Any Day Now

by Denise Roig

  “Mid-life crisis, old man.” Trust his old friend, Lawrence, to hit it right on the head. But Lawrence was the only one Rich could talk to. Lawrence had been growling for years about Rome’s requirements of priests.

  “Don’t give me that,” Rich had argued. “That’s practically a cliché.”

  “You think God’s protecting you more than anyone else? Welcome to the human race. You’re what? Fifty-four? So it’s a little late for mid-life. Still…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Say it.”

  “Have you ever…?”

  “No.” And in that moment Rich knew that if he asked his friend the same question, he would be forced to hear a different answer. And he knew, in a way that actually turned his stomach, that he was less proud of his own no than he’d once been. Less…invested.

  He went to a Christmas party a few weeks later, a party at the chancellor’s big house on the edge of campus. Every year the chancellor held two parties: one for the academics, the other for what he called “the professionals.” The place was packed. People had begun drinking early, way before Rich arrived for a token appearance. A woman, attractive, quite drunk, in her early forties, met him at the door. She took his coat. She offered him a drink. No one else seemed to notice that he’d arrived. It was a party past the point of keeping social score. It was drink time, get-down time.

  “Do you work on campus?” Rich asked the woman. She was wearing a suit jacket over one of those lace teddies. He’d seen the effect on the streets lately. All business, all eighties, but still all woman.

  “Loan office,” she said. “You look familiar.”

  “Campus ministry,” he said.

  “Ohhh,” she said.

  They drank together for a while, watching those around them get silly, then stupid. The head of building maintenance started doing the tango with the chancellor’s wife. Ties came off, shoes, belts.

  “What next?” Rich asked his companion. She seemed amused by the antics, sputtered with laughter when the man swooped the woman to the floor in a charade of the dignified dance.

  “Wanna dance?” Rich asked, a charade question.

  She turned, looked Rich straight in the eye. “You’re very good-looking, do you know that?”

  Rich had been told this often in his thirties, even deep into his forties. He had boyish looks. Straight blond hair, square jaw, brown eyes a bit widely spaced. And he’d stayed in shape, walked back and forth to campus two miles in both directions even in streets piled with dirty snow. But no one seemed to have noticed much of anything about him lately. The days of appreciation seemed to be over. He’d never known what to do with such compliments anyway, offered as they often were either apologetically or boldly, rebelliously. I don’t care if you’re a priest: you’re a hunk.

  He smiled at her.

  “Have you seen the upstairs?” she asked.

  In one of the bedrooms, the one that didn’t have a bed full of coats, she turned to him. It wasn’t the first time. Easily a dozen women over the past thirty years had turned and fixed on him in the same way. And this time, although nothing was different — the woman wasn’t more irresistible, the setting not more paradisiacal, he’d drunk no more than he would have at a similar gathering — he let it happen. The energy to say no. That was all that stood between them. And it left him as he looked into her expertly made-up eyes.

  She led him into the closet. In the crush and rustle of hanging clothes he kissed her lips, touched her breasts, and with as much resistance as a piece of paper has to the wind, let himself be unzipped and coaxed and stroked and adored until he came in her warm hands. “But you?” he insisted, as she stuck her head out the door. “I didn’t…”

  “Honey, I’m just fine,” she said. She went downstairs first, and when he got to the base of the stairs, he kept walking, right out the door. He worried in the next week that he would run into her on campus. I don’t even know her name.

  On that next Monday he went to talk to the dean. By the next month, his papers were ready at the archdiocese. A place had been found in a parish in western Massachusetts. Rich didn’t think about any of it too much. Packed. Wrote goodbye notes. Threw away years’ worth of theatre programs. Sold the bulk of his books. Prayed as he hadn’t in years.

  ≈

  As Rich dialed St. Monica’s he half hoped Fritz would be in a meeting or out making visits. Fritz made a point of getting himself out there. Dialoguing.

  “Father Fritz here.” That mild, unworried voice.

  “Fritz, hi. It’s Rich Lawton.”

  “Rich. You’ve been on my mind.”

  “Telepathy.”

  “Call it what you like, Rich.”

  Why did it always feel as if Fritz received his words, any words, as a personal challenge? I don’t want your job, Rich thought. I had your job.

  “Fritz, I know it’s only February. Probably too soon to be thinking about Easter.”

  “Never too soon. In fact, the liturgy committee’s already met twice. We’re pretty much on top of things at St. Monica’s. Listen, it’s not me,” he added. “I’m a professional procrastinator. It’s people like Birdie Waters and Don Westcott who keep this place chugging along. I tell you, Rich, it’s the parishioners who run things. I just do what they tell me.”

  Fritz laughed and Rich tried to join in. He knew that not for a moment did Fritz believe this. No parish priest did. If there was any ego left in these guys after making it through the parish circuit, it was pride in making things happen. But it was only the most subtle and skillful leader of the flock who saw the wisdom in hiding his own efforts. Yet when you did, when you let your people shine like little stars over Bethlehem, you gained their unconditional support and devotion. What you gained was love. Score one for Fritz. He was smarter than Rich had thought.

  “Fritz, as you can understand, I’ve been trying to keep my nose out of things. For your sake. And for mine, to be honest.” Rich began his approach.

  “Yes,” murmured Fritz. “Yes, I would think it would be very difficult. Well, I have to say that I think you’re doing a fine, fine job of managing.” It was generic, professional comfort. Rich might have been receiving a pat on the hand for coming through gall bladder surgery or accepting a child marrying outside the faith.

  “We did some things during Holy Week at Granby — well, even at NYU, that I thought might transfer nicely to St. Monica’s.” Transfer? Bad word. Rich plunged on: “You know. Activities that bring people together. Get them involved. We have to do that, Fritz, as you know.” He regretted right away the cautionary last line.

  “I’m all for involvement, Rich. As you know. Why not come along to our next liturgy committee meeting? I’ll have to check with the members first, but I’m sure they’d be more than happy to welcome you. They’re real keeners, these folks. And you have, as you say, a different perspective. A priest’s perspective and…” Fritz searched for the sensitive phrase.

  “Something of a lay perspective?” Rich said and almost laughed. “Laid perspective,” Lawrence would have said. Where was Lawrence? Didn’t any of these new guys have a sense of humour?

  “I do want new blood, you know. New ideas. We can’t afford to stand still, Rich, as you said. If we do, we’ll end up out here all by ourselves preaching to each other.”

  Not me, thought Rich, and realized he didn’t want to join any committee. He’d had years of committees. He could already see himself one or two or three nights a week pulling on his coat or his sweater or his sandals and kissing Louise after another marvelous supper and telling her, “Don’t wait up. Sometimes these guys get real carried away. There are about seventy items on tonight’s agenda.” No.

  “What I had in mind actually, Fritz, was something rather specific. A paschal candle.”

  “A candle,” Fritz said. Not a question: a flat, very flat, statement. What had he been expecting: some revolutionary twist on the Gospel for Holy Week? A rap version? No wonder he’d be
en defensive, protective.

  And Rich explained, as he had explained to Louise, about the melting of the year’s candles by parishioners to make a new candle, a huge candle, one big enough and bold enough to shine out the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. He was surprised when his voice cracked on the word “Christ.” Jesus. My saviour. It had been weeks since he’d said those words out loud. In the days when he would say daily mass, they had been so familiar. Like coffee, dear, love, yes, the words of his new life.

  “It’s not complicated to make. And not hard to coordinate, just a couple of people is all you need,” Rich continued because Fritz was not saying anything.

  “OK,” said Fritz, finally cutting him off as Rich, less certain now, was saying, “lovely, unifying experience…”

  “I’ll bring it up at our next meeting. As luck would have it...” Rich could hear Fritz hitting computer keys. Did priests keep their agendas on computer these days? “Tomorrow night’s our next meeting.”

  “I can bring you some photos,” Rich said. “Every year we took Polaroids so we could keep a record. And I could write up a short proposal if you’d like. Since I won’t be there.” Proposal? What was he proposing? The years of university administration bog-down were still with him. If you wanted to do something, anything, even wipe your nose in this institution, Rich used to say to Lawrence, you have to write a damn proposal. Not a memo. A proposal. And then the finance committee and the curriculum committee and the student rights committee had to wave it through.

  “You really got into this candle, didn’t you?” said Fritz. Rich could still hear keys clicking. Was Fritz checking out the rest of his week, or was he giving Rich the sign-off?

  “It was a wonderful thing,” Rich said, suddenly tired, suddenly feeling helpless. How could he ever explain anything to this young man? “Yes, I guess you could say I really ‘got into it.’”

  “Would photos help sell the idea?” he asked again.

  “Save yourself the trouble, Rich,” Fritz said. “I find people either take an idea and run with it, or they leave it alone. I’ll do my best. Personally, I think it sounds nice.”

  When he hung up the phone Rich had to go right into the kitchen and make himself another cup of coffee. Nice, was it? In Rich’s experience, especially in Father Rich’s experience, there was nothing nice about Holy Week. Some years, especially those last years, he would reach Easter evening feeling like a frayed cincture. Like someone about to unravel, like someone turned inside out. Father Fritz, Louise would say, could use some unravelling.

  Louise. He’d almost forgotten about Louise this morning, the primary, still-beautiful fact of his new life. He sat down at the kitchen table, stirred some sugar — too much sugar, too bad — into his coffee, felt things slow in his body again. He thought of last night, the way Louise always looked away to the right, almost as if she were looking out the window, at the moment of climaxing.

  “Do I do that?” She’d looked amused and baffled when he’d told her. “I didn’t know I did that.”

  “What about me? What do I do when I come?” he’d asked. Such a bold question. Every time they talked about sex, even more than every time they had sex, he was surprised, pleased with himself.

  “You...” She paused. This was delicate lovers’ territory. “You furrow your brow.” She demonstrated, crinkling the wide, pale space between her dark eyes.

  “And you, you do this,” he turned his head languidly, eyes closed. It was enough to arouse him again, enough to make him ask, “Did you have any plans for the next thirty minutes, Mrs. Lawton? Do you think you could schedule me in? I’m a hard-luck case.”

  “I guess you could call it a crisis of faith, Father.”

  Louise told him later that she had rehearsed that line before coming to see him the week after Easter three years before.

  “I didn’t want to freak you out completely,” she explained. “Of course, that was why I’d come to talk to you instead of trying to get through to dear old Father Ben at my parish. It would have knocked his collar off.”

  That was the way Louise talked. And she looked the way she talked, he realized after she left his office that first afternoon. A curvy woman with hips that made no apologies for enjoying the delicious in life, light-brown hair straight at the roots, cloudy at the shoulders, the traces of last year’s perm, eyelids filled in with mauve pencil. She also had the most animated face Rich had ever seen. The woman was either laughing or smiling or rapt or frowning in close attention. She likes to be alive, Rich remembered thinking.

  It was always so quiet after Holy Week. The twice-yearly faithful were gone until Advent or even next Easter. Even the regulars, those who showed up from Holy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter Vigil to Easter Sunday, seemed to need a break. Father Frank always went conveniently supine with some flu — “The spirit seems to go right out of me after Holy Week, Rich, my man.”

  Three years into his time at St. Mary’s, Rich knew what to expect. He played catch-up in the rectory office. He answered the calls from mothers getting into full gear for summer weddings. “Now that Easter’s over, Father, we can get down to details. What was your fee again? Oh? That much?”

  It had been a grey mid-April, melancholy weather that had nudged him closer to what had been scratching in his chest for the past decade. A decade? It now seemed impossible to Rich that he could have tolerated such discomfort, such dis-ease, for so long. The thing with women, that pressure in his groin and imagination, had lessened in the first year at St. Mary’s. But it seemed to have taken everything exciting with it.

  “But you don’t understand. That’s what a priest’s life is like, Louise.” Back then, three years ago, in those early conversations, he’d been able to justify the low-level lack of joy.

  “You’re supposed to feel shitty while you try to get the rest of us to feel good? Some life,” she’d said.

  It had been Louise’s growing belief in destiny — destino, she called it — and angels and reincarnation and female spirituality that had brought her into Rich’s office. “It’s not like I want to do a formal confession or anything. I’ve just got some questions,” she’d said. She was on the defensive at the beginning. Rich had just sat, quiet, nodding, not saying much, letting her frame, then answer her own questions. It wasn’t hard work. Watching Louise’s face as she tried to explain the limitations she found in her own parish, her need to be on her own path, especially now that her father — “the ultimate patriarch” — was dead, her belief in both more and less than the Bible promised, was quite simply a pleasure. And because Rich had come to hoard his few pleasures, he listened, kept still, afraid even to get up and offer a cup of coffee.

  “I know what you mean,” he said at some point, when Louise’s voice had dropped off.

  “You do?” she asked and looked him so clearly in both eyes, that he stood up and put out his hands to her.

  “I’d like to go for a walk,” he said. They went out into the cool, promising day. They talked and walked until 5:00.

  It was still, of course, priest to parishioner, still leader to follower, and it stayed that way for months. He couldn’t leap, although at night he placed her next to him, then underneath him. He felt incapable of leaps after thirty-five years.

  Louise came to St. Mary’s only on rare Sundays, both of them agreeing she needed to work things out on her own turf. “And besides, I need you to be there at a slight, disinterested distance. Separate, you know? Like the shepherd of another flock. I’m the stray sheep you have no real investment in,” she said.

  Still, it was Louise who confessed first. “I love you,” she said one Sunday night just before Advent. They’d gone for one of their walks after mass, then out for coffee, then out for pizza, had even discussed driving to Northampton for a late bookstore prowl.

  “That’s not a good idea,” he said. So automatic, so priestly, so crass really. It was the kind of line he’d used on enamoured college students.

  “We’re not talking i
deas here,” said Louise.

  “Well, that’s where it has to stay, Louise.” The threat was so real this time, the space between them so easily violable, that he felt himself turn nasty.

  “OK,” said Louise. “I’m tucking it away.”

  She stayed out of sight for a few weeks. And everything in his life began to go wrong. Father Frank started sounding like the bigot Rich had always suspected him of being. Rich’s two favourite people on the chapel’s planning committee, Hugh Malone and Bette Rice, began an ugly play for power, splitting the formerly friendly group in two. Three, four times a day someone would call and ask, “Father, what are we supposed to do?”

  Scarier than his impotence in the situation was his indifference. For the first time, Rich didn’t give a damn. Let the little people slug it out on their own. He missed Louise, the sight of her, the sound of her, that face always willing to show something. Was this love? It didn’t feel like the earlier stuff. Trish with the tight jeans and high voice who would sometimes look at him as if he were God and not a mere priest. And other women he’d flirted with in public, cavorted with in private. A privacy so private he was the only one there.

  One afternoon, he actually asked one of the widows in the parish if she’d like to take a ride into Boston to browse through used-book stores. Saralee was one of the rare sophisticates in the parish, a former New Yorker, a former Jew who’d converted for her husband, a French-Canadian, years before. She was a big reader; her confessions often involved reading novels that did not jibe with church dogma.

  “Father, I have sinned.” He could always recognize the accent. Years in Granby and she still sounded like she was living in Queens.

  “I read a book this week that condemned the Catholic church for its silence during the Holocaust.”

  “And did you agree with the point of view?” He felt like a fraud sitting behind the screen. Of course, the church had committed the reprehensible sin of silence during the war. What else was new?

  Sometimes after she left he would write down the titles. It would make for a good reading list. Someday.