Rabid (18 page)

“Please-ah, Father Dante.” They said goodbyes and his grip on her hand loosened.

She yanked her hand free and walked away without running. She clambered into her car and gripped the frozen steering wheel. Nausea coiled in her esophagus and she grabbed the door handle, but she had survived without screaming or fleeing. The cold steering wheel patted her forehead like a mother’s hand should.

She had seen the enigmatic priest, all right, but she didn’t count on him seeing her and grilling her about her father and her family and Orthodoxy in front of everyone while the hangover from her father’s annual anniversary wake still gored her temples and roiled her stomach.

~~~~~

The choir descended the narrow stairs behind the jalousies and the altar. Laura glanced through the wooden lattice while the congregation zipped themselves into a line to leave the loft. She whispered to Lydia behind her, “Does Theresa Witulski look pregnant again?”

Lydia shook her head. “I hope not. You heard that she told Jolinda that they wanted at least two boys, so they were going to keep having kids until they got a second son.”

“But they have
thirteen girls
,” Laura said.

“God is punishing them for pig-headedness. Hasn’t anybody told them that it’s ‘Thy will be done,’ not ‘my will?’”

Mary said from behind Lydia, “Frank should leave her alone. She’s suffered enough.”

Behind Mary, Bev smiled at Laura, who smiled back. Bev wasn’t a gossip-hound like the rest of them. Laura appreciated that.

~~~~~

Dante shook hands with people in the bright, cold sunlight and smiled, glad that he had only one more Mass for the day.

That Coptic Orthodox woman, Leila Faris, something was odd, there. Dante hadn’t introduced himself, but she had known his name. Of course, his name had been listed as a celebrant in the Order of the Mass in the program. That must be it.

But she had called him Monsignor, which was correct, but not generally known.

Behind a few more people, Sloan pushed his girls out of the church. He caught Dante’s eye, and Dante extended his hand.

Sloan looked around, and then straightened and his shoulders dropped. He smiled.

~~~~~

Jesus H. Fucking Christ.
Conroy wheeled the girls aside as if shielding them from a blast.

Leila was talking to that priest. Conroy never should have mentioned the priest in the lab. He had invaded the no-man’s-land that separated his family and casual fucking.

Leila shook off the priest’s hands, trotted to her car, and hopped on one foot as she tumbled behind the wheel.

Leila probably hadn’t said anything substantive to the priest. Conroy was off the enormous, barbed meathook that Beverly’s putative divorce attorney would’ve rammed up his ass if the Leila situation ever came to light. He inhaled the metallic January air and said, “Hello, Father Dante.”

“Hello, Dr. Sloan,” said the priest. “Nice to see you. Hope you enjoyed the Mass. See you tomorrow.”

“Monday?” Conroy asked. “Why?”

Father Dante said, “As usual, for our session.”

“Okay,” he said.

If they thought he was going to more counseling after that last debacle, they were in a state of neural insufficiency, goddamn it. Conroy sauntered to his Porsche parked in the gravel overflow parking lot, trailing his flitting daughters.

~~~~~

Bev arrived home and stripped off her gloves, tossing them and her purse on top of the dryer. “Conroy?” she called.

“In here!” he yelled from the kitchen. Bev wandered over to the kitchen, where he was eating a sandwich.

Conroy said, “Something weird, today. That priest said he would see me tomorrow.”

Conroy couldn’t have forgotten. She whispered, “Counseling.”

“No, I stopped doing that other,” he glanced toward the doorway to the living room where the girls were watching cartoons, “
thing
.”

Bev had thought that he was going to say
woman,
doing that other
woman
.

“I did everything that priest asked.” He ate the last corner crust of his sandwich. “I broke it off. I confessed. I was heartily sorry I had offended God.”

Such rote verbiage sounded like he had faked it and deceived Father Dante and her. Oh, Virgin Mary, this was too hard. “We need more than one week of counseling.”

He asked, “Aren’t you happy?” and ate the end of a pickle.

The conversation would proceed:
If you’re not happy, then we should get a divorce.
She said, “If you were happy, you wouldn’t have done that other
thing
.”

From the living room, television cartoons jingled and beeped. The set was on too loud, but if the girls ruined their hearing they wouldn’t be able to hear their parents’ fighting.

Conroy’s mottled face was stiff. His thin lips barely moved. “It was a one-time thing.”

“You said in counseling that the affair went on for six months.”

He clarified, “It was only one affair.”

That might be another lie, that there was
only one affair
. There might be more affairs. God, she hadn’t thought of that.
More affairs.
Stupid anger welled up. “Was it only one?”

He dropped his dishes in the sink. Water splashed. “Yes. I broke it off.”

Bev dug her fingernails into the wood of the kitchen table. Outside, cold wind blew a swing on the girls’ swingset, like a ghost rode it. “How do I know?”

“I sent you the email. You saw it. We’re quitting the counseling.”

“No. That was the deal, Conroy. We go to counseling. Not for just a week. Not just until you give up your—”
whore, lay, bitch, cunt
, “—affair. Until I say we stop.”

“Priests are always meddling. The whole Vatican is a sick, twisted, corporation that micromanages people’s lives, everyone, the priests, the laity, everyone. I stopped the affair. You can’t leave me now. How would that look?”

“It would look like you screwed around and so I left you.”

“It would look like I’d stopped and you
still
left me.”

The solid edge of the kitchen table threatened to crumble under her fingers, leaving her holding sawdust. “You have a morals clause in your contract. The university would fire you.” The cold tile counter pressed her hip and she gathered her breath inside to threaten him. His eyes were narrow, blue slits. “The scandal would derail your career for years. And the chair is open now. It might not be open again for decades.”

Bev started to push a strand of hair off her face.

Conroy gestured his disdain for her opinion.

Their hands rose at the same time, fast, and slapped in the air.

Conroy grabbed her. His big hand lassoed her wrist.

Her breath snagged.

The room spun around the point where his hand held her wrist. Spinning howled around her head and her other arm wrapped around her head like a helmet. “
No!
”

Her wrist ripped from Conroy’s grasp and she caught herself on the counter.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right.”

Air scratched at her closed throat and parted the clamped muscles. “Fine,” she said.

“I thought you had been,” he looked away, “drinking.”

“How could you think that?”
Bastard. Idiot.

“Last week, you drank with that priest.”

“It’s not like that.” She hadn’t broken her rules. There was no problem.

“I don’t like that priest coming over here when I’m not home, and you shouldn’t drink, especially in front of the girls.”

“I haven’t.” Not to excess.

“I can’t go to counseling every night. I have that grant to finish, and experiments.”

Negotiate,
she thought,
don’t escalate.
“We could reduce the counseling.”

Conroy leaned on the edge of the kitchen table. “Once, every other week.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” She rubbed her raw wrist.

“Once a week.”

“Wednesdays and Saturdays,” she offered.

Conroy stared at the ceiling Bev had sponged yellow to look like the plaster wall of a Tuscan farmhouse. “Just Saturdays. I don’t know if I’ll be home for supper at all next week.”

“Fine.”

Bev went upstairs to lie down. She took off her wedding rings and speared them on the ring-keeper next to her bed. They chittered down the post to the silver base.

Tomorrow was Monday, and after she went to the indoor driving range and smacked golf balls into the air like a repeating bazooka, she could keep their appointment with Father Dante. She could talk to him, alone.

From her bed, she prayed to the Virgin to open Conroy’s heart and for strength and peace and calm. Her crucifix chained around her neck itched, and she held the graven image between her palms and prayed harder. The head of the tiny Jesus pressed into her palm.

~~~~~

Leila, double-gloved and lab-coated, pipetted fuchsia fluid over the infected cells. The biological hood whooshed, and the air chilled her arms. Her white lab coat sleeves were wound tight around her wrists and sealed to her gloves with lime-green masking tape.

The lab door from the hallway banged open. Leila pipetted steadily. If she blasted the sick cells clinging to the dish, it wouldn’t matter if anyone discovered the experiment because the cells would all be dead.

The tissue culture door slammed open and banged the refrigerator behind it. Conroy held the door open with one splayed hand. “Why the hell were you at my church?”

Media dripped onto the last gauzy monolayer of cells, and Leila capped the dish. She slid the long pipet into the tall bucket of bleach-spiked water. “Is anyone else around?”

“No one’s here.”

“You checked?”

Conroy stomped around the dark lab, slamming doors. Leila put her samples in the body-temperature, breath-moist incubator. She stripped off her gloves, inside out and inside each other, tossed her lab coat in the biohaz laundry bin, and washed her hands with antiseptic soap.

Conroy slammed open the tissue culture door again and rattled the refrigerator as she rinsed foam from her hands. “What the hell were you doing at my goddamned church?”

“I wanted to the see that scientist-priest.” She dried her hands with a paper towel and dropped it in the biohazard box. The towel landed on discarded clear six-well trays, sallow latex gloves, and a haystack of inch-long, yellow plastic pipetter tips.

“That goddamned priest saw you.
My family saw you
.” He slapped the sheet metal hood.