The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (69 page)

“I miss you, babe.”

“Me, too.”

“I wish I could be there.”

She wished it, too. At the same time she cringed at the thought of Byron looking on, however sympathetically, as she struggled to make sense of this family that had been dumped in her lap.

“I’ll give you a full report on the way back,” she promised.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks, I’ll need it.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She thumbed the
END
button, wishing the words so often whispered in her ear were accompanied by a living, breathing Byron. It was hard seeing so little of him. And what worried her most was that their long-distance relationship had begun to seem normal.

That thought led to ones of Gerry. At least a dozen times over the past few weeks she’d gone to pick up the phone, but something always stopped her. What would be the point? One thing would lead to another, and before she knew it she’d feel pressured into inviting Gerry here. And how would she explain
that
to Lou and Millie? She’d been able to justify the first meeting, in her own mind at least, but her parents would see another as nothing short of a major betrayal.

Then she remembered Justin’s sweet, funny e-mails. And the recipes Mavis had sent, painstakingly copied onto index cards in her crabbed, arthritic hand. Even the memory of Gerry’s ambivalence and Andie’s pushing her away weren’t enough to blot out the warm feelings that crept in.

But first she needed to solve the puzzle of her father. Using the little bit of information Gerry had given her, she’d gotten his home number from the offices of the archdiocese in San Francisco. Luckily his housekeeper had answered when she called. With her fingers crossed behind her back, Claire had told her she worked for the
Marian Reader
and would like to send Father Gallagher a copy of the article in which he’d been mentioned.

Now, armed with his address, she was going to confront him face-to-face.

She saw that she was nearing the Civic Center turnoff, and her stomach did another free fall. Was it fair to ambush him like this? Maybe she should have told him who she was over the phone. If Gerry was right, it would have saved her a trip.

And what about her parents? She hadn’t told them about this little jaunt. They could hardly stand to hear about Gerry. After Claire’s weekend in Carson Springs they’d asked only the bare minimum—what was she like, how were her kids? She knew they felt bad about the stink they’d made. Millie had been going out of her way to be nice, and Lou had volunteered to fix a leak under her sink. So Claire had stuck to the facts, not elaborating. It was easier to let them think her curiosity had been satisfied, that she’d gotten … closure.

Father Gallagher lived on Turk Street in a narrow, two-story clapboard house tucked back from the sidewalk. She circled the block several times before she found a parking space. Fog had crept in, and the dampness clung like wet flannel as she walked back to the house.

She let herself in the gate and made her way up the front path. In the yard, dwarf trees and shrubs were bowed with moisture, and the house seemed to loom like a ship in the fog. Her heart was pounding as she mounted the steps to the porch.

She knocked on the door and a long minute passed before a pair of washed-out blue eyes below a fringe of gray bangs appeared in its beveled glass oval. Claire must not have looked threatening, for the door swung open. A heavyset older woman in a nubby brown sweater that bagged down around her hips stood before her, a lime-green duster in hand.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Father Gallagher,” Claire said.

“Oh yes, he’s expecting you.” Claire’s heart lurched. How had he known? Then the woman said, “Father said they were sending over some papers for him to sign.” She stepped back to let Claire in.

She was ushered into a shabby but scrupulously neat living room with a small dining ell off to one side. She caught the faint odor of cooked fish from the night before. Apparently the easing of restrictions brought by Vatican II hadn’t penetrated this corner of the ecclesiastical universe.

What am I doing here? This is crazy.
She ought to be looking ahead to the future, not mucking around in the past. Didn’t she have enough with just Gerry? What could this man offer her that would be worth the grief?

She heard the creak of someone descending the stairs, and a moment later a man stepped through the archway into the living room, walking with a slight limp—a priest from central casting with piercing blue eyes and wavy silver hair brushed into wings over his temples. His face was smooth and serene except for the deep line, like a chevron, between his brows.

He stuck out a large dry hand smelling faintly of soap. His grip was firm. “I’m sorry the archbishop had to send you all this way.” He smiled and tapped his leg. “Touch of rheumatism. I’ll be back at my desk in a day or two.”

Her cheeks grew warm. “I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else.”

He cocked his head, wearing a faintly puzzled look, as if trying to remember if he knew her from somewhere. “Well, my mistake, then. What can I do for you?”

“My name is Claire—Claire Brewster.” She waited to see if her name would ring a bell and when it didn’t grew light-headed. “Would it be all right if I sat down?”

“Of course.” He gestured toward the sofa.

Claire had the strangest sensation of its cushion falling away from her even as she sank into it. She waited for Father Gallagher to sit down as well, but he remained standing, favoring his good leg as he leaned up against a wing chair.

She cleared her throat. “Gerry told me where to find you.”

“Gerry?”

“Fitzgerald.”

He only frowned slightly, then tapped his temple and said, “Ah yes—Our Lady of the Wayside. She was one of the sisters there. She taught catechism, didn’t she?”

“But weren’t you—?” She stopped, feeling suddenly unsure of herself.

“Friends? Yes, I suppose you could call it that. As much as any spiritual adviser can be.” Father Gallagher regarded her mildly. “I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Brewster, but I’m rather busy at the moment. Perhaps you can tell me why you’re here.”

Claire drew in a deep breath. “I thought—she told me you were my father.”

The chevron on his forehead deepened, and now he did sit down, sinking heavily into the wing chair. “What would make her say—or even think—such a thing?”

“The truth is, I don’t know her that well. I was adopted, you see.” Claire plowed on. “I didn’t know much of anything until she called me out of the blue.”

His expression didn’t change, but what she’d taken for priestly serenity suddenly seemed far less benign—a kind of eerie detachment. Even as Claire searched for a resemblance, she was glad when she didn’t see one.

“Whatever she told you,” he said in a voice as eerily detached as his expression, “I’m afraid you’ve been led astray.”

It couldn’t have been more than seventy degrees in the room but sweat was oozing from her armpits. It was just as Gerry had said—he wanted no part of her. Oh, God, why had she come?

“I don’t see why she would make up a thing like that,” Claire said.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that she’s sincere in her belief.” His expression shifted subtly, like that of an actor slipping into a role. He leaned toward her with a look of concern. “It happens more often than you’d think— young nuns becoming infatuated with priests to the point of hysteria … and sometimes even delusion.” He shook his head. “There’s a whole body of literature on the subject, if you’d care to read it.”

“She … she’s not like that.”

If anyone was lying, it was Father Gallagher. She’d
swear
to it. At the same time, she couldn’t be 100 percent sure.

“You said yourself that you hardly know her.” He brought his fingertips together in a steeple under his chin, and she caught the glint of a gold signet ring. “May I make a suggestion. Miss Brewster? Let it sit for now. In time, perhaps the truth—the
real
truth—will come out.” He sounded so sincere—as if she were nothing more than a parishioner who’d come to him for spiritual guidance—that for a moment she almost believed him.

“But—”

He glanced at his watch and rose. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this short. I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing.”

Claire dragged herself to her feet, cheeks burning as if with fever. “Thank you for seeing me, Father.” The irony of addressing him as “Father” wasn’t lost on her.

“Not at all, my child.” He spoke as if she were just another member of his flock, and when she put her hand out, he took it between both of his, patting it gently.

Then she was out the door, stumbling down the steps in a daze. What had happened back there? Claire scarcely knew what to make of it. She
had
heard of cases where religious fervor crossed the line into sexual hysteria. Was it possible the affair existed only in Gerry’s mind? In which case, if that man wasn’t her father, who
was?

Father Jim Gallagher couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t wanted to be a priest. While the other boys were sneaking cigarettes in the parking lot of All Saints and bragging about their sexual exploits with the girls from Holy Cross (most of it wishful thinking), he’d found solace in Father Czerny’s cool book-lined study, where they’d spend hours discussing biblical text and the radical changes wrought by Vatican II.

Father Czerny, a large shaggy-browed man with a habit of blinking rapidly when agitated (as he generally was when discussing such things as the Vatican’s mandate that mass be said in English instead of Latin), had been more than parish priest and mentor. He’d been a true savior. It was from him that Jim had learned to cope with his father’s drinking and his mother’s neglect. The old priest, who was no saint himself—he smoked too much and enjoyed the occasional card game—had done more than show him the light, he’d shown him the way out: from the neighborhood, and from the bottom of the heap where nothing ever changed, where every day looked like the one before, with your mother screaming at your father for running up a tab at O’Malley’s and him screaming back at her to show him some respect and Mrs. Malatesta downstairs thumping on the ceiling with her broom, yelling,
Shaddup, ya goddamn micks, shut up or I’ll call the cops, I mean it this time.

Over the years little Jimmy Gallagher, whose sleeves were always too short and whose nose was always running, had gradually given way to Father Jim Gallagher. The seminary some viewed as restrictive had been a haven of quiet and sanity. Even celibacy, with which he’d struggled at first, had grown easier with time and with the knowledge that a life without sacrifice was a life much like the one he’d abandoned: unstructured, undisciplined—and generally unfit. It wasn’t until he was assigned to St. Xavier’s and a pretty young novice named Gerry Fitzgerald came into his life that everything changed, that he began to wake in the middle of the night to find his sheets damp and stained.

Oh yes, he remembered her all right. Gerry, with her sloe eyes and bewitching smile, her hips that swayed enticingly beneath her habit. Gerry, whose very innocence inflamed him. It was as if an exotic bird had flown over the wall, its bright plumage visible only to him, its silver-throated song for an audience of one: a creature of God’s creation who flew in the face of everything godly, who through no fault of her own was wreaking havoc with his carefully ordered existence. All this before they’d scarcely exchanged more than a word in passing.

When did it cross the line? He couldn’t recall the precise moment, only the small breaches along the way. A hand lingering on hers a beat too long. Pleasantries that evolved into lengthy conversations. Visits to the convent that became more frequent and were not so coincidentally timed to when he was most likely to run into her. Even when she knelt before him in the confessional, where her very nearness was like a drug making his head swim and his heart race, he took more time with her than with the others. Now, in retrospect, he saw those confessions, in the shadowy cubicle steeped in her scent, their murmuring voices intimate as lovers’, as the precursor of what was to come. The absolution he gave felt like dirty coins passing hands. For wasn’t he guilty of sins far worse than hers? Even the exquisite release in the privacy of his room afterward did little to alleviate his torment.

He remembered as though it were yesterday the night he’d tumbled over the edge into the abyss. Gerry had been assigned by Mother Jerome to take over a catechism class taught by a teacher who’d become ill. Soon she fell into the habit of stopping by the rectory afterward for a cup of tea and a spirited debate—Gerry was in favor of Vatican II; in fact, she argued passionately that even more changes were needed. Over the weeks his chair began to creep closer to hers. Their tea would be long cold by the time one or the other remembered to glance at the clock and remark on how late it was getting. They both knew that what they were doing was wrong—it was forbidden for a nun to be alone with any man, even a priest—but neither made mention of it.

Then one evening as Gerry was getting ready to leave, the heavens opened with a crack of thunder. She stood in the doorway looking out at the rain sheeting down.

“You can’t go out in this,” he told her.

“I can’t stay, either.”

They eyed each other like guilty schoolchildren.

He went off in search of an umbrella, but just then the rectory was plunged into darkness. He bumped about, hands outstretched, groping for familiar outlines with which to orient himself. He located a drawer, sorting through its indecipherable jumble until he found a book of matches. Only then did it occur to him that if his housekeeper had stocked any candles, he hadn’t the faintest clue where they’d be.

He struck a match and Gerry’s face, framed by its white wimple and veil, flared into view: flushed and wide-eyed. He didn’t realize he’d been staring fixedly until he felt the flame singe his fingertips. He dropped the match with a cry.

“Are you all right?” Her voice floated from the darkness.

She must have moved toward him, for they collided. He grabbed hold of her to steady himself, catching her scent: that of starched linen and milky-sweet tea and flowers.