The St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club

by Randle, Ned;

  As he sat there, both nauseated and aroused by his thoughts, Father Tom began to wonder if recent signs had pointed him in this direction, made his path straight so he would be here, at this time and this place, to either commit the unpardonable sin of covetousness or to offer succor to the man whose wife he covets. Then, as if St. Augustine heard his thoughts and prayers, he had an epiphany—he was exactly where he was meant to be, and he was subliminally informed of what he should say to help relieve Theo’s discomfort:

  “Well, Theo, I’d be pleased if you’d consider me your friend.”

  Tom’s comment elicited no immediate response from Theo, and he wondered if the man had even heard him.

  Theo continued to look blankly at him and then away to stare out the window and uttered a weak, “Thanks, Tom. I knew you would.” Theo turned his face back to Tom and said, “Naomi’s not well.”

  It was a comment the priest found to be perfunctory and inappropriate in response to an offer of friendship. But wasn’t listening to such things the essence of friendship? Nevertheless, he wasn’t able to focus on Theo or his response. It was his turn to avert his face from the man sitting across from him as he felt his face flush warm with the blood of sin and contrition. The familiar catch in his breath at the mention of her name hampered his ability to speak. As he looked out the window, he hoped Theo hadn’t seen his reaction, and he considered whether the man chose to ignore as insincere or compensatory his offer of friendship because he had earlier read his filthy mind and decided to mention his wife’s health to shame him.

  “We don’t think it’s anything serious,” he added. Tom exhaled slowly. “They think it’s her gallbladder. She’s going in for tests next week.”

  “I’ll keep her in my prayers.”

  “But not at Mass.”

  “No, my bedtime prayers.”

  “I appreciate that, Tom.”

  The two men drank their coffee, which the waitress had quietly topped off, and didn’t speak. Tom hoped the moment would pass without further mention of Naomi; he wasn’t sure how he would react if Theo again said her name. Theo licked his fingertip and dabbed up the sweet remnants on his plate, sucking them off his finger with an audible smack. Between swallows of coffee, they finally made tedious small talk about baseball, the vagaries of Midwest weather, and the sweet relief of being near the end of summer and free from the intense heat and humidity.

  However, having heard thousands of confessions over his years as a priest, Father Tom knew there was something else on Theo’s mind he wanted to say. If it was another confession Theo was harboring, Tom hoped this time it was the confession of a venal sin for which he felt equipped to dole out a dollop of absolution and move on. He did not want to hear another painful soul baring. But whatever else was on Theo’s mind must be of great importance, he reasoned, for the pastor to risk meeting with a Catholic priest in public, even if it was just to enjoy coffee and a donut fifteen miles from his church.

  “When Naomi first took sick, we got our hopes up,” he finally said. “We thought she might be pregnant. We hoped and prayed she was pregnant. But she isn’t. I must tell you, Tom, not being able to have a child has been a terrible disappointment for us, particularly for her. She never complains; she views it as God’s will. But I can see a look in her eyes when she’s around children.”

  Tom was taken aback by the frankness and intimacy of Theo’s comments. Moreover, he was discomfited by such talk. He remained quiet and tried to clear his mind of images of Naomi and Theo in that way. Although he’d been celibate since he decided on his plan in life, as a young man, particularly in the lost days between Benedictine College and when his mother saved him, while he was working on the construction crew and living a profligate life, Tom was initiated into the mysteries of the carnal act that could result in creation of life, and he didn’t want to think about Theo and Naomi in a heated clench, both with eyes pinched closed to spare themselves the lasciviousness of seeing a look of enjoyment on the other’s face.

  Still, as skeptical as one reading his heart might be, Father Tom was well aware of and sympathetic to the burdens of womanhood, from their minor monthly anguishes to the major events of pain and suffering. He also was aware of Thoreau’s aphorism, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” but he thought more so women. He knew from many years of Pre-Cana counseling most women longed to be married but knew little of what marriage required of them, both emotionally and physically. He later learned through his awkward attempts at marriage counseling that often, shortly after the wedding ceremony, a woman would find the man she married to be both distant and needy at the same time. And in some instances, she soon found him repulsive when he forced himself on her. The revulsion didn’t necessarily arise only when the man was brutish or coarse, but the revulsion could occur even with a timid or solicitous man if the man was no longer the man she originally thought him to be. He wondered if Naomi ever felt this way. On the other hand, in the case of Naomi and Theo, he wondered if she ever found herself repulsed by his touch when Theo turned out to be exactly the man she thought him to be.

  “It’s my fault. Something’s wrong with me,” said Theo, which didn’t surprise Tom since he couldn’t consider Naomi to be anything less than perfect.

  Perhaps, in actuality it is no one’s fault; perhaps it is God’s will, Tom considered as he looked across the table at Theo. He wondered if the anxious little pastor would make a good father. He certainly was no one to judge. He knew nothing of fatherhood. The possibility of him being a father even in the days before he was ordained was as remote as him now being named Pope. The way the needle on his moral compass spun, he never would have taken the chance, never would have sired a child outside of marriage, much less outside love. And he’d never been in love. But he’d never before met a woman to love.

  Nonetheless, he knew he wouldn’t have been a good father had he taken another direction in life. He had had no one to learn from. His own father abandoned his mother and him when he was only nine years old, leaving him with a distrust of fathers in general and with scant sympathy for men in Theo’s situation. Yet being human and mortal, he couldn’t help but think about it. What would a child of his have looked like? What personality would the child have exhibited? He knew looks and personality would have depended upon, at least in part, the woman he mated with.

  For Tom, such woolgathering was pointless, and he turned his attention to Theo, who was sitting across from him with a pained look on his face. He looked at the pastor’s fingertips and saw they were chewed down so far, several had dark remnants of dried blood at the quick. Tom silently castigated himself for thinking of himself and not taking the man’s problem more seriously. Theo surely must be distressed, he thought, to so painfully maim his hands. Just because he didn’t identify with Theo’s unhappiness, it didn’t mean he couldn’t be empathetic.

  “Have you considered adopting a child?”

  “We’ve not discussed it. It’s all so difficult for me to discuss. But I know she wants to be a real mother.” Theo paused then looked up at Tom sheepishly. “Not to say adoptive mothers aren’t real mothers. I know they are wonderful mothers. That was insensitive of me. What I mean is, she wants to carry a child.”

  Tom sat staring straight ahead, rotating his coffee cup on the tabletop. Theo turned to look out the window, trying to avoid Tom’s eyes. Tom was trying to put his finger on an odd feeling he had about Theo’s comments.

  As if he were attuned to Tom’s thinking, Theo started fidgeting, uncomfortable with the import of his words: “This is what I wanted to talk to you about, Tom; confidentially, of course: there are times, like now, I’ve seriously thought about setting her free, before it’s too late for her, let her start over with a new life. She’s considerably younger than me—”

  “Surely she loves you,” Tom interrupted, hoping the release of words would lessen tightness in his chest, to quell the rapid heartbea
t immediately engendered by Theo’s words about setting Naomi free.

  “There are many types of love, as you know.”

  “I need time to give this some thought, Theo. You know our church doesn’t countenance divorce, either. Seems like a drastic step.”

  “I need advice, Tom, and I don’t know where to turn. And the clock is ticking, as they say.”

  Theo stirred his coffee, which by this time was cold and unpalatable when he sipped it; he’d waved away the server when she offered to warm his cup, and he was in the midst of his divulgence. Even in view of the profundity of his comments, Tom could feel there still was more Theo wanted to say, more on his mind. For his part, Tom was still wrestling with the untoward sensation he felt when Theo mentioned setting Naomi free to start over. To start over…

  “The Synod doesn’t embrace the idea of divorced pastors,” said Theo. “That’s the problem.” He paused. “Protestant clergy think they can have it all,” he added with a mordant edge to his voice.

  “Surely, she loves you,” Tom said irresolutely, not being able to think of anything else to say. In truth, he didn’t know if Naomi loved her husband or not. He had no way of knowing, although the night he saw her in his room at the foot of his bed, he had sensed everything there was about her, including what was in her heart, and he didn’t sense in it a place for Theo. But that was only chimera, and selfish, wishful chimera at that, he reminded himself. But isn’t the substance of love just as illusory? Surely she loves him, he told himself, again irresolutely. Surely.

  “Naomi’s father was a Lutheran pastor. So was mine, and my mother’s father, as well. These are marriages arranged by expectation. Daughters of pastors understand the job and make good pastors’ wives. The pastor gets a spouse and a helpmate—a Sunday school teacher or a music or choir director. Naomi runs our Christian Education Department. Anyway, our marriages can be fine arrangements. And respectable relationships.”

  “I assume they evolve into loving relationships.”

  “As I said, there are many types of love.”

  Tom agreed with a short nod of his head. Theo was right, he reminded himself. He recollected a bit of Greek philosophy he’d studied describing six types of love, in the classical sense: eros, philia, ludus, agape, pragma, and philautia. He assumed these marriages of expectation were not based on eros and certainly not ludus, but more likely involved philia which over time, evolved into pragma. He knew the erudite little Lutheran had to be cognizant of the types of classical love but sensed they were not what he meant when he said there are many types of love. Even Tom understood the six Greek classifications didn’t allow for all the subtleties involved in marriage.

  On occasion in his ministerial capacity, Tom had puzzled over the most powerful and compelling type of love he’d ever witnessed—the irrational, overwhelming and frightening, rarified love certain couples had for each other. This type of love was, in his experience most uncommon but could, where it resided, provoke lovers to turn their backs on reason, religion, or on life itself to satisfy the demands of their love. He felt he might be in the one-sided throes of this species of love. He often wondered why, when God had commanded His creatures to love Him above everything else, He allowed a love of that magnitude, a love that contravenes God’s express command to love Him above all things, to enter the world. Such a love places in peril the souls of the lovers. Perhaps, as some fundamentalists are wont to believe, Satan is indeed the architect of love. On the other hand, Tom reasoned, people sin all the time and hence the need for Confession and Absolution. And how is sharing a love which is greater than the love for God a greater sin than others, other than the violation of the admonition to love God above everything else memorialized as the first, and perhaps most important Commandment?

  In any case, such musings over the existence of condemning love were for another day. He knew from Theo’s posture and his repeated allusion to many types of love that it was not the relentless, soul-searing type of love he was looking at between himself and Naomi, nor perhaps in any of the marriages of expectation, which Theo alluded to and quietly confirmed.

  Theo told Tom his secrets without looking up from his tepid coffee. As he finally raised his head he said, “You know the parsonage where Naomi and I live? That house is nearly ninety years old. For ninety years, it’s been continuously occupied by a Lutheran pastor and his wife. I can tell you for sure there’ve been many babies conceived in that house over ninety years, but I can also tell you with a fair amount of certainty, most resulted from dutiful copulation, and in ninety years, those walls have witnessed few, if any, conceived as a result of passionate lovemaking.”

  Father Tom could only imagine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  What Theo didn’t tell Father Tom over coffee was, from the beginning of their relationship, he hadn’t wanted to marry Naomi. He believed had he possessed the emotional strength to refuse the arrangement, it was almost certain she now would be happily married to another man, raising a brood of his children, and the thought that he’d denied her a chance at happiness made him heartsick.

  He arrived at the parsonage unmindful of the fifteen-mile drive from the coffee shop. He’d spent the entire trip castigating himself for his emotional weaknesses: first, for his pitiful display of self-debasement before the priest, and, more so, as he’d done hundreds of times before, for failing to have the strength to walk away from marriage early on when he didn’t feel the marriage right for either Naomi or himself. But the damnable thing about the entire situation, the one stumbling block to setting her free to live, was that despite the tepid feelings he had for Naomi at the outset of their marriage, his love for her was now almost overwhelming. Even though he loved her with little demonstration and much reserve, he could not imagine life without her. Yet, he wanted to do what was best for her, whatever that might be. That agonizing dilemma, which at times was nearly unbearable, caused him to bare his soul to Father Tom.

  When he beat himself up, as he often did, he looked back at his relationship with Naomi, its genesis and progression, and tried to figure out if there had been a point at which he could have gallantly extricated himself from the arrangement. It was a moot point, he knew, but the upbraiding bloated his well-deserved Weltschmerz, the world of pain he deserved to live in, the apt term taught him by an old German philosophy professor at the seminary. The truth was, there was no point at which he could have avoided his marriage. It was inevitable. As the single daughter of the principal pastor, Naomi was seen by others as a natural match for young Reverend Theo Swindberg when he was called to be associate pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church. And after a respectable amount of time, he found himself the object of others’ machinations.

  Naomi was the Christian Education Director, and her father, the principle pastor, firmly encouraged him to serve as youth minister. The position placed him in her ceaseless orbit, and after a while he was caught up in the vortex and couldn’t escape. That ceaseless orbit was an attribute he’d found disconcerting when they were younger. She exhibited a restless energy that made him feel nervous and unsettled. She never sat when she could stand, never walked if she could run. She was pretty, if not beautiful, strong, and robust. Her physical gifts intimidated him. And she added to her striking appearance by acting older than her years. She was self-assured and commanding.

  Alongside her, he felt puerile and small. He had always been slight in stature, but in those days he was spare and gangly. His albs hung limply from his narrow shoulders and he seemed hidden behind his stole. The chasuble he wore to administer the Lord’s Supper made him appear diminutive and immaterial to the cloth that covered him, and the first time he saw himself in the mirror with it on, he questioned whether he would accept Communion from such an inconsequential little man.

  Naomi may have overawed him physically, but intellectually she was not his match, at least in the beginning of their relationship. He had a facile mind and a r
emarkable gift of memory and would, when engaged in informal conversation or when preaching to the congregation, recite Bible passages by chapter and verse from memory. Early on, he’d impressed her with an encyclopedic knowledge of Reformation history. He had, he boasted, committed Luther’s Small Catechism to memory by the time he was six years old. He was a purveyor of Christian trivia, and when they started to formally date and were out to dinner or sitting in the living room of her father’s parsonage, she would sit in glassy-eyed silence as he rattled off countless banal anecdotes about the early church, the Reformation, and Martin Luther. He finally realized he’d gone too far when once, over dinner in a nice restaurant, he related the myriad ways saints and martyrs had been tortured and murdered until Naomi made mock vomiting sounds. He took great pains to limit his comments, both in number and content, thereafter.

  Naomi, on the other hand, was a young woman more interested in getting things done than in learning arcane facts. Church history may be of academic interest to an intellectual such as Theo, she’d reasoned, but it had little practical application. Her side of a conversation generally centered on prosaic topics, such as which study materials they should purchase for the Sunday School or the logistics of decorating the gathering hall for the next holiday season. She relished hectoring her father and the church counsel to designate more parking places adjacent the church as handicapped parking for the benefit of old or feeble congregants. She coached a girls’ basketball team in the YMCA league, teaching the kids a rugged and relentless style of play. Her teams dominated their division three years in a row, causing parents of opposing players to petition the Y to ban her team from the league lest someone get hurt.