In This Life (19 page)

“It’s not a matter of choice! It’s a matter of reconciling my heart with my soul. Sometimes, people make choices outside of themselves because that’s where their peace resides. And when the time comes, I will know.” I surprised myself with my own surety, my own conviction. “I need to step away for a while.”

He stopped in between the center aisle and the steps descending from the lectern. The vehemence in his voice was gone. “Are you sure you’re ready to leave God behind you?”

I allowed myself to indulge in a few seconds of silence.

“I’m just not sure I’m ready to leave her behind,” I said.

Back to the present with Peter knocking on the wall next to the open door. “Jude? Are you decent, man? Can I come in?” His shirt was buttoned up neatly, his hair now in place.

“Hey. I’m kinda tired right now, can we just catch up tomorrow?”

He ignored what I said, sauntering inside and leaning against the desk. “What’d she say, dude?” His light hair and translucent eyes illuminated that dark corner of the room.

“Nothing. Her husband was out of town, we talked for a few minutes.”

“That’s good, right? That she’s moved on? You just had to see it for yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I admitted reluctantly. “Pete, how’d you do it? How did you survive in such a different place when you left the seminary?”

“You’re not leaving the seminary,” he said. “You’re on a leave of absence. You don’t have to learn any permanent survival skills. In three months, you’ll be back where you belong. Because you do belong there, man. Let’s just call this your temporary insanity.”

“We both left. How does that make us so different?” I challenged.

“Dude. I left for many reasons. My heart wasn’t in it, I hated everything about living there, and soon enough I broke every single commitment we were made to uphold. You, on the other hand, remain as pure as you did on the day you signed up.”

He took his place on the floor and sat in the middle of the room, but not before grabbing the wooden picture frame that rested on the table next to my bed. “Was this taken in Thailand?” he asked, as he stared into her bright blue eyes. I felt uncomfortable, possessive of her almost. I couldn’t bear to have another man admire her in that way.

“I can see why you’re smitten. She’s a beauty.”

I took the frame away from his hands and held it in mine. “She looks even better now. A girl who has turned into an alluring, accomplished young woman. She has the world at her feet, and a bright future ahead of her.” I couldn’t help but smile as I spoke those words.

“Then stay away. If she doesn’t want you, don’t waltz into her life knowing that you won’t stay. Because you’re not staying. You’re going back. That’s your calling.”

I didn’t say anything. My thoughts remained focused on her face. I’d stared at this picture so many times before. It was taken on the last happy day we had on the island. She was smiling, peaceful and carefree, with her hands up in the air.

“Look at this!” she’d exclaimed as she twirled around and around the exposed side of the ledge in our little bamboo house. “The most beautiful place in the world. I don’t ever want to leave!”

Pete’s voice brought me back to earth. “Hey, I forgot to tell you that your sister Katie called.”

I let out a groan. My sister could be a major pain at times. She’d also had the biggest crush on Peter when she was growing up. But then again, so did the entire population of girls at our local high school.

“Did she say what she wanted?”

“Nope. She did ask me to join you for dinner at your folks’ place three weeks from this Sunday,” he said as he finally stood up to leave.

I nodded my head as he headed towards the door. “That’s a great idea. You can help me steer through their questions if I survive that long. They’re not too happy about what I’ve done. Leaving the church for a few months to figure myself out—my parents actually thought I had that down years ago.”

He turned around to look at me reassuringly. “I’ll be there, man. I’ve got your back. I’ll have them focusing all of their attention on me, and they’ll forget you’re even there.”

THREE WEEKS HAD
passed since I was with her at the park. It took every ounce of me to avoid stopping by the hospital to see her. What Peter had said the other night resonated with me; if I were to decide to go back, there was no point in seeing her. Besides, she told me to stay away, and these were requests that I had to honor. This situation, what did Peter call it? Temporary insanity?

For the first time in a long time, the holidays had me feeling lost and displaced. This was the first Christmas that wasn’t spent celebrating mass at the church, helping out with the choir or leading the youth group in the preparations for their trip to the Vatican. I spent the day at my parents’ place, in a house filled with forty of our relatives and friends and nowhere else to go after brunch was over. Every so often, I caught my father glancing at me awkwardly as I stayed glued to the television screen, sprawled out with my legs up on the La-Z-Boy, watching the Cardinals play the Cowboys with a bottle of beer in hand. I proceeded to scandalize my mother by cussing at the terrible plays. It amused me to watch them shake their heads as if they didn’t know that the stranger who sat in their midst was the man they had known for thirty-one years, their son, the deacon. That was the beauty of having such loving parents. They stuck with me through my seeming descent into a state of disgrace.

I finally felt like I had overstayed my welcome and stood up to leave about thirty minutes after midnight. It was officially Christmas day. My mother followed me to the front door.

“When do you go back to St. Joe’s,
meu anjinho
?” My little angel. She hadn’t called me that since I was a child.

“I don’t know yet, Mãe. I still have a little more than two months to think about things.”

She nodded her head and kissed me on both cheeks. “Come to dinner that weekend, okay? Bring Peter. Mary wants us to meet her boyfriend.”

“Mary wants to expose him to our crazy family?”

She shook her head at me and laughed. “Be good, Jude, okay?”

“Okay, Mãe. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

THE GRINDING WHIR
of the coffeemaker was drowned out by the loud banging on the front door.
Great, I thought to myself. Could it be another one of Peter’s spurned girlfriends?
I deliberately took my time and meandered towards the noise, hoping that whoever it was would change their mind and turn away.

She might as well have kicked it in.

She stomped her way past me and stormed into the living room right after I opened the door. My God she was beautiful. Her hair, her face, her dress. It was short, it was blue, and the flaming red birthmark on the middle of her left thigh was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. She whipped herself around to face me.

“Fuck you. I was happy. I was happy, goddamn it!”

I tried to remain calm by sticking my hands in my pockets, resisting the urge to pounce on her and topple her to the floor.

She’s married. Holy matrimony. Faithfulness. Love. Commitment. She gave it all to someone else. Fuck her.

She zipped past me and continued on. “Fuck you for messing up my life. What the hell did you want to accomplish by showing up after five years?”

Fuck me?” I yelled back. “Fuck you! You married someone else! So why do you care? If you’re so happy and secure with Dante, what the fuck do you care?”

Back and forth she paced, the sound of her high heels clicking on the wooden floor.

“Don’t you dare talk about Dante! He left me because of you!”

I was at a loss for words. He left her? She’s free?
She followed my thoughts with a sarcastic laugh. A low snicker, an evil sounding cackle.

“Ha! You just said fuck,” she said.

“I just said fuck. Fuck!”

“Don’t you have to go to confession or something? There’s a church right down the fucking street. Go cleanse yourself, sinner!” She waved her arms in the air.

Sinner. Despite the blaring veracity of her words, they angered me.
It was bad enough to feel like I’d abandoned my faith. I didn’t need her, the reason for all this, to judge me.

“Oh, you don’t know, lady. You don’t know how much cussing I want to do right now!”

“Then do it. Don’t be a hypocrite!” she screamed. Clickety clack, clickety clack. She walked around and around in circles.

Leola said that she had changed. That she was more subdued these days. I was going to beat that fucker up. She was still as outspoken as ever. Her rabid eyes lit up like the burning embers on that dark secluded beach and it excited me to no end.

“You’re crazy!” I yelled back.

“Not as crazy as you. Stalker.”

Once again, she spun around, stomped across the floor and stopped right by the aquarium. Her face grew ashen, drained of all color. She leaned on the arm of the couch to steady herself.

“What’s that?” she asked, the prideful attitude still evident in her voice.

“What do you mean what’s that? It’s a fish tank.”

“Are those the…” She pointed to the two blue seahorses wrapped around each other, floating in and out of the bright orange coral.

“Same ones? Not the same ones, no. They don’t live that long. These are two years old.”

“Oh.” She turned to her right and found my open bedroom door. I quickly followed her inside and sat at the edge of my bed, afraid of what she was going to do next. She noticed her picture on the nightstand. It antagonized her so much that she flew across the room and attempted to pull me up with all her might.

“Stand up! Stand up, you coward!” Her nostrils flared as she barreled towards me.

I leapt to my feet and tried in vain to subdue her.

“Face me, you hypocrite! Look at me!” she cried. “You meant everything to me.” She struck my shoulders with both hands as I stepped backwards to avoid her. She followed me step by step, smacking me with open palms, hitting me on the chest then slapping me on the face. I caught her hand in mine just as she was about to deliver another blow. Her wedding ring was gone. “But,” she said as she used her other hand to pound her fist into my shoulder, “I.”

Pound.

“Meant.”

Pound.

“Nothing.”

That was it. I was pushed to the brink, forced to my limit. “How do you know?” I yelled, my cheek stinging from the force of her hand. “How do you know that I was fine? I was miserable, do you hear me? I was fucking miserable!”

“You lie! You’re a goddamn liar!” she yelled, starting to bawl. “I buried you with my mother. You both left me on the same day! Do you know how painful it is to have someone die on you? The hopelessness of never seeing them again? Have you ever felt like you were placed in a box and could never ever crawl out of it?”

The box. That’s exactly how I had felt all these years. I was in a coffin, buried by mistake, waiting to die. Not me, I fought hard to say. I was the chosen one, committed to freedom. Why then, had I been locked up in a box, unable to break out of the hold she had on me?
I remember being traumatized by a movie on afternoon television about a woman who was buried in a coffin that had been sealed shut. Her hair grew white from fear as she laid there, immobile and trapped, while she watched the maggots feed on her.

I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t see her this way, couldn’t watch this headstrong, spirited woman shamelessly decimated before my very eyes. I started to cry. The sound that I made was unrecognizable. I cried for the years that had passed, the aching, the longing, the wasted time. I was filled with hatred and heartache and lust.

Yes, and lust.

I wanted proof of life. Let her scream and kick and cry beneath me, it would be evidence that she was here in the flesh.

“You killed me,” I cried. “The day you married him, you took my future away from me.”

I pushed her against the wall and pinned her arms above her head. I brought my face close to hers until her lips drank in my words. “Do you know what it feels like to die every day, to dream of you, to spend every waking hour of the day wanting, needing, craving someone you can never have?” Her face turned to fear. I wanted her to feel my frustration, to match my fear, my anger. “Do you?” I demanded.