Priest. Part 20

We both breathed heavily for a moment, pleasure still thick in the air, but it was the only thing thick in the air now: the tension and bitterness and anger from earlier were gone. It had worked-Poppy's game had worked. I had burned away the jealousy and primal urges, and in the interim, also burned away something else. My guilt maybe, or the feeling of sin. Something had shifted, like it had for me those moments on the altar, where the line between sacred and profane blurred completely, and I felt like I'd just partic.i.p.ated in something holy, just pressed my naked hands to the mercy seat in a cloud of incense and sweat.

I knelt in front of her and untied the silk leash, using the material to carefully dab my climax off her face. "Game over," I said gently, running the tip of my nose along her jaw.

"Who do you think won?" she murmured.

I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her into me, kissing the top of her head. "Do you even have to ask? It's you, little lamb." She nestled into me, and I rocked her back and forth, my precious one, my sweet woman. "It's always you."

The autumn night pressed against the outside of the car as we drove home, and I kept my eyes on Poppy's profile, which was lit by the lights on the dash and silhouetted against the velvet night outside.

What had happened in the club...it had been dirty and cathartic and galvanizing, although I couldn't articulate to myself exactly why. The answer hovered just out of reach, shimmered beyond a veil that I could only graze with the fingertips of my thoughts, and as we pa.s.sed out of the city and into the countryside, I stopped trying and just let myself take in the majesty that was my Esther, my queen.

I wanted her to be my bride.

I wanted her to be my bride.

The thought came with the clarity of cold steel, certain and true and no longer something I felt in the moment of s.e.x and G.o.d, but something I felt sober and calm. I loved Poppy. I wanted to marry her.

And then the veil finally fluttered down and I understood. I understood what G.o.d had been trying to tell me these past two months. I understood why the Church was called the Bride of Christ, I understood why Song of Songs was in the Bible, I understood why Revelation likened the salvation of the world to a wedding feast.

Why had I ever felt like the choice was between Poppy and G.o.d? It had never been that way, it had never been one or the other, because G.o.d dwelled in s.e.x and marriage just as much as He dwelled in celibacy and service, and there could be just as much holiness in a life as a husband and a father as there was in a life as a priest. Was Aaron not married? King David? Saint Peter?

Why had I convinced myself that the only way a man could be useful to G.o.d was in the clergy?

Poppy was humming along with the radio now, a sound barely audible over the dull roar of the Fiat on the highway, and I closed my eyes and listened to the sound as I prayed.

Is this Your will for me? Am I giving in to l.u.s.t? Or am I finally realizing Your plan for my life?

I kept my mind quiet and my body still, waiting for the guilt to rush in or for the booming voice from Heaven to tell me I was d.a.m.ned. But there was nothing but silence. Not the empty silence I'd felt before all this, like G.o.d had abandoned me, but a peaceful silence, free of guilt and shame, the quiet that one had when one was truly with G.o.d. It was the feeling I'd had in front of the tabernacle, in the sanctuary with Poppy, on the altar as I'd finally claimed her for my own.

And as we were in her bed later, my face between her thighs, it was 29th chapter of Jeremiah that finally surfaced as the answer to my prayers.

Take wives and have sons and daughters...for surely I have plans for you, plans for your happiness and not for your harm, to give you a future full of hope...

I didn't tell Poppy about my epiphany. Instead, after making her come time after time, I left for my own bed, wanting to sleep alone with this new knowledge, this new certainty.

And when I woke up early that morning to prepare for Ma.s.s, that certainty was still there, glowing clear and weightless in my chest, and I made my decision.

This Ma.s.s would be the last Ma.s.s I ever said.

"If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to h.e.l.l...and if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the Kingdom of G.o.d with one eye than have two eyes and to be thrown into h.e.l.l..."

I looked up at my congregation standing before me, at the sanctuary that was full because of me, because of three years of unceasing toil and labor. I looked back down to the lectionary and continued reading the Gospel selection for today.

"Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you re-season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." I took a breath. "The Gospel of the Lord."

"Praise be to you, Lord Jesus Christ," the congregation recited and then sat down. I caught sight of Poppy sitting near the back, wearing a fitted dress of mint green linen, bisected by a wide leather belt. The sun came through the windows perfectly to frame her, as if G.o.d were reminding me of my decision, of why I was doing this.

I let myself stare for one beat longer, at my lamb in those shimmering, tessellated beams of light, and then I leaned forward to kiss the text I had just read, murmuring the quiet prayer I was supposed to pray at this point and then another silent one asking for courage.

I closed the lectionary gently, revealing my phone with my homily notes. I'd reluctantly written the kind of homily you'd expect with this gospel reading, about the nature of sacrificing ourselves to avoid sin, about the importance of self-denial and discipline. About keeping ourselves holy for the work of the Lord.

Hypocrisy had haunted me as I'd typed every word, hypocrisy and shame, and as I stared at the notes now, I could barely remember the agony that man had been in, torn between two choices that were ultimately false. The way forward was now clear. All I had to do was take the first step.

I flipped my phone over so that the screen faced down and raised my eyes to the people who trusted me, who cared for me, the people who made up the living body of Christ.

"I spent the week writing a homily about this pa.s.sage. And then when I woke up this morning, I decided to throw the whole thing in the trash." I paused. "Figuratively speaking, I mean. Since it's on my phone, and even I'm not holy enough to give up my iPhone."

The people chuckled, and the sound filled me with courage.

"This pa.s.sage has been used by many clergy as a platform for condemnation, the ultimate declaration by Jesus that we are to abandon any and all temptations lest we lose our chance of salvation. And my old homily was not far away from this idea. That self-denial and the constant shunning of temptation is the path to heaven, our way to the small and narrow gate."

I glanced down at my hands resting on top of the lectern, at the lectionary in front of me.

"But then I realized that the danger of preaching this was that you might walk out of this building today with an image of G.o.d as a small and narrow G.o.d-a G.o.d as small and narrow as that gate. I realized that you could walk out of here and believe-really and truly believe-that if you fail once, if you slip and act like the messy, flawed human that you are, that G.o.d doesn't want you."

The congregation was silent. I was treading outside of normal Catholic territory here and they knew it, but I wasn't afraid. In fact, I felt more at peace than I ever had delivering a homily.

"The Jesus of Mark's Gospel is a strange G.o.d. He is terse, enigmatic, inscrutable. His teachings are stark and relentlessly demanding. He talks about things we would consider either miraculous or insane-speaking in tongues, handling snakes, drinking poisons. And yet, he is also the same G.o.d we encounter in Matthew 22, who tells us that the greatest commandments-the only rules we need to abide by-are loving G.o.d with all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our minds, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

"So which Jesus is right? What rubric should we use when we're confronted by challenge and change? Do we focus on pruning out all evil, or do we focus on growing love?"

I stepped out behind the lectern, needing to move as I talked, as I thought my way through what I wanted to say.

"I think the answer is that we follow this call from Mark to live righteously, but the caveat being that we have to redefine righteousness for ourselves. What is a righteous life? It is a life where you love G.o.d and love your neighbor. Jesus tells us how to love in the Gospel of St. John-there is no greater love than to lay your life for your friends. And Jesus showed us that love when He laid down His own life. For us. His friends."

I looked up and met Poppy's eyes, and I couldn't help the small smile that tugged on my mouth. She was so beautiful, even now when her forehead was wrinkled and she was biting her lip in what looked like worry.

"G.o.d is bigger than our sins. G.o.d wants you as you are-stumbling, sinning, confused. All He asks of us is love-love for Him, love for others, and love for ourselves. He asks us to lay down our lives-not to live like ascetics, devoid of any pleasure or joy, but to give Him our lives so that he may increase our joy and increase our love."

I stared out at their upturned faces, reading their faces, which ranged from pensive to inspired to downright doubtful.

That was okay-I was going to model this sermon for them. This afternoon, I was going to call Bishop Bove and lay down my own life. I would resign from the clergy. And then I would find Poppy and I would ask her to marry me.

I would live my life awash with love, just as G.o.d had intended.

"This won't come easy to us Catholics. In a way, it's easier to dwell on sin and guilt than it is to dwell on love and forgiveness-especially love and forgiveness for yourself. But that's what's been promised to us, and I for one, will not refuse G.o.d's promise of a full, love-filled life. Will you?"

I stepped back behind the lectern, exhaling with relief. I'd said what I needed to say.

And now it was time to lay down my life.

I couldn't find Poppy after Ma.s.s, but that was okay. I wanted to call the bishop right away, while my mind and spirit were certain. I wanted to move forward, I wanted to explore this new life, and I wanted to start exploring it right the h.e.l.l now.

It wasn't until I was actually dialing Bishop Bove's number that the full, complex reality of what I was doing sank in.

I would be leaving the congregation in a lurch-they would need visiting priests until they could find a new one to stay at St. Margaret's. Worse, I was echoing the departure of my predecessor. Yes, I was leaving to marry, not because I was being arrested, but still. Would it feel the same to my parishioners?

No more work at panels and conventions, crusading for purity in the clergy. No more work in Lizzy's name, on Lizzy's behalf. No more youth groups and men's groups, no more pancake breakfasts.

Was I really ready to give all that up for a life with Poppy?

For the first time, the answer was a definitive yes. Because I wouldn't really be giving all that up. I would find ways to serve as a layperson; I would do G.o.d's work in other ways and other places.

Bishop Bove didn't answer-it was still early in the afternoon, and he could be wrapped up with his congregation after Ma.s.s. Part of me knew that I should wait, should speak with him personally, rather than leave a message, but I couldn't wait, couldn't even think about waiting; even though there would be more conversations involved than just this voicemail, I still wanted to start the process before I went to Poppy. I wanted to come to her as a free man, able to offer my heart completely and without reservation.

As soon as I heard the tone, I started speaking. I tried to keep my message brief, direct, because it was impossible to explain everything clearly without also delving into my sins and broken vows, and that at least, I really would rather not do on a voicemail.

After I finished leaving my thirty second resignation, I hung up and stared at the wall of my bedroom for a minute. I'd done it. It was really happening.

I was done being a priest.

I didn't have a ring, and on my salary, I couldn't go out and buy one, but I did go to the rectory garden to pick a bouquet of anemones, all snow white petals and jet-black middles, and tied the stems together with yarn from the Sunday School room. The flowers were elegant without being flashy, just like her, and I stared at them as I crossed the park to her house, my heart in my throat.

What would I say? How would I say it? Should I get down on one knee or is that something they only did in the movies? Should I wait until I could afford a ring? Or at least had more than unemployment on my horizon?

I knew that she loved me, that she wanted a future with me, but what if I was moving too fast? What if instead of an ecstatic yes, I got a no? Or-almost worse-an I don't know?

I took a deep breath. Surely, this is what all men dealt with when they prepared to propose. It was just that I hadn't ever thought a proposal was in my future, at least not for the last six years, and so I hadn't even considered how I would do it or what I would say.

Please let her say yes, I prayed. Please, please, please.

And then I shook my head and smiled. This was the woman I had been with last night, in our own chuppah, G.o.d all around us. This was the woman who had been my own personal communion on the church altar. The woman G.o.d had made for me and brought to me...why did I have doubts? She loved me and I loved her, and of course she was going to say yes.

I realized too late that I was still in my collar, something that I had already officially (sort of) quit, but I was already halfway across the park and I had these flowers in my hand and I didn't want to turn back for a detail that was now so trivial. Actually, the irony of it made me grin a little bit. A priest proposing in his collar. It sounded like the setup for a bad joke.

Poppy would think it was funny too; I could picture the small smile she got when she was trying not to laugh, her lips pressed together and her cheeks trying not to dimple, her hazel eyes bright. f.u.c.k, she was beautiful, especially when she laughed. She laughed the way I'd always imagined princesses laughed when I was boy-sunnily, airily, the fate of kingdoms ringing in their voice.

I opened the gate into her garden, my stomach flipping backwards and sideways, my cheeks hurting from smiling so much, my hand shaking around my fresh bouquet, which was still wet from the morning's drizzle.

I walked through the flowers and plants, thinking of Song of Songs, of the bridegroom going to his bride, singing as he goes. I know exactly how he must have felt.

As a lily among brambles, so is my love among women.

I climbed the porch, clutching the flowers tight as I walked towards the back door.

You have captivated my heart, my bride. You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes...

I murmured the other verses to myself as I got ready to open the door. Maybe I would murmur them to her later, maybe I would trace them with my fingers on her naked back.

The door was unlocked, and I stepped inside her house, smelling the lavender smell that was all hers but not seeing her in the kitchen or the living room. She must be in her bedroom or the shower, although I hoped she was still in that pretty mint dress. I wanted to peel it off of her later, expose inches and inches of ivory flesh as she murmured yes to me over and over again. I wanted to kick it away from our feet as I took her in my arms and finally made love to her as a free man.

I took a deep breath as I rounded the corner into the hallway, about to announce my presence, and then something made me freeze-instinct maybe, or G.o.d himself-but whatever it was, I hesitated, my breath catching in my throat, and that's when I heard it.

A laugh.

Poppy's laugh.

It wasn't just any laugh either. It was low and breathy and a little nervous.

And then a man said, "Poppy, come on. You know you want to."

I knew that man's voice. I'd only heard it once before, but I knew it immediately, as if I'd heard it every day of my life, and when I took another step into the hallway, I could finally see into her bedroom, and the entire scene was laid bare.

Sterling. Sterling was here, here in Poppy's house, here in her bedroom, his suit jacket thrown carelessly over the bed and his tie loosened.

And Poppy was there too, still in that mint dress, but with her shoes off and two spots of color high in her cheeks.

Sterling and Poppy.

Sterling and Poppy together; and now he was gathering Poppy in his arms, his face bending to hers, her hands on his chest.

Push him away, a desperate voice pleaded inside me. Push him away.

And there was a moment where I thought she would, where her face tilted away and she took a single step back. But then something pa.s.sed over her face-determination maybe or resignation-I couldn't tell because then the back of his perfectly groomed head was in the way.

And he kissed her. He kissed and she let him. She not only let him, but she kissed him back, parting those sweet vermillion lips, and I was Jonah swallowed by the whale, I was Jonah after the worm had eaten his shade plant- No, I was Job, Job after he had lost everything and everyone, and there was nothing left for me ever again, because then her hand slid behind his neck, and she sighed into his mouth, and he chuckled a victory chuckle, pressing her into the wall behind them.

And I could taste ashes in my mouth.

The flowers must have fallen from my hand, because when I made it back to the rectory, I didn't have them, and I didn't know whether they had fallen inside her house or in her garden or on my way back through the park, I didn't know because I couldn't remember a single G.o.dd.a.m.ned detail about how I got back home, whether I was loud when I left, whether they noticed me, whether my lifeblood was actually bleeding out of my chest or whether it only felt that way.

What I did remember was that it had started raining again, a steady sweeping rain, October rain, and I was only able to recall this because I was wet and chilled when I came to myself, standing numbly in my dim kitchen.

I should have been furious in that moment. I should have been devastated. I've read the novels, I've seen the movies, and this is the moment where the camera would zoom in on my tortured expression, where a two-minute montage would have stood in for months of heartbreak. But I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing, except wet and cold.

I was on the highway.

I wasn't precisely sure what constellation of decisions had led to this, except the storm had grown stronger and there had been thunder, and all of sudden my kitchen had felt so much like my parent's garage, which was the first and only other place my life had crumbled into ash.

Except Lizzy's death had made me angry at G.o.d, and I wasn't angry at G.o.d now, I was only desolate and alone, because I had given up everything-my vows, my vocation, my mission in my sister's name-and it had been repaid with the worst faithlessness, and you know what? I deserved it. If I was being punished, I had deserved it. I had earned every hollow second of blank pain, had earned it with all those stolen seconds of sharp, sweaty pleasure...

Is this how Adam felt? Driven from the garden to the cold, stony soil of an uncaring world, and all because he couldn't resist following Eve until the last?

I drove down to Kansas City, and once there, I drove around for hours. Going nowhere, looking at nothing. Feeling the full weight of Poppy's betrayal of me, the full weight of my betrayal of my vows, and worst of all, feeling the end of something that had meant everything to me, even if it was only for a short amount of time.

I didn't have my phone, and I couldn't remember if that was an intentional decision or not, whether I'd decided to trade radio silence on her terms for radio silence on my terms-because I knew, deep down, that she wouldn't text me or call me, she never had when we'd fought, and I also knew I would make myself miserable with the constant checking, the disappointment when there was nothing on my screen but the time.

And when I pounded at Jordan's door at midnight, and he opened the door to me and the relentless rain, he didn't turn me away like he had done last time. He gave me long look-piercing, but not ungentle-and then nodded.

"Come in."

I confessed right there in Jordan's living room. It was f.u.c.king miserable.

Unsure of where to start or how to explain it all, I simply told him about the first day I'd met Poppy. The day I'd only heard her voice. How breathy it was, how layered with uncertainty and pain. And then the story unspooled from there-all the l.u.s.t, all the guilt, all the thousands of tiny ways I'd fallen in love, and all the thousands of tiny ways I'd crept away from being a priest. I told him about calling Bishop Bove, about my handmade bouquet. And then I told him about Sterling and the kiss, and how it was as if every fear and paranoia I'd ever had about them had been birthed into something monstrous and snarling. Infidelity was terrible, but how much worse was infidelity when you'd suspected all along that there was something between the two parties? My brain wouldn't stop screaming at me that I should have known better, I should have known, and what had I expected to happen? Had I really expected a happy ending? No relationship with such a sinful start could lead to happiness. That much I knew now.

Jordan listened patiently the entire time, his face devoid of any judgment or disgust. Sometimes his eyes were closed, and I wondered what else he was hearing besides my voice-who else, rather-but I found I no longer had the energy to care about anything, even my own story, which ground to a slow, painful halt after I got to the part where I found Sterling and Poppy. What else was there for me to say? What else was there for me to feel?

I buried my head in my hands, but not to cry-anger and grief still hovered elusively out of reach-there was only shock and emptiness, the blank stunned feeling one might have after stumbling out of a war zone.