Fit Month for Dying (18 page)

He slowly unsteeples his elbows, unlocks his hands, picks up a paper clip from the desk, turns it over, pries it open, presses it together. As I search for scalding words in the face of his complacency, he tosses the paper clip aside, looks squarely at me and, in a voice as dead as his eyes, says as if he has just read my mind, “I wish to God there were some punishment for me that would give you the satisfaction you need.” He hangs his head. “Such punishment doesn't exist, does it? Nothing in this world can help you. And nothing in this world can help me. For that matter, as far as I'm concerned, nothing in the next one can help me, either.”

His jaw slackens. His shoulders slump. Perspiration oozes out of his skin. His abject despair is almost enough to douse my rage. He clears his throat several times, a nervous habit that I had noticed before whenever I had spoken to him. “They're going to laicize me. Did you know that?”

“I hoped they would,” I reply, striving for composure.

He stares at his fingers and quotes, “
You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. This is the priest whom the Lord has crowned.” He runs his fingertips along the edge of his collar. “That's all I ever wanted to be. A priest. Ever since I was ten or eleven
.”

“You should have thought of that before you destroyed the children.” I have no intention of allowing him to wallow in vocational passion.

He makes no attempt to refute my chastisement, just absently rubs one hand over the other on the desk. Aware that I am beating the beaten, I persist. “Greg is all for you going to jail. Do you know that? He wants to take you to court. He wants public censure. Public flogging, if it were allowed. And as soon as he found out what you had done, he wanted to come over here and beat you up himself. I had to block the doorway with my body.”

When he gives me a grateful look, I squelch his gratitude.

“I did it for Brendan's sake. He begged me to keep his father from hurting you. And he begged his father not to have you put in jail. Or harm you in any way.”

He recoils, drops his head into his hands and mumbles, “Oh God Almighty. Oh God Almighty. I'm so sorry. I never asked to be this way. I never intended to hurt anyone. Especially not Brendan.” He adds, as if it is supposed to make a difference, “And I never bullied anyone to be with me. I may have enticed. But I never bullied.”

“
Enticed
! You mean lured! Snared! Is that supposed to justify your behaviour? You never
bullied
them? They're just children, for the love of God. You took advantage of them. That's what you did. They revered you. If you had told them to jump into a snake pit, they would have done it for you.

“Do you know that I left Greg at home right now disgusted with Brendan because he knows in his heart that despite everything you've done to that child, Brendan will still defend you. And worst of all, part of Greg believes Brendan wanted to be abused.
Greg won't admit that, but I can see it's true. I can see it in his eyes. I can hear it in his voice. And it's tearing me apart. It's tearing all of us apart. We're a family destroyed. That's what we are.”

He claps his hands over his ears. “Don't! Don't! I don't want to hear any more.”

He jumps up and begins pacing the floor. He rips his collar off as he walks, tosses it on the desk beside the mangled paper clip. Tears roll down his face, and he brushes them away, childlike, with the back of his hand.

“Like I said, I never meant to hurt anyone! As God is my judge. Especially not Brendan.” He stops his pacing. There is a chair beside the wall, heaped with pamphlets. He heaves the pamphlets to the floor and brings the chair close to mine.

He stares at me until I can no longer avoid meeting his eyes. They remind me of Danny's. “Listen to what I'm going to say,” he says softly. “Brendan isn't flawed like me. You must make Greg understand that. Brendan got led along because he admired me. I knew that, and God help me, I used it. But he also liked the camaraderie, being around boys his own age. And he loved the charity work. He loved helping the needy. What happened after those events was my fault. All my fault.”

He looks away, focuses his gaze on a point distant from me, clears his throat again, and, once he has his emotions solidly in check, he begins to explain the hold his perversion has upon him.

“I've tried to control this beast inside of me. That's how I think of it. A raging, untamed beast. God alone knows how I've tried to get it under control. And if you think your husband hates me, he doesn't hate me nearly as much as I hate myself.”

He stands up. Paces some more. Goes to his desk and sits down again.

“I'm telling you, I hate myself so much I have anxiety attacks. Blackouts even. Sometimes it's all I can do to catch my breath. I get dizzy. Break out in a cold sweat. My heart pounds. Sometimes I'm certain I'm going to die, right at that very moment. And that puts me in a worse state — if I die I'm certain I'll go straight to hell because of what I am.”

He lets out a long, agonized breath. “And sometimes I think I'd be better off dead, despite the certainty of hell. It would make life better for other people. Better for Brendan. My mother. My superiors. The Church.”

He gets up again, leans against his desk and faces me. “Have you any idea what it's like living with the certainty of hell?” he asks, certain that I don't, certain that this state is reserved for the wretched few. I am reminded of Sister Rita's lesson on the Agony in the Garden.
Do you know how much pain it takes to sweat blood
? “Do you know what it's like to live without the hope of eternal life? Day and night to live without this hope?”

And like Sister Rita, he answers for me. “Of course you don't. Few people do. When I was in the seminary I heard about a priest who had sworn away the possibility of everlasting life. He lived in Germany during World War II, and he was escorting Jewish children to safety. The SS made him swear upon his soul that he wasn't lying when he said that the children were Christians and he was just taking them for an outing. For the sake of saving those Jewish children he swore away his own possibility of heaven. For the rest of his life he believed he would go to hell when he died because he had sworn away his soul.”

“That's ridiculous,” I say. “The end justified the means. Didn't anyone ever tell him that?”

“Plenty of people did. But it's what you believe in your heart that counts. I shuddered when I first heard that story; I thought, my God Almighty, what a hopeless life to live. I never thought I'd be living with that same hopelessness. But I do. Night and day. Day and night. I know God is all-forgiving, but to be forgiven I need to slaughter the Beast. Sorrow for sin is manifested in changed behaviour. And I can't do that. Maybe because I don't want to change badly enough. Sometimes I wonder if hell could be any worse than what I'm going through on earth.”

He stops talking, takes off his glasses, and with both hands rubs away the perspiration that has collected in the soft flesh around his eyes. I notice how white and long and delicate his fingers are. He replaces his glasses and asks me, “Have you any idea what it's like living with the fear of being found out? Always wondering whether this is the day you'll be turned in? I've lived with that hell, too, for more years than I care to remember.”

“Haven't you heard of psychiatrists?”

“When the anxiety attacks first began, I told my superiors about them. I was sent from one psychiatrist to another, but I couldn't bring myself to tell any of them about the Beast. The diagnosis came back that I was too scrupulous. I was trying to be too holy.”

He laughs. “Too holy! Some holy! And don't ask me whether I prayed for help. I've done that too.
Ask and it shall be granted. Knock and it shall be opened.
Well, I asked and I knocked, and when nothing changed, I'd think I hadn't asked with enough sincerity, so I'd ask again. And again! And again! But the Beast still stayed. And the more I asked and the more I knocked, the worse the anxiety attacks got. Now I just suffer through them. I don't let on I have them. My superiors think they're cured. But they're far from cured. I get them at Mass. Right at the moment of transubstantiation, that's the worst time.”

He raises both hands, thumb and index finger on each hand pressed together as if elevating the sacred host. He whispers,
“This is my Body!”
He turns to one side and reverently lays the make-believe host down on his desk. He picks up a can that holds his pens and pencils, and holding it aloft with both hands, he whispers,
“For this is the chalice of my blood of the new and eternal covenant, the mystery of faith, which shall be shed for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins.”

This, too, he reverently places back on the desk as if it is actually a sacred vessel. Turning to face me, he asks, again not expecting an answer, “Do you know what's running through my mind when I hold the host up and say,
this is my body?
”

Stunned by his actions, I can't even shake my head. I simply stare at him, but he doesn't notice. He sits back down in his desk chair, spreads his hands, palms upward, on his knees, surveys them and then supplies his own answer. “What I am thinking is that these hands aren't fit to be touching this sacred host, this sacred vessel.”

He tilts his head pensively and frowns. It crosses my mind that he would be good at confessions. I picture him in the confessional, ear to the grating, face averted. I am certain he would be a careful listener, a compassionate dispenser of penance.

“And I'm thinking these are no longer anointed hands. That's when the anxiety attacks happen. That's when I get dizzy. That's when the sweat pours off me. Everything goes black. I have to fumble on the altar for the pall and the corporal so I can put the sacred vessels down safely. And I'm terrified I'll tip over the chalice or the ciborium or I'll set the host down on the altar cloth instead of on the purificator and one of the servers will shout out that I'm doing it wrong — that I have now desecrated the host just like I desecrated the young boys.”

He tells me that when he left the seminary, he had begged his superiors to send him somewhere to do missionary work — a leper colony, old age homes, palliative care hospices — anywhere where he wouldn't be near young boys. Of course, just as he had done later with the psychiatrists, he withheld from his superiors the real reason for wanting such assignments. So his request was denied.

“At one time,” he says, “I was even thinking about feigning alcoholism, telling my superiors I was hitting the altar wine pretty heavily.” He smiles thinly. “And that's one problem I don't have. At least not yet. But I thought it would get me sent away to a treatment centre, and once there I could find some way to rid myself of the Beast. Maybe I might be able to fess up confidentially to a counsellor.” He suddenly throws out another question. “Do you know Luke's gospel about Zacchaeus?”

I shake my head, admitting my spotty knowledge of the gospels, Sister Rita's catechism lessons notwithstanding.

“It's the gospel that offers me my one glimmer of hope that I'm not as repugnant in God's eyes as I am in man's. You see, Zacchaeus was a rich publican, a sinner, and one time when Jesus was on His way through Jericho, He stayed at his house. Everyone was upset because Jesus lodged in the house of a sinner. But Jesus said,
‘Today salvation has come to this house, since he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.'
” He repeats, “
‘Since he, too, is a son of Abraham.'
”

He fumbles amongst the rubble on his desk and picks up the discarded Roman collar and puts it back on, stuffing the ends through slits in the neck of his shirt. With the collar in place, he looks less vulnerable.

“I was sure that when I became ordained, the Beast would be conquered. I wanted so badly to be a priest.” Once again, he runs his fingers along the edge of the collar, absently fondling it. “I thought the discipline, the studies, the celibacy requirement would help me. And I was so certain I would never do anything to scandalize the priesthood. Nor to scandalize my mother.” He closes his eyes for a few seconds. “The disgrace is going to kill her. That haunts me. She's not well. She had a stroke a couple of years ago, and she never fully recovered. That's the only thing that makes me glad I'm not going to the penitentiary. Otherwise I couldn't care less what happens to me.”

I think of Grandmother, who always said whenever she heard about some wayward young man whose crimes had disgraced him, “No matter the deeds he's done, he's still some poor mother's son.” She would sigh heavily, probably thinking of Martin, dead long before his time, and repeat, “He's some poor mother's son. Somewhere some poor mother is crying for him tonight, wishing she could take on his pain.”

“The laicizing isn't going to be made public,” he says, breaking into my thoughts. “That should help her a little. She can say my health couldn't take the rigour of the priesthood.” I notice a hint of mischief in his eyes. “Isn't that what they used to say when a priest or nun left their orders, or got kicked out?”