Then the conversation turned to age and sex. In that order. Their aging was always a subject of fond teasing, and the subject of what each perceived to be the other’s non-existent sex life was usually dealt with in the same context and with the same humour.
“I made the dreadful mistake of letting the TV into the bedroom,” Terry was in full fantasy. “So there is usually someone more attractive than me on for Janet to contemplate and I usually go to sleep. But when there’s a full moon, I get up and howl and sometimes that works.” And he showed his friends. Then he mimicked his wife. “Let the dog in dear,” and she goes back to her program. They all laughed.
“Well, I could howl all I liked and nobody would be there,” Deirdre said. “But don’t feel sorry for me. There’s a young guy on the editorial board who took me out last week, and we necked. I couldn’t believe it. We necked in the car. First date. I told him the next day that I was Jewish and couldn’t possibly go out with him again. He believed me!” They all roared.
“But the other thing that happened to me the other day really told me that I’m getting down to the last days if I’m ever going to have anything more than necking sessions with guys ten years younger than me. I was out on a story and meeting with the president of the stock exchange in his office. It had been an elaborate deal just to get in and see him. You know there have been charges that their procedures are too loose, that investors aren’t adequately protected and so on. Well, I know for a fact that this guy has left his wife, it was in the gossip columns. He’s about your age, Pat.” Father Pat looked not at all happy to be put in another age group than his beloved Deirdre.
“I wore this outfit, and he turned out to be a ten. Much better looking than in his photos, and he bounded out from behind his desk, held my chair and started the ‘I want to get to know you’ bullshit. But you know, I liked it. He looked at my ring finger and assumed I was divorced, or at least he asked me. I went along. Then, any kids? No. I didn’t want to lie. Then, weren’t you in Ottawa? I remember your byline. That worked, and before I knew it I was telling him about what a pain it was to come back and go back on general reporting.
“Anyway, he won. I did a largely symbolic, puffball interview after that. I felt awful. And, well … I’m seeing him for dinner a week Thursday.” With this she blushed ever so slightly. During her expose she had become so animated that she had moved away from Father Pat and was waving her arms enthusiastically.
“Let’s drink to that, Deirdre,” Father Pat heard himself saying formally.
“Talk about me consorting with crooks. He’s supposed to be a bit of a one himself, honey.” Terry couldn’t resist.
“Well, my darlings. I’ve given up on you two, and there aren’t many ports left for this boat in this storm,” Deirdre said with a hint of irony.
Father Pat felt a requirement to change the direction of the conversation after that little bombshell.
“I have a frightening aging story, a bit of a shocker for me at least,” he said. “You know there are a couple of not-unattractive mid-thirtyish young mothers at the church who try to teach church school. I see them occasionally to discuss bigger projects like the Christmas Pageant. We are very friendly. I’ve never felt a great age difference — you know, it doesn’t come up. Just like it doesn’t with you, Deirdre …” and he looked at her wryly. She was more than ten years younger, but her experience and general mature demeanor put her squarely in the no-age category of some women around forty who would had not outwardly changed in the last ten years and were unlikely to in the next. Nevertheless …
“Well, one Wednesday evening at a rare meeting with these two women, the subject came up of me coming to a meeting of another group they both belong to. The Ridgewood Parents Association,” Father Pat continued. “This group had been discussing the need to take a stronger position on school funding cutbacks. They knew I had some political views and expertise and might be helpful, and they needed someone to tell the group how important it was to mobilize and actively fight the local board.
“But more to the point was how they phrased the invitation. Not, you could help us because you were in politics, Oh no! ‘You know,’ the prettier of the two said in a most disarming way, ’we need someone of your age and experience to say we are on the right track fighting this thing.’ Then the clincher for me: ’Everyone respects what someone with grey hair says!’
“I nearly died. I had not realized that I had become so Methuselah-like that my advanced years alone bestowed such authority on me. Nor did I realize that this was the way those charming women saw me. It was quite a shock!”
“Well you would look a lot younger if you lost some weight,” Deirdre said good naturedly, giving him a pleasant poke in the side. Father Pat had hoped one of them would have said something more encouraging and was annoyed he had set himself up with the story.
“At any rate, I don’t feel like some sort of elder. Nobody in their fifties does,” he said a bit defensively.
“Time you got yourself a twenty-nine-year-old lover,” Terry said.
“Funny, I know I couldn’t handle that,” Father Pat thought of his old pal Jeff and the exotic dancer. But, clearly, it was time to go.
They said their good-byes in the shelter of Bradley’s dingy doorway. Deirdre was going back to the Record which was on the way to the train station. Terry was going uptown so Father Pat took Deirdre’s arm and they set off into an unexpected late-afternoon winter sun.
“It’s a good thing we’re such good friends,” Father Pat said as Deirdre pulled his arm into her side. “Anyone listening might wonder.” He was feeling a bit vulnerable and looking for reassurance.
“Come on Pat.” Deirdre knew exactly what he was after. “It’s about time your friends told you what we think is going on in your life. We’ve known you long enough. If we didn’t love you, we wouldn’t bother. And if you want to know my real opinion, I’ve never even thought you were much older than I was.”
This warmed the priest. “Thanks for that. But I guess my life is a bit fragile since Ottawa. I mean, you know, we’re all doing our best.”
“Yeah. I know. I should. But at least you have your cozy routine, you’ve got lots of great memories, and someone gets meals for you. When did you last come home to an empty apartment?”
By now they were outside the modern, fancifully fanned entrance of the Record. Deirdre let go of his arm decisively. She looked at him for a moment, then, throwing up her arms, she said, “Oh hell, Pat, I’ve got a story to do, and I left the notes at my apartment. Come on. If you have time, you can walk me there and we’ll share a cab back. Come on.” And she grabbed his hand.
Deirdre lived in a downtown mixed- use project that included shops, low-rise condos and a cinema where she and Father Pat had once met somewhat surreptitiously to see a French film. Deirdre, constantly changing her living and lifestyle, had rented her condo from the owner, who was working in Calgary for a couple of years. Father Pat had heard how unusually elegant it was — at least for Deirdre who dressed with far much more flare than she lived. He had never seen it.
“You are going to die when you see the royal boudoir,” Deirdre said, clearly enjoying cheering up her friend, who was now somewhere a few feet off the pavement.
“It’s ridiculous, and the place belonged to a man. And it faces west. I get a view of the sun setting.”
By now it was well after four and indeed the sun was getting low in the sky.
She did not let go of his hand going up in the elevator. Father Pat felt about as far away from Ridgewood as he could — physically and mentally. He was a politician again, and he and Deirdre were having dinner as they often did in Ottawa. They were laughing, and he was wondering if anything would ever come of their relationship. Now he wondered again. Perhaps, finally, they were coming close to a turning point — one of those moments in a long build that either hit or missed, never to return again.
Deirdre opened the door at the end of the long hall and the orange s
un struck them hard.
“Wow, great view,” Father Pat said, going to the long windows and looking down a half-dozen stories to the street. The setting sun caught the streetcar tracks making them four fiery ribbons stretching away down the length of the street. The sun was wedged between two walls of buildings and the whole cityscape seemed foreshortened from this perspective.
There was no first move. Deirdre had taken off her coat and was beside him. She pulled him around to her, almost maternally, and kissed him at his hairline.
“We do love you, you know,” she said. His hands were on her shoulders. She took them and, with them, caressed his face. “You look old and sad. What are we going to do?”
“I can’t even begin to think, Deirdre. It’s all so complicated. And I don’t want to spoil anything.” He really meant this. His father had always warned him to hang on to sure things. He had not been risk averse when it came to other people’s lives, but he had followed his father’s advice when it came to his own. Now there was an invitation he felt he had not encouraged. But equally he could not afford to refuse it out of hand. He was also about to completely lose control as a woman he genuinely loved as a friend appeared to want to be loved as a woman.
She bought some time. She moved away, and still very close, gazing into the sun she began to take out the hairpins that held her hair. In a minute she was shaking a black mane that reached almost to the middle of her back. Father Pat found himself stroking it gently from behind. His hands, then seemingly acting on their own, slipped around her waist. For a long few seconds, the two remained motionless. Then Deirdre took out the last pin and after putting it back in her hair to keep it off her face, moved her hands down and parted them slowly across his, which were still clasped together just under her breasts.
She interlaced her fingers with his and very slowly moved them over her breasts, pulling them in more tightly against the soft black fabric. After another eternity, she took his right hand and moved it past the sheen of her scarf under her jacket and into the warmth of her loose, low-cut bra. He could feel her hard nipple. She sighed.
They still said nothing. All Father Pat could see was her thick hair, and all he could feel was his body pressed against the cheeks of her buttocks.
It just came out. “I love you,” Father Pat heard himself say. “I always have. And I know I always will.”
“God, I hope you can … and will,” Deirdre turned around slowly. There were tears in her eyes. “This may be wrong. But, I want to know.”
And they kissed. They were like virginal teenagers. But this was not Priscilla suffering and waiting for something good to happen on his parents’ oriental rug thirty years ago. This was a woman in full control of herself and her body starting to unbutton Father Pat’s almost new viyella shirt.
In the furious taxi ride to the train an hour later, Deirdre held Father Pat’s hand firmly just below the crotch of the pants she had put on. He remembered the kids in the subway car. They were silent.
“What do we say to Terry?” Deirdre asked under her breath.
“Look, you guys got this going about my past. I’m going to need all the help I can get from you both to see the future — whatever …”
“OK, we’re in it together. Agreed. But, he won’t be happy. He really liked me a while back, you know.”
“I know, but he once accused me of having an affair with you. I think he wanted to believe my denial, but didn’t … Oh God!” Father Pat said loudly and passionately. “What am I to do?”
“What are you talking about, Pat? Stop sermonizing. It’s about whether we want it to be something new, or nothing new, and maybe back to the old scene — where we were. Whatever, it’s your call. If we decide this didn’t happen, you’ll never hear me say anything.”
FATHER PAT HAD minutes to dash through the underground maze of tunnels that directed passengers to the various commuter tracks. Ridgewood was track 2D and he bounded up the stairs in a fearful daze. He had no idea what car he got on, but he went up to the upper level seats and plunked himself by a window, facing what he thought was forward. The train pulled out almost immediately and he found himself facing a hard-faced elderly man who was sitting stiffly beside a black woman many years younger. And he was going backward. How symbolic, he thought.
He replayed again and again every second of the remarkable late afternoon with Deirdre, as he looked glazed through the reflection of the window at the passing lights. The train picked up speed.
“This didn’t happen. You’ll never hear me say anything.” Oh God! He’d agreed to tell Terry and seek his help. The comfort, the predictability, the fun and even joy of friendships long experienced seemed as transient now as the fast-flying bursts of snow that occasionally billowed by the window.
And Brenda. She deserved better. She had deserved better ever since their inability to have children and Pat’s decision to go to Ottawa and immerse himself in politics had marked a change in their previously intense relationship. Now he had actually betrayed her — physically — and others, even if it was only Terry who would know. Whatever, she risked being demeaned. Even to have made such a breach of faith, the faith she likely had in him, only once, and with someone he had known for years, and who Brenda knew too.
Suddenly he saw himself not as the wise greying elder the Sunday school women trusted, but as the aged lecher returning from an amorous conquest. He looked down at his viyella shirt. He could see it now crumpled on the floor by Deirdre’s couch as they embraced half-dressed.
Then he could feel, actually feel his right hand on her breast. The sensation was so vivid that he jammed the offending extremity into his coat pocket and nervously flipped his house keys over and over on their ring. Looking up, he saw the black woman studying him as he jangled the key chain nervously. She looked puzzled, then went back to talking quietly to the older man, who himself was looking a bit nervous.
How futile to pretend nothing had happened. He had been considering this very thing for more than twenty years in the dark and distant recesses of his consciousness. He knew that to be true, although if he had had one lecherous thought about Deirdre in the last decade, he had certainly pushed it far out of the reach of his daily thoughts.
Now the conversation between the unlikely couple opposite was becoming more animated and intruded on Father Pat’s dark recollections.
“I did not loose that file. You’re crazy. Why do you blame me? Do I not look after you, Charles?” The black woman was defending herself too loudly for Father Pat not to hear.
“Be quiet. You’re making a scene. I told you I needed that file. You could not find it. It’s simple. You let me down. Now what about tomorrow? I must …” And the train roared under a long underpass, drowning out the tail of the conversation. The car’s lights blinked.
When they came on again, to Father Pat’s surprise, the black woman was holding the old gentleman’s hand. He was looking at her, his head bobbing up and down and he had an unpleasant steely look on his face. Father Pat turned to watch what would happen in the reflection of his window. She looked annoyed; he looked somewhat coldly triumphant.
“So, we’ll meet then. I’ll book off and stay in town tomorrow,” Father Pat heard this clearly.
She looked ahead. They held hands for a minute longer, then, as if she no longer existed, the older man pulled the newspaper from his side pocket and started to read it. She stared ahead, and slowly folded both her hands in her lap.
This vignette plunged Father Pat into paroxysms of guilt and anxiety. He saw himself in the backs of taxis, in hotel rooms, in that strange apartment, fleeing the hard realities of his real life for the soft escape of Deirdre’s ministrations. He could hear himself saying to an anxious Deirdre, “We’ll meet then. I’ll book off and stay in town.”
Or was he just imagining that anything had indeed changed? He tried to look at it from her side. Had she made this gesture, however grand, from curiosity, from desire, or from genuine love? Little in what she had said l
ed him to believe it to be the mature or thoughtful love or devotion of his sermon. He had that already, in a way. She had said, “This may be wrong,” she had said. “I want to know.” Had she been simply acting like an inquiring reporter?
Was she saying to herself, “Oh, I’ve known this curious and somewhat lovable man for twenty years. He obviously really likes me. He’s a bit lonely and frustrated. Why not make him really happy, if only once?”
Well, she had. Was she hung out like he was now that it was over? Or did she really think that she could write it off and go back to the kind of wonderful friendship that had really nourished him for many years?
As the passing city lights gave way to the blackness of the countryside he thought of the moral imperatives that should be governing his life. Of course, he thought of his ultimate boss and judge, his bishop, in the same way he thought of the fierce ticket taker on the ride in. It was all part of the same thing. The boy, the fear of being caught out.
Then he thought of a sermon by the great nineteenth-century Boston preacher, Philips Brooks, in which Christ was introduced as a kind of all-seeing super-grandfather who had produced teachings by which you could measure every action. He remembered a passage that had struck him as he wrestled with his faith in seminary. He had memorized it:
I, with my passion boiling in my veins, leading me to do some foul act of outrageous lust, have I a single moment’s doubt what Jesus would have me do if he were here? There is no single act of your life, my friend, there is no single dilemma in which you find yourself placed, in which the answer is not in Jesus Christ.
At one time, in his first semester at seminary, when he was still not sure whether to be further pursued by Brenda, this had helped him get over a short lived situation he was having with a married woman who had actually forced her attentions on him with such strength that they had ended up almost making love in the kitchen of the seminary. He had prayed and prayed and the next time she had caught him alone closing up after he had finished his kitchen duties, he ran. He had put himself through seminary washing dishes. It was hard enough without the oversexed wife of a colleague throwing herself on him. He had no doubt what Jesus would have done and he did it.
The Father Pat Stories Page 22