“Then, as I said, I got this call on a July midweek day, when we first came back from Ottawa. She sounded desperate. Like old times. She told me they were back in town and that Sam, by this time sixteen or so, had been going out with a young man from St. Bart’s. Small world, D, eh? A guy called George Orr. I knew his parents and could place him although he seldom came to church. A tall young man with stringy long blonde hair.
“Priscilla told me that this George Orr had taken off with her Sam and they had been missing for three days and what was I going to do about it. Time to make up for my and the church’s and society’s inability to help her when she was a disturbed teenager. What could I say? I agreed reluctantly to make a few calls and get back to her. What a rat’s nest it turned out to be. The Orrs were beside themselves. Not only was their darling George off with this seductress — I forgot to tell you that from everything I could gather Sam was a knockout, slender, tall, and was doing teenage modeling and by this time supporting her mother — anyway not only was George AWOL with this hussy, but he had taken his father’s treasured red Sting Ray convertible.
“Orr couldn’t understand why I wanted to get involved, but he promised to let me know if he heard from his son so I could calm the mother. He had no idea who Sam was except that she was beautiful and his son had met her at a downtown coffeehouse. Typical.”
“Pat I hope this is leading somewhere, because I have to go soon.” Deirdre was getting impatient and the musty bar was now almost empty of the lunchtime crowd.
“Wait for it, my dear. There is a major lesson in life lying herein.” Father Pat wouldn’t be deterred. He knew the ending and knew it was good. And even if it sounded like a melodrama, it was his life and his beliefs that he was exposing. So she had to listen. “You like me. You’re curious. You have to listen,” he added for good measure.
“OK, OK,” Deirdre actually did want to know where all this led.
“Well, a couple of days later, a Saturday, I remember, I was driving with Paddy late in the afternoon coming back from the garden centre on the main highway and this red convertible Sting Ray is in my rearview mirror as I am trying to swing into the inside lane to turn off on to our side road. I saw at once a striking blonde man and an equally striking blonde woman. It had to be Sam and George. This was my chance to make up for a spoiled two year affair and years of neglect. I tried to wave and signal with my hand, but they must have thought I was some sort of creep. He floored the beast and blurred by me. I then proceeded to loose my mind and gave chase. I stayed discreetly behind them for about half an hour. I had no plan, except to try, perhaps to get at Sam when George was away — maybe having a leak or something — and talk to her, plead with her to come with me and go back to her mother. Luckily I had on my collar, so perhaps she would trust me, listen to me.
“They did stop for gas. I pulled up a bit behind them and was ready to leap out as I saw his door swing open. But she wasn’t far behind him and I almost blew my cover. They both went in for a leak and came out together, hand in hand. Then, as I followed for nearly another hour I realized that they were going to White Lake. They took the same turnoff I had been taking all my life, then another. I couldn’t believe it. Then I remembered that the Orrs had once taken a cottage at Sutton Beach for several years when George was a pre-teen. The place they rented was nearly at the very end of the line of summer homes, next to the community’s small public park. It had a decent, if crowded beach. Perhaps George wanted to show Sam an area he knew as a kid.
“Paddy and I were getting a bit hot and bothered as we watched the red sports car turn into the campground. Now, a quandary. I’d stick out like a sore thumb in my dark trousers and dark shirt and collar. And there was a sign No Pets Allowed. I’d have to lay low until dark then see if Sam separated herself from George long enough for me to move in — but from where? I could have set up at Whitehaven. But Peter was there. What would I tell him? Belle, his wife, would make mincemeat out of this latest example of my ’gross meddling in other peoples’ affairs,’ as she once called one of our adventures.
“But if I waited until just before dark, I could park down the road a bit and sneak by the cottage and get my canoe. It was always overturned on the dock. Then I could glide down the coast to the campground. God knows I spent enough of my adolescence checking out the shore, the lake and the sky from the silent vantage point of the canoe at dusk. I knew there were a couple of campsites right on the lake. Maybe Sam would be contemplating at the shore while George cooked or something. Well, I was really committed now. It was worth a try. I went to the phone booth and made up some cockamamie story for poor Brenda, and headed down to the shore.
“The sun was setting and Paddy and I managed to sneak down a path beside the neighbours thus avoiding detection from Whitehaven’s verandah. The dock was not visible from the house hidden by cedars which form a path from the cottage. I launched the canoe as quietly as we could. I could hear Peter and Belle bellowing to some friends over dinner on the verandah not twenty yards away. ’Great wine,’ he was saying. ’Got it at Vintages, last bottle. Great year, eh Belle?’
“There I was about my Father’s business doing the silent J stroke like some outlandish missionary or aged peeping Tom — take your pick. Paddy saw something move on shore just as we were paddling out of site of our cottage and started barking. I heard Peter trumpet, ’Who the hell has let their dog loose? Christ, they can’t control their bloody animals on this beach …’ and then their noise disappeared behind the point. I was alone and I could make out a couple of campfires a few hundred yards away. Luckily there were only two sets of overnighters that Saturday. I prayed George and Sam were one of them.
“As I closed on the second site, it wasn’t hard to make out Sam, even though I had never met her. I could hear a young voice telling someone else to for God’s sake give her her rollers and help her with her hair. How was she going to look like anything in the morning? She’d forgotten her mascara and what was she going to do. To all this a few grunts. Then, after what seemed like an eternity trying to keep just out of sight behind a big cedar tree that curved over the shore, to my relief I heard the female voice say loudly, ’Christ, George, my feet are filthy. I’m going down to the lake to wash them’.
“Sure enough as I pushed the canoe a few feet beyond the cedar, bringing the campsite into almost full view, I could see coming out of a smallish tent this tall thing looking like dynamite in tight white short shorts. She was swinging down toward the shore. I floated silently to meet her.
Father Pat now started to act out the denouement for Deirdre, who still was not quite sure if there was a greater point to the story at all.
“I cupped my hand. ‘Pssst Sam. I’m a friend. Come over to the canoe.’ She was a bit startled, I have to admit. But she was her mother’s daughter. Unlikely to run away from an adventure. ‘It’s Father Pat Cheyne, I’m an old friend of your mother’s. But don’t make any noise. I don’t want your friend to hear’.
“It was rocky — I remembered this bit of beach well from a near disaster I’d had with my canoe as a kid — and in order not to scrape the canoe, I stayed a few feet off shore. She squinted, then came splashing up a bit tentatively. Maybe my wagging little Paddy looking for all the world like an animated bowsprit helped. She patted him and looked up at me with a lot less surprise than I had anticipated. ’So you’ve come to get me. At last.’ Then she paused. She studied me in a wide-eyed way I found a bit unsettling. But clearly she wasn’t going to cry out or anything. Then she came closer along the side of the canoe and said, ’Hey, I just did this to scare Mom.’ And to my amazement she put one long leg over the gunwale, then holding on to the other she stepped expertly into the canoe and settled down on its bottom, facing me. Paddy was all over her and we almost dumped. I tried to calm her. ‘OK let’s go. I’m yours!’ she said.
“I paddled back up the shore to save my life. I had my prize curled up in the bottom of the canoe humming lightly to herself. Was I being sedu
ced or had I really seduced her into coming back to her mother? I wasn’t sure.
“Things got stranger and stranger. She was perfectly polite and docile. We silently pulled the canoe up on the dock and she helped me turn it over. Then we tiptoed back to the car. ‘I love your dog,’ she whispered in my ear and she took my hand and kissed me lightly on the cheek before we go into the car. ‘I’m so glad we finally met. Mom talks about you a lot,’ she said.
“On the ride back she tried to explain why she had run off with George. It was just a lark. Nothing serious. And, no she hadn’t slept with him. He was too gross and anyway had filthy hair. I thought those were reasons enough. But I could not figure out why she was so affectionate and easygoing with me. Was she trying to reheat a bond which had existed between her mother and myself ? Or did she want that bond extended to her? Curled up right next to me, this seemed a possible explanation.
“‘You’re married, aren’t you?’ she asked. I said ’yes.’ And she wanted to know if I was happy. I told her pretty happy. ‘Too bad,’ she said, ‘I hoped some day you and Mom would get back together.’ Then she said, ’You know I wasn’t supposed to know who you were. But I figured it out and made Mom admit it. I found some pictures, and notes wrapped in a red ribbon. And a bangle mom never wears. A beautiful one you gave her’.
“‘Oh god,’ I thought. ’What has Priscilla told her?’ Well it wasn’t long coming out.”
“That you are her father, right?!” Deirdre exclaimed triumphantly.
“Right. How the hell did you know?”
“Pretty obvious. You aren’t that good a storyteller.”
“Right, but you don’t know what happened then.”
“I can guess. You let her down gently. With your great bedside manner.”
“Wrong and that’s the problem. I couldn’t. And that’s where this all becomes not very funny at all.” He paused. The little comedy in the canoe had a tragic side to it as well. He didn’t know whether to pull the threads together and tell Deirdre. But she was looking at him so intently that he couldn’t let her down.
“Come on, old Pat. Let’s pull this all into a ball and put it back on the shelf.” Deirdre knew Pat well enough to sense that the story was burrowing deeper than he had intended. “Might as well. I’m your friend, you know.”
“OK, OK. Well. Yes, her mother had not denied that I was her father when Sam had discovered all this so-called evidence. No, in her mischievous, or was it sick way, Priscilla obviously let the idea take root. But she swore Sam to eternal secrecy. The fact I was an upstanding priest and that my reputation could be ruined was advanced as the best reason. And Priscilla had said bluntly that Sam could never see me. Her call for the rescue was obviously designed to make sure a meeting occurred. It put me in an impossible situation. What could I tell Sam? I knew damn well what it had meant for Jill to be deceived about the identity of her real father. In my head I knew the truth was always better. But in this case, well … you can imagine that for me it was very flattering. And I suspected, rightly as it turned out, that the real father would never be known or show himself.
“I decided that blatant cowardice and the kindest of deceptions constituted the only route to take. So, without either confirming or denying, as they say, I told her that, yes, I had loved her mother very much and tried to be a good friend to her, but that I had gone out with her at a time in my life of great pressure and there was not much I could do. That her mother had a few problems and I couldn’t cope. I, of course, did not admit that I was an absolute failure as a lover as far as her mother was concerned!
“‘Oh, she doesn’t hold any grudges’ came back the lively answer. ‘I’m just glad we can get to know each other and that you rescued me. Like my knight in shining armour,’ Priscilla’s daughter to be sure.
“Well, I’ll tell you some other time about the late-night reunion with the former girlfriend and our out-of-wedlock putative daughter. Of course it was a love-in. It had to be. And I tried to leave and end it there. With finality. But it was Jill in reverse and I should have known that lies live on, return to haunt you, have a life of their own.
“But how ironic, eh?” Father Pat was trying to tie some of the threads together. But not all of them. “My father spends a lifetime denying the existence of this woman who actually is his real daughter, and in the next generation I encourage a young woman to think she is my real daughter when she isn’t! Well, obviously this isn’t the last chapter of that saga. There’s another chapter a year later. But for another time … But isn’t that a hoot of a story? And I still can’t bring myself to come clean. Maybe you could give some thought as to how I pull that off, Deirdre, and what my story would be if the Bishop found out! You are so good at advice.” This has ended OK, Father Pat thought. But Deirdre was persistent.
“So how does this connect with Brenda? That’s where we started this whole thing,” she reminded him pointedly. “Did she find out? Is that the problem? Is that why things changed?” Deirdre’s reporter’s nose smelled a story that was missing a key piece.
“Well, you will drag this out of me, won’t you. Anyhow, surely it’s fairly obvious. At least it is to me. As I was telling you, everything was great with Brenda, life, sex, even our shared spiritual experience and devotion to an active ministry, really getting involved with parishioners and their real needs. Well, you know. Then I decided to get elected and go to Ottawa. This was a turning point because at the same time … at the same time, after many years of trying we found out … well …” with this, Father Pat put his head in his hands.
“Well, come on, Pat.” Deirdre reached across and took his hand.
“Yes. The same time we found out we couldn’t have children. Pretty final, eh? Pretty awful. We had everything and nothing. Or at least that’s the way I felt and it showed. It had a huge impact on Brenda too. Poor Brenda — and there I was, helpless before the real challenge of being with a woman. Except this time it was the woman in my life. But it did change everything.” Then he paused and let out a long, long sigh.
“So you see, when that adorable Sam came along. Well, you understand, don’t you …”
Deirdre did and she thought, as they held hands in that dingy bar, what a roller coaster her friend had ridden. But so much of it was on tracks he had laid down for himself in a trackless world. His actual innocence. His sometimes reckless efforts to help, to make up, to be loyal. And who finally gets hurt? Brenda, the very one that set him up emotionally. At least Pat’s life had been lived and thought about in its many dimensions, and each element dealt with and felt with compassion, even if he always held something back. Deirdre was willing to think he had done absolutely the right thing in the Jill situation, but she was less sure on this one. So was Father Pat. Deirdre wanted to know the rest of the story about the bizarre reunion the night of Sam’s rescue. But Pat was fatigued, and she decided to let him off.
“Yes, I do. Well sort of. Understand, I mean. This is the moral dilemma of all dilemmas. Good thing you are expert in these matters, Pat,” she said.
“I’m not, you know. How can your conscience be your guide, as I was taught in Sunday School, on ones like this?”
“Well, anyway, I don’t have an answer. But I will think about it. And I’m going to let you off telling me about the great reunion. This time. Anyway, gotta fly!” Deirdre let go of his hand across the table, got up quickly and swished out and away.
Father Pat was left counting his failures. How 1950s, he thought. I failed Stevey. I failed Priscilla. I failed Brenda. Deirdre, well, she is a friend and perhaps that’s the most permanent thing I can think of on the distaff side. But what do we really know of each other?
But most of all he realized, as he prayed that night, the paradoxes of his life fresh in his mind, that he had not found a balance, a golden mean between passion and compassion, between extending the help and counsel appropriate to a man of God and the deep involvement that satisfied personal yearnings, between the truth as he was living it an
d the higher truth and morality of the gospel, between the distance of the observant canoeist and the engagement of a really active and involved human being. But most disturbing at that moment was the disparity he felt between the comfort and connection he felt there holding his friend Deirdre’s hand and his dark and lonely pursuit of comfort for his eternal soul.
The Ridgewood Mall Miracle
THE HEATING THAT December Sunday at St. Bart’s Anglican Church was giving off more noise than heat, and Father Pat found himself rubbing his hands together and wishing his tattered cassock had a fur lining as he smiled his way through the good-byes to his parishioners.
As the last of the faithful bundled out into the blustery cold, Father Pat went to secure the front door from the swirling wind, then he turned and recognized Alice Alnick lingering shyly. She was well known to the community as the ticket seller at Ridgewood’s tiny commuter station but was better known to Father Pat as an unfortunate woman whose husband had left three years ago after one final drunken row, abandoning her to cope alone with her droopy five-year-old daughter, Mary.
Alice Alnick was a St. Bart’s regular. “Coming to church is the only chance I have to get dressed up,” Alice had once told Father Pat. Done up in cast-off fashions, she occupied the third pew to the left while Mary passively attended Sunday School.
This Sunday Alice took Father Pat aside and confided that she was in a terrible state. She moved uncomfortably close to the priest, who could distinctly smell last night’s beer on her breath. The story tumbled out in hushed, conspiratorial tones.
The Father Pat Stories Page 18