Change of Heart (36 page)

“How does one become a priest?” Maggie asked.

“You go to seminary for a certain number of years, and then you become a member of the transitional deaconate … learning the ropes under the guidance of a more experienced parish priest. Finally, you get ordained.”

“How long ago did you take your vows, Father?”

“It’s been two years,” I said.

I could still remember the ordainment ceremony, my parents watching from the pews, their faces lit as if they had stars caught in their throats. I had been so certain, then, of my calling—of serving Jesus Christ, of who Jesus Christ was. Had I been wrong then? Or was it simply that there was more than one kind of
right
?

“As part of your duties at St. Catherine’s, Father, have you been a spiritual advisor for an inmate named Shay Bourne?”

“Yes.”

“And is Shay here in the courtroom today?”

“He is.”

“In fact,” Maggie said, “he’s the plaintiff in this case who was sitting beside me at that table, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes.” I smiled at Shay, who looked down at the table.

“During the course of your training to become a priest, did you speak with parishioners about their religious beliefs?”

“Of course.”

“Is it part of your duty as a priest to help others become familiar with God?”

“Yes.”

“How about deepening their faith in God?”

“Absolutely.”

She turned to the judge. “I’m going to offer up Father Michael as an expert on spiritual advice and religious beliefs, Your Honor.”

The other attorney shot up. “Objection,” he said. “With all due respect, is Father Michael an expert on Jewish beliefs? Methodist beliefs? Muslim ones?”

“Sustained,” the judge said. “Father Michael may not testify as an expert on religious beliefs outside of the Catholic faith, except in his role as a spiritual advisor.”

I had no idea what that meant, and from the looks on their faces, neither did either attorney. “What’s the role of a spiritual advisor in the prison?” Maggie asked.

“You meet with inmates who would like a friend to talk to, or a voice to pray with,” I explained. “You offer them counseling, direction, devotional materials. Basically, you’re a priest making a house call.”

“How was it that you were chosen to become a spiritual advisor?”

“St. Catherine’s—my parish—received a request from the state prison.”

“Is Shay Catholic, Father?”

“One of his foster mothers had him baptized Catholic, so in the eyes of the Church, yes, he is. However, he does not consider himself a practicing Catholic.”

“How does that work, then? If you’re a priest and he’s not Catholic, how are you able to be his spiritual advisor?”

“Because my job isn’t to preach to him, but to listen.”

“When was the first time you met with Shay?” Maggie asked.

“March eighth of this year,” I said. “I’ve seen him once or twice a week since then.”

“At some point, did Shay discuss his desire to donate his heart to Claire Nealon, the sister of one of his victims?”

“It was the very first conversation we had,” I replied.

“How many times since have you discussed with Shay his feelings about this transplant?”

“Maybe twenty-five, thirty.”

Maggie nodded. “There are people here today who think that Shay’s desire to become an organ donor has everything to do with buying himself time, and nothing to do with religion. Do you agree with that?”

“Objection,” the other attorney said. “Speculation.”

The judge shook his head. “I’ll allow it.”

“He’d die today, if you let him donate his heart. It’s not time he wants; it’s the chance to be executed in a way that would allow for a transplant.”

“Let me play devil’s advocate,” Maggie said. “We all know donating organs is selfless … but where’s the link between donation and salvation? Was there something that convinced you this wasn’t just altruism on Shay’s part … but part of his faith?”

“Yes,” I said. “When Shay told me what he wanted to do, he said it in a very striking way. It almost sounded like a weird riddle: ‘If I bring forth what’s inside me, what’s inside me will save me. If I don’t bring forth what’s inside me, what’s inside me will destroy me.’ I found out later that Shay’s statement wasn’t original. He was quoting someone pretty important.”

“Who, Father?”

I looked at the judge. “Jesus Christ.”

“Nothing further,” Maggie said, and she sat back down beside Shay.

Gordon Greenleaf frowned at me. “Forgive my ignorance, Father. Is that from the Old Testament or the New Testament?”

“Neither,” I replied. “It’s from the Gospel of Thomas.”

This stopped the attorney in his tracks. “Aren’t all gospels
somewhere
in the Bible?”

“Objection,” Maggie called out. “Father Michael can’t respond, because he’s not a religious expert.”

“
You
offered him up as one,” Greenleaf said.

Maggie shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have objected to it.”

“I’ll rephrase,” Greenleaf said. “So, Mr. Bourne quoted something that is not actually in the Bible, but you’re claiming it’s proof that he’s motivated by religion?”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”

“Well, then, what religion does Shay practice?” Greenleaf asked.

“He doesn’t label it.”

“You said he’s not a practicing Catholic. Is he a practicing Jew, then?”

“No.”

“A Muslim?”

“No.”

“A Buddhist?”

“No,” I said.

“Is Mr. Bourne practicing any type of organized religion that the court might be familiar with, Father?”

I hesitated. “He’s practicing a religion, but it isn’t formally organized.”

“Like what? Bourneism?”

“Objection,” Maggie interrupted. “If Shay can’t name it, why do we have to?”

“Sustained,” Judge Haig said.

“Let me clarify,” Greenleaf said. “Shay Bourne is practicing a religion you can’t name, and quoting from a gospel that’s not in the Bible … and yet somehow his desire to be an organ donor is grounded in the concept of religious salvation? Does that not strike you, Father, as the slightest bit
convenient
on Mr. Bourne’s part?”

He turned, as if he hadn’t really expected me to give an answer, but I wasn’t going to let him off that easy. “Mr. Green-leaf,” I said, “there are all sorts of experiences that we can’t really put a name to.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The birth of a child, for one. Or the death of a parent. Falling in love. Words are like nets—we hope they’ll cover what
we mean, but we know they can’t possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. Finding God is like that, too. If it’s happened to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else—and language only takes you so far,” I said. “Yes, it sounds convenient. And yes, he’s the only member of his religion. And no, it doesn’t have a name. But … I believe him.” I looked at Shay until he met my gaze. “I believe.”

|||||||||||||||||||||||||

When Claire was awake, which was less and less often, we did not talk about the heart that might be coming for her or whether or not she’d take it. She didn’t want to; I was afraid to. Instead, we talked about things that didn’t matter: who’d been voted off her favorite reality TV show; how the Internet actually worked; if I’d reminded Mrs. Walloughby to feed Dudley twice a day instead of three times, because he was on a diet. When Claire was asleep, I held her hand and told her about the future I dreamed of. I told her that we’d travel to Bali and live for a month in a hut perched over the ocean. I told her that I would learn to water-ski barefoot while she drove the boat, and then we’d swap places. How we would climb Mt. Katahdin, get our ears double pierced, learn how to make chocolate from scratch. I imagined her swimming up from the sandy bottom of unconsciousness, bursting through the surface, wading to where I was waiting onshore.

It was during one of Claire’s afternoon drug-induced marathon naps that I began to learn about elephants. That morning, when I had gone down to the hospital cafeteria for a cup of coffee, I passed the same three retail establishments I’d passed every day for
the past two weeks—a bank, a bookstore, a travel agency. Today, though, for the first time, I was magnetically drawn to a poster in the window.
EXPERIENCE AFRICA
, it said.

The bored college girl staffing the office was talking to her boyfriend on the phone when I walked inside, and was more than happy to send me on my way with a brochure, in lieu of actually telling me about the destination herself. “Where were we?” I heard her say as she picked up the phone again when I left the office, and then she giggled. “With your
teeth
?”

Upstairs in Claire’s room, I pored over pictures of rooms with beds as wide as the sea, covered with crisp white linens and draped with a net of gauze. Of outside showers, exposed to the bush, so that you were as naked as the animals. Of Land Rovers and African rangers with phosphorescent smiles.

And oh, the animals—sleek leopards, with their Rorschach spots; a lioness with eyes like amber; the massive monolith of an elephant yanking a tree out of the ground.

Did you know,
the brochure read,
that elephants live in a society much like ours?

That they travel in matriarchal packs, and gestate for 22 months?

That they can communicate over a distance of 50 km?

Come track the amazing elephant in its natural habitat, the Tuli Block …

“What are you reading?” Claire squinted at the brochure, her voice groggy.

“Something on safaris,” I said. “I thought maybe you and I might go on one.”

“I’m not taking that stupid heart,” Claire said, and she rolled on her side, closing her eyes again.

I would tell Claire about the elephants when she woke up, I decided. About a country where mothers and daughters walked side by side for years with their aunts and sisters. About how elephants were either right-handed or left-handed. How they could find their way home years after they’d left.

Here is what I wouldn’t tell Claire, ever: That elephants know when they’re close to dying, and they make their way to a riverbed for nature to take its course. That elephants bury their dead, and grieve. That naturalists have seen a mother elephant carry a dead calf for miles, cradled in her trunk, unwilling and unable to let it go.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||

Nobody wanted Ian Fletcher to testify, including me.

When I’d called an emergency meeting with the judge days earlier, asking to add Fletcher to my witness list as an expert on the history of religion, I thought Gordon Greenleaf would burst a blood vessel in chambers. “Hello?” he said. “Rule 26(c)?”

He was talking about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which said that witnesses had to be disclosed thirty days before a trial, unless otherwise directed by the court. I was banking on that last clause. “Judge,” I said, “we’ve only had two weeks to prepare for this trial—neither of us disclosed
any
of our witnesses within thirty days.”

“You don’t get to sneak in an expert just because you happened to stumble over one,” Greenleaf said.

Federal court judges were notorious for trying to keep their cases on the straight and narrow. If Judge Haig allowed Fletcher to testify, it opened up a whole can of worms—Greenleaf would need to prepare his cross, and would most likely want to hire a counterexpert, which would delay the trial … and we all knew that couldn’t happen, since we had a deadline in the strictest sense of the word. But—here was the crazy thing—Father Michael had been right. Ian Fletcher’s book dovetailed so neatly with the hook I was using to drag Shay’s case to a victory that it would have been a shame not to try. And even better—it provided the one element I’d been lacking in this case: a historical pre cedent.

I had fully convinced myself that Judge Haig would laugh in my face anyway when I tried to include a new witness at the last minute, but instead, he looked down at the name. “Fletcher,” he said, testing the word in his mouth as if it were made of sharp stones. “
Ian
Fletcher?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Is he the one who used to have a television show?”

I sucked in my breath. “I believe so.”

“I’ll be damned,” the judge said. He said this in a voice that wasn’t wish-I-had-his-autograph, but more he-was-like-a-train-wreck-I-couldn’t-turn-away-from.

The good news was, I was allowed to bring in my expert witness. The bad news was that Judge Haig didn’t like him very much—and had in the forefront of his mind my witness’s former incarnation as an atheist showboat, when I really wanted him to be seen as a grave and credible historian. Greenleaf was furious that he’d only had days to figure out what tune Fletcher was singing these days; the judge regarded him as a curiosity, and me—well, I was just praying that my whole case didn’t self-destruct in the next ten minutes.

“Before we begin, Ms. Bloom,” the judge said, “I have a few questions for Dr. Fletcher.”

He nodded. “Shoot, Judge.”

“How does a man who was an atheist a decade ago convince a court that he’s an expert on religion now?”

“Your Honor,” I interjected. “I’m planning on going through Dr. Fletcher’s credentials …”

“I didn’t ask
you
, Ms. Bloom,” he said.

But Ian Fletcher wasn’t rattled. “You know what they say, Your Honor. Sinners make the best reformed saints.” He grinned, a slow and lazy smile that reminded me of a cat in the sunlight.
“I guess finding God is like seeing a ghost—you can be a skeptic until you come face-to-face with what you said doesn’t exist.”

“So you’re a religious man now?” the judge asked.

“I’m a
spiritual
man,” Fletcher corrected. “And I do think there’s a difference. But being spiritual doesn’t pay the rent, which is why I have degrees from Princeton and Harvard, three
New York Times
bestselling nonfiction books, forty-two published articles on the origins of world religions, and positions on six interfaith councils, including one that advises the current administration.”

The judge nodded, making notes; and Greenleaf stipulated to the list of Fletcher’s credentials. “I might as well start with where Judge Haig left off,” I said, beginning the direct examination. “It’s pretty rare for an atheist to get interested in religion. Did you just sort of wake up one day and find Jesus?”