by Dan Alatorre
“Are you two finished?”
“Pretty much.” Mallory took a large glass and a small plastic cup down from the cabinet. “We’re taking a break for lunch.”
I thought for a moment. Between eating, finishing their planting, and cleaning up with a bath, they would easily be busy for several hours. I grabbed my car keys. “I’m going to run out and take care of some errands.”
She poured a tall glass of tea and glanced at our daughter on the door stoop. “Did the church call back yet?”
“No, not yet. I think if I just show up, they’ll have to talk to me.”
“Sophie, stomp your feet. Knock the dirt off.”
Our daughter jumped up and down, landing as hard as she could. Mallory turned her attention back to me. “When are you going?”
“Right now.”
She nodded. “Okay. Be careful.”
I kissed her, then I reached down and picked up my dirty daughter. “I’m going out for a few minutes.” I gave Sophie a peck on the forehead. “You be good for mommy!”
She threw her arms around my neck. “Can I come with you?”
Putting her down, I squatted next to her, smiling. “I think you would be a big help if you came along, but you need a bath first, don’t you think?”
“No!”
Of course not.
“How about some tea and . . .” Mallory rattled a colorful cellophane bag. “Some potato chips?”
That got Sophie’s attention. “Chips! Can I have a peanut butter sandwich, too?” She sprinted into the kitchen.
So much for going with Dad.
“Whoa! Let’s wash our hands first.” Mallory tapped the kitchen faucet. “Get your step stool.”
As Sophie made an abrupt U-turn, I stood up. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
Mallory gave me a wink.
The drive to Our Lady Of Mercy was a short one. When I had been required to go every Sunday for the eight weeks before Sophie’s baptism, I found the earlier in the morning the service was, the less traffic and the fewer churchgoers I had to endure.
I grew up going to Catholic schools. As a kid I attended Mass with my family every week, but when I went off to college, my attendance dropped off. I’d still go to church with Mom when I went home during the holidays, but as the college parties went later and later on Saturday nights, sleeping in became the Sunday morning ritual, not Mass.
Eventually, I stopped going all together. “I’m not a ship without a rudder,” I once joked to my mom. “I’m just a ship without a port at the moment.”
She did not like the comparison.
When the time came to get my daughter baptized as a Catholic, I was required to join a local Catholic church and attend services. Our Lady Of Mercy was closest to our house, so they won.
It had been almost three years since my last visit. Sophie and I attended the seven-fifteen morning service for a couple of weeks after her baptism, since we were always both awake long before then, but that was probably it. As a result, I did not expect much of a reception. I wasn’t even sure we were still on the mailing list.
Our Lady Of Mercy wasn’t like the large gothic church I knew growing up, and I kind of looked down on them a bit for that. To me, churches needed to be a bit more ornate to have the full effect.
As I parked and walked up to the main office, children raced around the playground. A slide and some swings, it was part of their preschool program, but Our Lady Of Mercy did not have a school. Even this late in the year, it was still hot and muggy outside. Plus, it was probably getting ready to rain. Tropical storms will dump days and days of rain, but they like teasing a little first. Some of the prettiest, calmest, sunny days would happen right before the storm, giving no idea of the shit that was about to start. That’s why there are so many of those old Spanish galleons sunk off the coast of Florida—the weather was great the day they set sail.
I opened the office door and stepped inside. The cool blast of air conditioning was immediately refreshing. I had already broken out in a light sweat during the walk from parking lot. I viewed the reception room. Same couch and chairs from three years ago, and the same table full of magazines. Probably the same magazines.
The priests’ offices were just through the next door, but first I had to chat with the lady behind the reception room’s little window—Mrs. Clermont, according to the little fake wood placard. She wore horn rimmed glasses on her little round head and her hair was tied in a tight bun. A blue pen stuck out from behind her left ear and a pencil protruded from her right. She was practically a cartoon character. I halfway expected her to turn sideways and become super thin, like she was drawn on paper.
At the moment, a large woman was occupying the space in front of Mrs. Clermont’s window, so I picked a spot on the couch and sat down.
The magazines were typical churchy fare—nothing you’d probably read at home—but a small stack of this week’s church bulletins sat off to one side. Skimming through one might give me a little insight into the current affairs of Our Lady Of Mercy, allowing me to appear more engaged than I actually had been. I picked up a paper bulletin and flipped through it. The usual: Mass times, a bake sale, a clothing drive for St Vincent DePaul . . .
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to the priest, or even how to begin.
Are you unlucky if you go to a winery and almost get killed by its owner? Or are you lucky that you narrowly missed being hurt?
Are you lucky to have escaped a car fire, or are you unlucky to have been in a burning car at all? It sure didn’t feel lucky that day, to be stuck on a hot bridge in the sun and heat, with a fussy child and no place to sit down, nothing to drink. We missed the cookout and the pool party.
When something bad happens, it doesn’t make things better to say that it could have been worse. That’s not happiness, that’s only the avoidance of misery. There’s a difference. Was I supposed to tell our daughter that no matter how crappy things get, they can always get crappier?
I gazed at the bulletin, but my thoughts were elsewhere.
We could have easily been overcome by fumes if I hadn’t driven into the emergency barriers when the car burst into flames. That wasn’t luck. That was a decision.
It might have been luck at the winery, though. I couldn’t account for that. And with the doctor at the hospital, when Sophie was born, there was a fair amount of luck with us that day.
I sighed. Maybe it was luck in the car fire after all. Hitting the saw horses could have made me lose control of the car. It almost did.
Folding my arms, I pressed myself into the couch.
In movies, fires take a while to get going—because the actors need time to say their lines. In reality, a fire in a house takes only seconds to start, and within minutes the whole house is consumed. The videos of Christmas trees burning in living rooms were a real eye opener. So was the frat fire in college, when we accidentally burned down a rec room during a dance because the chimney was clogged.
Smoke gets everywhere, and it gets there fast. That was the real killer. People in fires don’t burn to death, they asphyxiate on smoke. I knew that, so I plowed my car into the traffic sawhorses. I would not put my daughter at risk.
But by taking her out of the car and standing on the side of the road, we were at risk again. Cars speeding by weren’t looking for people in the emergency lane.
I shifted on the couch. It was all too confusing, too interwoven between what someone might see and what someone else might want to believe.
Which is where a man of faith might come in handy.
“Sir? Sir, may I help you?”
The lady behind the little window was addressing me. “Yes.” I got up. “Yes, thank you. I need to speak with . . .”
I drew a blank. I didn’t have a name of a specific priest that I wanted to talk to. I hadn’t been here in almost three years. I had even forgotten the pastor’s name.
Crap.
I glanced down at the bulletin in my hand. The list of service
s showed which priest was doing each Mass. I read the first name I saw: 11 A. M., Father Joe. I looked up at the woman. “Father Joe, please.”
“Father Joe?” She scanned the paper schedule on the desk. “Did you make an appointment, Mister . . .”
“Kenner. Doug Kenner.”
“Mm hmm.” She nodded. “Well, did you make an appointment, Mr. Kenner?”
I debated whether to lie or not, if that might get me in today instead of getting rescheduled to another time. Tough call. Mrs. Clermont probably wouldn’t look kindly on things if she caught me in a lie, and then she’d be less helpful. I wanted to talk to somebody today. Now.
“I called, and, uh, I didn’t make an actual appointment, because . . .”
“Father Joe is in Venezuela on a mission right now.”
“ . . . because Father Joe is in Venezuela on a mission.”
She lowered her head to peer at me over her reading glasses. “I see.”
I shifted on my feet, clutching the bulletin.
Drawing her finger across the schedule, she stopped on a highlighted square. “Well, he will be back Sunday. Would you like me to schedule you for a time with him next week?”
“Ah, actually, I was kind of hoping that I could just come in and talk to, you know, whoever was available right now.”
She glared at me. “But you don’t have an appointment.”
“Uh . . . no.”
“And you don’t want me to make an appointment for you?”
I hooked a thumb toward the priest’s offices. “Is it possible to maybe see whoever’s available right now?”
The cartoon lady shook her head, staring at her schedule book again. “Everybody’s pretty booked up today.”
Doing what, I wondered. Not tending the proverbial flock.
I took a deep, quiet breath. Showing my frustration wouldn’t score any points with Mrs. Clermont, and she seemed to be the gatekeeper. One misstep and it might be weeks before I saw anyone. Beads of sweat formed on my brow.
But everybody has a boss, and nobody wants the boss to get a bad report about them. Maybe I could get something going that way. This route certainly wasn’t working.
I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Clermont—”
The woman glared at me. “I’m not Mrs. Clermont.”
Cringing, I closed my eyes. Of course you aren’t.
“She’s out sick today. I’m filling in.”
I forced a smile. “Volunteering?”
She smiled back. “That’s right.”
Rubbing my temple with one hand, I tapped the paper bulletin on the counter with the other. “I really feel like there should be somebody, some priest, that I can talk to.”
Her chair springs groaned as she rocked back. “Everybody’s booked with people who made appointments.” She delivered the words with a jab.
“Well, I’m glad God keeps such a regular schedule,” I said. “What do you do when an emergency happens?”
She leaned forward. “We pray.”
I squeezed the paper bulletin in my fist, out of sight from the substitute troll. “Okay.” I backed away, heading for the door. “Thank you.”
“I can still make an appointment for you.” The chair springs squealed and her little round head poked through the window.
I stopped. “When would it be for?”
“The earliest is next Wednesday with Father Joe, but you can see Father Martin on Tuesday, or Father Raul.”
Tuesday. Almost a whole week away.
“Let me call you back about that.” I tried to sound sincere. And nice. An appointment a week away might end up being better than nothing. I thought about going back and scheduling something as a fallback position. But I really needed answers now.
I pushed the door open into a light drizzle. Covering my head with the bulletin, I headed to the car, passing a sign.
“Confessions today 12 noon – 3 P. M.”
Confession. I shook my head. What poor bastard is going to come all the way over here in the rain simply to say he swore too much this week? Confession. The church’s way of spying on its members in olden days, getting them to tell all their sins and gossip to a priest.
A priest.
I stopped.
Yeah, confession.
Chapter 13
I eased open the door to the massive church and stepped inside. The metal latch echoed off the big walls as the glass door clicked shut behind me. Only three other people were visible in the rows of pews, their heads bowed in prayer. The bright, green and white windows behind the altar greeted me from their place behind the enormous wood cross.
Our Lady Of Mercy had an open floor plan like an auditorium. It was bright even on rainy days, with lots of tall windows to let the light in. That contrasted greatly with the dark, gothic St. Matthews I’d known in Indiana, full of oil paintings and stained glass windows, arched ceilings and stone columns—but ancient relics like that were built for a different time. St Matthews was erected by German stone masons over a hundred and forty years ago, modeled after cathedrals in Europe. Our Lady Of Mercy had been built in the 1970s, and it had that look.
Things tend to be done a certain way in any Catholic church, though. Holy water is located near the doors, a rack of prayer candles would be off to one side, and lining a quiet wall somewhere would be a row of confessional booths.
I crept across the back of the quiet church. To the right stood the glass partition for parents with young children, allowing the family to attend the service but not interrupt it if the baby cried. To the left was a row of wooden structures, about the size of three phone booths all in a row, with curtains. Those would be the confessional booths. The priest sat in the middle one, and the confessors sat on either side. Protocol dictated that you wait your turn by praying in the pews, but if the side curtain was open, you were being invited to come on in. Some churches even had a little light over the top of the center booth, to show that the priest was actually in there. No point in telling your sins to an empty box and having to do it twice.
Confession is a touchy thing. Nobody likes to talk about all the stuff they’ve done wrong. If a thousand people were at Mass, maybe a dozen would be at confession, unless a big holiday was coming up, like Lent. In places like New Orleans, confessions were standing room only after Mardi Gras.
That was sure not the case today. In a far corner, an old lady in black prayed quietly. Seems like there’s always an old lady in black praying when you go to a church. That’s also part of the way things are done.
Outside the confessional booths, two people sat in the closest pew. They were probably waiting their turn. I checked the time on my cell phone. There was more than an hour to go before they wrapped up the confessions. I stepped around the end of the last pew and sat on the cold, hard wood.
People get intimidated about making a confession, me included. The longer the wait, the more nervous everyone gets. With good reason. Admitting, out loud, the sins they’ve committed and the other things they’ve done wrong? Supposedly, folks feel better for having gotten something off their chest. I always just felt relief that it was over.
After a few minutes, a woman emerged from the confessional and joined the others who were waiting. They all got up and left together.
My turn.
I took a deep breath and stood up, stepping sideways to the end of the pew and out onto the carpet as I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. I made my way to the confessional booth and reached out to take its red velvet curtain in my fingers, having one last look around the spacious church. Aside from me and the old lady praying at the candle rack, the place was empty.
Good. This might take some time.
I slipped past the curtain and kneeled down, staring at the small screen that prevented the priest on the other side from knowing the confessor’s identity. It had been years since my last confession, so I was antsy, but I felt relatively certain I remembered the routine.
I waited, tapping my toes. On a busy day of confessions
, like a long day of interviews, the priest might need a few moments to relax before starting the next series. Who knows how long he will have to sit there listening. Hours, maybe. On a slow day, he might be in there reading Field & Stream from the table in the reception room.
Maybe I should come back later.
“Are you ready to begin?” The man’s voice boomed into the confessional.
I jumped backwards, slamming into the wall. “Jesus!”
“No . . . Frank.”
I caught my breath and shook my head, climbing back onto the kneeler. “Right, Father. Sorry.”
“Been a while for you, huh?” His thunderous words filled my side of the little box. People in the pews could probably hear him. Maybe people in the parking lot.
Crouching, I managed a miniscule peep. “Yes.”
“We’ll go slowly, then. In the name of The Father . . .”
We couldn't see faces through the screen, but some movements were still visible. He made the sign of the cross. “How long has it been since your last confession?”
“Uh, a long time.” I squirmed on the kneeler. “And to be honest, I’m not really here to confess. I sort of need help with a problem.”
Father Frank sat motionless. “So your first confession in a long time . . . is not a confession?”
It was harder than I thought. “That’s right, Father.” I swallowed hard. Time for some salesmanship or he might shut the whole thing down on me. “If it’s okay, I really need to talk.”
That might be a good hook. Clergy are always open to helping a member of their congregation.
Father Frank was silent.
I hooked a thumb at the curtain. “If it’s any help, you don’t have anybody else waiting. You can check. There aren’t any other . . . customers.”
I winced at my own ineptitude. Through the screen I saw him close the book in his lap—hopefully it was The Bible and not a John Grisham novel. He opened his curtain and leaned forward.
I put a finger to my own curtain and peeked out a little. The church was completely empty.
Drawing a loud breath, Father Frank tapped his book. “Where would you like to talk? Here, or in the regular seats? There isn’t another service for a few hours, so nobody will be coming in.”