“Well, I guess I just have had a lot of problems seeing how you can develop spiritually, intellectually and physically and emotionally at the same time. Especially as far as woman and … well you know … are concerned.” Help, he thought, I’m getting into this too deeply.
“You mean sex, Pat. Don’t you?” She looked at him intensely. “Well, you don’t have to answer. But I should tell you I’ve been watching you a bit. You are different. You seem calm in a way the others aren’t. I’d like to talk to you again. And I’m glad we ran into each other finally!”
And with that she got up, and after gathering herself together and catching herself about to stumble on an obviously tender ankle, managed to swing off, her style intact.
“Are you sure you’re OK?” Pat called after her.
“Don’t give it a thought,” she said over her shoulder.
Well, here was someone new to ponder on. Pat had never been virtually picked up before. Nor had he so quickly revealed so much of himself to anyone since Priscilla. And with her he always thought his problems were so pallid and abstract compared to hers that he seldom brought up his anxieties of the soul. Could this older woman be interested?
She was. And the next week it was Brenda who again asked him to buy her a coffee. Except this time it was late afternoon. And their coffee meeting stretched into the supper hour.
“I better phone home and tell them I’ll be late,” he said looking anxiously at his watch.
“Tell them you’re not coming home for supper, you’re coming to my place,” Brenda said peremptorily.
Brenda had a third-floor flat in an old downtown house. It was done up sparingly but was tasteful and spotless. Pat felt awkward, but being able to open up and share what he really thought about life with someone obviously ready to listen was sufficiently unique and wonderful to be cherished. This will be the first and last time I’m invited, he thought, better make the most of it.
“Cigarette?” Brenda was curled on the sofa looking at Pat, her fabulous legs up and crossed under her not six inches from Pat. He was sitting on his hands.
“Sure.” Pat smoked about two cigarettes a day with his library friend John. It was the sole basis for their relationship. After a couple of hours with their heads down in a book, they would catch each other’s eyes and go out into the quadrangle for what soon came to be called “happy cigarette time.”
Pat and Brenda lit up. The conversation started to flow effortlessly. Brenda had read widely and had taken a course on the Protestant reformation in undergraduate history. She was also into existentialism, and was working her way through Sartre. There was lots to discuss.
“I just can’t go on working as hard as I do without believing that I was put on this earth for some purpose.” Pat waved his arms around expressively. “Surely you can’t think that the only thing is to live every moment to its fullest, do you really? Honestly?” And he reinforced this exclamation by turning and reaching out toward her. His forgotten cigarette caught her left leg just above the knee.
“Christ, Pat, you’ve burned me!” she almost screamed, recoiling as her nylon stocking fizzled and a ugly gaping hole appeared. “Look what you’ve done. My God. Grow up!”
Pat was shattered. He didn’t know what to do. Then she started to laugh. She did a little wiggle with her hips, flaunting the gaping hole that now extended up under her short skirt.
“Da da da da da …” she mimed the notes of a stripping melody. “Might as well take them off.” And as Pat stared bug-eyed, she swayed slowly and flipped up her skirt, flipped off one stocking from her garter belt after the other and peeled them off down her sensational legs. Then she rolled them up in a ball and threw them in Pat’s face.
“There. A souvenir from tonight. Show your mummy how you treat a lady!” And he couldn’t do anything but join her in peels of mirth.
Later, after ordering pizza, Pat couldn’t resist getting to the heart of the matter. He found himself doing a Stevey in reverse.
“Brenda, I’m really pleased to be here. But I’m not sure why I am. I mean, I haven’t done much in my life …”
“Oh shut up,” she interrupted. “At least you’ve thought about your life. That’s more that I can say for most young men.”
“Yes, but I’m just a young guy, young for my age, I suppose. Well, what I want to say is that I don’t want to bore you. I really don’t think I can match the guys I’m sure you see.”
“What guys? I had one lover after university.” Pat loved the word lover. He had never before heard a woman use it that way “An older man. From a rich family. He treated me royally. We even flew to Florida together for a long weekend. He had beautiful hands and treated me well.”
“So, what happened?”
“Typical. I found out he was married and even had a baby. He never told me, the bastard. I was a nice innocent little co-ed tart for him. And I was pretty hooked on him. But I was looking in the glove compartment of his car one day for the ownership when he got stopped by a cop. There was a Mr. and Mrs. letter in there. I put it back. When I confronted him, he said he had intended to tell me all along. I hate liars.”
“Yeah. I do too.”
“I suspect you are honest even if you are young,” she said looking at him. She had no stockings on and those legs, now bare, were touching his thighs.
Despite repeated hints like these from Brenda that she wanted to take things along more quickly, their relationship developed very slowly. That was Pat’s way. Like the spruce trees at the cottage. Let it grow. And Pat was like an old bachelor, set in his ways, as he completed his final year with honours and went on to seminary in Boston.
Brenda and he had a real date the week before he left. He borrowed his parents’ big black Buick and picked her up and took her to a white tablecloth restaurant high on the top of a downtown hotel. They had not seen a lot of each other that summer. Pat had worked a night shift at a freight forwarding warehouse to earn as much money as possible. Brenda had spent her holiday in Europe with a female friend.
“It’s sort of stupid that you’re leaving next week and we never really got off the ground, isn’t it?” Brenda was being her honest self, as usual.
“What do you mean, Brenda? I really don’t know what you see in me … I mean I really like you and it’s great bouncing ideas around. We won’t lose touch.”
“Oh yes we will. You’ll find some pretty young co-ed. But don’t worry,” and she lowered her voice in a mock command, “I hereby give you your freedom!”
“I’m not free anyway. I have so much to learn. So much to become if I’m going to be a good priest and be able to really help people …” Pat felt he sounded cold and self satisfied. She caught him.
“Oh, don’t be such a self-righteous little prig. Don’t you understand? I really like you. Love might be too strong a word. But I don’t want to lose you, and all you can think of is some vague notion of saving souls. Well, why not look at me? Take care of mine!” And she leaned forward and grabbed his face and kissed it.
The careful space Pat had built round himself since releasing his emotions from Priscilla was definitely being penetrated by someone very skilled. And someone he was indeed trying to put out of his mind. She would not let him.
“Come on,” she said firmly. “Pay the bill. We’re going back to my place.” She continued her invasion as soon as they got in Pat’s parents’ VW parked in a dimly lit lane beside the hotel.
“No, don’t start the car,” she pulled his hand away from the ignition and turning to put her back against him pulled it around her and put them squarely on her breasts. Then she leaned back and with her other hand pulled his head around to meet hers. She opened her mouth wide and drank him in, pulling his tongue into her mouth forcefully. Pat felt himself sliding into a bliss he had never experienced. Brenda was relentless. She then moved his hand down from her breast to her stomach and started to push it even lower. “Sex is either denial or being very good at it.” His saying came back to him. Clearly she was very
good at it. But he was still in denial mode.
“Wait, wait. Not here.” Pat was really frightened. There was no other word for it. “Oh my god Brenda. What are we doing. I mean I don’t know what I’m doing. I know you do. Oh shit. I’m so excited …”
“Well,” Brenda disentangled herself. “I’m always here for you,” she said in the most satisfied way.
“You’ve got nice hands — and you kiss nicely,” Brenda said professionally as they drove home.
“You’ve got great legs, I love talking to you and as for everything else, I have a lot to learn,” Pat said sheepishly.
“You do, and I hope I’ll have a chance to be your most honoured and respected professor,” Brenda said laughing and flopping her head down on his lap. “Hey, what’s this down here?” She started to playfully bite his inner thigh between his crotch and his knee.
“Jeeze Brenda, I’m trying to drive. You know what it is and it’s shy. Please,” Happily they were pulling up in front of her house. Pat forced himself not to accompany her up to her room.
Nevertheless, with the kind of promise inherent in that kind of send-off, it was almost inevitable that they would become engaged. Pat was indeed very lonely at seminary. He had one good friend, Terry, who taught him the joys of dry martinis, and a sanctimonious roommate he could not stand who berated him when he came home late and he smelled drink on his breath.
But the real event of nearly every other day, aside from his very real spiritual development, which he monitored obsessively, became the arrival of the letter from Brenda. They were often short and to the point, but they slowly became suffused with a kind of calm love and passion, and so did the letters Pat found himself writing back. This letter was a turning point.
Dearest dearest Pat,
The library is as boring as ever. Joan, the head librarian, must be having the menopause. She chews me out for the slightest things. I really need a change.
I took your advice and accepted to go out with George Fallingbrook, an English teaching assistant who had been bugging me for a date ever since you left. He must be nearly forty, has a scraggy beard and smells of something not too wholesome. He’s interesting enough, but when he buried me in his whiskers and started to try and French kiss on the path to his rooms, I decided not to take him up on the idea of a nightcap.
You’ve spoiled a lot of men for me, Pat. You are honest. You are modest. You are gentle. Your life is ahead of you and you are earnestly (almost too earnestly, if you ask me) preparing for it. Guys like George are so sure of themselves. They drive me crazy. You are old beyond your years and yet you are so young you remind me that I could perhaps recapture the years I wasted trying to be more important and unattainable than I actually was.
At any rate, you are not getting away from me. And I have plans for us. Big plans. Look out! Brenda the leggy librarian is after you!
Love, many hugs and more, much more.
B.
Pat had never imagined that a mature woman could appreciate qualities he felt were of little romantic appeal or relevance to anyone. But he also began to realize that what was between himself and Brenda was concrete, real, substantial and perhaps lasting. They still had not made love and yet they were genuine soul mates, great friends. Could this not auger well for a future together? With each letter this thought become more and more intrusive.
In this respect, that Christmas was a triumph. They decided to go alone to Christmas mass at the Cathedral and it became a transcendent experience, at least for Pat. Going down the aisle hand in hand with Brenda, kneeling at the rail, smelling the incense and the angelic strains of In the Deep Midwinter being sung around them by the boys’ choir as the host and chalice met their lips. Brenda turned as they got up and her look swallowed him up with its tenderness and passion.
Pat’s parents came as close to liking Brenda as they could, given their assumption as Pat’s brother Peter had heard that she was “several, heaven knows how many, years older than your brother.” Pat’s father was particularly boisterous around her, insisting that she call him by his first name — a good sign, Pat thought. At any rate, for his parents, Pat’s new and open relationship was not an issue. Pat could take it where he wanted and there would be no interference.
And in her apartment that Christmas holiday they consummated their relationship in a way Pat had always dreamed it should happen. Brenda was smart enough to get a couple of martinis into her virgin male friend to make sure he relaxed. And she did everything else she knew or had ever read about to bring him to that relaxed confidence and sense of the other’s needs that serves all lovers so well. She was the perfect professor and it was the perfect setting, her immaculate double bed with candles on both night tables; she in a shortie silk nighty, her hair back. Buried in a half dozen pillows fluffed up. Her legs apart, her hand between them lightly stroking herself.
“This is how you do it. See?” Pat was actually relaxed, leaning on his elbow, his head about at the level of her stomach. “Now kiss me where my hand is …”
It was then all moans and wet sounds, small giggles, wonderful body smells, unique tastes, tingles that started at the toes and went right up bodies, hard and then harder nipples and Pat’s manhood finally, after all these years, making its triumphant entrance into the holy city.
“I can’t believe it. I did it! I did it!” Pat had felt their orgasm — his first real one with a woman. Nobody needed to tell him it was good — for both of them, and they were indeed “very good at it.”
“This must be how you make babies!” Pat whispered loudly.
“Yes. We’ll have to do it for that some time.”
“Really? You mean it? You want a baby? From me?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Oh please, Pat. Let’s”
“Hey wait, we have to get married first.”
And they did. That spring. And Brenda joined him in Boston and they moved to the married quarters. She got a job at the seminary library and she replaced Terry on Pat’s evening bar prowls. They went to concerts, they walked hand in hand along the river, they went on day trips on their bicycles. And late at night, under the sheets of a clean bed, they made love long and hard. And they talked about how great it would be to finally make love with even greater ferocity and conviction for the purpose intended — to make a small version of each other.
They were happy newlyweds.
“WHAT HAPPENED? IT seemed to start so well?” Deirdre Donaldson asked Father Pat.
They were having their weekly lunch at Bradley’s and for reasons unknown, and for the first time, he was telling a somewhat sanitized version of the story of how he met Brenda and how she had successfully wooed him. By the time this conversation took place over twenty-five years had passed, and Deirdre felt the quiet, reserved, slightly overweight woman with the severe auburn hair bore little resemblance to the Brenda of Father Pat’s university and seminary story.
“Oh perhaps I should just leave it at that. Things changed. Don’t they always?” The priest wanted to caress those golden days, which seemed so decisively gone. “Did it have something to do with Priscilla coming back?” Deirdre knew Father Pat had seen the glamorous Priscilla when they were both in Ottawa. Had Brenda been told that she was trying to make a comeback?
“No. At least I don’t think so. I told Brenda about Priscilla early on. Made it clear she was a major failure as far as I was concerned, and that I could never really face her again, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t and don’t, if you get my thinking. Which didn’t prevent her from trying … Say did I ever tell you the story about her daughter. It’s a doozer. Have you got time?”
“Well, I guess if I’m not going to get the real goods on your marriage, I might as well be diverted. Who knows, maybe even amused!” Deirdre looked imperiously at her watch. “I’ve still got a half-hour. Better make it good!”
“It is,” Father Pat said confidently. “And, I do think it makes a point. To wit: no relationship once entered into ever really ends or is permanen
tly incapable of being turned to some good. Or maybe it’s that nothing that has moved you ever really ends. I think that’s it. Got it?”
“Yeah. Sure. And you never touched her. Right?”
“Right. And, as it turns out, I also only even saw her once — but what a meeting that was — after a short meeting we had in Ottawa. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“This chapter in the Priscilla papers started in Ottawa after I’d heard from her after a long silence. I think I told you then that Priscilla had a child a couple of years after we broke up. I don’t know by whom. But I got a birth notice. Typical nutty Priscilla. It said ‘I have a wonderful baby girl. A virgin birth. Gifts welcome. Tigger — that’s her old old cat — and I are very happy.’
“Obviously the father remained out of the picture. The whole thing brought back memories of my father’s secret child, Jill? Remember Jill?”
“Yes, of course. You did seek my advice, as usual, on that trauma, as I recall.” Deirdre forgot very little.
“OK. Yes, I do remember. Well, when Priscilla’s illegitimate child — doesn’t that sound ridiculous and judgmental? I never thought of Jill that way, though Peter did. I’m losing it. Anyway, when Priscilla’s kid was seven or eight, I did get a strange call from her a day or so before Christmas. She asked me if I would call her daughter and pretend I was her father. I said no. She started to rant and rave. Reminded me how I’d deserted her in a time of crisis etc. etc. So I reneged. On the condition that she say it was a call from Santa Claus, not her father. I’d ho ho ho and that would be that.
“So I called and had a good time asking the little girl — her name was Sam — if she’d been a good girl and so on. Well, this became a feature of Christmas eve for several years. Brenda was not totally taken with the idea. But I felt it was the least I could do. In the meanwhile, Priscilla was starting to be used by a few of the city’s fashion houses, and her face was being seen. I saw it from time to time. And she’d call occasionally and we’d laugh. She’d tell me about her latest allies and enemies, her suicide attempts, and hint at many and varied lovers Once I loaned her some money to have her teeth fixed. I never saw much of it back. But there was still a sort of bond. I lost touch for a few years. She and Sam went to New York. She took up with a photographer. I got a notice of her engagement, then a call from her in an uproarious state telling me that her boyfriend turned out to be a closet gay and she only found out the day before the wedding and he had to settle with her for a lot of money.
The Father Pat Stories Page 17