by Lily White
The room fell into sanctimonious silence as I walked to a nearby pew and sat down on the hard wood. Leaning forward, I buried my face in my palms. I tried to convince myself I was just tired, but I knew myself well enough to know that I was hiding.
Even though I’d once been a priest with the same duties and responsibilities of the man I was waiting on, even though I’d spent countless hours in a sanctuary less dramatic and glamorous than this once, I found it difficult to be surrounded by the religious symbols and relics that were now staring me down. I wasn’t a different man just because I’d removed the clerical collar, but with each new memory of my life that surfaced, with each new secret that was unburied, I found myself becoming more jaded and angry at the concept of God.
I couldn’t even refer to that heavenly being as if he actually existed, not now and never again after realizing just how horrible he’d allowed my life to become.
There was no telling how much time passed before I felt a hand land on my shoulder, before I heard the soft susurration of cloth against wood as Timothy sat down.
“Is it really so hard to look up at the altar? You’ve been sitting like that for at least an hour now.”
Without moving or looking over, I answered, “It’s all a lie told to appease the masses, a pretty veil pulled over the truth that we are on our own.”
“Can I ask you something, Jacob? Just out of idle curiosity.”
Finally ripping my hands away from my face, I looked up, my gaze locking on a large gold cross positioned in the center of God’s altar. Beside it was a small, carved box, the jewels embedded in the wood glimmering beneath the soft lighting of the sanctuary. I wasn’t sure what religious relic was contained in that ornate box, but what I did know was that it was most likely priceless. The bones of a Saint. A remnant of some perfectly pious man. A lie covered as easily as a shroud that is draped over the face of a tortured Savior. I had been part of that lie when I chose to swallow it down, but now I found it difficult to stare it in the face.
“What do you want to ask?” A knot in my throat made my voice hoarse and deeper. Clearing it several times, I was able to speak again, but still I felt strangled.
Timothy allowed several seconds of silence to float between us before building the courage to ask a question I wished he had left alone.
“What happened in your life to cause you to lose faith in God?”
On any other day, I would have brushed off the question and reacted with contempt. This morning I was weaker, somehow, more willing to lay out the answers to that question only because I couldn’t make sense of them myself.
“Are you asking this as a priest would a parishioner? Can we consider this my confession?”
Timothy shifted in his seat to lean forward. With his elbows resting on his knees, he looked toward the altar while speaking to me. “If that’s what you need in order to talk. This conversation will never go beyond you or me.”
A bark of humorless laughter shook my shoulders. “Did you promise the same thing to my father when he showed you all the skeletons in his closet?”
Silence again before, “I deserve that. But in my defense, I didn’t spill his secrets openly. I only hinted to where you could find them. I never understood why he told me about burying the confession in a place where you would know to look for it. I think, secretly, he hoped I’d break my oath and tell you where it could be found.” Pausing for a brief moment, he added, “And if I had to be completely honest, I’ll admit that I wanted that information out in the open. I’ve never agreed with the politics in the Church that have allowed for the destruction of so many people.”
Glancing at his expression, I saw that he was being truthful. His lips were turned down and his jaw was tight. I wondered if he felt the same chains and trappings of his profession as I’d felt in mine. For me, it was financial, but for him, it had to be more. The larger the parish, the more politics took over, and the easier it was for the wicked to invade and prey on those who believed them divine.
Turning my focus back down to where my hands were clasped together over my lap, I watched my thumb idly rub over my skin, the lines stretching until absent, only to return when my thumb released the tension and allowed the flesh to snap back in place. I watched the blood pool beneath, turning white when I increased the pressure of my hold until the skin was absent of life.
“When I was a kid, our lives were built around the Catholic Faith. I was too young to understand the guilt, the shame of being alive and making stupid mistakes that are inherently human. Up until I was six or seven, I truly believed there was a God who existed to love me, that truth could be found in the happy songs they taught us in Sunday School, that it was truly a miracle every Christmas when we remembered the virgin birth of Jesus in the manger. Life was seemingly magical when I was a kid.”
“I assume your father had something to do with that changing,” Timothy supposed.
“You assume right,” I admitted, my jaw ticking with the tension of clenched teeth. “The punishments started after he discovered Jericho and I looking at a book on female anatomy. We were only curious boys trying to understand the differences between women and men. But my father, in all his glorious wisdom, believed that our curiosity was the worst form of sin.” Sad laughter rushed over my lips. “Why is sex worse than murder in this particular religion?”
Timothy’s burst of soft laughter joined mine. “It seems that way, doesn’t it? Even if the act is so natural that even animals have to accomplish it in order to prevent extinction. I had a priest explain to me once that sex isn’t a bad thing if it occurs between a married couple – as long as it was performed in the missionary position and for the sole purpose of creating a child.”
“So, we’re not allowed to enjoy it. Is that where the sin exists?” Growing quiet, I flicked my thumb against my skin once more, watched the blood push away and come back to color the flesh. “Are we allowed to enjoy anything?”
“We can enjoy our relationship with God,” he offered.
Nodding my head, I raised my focus back to the golden cross on the altar. “You mean the God who allowed a grown man to beat on two innocent boys just because they’d grown old enough to know there was a difference between the male and female body?”
His voice was remorseful when he answered, “I’m not sure God can be blamed for that.”
“Can He be blamed for anything?” I pondered aloud, more to myself than to Timothy.
“You know as well as I that God gave us free will to make a choice. We can choose good or evil, can act in accord with Grace or devastation. Just because one person chooses to commit mistakes in blatant disregard for the welfare of other people doesn’t mean God doesn’t care. How often have many of those mistakes led to something good and decent?”
I knew what he was getting at. I’d learned many of the same answers while in seminary school. The only problem was that I had difficulty believing them. Nothing good came from my darkness. At first I’d believed that my mistake with Cassandra led to me saving Eve from my twin brother. But, in the end, it only led to me having the opportunity to destroy Eve as well.
“You haven’t finished telling me what happen to lead you to where you are now.”
It was funny how his prodding question perfectly fit the thoughts I was rolling over in my head.
“After years of abuse at my father’s hand, I found myself questioning his Faith. I often wondered if the Church wasn’t evil for creating men so delusional they felt the need to torture their own children in order to save their eternal soul. I also wondered how the bruises were never noticed by my Sunday School teachers, how something so open and obvious could be missed by the very people who were the hand and mouth of God. I never understood how an entire body of people could remain silent.”
Taking a breath, I released it slowly. “So, when I turned eighteen, I decided to abandon Faith for science, for something that could be seen, touched, weighed and measured. I figured if the answers to my questions we
ren’t found in the Bible, surely they could be located in a school of intellectuals.”
When my voice trailed off, Timothy filled the silence. “What happened then? Obviously, you returned to the Faith in order to become a priest. Did something happen that showed you God could exist, after all?”
I shook my head. “No. I made a mistake, one that cost a beautiful woman her life.”
Timothy turned to look at me and for the first time since we started talking, I turned as well to meet his gaze. “It wasn’t murder or anything like that. Just a sexual game that went too far. The medical examiner told me a blood clot had been loosened in her veins, that it had traveled to her brain and caused a stroke. He said it could have happened at any time and I spent the next couple of months wondering if I hadn’t sped the process along. I considered myself a monster. I believed that my father may have been right. That my sexual deviance had led to the destruction of a woman who was kind, who was beautiful in every way, who would have never hurt a fly, if it could be helped.”
Pain shot through me to think of how gentle Cassandra had been. The woman cared so much about all life that she wouldn’t let me kill a bug if it got in our apartment. She always demanded I trap it first and release it unharmed back outside.
I killed someone that gentle.
I destroyed her.
I did that, just like my father had always warned me I would.
“So,” I said, clearing my throat and wrestling to untangle myself from the memory, “I decided that maybe my father was right. Maybe the world would be better off if I never had sex, if I never had the opportunity to kill a woman again. It seemed that I’d enjoyed sex a little too much and it led to the worst of crimes. The utter destruction of someone far more beautiful than I deserved to know in my life.”
Shifting in his seat again, Timothy must have struggled to find something to say. Eventually he found the words, but they did nothing to appease the painful beat of my heart.
“You could have become celibate without the need of becoming a priest. I think if you dig deeper, you’ll find that there was still a small spark of Faith inside you, even when you left home and had convinced yourself it no longer existed.”
I didn’t answer and he didn’t press the topic. Instead, he threw out another question I wasn’t sure how to answer.
“What forced you out of the Church a second time? What led you to this particular moment?”
Well, you see, my brother is now a cult leader named Elijah and he brainwashed a woman into being the perfect toy. After dropping her off at my door, he waited long enough for me to fuck her as much as I damn well pleased, and unfortunately, I killed her, too.
No. I wouldn’t be giving him that answer. In an effort to be honest without dishing out the dirty details, I responded, “Another woman.”
“Ah,” he replied, his head nodding in understanding. I only caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. “You broke your vow of celibacy, I assume.”
“Yeah, you can say that.”
Another silent beat passed between us. “It doesn’t mean you have to leave the Faith completely behind. Men weren’t all created to be champions for God. There isn’t a single one of us who can claim to have lived a life completely devoid of sin. All we can do is remember the beauty of the Faith that God has given us and use it to do our best and set the wrongs back to right.”
I was growing frustrated with the conversation, so much so that I ended this moment of confession to talk about what I’d come here to find out.
“Did you find the music director and priest who molested my brother?”
He waited several seconds before answering, “I did. But I’m afraid they are no longer around to answer for their crimes.”
So, it was true…
My head snapped up at the answer. Turning to face him, I waited for his gaze to meet mine. “They died?”
Nodding, he confirmed that those two bastards were firmly out of reach. “From what I’m told, both of them died in mysterious accidents. The music director passed very shortly after being transferred, and the priest a few years after that.”
“How? How exactly did they die?”
He rubbed his lips together and visibly swallowed. “The music director was trapped in a fire in his small apartment, but there was some question as to how he became trapped in the first place. Apparently, he had several broken bones in his legs that prevented him from escaping the inferno.” His gaze darted away to something behind me. When he raised his hand to wave at a person who’d walked in, he lowered his voice and suggested, “We should discuss the rest in my office. Parishioners are starting to come in.”
I stood as soon as he finished speaking. I was far too impatient to move slowly. Once he was also on his feet, he said, “You know where my office is. Go ahead and wait for me. I’ll see to the people who just walked in and make sure they’re settled before joining you.”
Quietly leaving, I moved through the hallways toward his office, my body tense and shaking, my mind racing over the possibilities of how, exactly, the music director died. The timeline fit for what I knew. Not only was there the means and the opportunity to kill someone so blatantly, there had been motive as well.
Letting myself into Timothy’s office, I made a point to turn my head toward the desk in order to prevent staring at the large crucifix on his wall. The last thing I needed was to be reminded of the sacrifice a perfect man had man in order to save a wretch like me.
Wretch.
Hell, I was sure if you looked up the definition, a picture of me would be pasted beside it.
Taking my seat, I bowed my head and continued thinking over the ever deepening belief that I didn’t need to take revenge on the men who’d hurt my brother. I would have bet every cent I had that Jericho had been responsible for their demise.
The door creaked open behind me and within a few seconds, Timothy was seated at his desk staring back at me.
“How did the priest die?”
I didn’t have time for small talk regarding faith or religion, all I wanted was the details of what I assumed had been done.
“Don’t you know?”
When my head snapped up, I found Timothy watching me with intense and probing eyes. “How the hell would I know that?”
Rolling his shoulders back, he settled in his chair before folding his hands together over the desk. “The priest died in an auto accident. It seems his car careened off the side of a cliff into a lake at the base of it. When he was found and his body was extracted, they found drugs in his system and a plastic baggie in his clothes with photographs of other boys he’d molested. Photographs that matched the ones given to your father.”
Anger burned me from the inside out, but I played along. “And let me guess…the Church covered up those crimes as well.”
Timothy eyed me closely. I didn’t know why his demeanor had changed so drastically between the sanctuary and now, but he resembled a man who didn’t believe the person sitting across from him.
“There was no prosecution, if that’s what you’re asking. I assume his death was good enough for the Church. They didn’t bother to seek answers to the odd circumstances of his death, either. I believe they agreed that he was a monster who needed to be stopped. Since the photos were never mentioned in the news, the entire situation was written off as handled.”
My face must have been blazing crimson for how hot I was. My anger had transitioned to naked fury, a truth I was sure was written all over my face. “How can you continue working for an organization that allows such travesties to take place? How do you reconcile your part in this, knowing how many people have been hurt and swept under the rug by a group of people who are supposed to be helping mankind?”
His expression hardened. “My allegiance isn’t to the Church. It’s to the Faith. And before you tell me there isn’t a difference, I’ll insist that there is. However, it’s hard to stand on a street corner and lead people to God. So, I’ve resigned myself to working w
ithin the confines of the Church to help the people I can. I don’t subscribe to the politics, and I’m never silent on issues that hurt people. I can promise you that nothing like what happened with those two monsters has happened again since I’ve taken over the parish.”
Searching his face for any sign that he was lying, I came away empty. Timothy was a truly good man, the type of priest that I’d never been able to be. If every person who’d worked in the parish when I’d grown up had been like him, I may have never lost my belief in God. He was the type of man who would have noticed the bruises, and I was sure he was the type of man who would have pulled my father aside and explained that the abuse wasn’t what God would have condoned. Based on that realization alone, I had to curb my anger because Father Timothy wasn’t the type of man who deserved it.
“Why did you think I would know how the priest died?”
Maybe he did know, after all…
The question had been floating in my head since the moment he mentioned I would know anything about the man’s death, and the lull in our conversation had given me the perfect opportunity to ask it.
So still that I wondered if he’d heard the question at all, Timothy stared across the expanse of his desk studying me. His eyes searched mine, eventually shifting down to search my face, my neck, the manner in which I held my shoulders. The silence between us was deafening and I could have sworn he was taking his time counting the beats of my breath as my chest pushed in and out in an unsteady rhythm. Finally, after several tense seconds had passed, Timothy opened his mouth to explain.
“While making a few calls and researching online about the location of the music director and priest, I also took a few minutes to look into a smaller parish in the Appalachian Mountains, a parish called Our Lady of Serenity.”
My brows pulled together in confusion, my mouth opening and closing again without voicing my question. Why in the hell was this man looking up the parish I’d once led? Why did it matter where I’d come from, where I’d lived before giving up the life of a priest?