Stay With Me

by Astfalk, Carolyn

  She lowered her head until she was in his field of vision again. “It’s only seven weeks, Chris. And then we can entertain each other all we want.”

  “Promise? All day, all night?”

  “That’s a promise I’ll be happy to keep.”

  ***

  Chris sat in the retro-looking upholstered green chair alongside Father John’s desk. He clasped his hands together and bounced his left knee at a rhythm wildly out of sync with the soothing chant that Father played from his iPod.

  “You want a cup of coffee?” Father John already carried two steaming mugs, which he placed on his desk.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” The coffee was too hot to drink, so Chris inhaled the pungent aroma and clutched the mug between his hands, more to keep them busy than anything else.

  “I was surprised to see you at Mass this morning. I thought you were on your way to work this time of day.”

  “I usually am. I told my boss I needed a couple of hours to take care of some things this morning. He’s cool with that kind of thing as long as you don’t abuse his generosity.”

  “Hey, is that Limberlost Lager on tap yet?”

  “Another week, I think.”

  “I need to get a growler of that.”

  Chris tried a sip of the coffee, burnt his tongue, and set it back on the desk. He stretched his legs out in front of him for a second, crossed them, uncrossed them, and resumed bouncing his leg.

  “So,” Father John said, his gaze surveying Chris’s bouncing leg and nervous fidgeting, “what’s up?”

  “Can you hear my confession?”

  “Sure. Do you want to talk about this first or in confession?” He wagged a finger at Chris’s still bouncing knee.

  Chris stilled his leg with the palm of his hand and sat straight in his seat. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “So, how many weeks until the wedding?”

  “Six. Six weeks, one day, seven hours.” He looked down at his wristwatch. “Twenty-one minutes.”

  “A little anxious, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “‘What have I gotten myself into’ anxious or ‘I think I’ll go crazy if I have to wait that much longer’ anxious?”

  “The latter. Definitely.” Chris repositioned himself in the chair for the umpteenth time and took a calming sip of his coffee, letting the sounds of chanting monks soothe him before he spoke.

  “It’s the ‘goodnights’ and ‘goodbyes.’ They’re killing me. Us. It’s like everything has been ratcheted up a notch. Or ten. The goodnight kisses are really…hard.”

  “That’s the word you’re going to go with? ‘Hard’?”

  Chris let out a humorless laugh. “That would be the most accurate I suppose, but maybe ‘difficult’ would be a better word choice.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “It’s not enough anymore. The hand holding, the chaste kisses. Even the not-so-chaste ones. They’re going on longer. Hands are straying places they haven’t wandered before. I don’t want to let her go, and we’ve still got six weeks left.”

  “I can’t help think sometimes that things were simpler when people got married without these long engagements. Not that yours is long by comparison. Unfortunately, most people are so ill-prepared for what marriage means that it’s best that we give them a little time to stop and think.”

  “Believe me, we’re not into long engagements. We’re making this as short as the Church will let us.”

  Laughter and loud conversation from people passing by Father John’s office momentarily distracted Chris. Maybe this visit was a waste of time. He didn’t know what he expected to get out of it, but there had to be something he could do to bolster his restraint and self-control.

  “It was easy to say we wanted to wait until we were married when we were getting to know each other, but it’s something else altogether to feel the love of my life lying in my bed, nestled in my arms at two o’clock in the morning and resist showing her how much I love her in every way possible.”

  Father John held a hand up. “Back up. You’re sleeping together?”

  “A couple of times. Like Monday night. She stopped by my apartment after work. We had dinner, worked on some wedding stuff, watched TV, and then when it was time for her to go that nasty thunderstorm with the tornado warning hit. I insisted that she stay.”

  “I’m guessing she didn’t object to that.”

  Chris gave a rueful smile. “Not much.”

  “Okay. I get the storm. It was a bad one, but sharing a bed? You’re asking for trouble.”

  “It didn’t start out that way. I took the couch, but then sometime during the night, the lightning or something woke me. I went to check on her. I just wanted to see her sleeping in my bed. She was so beautiful. So peaceful. Somehow I must have woken her, because she opened her eyes, and then she lifted the covers for me to climb into bed with her. I didn’t have the will to refuse.”

  “All right. No more of that.” Father John set his coffee down and wiped his hand over his face. “But you knew that already. No more spending the night together short of an emergency, and then not in the same bed. Pray together every time you’re together. Pray for your marriage. Pray for the grace to resist temptation. If it comes down to it, one of you may just need to leave. And last, come to confession. Once a week until the wedding doesn’t seem like too much to me. Both of you. You need the sacramental grace.”

  Chris glanced at his watch again and rubbed his palms over his thighs. “I have to get to work. Those are good suggestions. Rebecca won’t go to confession to you though. She says it feels weird.”

  “Go wherever you want, just go.”

  Rebecca had a lot fewer issues with sacramental confession prior to converting than he did. Chris had nearly driven Father John crazy with his objections before he realized it was his pride standing in the way. Since she entered the Church at Easter, Rebecca seemed to have taken to confessing her sins aloud with ease. Her only reservation was Father John hearing her confession.

  “Yeah, okay.” Chris kneaded his hands together, and frowned at the amused look on Father John’s face. “Are you laughing at my predicament?”

  “No, not at all.” Father John suppressed his grin and leaned back in his leather chair. “Just thinking about something an old monsignor once said to me. Holiest man I’ve ever met, bar none. He told me this before I entered the seminary, while I was still trying to ignore God’s call.”

  Father John leaned his arms on his desk and adopted the manner and voice of a crotchety old man. “He said, ‘Son, don’t start the engine if you’re not going to bring the car out of the garage’.”

  Chris bit the inside of his cheek to hide his grin as he imagined a young Father John being chastised by the old priest.

  “I know there are different considerations for casually dating teens as opposed to two adults whose marriage is imminent, but I think it’s still good advice. It sounds to me like you two are not only starting the car, you’re revving the engine and then slamming on the brakes. One of two things is going to happen. Either the brakes are going to fail and you’re going to burst right through the garage door or you’re going to asphyxiate in the garage… maybe blow out your engine…kill the transmission?”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. No more car metaphors.”

  “Chris, it will all work out. Really. You’re in the home stretch now, so to speak.”

  A buzz came over the intercom on Father John’s phone followed by the voice of the secretary, Erica.

  “Father John, there’s a call for you on line two. Kimberly Mitchell’s mother, Myrna. Says it’s urgent.”

  “Okay,” Father John answered. Then to Chris, “Hang on a second. I should take this.”

  Chris checked his watch again and leaned back in his chair. He really did need to get going soon. He was glad he came, though. Father John gave him concrete things they could do that would help keep them from going too far. Outside the window, the morning clouds dissipated, an
d the sun broke through. He wondered what weather was forecast for the weekend.

  The urgency in Father John’s voice tore Chris out of his own thoughts.

  Father John rattled off a stream of questions: “Is she conscious? Do they think she’s suffered any brain damage?”

  Given the conversation Chris overheard, he felt increasingly awkward. He stood and moved to leave, but Father John motioned him back to his seat.

  “Okay. I’ll be there shortly. Thank you, Myrna.”

  Father John hung up the phone and dropped his head into his hands. “This is my fault.”

  “What happened?”

  Father John looked up, the strain in his face evident. “I need you to keep this confidential. Between you and me.”

  “Of course.” Chris had never seen Father John this unnerved. He was remarkably even-tempered despite the wild ups and downs of his days. He could leave a wedding to go to a funeral home, counsel a couple on the brink of divorce and baptize a baby the next morning. He seemed to take it all in stride. Something about this was personal, and it ate at him.

  “A young woman, married less than a year, came to see me. She wanted to talk to me about her marriage—specifically her abusive husband.” He sighed and shook his head. “Chris, I notice beautiful women all the time. They come up in the communion line for goodness sake, but never since the day I accepted God’s call to the priesthood have I felt any real attraction to a woman. I figured it was all part of the honeymoon phase of my priesthood. There was no attraction, no temptation. I saw a beautiful woman and admired her as God’s handiwork with not an iota of desire. I knew it wouldn’t last, and it didn’t. It was over the day this woman, Kimberly, came to see me.”

  What was Father John saying? He wouldn’t have broken his vows. Chris needed help resisting temptation, not Father John. “I know you know this, but there’s nothing wrong in being tempted. Jesus was tempted.”

  “It’s not that. It’s how I reacted to the temptation.”

  Father John stood and walked to the window. Several seconds passed before he tucked his hands into his pants pockets beneath his cassock and turned back to Chris. “Because it hadn’t happened in so long, what I felt for her caught me off guard. She’s beautiful, Chris. Blond hair, blue eyes, the sweetest, softest smile. Long legs. The whole package.”

  Chris had only heard Father John talk about a woman in that way once when he had casually mentioned an old girlfriend.

  “She’s a lovely person, too. Comes to Mass every Sunday and volunteers at a crisis pregnancy center. She gets married, and this guy does a total one-eighty. He started smacking her around, keeping her from her family and friends. She confided in a couple of people, friends, and they didn’t believe her. They insisted she misinterpreted things, that her husband would never do that.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She wanted to talk to me. Now, ordinarily, I would refer someone like that to Catholic Charities for professional counseling, but she insisted she didn’t want to go there. She couldn’t see herself as some kind of victim. She didn’t think she needed professional help; she was adamant she wouldn’t go there. She just wanted some pastoral advice.”

  So, this was the dilemma that had been brewing for months. So far it sounded like Father John had done everything right.

  “Instead of meeting with her and encouraging her to see a professional counselor as well, because of my attraction to her, I cut her loose. I told her I couldn’t help her and refused to schedule another appointment with her.

  “Chris, the look on her face. I may as well have slapped her myself. I didn’t even think of how that kind of rejection might harm her relationship with the Church. I tried to soothe my conscience by telling myself I fled temptation, but in truth I was selfish. I wasn’t going to act on what I felt. Not in a million years. Nor was it some kind of mutual thing. She came to me for guidance, but because of my discomfort, she went back home to her husband with no more support than she had come in here with.”

  “What happened? What was the call about?”

  “Her mother found Kimberly this morning beaten so badly that she’s in a coma.”

  Chris let out a breath and shook his head. He’d never understand how a man could do that to a woman he supposedly loved. “I’m so sorry. I get how you feel like it’s your fault. I really do. But you can’t do that. Maybe you could have handled it better, but the only one responsible for her condition is the man who hit her.”

  Father John nodded, but Chris doubted he agreed.

  “Listen, I want to go to the hospital. At least maybe I can offer some comfort to her mother. Before I go, let me get my stole, and I’ll hear your confession.”

  “No, that’s okay. Go. I’ve got to get to work anyhow. I’ll come by tomorrow morning during the scheduled hours.”

  “Thanks. And I appreciate you listening. Father Richard’s a good enough guy, but I don’t have much of a connection with him like I do with you or some of my other brother priests.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. And I’ll pray for Kimberly.”

  For her sake and for Father John’s, he hoped she’d make it. Because if she didn’t, he had a feeling Father John would blame himself.

  23

  Lover Lay Down

  With less than a month to go before the wedding, Chris’s stress level ratcheted through the roof. He pulled up outside the neat split-level home with white siding and brown shutters and rubbed his hand over his forehead. He could use a beer. Because of a tank problem, he had been called in to work, and it had thrown off his whole day. He missed confession, and there hadn’t been time to clean his apartment or stop at the tuxedo shop like he’d planned.

  He looked again at the house and didn’t see any movement. It belonged to Craig, a childhood friend of both his and Alan’s. He and his wife bought the home three months ago, and this was the first he’d seen it. He noticed Alan’s car in the driveway, along with three others, two of which he recognized. He hoped Alan hadn’t overdone it or gone against his wishes. While Chris would have preferred something small, low key, and memorable like camping, a rafting trip or even a night out at a couple of bars, Alan insisted he had to have a bachelor party, so he relented.

  A month before Alan’s wedding, Chris had spoken to him about what he’d like to do to celebrate, and Jamie had given him a list of the local men invited to the wedding. Chris rented a room at a restaurant and bar. It was simple, but it served its purpose.

  Three hours into the festivities, when everyone was feeling good, a blond girl appeared at the entrance to the room asking for the Reynolds party. They summoned Chris since he was the best man. The young—very young—woman identified herself as the hired entertainment for the evening and asked him to point out the groom. It caught Chris completely off guard. He didn’t know who had enlisted her or what exactly she would do, but apparently it had been prearranged and paid for by someone, so he let her proceed.

  She looked like she might be pretty if she hadn’t had on so much makeup. Instead she looked a little skanky, but that didn’t prevent her from getting the men’s attention when she removed her coat and revealed a skimpy black teddy with black fishnet stockings. Chris hung around for half of her “performance,” but when she proceeded to give his brother a lap dance, he left the room.

  Chris didn’t go for that kind of thing. Nothing says “I’m about to make a lifelong commitment to love and honor” like letting a nearly-naked, possibly underage girl that you’ve never met before rub herself all over your genitals, right? Then there was the fact that when Jamie found out and everything hit the fan, he didn’t want to be held responsible. The more he could do to distance himself from the debacle, the better. Or so he thought.

  The kicker had come the next day when he sat at Alan and Jamie’s kitchen table and learned that Jamie had hired the girl as her wedding gift. And Alan had sure enjoyed it. Chris didn’t know if their mother ever got wind of it, but if she had, she
would’ve given Alan the tongue-lashing of his life.

  The whole thing struck him as supremely messed up, and tonight it made him nervous. He had been clear with Alan that he didn’t want anything like that. Just the guys and some drinks. A pool table or a dart board would be good, too.

  Chris saw no sign of Craig, but a sign next to the door said, “Party downstairs.” He let himself into the split entry, and laughter and heavy metal music billowed up from below. The place already reeked of beer and cigars. Craig’s wife was going to love this. At the bottom of the stairs he crossed the hall to a wide-open family room with a humongous flat screen TV, a couple of couches and an entertainment center on his right. On the opposite side of the room stood a bar.

  From the first call of “Get the groom a beer,” Chris never saw the bottom of his cup. Once the party was in full swing, about twenty guys were evenly split between a Stanley Cup playoff game on the TV and the keg next to the bar. Chris gave them a hard time about not having any Gateway beer, but even aside from the keg, someone had purchased a nice selection of bottled beers, not to mention hard liquor.

  As he tilted the first full SOLO cup to his lips, Chris thought of Rebecca. He remembered how uncomfortable she’d seemed about the alcohol consumed at Alan and Jamie’s wedding. She had loosened up a lot since then, and they would be serving alcohol at their own wedding reception in a few weeks, but he thought she would still feel tense if she were with him.

  In the beginning, even his drinking a couple of beers made her uneasy, but she needn’t have worried. Chris didn’t get drunk.

  Twice in his life he drank enough to be considered inebriated. He celebrated his twenty-first birthday by consuming so much alcohol he vowed to never drink near that much again. Only two weeks later, Jamie drove him home from a party at Alan’s apartment while he vomited into a bag on his lap. He had no intention of overindulging that night, but every time he refused a drink or said he’d had enough, his “friends” doubled their efforts to get him to drink.

  After that he got smart. He liked being in control of himself and not having to worry about saying or doing something stupid or dangerous while under the influence. His strategy included never turning down a drink. Instead he held onto a cup. No one noticed if he nursed two or three beers or a couple of ginger ales the entire night. As long as he imbibed they were happy, and they left him alone. That had served him well in the past, but not tonight.