Hours of Gladness (25 page)
Authors: Thomas Fleming
“F
ather. I missed you on our jogging route and heard you were sick,” Jackie Chasen said. “Here's the Jewish equivalent of penicillinâchicken soup.”
ather. I missed you on our jogging route and heard you were sick,” Jackie Chasen said. “Here's the Jewish equivalent of penicillinâchicken soup.”
“Ohâthank you,” Father Hart said, taking the plastic container. “Come in, come in.”
Jackie had never been inside a Catholic rectory before. A new experience. She was in search of new experiences. Last night, Mick had turned up at her house drunk again, trying to tell her he was sorry for being such a bastard that night in Atlantic City. She had thrown him out again. Obviously the magic was gone from that relationship. Maybe the magic was gone from Paradise Beach. The little Irish creep Kilroy called her two and three times a day. He was getting nastier and nastier, calling her a fookin' capitalist cockteaser and other charming names.
Father Hart invited her into a living room that looked as
if it had been decorated by Bob Cratchit: faded brown wallpaper full of butterflies, harps, and birds, ancient stuffed chairs with lace doilies on their arms, a red rug with a flowered pattern that was almost obliterated by age, over the fireplace a portrait of Jesus ascending into heaven. The priest looked almost as blah as the room. His smile was forced and dim, his eyes lackluster. He wore a red sweatshirt with BEAUTIFUL NEW JERSEY in white letters across the chest.
if it had been decorated by Bob Cratchit: faded brown wallpaper full of butterflies, harps, and birds, ancient stuffed chairs with lace doilies on their arms, a red rug with a flowered pattern that was almost obliterated by age, over the fireplace a portrait of Jesus ascending into heaven. The priest looked almost as blah as the room. His smile was forced and dim, his eyes lackluster. He wore a red sweatshirt with BEAUTIFUL NEW JERSEY in white letters across the chest.
“What's wrong, the flu?”
“Yesâthe flu. You might call it the flu.”
“What did the doctor call it?”
“Flu. But he said it reminded him of malaria.”
“In Paradise Beach?”
“A lot of strange things come to Paradise Beach.”
“Like me, for instance.”
“Yes. You did seem strange to me at first. I'd never known a Jewish person before, believe it or not. We all live in ghettos in America. Sometimes golden ghettos, but still ghettos.”
“Yes,” Jackie said, not sure what was coming.
“But we growâless strange, we even become friendsâthrough gestures like this. Through ⦠learning about each other. Your enthusiasm for Dylan Thomas, for instance. I got out some of his poetry and read it for the first time. Magnificent stuff.”
“Oh, I'm so glad.”
“I told you I was familiar with him. I was ashamed to admit I wasn't. I'd only heard one of his poems sung by Joan Baez at a peace march in 1970.”
“You marched against the war?”
“Yes. Did you?”
“I did everything against the war. Including some things you wouldn't approve, Father.”
“How do you know? I hope you don't think I believe in that insipid figure over the fireplace, ascending into a heaven that makes a mockery of the real world. I believe
in another Jesus, a guerrilla leader who pledged himself and his followers to a revolution on behalf of the poor, the victims of imperialism.”
in another Jesus, a guerrilla leader who pledged himself and his followers to a revolution on behalf of the poor, the victims of imperialism.”
Amazing things began happening to Father Hart as he said this. His slumped chest vanished, his shoulders seemed to expand to fill the sweatshirt to its full dimensions. His head no longer drooped, the line of his profile acquired Roman nobility, which his high forehead and balding head accentuated. He was still not handsome, but Jackie suddenly found him attractiveâincredibly attractive.
When was the last time she had loved a man whose mind she admired? Jackie asked herself.
The word love seemed to flip automatically into her head. It was not forbidden in these sacred precincts. Yet it was illicit, a word that always stirred warmth in Jackie's body. She listened while Father Hart told her how he sat here through the long, lonely winter nightsâhis visiting priest had apparently departedâand thought these revolutionary thoughts that he could not express to the Irish-Americans of Paradise Beach.
He poured her a glass of Chablis and one for himself and asked her to describe Chicago in 1968. He had been locked in his seminary, hearing, reading about it from a frustrating distance. Jackie left out nothing. The marijuana and the sex in the park, the stoned crazies charging the helmeted police, the smashed windows of the days of rage. Father Hart's face grew flushed; he confessed his secret wish to go to Guatemala and launch a revolution there, in the name of Jesus the guerrilla, to be the Che Guevara of his time.
“Go,” Jackie said.
“Would you come with me?”
“Sure,” she said, sensing for the first time in years what she once called a flow. The wine, the conversation, was unreal, surreal. It was rushing toward an exquisite moment, a desire that was a marvelous mixture of sex and
politics and poetry, the way she had always imagined love and so seldom found it.
politics and poetry, the way she had always imagined love and so seldom found it.
“I'd need someone like youâto give me the courage,” he said.
“I'm not brave,” she said, remembering her terror the night Joey Zaccaro had visited.
“Yes, you are. You've proven it. I knowâwhat you did the night those mobsters attacked you. I know what happened.”
“Everything?” Jackie said, remembering the wild lust with Mick in the Pines. Was that where she had lost the girl in white?
“I mean, helping to bury the mafiosi. Helping the Irish gunrunners. I'm helping them too.”
“You are?”
“Yes. The other priest who was here ⦠was a British agent. They killed him here ⦠last night.”
“My God. You helped them?”
“I gave them permission.”
“Oh, Father.”
A murderer. This sallow-faced, boyish man had committed what Norman Mailer called the ultimate act, the only act that defined and proclaimed absolute freedom. He had murdered a fellow human being. The girl in white could never understand such a person. But the old Jackie understood him. So did the new Jackie.
“Stop calling me Father. My name is Philip.”
“Philip. Yes, Philip.”
“I have to tell you something else. I'm a virgin.”
“That makes me ⦠almost cry. It makes me feel ⦠honored.”
It was incredible how much she wanted him. She felt creamy inside at the thought of him entering her. It would be like making love to a piece of God. Embracing something old and sacred. The girl in white would understand that, even if she did not completely approve it. Some lines from Dylan Thomas leaped into Jackie's mind.
A process plows the moon into the sun
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin
And the heart gives up its dead.
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin
And the heart gives up its dead.
Yes, perhaps she could give up the dead at last, Great-grandfather Yid and Grandfather, aka Ronald Colman, give up bitchy mother and chastened father, who were as good as dead, give up all the years of garbage sex for a new beginning with God.
Breathlessly, almost strangling on the words, Jackie told him about the girl in white. He wept. She touched the salt tears with her fingertips, then with her lips. Never, never, had she wanted a man so much, never had she wanted to give a man so much.
He was so shy, so naive. He undressed first and then undressed her, an unbelievably bad tactic for a seducer. But it didn't matter. Her body blazed with wanting; she lay on the bed, ignoring the chill in the room, and watched him strip. She raised herself on one elbow and took his penis in her mouthâa completely spontaneous gesture. It simply seemed right to her. He gave a little cry, of pleasure or of fright. Her tongue explored the head as it swelled; she seized one of his hands and placed it on her breast.
An oddity: the penis was cold, icy cold. It had to be the terror of the first time, the dread of damnation still lurking in his Irish-American soul. There was an answer to that problem. She fell back on the bed and opened her legs. “Now, Philip, now,” she whispered.
He entered her and she knew, somehow, what he was thinking and feeling. He was entering freedom, entering the America that his priesthood had denied him for so many long, dry years. He was entering woman, the other half of the known world, after so many years trapped in the arid dungeon of maleness. He was entering triumph, ascension, Moon-Mars-Venus walking, the starry reaches of outer space. He was entering life, love, courage.
She soared with him. It was so different from Mick; there it had been surfing. No flight, simply the mounting wave, the spasm of release, the long ebbing ride to the beach of satisfaction. Surfing or a whirling ride around a track in a souped-up Audi 5000S or Acura Integra across a finish line to the blare of a brass band.
Yes, there was more than one thrill in Mick's repertoire, but none of them equaled this transcendent ascent. Up, up, in wild, ever-widening spirals until the whole sky, sun, moon, and stars were in her, she was the universe and the universe was her and him and God in an ecstasy of oneness beyond anything she had ever known. How could she ever come down? How could she ever walk the humdrum streets again?
When it finally ended, they lay there for a long time in silence. If they had returned to earth, it was a remarkably soft landing. Perhaps they were on an asteroid somewhat south of Venus. Finally, he spoke. “The mafiosiâwhen they were going to hurt youâthey tied you to the bed?”
“Yes,” she said, shuddering involuntarily at the memory.
“That must have been terrifying.”
“It was. I get sick to my stomach every time I think of it.”
“Horrible,” he said, cradling her in his arms. He pressed her against him, as if he wanted to squeeze the evil memory out of her body. Jackie trembled and almost wept.
“What if we did it that way? What if I loved you that way? It might heal the wound.”
Enormously touched by the word
heal,
Jackie agreed. She let him tie her arms and legs to the ends of the bed, exactly as Joey Zaccaro and his bodyguard had spread-eagled her that awful night. Philip Hart knelt beside her, his long, bony body trembling. Was it that cold? He should have gotten over the shock of desire. She decided it was that cold in the room. Hunched beside the church, the rectory did not get much sun.
heal,
Jackie agreed. She let him tie her arms and legs to the ends of the bed, exactly as Joey Zaccaro and his bodyguard had spread-eagled her that awful night. Philip Hart knelt beside her, his long, bony body trembling. Was it that cold? He should have gotten over the shock of desire. She decided it was that cold in the room. Hunched beside the church, the rectory did not get much sun.
Philip's hands traveled down her body. He knelt between her legs and she watched him grow hard. Then, with both hands on her breasts, he entered her. Jackie looked into his eyes, expecting to see concern, tenderness, adoration. Instead she felt as if something were sucking her soul out of her body down a long, terrifying tunnel toward a tiny pinpoint of light, like the twinkle of a single infinitesimal star. Inside her his penis was incredibly cold, like a tube of icy steel. On her breasts she could swear she felt the furry sensation of an animal's paws.
From Philip Hart's mouth came a guttural laugh that was totally out of character, a chortle of pleasure she might have expected from Joey Zaccaro. “I've got a wonderful idea,” he said in a strange croaking voice, as if the cold in the room had settled in his throat.
He vanished and in a few minutes returned wearing the outer vestment of the mass, the long green garment with a golden cross on the front and back. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Fucks,” he croaked as he mounted her again.
What was happening? Suddenly all Jackie could remember was a prayer Great-grandfather Yid had taught her when she was four years old.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
It did not make any sense but it was the only prayer she had ever learned, and prayer, nothing but prayer, seemed vital at this terrifying moment.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
It did not make any sense but it was the only prayer she had ever learned, and prayer, nothing but prayer, seemed vital at this terrifying moment.
She did not know why. Was it because she was encountering another face of God, the side that was adored in darkness and fear? Was this the murderous Philip Hart, the worshipper of Jesus the guerrilla?
“I don't like this. It's not helping,” Jackie said as the icy penis stroked her. She twisted and turned but the knots were well tied.
“Say the prayer after me,” Hart croaked. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Fucks.”
“No. Untie me!”
He withdrew, reared back, and crouched above her. She stared up the green vestment and the gold cross to the sallow
face above them. It swayed there like an unfinished moon, strained by bewilderment. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't know what's happening to me.”
face above them. It swayed there like an unfinished moon, strained by bewilderment. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't know what's happening to me.”
Suddenly a round stain appeared on his forehead. Exactly like the stain on Joey Zaccaro's forehead. The bewilderment on Father Hart's face became absolute, final. His eyes careened to the left and he fell forward on top of Jackie. She twisted her head and saw Billy Kilroy in the doorway, the gun with the bulge beneath the barrel in his hand.
“You fookin' capitalist bitch. Seducin' a fookin' priest,” he said.
He stifled her scream with a handkerchief jammed in her mouth. Then he went downstairs and came back with two bottles of Irish whiskey. He poured them all over Jackie and Father Hart and the bed and dropped a burning match beside them. Everythingâflesh, vestments, sheets---exploded into flame.
To Jackie's amazement there was no pain. Or perhaps the pain was so total, nothing else existed for comparison. Like absolute cold the flames extinguished everything, obliterated opposites, annihilated possibilities. The universe was on fire and Jackie only had time for one last prayer.
And death shall have no dominion.
It was a poem but it was also a prayer. Great-grandfather Yid's prayer had made Dylan's poem a prayer.
And death shall have no dominion.
It was a poem but it was also a prayer. Great-grandfather Yid's prayer had made Dylan's poem a prayer.
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