by Mark Rader
About The Wanting Life
It’s the summer of 2009, and the Novak family is in crisis. Paul, a dying priest, is haunted by a relationship forty years removed from his present life in Wisconsin, when he was a graduate student in Rome. Britta, his self-destructive sister and caretaker, is struggling to find meaning without her beloved husband. And Maura, Britta’s daughter, is an artist who finds herself impossibly torn between a future with her young family and the man she believes is her one, true love. Told from all three perspectives, Mark Rader’s debut novel examines each character’s attempt to reconcile their deepest desires with the limits of their lives, and, in doing so, unearths a surprising emotional legacy.
“A cross-generational novel focused on happiness, fulfillment, and love… whose leads are unafraid to explore the complicated territory of human desire.”
—Foreword Reviews
“Mark Rader’s poignant debut novel explores the emotional costs of seeking and sacrificing romantic love… An insightful and compassionate family drama about desire, love, and the courage it takes to live a full life.”
—Kirkus Reviews
The Wanting Life
a novel
Mark Rader
The Unnamed Press
Los Angeles, CA
AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK
Copyright © 2020 Mark Rader
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected]. Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.
www.unnamedpress.com
Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of Unnamed Media LLC.
ISBN: 978-1-944700-99-7
eISBN: 978-1-951213-03-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019951347
“Tear It Down” from The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992 by Jack Gilbert, copyright © 1994 by Jack Gilbert. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
All rights reserved.
Ruth Stone, excerpt from “Wanting” from What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems, copyright © 2002 by Ruth Stone. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by John A. Sargent III
Designed and Typeset by Jaya Nicely
Manufactured in the United States of America by Versa Press, Inc.
Distributed by Publishers Group West
First Edition
Wanting and dissatisfaction
are the main ingredients
of happiness.
To want is to believe
there is something worth getting.
Whereas getting only shows
how worthless the thing is.
And this is why destruction
is so useful.
It gets rid of what was wanted
and so makes room
for more to be wanted.
—Ruth Stone, “Wanting”
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
—Ecclesiastes 7:10
For my family
Contents
I. Sister Bay
II. The Pilgrimage
III. Everything
IV. Maura in Love
V. Homecoming
VI. Goodbyes
The Wanting Life
I. Sister Bay
It was only dinner with the McNamaras they were driving to tonight—the friendliest company imaginable—but Paul was already wishing he’d had the guts to stay home.
On his first night with his sister at the rental cottage two weeks ago, he’d accepted Georgia McNamara’s invitation to their new summer place in the hopes that his darkness would have lifted by now. But it hadn’t; in fact, he felt much worse. After waking from a nightmare on the couch earlier this afternoon, he’d pulled out his phone with every intention of canceling. They would be kind to him, but their kindness wouldn’t help, as these two weeks with Britta had made clear. All he had to do was tell Georgia he wasn’t feeling well and apologize for the late notice. But instead, phone in hand, his martyr complex—as Britta called it—had kicked in. He’d pictured Georgia whipping up a feast in the kitchen, humming Beach Boys songs. Then her phone buzzing, her Hello?, the disappointed drop in her eyes. He reminded himself that he’d declined their last three dinner invitations. He felt Gordon’s disappointment too. And their adult children, whom Georgia had said would all be in town for the weekend, even Sophie who lived in New York…if he didn’t show, none of them would likely ever see him alive again.
So, feeling obligated, he’d slipped his phone back in his pocket and sighed, and now here they were in his Camry, heading south along the bay side of the peninsula to Egg Harbor, Britta at the wheel. He hated being a passenger in his own car, but it was wise, with all the morphine he was on, he knew that. He was trying to see it as a perk: his mind could scatter and drift as it liked. Usually, when they were quiet like this, Britta turned on the public radio station out of Green Bay, but tonight his sister was letting their silence stand, the only sound the rush of air through their open windows, steady as white noise. Outside it was an unusually gorgeous early evening in July. A pink liquid sun hung over the bay on Paul’s right, its oven heat steady on his face, neck, and shoulders, hot disks of light burning into the water’s surface so brightly he had to squint, despite the shades clipped over his bifocals. Dark gray silhouettes of seagulls hung above the waves, suspended and swaying like kites, and along the sand, a boy so skinny you could count his ribs sprinted along the waterline, joy personified, a blue pail swinging from his hand.
Normally all this beauty would have made him close his eyes against the sun and melt into the glowing red sea behind his eyelids. Normally he would have inhaled and given praise. But he didn’t have gratitude in him these days. For these weren’t normal times. Nor this his normal self.
Three months ago—a few days after Easter, actually—he’d walked into Mercy Clinic a fit man of seventy with a nagging pain in his side. Strained muscle, he’d thought. Small hernia, maybe, from lifting too many books during St. Iggy’s library remodel. Instead, Dr. Shah had blinked his big dark eyes and said, I’m very sorry. The o round and hollow, the r’s trilled.
In the X-ray of his liver, the two smallest tumors looked like fish eggs. The big, deadly one: a gray fist clenching a straw. The cancer was already stage three. The location of the big tumor made surgery impossible. There was very little that could be done. He’d get six months more if he did chemo. Four, maybe, without. So then, he’d decided a few days later, without. Quality over quantity being the idea. Which meant he’d be in the ground by September. October, if he was lucky.
As a pastor, he was no stranger to deterioration and death. In hospital rooms silent but for the wet rasp of a single throat, and bedrooms that reeked of fear and lemon disinfectant, and once in a sunny backyard, standing beside a very annoying Buddhist monk named Brother Larry—he’d led families in prayer, administered last rites, and given counsel the best he could. For thirty-some years now. He told the dying and their families that heaven was real, a realm beyond suffering. He gifted people On Death and Dying by Kübler-Ross, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, Bibles with little Post-it tongues. Except for the few months after his mother had died, when everything made him cry, he never lost his composure. It was his job not to—and he was good at his jo
b.
There was no predicting how people would handle it: that was something he’d learned. Usually people remained themselves, muffled a little by exhaustion and meds. But sometimes, at the last minute, they changed. Mean ones got sweet, sweet ones got mean, tough old guys sobbed like babies, terrified to let go. When it was his turn, Paul had always imagined he would be one of those who didn’t change. He would accept his fate stoically, as he’d accepted so much in his life. Go honorably into that dark night. But about that, it turned out, he’d been wrong: never before had he been more troubled. Which was saying a lot.
All the hiding he’d done, the secrets he’d kept inside—he knew this had something to do with it. The official story of the life of Father Paul Novak was that he was a more or less happy man who’d lived an admirable life of service. He knew he wasn’t as beloved as his best friend, Tim Cochran, pastor at St. Boniface in town, or Ed Warpinski over at St. Anne’s: they were warmer and more charming, bear-huggers both. But in his own steady, generous, devoted way, he’d served his congregation well. Reserved by nature, he’d worked hard to become a man people could open up to, someone who listened. He showed up to appointments five minutes early, was meticulous and opinionated about matters large and small—yes, sometimes to a fault. But that was only because he cared so much, because he hated to disappoint.
In the twenty-eight years he’d been the pastor at St. Ignatius Parish in Northfield, and the five before that at St. Matthew’s with Father Tim, before they were reassigned, he’d baptized hundreds of babies, married hundreds of couples, delivered thousands of sermons. As eloquently as he could, he’d shared his thoughts about the abiding love of God, the inevitability of suffering, the mystery of faith. And while the memberships of most parishes in the diocese were shrinking, St. Iggy’s had grown bigger by nearly half since he’d started there—proof, he liked to think, that he was doing something right.
Still, even so, flowing under this story had always been another, fraught one, and in the month after he’d celebrated his last Mass and especially during these past two weeks in their rented cottage in Sister Bay, only this story had felt true. In this version of things, he was a coward who’d built a cage around himself but spent most of his life complaining how he wasn’t free.
In the morphine-fueled daydreams that had arrived these past few weeks as he napped under Britta’s umbrella at the beach, Paul had been visited by a number of handsome strangers: the men who could have been. They sat across from him at a dinner table, candlelight reflected in their eyes. They rolled over in bed to touch his face. Most of them had olive skin and dark eyes, like Luca, but they weren’t him, not exactly. Though Luca had appeared to him once, directly, as himself. In that dream, Paul was climbing a staircase, carrying a white paper bag filled with cheeseburgers, Luca’s favorite. When an open door appeared at the top, there was Luca sitting on the edge of an open window, his hair the same shiny, dark, curly mop it was in Rome, but his body was pale and skeletal. Where were you? he asked, and Paul realized that Luca had been waiting for the meal he’d brought for a long time. But now it was too late. I can’t eat, he said, I’m sorry. Then he swung his legs over the ledge, pushed off, and fell, a slowly shrinking X….
Since Britta had flown in from St. Louis two weeks ago, three expensive suitcases in tow, she’d been trying to distract him from his nagging sadness. Every day, they ate out for lunch, her treat, and drifted through the tacky art galleries, half-heartedly scanning the walls and bins for hidden gems. Down at the beach, she insisted he get his feet wet at least, and even though he didn’t feel like making the effort, he obeyed. Their first Sunday there, Father Tim drove up with his fishing gear, and they each caught exactly nothing with plastic night crawlers at the pier. When Tim asked him how he was doing, he said he’d been feeling depressed, to which Tim had nodded, understanding completely, he said. Though actually he did not.
Obediently, per Dr. Shah’s instructions, Paul had been taking his morphine pills twice a day and double his usual dose of antidepressants. After breakfast, he sometimes called his secretary, Jean, to check in, and she made sure to pass on the well-wishes from the people who dropped by. But their concern didn’t comfort him. It was like his heart was encased in glass.
Britta, bless her, had been trying to get him to open up more about his feelings, and mostly he’d been honest. When she’d asked him if he was scared, he said of course. When she asked him if he was worried about the afterlife—whether there was one—he said no: what scared him was the prospect of losing control of himself. The messy falling apart. When she asked him how he felt about having served his last Mass before they drove up to the cottage, he said he was glad he’d stepped down earlier than later, but that he felt a little lost.
Yet this matter of his thwarted heart—about that she had no clue. No one did.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to finally understand how, and how much, he’d struggled. A big part of him did. He knew well how cathartic unburdening your secrets could be, having heard so many in the St. Iggy’s confessionals. It was the actual doing it—the kicking open of that long-boarded-up door—that was so daunting. If he told her how close he’d come to leaving, how often he’d wished he had and why, he’d have no choice: he’d have to tell her everything, starting with Rome and Luca Aurecchio. Which felt, at the moment, impossible.
At the first little crosswalk in Egg Harbor, Britta brought the car to a jerking stop as a family of five rushed across the street, fresh from the beach. The young parents were cartoonish beasts of burden: the father with a huge beach bag slung over one shoulder, a pink backpack slung over the other, a Dora the Explorer inner tube pressed to his chest. The mother half-heartedly wielded a beach umbrella like a sword, two huge plastic shopping bags drooping off her free shoulder. Their children—three blond girls—trailed behind, carrying nothing. The tallest had a beach towel wrapped around her head like a Bedouin. The middle girl wore hers like a cape. And the youngest, maybe six, was whipping hers above her head like a lasso, while also waving—at them, actually.
Britta waved back. Paul didn’t. By the time he considered it and decided to also wave, the moment had passed. His brain was sludgy like this now—thus his banishment to the passenger seat.
“Oh my god. I feel tired just looking at them,” Britta said, as she stepped on the gas.
“They’ll sleep well tonight.”
“The parents or the kids?”
“Both, probably.”
The Australian lady in the GPS told them to turn right a block ahead, so Britta did, veering onto a road flanked on both sides by tall pines. The sun flashed and gushed through the gaps like Morse code. In a tiny park, an old pale-legged hippie in jean shorts conjured giant bubbles for two boys with a big yellow wand.
“Oh shit,” she said. “We probably should have brought some wine.” She scrunched her nose at him. “Should I stop somewhere?”
“I don’t think it’s that kind of party,” he said. Had it occurred to her earlier, he thought, she could have plucked a bottle from the small arsenal she’d assembled in the garage of the cottage.
“No, I guess not.”
The many hours Britta had spent lying out at the beach lately had given her normally pale skin a healthy-seeming pink glow, but it was an illusion: he’d never seen her in worse shape. She’d always been fat (that’s the word she’d used herself since meeting Don, when the fact stopped mattering to her), she’d always liked her wine. But since Don had died three years ago, things had gotten out of hand. He’d seen it firsthand during her visit: every day she ate two helpings at every meal, every night she polished off a big bottle of Pinot Grigio all by herself. Then, in the mornings, a pot of coffee, as if that balanced things out. Even with the driver’s seat pushed all the way back, it was a tight squeeze for her; the seat belt strained against her belly and thighs. Plus, just in the past few months, she’d taken up smoking again, after quitting ten years ago, though she claimed this was only temporary. A wa
y to cope with what was going on with Maura, her daughter out east.
Maura. As the road scrolled under them, Paul thought of his niece. Not long after he’d called Britta with his bad news back in April, Maura had called Britta with her own: she’d been having what she called an emotional affair with a man she’d met at an art retreat. David something. Then in May, her husband, Harden, found out, and she wasn’t sure what to do because, if she was being honest, she had fallen in love.
What her daughter had probably wanted from her, Britta told him later, was to simply listen. Absorb her news and pain. But she couldn’t: she’d been livid. It felt personal: After everything she’d been through, now she was supposed to endure this too? She’d been blunt. Told Maura to break it off. Get counseling with Harden. Fix things while there was still a chance. And when Maura pushed back, saying she wasn’t sure if she wanted to fix things, that was the whole problem, Britta told her she was being selfish. Selfish and stupid. She had two young kids, one of whom had special needs. How could she even think about leaving them, especially now?
At this, Maura had hung up, and for the past six weeks she’d been unreachable. In voice mails and emails, Britta had apologized for her tone, implored her to call or email back. A few days after they’d arrived, Paul overheard her leaving a voice mail message: I’m with your uncle. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. Trying to guilt her into it. But that hadn’t worked either. It’ll pass, Britta said a few times, dismissively batting the air, she can’t ice me out forever. But when she checked her phone and laptop every morning for messages, the disappointment in her eyes gave her away.
There was no room here for his own hurt, of course. This was his sister’s cross to bear, not his. But that Maura hadn’t reached out at all to him—it stung. Unlike her brother, Shade, lover of football and video games and possibly little else, Maura had always been a sensitive, creative creature. A kindred spirit. His favorite. As a girl, she called him Uncle Father Paul, so ever after in the birthday cards he sent—still sent—he signed off Love, UFP. Every time he’d visited them when she still lived at home, she had some elaborate art project going. A panoramic Smurf village drawn with Sharpie on a giant roll of brown paper, as detailed and busy as a Hieronymus Bosch. A string of origami cranes she was making for a pretend Japanese wedding. One year, moody charcoal drawings of dead birds, each title a song lyric from her favorite band, the Cure. When she was concentrating on her art, she furrowed her brow and bit down on her lips the same way he knew he did when he was at his kitchen table or in his office at the church, making notes for a sermon.