The Empty Room (12 page)
“Glad to hear it. When would you like to come in?”
“Can I come in today?”
“Today?”
“Why not. Take the bull by the horns, you know?”
“Okay, why don’t you come in, say … about an hour—one-fifteen, could you be here then? We need you to take your tests over again and so forth.”
“I could do that. Certainly. But I don’t understand why you need me to take the tests over. You have all that, don’t you, from before? Typing speeds and so forth?”
“Well, it’s not so much about typing speeds anymore, Ms. Kerrigan. It’s about what sort of computer programs you’re fluent in,
and then there’s the usual aptitude and intelligence tests, just the standard tests you did last time you were here. When was that—two years ago, yes?”
Yes, it had been just two years ago. There had been that little misunderstanding in the Theology Department, but it hadn’t been her fault at all.
I
t had begun so innocently, as these things always did. Father Paul McIntyre was on a visiting professorship from the St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and Colleen had been assigned as his support staff. She had resented the extra work at first, especially since he was wrestling with a new manuscript she was expected to type up, but he was such a kind person—leaving little thank-you notes and the occasional box of chocolate truffles on her desk—that she soon found herself quite liking him.
His book about early Irish Christianity from the time of Saint Patrick to the ninth century intrigued her and she found herself absorbed by its combination of science and spirituality, by the argument that science and faith were reconcilable, that the sacred could be found in nature, contrary to the Roman belief that the world and all in it was to be rejected.
One late afternoon, when he came back to the office from his last lecture, bringing with him the scent of autumn leaves and pipe smoke, she commented on how much she admired his work.
“I don’t usually pay much attention to what I type up, but this is different, Father.”
“Is it, now?”
Black Irish they called colouring like his, with the ruddy skin and mop of unruly black and grey hair. When he smiled, as he did now, charming little lines appeared at the corners of his wild blue eyes.
“Well, what you say about the reconciliation of transcendence and immanence, that they needn’t be at odds. If I understand correctly, you’re saying one can approach the question of transcendence through an appraisal of immanence … that it’s through the hints God writes on the book of the cosmos about Him, or Herself, that we can know, or at least get glimmers of, that which exists independently of the cosmos.” She felt a flush rise up her neck. She was probably blithering. “It got me thinking. I don’t know, it was quite inspiring.”
Father Paul sat on the ledge of the deep casement window across from her desk. “With a name like Colleen Kerrigan, you must be Catholic, am I right?”
She grimaced. “Lapsed, I’m afraid.”
“Well, a faith without doubt is not worth a great deal in my estimation, Colleen, and with a name like that you’re bound to have faith in your blood. To be named is to be claimed, and I feel sure God has claimed you as his own.”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t feel much claimed.” She said this before she knew she was going to, but as soon as the words were out she recognized them as true. “Just the opposite, in fact.”
Father Paul looked serious. “Oh dear. The soul hunger, then?”
She laughed. “You have a poetic way of putting things.”
He laughed himself then, a deep, rolling chuckle. “You’re not the first to accuse me of having an overly poetic soul. Comes from spending too much time either with my nose in a book or rambling about a windy crag somewhere. Tell me, did you go to Catholic college?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t go to any kind of college. I’ve been on my own since I was a teenager, working. I mean, I’ve taken courses here throughout the years—literature, philosophy, comparative religion—but I never got a degree.” It annoyed her to feel the blush creep into her cheeks.
“Really? I would have bet money on you being Jesuit trained, the way you talk about books.”
“No. Just my own reading, mostly.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Wasn’t George Bernard Shaw self-taught? And William Blake and George Orwell and Herman Melville and Benjamin Franklin, for that matter. But never mind. Doesn’t for a second reflect on your ability to think. There’s a world full of idiots”—he pronounced it eedjits—“graduated from universities without a decent thought in their heads. Now, back to the subject at hand. Tell me why you don’t feel connected to God.”
It felt odd, and yet not odd, to talk about such things with a man she hardly knew. And yet, he was a priest and she could tell from his work he was someone who enjoyed conversations about what really mattered in life, meaty things, things of substance, and not just the random small talk so many people wasted their lives on. In fact, coming to work in this department had been a bit of a disappointment.
She had imagined a group of deep thinkers. What she’d found was just another faculty full of petty politics and tenure-track bickering. Until now. Until Father Paul of the beautiful, wild blue eyes.
“I don’t know,” she began. “It’s hard to describe. It’s as though there’s a”—she was about to say hole, but saying she had a hole that wanted filling sounded entirely unlike what she intended—“a kind of hollow”—much better—“a blank space somewhere inside.” She shrugged. “A kind of longing, I guess.”
He bit his lower lip and nodded, as though she had said something profound. “It is not as uncommon as you might feel it to be. ‘The Dark Night of the Soul.’ Have you read St. John of the Cross?”
“A long time ago.”
He closed his eyes and recited,
“Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved
…” He opened his eyes again and smiled. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark, Colleen.”
She felt herself flush again, for a different reason. “It doesn’t always feel that way.”
“No, it doesn’t, does it. Perhaps we should have a little chat about that then, when you’ve the time.”
And so it began. They went out for a coffee, which turned into drinks once or twice a week, and long talks about God and the nature of the soul. His responses to her feelings of detachment, of “otherness” were always the same. “You must ask yourself, what is the invitation in my longing? What am I being invited to experience?” he would say.
One day, on his invitation, she popped into his office after she finished work. He said it was a good idea; they could talk without the interruptions and clatter of public places. He had a lovely old office with a fireplace in it, although it didn’t work, and a mismatched pair of leather chairs. He invited her a second time, and a third, and it was on that third night Father Paul produced a bottle of Tullamore D.E.W. from his desk drawer. She loved the malted taste, the hint of charred oak. It became their drink. He told her that her longing for God, which up until these discussions she hadn’t been aware she had, were reflections of God’s longing for her.
They talked one night of Father Paul’s own search for meaning, and how he had come to find God. “I was a bit of a rascal as a young man,” he said with a chuckle. “I was even asked to leave the seminary for a time.”
She wanted to ask why, but felt it was too personal a question. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her.
“It was suggested I might take a walk in the world, just to be sure I could manage the balance of the office, you know, to be sure there were things I could deny myself, in return for serving God’s glory.”
She imagined women, red-haired, smelling of freshly baked bread, dressed in loose linen shifts, glowing by firelight. (There was an Irish shop on Bloor Street. They sold linen clothing, linen nightdresses.)
Father Paul rolled the glass of whisky between his palms. “They asked me to pray on my calling, which I did, and I found Christ
waiting for me on the mountaintops and in the fields and by the sea, singing in every stone and seashell. I realized there was nothing in the world to fear, all of it being visioned from the mind of God Himself.”
She loved the way he talked.
“Call me Paul,” he said. “I’m not your priest, am I. I’d be glad if you thought of me as a friend. A friend is a good thing to have and doubly so when a man is far from home.”
“Paul, then,” she said, and thought what lovely long legs he had, stretched out there in front of the fire—although of course it wasn’t a fire, just a couple of candles he’d lighted in the hearth. That was the second of the university rules he broke, the first being the drinking of whisky.
On the fifth night, a Friday, over her third whisky of the evening, Colleen confessed how very lonely she was, and Paul took her hand in his and kissed her palm. It was as though he’d poured warm, melted honey on her skin.
Oh my, she thought, oh my.
In her mind she saw a white, thatch-roofed cottage by the Irish Sea. Paul stood in a patch of garden by the door, his hair lifted by the salt-laden breeze. He turned, smiled at her, his eyes full of laughter in their nest of crinkles and …
When he leaned over the little table between their chairs to kiss her, she thought how she should resist, how wrong this was on so many levels, but then she thought she would wait to resist just a moment or two, and then the moment of resisting passed and she
thought only of the taste of smoky peat and honey on his lips and how assured and knowing his fingers were.
The next night she told him about her financial troubles and how she feared becoming a penniless old lady—homeless even, unloved and abandoned. She shed real tears, encouraged, perhaps, by the drink, but no less sincere for that. She did not say that in a small corner of her mind she was afraid it was the drink itself that would cause this horrible fate to befall her.
As Paul buttoned his fly he smiled and said, “You’ll never be old or unloved, Colleen, for you are beloved of the Lord,” which is not exactly what she hoped he’d say. “And as for penniless,” he continued, “I believe I have a remedy for that as well.”
He opened his drawer, took out an overtime sheet and filled it in with a generous number, signing it with a flourish. “We’ll say you’re helping me with invaluable research, shall we?” He crossed the floor to her and pulled her down onto the oriental rug beside him. He nuzzled her neck. He smelled of whisky and damp wool. “And we wouldn’t be fibbing, for I’ve learned a great deal from you, my Colleen.”
His Colleen. She was claimed.
And so it continued for two happy months, until that night Professor Roach came looking for Paul. If only they’d remembered to lock the door.
Paul did not come to the office the next day, and the day after that the Dean summoned her into his office. Father Paul, it seemed, had been called back to Ireland unexpectedly.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” asked the Dean, from behind his cluttered desk. He drummed his fingers on a surprisingly thick wad of timesheets.
Perhaps she’d been greedy, padding her overtime that way, but it had been Father Paul’s idea.
“Not a thing,” she said.
She took some time off, intending never to return, and worked several temp jobs while she “considered,” much as Father Paul once had, her calling in the department. But in the end they hadn’t wanted a scandal, especially not when it turned out there were two female students as well who were broken-hearted at the good Father’s sudden departure.
Yes, those girls. Coltish, smooth-skinned, pert of bottom and breast. He had never said she was the only one; the assumption had been hers. Had he talked with them the way he talked with her? All that poetry of wind-swept barren crags where God waited for the supplicant with berry-stained lips, and heather-scented skin. That, more than anything, more even than the lack of a goodbye, seared humiliation into her heart like a branding.
It was suggested she look for a job somewhere else in the university. Fair enough, she’d thought, her evening bottle of wine salted with tears. Very well. A fresh start.
A
nd now there was to be yet another fresh start. “Fine,” she said to the man at C&C Staffing. “An hour. I’ll be there.”
“See you then.”
Colleen pressed “end call.” Computer programs? She knew Excel, Word, PowerPoint, but didn’t remember being tested on those last time. She checked her watch: 12:17. The C&C offices were on Eglinton Avenue. She could walk there, but she’d have to leave in about twenty minutes to arrive on time.
Next to the laptop lay four notebooks full of Colleen’s writing. A journal, two old scribble-books of poetry that she knew wasn’t any good, and another book full of jottings for a novel she planned to write one day about a young girl in the 1930s, whose mother was mentally ill and whose father was an alcoholic. It was her life, of course, but under the guise of another time, another place, in order to protect the guilty. She’d read a few books on the Great Depression and she would start the actual writing anytime now.
She picked up the journal and realized it had been almost six months since she’d written in it. She felt the urge to write in it now, to pour out her pains. But she couldn’t. Not now. She’d go
and see the temp agency and get that squared away, and then she’d come back and write.
She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth out with Listerine. She knew some people, real alcoholics, drank Listerine for the alcohol content, but she couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. Perfume, cleaning products … that would really be the end of the line.
She reapplied her lipstick and noticed her face had become shiny, the pores a bit large. That happened sometimes when she drank slightly too much, but she was still in that pocket before the booze made her look awful, and that wouldn’t happen today, not with a little discipline. Still, she’d have to fix the shininess. She wiped off the lipstick with a piece of toilet paper and washed off her makeup. She ran the water until it was really cold, then splashed her face several times. So bracing. She reapplied her foundation, and for a moment considered using eyeliner, but decided against it. She didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard. Just the lipstick, that
interesting
shade of red on a pale face.
