Any Bitter Thing

by Monica Wood

  —You’re driving? To Maine?

  —I can’t get a flight till tomorrow.

  He stops what he’s doing, ticking off a litany of preventable catastrophes.

  —Don’t forget to lock the patio door. Don’t let David leave his bike outside. I just had your oil changed, so you should be all set, carwise. Aaron’s covering for me, they put me on for the weekend so we won’t lose anything in my check.

  —I lived without you for fifty-one years, Mike.

  He stashes some shirts into a suitcase. The shirts are white, mostly; one of them is a pale blue. This wardrobe has been a source of merriment in the household, for he has never learned to dress as a layman. When Frannie withdraws from their bedroom—clack, clack clack, go her hurt feelings down the stairs—he steals into the closet and reaches into the back, unzips the garment bag wherein hang his blacks, two complete sets. Black jacket. Rabat. Shirt, slightly yellowed. Black pants. Cassock and collar. They still smell like home. On the floor, next to the black shoes, a small leather case containing the essentials for a sacrament he cannot bear to consider.

  He must hurry. She needs a priest.

  For a long time after he left Maine, he tried to make God forsake him. Alone and despairing, he determined himself unheard. Landscapes blinded him, sunrises mocked him, Earth’s abundance salted his wounds. Seven times a day he spit into the abyss, reading his Breviary with moving lips, repeating words that vanished into the ether. Driving endlessly, a long escape, endless and to no end. He found himself in large, anonymous cities, ducking into churches to hide and finding God there. Trysts, he thought of these impulses: illicit moments of undeserved relief.

  —Who’s the friend who called? Frannie asks as he puts the one valise (a flight bag, they used to call these small black bags) in the trunk. She eyes the garment bag but says nothing.

  —Her name’s Vivienne, he says. She was my neighbor back then.

  —Back when?

  —Frannie. I have to go.

  She studies him, confused.

  —All right, she says. Call me.

  —All right. I love you.

  —Me too. She kisses him briskly, her eyes wet.

  He wants to explain, but where would he begin?

  —I’ll pray for her, she says.

  In his rearview he catches the worried folding of Frannie’s arms as she stands at the end of their straight, swept, blacktopped driveway in neat, safe, featureless Conlin, Ohio. He stops, backs up, rolls down the window, suddenly frightened.

  —The roof is not going to collapse, Mike, she says wearily. The boiler isn’t going to blow. Now, go.

  But the boiler could blow. A tree branch could smash through a window. The boy could come down with pneumonia, and he will be nowhere in sight. He starts out again, his rearview filling this time with the well-appointed house that, for lack of anything sturdier, will have to pass for shelter.

  Fourteen hours and Maine appears, much changed after so much time. Clearing the tollbooth at the border, he finds more sky than he expected. More sky and fewer trees. Fewer trees, wider roadways, construction everywhere, the innocent land looking hacked and abused. He sucks in his breath, escaping at the first exit in search of a less violated route. In and in he goes, his Maine, his old life, his younger self appearing before him as the road unrolls like a spool of remembered cloth. God, my God, he prays: Is it here you have waited?

  He is quaking now, feeling the old white light of divine connection, hands knuckled ferociously around the steering wheel. God, my God, is it here you have waited?

  He rolls down the window, inhaling: pine, hay, a small, agonizing thwack of ocean. He can barely drive for the din of blood in his head.

  No one called a priest. It is up to the husband. The husband said: My wife isn’t Catholic.

  On a neatly made bed in a chain motel at the turnpike exit, he lays out his former clothes. The motion—the careful smoothing, the softness and gloss of the fabrics—reminds him so much of laying out the altar that tears come to his eyes. He wipes the black shoes with the bedspread until they shine. In the inside pocket of the jacket he finds the pyx, a now-tarnished silver case in which twenty unconsecrated hosts have crumbled with age. Kneeling at the bed, he consecrates them in Latin and swallows them all.

  The clothes have aged at the back of the closet, the material soft and starchless. The outfit looks shabby, dulled by time or moths or disuse, an extravagant symbol for the moment he is inhabiting. He sits, exhausted, in the ugly motel chair, staring at the laid-out clothes as if they might get up and walk off without him.

  The husband said: My wife isn’t Catholic.

  Soon he gets up, strips, and dresses himself, applying the clothing to his body like bandages on a burn. From his flight bag he extracts the leather case, surprised to find everything there but the prayers—he wonders if the boy has taken them, if the boy has considered a vocation. The stole is there, and the oil; in his head he retains the prayers for the dying. They are not long.

  I baptized this child. Let me now anoint her.

  Once every spring, he took Lizzy to Portland for a trip to Porteous, where they looked at all the pretty dresses and chose one for Easter. They would shop awhile, drop in at St. Dom’s to see Matt Flynn and his goofball dogs, then drive down to the waterfront for fried clams at Boone’s. Back then Portland was just a big town with city pretensions; in his absence it turned itself into the real thing: more people, more cars, more buildings, more signs, more loitering souls wearing two coats. He drives through the West End, heart-crushed to find the doors to Saint Dom’s closed. It is no longer a church. He wonders what happened to Matt, who used to win at pinochle and gloat like the devil himself. Matt was one of the priests named by the Diocese in the recent full disclosure, the great purging that exposed some men as privately accused child molesters from decades back—men he knew and respected, men whose skills he admired, whose siblings he’d met, whose parents he’d helped bury. He himself would be on that list. How many of them are innocent? he wonders. How many are not? He finds himself hoping Matt’s dogs are still alive, especially that wire-haired, smiley one, though they couldn’t be.

  The hospital, where he made monthly pilgrimages to visit his ailing, homesick parishioners, has grown wings. It looks taller, too. All at once he relaxes; he won’t be recognized in this new, changed place.

  He, too, looks much changed.

  The parking lot used to be free but now charges by the half hour. He works his way through the bright hospital lobby, looking for a phone. He calls Frannie, leaves a message, assures her all is well, he’ll be home tomorrow. He says it again—all is well, I’ll be home tomorrow—aware of the machine in his house recording these words as a prayer that must now be answered.

  He takes the rooms floor by floor. Occasionally a patient in paper slippers accosts him in the hall, asking to be blessed. But mostly he is ignored. No one mentions the doll tucked under his arm.

  Entering a waxed corridor from the fourth-floor stairwell, he spots Mariette, whom he recognizes even from the back. The sight of her feels like an avalanche of feathers. She is a woman now, and when she turns to speak to the man standing next to her, he sees that she turned out handsome and sturdy-looking, more like her father than her wrenlike mother. The man she speaks to reminds him of the Pelletiers—the incarnation of Leonard Pelletier, though too young. Charlie, then. He takes a few steps into the hall before withdrawing into the shadow of a doorway, feeling like a thief, listening for the voice of Vivienne. Instead, he hears a man. The husband, Drew. A gut-twist of envy visits him from some place he can’t begin to name.

  It strikes him that in this disguise he could get in anywhere. He ducks into the stairwell and skirts through the other floors, biding time, moving, moving. No one bothers him. He is asked not a single question, stopped by not a single aide or doctor as he slides from floor to floor in the lengthening night, staircase to elevator, returning to the fourth floor every twenty minutes to see if they ha
ve gone. He could be a murderer, a terrorist, an imposter with bad intentions. He could be the thing theysaidhewas.

  Around one o’clock, everything quiets. Night takes over, muffling the corridors and stairwells. Returning, he finds the hallway deserted for the moment, the family gone home to wait, or to the first floor for a soda or a bottle of water, possibly to the chapel for a desperate prayer.

  Intensive Care, immediate family only. The alcove near her room is quiet, the nurses’ station, shiny and partitioned, occupied by a woman who frowns into a manila folder. He waits until she disappears behind a screen. He hears a busy rustling of paper and takes a chance.

  It is the hair he knows first, that distinctive shade of red, her mother’s hair, golden at the ends. Her face spasms from what has been done to it. It is hard to tell whether she turned out beautiful. He gazes upon her, unable to speak. Her hair fanned against the pillow, her body embalmed in a rig with a steel framework that resembles gritted teeth. Just after he baptized her, thirty years past, he stepped around the baptismal font, flanked by Elizabeth and Bill, and lifted the baby to the congregation as if introducing the Christ Child to a delivered world. Everybody smiled; he can still hear the wave of applause.

  How can she be thirty years old? On her bed he places the angel, having unearthed her from the pocket of the garment bag where she has resided all these years. You have a package, the orderly had told him as he sat in his tenth-floor room in the Baltimore “facility.” He’d been looking out the window, trying to locate his car in the lot. He had an extra set of keys and they’d been too polite to search him on arrival. They had let him drive to Baltimore himself, everyone pretending he was making an act of free will, that he would seek voluntary care and counsel and then return, renewed and whole, to a life stripped of children, of tenderness, of responsibility, of meaning. He’d left everything behind: his books and cigars, his sister’s breakfront, his dishes and curtains, his cats, his only child. Jack Derocher, in a show of sympathy, had sent along some things he didn’t even want: his shaving gear, his other shoes, his winter coat, a set of blacks—his backup set, with a button missing at the jacket cuff. This new package looked the same, another useless item, but it wasn’t. Inside he found the angel, a note pinned to her silvery garments: I am sorry.

  He drapes the stole over his neck, his anguish becoming a thing with wings, flapping in his throat. How can he explain himself now? To her, to anyone?

  Muh, he says, trying to form the words, hacking out syllables that demand release. Muh. Her body appears frail and powerless, swaddled and still. My, he manages, finally: My child. He thanks God that she looks loved.

  He wets his thumb with holy oil and anoints her forehead, whispering in rapid Latin. In nomini Patri, et Filio . . . If she dies tonight she will die in God’s arms.

  Briefly, her eyes flutter open.

  He flinches as she takes his measure.

  Then, once again, he vanishes.

  EIGHTEEN

  The bishop wouldn’t see me. Instead, I was ushered into the high-ceilinged office of the co-chancellor, a sprightly man, fiftyish and young for his station. He still had all his hair, an impressive pompadour of faded gold. Twenty years back he’d probably been the type of curate who inspired a full choir top-heavy with sopranos.

  This co-chancellor, Monsignor Fleury, greeted me from behind an imposing desk—in “civvies,” as Father Mike used to say. I sat down, recalling our summer excursions to the beach, the way Father Mike kept his collar in the glove box, tacking it onto his madras shirt about a mile short of the tollbooth. Go ahead, Father, the toll collectors enthused. Go right on through. Nowadays they’d make the priest pay twice.

  “I didn’t know Father Murphy,” the chancellor told me. “I was still a curate up in Van Buren around the time he left St. Bart’s.”

  “He didn’t leave,” I said. “He was removed.”

  He slid his glasses down. “You’re the little girl”

  “I was the little girl.”

  He met my eyes, for which I gave him credit. “The Church is making every effort of late, Mrs. Mitchell, to right the wrongs of the past.”

  “So I’ve read.”

  His eyes flicked sideways and back; he’d misunderstood my intentions completely. To him I was part of the recent posse of victims gunning for justice—and a settlement—after the fact. Probably he thought I’d been talking to either a lawyer or a reporter. “I don’t believe it was fully appreciated back then how damaging—” He waved his hand around as if I were smoke. “The scars—”

  I leaned in, close enough to catch a syrupy whiff of aftershave. “Nothing was done to me, Monsignor Fleury. I’m good news for you. I was not damaged. I am not scarred”

  He looked confused, for of course I was scarred.

  “I’m glad to know that,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me where my uncle is.”

  Another furrowed look. “Are we talking about Heaven and hell?’

  I placed both hands on his desk, which was not the pristine expanse I might have expected, but a landfill of papers and manila folders. “We’re talking about Earth,” I said. “Canada, specifically. I’d like to visit his grave.”

  “The Church wouldn’t have had anything to do with his burial, I’m afraid. That was handled by the family.”

  “But—” I took a moment to re-orient myself. “He died in your care. In your so-called facility. Where you sent him for no good reason.”

  He didn’t answer right away. The day’s gloom lifted; a wide blade of sunlight cut the room in half, separating us. I squinted into the glare. He lolled out of his chair, looking suddenly older, and adjusted the blinds. “If you know he was sent to Baltimore, then you must be aware that he was the subject of an investigation.”

  “I’m aware, yes.”

  “There was an accusation, on your behalf, from a parishioner.”

  “Not on my behalf.”

  “Well, you were just a child.”

  “Believe me, it was not on my behalf.”

  “You’re aware of the nature of the accusation?”

  “You’re aware that I just told you nothing was done to me?”

  He cleared his throat. “The state sent a caseworker to speak to you.”

  “The state?” A small click, like a distant lock-and-load heard through a thicket of trees, sounded very far back in my head. I had not come here to be surprised. “I thought she was a nun,” I said.

  “The accusation against Father Murphy differed significantly from other—incidents—of that era. It came from the Department of Human Services. The Chancery had little control over its course.” He observed me warily. “You recall the investigation?”

  “A little,” I said. “I was nine. A very young nine, Monsignor. Innocent. Sheltered. Uninformed. I was scared to death and didn’t understand the questions.”

  He sat down again. “We send our clergy to the Baltimore facility for a variety of reasons. Some have drinking problems that surface now and again. Some suffer crises of faith or vocation. And as the whole world now knows, some have abused their office. Others go for less obvious reasons. We used to call them nervous breakdowns.”

  “He had a nervous breakdown? Father Mike had a nervous breakdown?”

  “That’s certainly how it appeared.” He paused. “You understand, the breakdown happened after he arrived in Baltimore. He wasn’t sent there initially—”

  “I know why he was sent there initially.”

  “I wasn’t privy to any inside knowledge then. I’m just going by the records.”

  “The records?” I was beginning to sound like a talking bird.

  His fingers moved almost imperceptibly toward a manila folder lying atop a crush of other folders. I had a pretty good idea whose it was, though he made no indication that it was anything more than part of the mess on his desk. “I was told there were no records,” I said. Our eyes met, an electrical charge. “The woman on the phone—Sister Hele
n Dunley?—she told me there were no records.”

  “You didn’t identify yourself very precisely.”

  “Would it have made a difference if I had?”

  He pushed his seat back a little, holding the lip of the desk with both hands; he had most likely been explaining processes like this to victims—real victims, that is—for weeks, sitting in this very office, staring into the unmarked faces of the genuinely damaged.

  “My uncle had a weak heart,” I said. The clicking in my head sped up; I could see that everything I said surprised him. “I don’t believe there was any breakdown, Monsignor, and I find it ironic beyond words that he died while receiving all this so-called help from the Church.”

  “Except,” he said, “to be perfectly accurate—not that I’m minimizing the Church’s role in his life, Mrs. Mitchell, I’m not—Father Murphy died after having refused the Church’s so-called help.”

  “No,” I said evenly. “He died in Baltimore. He was probably wearing a regulation johnny and robe.”

  Monsignor Fleury’s bearing changed then, taking on the befuzzled cant of the hard of hearing. “Father Murphy left our facility,” he said, enunciating, “without being discharged. The Church had arranged for him to join a retreat center in Pennsylvania. He would be trained in keeping archives, fielding requests for marriage annulments and the like. It was not work he looked forward to.” He buckled his hands over his stomach. “After leaving Baltimore, Father Murphy sent a letter to the bishop, informing him that he had—well, that he had left us. Left the fold. We received word of his death not long after that.”

  Now my head was in full throb. “Received word? From where?”

  One quick spark of the eye toward the folder. “From his sister, I believe. A Mrs. Cecilia Barrett. As next of kin, she was the one notified by the authorities.”

  The room pitched a little. “She wasn’t his next of kin I was.”

  “As his sister—”

  “She wasn’t his sister. She was my father’s sister. They weren’t related.”