“Is it a sin to get snot on a priest’s cassock? If so, I am a big fat sinner.”
“My cassock is in my closet and safe from all harm. And any sins you commit against my jacket are merely venial.”
“Well, that’s good to know. Do you really have a cassock?” she asked, trying to imagine Søren wearing a cassock. She’d only seen those weird ankle-length robe things on the pope on TV and occasionally on a priest visiting from the mission field.
“I do,” Søren said, nodding his regal head. “All Jesuits do.”
“How come you never wear it?”
Søren paused and considered her question. He was the only adult she knew who did that, who took her questions seriously enough to think about them before answering.
“I suppose I find it too distinctive. It’s far better for a parish priest to blend in with his congregation.”
Elle snorted, and Søren’s eyes widened slightly at her reaction. “You? Blend in with us? Have you seen you? You’re like eight feet tall and gorgeous. You don’t blend in with anybody. You wouldn’t even blend in with other eight-foot-tall gorgeous priests.”
Søren pursed his lips at her. “Eleanor, haven’t we had this conversation?”
She exhaled noisily. “Yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to tell you that you’re gorgeous because you’re a priest and that’s inappropriate, and I stopped listening after that because I was imagining what you looked like in jeans. You probably don’t even own a pair of jeans. You probably sleep in your vestments.”
“I do own a pair of jeans, and I sleep in a bed.”
Elle pictured him in his bed. She shouldn’t have done that. Because what did he sleep in? Really? She couldn’t imagine him as a boxer shorts and t-shirt kind of guy like her dad. And he was definitely not the sort to wear old man pajamas.
Naked. He slept naked. She knew it. She’d bet her life on it.
“Wait, what kind of bed?” she asked.
“We shouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said, turning his head, no longer looking at or even near her face. “This is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just really miss you,” she said.
“It’s been far too quiet in the doorway of my office without you,” he said. “I do have something for you. That’s why I’m glad you came.”
“Something? A gift?”
“A very small gift.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a tiny purple velvet drawstring bag. She took it from him and with shaking hands, opened it.
“It’s a saint medal,” she said, staring at the silver coin on the end of the silver chain.
“St. Louise,” he said. “Her feast day is March 15th.”
“My birthday.”
Elle put the necklace on and felt the cool metal of the medallion against her skin and near her heart, right where she wanted Søren.
“Thank you,” she said. It was a nice gift, a safe gift, a very Catholic gift. The sort of gift a priest could give to a member of his parish without raising eyebrows. Her gift, however, would raise eyebrows. Specifically, his.
Still, she’d come all this way in the cold and the dark.
“I have a little gift for you, too,” she said.
“You should not be buying me gifts. Ever.”
“It’s just a stupid thing, okay? And I didn’t buy it. I already had it so take it, please, and don’t laugh at me. Then I’ll leave.”
She dug the tiny wrapped package out of her coat pocket and dropped it onto the fallboard of the piano. He picked it up and carefully—as if it were a bomb—unwrapped the tissue paper.
“I had a whole set of them as a kid,” she said. “Bears and sheep and tigers and stuff. Dozens of these little plastic animals. I had to dig through like a million boxes to find that one.”
“A stag?” Søren asked, staring at the small antlered deer in his hand.
She shook her head. “It’s a hart. Which is also a stag. But I’m calling it a hart. That’s the traditional name for it, I guess. A male red deer. I like puns. It’s a visual pun,” she said, flushing a little. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now as soon as she’d given it to him and explained it, she realized how truly stupid the whole idea was. A plastic toy deer? That’s what she gave the smartest, handsomest, weirdest man in the world for Christmas? This man she loved with every cell in her body?
“As the hart panteth after the water brooks,” Søren said, “so panteth my soul after thee…”
Oh. So maybe the hart had been a good idea after all.
Søren still stared at the toy.
“Was that a Psalm?” she asked.
“Psalm 42, verse one,” he said, his eyes looking deep into hers. Something glinted in those dark gray depths, deep as the ocean and just as mysterious…
Elle reached out and stood the stag upright on the center of his palm. The little hart’s proud head and dark eyes stared straight at Søren.
“So, there it is,” Elle said. “I give you my heart.”
Slowly Søren closed his fingers around the tiny hart and pressed his fisted hand to his chest. “Thank you, Little One,” he said, his voice hardly a whisper.
Elle merely leaned against his shoulder once more.
“Merry Christmas, Søren.”
She heard him take another deep breath through his nose as if he preparing to say something important, maybe even forgive her and end their separation.
But no.
All he said was, “Merry Christmas, Eleanor.”
She got up, put on her coat and started to leave. At the sanctuary door, she stopped and turned around.
“It’s too bad it isn’t Christmas every day,” she said. “Then nobody would have to go back to fighting stupid wars.”
Søren said nothing, merely turned away, still holding her hart in his hand.
Nora blinked and two hot tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them away before Kingsley saw them. Nora lifted her feet off his stomach, and he sat up, still at her feet but with his chin on her knee.
“Strawberries,” Kingsley said.
“What? You want strawberries or is that your new safe word?”
“Your hair,” he said. “It smelled like strawberries that night. When Søren breathed in right before he wished you merry Christmas, he was smelling your hair. He told me the next day he was ashamed of himself for how weak he was at that moment, that he sniffed your hair while you weren’t looking. I remember him telling me your hair smelled like strawberries.”
“That was my shampoo. Suave, strawberry-scented. Only ninety-nine cents a bottle. He told you about that night?”
“He told me he saw you after mass and talked to you, and that he was having a very hard time with the separation from you,” Kingsley said. “He said you looked so beautiful he couldn’t stop himself from smelling your hair.”
Nora laughed. Better to laugh than to cry. “That whole year we were ‘separated’ or whatever…I thought he hated me. Or worse, that he’d forgotten about me. I’d rather him hate me than forget me.”
Kingsley shook his head. “Forget you? Sometimes he’d show up at my house at two or three in the morning, and I wouldn’t even have to ask why he was there. I’d hear his Ducati in the alley. I’d get up, let him in, and find him whatever pretty masochist was lying around the house for him to ‘vent’ his frustrations on. All because of you.”
“Are you serious?” she asked. “He never told me that.”
“He wouldn’t want you to know how weak you made him feel.”
“But I want to know,” she said.
“Did you know he thought about kidnapping you?”
“What?” Nora was agog.
“I asked him once what he would have done if I hadn’t been able to keep you from going to jail after you stole all those cars. He said he would have taken you to live with his mother in Denmark. I’ve smuggled people out of and into various countries before without getting caught.
Lucky for you, it didn’t come to that.”
“Lucky for his mother,” Nora said.
“But that bad year you two weren’t talking, he admitted to me under the influence of a very potent Cabernet that he wished he had packed you off to Denmark.”
“He probably thought his mother would take better care of me than my own mother did.” And he was likely right about that.
“He thought he wouldn’t be so tempted to beat you and fuck you if you were living an ocean away from him and under his mother’s roof. That’s what he was thinking.”
“God,” she said.
“I could tell you many stories about that year,” Kingsley said. “The time I chained his ankle to my bed is a very good one. It was either that or he was going to murder a boy at your church he overheard talking about your tits in glowing terms.”
“I feel like I should tell you I’m sorry,” Nora said, wincing.
“Don’t. It was a terrible year for him. For me?” He pointed at himself. “I was having the time of my life.”
“I had no idea he was feeling so much during that year. He always acted like he had it all under control, meanwhile I was the one falling apart.”
Kingsley blew a little disgusted pfft.
“Pfft?” Nora repeated.
“Pfft. Grown men who have their shit together don’t go around sniffing the hair of teenaged girls,” he said. “He’d probably sniff your hair again if he got near you.”
“Fuck, I’d sniff his hair right now if I could,” she said. “I love the way he smells.”
“Frost on pine trees,” Kingsley said.
“Fireplace smoke in the distance.”
“New-fallen snow.”
“The way peppermint hits your nose,” she said, then laughed at herself. “We’re insane.”
“All his fault,” Kingsley said. “We were normal until him.”
“Damn straight we were. Both of us, little angels.”
Kingsley laughed.
“What?” she asked.
“I just noticed something on the card,” he said.
Nora leaned over and watched as he flipped the Sacred Heart card over and pointed out a tiny red deer with antlers under the name of the printing company of the card.
“It’s the card logo,” she said. “Christmas card companies sometimes have reindeer for logos.”
Kingsley licked the tip of his finger and ran it over the deer and the card company name. The ink of the company’s name didn’t smear. The ink of the deer did.
“He drew a ‘hart’ on your card, Maîtresse.”
“God damn,” she said, the knot in her throat now the size of a golf ball. “He did.”
Nora met Kingsley’s eyes, and he smiled at her, proud as a little boy who’d solved a riddle that stumped the grown-ups in his life.
“King, what if he’s not giving me the silent treatment,” Nora said. “What if he thinks I’m giving him the silent treatment? I’ve been waiting for him to talk to me. Maybe he’s been waiting for me to talk to him.”
Once upon a time, thirteen years ago, she had given Søren her “hart” for Christmas. He’d given her his heart, too, this Christmas, and hidden it on her card. He hadn’t forgotten her at all. He hadn’t forgotten her, and he still loved her. And that’s when it happened, that’s when Christmas came to her house. It wasn’t in the tree and it wasn’t in the kitchen and it wasn’t on the mantel and it wasn’t hanging in strands off the eaves or even knocking at her door. It was in that tiny hart on her card. If she’d blinked she would have missed Christmas. Good thing Kingsley had better eyes than she did.
She touched the little hart, its little hand-drawn antlers. As the hart panteth after the water brooks…
Nora slapped her thighs and stood up. “Come on, Captain. We’re going over the wall.”
“What? Where?”
She waved the card in front of his face.
“To Sacred Heart?” Kingsley asked.
“I have to see him. I have to,” she said. “And if we leave now, we’ll get there in time for the homily.”
“Then go,” he said.
“Come with me, please?”
Nora could tell Kingsley was tempted but didn’t want to be a third wheel. No matter how many times she told him Søren cared about him as much as he cared about her, Kingsley never could or would let himself believe it.
“Ah, I should go home,” he said. “The dogs miss me when I’m gone at night.”
Nora narrowed her eyes at him. Pathetic excuse.
“I bet you one-thousand dollars I can guess the first two words out of Søren’s mouth when he goes up to give his homily,” she said.
“One-thousand dollars?” Kingsley asked.
“Cash,” she said.
“No bet. It’s ‘Merry Christmas,’ isn’t it?”
“Nope.”
“Then there’s no way you can know. He gives a different Christmas homily every single year, doesn’t he?”
“He does. But I can still guess the first two words he’ll say. You believe me?”
“No.”
“One-thousand dollars says I can.” She scratched him under the chin like a cat. Then he grabbed her finger and held it tight. She knew she had him then. The chance to prove her wrong always got him.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll take that bet. You better bring the money.”
“I got the money,” she said. They shook hands on the bet. “Let’s go to church.”
II. Kingsley’s Christmas Truce
Now playing: “All I Ever Get For Christmas is Blue” by Over the Rhine
It was twenty degrees and falling when they left Nora’s house. Kingsley cinched his scarf tighter around his neck as he got into her car.
“I better win that money,” was all he said as she took the highway to Wakefield.
“Kiss it goodbye, King,” she said and turned up the heat and the radio. A velvet-throated jazz singer crooned “All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue” at him, and he was tempted to call the golden-voiced singer and offer to cheer her up a little in his own particular way.
“You know, we could be fucking right now,” Kingsley said. “Church versus fucking, and we picked church?”
“Well, too late. We’re here,” she said as she pulled in across the street from the brightly-lit church. Even in the car, Kingsley could hear the music pouring through the doors, which were decorated with massive green and red-ribboned wreaths. “Shall we?”
Kingsley took a fortifying breath. “Once more unto the breach.”
They walked into the church. Kingsley and Nora stood at the open sanctuary doors, toes touching but not crossing the threshold. The congregation finished singing and everyone sat. An air of expectation filled the room to the rafters. Breaths were held. Babies shushed. All eyes looked ahead.
Søren came to the pulpit.
Kingsley so rarely saw Søren in his vestments that it took his breath away to see his former lover wearing a snow-white chasuble and a silver and gold-embroidered stole. With his blond hair shining in the candlelight—and perfectly in place as always—he glowed like an angel. Which, Kingsley thought, perfectly demonstrated how deceptive appearances can be.
Nora leaned in, put her mouth to Kingsley’s ear, and whispered two words:
“Lights, please?”
Søren began to speak from the pulpit. “Lights, please?” he said.
The congregation roared with laughter.
“Dammit,” Kingsley sighed.
“Why does that always work for Linus?” Søren said, playfully peering up at the balcony as if searching for his missing spotlight. “Not once has it ever worked for me.”
Kingsley pulled out his wallet and counted ten Benjamin Franklins, which Nora merrily pocketed in her coat.
“Merry Christmas,” Søren said.
“Merry Christmas, Father,” the congregation responded in unison. Nora was grinning, basking in her victory.
“It’s wonderful to see so many
of you here,” he said. “And so many faces I haven’t seen since Easter.”
The church rippled with chuckles and groans. Clergy humor.
“I see Regina tapping her wristwatch to warn me to make this quick,” Søren said. “I’m allowed twenty minutes, Regina. What was that?”
Søren leaned forward to listen to someone speaking from the front row.
“Ten? I only have ten minutes?” Søren sounded aghast. “But this is my moment, Regina. Why are you trying to kill my moment?”
The entire congregation laughed again. Kingsley felt it as much as heard it—the laughter of five-hundred people in a confined space could register on the Richter scale.
“Who is this man?” Kingsley whispered to Nora. “They adore him.”
“Kingsley Edge, meet Father Marcus Stearns.”
“Oh, I can have thirty on Easter?” Søren said, still negotiating with an elderly woman in the front pew. “That’s fair. Thank you, Regina. May I begin now? I can? Good. Start your stopwatch.”
How could it be that this gentle, playful charming Father Stearns was also Søren, the boy who’d taught Kingsley the meaning of the word pain?
“Yes, I know it’s late,” Søren said. “And we all want to get home to our families or friends or, if you’re me, to bed. Some of us don’t get to take Christmas Day off.” He pointed at himself, playing the martyr.
Kingsley grinned as two young women in front of him looked at each other and wagged their eyebrows. Undoubtedly they were imagining their priest in bed. Welcome to the club, ladies.
“I hear there is a War on Christmas. In fact, I hear it every year, but I have yet to see armed men using Christmas trees for target practice in the park. Very disappointing to find nothing but families with children walking around enjoying the lights and ornaments and not a grenade to be seen. Perhaps there is a War on Christmas, as in there are wars going on, and they don’t stop for Christmas Day. The war in Iraq, Darfur, Somalia…I could go on. And other wars, too. The eternal war between good and evil. The cold-shoulder war between left and right in this country. The wars in our own lives and hearts. The war against our addictions, our illnesses, our rivals, ourselves.” He paused. “It may come as a shock to you that I have a habit of antagonizing those who are closest to me…”
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