“Oh, good heavens, I almost forgot. The Widow Barlow would like a pastoral visit. She doesn’t expect to come to Mass during the winter — the sidewalks are far too treacherous and she’s been ringing City Hall about that each morning.” Father Solomon nodded. It was time for him to receive his list of duties.
“Yes, Mrs. Turner.” Although he didn’t sound soft, he at least came across as obedient.
“And please pray for the McIntyres — their mother is in a home now — she recognizes not a soul, save for her poodle, Yappy. Didn’t forget him at all, it seems. I fear we won’t be seeing her again ... and Lord knows her family rarely makes an appearance in the house of the risen Lord. They must be otherwise engaged...” Mrs. Turner was better than most at sarcasm. Father Solomon wanted to get in a “yes, of course,” but Mrs. Turner started up again before he could slide in a response.
“And please don’t forget to find out whatever happened to that poor Mrs. Finnegan. I can’t get a hold of her for a week now. It’s just not like her...” She paused, realizing she had forgotten something, then looked down at her bag.
“Oh, dear me — where did my mind go! I all but forgot that I brought you this cherry liqueur. Just to keep you warm at night, Father. Only a sip now, every now and again. We don’t want you ending up like Father O’Callaghan, God rest his soul!”
***
“So then, what exactly is it that I can do for you, Mister...?” Father Solomon had to break the silence. It’s not so much that the awkwardness of the strange man tapping that spoon against the teacup or turning it round and round on his saucer especially bothered him; it was more that he began to resent spending time on a man who just sat there brooding, instead of introducing himself. The man abruptly stopped stirring his tea and looked the priest directly in the eye.
“Joseph James Etienne Leclair.” The long name rolled off the man’s tongue slowly and he seemed to be slurring slightly. “But I go by Joseph on Tuesdays...” His slurred speech morphed into a smirk.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Leclair?” Father purposefully shunned the first-name basis, choosing to maintain boundaries. Leclair returned to stirring his tea.
“You probably can’t do anything for me, Father Mister.” He responded with resignation and acidity.
“It’s Solomon.” Father Solomon was beyond pretending that he was unvexed.
“Solomon. Solomon. Solomon.” Leclair kept stirring his tea as he slowly repeated the priest’s name. “You can’t help. You won’t help.” His words were a stinging accusation.
“Try me.” Father leaned across the table to Leclair and spoke in a daring, almost threatening tone. He could see that the nails on the man’s fingers were chewed all the way back to the cuticles and the creases in his fingers were caked with dirt.
Leclair was silent only briefly before he spoke matter-of-factly. “I have demons.” His eyes were fixed firmly on his tea. He stirred and stirred his tea, but it wouldn’t cool off; steam kept rising from that cup.
“We all do.” Father Solomon spoke, but Leclair glanced at him at first perplexed, then almost insulted. “You’re not alone in that,” he added.
“I have demons.” Leclair appeared to be getting angry at being dismissed. He didn’t raise his voice, but it became deeper and sterner. “They speak to me all at once so I can’t understand a word they’re saying. It’s like this chorus of garbled voices.”
Father Solomon sighed. “And you can’t at all make out what they’re saying to you?”
Leclair huffed and fell back into his chair in frustration. “Isn’t that what I just said?” He glared at the priest.
“I suppose...” Father Solomon looked at the window across the room from them, reflecting on what to say next. The red-and-white articulated bus stopped to pick up a handful of shivering passengers across the street, bundled up from head to foot. Cars zoomed by with drivers nestled in warm seats as this dreary mass gathered anxiously by the front door of the bus. Would I trade places with them? Father cleared his throat.
“I am supposed to tell you that we can pray about it together and that prayer is powerful. And it can be. But I have to ask you if you’ve ever spoken about this with someone else. Someone who is equipped to truly help you” — he paused, before adding — “in a more worldly sense...”
Leclair pushed his cup of tea away on the table, crossed his arms and glared at the priest.
“You’re gonna send me to a shrink, aren’t you? Holy fuck! What a useless place. You of all people should know that shrinks can’t help with what I have!” Leclair’s voice went from a seething low pitch to a frenzied yell. Solomon was startled but knew that he couldn’t show it. Never tell a person in distress to calm down, he reminded himself, but do your best to stay calm and level.
“I can pray with you, but I don’t have any special powers...” If Father Solomon was certain of anything at all, it was that he possessed no magical powers and very few gifts. The ability to exorcise demons wasn’t one of them, nor would he make a good psychiatrist. Religion was at its worst when it offered a quick fix, especially when faced with the complex problems of the human mind.
Leclair slammed the table with his fist.
“Fuck yes, you do! You do! But you won’t use them!” Leclair pointed his finger at Father Solomon. If he’d been a few inches closer, his finger would have gone straight into the priest’s right eye.
“Mr. Leclair, if you’re referring to what I think you’re referring to, it does not work the way you presume it does. I’d have to put you in touch with someone at the diocese who performs the ritual. But I’m not convinced that’s what you need...”
“Not convinced, eh? Well why don’t you put me in touch with a real priest then, Father!”
The man was hissing and seething with an anger that made Earl Grey, apparently unable to cool down, seem lukewarm by comparison. Father focused on slow, calm gestures and body language. He bowed his head and interlaced his fingers, resting his hands just above his belt. He took his time before speaking and allowed for an extended moment of silence to wash out the anger and tension from the room. Silence is an underappreciated gift in the world today.
“Would you like to pray with me?” Father Solomon had been searching for his “soft voice” all day and just maybe, he had finally found it. But he was caught off guard when Leclair leapt out of his chair, only to suddenly drop to his knees, directly in front of the priest. He didn’t say a word.
“Is there anything specific that is weighing heavy on your heart, Mr. Leclair?” This time it was Leclair who invited silence into the room. He seemed pensive, deep in thought and was fixated on something he saw in the far corner of the room. When he finally spoke, he sounded reluctant.
“My neighbour ... she’s dead.” He started nodding his head in agreement with his own assessment, even as he continued to look at whatever he saw in the corner.
“Were you close to her?” Father Solomon sensed that she was something more than a neighbour and that he might have to ask the right questions to flesh out the details needed to get a complete picture. Leclair turned to him and seemed to hesitate less.
“She took me in when I got paroled. Nobody else would. She didn’t ask questions, didn’t worry about my past one bit.” Leclair stared off into space and seemed genuinely stunned as he considered what he was saying.
“Unconditional love…” As Father Solomon spoke those two words, he thought about the innumerable times he had heard them or read them. But he couldn’t ever remember actually uttering them.
“She got sick. The last month was difficult on her and on me too. She couldn’t bathe without help but was too proud to ask me.” The frown lines seemed more pronounced on Leclair’s face, eyes dark and drained of life. He was about Father Solomon’s age, but it was as though the years in the parallel universe that he inhabited were measured differently.
“She had no family?” Leclair just shook his head in response and returned to staring at the corner of the room. It was as thou
gh he was at the cinema and some film, screened only for him, was being projected on the wall.
“She would just lie on the chesterfield all day. That was the spot in the apartment that got the most afternoon sun. It was sort of cozy in the winter. She said she was lying on the beach in Cuba. She pretended that I was an attendant at a resort. She had me bring her rum and Cokes. Then I’d just sit there on the floor next to her in the sun and she’d tell me all about these clunky cars from the fifties that roared down the streets in Havana. And about some cab driver she had a fling with once in the back of one of them vehicles…” Leclair’s head was still turned towards the wall as Father Solomon smiled and then chuckled quietly to himself.
“Then it became too painful for her to lie on the chesterfield. She became bedridden. Couldn’t leave her bedroom…” Leclair glanced briefly at Father Solomon.
“But you were there for her all along. She had you.” Father Solomon hoped that he sounded comforting but was never really sure.
Leclair sighed and seemed to muster all his strength. He looked straight at the priest.
“Until I killed her.” This time silence crept back into the room of its own accord, uninvited. Father Solomon was taken aback. He pushed the teapot out of the way and didn’t know why. It was important to remain composed, but who was this man? And how did this get so lurid?
“She was a pharmacist before she retired. She had worked out exactly the right potion, spent an afternoon explaining it all to me, told me it was an act of mercy. I told her I was dense, just a boy from the valley who barely finished high school. It was too much for me. Too damn much.” Leclair became increasingly agitated. “She didn’t care; she told me that I had to do this for her. ‘Put on your big boy pants, Joseph!’”
“And you did…” Father Solomon didn’t really want confirmation and he sounded tentative.
Leclair nodded, looking away from the priest.
Father Solomon took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “Who have you told about this?”
“Just you. And now I need you to do something for me…” Leclair was looking directly at Father Solomon with a determined expression. “I need you to drive out with me to the valley to bury her ashes. I still own a little plot of land out there — as a kid, whenever I felt jittery, whenever just seeing people made my chest tighten, whenever I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, I would go out there. I need you to go there with me and bury her. Proper rituals and all.”
Father Solomon avoided eye contact. Beyond the window, he saw a city worker in a neon vest sprinkling salt on the glistening sidewalk. Every now and then, he put down the bag and blew warm air into his freezing hands. Someone should give him gloves. Father Solomon was startled when Leclair sneezed and grabbed a napkin from the table.
“This is not how it’s supposed to work…” Father Solomon saw an odd grin materializing on Leclair’s face.
“You’re telling me?”
The priest looked away and bit his lips as Leclair finally got up from the floor.
“Tomorrow at two o’clock. I can come get you. I know where to find you.”
***
The rectory, once home to a community of priests, had five bedrooms. Solomon occupied the one at the end of the hallway and the rest were euphemistically considered guest rooms. The parish rarely received guests these days. Last year, an enthusiastic historian visiting from Brockville stayed in the rectory for a couple of nights — snapping pictures, scribbling notes, collecting memories and recording a day in the life of a parish priest. Father Solomon felt as though he had come to the end of his life and that the only remaining task was to ensure that fragments of his parish and of his personal existence were preserved for posterity. He hadn’t even turned forty, yet his life seemed to be one of farewells and departures. Oddly enough, funerals often brought life to the church. Pews were bursting with grandchildren and young couples. Many of the adults followed the rituals, hymns and responses as outside observers — with a mix of bewilderment, distance and the occasional glimmer indicating that something they heard or saw sparked a memory from their childhood.
Solomon sat on his twin bed, with his legs crossed. The radiator under the window was leaking again and it was time to empty the overflowing margarine tub. His room was bland and somewhat clinical, filled with a harsh white light that made the blue walls seem even less inviting. Solomon didn’t believe in accumulating things. When the bishop decided to assign him to a different parish, he’d fit everything he owned in this world into a suitcase, a backpack and one small box. The rinky-dink night table, lamp and crucifix above his bed all belonged to the parish, as did the burgundy rotary dial telephone and the plaster Virgin Mary that stood guard over it.
Sometimes Solomon felt it would be better to have the Mother of God turn away when he was sitting in bed in an undershirt eating strawberry Jell-O from a big salad bowl. He never waited long enough for the Jell-O to set properly and it just wasn’t the same without a dollop of whipped cream on top, but there was something weirdly comforting about this bachelor’s dinner. The bright-red gelatin brought colour to the otherwise uniformly drab, washed-out room.
Solomon was startled when the phone rang. He reached to pick it up on the third ring.
“This is Father Solomon…” He removed the bowl of Jell-O from his lap. This could be something urgent, a request for an anointing perhaps. But within five seconds, he realized exactly what this was about and felt his blood pressure rise.
“No, no … I am afraid there is no lady of the house here. Yes, I am absolutely certain. God bless.” He slammed the receiver back on the phone with enough strength that it let out a short ring. Solomon kept his eyes on the night table. Decisions, decisions... Then, with a very deliberate motion, he reached for the drawer, pulled out the bottle of cherry liqueur along with a folded flyer from a department store. Solomon took a gulp straight from the bottle. Sweet Jesus, this thing tastes like cough syrup. He put down the bottle on the night table with a thud and grimaced as he swallowed hard. Solomon began flipping through the pages of the flyer. Vacuum cleaners. Towels and bed linens. Blenders. Spring clothing. Spring clothing? Women with perfect skin and impeccable figures modelling lingerie and men with chiselled bodies selling underwear. Smiles all around. Solomon absent-mindedly reached for the cherry liqueur and barely noticed as the thick, nauseatingly sweet syrup filled his mouth and set his throat alight. The room felt warmer than before, the mattress softer and the silence was perfection itself.
***
Leclair crouched on a patch of exposed frozen grass by the church wall as he exhaled cigarette smoke. He was fifteen minutes early and Father Solomon had just returned from dropping off documents at the chancery. Ciarán usually took care of the janitorial and maintenance work around the parish and Father Solomon happily gave him a twenty here and a twenty there to complete the endless mundane tasks that normally landed on his plate. But Ciarán had recently found steady work with a master carpenter and would only be able to help out on weekends. The list that Father Solomon had compiled for him remained untouched. Salt the walkway. Mop up the puddles at the back of the church. Figure out why the light bulb in the sacristy keeps burning out so fast. Be on standby tomorrow from eight to noon for the repairman to come check out the boiler. Vacuum. Dust. Clean the washrooms. New batteries needed for the mic — the Dollar store ones are just fine. And if all that’s done, schedule time to finally varnish the pews. Father Solomon was mindful of the pastoral chores that Mrs. Turner had given him as well. He hadn’t managed to check any of them off yet.
Father Solomon walked over to Leclair, who was still crouching and inhaling the residual fumes from all that remained of his cigarette — a stub. Solomon often complained about having no time for pastoral work due to the relentless, random and mundane chores of the world. Yet now, faced with something that demanded profound pastoral skill, he wanted nothing more than to scrub the washroom at the back of the church.
Everything w
as wrong with what this man was asking him to do. Last night Father Solomon left a message on Ciarán’s answering machine, hoping that, as a result of some miracle (perhaps his carpenter boss fell ill?), he might be able to accompany Solomon as he was driven out to some undisclosed location alongside an urn. Ciarán dutifully returned the call. As it turned out, his boss was doing just fine. No miracle today.
“It doesn’t sound like a very good idea,” Ciarán paused. “I mean you driving out with this man, alone and all…” Static temporarily drowned out Ciarán’s voice. “But I’ll tell you straight up, Father — if I could, I’d be there with you in a heartbeat. And I’d bring a shiv, just in case.”
His own physical safety was not Solomon’s only concern. This man was ill, traumatized, and his perception of reality likely warped. A psychiatrist would meet his patient in the safety of his office, with a receptionist seated on the other side of a thin wall. Professionalism dictated clear boundaries and distance. Pastoral work often relied more on responding compassionately while exercising sound judgment. Solomon wasn’t certain that he had it in him to do either.
“Hello…” Father Solomon got no reaction from Leclair. “Why don’t we sit down for a coffee in the rectory. How about that?” Maybe he could talk this man off the ledge and save himself an unsettling drive out to nowhere.
Leclair didn’t have to say anything — he just glared at Father Solomon. He got up and walked over to his pickup truck without another word. Was he going to just drive away? He got into his truck, closed the door and Solomon felt hope embrace him, warming him amidst even the biting cold. But the warmth evaporated as soon as Leclair slammed his palm onto the horn again and again, all the while his eyes fixed firmly on Father Solomon, an unyielding stare through an icy windshield.
For some reason, Solomon couldn’t remember ever getting into the truck, but there he was, in the passenger seat, watching Leclair gripping the wheel with one hand and tapping his knuckles against his mouth with the other. He hadn’t uttered a word, replacing language with non-verbal communication. There was barely any traffic on the 417. Solomon felt uneasy as they passed the high-rises and modest glass towers of Centretown.
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