Rabid (16 page)

“And thus you have borne false witness at least three times.”

Conroy’s kneecaps bore through the skin on his knees. “Right.”

“And why did you lie?”

He
hated
this smug-ass priest. “Why don’t you tell me?”

The priest’s head bowed. “We should pray for the Holy Spirit to open your heart.”

“Now?” His knees grated like two stones grinding into a rubble of pebbles.

“So that you may know what your sins are and confess them.”

“The lying was a sin. I’ve got that.”

“But why did you lie, to her, to your wife, to me?”

“Because I didn’t want to get caught.”

The priest sighed as if the cross itself pressed the air out of him. “No, when you got caught, it wounded your…”

“Beverly would’ve wounded me all right.” Probably in court. He was sure about that.

“No,” the priest said. “There is a reason, within yourself, why you lied. An emotion, a feeling. It would have wounded your…” The priest waited.

Conroy had lied so he wouldn’t get caught. Because he had gotten caught, he had to come to counseling, and counseling was embarrassing, and everyone was going to find out about it and rib him about it. “Pride?” he asked.

“Yes!”

The priest was stupidly excited that Conroy had guessed correctly. God, his knees hurt, ached, stung, and throbbed as the skin ground away.

The priest asked, “Now, what is the root of your pride?”

This couldn’t go on. Conroy’s broken knees were crushed and pulverized. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The priest sighed and asked, “Have you any other sins you wish to confess?”

“Not right now.” He needed to stand up. His knees could not stand the weight of his skeleton and gristle and flesh and blood.

“Then, for your penance…”

Penance, as if he was back in grade school and the penguins were cracking a ruler on his knuckles, or his knees, cracking a ruler over his kneecaps again and again.

 “…you must apologize to your wife and to the other woman, Peggy, for having lied to them. You must not see this other woman. You must attend marriage counseling and try, with your whole heart, to mend your marriage that you jeopardized.”

“All right.”

“And the rosary, the entire rosary, before tomorrow morning.”

That would take an hour, although more than once in grade school he had sorted the beads while thinking about something else. “Yes, Father.”

“Make a good Act of Contrition.”

Conroy, mindful of his must-be-bleeding knees, recited the Act of Contrition fast and was glad he remembered the whole thing. In the act of Contrition, he spoke to God rather than girly demi-deities, dreading the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, resolved to confess his sins, do his penance and avoid-the-near-occasion-of-sin-Amen.

He staggered to his feet and rubbed his raw kneecaps under his pants.

The priest smiled, maybe a little smugly. “Shall we call your wife in?”

“Sure.” Conroy’s back creaked as he pulled himself down into the chair. He dreaded the pains of confession, that was damn sure. He massaged his patellae.

At least he would never have to confess about Leila. He had never lied to her about casual fucking.

~~~~~

Chapter Six

The Daily Hamiltonian:

Sermon Summaries

By Kirin Oberoi

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church: Father Samual Sorenson will speak on “Our God-Haunted World.” Monsignor Dante Petrocchi-Bianchi, will assist. Masses are scheduled for 6:15am, 9:30am, 12:00pm, and 2:30pm.

~~~~~

Sunday morning, Dante and Father Samual celebrated the Mass together.

Dante had attended Mass every day for over a decade, a part of his normal day as a novice, a scholastic, a regent, and a Jesuit priest. The Nicene Creed recited itself in his mouth. Parishioners sparsely attended the weekday Masses, and their few, desiccated voices buzzed in the forced-heat that rebounded on the pale floorboards and the saints’ statues lining the walls like a doll shop.

At the four Sunday Masses, however, Samual and Dante performed to packed houses. At the third, the air rustled as hundreds of lungs wafted it to and fro, each flavoring the air with coffee or tea or strong mint. The meat of their bodies absorbed the currents of the heating system. The mass of bodies overpowered the church’s grumbling.

Dante hadn’t celebrated a Mass for years. He wasn’t a parish priest. That morning, the vestments of the officiant—the white linen alb, the stole with the kissed cross at its center, and the embroidered silk chasuble—slipped over his head and lay on his body. The archaic garments and proscriptions on their wear were dictated as if for protective gear, like a yellow protective suit with an air tank and face mask to dig in contaminated ground.

All here had been violated: the children physically and the whole parish spiritually.

But with God, all things were possible, even redemption for His own Church.

Enrobing for the Mass seemed eerie, a concurrent flashback to the seminary and a déjà vu of future Masses, a glimpse of past lives and future reincarnations within the garments and rituals of priests since the Christ laid hands upon Peter, and Peter upon the next priests, and so on, until hands had been laid upon him, unworthy, wrathful, lustful Dante, who was now on the other side of the planet, two millennia hence.

Dante caught a last glimpse in the mirror to ensure that the alb wasn’t tucked into the back of his pants. A proper priest topped by Dante’s head filled the mirror.

Father Samual walked beside Dante down the aisle of the church through the congregation, a metaphor for being called out of the community. The entrance song welcomed them, and the priests knelt and kissed the altar.

Father Samual extended his hands over the assembled Catholics. “May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

The cathedral rumbled with their response, “And with your spirit.”

Father Samual, his voice old but strong, began the penitential rite. The oiled wood and stained glass reverberated with the volume of the voices and withstood their calls to God and Christ for mercy. Samual stood in front of them all, white-robed and gilt-embroidered.

It is said, or at least some enraptured priests had commented to Dante, that Holy Orders stamps the human soul with God’s seal, an ontological change. At his own Mass when Dante had taken Holy Orders, he tried to feel God’s touch, but he was not sure if that seal would be a feathery molding of his soul or a branding that seared him. In the end, the Mass had seemed like any one of thousands of others, except that he had lain face down before the altar, and his nose was sore.

His disappointment in the lack of a Divine touch had been palpable, and during his month-long Ignatian spiritual exercises with the Society of Jesus he decided that his unfilled longing itself was the cellular level change he had anticipated.

Within months, logic crumbled the tautology that feeling the absence of God was indeed experiencing the presence of God, and he had descended to a utilitarian realization of Holy Orders, that he must have been indelibly stamped because he evidently was a priest.

Even if the investiture of priesthood did blast through a man’s soul, time eroded all things, even souls. With time, the stamp that Holy Orders imprints on a man might smooth away like an over-thumbed Roman coin, though the alternative was that, like a scratch in the earth that catches the wind, a fiery mark might plow deeper, chasm, and wear away humanity.

Perhaps it depended on the man.

Father Samual had written a sweetly stupid homily about the joy of finding the Lord in all things, in dappled things and shining things. “Our Catholic world is a God-haunted world,” the old priest said to the assembled, “and we find Him in all things and in our hearts.” Samual spread his arms as though spreading a cape and raised his face to the gilt ceiling.

Dante’s hand itched to find a staff and smite Father Samual on the back of his white head, where his shepherd’s instinct slept, so that Samual’s gelatinous gray matter rippled forward in a shock wave and splatted onto the inside of his pink-skinned face.

Perhaps Samual hadn’t known that Nicolai was abusing the children.

Perhaps he didn’t or couldn’t believe the accusations.

Maybe he didn’t give a damn.

The collection baskets were passed, and Dante watched the baskets and the pyx of Host and chalices of communion wine brought forward by the deacons while the choir sang. Bev’s somber choices like “Panis Angelicus” clashed with Nicolai’s blithe homily but soothed Dante. Longing for peace
should
fill this unquiet church.

Nicolai had stood here at the perched altar, next to the altar boys, and looked down on the children, sprinkled in the pews with their parents.

The Sloans, the doctor and the two girls, sat gravely on the left side of the church, a few rows back. Sloan absently massaged the scalp of the younger girl, Dinah, and she leaned on him. Her vermillion velvet dress was a cloud catching the setting sun against the landscape of Sloan’s blue shirt and beige pants.

At the altar, Dante stood over the round crackers of the Host, which were wider than his splayed hand. As the choir sang the lilting lament, “
Panis angelicus, fit panis hominum,
”
Heavenly bread, that becomes the bread of all mankind,
he breathed and whispered over the bread, “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation. Through Your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.”

~~~~~

In the choir loft, thirty feet of air above the congregation, the choir sang the low, keening hymns.

“
Manducat Dominum, Pauper, pauper, servus et humilis
.” This body of God will nourish, even the poorest, the most humble of servants.

Bev sat at the organ platform and directed the solemn hymns with flourishes of her upstage hand.

Lydia didn’t know why Bev had picked such bummer songs.

Laura understood. Her breath hurt as if a blood clot blocked her windpipe. After this day, Bev called Laura every day, several times a day, for months.

Mary sang the hymns. They were all the same to her.

~~~~~

Bev sweated in the choir loft, drumming the organ. The heat rose in the church from the furnaces and bodies below. Fans blurred the voices of the choir.

Up there, especially in the winter when the furnace heat rose above the congregation, it seemed wrong that Hell was below the ground and Heaven was above. Heaven should be a cool, quiet place, a basement or an old fortress enclosed by thick, earthen walls that retained the cool of the night. Hell seemed like it should be a precarious place where heat climbed and coagulated.