going along with this? She’s not going to decide you should take the money and send your girls to Disney World?”
“Jesus, Gabe!” Jack had said. “Do you really think my teenage daughters would be caught dead at a theme park? If they got their hands on your money, the three of them would go to Paris. But, no. She’s not a partner this time. It’s just you and me.”
“And you really think people are going to want to eat in a restaurant where they’re served by kids with Down Syndrome and schizophrenia?” I’d braced for my brother’s pious bullshit.
“Not a chance.” Jack had said, and I’d relaxed. “I did talk to a couple people about making it public. There are a few places, one in Denver and one in, uh, Wisconsin, I think. They do a lot of PR around hiring disabled workers, and it gets them stories in the local newspapers. Which is worth what, exactly? It’s not like anyone even reads the paper these days.”
I’d grinned, thinking of Isaac. My brother might resist the comparison—so would Isaac, actually—but they were, I’d realized, quaintly alike.
“The truth,” Jack had continued, “is that Pope Vincent can go around kissing as many little handicapped girls as he wants. Most people still aren’t going to want that around when they’re out for a nice dinner. Guilt ruins pleasure, you know?”
“Yes,” I’d said. “I’ve heard.”
“This isn’t about hiding people.” Jack had paused, and I’d heard the tiny whoosh of a lighter. He’d taken a quick breath in then exhaled slowly, like someone doing yoga. While smoking. “This is about giving jobs to people who need them while running a business. Hey, what do you think of Chapel?”
“As an activity?”
“A name,” he’d said. “The name of our place. I thought it would, you know, give you some credit. Keep things in your camp.”
I’d thought of the site we’d chosen: a small stone building on the water in South Boston, near our old neighborhood but in an area that had been discovered by artists and hoteliers and gay couples starting families.
“I like it.” Jack and I were careful to remain stoic with each other. After years of estrangement, our new partnership was fragile. But I’d slipped up with what I said next. “You’re doing a good thing, Jackie. I think a place like this might have helped Aidan.”
I’d broken our pact by mentioning Aidan, and as soon as I’d said the words, my face had gotten hot. I was again that nineteen-year-old skulking around his mother’s kitchen, afraid to go out into the neighborhood and face the people who knew what he’d done.
“Nah.” I had almost forgotten Jack was still on the line, my transformation had been so complete. “Let’s be realistic, Father. We aren’t going to have the resources to deal with a kid like that.”
“What do you mean? I thought that’s what we were talking about, giving jobs to young people with, uh, problems.”
“We are. And I’m committed to that. Mild retardation, autism, maybe, what are they calling it now? … transgender? But c’mon, I can’t deal with junkies. We’d be in business like two days. I hope you’re not expecting …”
“But don’t you think, if Aidan had had an opportunity to do something like this before …” I’d swallowed. “Before he got messed up with drugs? He might have been all right.”
There’d been a moment where I’d waited, and when my brother’s voice had come back it was gentle, as if we’d changed places, he now the older brother and I the younger, he the confessor and I the repentant.
“Gabe,” Jack had said. “Aidan was never going to be all right. His father was a drunk who smacked him around. His mom thought he was punishment from God. Aidan was sneaking booze from the time he was fourteen. Poor bastard was hard-wired that way. In addition to being a little deformed and messed up in the head, he was an addict to his core. Who knows why? But there’s nothing anyone could have done.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The night before, holding the phone to my ear, I’d stood staring out the living room window and listening to Jack’s breathing, as familiar to me as my own. Jem’s townhome was perched on a bluff and below us the Cuyahoga rushed northward, toward Lake Erie. I’d watched as a light flickered above the writhing water.
“You were a fuckin’ asshole back then, Father. I for one couldn’t stand you. But you didn’t kill the kid. Life did that.” The river beneath me had moved like a serpent’s tail, and the weight I had carried for twenty years had fallen away, leaving only sadness. I was washed clean.
• • •
Still holding my coffee, I went to the small guest bathroom and quickly showered. Afterward I wiped the steam from the mirror and saw my face appear—ghostly and mottled at first, then real and more confident. I watched the transformation as I shaved.
Every day, I looked a little more like myself. Since coming to Cleveland, I’d lost both the gauntness in my cheeks and the soft paunch in my midriff. I’d all but quit drinking since leaving Chicago, except for a glass of wine on Sundays. Jem had loaned me her old bicycle—far less valuable than her new one, so it stayed outside chained to the side of the garage—and I rode it everywhere I went.
The summer would be hot, she warned me. I would probably need a car by July, or I’d be showing up for work rank and covered with sweat. I had no money to buy a car now, because I’d turned over my founder’s fee to Jack so he could start building the restaurant. But the Forgiveness4You board was scheduled to meet in June, and Isaac had emailed to tell me to expect a check for 3 percent of the profits to date.
“This thing is a fucking goldmine,” he wrote. “We’re already up and running in Austin. Seattle goes online in August and Portland in September. Stamford, Connecticut, sometime after that. We’re scouting Minneapolis, Denver, and Asheville, North Carolina, right now. We’re staying away from Cleveland for the moment, at your request. But we are engaged in global awareness campaigns. Internet, satellite TV. We’ve added an en
tire digital team to create a mobile app. Even if we don’t move in next door to you, this isn’t going to stay contained. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
I responded saying I understood, but in the very small world I’d set up in Cleveland, I doubted anyone would notice. I smiled at that, even as I typed, imagining that Isaac would see this as a challenge. We’d settled into a regular email correspondence that sustained me through the first very lonely weeks. Next to Madeline he was the person I missed most.
This was, I knew in my heart, most of the reason I had agreed to return and serve on the board. There was the possibility of dinner with Isaac and perhaps Madeline, though I had not spoken to her since our last night together. And popping up on her email seemed crass, too informal for a relationship like ours.
A few days after Easter I had written her a letter by hand, with pen and paper. It had felt like a brave and gallant thing to do, but once I’d dropped it in a mailbox—wondering if anyone even checked them anymore—I’d begun to worry that it might seem distant or contrived, an act designed to maximize the space between us. At least a dozen times I’d picked up the phone to call her, but I’d seized up when trying to think about what to say. How to explain.
• • •
Madeline had taken over the Forgiveness4You Foundation and managed all the pro bono work. “We’re giving away 28 percent of our services!” Isaac had complained in his latest message. “Meadow’s gone off the deep end. She’s freakin’ Mother Teresa!” But he had to know this would make me yearn for her even more and question my decision to leave. Isaac could be exacting and a little cruel that way.
It was 6:30 a.m. by the time I was shaved, dressed in black, and helmeted. I let myself out the front door and walked around the little car Jem hardly ever used. “Take it whenever you like,” she’d said when I arrived. “I’ll leave the key.”
But this had not felt right. Jem had offered me a home and a new start. She stayed up with me talking, helping me patch together my new life. But I could never be anything more for her; my heart, my allegiance, lay elsewhere. She never spoke of her disappointment, and when I’d asked her once, she’d shrugged it off.
“It takes two people with similar levels of passion to make romance work,” she’d said in her scientific way. “Friendship is more forgiving. You can put that together with anyone you love.”
There was affection between us. Each of us, I think, was starved for someone to touch. Often, while we were making dinner in the evening, jockeying in her small kitchen, our bodies would brush. When we watched the news at night, she might rest her head on my shoulder, lightly, and once, when she seemed particularly lonely, I stroked her hair. But our boundaries were clear. After the news was over and we’d cleaned up our glasses and plates, we said good night and each went into our own separate rooms.
Bicycling through the cool, clear morning, the sun rising at my back, I watched Lake Erie harden and brighten and shine. Traffic was picking up on Memorial Shoreway with a rush of semi-trucks and early morning commuters. I turned left and coasted down a long, narrow street. It was in the diocese building around one of these corners that I had discovered I was still, technically, a priest.
I’d come to Cleveland intending to apply for a chaplaincy at the hospital where Jem worked. I’d been nervous about the background check, afraid that my old arrest—now unearthed—would show up and disqualify me. Instead, what had come back was proof that I was a fully-ordained priest consecrated by the Catholic Church. I’d gone to the diocese with my story.
I’d walked away from my congregation! I’d told the nun who officiated over their front office. Surely that was reason enough for the Church to be done with me. She was Margaret Thatcher in a wimple and a slate gray dress, austere, even a little regal. She’d simply shaken her head and said no.
“Many of our young men question their calling at some point,” she’d said. “We can’t have all of them running off. So we give them time to reconsider.”
I’d asked how much time, and she’d said ten to twelve years, or until they married. “Usually, that’s what triggers a transition,” she’d said. “But my sense is the Vatican is becoming more lenient there, too.” The nun had given me an exasperated look and I had been able to tell that she did not completely approve. “We have a few former Anglican priests who came into the Catholic Church due to a need in the community. If they’re married already, we look the other way. I wouldn’t be surprised if it works that way for men like you someday.”
At first, I was furious. I felt trapped, like a cult member who thinks he’s escaped, but realizes he’s only been living on the outer edges of the compound, trying to rebuild a life while his captors keep their hold. The chaplaincy went to a recent divinity school graduate who had less to “sort out.” I began the process of laicization, but it was foggy and unclear.
I would be immediately defrocked if I joined the military, Nun Thatcher had told me. Then she’d appraised me with unblinking eyes that matched the gray of her dress. “But you’re looking a little long in the tooth for the armed services. I doubt they’ll have you. Marriage is your best bet.”
We’d become almost friends by this time, and I’d found out her name but I never used it. She was always Thatcher to me. I had happened to be in her office Monday morning after Easter to deliver one of the documents she’d said might or might not convince the Church to let me go. The newspaper had lain between us on her desk, its front page nearly filled with a photo of Pope Vincent undefended and cradling the little girl, Renata, in his arms.
“He’s a good one, isn’t he?” she’d said, when she’d caught me looking down.
I’d nodded. I had watched him sweep her up over and over on CNN the night before. And I’d felt something stirring, though I’d been trying to ignore it. Wily Nun Thatcher had seen it at once. She’d reached across the desk and patted my hand with her long claw. “He will change the canon. Mark my words.” The next week, when Vincent had responded to a question about gay clergy and uttered five words that changed the Catholic Church forever—“Who am I to judge?”—I had thought of the tough old woman and sighed. In the fight for my soul, we’d both known who was winning. And it wasn’t me.
Thoughts of Nun Thatcher stayed with me as I approached the little scorched-looking building where I worked. The parking lot was surrounded by a rusted fence and empty but for the old station wagon someone had abandoned there last week. It sat with its hood gaping open a foot or so. There was green glass and the remnants of a bottle near the passenger door, so I stopped to see if perhaps someone had crawled inside to sleep. But whoever had used the car was gone. I made a mental note to call the impound lot, then locked my bike and went in through the back door.
The entryway was musty, a place for spiders and mice. I hung my messenger bag, which contained my lunch and a book that Oren had sent me on Ruby’s recommendation. Then I hurried into the small makeshift vestry and opened a cupboard door. Ours was a poor church, so I washed and folded my own vestments, but I kept them here so they wouldn’t get wrinkled on my bicycle ride.
When she’d told me about this congregation the nun had been brutal, making it sound even worse than it was. I’d been imagining crack pipes in the pews and bars on the windows. Walking in to find the church simply dim, filthy, and barren, I’d felt a little gypped. After nearly four weeks, I’d learned how shallow my first response had been. The people of this tiny place were poor and tired and mostly angry with God. But they were still looking for Him. This, I understood.
I had no acolytes during the week, so I shrugged myself into a plain white cassock, lifted a stole from the cupboard, kissed it, and placed it around my neck. Then I entered the sacristy and looked out onto my congregation. There were three souls, which was standard for a Thursday morning. Once I’d arrived to an empty nave and had, after considering the matter for a couple of minutes, performed an entire service by myself.
The point, I’d realized that day, was my own communi
on with God, my service to Him, whether or not I had “customers” with their own expectations and needs. It had been during that low mass, as I’d read the scripture portions I’d chosen aloud, that I had secured my own commitment. Here I faced my God squarely, with no demands or delusions. I had made my full confession, done penance in His name, and He had received me back.
“I am a priest,” I’d written to Madeline on that night in mid-April, telling both her and myself. “Not out of guilt or because it’s an escape. But because this is who I am.”
This morning there were people facing me, asking me to lead them out of darkness. And in doing so, again and again, I would lead myself. I dipped my fingers in the holy water on the altar and crossed myself. In the pews, an old man wept quietly. A teenager glared at me over her tightly crossed arms. Lenora, my Thursday morning regular, folded her hands and bowed her head.
I lifted my arms to hold my tiny congregation. “May the peace of the Lord be with you always,” I said. Together the three small voices rose up, “And also with you.”
The morning smelled of wildflowers and incense. And low inside my head I heard my brother’s words from the night before. For the first time, I pictured Madeline from the altar and her clothes gleamed like lightning. In my chest, under the old tattoo, I had the sensation of something breaking open. The golden light of sunrise. Faith as Raj described it, vast and clear. It had begun.
ANN BAUER is author of two novels, The Forever Marriage (available from The Overlook Press) and A Wild Ride up the Cupboards, and co-author of the culinary memoir, Damn Good Food. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Elle, Redbook, The Sun, and Salon. She splits her time between Minneapolis and Boston.
