Wild Things (19 page)

"Nara told me a little bit about you, but why don't you fill in the gaps?" He opened a notebook as he spoke.

"You spoke to Nara?" Had Nara told him I was a lesbian?

"Since she referred you I called to thank her. All she said was that you and she had met recently." He looked at me with such an inviting and compassionate expression that I found myself speaking more easily than I had thought I would.

"I'm, well, she said you would understand what I'm going through. I was struggling with my sexuality." I felt myself turning red. "I've stopped struggling. I know I'm a lesbian. I'm not fighting it anymore."

He smiled gently. "Most of my clients come to me for help with the struggle. But you're beyond that now. What can I help you with?"

I had an overwhelming urge to call him Father. Transference and habit, I supposed. I tried to sound nonchalant and failed miserably. "What do I do now? I'm an outcast from my church. My parents will not want to see me, and I feel as if this mountain of ret
ribution and anger will be coming down on me when I tell them." I twisted the strap of my purse.

"Do you have to tell them?"

"I can't lie. It hurts me, and it would hurt everyone in the end. I can't go to Mass anymore because I don't repent my feelings." I looked up at him. "Do you know anything about being raised Catholic?"

He nodded. "In fact, that may be why Nara referred you to me. I'm a recovering Catholic," he said with a rueful smile. "And I'm gay. I know what you're going through. The social disapproval is bad enough, but eternal damnation can be daunting."

I felt an enormous wave of relief. He did understand and had obviously found peace somehow. "Then you can help me, Father. I need guidance."

He abruptly sat back in his chair. "Why did you call me Father?"

I was confused, then realized what I'd done. "I suppose I'm just used to it. I won't do it again." I could see it had upset him.

"Forgive me," he said, lowering his head. "Give me a moment." I waited, feeling awful.

Finally, he looked up at me. "You hit a nerve. I wasn't just Catholic. I was ordained."

I gulped. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. You see, I still believe in penance, in absolution, and the sacraments. I've chosen to take a different path, and I believe that this. .. separation ... is what God has chosen for me. But he won't make it easy. So the reminders I have of what I lost when I left the priesthood are painful. I think that's as it should be for me."

"What made you realize you couldn't be a priest?"

He smiled wryly. "I've never realized that. It was
a
who
that made me realize I was gay. A bishop decided I was no longer a priest. But I still feel the call. Every time I go to Mass I ache to celebrate it, but I can't. I am a good priest, with a lot to offer. Yet the Church chooses to waste one of its shepherds."

I bit my lower lip. "Will the Church ever change? There's so much condemnation in the Bible."

Gently, "Is there? What do you recall?"

"That it says homosexuality is a sin. An abomination."

He relaxed with a sigh, then gave me a reassuring smile. This was obviously familiar ground to him. "Not quite. There are only a few references to homosexuals, and they're all in the Old Testament. The New Testament is completely silent on the topic."

I hadn't realized that. "But the implication has always been that Christ condemned it."

"No. He didn't. He did say, Judge not, that ye be not judged. His commandment was that we love one another."

"The devil can quote scripture for his purpose," I said wryly.

"You'll have to decide if I'm a devil," Patrick said.

"I'll let you know," I said with a smile. "So where does it come from? I know there's something in Leviticus."

"Other than the reference to undescribed sins the men of Sodom committed, Leviticus is the only source for the church's teachings on male homosexuality. Two verses, forty-five words, out of nearly a thousand pages." He spread his hands. "Female homosexuality is not mentioned at all in the Bible. Perhaps, like
Queen Victoria, the original writers didn't believe it existed or could create any sinful pleasure."

Somehow I wasn't surprised. "The writers of the Bible largely ignored women. St. Timothy and St. Paul were explicit about the substatus of women. Omitting female homosexuals in the text isn't a loophole. You can't covet your neighbor's husband just because the commandment says
wife."
I thought for a moment, then went on, "I guess I have reconciled myself to the misogyny in the Bible, and popes over time have softened those teachings."

"A lot of what the Bible says has been modified and ignored in the modern church." Patrick tapped his pencil on his notepad. "Leviticus nineteen and twenty are the chapters with the two verses. To put them in perspective, Leviticus twelve says that a woman who has a male child cannot receive sacraments or touch anything holy for thirty-three days. Twice that for a female child. Leviticus seventeen tells us that the blood of all slain beasts should be offered at the tabernacle. Leviticus twenty-one tells us priests may marry; however, anyone with a blemish cannot be a priest. Blemishes listed include the blind and lame, flat nosed and crookbacked. In two thousand years, the Church has done away with many of the rules in Leviticus because they were outdated or supplanted by new teachings. For example, it took pressure from within and without to free some of my sisters in the church from virtual slavery and servitude to men in the Church. I think of those two verses in the same way and pray that someday the Church will recognize it."

I understood the comfort he was offering me, but didn't know if it would be enough to sustain me. I
wanted to believe him. I wanted my faith again. People who aren't particularly religious don't understand how faith feeds the soul. "And if it doesn't, what happens to your soul? What will become of us?"

Patrick raised his eyes heavenward for a moment and his faith, not blind and unquestioning but faith nevertheless, was palpable. Thou art a priest forever, I thought. He was lit from inside in a way I hadn't seen in the older priests at St. Anthony's for many years. "Christ promised us that all things are possible to those who believe. He promised that our faith would make us whole."

* * * * *

My dread of telling my parents was as strong as it had been, but after seeing Patrick and talking with him for more than the allotted hour, I no longer felt as if I would wake up one day in Hell. He suggested that I look into the Metropolitan Community Church and other gay-affirmative churches if I wanted to attend services that would welcome me and still be rooted in Christian teachings. Dignity meetings, he also said, might be of help to me if I felt comfortable talking in a group.

Before I could even consider any of these options, I decided I would take one last Communion at St. Anthony's, to say what I had to say in my heart to the God in that church, and after that find my own way. Taking Communion when I hadn't received absolution was a sin, but I was past caring about rules. I would tell my parents why after Mass on Sunday. Then I would tell Eric.

So I went to Sunday Mass and took my last Com
munion at St. Anthony's. I prayed as devoutly as I ever have that God would understand that I still believed in him, that Christ would grant me his charity and love. I felt at peace for the first time in many weeks.

When we reached my parents' home after church, we had our traditional Sunday supper: a beef roast, mashed potatoes, and boiled vegetables. I found myself a little nostalgic and realized I was thinking of the meal as a Last Supper of sorts. Nutritionally I was better off, but the ritual of the meal was as much a part of me as Sunday Communion.

The meal was unexpectedly peaceful. Meg and David had wrought changes in my parents, who seemed more relaxed than I had seen them in a long time. David brought out a maternal playfulness I had never seen in my mother, and I wondered what had made her seem so cold and strict to me. I began to hope that this new mellowness might help them accept what I had to tell them.

After supper my father turned on a football game, and Meg took David upstairs for a changing. Michael huddled in a chair where he could glance at the game, but otherwise occupied himself with his murder mystery. I searched for a way to open the subject and realized there was not going to be an easy way. My palms started to sweat.

My mother, freed from rocking her grandson, said, "Now, Faith Catherine, perhaps you'll tell me why you've been going to some other church for services."

My heart sank. Without David on her lap, she reverted to her usual critical form. "I told you on the phone about last Sunday, Mom," I said, ignoring the
three Sundays I hadn't gone at all. "A friend of mine died and it was his funeral service."

"Was he Catholic?"

"No, but it was a Christian service." I saw how I might use this topic to lead in to what I wanted to say. What I'd eaten for supper was sitting in my stomach like a stone.

My mother pursed her lips and asked, "What friend was this?"

"A friend from the university. He and I worked together for several years. He had cancer."

My mother looked at me suspiciously. "He was just a friend?"

The question exasperated me. "Mother, when are you going to stop suspecting me of having affairs?"

"It's my duty to worry about you," she said coldly.

Her duty. Never that she cared about me. I couldn't help but compare her cold duty to the supportive love Sydney had from Carrie, or that Nara had shown me. I remembered suddenly how Carrie had told Sydney she could bring any special person home, no matter who. I hadn't understood then what Carrie had been trying to say: Sydney could bring a woman home with her and her lover would be welcomed.

I envied Sydney from the bottom of my heart. Taking a deep breath, I said, "We were not having an affair. Besides, I found out at the funeral that he was gay."

My father looked up from his football game. "And you stayed?"

"He was a friend, Dad. A good and kind friend."

"You should have left. I thought I taught you better than that."

My mother pressed her hand to her heart. ''What if someone who knew your father had seen you there? Your father is the head usher at St. Anthony's Cathedral. There are people who can't wait to spread malicious gossip"

"I can't worry about that," I said, my voice on the edge of shaking.

Michael gave me an odd look and shifted uncomfortably.

My father set his recliner forward. My courage faltered for a moment as I recognized he was prepared to leap to his feet and tower over me, perhaps do worse. "I have to watch my reputation," my father said.

I won't be intimidated, I told myself. The cup is before me and I must drink. "I can't spend my entire life worrying about your reputation, father. I have to—"

He came to his feet and stood in the center of the room. "I won't have my daughter consorting with faggots."

"I am not consorting—" I began in a shaking voice, then stopped. I realized that I had indeed been consorting and would probably happily do so again. I stood up and faced him. "I think you'll have to get used to it."

I gulped at the frozen mask of outrage on his face. My mother gasped.

"I am a lesbian," I said, and then I lifted my chin. Childish, perhaps, but I imagined I was Eleanor facing one of those greedy, prissy abbes who had
dared to tell her what she could and could not do. "For obvious reasons I will not be attending Mass in the future."

Michael was staring at me. My father's face was turning purple as he struggled for words.

My mother said in a stunned voice, "You don't know what you're saying."

"I know what I'm saying, and it's not easy to say it. But I won't live a lie."

My father was trembling with anger. I stood my ground as he advanced on me. I couldn't count on Michael's intervention. He might be as angry and repulsed as my father was.

"Unnatural child! I should have had a half-dozen grandchildren by now, but instead you live under my roof and practice your filthy, perverted sins." He spat as he talked, and I could smell his after-dinner whiskey on his breath.

"If you don't want me under your roof again, fine," I said. I stared at him, then at my mother who wouldn't meet my gaze, and finally at Michael.

"Get out of this house, harlot. Get out of my sight until you repent and have done your penance."

I continued to look at Michael who, incredibly, gave me a ghost of a smile. I felt a wave of relief. I no longer cared about my parents, but losing Michael would have been a difficult blow.

"Don't look to your brother for support, tramp. The only thing worse than you would be if my son was a faggot."

"Don't you ever use that word again," Michael said in a voice that silenced the room. Only the roar of the football game continued.

I gaped at him.

My father's attention abruptly diverted from me to Michael. "Are you one too? Are you a faggot?"

Michael got up, a painful process for him, but once on his feet his back was ramrod straight. He looked like the naval officer he was. "I told you not to use that word. You don't even understand what you're saying. If it weren't for a faggot, you wouldn't have a son."