Even if he measured what had happened not by Christian or biblical standards but by who might get hurt and by how much, he knew he was on rapidly shifting ground. At university and for many years after he would comfort himself by thinking that he had never really hurt anyone — except Priscilla. Pretty hard to maintain that fiction now. And the train started to brake harshly as they came roaring into the little Ridgewood station.
Closing his eyes and feeling physically ill, he got up, only to catch the coat of the older man with his arm as he swung it over his shoulders. The black woman was clearly getting off at a more distant station. As Father Pat looked on from the aisle with renewed interest, the man edged by the woman without a word, without even glancing her way. She looked straight ahead, totally unmoved.
He moved behind Father Pat and the train lurched to a stop. They made their way down the stairs and out into the glaring lights of the Ridgewood platform. The little ticket office was dark. Alice had gone home. He pictured her, just a few hours before, looking after him intently as he got on the train.
He trudged into the clear cold night. Only the upstairs light was on as he rounded the corner and faced the manse. Strange, he thought, I was expected for dinner. He braced himself, slipped the key in the lock and, click, the bolt yielded. The warmth of the house enveloped him, and he kicked off his shoes self-consciously.
“That you, Pat?” he heard from upstairs. “I didn’t expect you.” Then Brenda’s familiar footfall as she came downstairs switching on lights. From the last stair she looked at him in puzzlement and said, “Deirdre called. She said you might have missed the train. She apologized. Said she’d kept you late talking about a story. Oh well, I’ll fix up something to eat. You look cold.” And she came toward him. “Here, let me take your coat.” Did she already know or suspect?
This exchange gave Father Pat a stomach that would not welcome food. Not at this point. He fled to the kitchen and poured himself a Scotch while Brenda started to fuss with the stove and refrigerator. He realized that, except for himself, and his God, at that point it could be business as usual.
He did not count as much as he might have on Deirdre keeping her word. Indeed this was to be an issue that the three friends were going to have to deal with. She made that clear in a short conversation she had with Father Pat the next day. Father Pat had had a miserable night and was in no mood for truth. But she was firm. She was as he loved her. He knew he was for it.
As the day of their meeting approached, he was constantly reminded of the words of the general confession he had recited so many hundreds of times:
Almighty and most merciful father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
Epilogue
THERE WAS LITTLE discussion about where Pat and Deirdre would meet Terry to discuss this watershed in their long relationship. A bar was inappropriate, and likely too expensive for the amount of liquor which they would certainly consume. Father Pat had no desire to return to Deirdre’s and the manse was out. So, they decided on Terry’s and picked the night his wife went to her community college course. It was the first Wednesday in February, “suicide month,” as Terry liked to call it.
Deirdre and Father Pat decided it would be too embarrassing for either to tell Terry to his face about what had happened. Father Pat said he would write a note so the three of them could get over the hums and hahs and talk about what to do. So Father Pat agonized over the following note, which he delivered by hand to Terry’s house the Tuesday before the meeting:
Terry,
Maybe this note won’t come as a shock. But what happened after we left you a week ago came as such a shock to Deirdre and me that we want to talk about it with you tomorrow. This is why the mysterious meeting at your house.
Deirdre and I went back to her apartment after Bradley’s and made love. That’s what happened. And believe me, Terry, it was for the first time. I think I’m more devastated than she is, but I won’t try to speak for her. Of course I’ve loved her. You know that. But being involved this way overturns so much of where I thought I was in this life, and with you. Or perhaps it doesn’t. But we decided we were, in a funny way, in this together.
Please be understanding, Terry. We need to talk about this, and we need your help. We both have decisions to make.
Sorry.
Pat
He also wrote a poem, which he enclosed. He spent the better part of an afternoon writing it. He sent Deirdre a copy of both the letter and the poem.
We all know solitude
Some seek it in prayer, contemplation or in nature
Others know it in lonely intellectual pursuits
For still others their quest for art demands it
And for a few holy men, it is their life
Some welcome solitude
As the most companionable of companions
Others fear it
Exorcising it with noise and clamour
We know we are alone in nature, that is our state
When we look in the eyes
And there is no reflected light
From our spouses, our families, our co-workers
Those who “know” us
But for some few, for us, for we three
There is a light to illuminate our solitudes
It is lit when we deeply share
A moment of truth together
Then it shines into the other
The doors to our souls
Swing open a crack
And briefly our darknesses disappear
Father Pat let himself into Terry’s front door and went down to the cozy recreation room to find his two friends sipping drinks quietly. Paddy trotted after him and curled up at Terry’s feet.
“I loved your poem!” Terry and Deirdre said, in unison, as Father Pat sat down.
“Well, I meant it,” he replied awkwardly. He admitted, only to himself, that this poem was just a little manipulative. For the magic circle that existed in that room it was just right and he knew it. But he also knew that it did scant justice to the very central role, for instance, that Brenda played in his life. And it neglected others, like his father, like Priscilla, and Sam — even Jill.
“Where do we start?” Terry broke the ice after Father Pat was settled with a malt whiskey. Deirdre had a glass of wine. She was curled up on the dimly lit old sofa draped in jeans, a loose silk shirt and an open, brightly patterned vest. She had her hair to one side in a long loose sort of pig-tail fastened with a perky red ribbon. She had no makeup on and looked tired, as did the other two.
Father Pat slipped off his shoes. One black sock had a hole in the toe and he pulled it over his foot, hoping nobody would notice. He had taken off his round collar and left the collarless black shirt open. He unbuttoned his black vest. Terry looked almost relaxed in an expensive multi-coloured sweater and grey corduroys. He leaned forward.
“You know, Pat, I was surprised that this was the first time for you two. I was as surprised by that as much as I was by anything else in your note. But I can see that things were not at all the way I thought they were, and that to start something after all these years is a real problem. I guess it’s like falling off the wagon.”
“That’s not a great analogy, Terry,” Father Pat said. “It’s more like really falling off a real wagon or perhaps a train — when it’s moving. And crashing on the ground.” Then he lost the analogy. “It’s the most dramatic change you can imagine in a relationship that is really important to both Deirdre and me.” He hated the sound of “Deirdre and me”. He hardly meant to be exclusive. “And a change, although God I hope not, in our scene as friends,” Pat added quickly.
“I agree,” Deirdre said. “That’s why I felt strongly we should discuss it together — for me it was the only way.” She spoke slowly and deliberately.
“But what is there to discuss? You know, I’m a good PR man. There’s perception and reality. So far, the percepti
on is the same. You are good and great friends. Lots of history. That’s all. I don’t think even Brenda suspects anything.” Father Pat remembered how she had behaved the night he returned. She believed the disingenuous call from Deirdre. Or seemed to. Terry caught his thought.
“So what about Brenda?” he asked.
“Two simple things, Terry,” Pat said. He caught his breath. This was his wife of over twenty-five years, and the first time he had talked about her this way. “One, she doesn’t suspect. Two, if she knew or did suspect, it would collapse her whole life. At least I think it would. In any case, I’d have to leave.”
“Terry, isn’t the question, at least for you …” Deirdre sounded pleading, “Isn’t the question first whether we three can go on the same?”
“Of course we can,” Terry said firmly. “One hour doesn’t undo years of shared experience and a lot of fun. We do seem to be able to do things together. Think of the dump scam and Pat’s crazy dog — of Christmas and that dumb Joe Alnick. Of the PM’s visit and how we nearly thoroughly exposed old Mulgrew. We’ve done lots of things and we’ll still do lots of things. Let’s not forget it’s always been a cause. It’s, it’s …” and he fumbled for a piece of paper, then read, “it’s your sharing a ’moment of truth,’ as you said in your poem Pat. And we’re not going to end because you … got carried away.” and he stopped himself.
“We both did, Terry. Let’s make that clear,” Deirdre said. “It happened for a reason.”
“Maybe that’s what we should be talking about. Or can we?” Terry felt he was running a sensitivity session. Yet these two people were his family too, in many ways, just as they were to each other.
“Well, it was partly the circumstance,” Deirdre said, feeling she had to unburden. “That Monday I had to admit to myself that Pat was more complicated, more sensitive, far less the easy going guy that I’d thought he was. I have to say I saw you in a different way, Pat.” She looked at him warmly and he could feel himself melting. “A more-than-friend, in a really interesting way. And when we … well I don’t want to tell Terry everything or we’ll never hear the end of it. But, what I’m trying to say is that, yes, it was partly curiosity, but it was also seeing you in a different way. I think that really started when you unburdened to me about Brenda, then the Sam story. You opened a lot of doors that are hard to close. You can’t share those kind of secrets, those kind of thoughts with a woman who likes you without becoming closer … in every way. Were you so naive to think you could?”
“I guess I wasn’t making those kind of distinctions.” Father Pat was feeling very uncomfortable. He remembered that he’d been quite frank with Deirdre that day about his sexual awakening with Brenda. Had that given Deirdre an idea? He couldn’t add to her thought on this score. Like Doug Charter years ago with Priscilla, he was out of his league.
Terry kept it going. “I don’t have these conversations every day, especially with grown people. But I’ve got to ask if you’re going to keep this thing up or not. And how — at what temperature, if I could be so bold.”
“I think we both need to get some things off our chests — and you can help. Right, Pat?” Deirdre had promised herself in her determined way that she would not go home that night without a real resolution to this situation. And she hardly expected it from Father Pat.
Father Pat took a few seconds to find his words. He had many powerful thoughts on the issues that were flying about in his head. His mind was still on the dark ruminations of his commuter trip back to Ridgewood on that Monday. He could not escape the determinants of those reflections; nor the real moral dilemma he was in.
“I don’t know how to start. But you’ll have to be patient. I owe you both a real explanation for once. Then we can decide,” he began. “I am a priest. I forget it sometimes and you do too. A lot of the adventures we’ve had are really on the edge of what this community, and for that matter my bishop can accept from a practicing priest with parish responsibilities.
“Think of the Omega plant affair. I was actually protecting a woman, as it turned out, who wanted to kill the PM. I never told you guys, but there was never any kid. It wasn’t a prank. And there I was, in the most questionable moral position, running from the cops with the mother of the kid we thought was the prankster. Oh yes. I got away with it. But that’s why I couldn’t tell you, Deirdre. I was aiding and abetting — or at least it could have come out that way.
“The dump scam, as you call it, was different. But what I never told you two was that I was hauled on the carpet by the bishop over that. And my own vestry committee demanded an explanation. I had to give it and write them a formal report explaining why I had used the media to embarrass a parishioner.
“Then there was the drama we put on to get me out of the soup over my article on homosexuals. Great theatre, Terry, and we did achieve a sort of atonement. But there’s no doubt that a lot of people felt I’d thrown it in their faces, and perhaps for pretty self-serving reasons at that. I created a lot of discomfort. I still get echoes of it, and my boss, the bishop, is watching.”
He paused. Ruminating on their three musketeer adventures. He began again slowly, “So, it’s easy to use my position, and you guys as willing accomplices, to bend the rules a bit and do what seem like good things. That has been the story of these last few years. And don’t get me wrong, these are the moments I’ve felt most alive and felt that, in a way, I’ve been of most service to the community. But not everyone shares those views.
“Double lives are never easy. I’m still smack in the middle of the most glaring double life of all pretending I’m the father of my ex-girlfriend’s out-of-wedlock daughter. And you haven’t helped me get out of that one yet, Deirdre!” He couldn’t resist smirking as he looked seriously at her. But he was quickly back to his monologue.
“Anyhow, God only knows I deal with enough double lives with my parishioners. Many are living institutionalized double lives — some of my most devout and loyal members. One of the accountants who served most loyally on the vestry committee was up for nearly a million in fraud last year. What did I say to him? Nothing.
“It’s a bit much when I have to admit I’m one of them …” Pat paused and put his head in his hands. Deirdre by this point was sitting up and flipping her fingers nervously around the stem of her glass.
“So I guess my double life has involved my return to the active priesthood — number one; number two the return of Priscilla and my alleged daughter, Sam, and three, and somewhat the most real, you Deirdre. It’s too much. But until a week ago Monday I actually thought my walking the fine line as a priest was really the only moral dilemma that was worth fussing over. Then, I crossed the line with you, Deirdre … I’m sorry.” And he stopped.
There was a long silence. The little bar refrigerator wheezed into life. They all jumped.
“It’s just the fridge,” Terry said, braking the ice again. “My, we are tense aren’t we? Come on, let’s top up the drinks. Will Dr. Jekyll and the two Mr. Hydes take another dash?” Pat, making a monster face, nodded. Deirdre laughed too and in a mock detective voice asked, “Would you like to confess to any other murders when one of these characters takes possession of you, Father? And by the way, we will not accept apologies for something that two consenting adults did! Right Terry.”
“Right, Donaldson. Now, I suppose we have two questions. Does the dog collar stay or go, and does the affair continue or end. Does the world, the flesh and even the devil win or lose?” Terry cut lightly to the quick. He knew that Father Pat was fulminating more and more about his decision to take up a parish again after politics. He was impatient and felt he could perhaps impose again a bit on their friendship as he had the day of their Bradley’s encounter.
“Face it, Pat. This would be a lot easier to deal with if you didn’t have all the expectations of the bishop and hundreds of devout Ridgewood members of your congregation to deal with. Then it would just be us and Brenda and perhaps even a reasonably humane solution. And don�
�t get me wrong, I don’t think it has a lot to do with morality. We discussed the organized church and morality enough at seminary. We know where we’re coming from on that.” Terry’s challenge was direct. Father Pat was not ready with an answer, although he was reassured that Terry understood that lives fully engaged did come with their built-in mysteries and that simplistic moralistic responses were inappropriate. But he still wondered if he would not really like to have Deirdre as a permanent companion.
The Goodfellow gay situation had shown there was more in his relationship with Brenda than he had thought. And his final encounter with Priscilla, the one his friends did not know about, had not resolved the paternity issue but had laid to rest that relationship’s challenges. But this was really different. This was a very mature friendship with a woman in which the forbidden had been finally and fully shared. And by the time he had got off the train after his intense afternoon with Deirdre, he had decided that there would be no surreptitious affair. That was not, definitely not an option. Perhaps he should tell his friends that much. He struggled to express himself without suggesting that his love for her was in any doubt.
“There is one thing I decided on the ride back that Monday on the train. No hotel rooms, no stolen nights, no web of lies, no sleaze … I suppose that means no affair!” He realized the irony of what he was saying. He also realized, at that precise moment, and with a jarring blow, that what he was saying might just be closing the door, likely forever, on his ever being a real instead of a wished-for or imagined father. He continued, “But don’t think for a moment Deirdre that … well that… I do love you and that will never change.”
The Father Pat Stories Page 23