Authors: Tiffany Reisz
“Much,” Marcus said emphatically, likely thinking of his sister.
“Can you imagine a father taking his 15-year-old daughter to get deflowered by the friendly neighborhood widower? What a job for a man that would be, eh?”
“If such a position were open, I’m certain Kingsley would volunteer.”
“He’d have to stand in line.” Ballard laughed and rubbed his forehead. “Poor girls. We never let them have any fun, do we?”
“That might be what I love most about Eleanor. She doesn’t ask permission. She does what she wants.”
“Maybe this girl can survive a life with you after all.” Half a life, anyway. Although Ballard wouldn’t say that out loud. He looked Marcus straight in the eyes. If he was going to do this—and Ballard knew Marcus was—he would make sure it was done right.
“Wait until she’s 18,” Ballard ordered. He rarely gave Marcus orders, rarely gave anyone orders. This was an order.
“I plan on waiting longer than that. The longer I wait, the more likely it is she’ll let go and move on.”
“Tell yourself that. Miriam’s loved me thirty years.” Ballard crossed his arms and looked to the ground at his own feet of clay. He looked up at Marcus and met his eyes.
“For starters, let her date other men. Encourage her to go to college. If anything will get her away from you and the Church, it’s college. Whatever you do, do not get her pregnant. If you do, you leave the priesthood that day. Don’t take a single night to think it over. If she gets pregnant, you call your bishop and your superior. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. Plan to get caught. You probably will get caught. When you do, you take full responsibility.”
“I do take full responsibility.”
“If it hits the press, she’ll need a place to hide. Something like this will make the news. Make sure she has somewhere to go, or she’ll end up with her pretty face on the front page of the newspapers.”
“Kingsley will take care of her. He can get out of the country easily if it comes to that.”
“You have friends at your church?”
“My secretary Diane. Should I warn her?”
“Does she love you? Is she loyal?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Then no, don’t tell her. If she’s loyal, she’ll lie for you. Leave her out of this. There’s no way for this to happen without you committing some egregious sins. Keep them on your own head. No one else’s.”
“Anything else?”
“Pray for her. Pray for yourself. Pray this girl falls in love with someone else and leaves you before you do any damage.”
“I’ve been praying that since the day I met her.”
“If she wants to leave you, let her leave. I don’t care if you think it’ll kill you to let her go, let her. And it won’t kill you. But you’ll wish it did. I speak from experience.”
“If she leaves, I’ll let her go.”
“I don’t care how intelligent she is, how mature, how beautiful or insightful or whatever it is you tell yourself to justify your feelings for her—she’s 16. You get caught fucking her and may God have mercy on your soul because no one else on Earth will. Myself included.”
“I accept that.”
“Once you break the vow of celibacy with one person you’ll want to break it with everyone you meet. It’s like cheating on a diet. You have one bite so you tell yourself you might as well eat the whole thing. The second the vow shatters everyone will be a temptation. Don’t give in. If you put this girl through the misery of being in an affair with a priest, at the very least you can give her your fidelity. Let her have whomever she wants. You stay faithful.”
Marcus’s gray eyes flinched. What Ballard had said hurt. Good.
“Marcus—”
“What about Kingsley?”
“What about him?”
“I love him too.”
“I don’t care. You get her or you get him. You’ll have to choose.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s 16, and you’re a bloody priest. She’s Catholic. She’s a child of God. And you’re going to bring her into a sinful relationship that could ruin her life. You don’t get to cheat on her as well. If you can’t give her a real marriage, you can at least give her the semblance of one. No cheating.”
“It’s not like that in our world—”
“Fuck your world, Marcus. I live in the real world. It’s fidelity or it’s cheating. If she’s not enough for you—”
“More than enough for me.”
“Then you have your answer. You told me what you did to your beloved Kingsley. He’s a child of God too and deserves better than to be hurt like you hurt him.”
“I’m a sadist, and he’s a masochist—”
“That’s not what I was talking about. You married his sister and she died because she caught you two together. I don’t care what you and he did in bed together. I care that you betrayed his love for you. He’s not here to speak for himself so I will stand in his stead and speak on his behalf. You don’t get to hurt him ever again. Do you understand that?”
Marcus turned his head and looked away, far away, in the distance. The sun was setting over the Manhattan skyline. The sun rises on the just and the unjust. Which were they?
“I understand,” Marcus finally said.
“Good.”
“Kingsley… I wasn’t a priest when he and I were together. But she’s only known me as a priest. He’ll never understand why I became a priest, never accept. She will. I think she already does.”
“I don’t say this very often,” Ballard said. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but I’m saying it to you. You were born to be a priest. It’s who you are and what you are and you will never be at peace if you leave the Church. It would be like cutting the wings off an angel.”
“I know that. I was never at peace until I became a priest. Even now, in the midst of all this turmoil in my heart…I’m still at peace.”
Ballard nodded. “You are at peace because you’ve built your house upon the Rock. The winds and waves have come now. When they pass your house will still be standing. And I’ll be standing by you.”
“Is loving her a sin?”
“No. Love is never a sin. If it’s a sin it’s not love. And if it’s love it’s not a sin. But that’s not what you’re asking. You want to know if making love to her is a sin.”
“Is it?”
“I think God’s view of sex is far removed from what the Church teaches. All I can say is that if the peace you know in your heart evaporates after your first night with her, you’ll know you’re in sin.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t then God is more forbearing than we give Him credit for,” Ballard said.
“Tamar dressed like a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law. Ruth got a husband by instigating intercourse with a barely conscious Boaz on the threshing floor. King David had over a dozen wives. King Solomon had seven hundred or more—”
“And Jesus Christ had none. We aren’t living in the Old Testament.”
“We aren’t living in the New Testament either,” Marcus said. “1 Corinthians 7:9, ‘But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.’ Seems a stark contrast to the grin and bear philosophy behind the vow of celibacy.”
“No one forced you to be a priest.”
“John 6:68,” Marcus said as if that were the only answer. Perhaps it was.
John 6:68. Ballard knew the verse well. Many disciples had walked away from Christ and his hard teachings. To his twelve, Jesus had asked, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” And in John 6:68 Peter had answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
When it came down to it, all priests became priests for this reason—the good ones at least. Because of the love of God. Because they had nowhere else to go.
By now the sun had left them behind. At this rate they’d be walking home in the dark. But no matter. Ballard had been Marcus’s confessor for eleven years now, a priest for thirty. He was a man accustomed to darkness.
“Have you ever thought…” Marcus began and met his eyes. “Have you ever considered, that perhaps the only thing God cares about, the only thing He wants is for us to love Him and to love each other?”
“Dangerous words, young man.”
“They were Christ’s words. Matthew 22: 36-40. What if He doesn’t give a damn who we sleep with as long as it’s consensual? I don’t care what Kingsley does and with whom he does it as long as he’s safe and he’s happy. I have trouble believing God loves him less than I do.”
“You’ll put priests out of a job with thinking like that. If it was all free love and unregulated freedom, it would be anarchy.”
“It would be Heaven.”
“That it would be. That it would.”
“I was meant to find this girl, meant to love her. God is behind this. I don’t know why,” Marcus said, “but this I believe.”
“If you believe, then I believe. But don’t fail her.”
“I promise I won’t.”
Ballard shook his finger at him. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I know you. I watched you eviscerate an entire room of novices during a theological debate.”
“It was a debate.”
“We were debating
mercy.
And you showed none. You have a capacity for arrogance that borders on cruelty. And not only can you be cruel, you enjoy your own cruelty while you’re inflicting it on another human being.”
“That was ten years ago. I have learned a modicum of humility and self-control since then.”
“Not enough. You are a dangerous man, Marcus Stearns. I’m most grateful you’re a priest because I’d rather have you with us than against us. At no point should you let yourself lose control of your impulses with that girl. Not like you did with your Kingsley.”
“I won’t. With her or him.” Marcus sounded sincere and Ballard believed that he was. But he’d seen Marcus lose his temper before, saw him reduce grown men to tears with a handful of well-chosen words. He would pray, Ballard would. He would pray for them all.
At last Ballard stood up and brushed the dirt of the dead off his shoes. He waved his hand and together they headed back toward the entrance of the cemetery.
“Will I ever get to meet this girl of yours?”
“Never,” Marcus said with finality.
“No? And why not?”
“You’re a flirt. Especially around well-endowed brunettes. I know you.”
“I do love a curvy brunette. But give me a ginger any day. Miriam had the most beautiful long scarlet hair.”
“Eleanor has long black hair. A mass of waves you could get lost in. And she smells like hothouse flowers. Black orchids and white oleander.”
Father Ballard breathed in deep and tried to remember… Miriam smelled like strawberries. Even her kisses tasted of them.
“Did she really get her rocks off on your desk?” Ballard asked.
“She did. And the first time we met, she called me an idiot.”
“She and I would get along swimmingly. Wanking and insulting you—two of my favorite things.”
“If you told me to list a hundred things I love about her right now off the top of my head…”
“Well?”
“I could.” Marcus glanced up at the fading sun. Was he praying? Ballard hoped so. Nothing and no one but God could help him now. “I have this fantasy of waking up with her and ordering her to make the bed. She would give me a dirty look. Knowing her, she’d growl at me while she fluffed the pillows. It’s not even an erotic fantasy. But the satisfaction that one mental image gives me of her glaring at me from across the bed… I have no words.”
Marcus took a ragged breath as if that confession, his fantasy about her, had taken more out of him than any other.
“What about the erotic fantasies?” Ballard asked, a question he’d asked dozens of priests he’d counseled. Only with Marcus was he ever afraid of the answer. “Are they troubling you?”
“Yes.”
“Why do they trouble you? Because she’s young?”
“Because they’re violent.”
Marcus glanced his way for only a shamed second and turned his gaze elsewhere. Anywhere elsewhere.
“I want to tie her up, beat her black and blue, and fuck her until she bleeds. You know why that fantasy troubles me?”
“Tell me.”
“Because it’s the tamest one I have about her.”
“I see,” he said although he didn’t. Marcus had explained his predilections to him a long time ago but Ballard never asked for details. He didn’t need them. He certainly didn’t want them. “I believe you once told me those in your community engage in a consensual sort of violence. Is that the sort of violence you’re talking about? The consensual sort?”
“It’s fantasy,” Marcus said, his face a brick wall—hard and impenetrable. “You don’t have to play by the rules in a fantasy.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then.”
“It’s a ‘no.’ ”
“Well…” Ballard began and shrugged. “Take out the part at the ending about fucking, and you have most of my thoughts about Margaret Thatcher. Hate that woman, God forgive me. I also mentally decapitated a man who cut me off in traffic the other day. Good thing we’re judged only on our actions, not our fantasies.”
Marcus laughed a little. “Now I remember why I asked you to be my confessor.”
“Even the most intelligent people have to be reminded of the obvious sometimes. You are not judged by what you think, but what you do. We all have horrible thoughts, thoughts that shame us, thoughts we don’t even want God to see.”
“It scares me, Stuart. The thoughts I have about her. I acted on a fantasy once. The first time I was with Kingsley.”
“When you put him in the school infirmary for three days?”
“He could barely walk when I was done with him. He wanted it. He enjoyed it. He even thanked me for what I did to him that night and told me he loved me for the first time. Cold comfort…”
“When I was 17, I got into a drunken bar fight in Liverpool. Broke a Scouser’s nose. Spent a night in the nick. St. Ignatius himself—”
“I know. He was arrested for street fighting.”
“Son, we’re all idiots when we’re teenagers. You’ve repented, been absolved. Don’t throw God’s forgiveness back in His face. Don’t throw Kingsley’s back in his.”
“You’re right. I know you are. I do accept his forgiveness, and God’s. The fear of doing it again, however, to her…”
“Sexual repression and suppression is the reason that we have priests in parishes who belong in prisons. I tell all my priests the same thing—vow of celibacy or not, you are a sexual being. God created you to be. Honor that part of yourself. Take care of your sexuality in a healthy way. If you’re having fantasies, have them. Enjoy them. Don’t fight them. Don’t deny them their place in your psyche. But don’t give them power over you.”