Consent

by Donna Freitas

  Never, ever had it occurred to me that he’d call the house in Rhode Island where I’d grown up, the house of my family. Never, ever had it occurred to me that it might occur to him to do this. I hadn’t given him the phone number there, of course. But of course, he went and found it. Like all the other numbers and addresses he’d found, my family’s address in Rhode Island was also in my file at graduate school.

  I was enraged—at him, at myself—but to speak this out loud to someone else, even to Christopher, would cause me to lose control of it, would calcify it in my body like a new bone. To remain silent about it, to never speak my fears aloud, was to permit the situation to remain a figment of my imagination. Not quite real and, therefore, possibly just a fiction that had taken root in my mind. If it lived only inside me, if I never let it out into the open, I could still retain power over it, distort it, bend it to my will, and my will was to refuse its truth.

  So, like with everything else that he’d done and continued to do, I did my best to bury this newest act. I didn’t have time to deal with him and his stupid needs. I didn’t have it in me to deal with him, to divulge any of what he was doing to Christopher or to my friends, and I certainly wasn’t about to share it with my father. My mother had barely come through surgery and she still might die. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s, my father couldn’t make a bowl of spaghetti, and I had to make sure my family got through this horrible situation. That was my number one priority. My only priority.

  But I also remember thinking, as the fact of his phone call kept rising to dominate everything else on my mind, that nowhere, not anywhere at all, was safe.

  I was home for four, maybe five days.

  Each morning my father and I would get up and go to the hospital to see my mother. Each day she was a little more awake, a little brighter, a little more talkative. She delighted the nurses with her humor, with her positive attitude, with her determination to get better—and fast. She wanted to be up and walking already, even though it would be a while before that was realistic. She was driving the nurses crazy, just like she always drove us crazy, but in a way that made them laugh.

  “Your mother has a will on her,” one of them said during a visit, with a big smile on her face, shaking her head. “And that bodes well for her recovery.”

  “Your mother’s faith is strong,” her surgeon told us one afternoon. He would continue to be the oncologist who treated her throughout her chemo. “It’s going to help her. Praying to God and her belief that God is listening have given her hope and a good attitude. That goes a long way in fighting cancer.”

  I was surprised that a doctor, a cancer surgeon, would speak about prayer and God at all, that he would speak about these things with my mother and take her Catholic faith seriously. But he did, and that meant the world to her, which meant the world to my father and me. I suddenly felt so guilty about the ways I’d spoken to her as a college student, so harshly about her God and how I didn’t believe in him. In college I’d become an avowed and outspoken atheist, I no longer kept my suspicions that God didn’t exist to myself, and I hadn’t cared how much this upset my mother. She would call me on the phone sometimes, asking me what I believed, why I didn’t believe, what I might be willing to believe.

  “What if God was a she?” she asked in the car one day when I was home for a visit. “I think God could be a woman,” she offered—a comment to which I replied, at the time, “Whatever, Mom.”

  But now I was grateful for her God and the ways this God was going to help her survive cancer. I would pray to that God and any other if it might give my mother another day of life, if it would set her on the road to recovery. Whatever worked, I would do it.

  Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, the parish of my childhood and my mother’s Catholic school, swooped in to take care of my family. People left food and more food. Some of it we ate and some of it went into the freezer for later. I remember taking a lasagna that someone made for us and cutting the entire thing into large squares. I wrapped each one individually in tin foil so that all my father had to do was heat it up in the oven, then put it on a plate. I was worried about what he and my grandmother would eat, if he would eat, when I wasn’t around.

  Neighbors, parishioners we knew well and some we didn’t, came by the house to say hello, to ask how we were doing, to offer to help us take care of my grandmother, who continued to ask us daily, nearly hourly, where my mother was and what had happened to her. We answered each time and then she’d forget.

  The parish priests came by, the nuns did, too, especially my mother’s best friend. When my mother returned home from the hospital, one of them would come to the house every day to give my mother communion. They would do this for the entirety of her chemo and radiation, which was nearly a year. The teachers at my mother’s Catholic school, where she’d been head of the nursery for over a decade, pooled their vacation days and donated them to her so she could get through chemo without quitting her job or taking leave without pay. They wanted to make sure she received her full salary during this difficult time, wanted to make sure that her health insurance didn’t lapse. This, and they wanted her back the next year, were determined that she would survive to teach again, despite her gloomy prognosis. That extraordinary act of kindness still makes me teary when I think about it.

  Our Catholic community, the priests and nuns, the schoolteachers and the parishioners, and their willingness to help were everywhere we turned. My father and I were so grateful. I still am and always will be grateful to those people. I still am and always will be grateful for the intensity of my mother’s faith and the way it became a life raft for all of us.

  Even my new boss and my staff at Georgetown wanted to do what they could to help.

  “Stay at home as long as you need,” the head of Residence Life told me when I’d explained that I had to go home immediately for my mother’s surgery, that I’d probably keep having to go home that semester to help.

  She said this despite the fact that my going home meant I would miss the opening of my residence hall, hundreds of first-years moving into the building with their parents in tow, one of the biggest responsibilities of my position. She arranged to have everything covered that day and every other day I would need. She told me there were more important things than work, that my mother was the most important thing of all. She brushed off this gesture as if it were nothing, when I knew exactly what a tremendous something it was. She and the rest of the staff would continue to help me however they could, whenever I needed them, for the remainder of that school year. Catholics everywhere I turned were being so good to me, were offering their hands to help me across this difficult stretch of life, even at my place of employment.

  My father and I discussed graduate school and what I should do for the semester, if I should return to my classes or move home. I was conflicted. I talked about moving home, but he wouldn’t have it. Privately, I was relieved. How was I going to give my mother that wish of seeing me get my PhD if I dropped out? My father argued that she would be horrified if I gave up grad school because she was sick, and I knew this was true. We agreed I’d come home as much as I could, every weekend if possible, and as long as my professors and boss were okay with my absence. They were, and soon I began to commute between Georgetown and Rhode Island, between TAing and classes and my job in Residence Life, and my father who couldn’t cook and my grandmother who couldn’t remember and my mother who was literally in for the battle of her life.

  My professor called again, once, during those first few days after my mother’s surgery.

  After Christopher gave me that first message, I’d stopped answering our home phone because I was afraid I’d hear his voice on the other end after I said hello. I happened to be out the second time he rang, too. I was at the supermarket. When I got home, grocery bags in hand, my father looked up from the newspaper he’d spread across the kitchen table.

  “One of your professors called? A Father L.?” My father’s tone inclined upward, turning
the information into two separate questions.

  I set the bags on the counter and thought I might vomit. “Okay, thanks, Dad.”

  “He wants you to call him back immediately. It sounded important.”

  “All right.”

  My father pointed to the notepad we kept by the phone. He’d carefully written out my professor’s name and his number and had underlined the request that I call him back, immediately, which he’d written in caps.

  He went back to reading his paper.

  I began to unpack the food and put it into the cabinets and the fridge.

  My grandmother shuffled by, wanting to know where my mother was, if I’d bought milk and juice, even though we had three cartons of each already because it was her favorite thing to get at the market.

  My father didn’t seem to think much about the fact that a priest-professor from graduate school was calling me at the house. He knew that I’d always been close to all of my teachers, knew they were a regular part of my life, so it must not have seemed too out of the ordinary. Teachers calling the house, coming to visit us, was a normal thing, teachers of all types—my teachers from growing up, who were also my mother’s colleagues. I was a dedicated student and my mother was a dedicated teacher who knew every other teacher in our town. There were all kinds of priests and nuns and Catholic people calling on us in every way they could, at the door, on the phone, in my mother’s hospital room.

  What was one more priest to add to the mix?

  Christopher and I drove back to Georgetown. He didn’t remark on the calls either, probably because, like my father, he knew I kept in close touch with my professors at Georgetown, especially since I lived on campus. He would joke about me being a teacher’s pet, and we’d laugh about this, since Christopher was also a teacher.

  I got home, I unpacked my clothes, I breathed, I tried to have a quiet night at my apartment. I didn’t call my professor while I was in Rhode Island and I didn’t call him now, either.

  11

  He wouldn’t let up.

  He used my mother’s cancer as a new excuse to be in touch. He called my apartment, wanting to know how she was, would she be all right, what was her diagnosis? He would use these questions as a pretense for the real reason he’d rung my apartment:

  When were we going to talk about his article?

  Had I read it? When would we get together for a conversation about it?

  I certainly hadn’t forgotten about his article, though I wished I had. I pushed it as far away from consciousness as I could during those days I was in Rhode Island, but no matter what I did, it would emerge again, like a buoy that refused to stay under water. Each time it popped up in my mind, I would renew my internal debate about whether the article was trying to tell me something—that it was a confession of love, however indirect—or if it was simply coincidence that he’d written an essay justifying the love of an older, celibate priest for a much younger woman. A woman with whom he would meet, clandestinely, in the woods, so they could have sex.

  Depending on the day, or the hour, I would come down on one side or the other. Obviously, it was a confession of love. Obviously, it was an overture. Obviously, I was letting my imagination run wild and the article was really nothing. It was a clear declaration, who was I kidding to think otherwise? I was undoubtedly a horrible person to suspect a priest of such inappropriate behavior, of breaking his vows or, at least, insinuating that he’d like to.

  Then again, wasn’t the article itself a justification of this—the breaking of the vow of celibacy to experience the love between humans? Hadn’t he argued that it was actually a good thing for a priest to break that vow, because human love pointed to divine love? Wasn’t it right there on the article’s pages, his claim that love between a man and a woman could help a priest know God’s love in a better, more intimate light?

  Yes, I’d read the article, but I wasn’t about to give him this information.

  So, I lied and lied again. I told him I hadn’t had time, that I was about to read it when I’d gotten the call about my mother, that because of going home and the chaos that followed I just hadn’t gotten to it. He demurred: But didn’t I have nearly a month before her diagnosis to read it? Hadn’t he made sure I had plenty of time? Hadn’t her diagnosis come at the very end of his long August trip?

  Yes, but. Yes, but. Yes, but, I told him, my excuses mounting. My new job. My new job training. My new RA staff training. Only I never mentioned Christopher, my boyfriend, because when I’d tried that before, it was a disaster. I pulled up everything else I could think of to fend off his questions, his pressing me about why and when and why not and how come.

  Well, could I read it now? Soon? When?

  He really needed me to. He really wanted to discuss it.

  No, um, I don’t think so. Classes are starting. I have a lot on my plate. Staying in school. Getting my PhD was important to my mother, and I didn’t want to let her down, especially now. Besides, I would be going home on the weekends to Rhode Island, making that long eight-hour drive back and forth each week. When would I have extra time to read something on top of everything else I was reading for classes? It just wasn’t realistic. No, I’m sorry, but I can’t read it now. It’s too bad, I would have liked to very much. I’m so sorry. I really am. Maybe when things slow down, I’ll get to it. But that won’t be for a long time.

  Nope. No. No. I can’t. No. Sorry, but no. There isn’t time. No.

  I’d finally made the shift. I went from silent tolerance, from quiet avoidance, to outright denial of his requests.

  I do not consent.

  I. Do. Not.

  I was articulating my nos out loud, but only because I felt I had no other choice. He was forcing those nos out of me, squeezing me until they emerged from my mouth, dislodged from my throat. He was pressuring me so much, so often, he was so persistent, that I didn’t know what else to do.

  Could I get together with him for coffee?

  For a play?

  To grab dinner?

  Could he come over and visit my apartment?

  Did I want to meet anywhere, anyplace, anytime?

  We should just get together, he said, regardless of the article. As my good friend, he was worried about me. He wanted to make sure I was all right. I had a lot going on. And friends made sure their friends were all right. Friends checked in with friends who were going through a difficult time. Friends do this. Friends do that. Friends, friends, friends.

  This became his new favorite word.

  As your friend, I want to…I am…we should…He would call my apartment and preface whatever he was about to invite me to do with these words. When, inevitably, I said no to his newest idea for getting together, he took to scolding me with this very same word.

  “Don-na,” he’d say, always pronouncing my name the same way, pressing down on that second syllable like he had a hand on my head and was trying to push me to the floor. The word friend always followed, like an out-of-tune piano key that clanged through my insides. “Friends spend time together. Friends do things for each other. You’re being a bad friend.”

  I was being a bad friend.

  He began to tell me this over and over. To make this claim.

  Was I? Was I being a bad friend?

  I began to ask myself this, too. I began to wonder if I was.

  Again, debate roiled within me. Maybe he really was a friend, and here I was, treating him terribly. Worse still, I was treating a professor terribly. A priest terribly. One who was also the head of my graduate program. What was I thinking, upsetting him like this? This was not good. Not good at all. What a mess I was making of everything.

  But then, I had so many friends, and I knew I was a good one. I was. I swear.

  Revulsion. Disgust. Fear. Rage. Helplessness.

  Hatred.

  So much hatred.

  I began to hate him.

  I began to wish him ill, wish that some horrible thing would befall him, like getting hit by a bus. I w
ished him dead. Anything that would make him stop contacting me. I began to fear that only something dire, like major illness or death, would be enough to make him go away.

  I was a trapped animal in a corner, arms crossed in front of me, trying to fend off this foe who kept coming at me no matter what I did. He refused to stop. He just refused. It didn’t matter how I said the word no, or how many times I said it, he would try again. My consent or non-consent was completely beside the point. Or maybe it was more that he simply couldn’t hear my no because he didn’t want to hear it. The only word he wanted to hear from my lips was yes. And until I said what pleased him, he would remain deaf.

  My mother was home for about a month before they started her on chemo. Her doctor wanted her as strong as possible because the chemo was going to be beyond tough. She was happy to be at the house, to be alive, to be with my father and her mother, my grandmother, to have some peace before facing everything else that lay ahead.

  We talked every day on the phone when I wasn’t there to visit.

  It was during one of these conversations that she informed me, around the end of September, in that lilting, singsong tone she always used as though I, too, were one of her nursery-school children, that she’d received a nice letter from my priest friend.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.