30
It had rained overnight, and the fresh, clean air of the morning was warmer––still thin and crisp, but not nearly as biting as it had been––and the bright sun glinted off the beads of water on the blades of grass.
The whole world was glistening and sparkling.
I felt numinous, as if pure energy instead of blood was flowing through my veins. My mind was clear, except for a twinge of guilt over Kathryn, and I was focused on the case. As I walked up the hill toward the kitchen, I reread Keith Richie’s file, thoughts of Anna gnawing at the edges, which was followed by more guilt.
It was still early, the empty grounds of the abbey struggling to wake up, and I found Richie alone cooking breakfast. The moist air of the kitchen was thick with the smell of bacon and coffee and eggs, beneath all of which was the pungent odor of old grease.
“You here to harass the ex-con some more?” he asked.
“That won’t work this time,” I said, holding up the file. “I have your records.”
The transformation was as instant as it was complete, and I saw it as well as felt it. Keith Richie was no longer a cook at a religious retreat, but a man of the mean streets, an ex-con, whose time inside had served to hone his hardness.
“Yeah, so?”
“So I know,” I said.
“Whatta you think you know?”
“What you’re capable of.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, “and you don’t want to. Promise you that.”
“Now’s not the time to be convincing me how menacing you are.”
He shook his head and dropped the ladle he was holding onto the stainless steel table. It clanged loudly then bounced onto the floor where it made an even louder noise.
Something about the violent noise seemed to set him off and he turned quickly to face me, puffing out his chest, his eyes just inches from mine.
“I ain’t takin’ no shit off you or anyone else. Just ‘cause I done time don’t mean I’m gonna bend over and take it up the ass the rest of my life.”
His breath smelled of cigarettes and coffee and it was all I could do not to wince.
“This isn’t harassment,” I said. “I’m questioning everyone.”
“By shoving their past up their ass?”
“No,” I said, “but only because it doesn’t pertain to the case or I don’t know it yet.”
“I don’t have to answer a single goddamn question.”
“That’s true. For the moment anyway, but eventually you will. So why wait? Why make things harder than they have to be? Unless you killed her.”
“Fuck you,” he said.
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
“I ain’t a fag, if that’s what you’re tryin’ to say. Some awful big fuckin’ niggers tried, but nobody was able to turn me out.”
He was clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides.
“You get in a lot of fights?” I asked.
“Enough.”
“It’s usually a lot harder on rapists,” I said. “Not as much as child-molesters, but—”
He relaxed, took a step back, and smiled. “You must have the wrong file. I went down for assault not rape.”
I stepped toward him, leaning in as he had. “I’m talking about what you are, not what you did time for.”
Anger twitched in his face and he drew in a breath, but he didn’t say anything.
I waited.
“Got nothin’ else to say.”
“Okay,” I said, “you can talk to Chief Taylor and Sister Abigail.”
He gave no indication he even heard me mention Steve, but his eyes widened momentarily at the mention of Sister Abigail.
“You were honest on your job application, weren’t you?”
31
“What are you most afraid of?” Sister Abigail asked me.
I thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure.”
“Come on.”
“Being alone. Not––”
“Aren’t you alone much of the time?”
“Too much. And I hate it.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but it’s complicated. I need a certain amount of time alone and I’m always comfortable with it, but too much and I’m miserable. Maybe finding a balance is impossible, but... what I want, what I need, is to belong, and in the state of belonging I need to be alone some––just not too much. It really is impossible. But what I meant was ultimately. I don’t want to wind up alone.”
“Do you think you will?”
“I think I might.”
“Why?”
“It’s where I find myself at the moment, where I always seem to wind up.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“Ah.”
We were quiet a moment.
“The thing is... I feel lonely when I’m not connected––I mean really connected. I seem to have this deep need to connect on a deep level. I’m talking intense and intimate connections on a soul level.”
“And right now you don’t have that with anyone?”
I nodded. “I guess. Partly because of what happened with me and Susan and Anna. Partly because I’m here, cut off from my life, but yeah. I mean, I’m experiencing some of that with you, but it’s one-sided. And there might be potential for it with Kathryn, but we just met, so...”
“Do you feel like you cut people off, shut them out?”
I took a moment to really consider the question. “Not knowingly, but I must. I wish I knew what I was doing.”
“We can explore that, but it may not be anything you’re doing. Some of us are just called to solitude. What else were you going to say when I interrupted?”
“When?”
“What else are you afraid of?”
“Meaninglessness. Even more than loneliness, though they’re related. I’m afraid of not mattering. Of not meaning to––well, anyone. Of not making a difference. Not fulfilling my purpose.”
“Being afraid of not fulfilling your purpose means you’re convinced you have one,” she said.
“Guess it does.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure I can define it—or that I even understand it enough to verbalize it, but I do live with a sense of it at least some of the time.”
“Tell me about your calling,” she said. “You do feel as though you have one?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d call it that anymore, but yeah, I feel I’m meant to do certain things.”
“Which includes what?”
I thought about it some more. “Helping people. At its most basic. Whether it’s counseling or interviewing, teaching or investigating, I’ve got a nearly naive idealism about helping people.”
“Nearly?”
I laughed.
“But you’re certainly not naive,” she said.
“I feel like I’m pretty realistic about the limits of what I’m able to do,” I said. “I have no illusions that I’m doing much good, but don’t think I’m any less committed.”
“Would you say you’re from the social gospel school?”
“Not exactly,” I said, “but I can see why you’d say that. I feel like there’s a spiritual, ministerial component involved that differentiates me from a social worker, but I’m probably closer to a social worker than most ministers.”
“Could you ever be fulfilled, to use your word, exclusively ministering or exclusively investigating?”
I shook my head. “Don’t think so. It’d be a hell of a lot easier, but... I don’t think it would be satisfying.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “I’ve tried both exclusively before at different times in my life.”
“What’s your greatest concern about doing both simultaneously?”
I took a moment to really think about it, though I had gone over and over it in my mind countless times. “I don’t have just one. I’m concerned about being ineffective, doing a half-ass job at one or both of them. Of losing bal
ance, surrendering my serenity and sobriety. Of how violent I become, particularly working cases inside. And the costs involved to me personally and those I love.”
“Speaking of Susan...” she said.
I took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and paused for a long moment before I began.
“When Susan and I were married the first time,” I said eventually, “we talked about but never got around to having children.”
She nodded, her expression encouraging me to continue.
“We actually tried a couple of times, but never got pregnant.”
“You just tried a couple of times?”
I smiled. “We had a lot of sex, Dr. Freud. What I meant was, a few different times throughout the course of our relationship we went off birth control in an attempt to get pregnant.”
“Gotcha,” she said, smiling, but holding up her hand as if she wanted no further details.
“I’ve always wanted kids,” I said.
“Why?”
“I guess I believe I’ll make a good dad. Mine is, and I wanted the opportunity to try and be even better. And, of course, there’s all the normal selfish reasons too—unconditional love, adoration, belonging, redemption, a shot at immortality.”
As with my comments about being alone, I felt uncomfortable talking to a celibate about children, but she seemed fine, so I continued to press past my discomfort.
“But it was not to be,” she said.
I nodded slowly, unable to keep from frowning as I did. “When we got back together recently, the subject didn’t come up. I assumed we would try again someday soon. We weren’t getting any younger and we wanted to have three, but we were together such a short period of time and our union seemed so fragile.”
She nodded again, still urging me onward. She was attentive and nonjudgmental, willing to hear anything I had to say. I felt safe. I knew I could reveal my deepest darkest secret and it would be okay. And that’s what I was about to do.
“Shortly before we split up again, she told me she was pregnant,” I said.
“Oh, John.”
“When she gave me her ultimatum––asked me to do something I just couldn’t do, she said if I didn’t do it not only could she not be with me, but she could not have my child.”
She nodded, her face full of kindness, her eyes brimming with compassion, and we sat in silence for a long moment.
“Which do you regret most?” she said. “Getting together again or making the decision you did that caused her to abort?”
I shrugged. “I regret everything. But I also don’t see how things could’ve been any different given the circumstances. And the truth is, it was more her decision than mine that ended us again. Someone very close to her forced her to choose a side.”
“How does that make you feel?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.
“Hurt? Rejected? Sad? Angry? What?”
I shook my head.
“Say it,” she said. “Say it out loud.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Tell me. Say it.”
“I... feel... I just can’t.”
“You need to. Come on. Just say it. I promise it won’t be as bad as you think.”
“Guilty. I feel guilty. Okay?”
“For...”
I didn’t say anything.
“For what exactly?”
“For... Because... For... For what else I felt.”
“Which was?”
I swallowed hard, my dry throat constricting further.
“Relieved. I feel guilty because of how relieved I felt that there would be nothing keeping us in each other’s lives. She used her pregnancy to try to manipulate me into doing something illegal, something I couldn’t do, and she used terminating it as a threat. She thought it would make me do what she wanted me to.” Tears filled my eyes and my voice broke. Clearing my throat and blinking several tears, I added, “And at first it was, but soon, the very fact that she was trying to exhort me with it made me glad she wasn’t gonna go through with it.”
“It’s a pretty normal reaction I think,” she said.
I narrowed my eyes in disbelief. “To want the potential for your own child to be wiped out just to be free of his mother?”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” she said. “You didn’t ask her to do it. You didn’t encourage her to do it. You were just secretly relieved she did.”
“But still—”
“Your parents divorced when you were young, didn’t they?” she asked.
I nodded.
“You know what it’s like for the children involved,” she said. “Couldn’t part of what you wanted was to spare your child of that?”
I thought about it, then shook my head. “I wish I could say it was, but I just don’t—”
“Perhaps on a subconscious level,” she offered.
I shook my head. “But wouldn’t it be pretty if I could think so?”
32
My heart beat just a little faster as I pressed the distantly familiar numbers. As I waited for a connection, my throat tightened a bit and my mouth became dry.
I had retrieved my cell phone from my room where it had been charging, and brought it with me down to the lake.
The connection was poor, and I didn’t have any idea what I was going to say, but I was determined. Chances were she wouldn’t answer anyway. I had called her cell, which meant my number would be displayed on her phone. Usually when I called her home line, which didn’t have caller ID, she’d answer but immediately hang up when she heard it was me, but because her cell phone displayed my number she often just didn’t answer. Maybe I’d get her voice mail and be able to say whatever it was I was going to say to it.
“Hello.”
There had only been two rings and I wasn’t prepared—of course there could have been two hundred and I’d have felt the same way.
“Susan?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice sounding hesitant, unsure.
“It’s John.”
She didn’t say anything, and I waited a moment for her to hang up, but she didn’t.
“I’m surprised you answered,” I said.
“I didn’t realize it was you.”
“Oh.”
“Not that I wouldn’t have answered if I did.”
“Really?”
“What can I do for you?” she asked, her voice flat and emotionless––cold, not angry.
“Accept my apology,” I said.
“Why? So you can feel better about yourself? So you can complete a step? It doesn’t change anything. Nothing’s ever going to change between us.”
“I just needed to tell you I’m sorry again,” I said. “And that I think I have a better understanding of your decisions and why you made them.”
“You think so, do you? Well, I still don’t know why the hell you did what you did to me, to my family, to our family, but as long as John Jordan has insight, can apologize and feel good about himself again, that’s all that matters, right?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
We were silent for a long moment.
After a while, I thought she might have ended the call, but then I heard her sigh heavily.
“I wish we had never met,” she said. “And I’m trying to pretend we never did, so if you’re really as sorry as you say you are, you can prove it by never calling me again.”
“Okay,” I said, but I was saying it to myself.
Shutting the phone, I slipped it into my pocket.
“She’s not wrong,” I said aloud.
Looking across the lake, breathing more deeply, I tried to take in as much of the beauty and serenity as I could, allowing the power of this sacred place to help heal me.
For a long moment, I just stood there, praying for forgiveness, for insight and wisdom, for Susan and her family, for Anna and Merrill, for my mom and Father Thomas and St. Ann’s, and for all the people I had wronged or hurt—even unintentionally.
Eventually, the healing began, and I felt connected and nurtured by my surroundings, as if they were a direct conduit to what I needed most.
As I continued to stand there, I tried to open myself to the sacred, to everything, to let down my guard that seemed so necessary for survival at the prison, to wake up and become fully alive to everything—every positive and negative experience, every feeling, every person, every thing.
As I did, I was reminded of the Buddha and the way people came to him in his later years and asked him what he was. Are you a god or an angel or a saint? they would ask. No, he would respond. Then what? they would ask. Merely a man who woke up, he would say.
I wanted to wake up—to be as fully conscious, fully aware of myself, others, the world, God. To awaken from my slumber and become an open receptacle, taking in the fullness of all that life had to offer. I had spent too much of my life avoiding certain experiences, whether through alcohol, violence, religion, another person, investigating. I had continually anesthetized myself against what I thought would be painful or unpleasant, but in doing so, I had been sleeping through some of the most important experiences of my very limited existence.
Before the peace and beauty of the lake and the sacred presence within it, I committed to awaken—awaken to the beauty, to the truth, to the sacred—to more fully experience and embrace every opportunity I was given.
33
Eventually Kathryn joined me by the lake with a blanket and picnic basket and entreated me to come away with her into the woods. Through her words and desire I could feel the pull of the divine and hear in her words the echo of the Song of Songs: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away with me. The winter is past; the spring has come. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. Arise, come, my love, my beautiful one, come with me.”
It wasn’t spring, of course, but it might as well have been, for something was resurrecting in me. I felt more alive, more aware, more open than I had in a long time.
I was waking up to all the possibilities. I was seeing beyond what I could see, perceiving what was beyond. The veil was parting and I was being granted a glimpse of something extraordinary.
Six John Jordan Mysteries Page 102