by J. R. Mabry
“Mikael, I don’t have it in me to guess right now. Why are you dressed like that?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I kind of thought…well, I’m good at getting people to talk.”
“Since when?” She raised one eyebrow. Then she blew her nose again.
“Okay, I aspire to getting people to talk,” he said. “I’m forming a secret identity.”
“You mean as in a superhero identity?” Her face screwed up in a ghastly look of pity.
“Um…kind of?”
“Oh, Honey, that’s so…weirdly pathetic, I don’t even know where to begin,” Kat said, her voice sounding genuinely sad.
“How about, ‘Great idea, Honey! You’ll be one more arrow in our quiver as we seek to fight the forces of evil!’ or something like that.”
“Not even Terry talks like that,” Kat said.
Mikael looked downcast. He took off his mask.
“What are you going to call yourself?” she asked.
He brightened up a bit, hopeful that she might be showing some genuine interest. “The Confessor.”
“And what’s your superpower?”
“Uh…I don’t really have a superpower. Although I am good at aikido,” he said.
“Excellent. So, when you exhaust the forces of evil, you can get them a glass of milk and tuck them in for a good night’s sleep.”
“I get the feeling you’re not taking this seriously,” he said, a little hurt.
“All right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What does The Confessor do, exactly, besides tuckering evil out with his stunning aikido moves?”
“Well, he’s kind of like the Sandman comics—”
“You look just like the Sandman!” Kat said, smiling. “Sexy.”
“No…I mean…thank you, but I mean the other Sandman. Not Morpheus from the Gaiman books, but like Wesley Dodds from the Matt Wagner books. You know, the Sandman Mystery Theater.” His eyes lit up with little-boy excitement.
The look of pity came back into Kat’s eyes. “Honey, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”
“Wesley Dodds is this millionaire in the 1930s—”
“Ah…I see the resemblance, now.” She gave him one of her looks.
“At night, he puts on a trench coat and fedora and a gas mask. He has a gas-shooting gun that makes people tell the truth. And he solves crimes by sneaking up on bad guys and making them…tell the truth.”
“And you’re going to make people tell the truth…how?”
“Well, I’ll be a priest, soon. The moral force of talking to a priest…people will feel compelled to tell the truth…won’t they?”
“Okay, Honey, it’s obvious that you did not grow up Catholic. Nobody tells the truth to the priest. Not even priests tell the truth to priests.” She looked at him like she was genuinely worried. “Please do me a favor, and put the mask away. It’s…it’s just silly.”
Mikael felt his heart sink. He didn’t agree, but there was no reason to debate it now. He could see that despite the welcome diversion of their conversation, Kat was still in shock. He took off the mask and the cowl and replaced them in his dresser, then he sat on the bed next to her, held her, and rocked back and forth. She clung to him.
41
“DO I HEAR STIRRING?” Susan wandered out of the back office. She saw Terry sitting hunched over Charlie, who seemed to be taking a nap. Then she saw Terry’s shoulders shake. “Oh, Honey, what’s wrong?” She put her cup down on the altar and knelt by Terry, encircling him with her arms. Terry turned and buried his face in her neck. She felt the hot water of his tears and hugged him tighter to herself. Eventually, his sobbing stopped, and he pulled back, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. “We left him there,” he said.
“You left who, where?” Susan asked, shifting so she could sit more comfortably.
“Him, Charlie.” Terry’s face screwed up like he was about to cry again. “We went to Hell. You know, a day trip. He went into one of the tombs, and…he felt at home. We couldn’t lure him out.”
Susan was horrified. She leaned back. “Fucking drag him out!”
“I can’t do that. You can’t force anyone into Hell, or out. People get to choose. Always.”
“What would happen if you tried?” Susan asked.
“I’d violate the most sacred values I have!” Terry said, a note of ferocity entering his voice. “We don’t coerce.”
“Fuck your values. Go back and get him!” Susan said.
“It’s not like that, Susan. It’s just not. Not even Jesus could force people out of Hell. I certainly can’t.”
“Won’t.”
Terry looked away. “Look, let’s not fight. It’s a setback, not a tragedy…not yet. He’s safe where he is. And his…body…isn’t going to get up and go anywhere.” He looked down at Charlie, who seemed to be napping. “We can brainstorm our options at the table when everyone is here.”
“What is it with us?” Susan said, shaking her head. “I mean, what is this, Comatose Magickian Central? A few months ago, it was Kat’s brother, and now Charlie?”
“One by one, we seem to be catching the members of the Lodge of the Hawk and Serpent as they fall,” Terry agreed. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose.
“Well, let’s make him comfortable, and then we should probably call the paramedics,” Susan said.
Terry looked up in surprise. “Paramedics?”
Susan put her hands on her hips. “He needs hydration and food. He needs to be fed intravenously. Unless, of course, your plan is to simply sit by and watch him starve to death.”
Terry said nothing. Susan placed one of the zafus under Charlie’s head and, opening one of the choir benches, pulled out a quilt. She spread it over him and stood back to consider him. “He sure is a prick,” she said.
“You shouldn’t speak ill of the comatose,” Terry mock-scolded.
“Maybe a part of him will hear me,” Susan said. “Someone needs to tell him the truth.”
“What did we do wrong?” Terry said.
“You want my opinion?” Susan asked.
“Yeah, of course,” Terry said. He tried to fix his hair. He gave up.
“Insufficient catechesis.”
Terry froze. “Say more.”
“You’ve been training him to do all this inner work, and he isn’t even a Christian, is he?”
“Uh…I didn’t ask. I just assumed that if he wanted to join us that he already was.”
“We didn’t assume that of Kat,” Susan pointed out.
“No, but it was clear from the outset that she wasn’t a Christian. Plus, she didn’t show up and say, ‘Hey, I want to join your order.’”
“So, it seems pretty important to establish his status from the outset, don’t you think?” Susan said, trying not to sound too judging. She knew she was failing. She plunged ahead anyway. “Maybe instead of starting with the Tree of Life, you should have started with the Apostle’s Creed? Or a children’s Bible? Or we could have had a hymn sing, and between every song we could have taken turns talking about what Jesus means to us. Loving Jesus is a relationship, and helping Charlie build that relationship should have been our first agenda item.”
Terry looked down at his hands. “You’re right. You’re always right. I feel like an idiot.”
“Oh, Honey, I’m not always right,” she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Most of the time, but not always. We’ll brainstorm this. We’ll pray about it. We’ll figure it out. We always do. God has never abandoned us. He’s not about to start now.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. “Oh, Terry. Something happened while you were…down under. Something terrible.” She told him about Dearborn.
Terry stared at her, open-mouthed. “Oh my God,” he breathed. “The Children of the Prophet…” he said, a distant look on his face. He clutched at his head and drew his knees up. “That’s…unthinkable.”
“That’s Republicans for you,” Susan said.
“We’ve got to call Nazim at the Islamic Cultural Center and see if we can help. They’re going to need grief counselors,” Terry said.
“Good idea,” Susan said. “Oh, Terry, there’s one more thing I need to tell you. Any minute now, Dylan’s going to wake up.”
“And that’s a problem why?”
“Because I burned all his pot.” Susan pursed her lips and waited for the penny to drop.
Terry almost burst out laughing. He caught himself and pressed his hand to his mouth. “You didn’t!”
“I did. He’s going to be furious.”
“Then it’s a good thing that we both have places we need to be this afternoon,” Terry said.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Susan said.
“The sooner, the better, I say,” Terry said. He looked down at Charlie. “Think he’ll be okay?”
“Um…sure he will,” Susan said. “What could possibly go wrong around here?”
42
TERRY RODE the bus up into Kensington in a daze. The news about Dearborn left him jittery, and he felt like he’d been up for days. Yet he was sure he couldn’t sleep. The sight of the possessed gathering outside their house as he walked to the bus stop left him with the same feeling that he’d always had waiting for the results of a medical test—in the background, foreboding, never quite out of consciousness, and yet life rolled unmercifully on.
Terry was so lost in his own thoughts that he missed the bus stop. Mentally, he kicked himself, got off at the next one, and walked back to the house he was seeking. Kensington wasn’t much of a town. It was, in reality, a Berkeley bedroom community perched high in the East Bay hills. A rambling assemblage of arts-and-crafts-style architecture, tiny pubs, and boutique restaurants, it was the kind of place that only the impossibly rich could afford—although one could say that about Berkeley in general, Terry mused. He felt lucky that the friars had been bequeathed their house years ago as none of them would ever be able to buy it or even rent it.
Checking the address on his phone again, he found himself outside a beautiful two-story fairytale Victorian. Pastor Oberlin’s notes said that he was to go around the side and knock on the basement door. Terry let himself in at the gate, wary of dogs, but as none seemed to be around, he relaxed. He knocked on the basement door, and in a few minutes it opened. An elderly gentleman greeted him with a warm smile. He was wearing dark pants, loafers, a smoking jacket, and a bright lavender ascot. “You must be the replacement pastor,” he said in a faintly British accent.
“I must be,” Terry said, smiling broadly. “And you must be Mr. York.”
The old man nodded. His hands shook with the telltale signs of Parkinson’s, but his gaunt face was cheery. His few thin wisps of hair were neatly cut and, it seemed, almost plastered into place. He’s doing the best he can with what he’s got, Terry said to himself. He was struck with the momentary vertigo of a man looking at himself in thirty years’ time—an old queen whose partner has died. Terry shuddered and resolved to do something to make Brian feel very special when he got home. He knew just the thing.
“Please come in, the kettle is warming now,” the man swung wide the door. Terry stepped into what was obviously a basement apartment, but one which had been appointed with much care. The low ceilings and odd angles were offset by the elegance of overstuffed Victorian chairs and the rugged wood of mission-style tables. It was patchwork, thrift store décor—but done with such attention and verve that the effect was immediate and pleasing. Terry not only admired it; he envied it, and this, he realized, meant that Mr. York was successful, at least as a decorator and a homemaker.
The man waved Terry into a seat at the table in his tiny kitchen. A teapot with a knitted cozy was in front of him along with a full china tea set. The little bowls of sugar cubes and the elegant creamer were chipped, and Terry could see where Mr. York—or someone—had glued them back together and repainted. The new paint did not quite match—it was too bright, and inexpertly applied. There was something about the attempt, however, that was so sweet that he reflected on the fragile dearness of the things he loved—how precious were useless things of beauty. A lump arose in Terry’s throat, and he found himself blinking back tears.
Mr. York poured hot water from the kettle into the teapot and carefully placed the lid on top. Wisps of steam brought the smoky odor of lapsang souchong to his nose, and he closed his eyes, basking in the loveliness of it. He swallowed as his salivary glands kicked in. “That smells delicious,” Terry said.
“An old lover of mine—he’s a Nepalese importer, you know—brings this tea to me. It’s from Bhutan, actually. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever tasted. I hoped you’d like it.” He set a plate of lemon custard cookies in front of Terry, and then he took a seat himself, wafting into the chair with grand, exaggerated gestures that Terry understood all too well. They were gestures that said, “Don’t let the squalor of my conditions fool you—I am a creature devoted to beauty.” Mr. York paused as he poured out the tea. “Now tell me, Father, are you partnered?”
Terry blinked in the face of such a cheekily personal question. Nothing wrong with his gaydar, he thought. “Um, yes. Nearly ten years, now. His name is Brian. He’s a Talmudic scholar.”
“Oh, now that is promising. But in my experience, scholars can go one of two ways. They can either be dreadful bores who need to show everyone how much they know, or they can be exciting, lovely people who are so in love with their subjects that it’s infectious—and of course they are not bores because they are keenly aware of how much they do not know, and they are not embarrassed about that fact. Now, which one is your Brian?”
“Well, he doesn’t fit neatly into your categories. He’s not pedantic, and he’s plenty humble, but he’s not exciting, either. He’s…solid.”
“He’s an Old World German frau, is what you’re saying.” York winked at him. Terry was saying no such thing, but he realized that he was talking to a man too old to care what anyone in the whole fucking world thought of him. He liked that immensely.
“How long have you been at Trinity North Church?” Terry changed the subject.
“Oh, nearly twenty years, I should say. I followed Pastor Oberlin there from Saint Irenaeus’s, I’m sure you know the story.”
Terry didn’t. He shook his head.
“Ah, that’s a grand tale. Pastor Oberlin—he was Father Oberlin, then—was running a Christian-Buddhist sangha in England when he was approached by the search committee from Saint Irenaeus’s Episcopal Church in Oakland—you know the one.”
Terry did. It was a stone’s throw from Ted and Mary’s, the best breakfast joint in the East Bay. York continued. “They were the most conservative parish in the diocese at that time, and they wanted a real English rector, so they found Pastor Oberlin and brought him and his family over here, promising him the world.”
“This sounds like it doesn’t have a happy ending,” Terry said warily.
“Noooo…conservative parish, he running a sangha…you can see the trouble coming, I’m sure. Two weeks into his ministry there, he had Indian temple dancers baring their midriffs to the strains of a sitar during the offertory. Myself, I think he barely escaped a lynching.”
Terry laughed out loud but then caught himself. “Oh. My. God. That sounds so Oberlin. I can just see it.”
“Yes, so the bishop booted him out, and about a hundred people left the parish with him, myself included.” His face looked momentarily sad. “We felt…responsible for him, after all. We brought him over here; we couldn’t just abandon him.”
Terry nodded. There was real love there.
“Soon, we were renting space at the little UCC church on Cedar, and within a couple of years, the two communities merged.”
“And that’s how Berkeley got its one and only Anglican-Rite United Church of Christ congregation,” Terry smiled.
York sipped at his tea, pinkie finger prominently extended. “Only in Berkeley,” he affirmed. “Which isn’t
to say I don’t stay connected to the diocese,” he said. “I have too many roots there to completely let it go. I keep a toe in the water.”
Terry had no idea what he meant by that, but he didn’t inquire. His eye lit upon a striking poster of a rearing horse bearing a rider in a cowboy hat and a brightly woven poncho. The text was in Spanish, and the word Gaucho! was splashed in blood red across it. “What’s the story behind that picture there?” Terry pointed to it.
“Oh my dear, you would ask about that, wouldn’t you?” His eyes took on a dreamy quality, and Terry could see his thoughts were retreating to the distant past.
“I was in Argentina in 1972. I was madly in love with my traveling companion, Larry Bern—you’ve probably heard of his 1980s incarnation as Swami Gitananda.”
Terry’s ears perked up. “He wrote Don’t Be Here Now, Just Be, right?” Terry remembered. “That was a great introductory text.”
“I came up with that title,” the man said, touching his own chest proudly. “Anyway, we were making our way across South America living off our psilocybin sales.”
“Excuse me, your what?” Terry asked.
“We had three suitcases filled with 150 pounds of dried magic mushrooms,” he said as if he were reporting on a news item. “It was one of those heavenly hedonistic periods that your generation resents but mine looks back on with the hazy nostalgia born only of selective memory.” He paused and seemed to savor the memories. “I can’t say that I remember much of that trip, but I do recall the feeling of the trip, and it was far more fun than ecclesiastically permitted.
“Anyway, we ended up in Buenos Aires, at a sex party with a visiting Brazilian bishop and half of the local diocesan staff in attendance. The beautiful blond über-Aryan I was fucking said that he had a proposition for me.”
“Excuse me, did you say ‘Aryan’?” Terry asked.
“Um…yes. Second-generation Nazi…refugees, let us say. Did I mention that he was beautiful?” He sighed, his eyes focused on a distant, dreamy horizon. “Anyway, I told him I wasn’t sure I could handle another proposition, especially if it worked out as well as his last one. He said he’d trade us the Third Reich’s most sacred relic for one of our suitcases.