Uncross My Heart

by Andrews

  “Perhaps a flawed person, like Emerson, knew the truth and couldn’t stand the pain and pressure, or the stupidity around him, and fighting it simply wore him out and he gave up.”

  “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “He interned with me years ago. I admired him because he stood for who he was and didn’t knuckle under.”

  A voice in my head said this was going in a bad direction. Mere words couldn’t alter her belief that her friend had been ousted unfairly, and my trying seemed to anger her.

  “I’m sorry he’s no longer in your life,” I said, and let a few moments of silence float on the frigid air.

  Vivienne must have realized her tone was combative because she suddenly took a deep breath and started over, changing the subject, chatting about mundane things, inquiring about our student programs, and laughing easily. I liked this beautiful, intense woman poking into my business, despite her sidebar into the world of her friend Emerson.

  “Could I offer you lunch?”

  She smiled that incredible smile and said she had to be going. As she thanked me for the time I’d spent with her, she shook my hand. Her touch sent a shiver across my chest and I wished that we were friends.

  I wished I had her home number and I could call and simply ask what she was doing or even who she was verbally crucifying today. While I was lost in those thoughts, Vivienne Wilde disappeared out of my office and most certainly out of my world.

  * * *

  It was Wednesday morning and I was sitting in my office just after sunup reading the local news events on my laptop when the electronic headline leapt off the computer screen at me. Dateline Claridge: FuTure chancellOr says suicide naTural selecTiOn FOr gay PriesTs. Byline: Vivienne Wilde. My heart raced and I felt dizzy just as the phone rang.

  Eleonor Washington’s voice stage-whispered across the phone line.

  “Girl, have you seen the paper? What the heck did you say to that woman? Hightower is about to shoot out through his own head, and he wants to see you before he does it.”

  I had no sooner hung up than my phone rang again. My father’s voice boomed into my ear. “A very risky but calculated move guaranteed to gain you the support of the right wing.”

  “I was misquoted.”

  “Don’t say you were misquoted—sounds namby-pamby. The brilliant part is the headline positioned you for the chancellorship without your having to say a word. It’s actually right on the mark—right on the mark. Let me know what I can do to help.” He hung up.

  Take your medication, I thought.

  On my way to Hightower’s office, I fumed. How dare that woman write something like that? Is she insane or just vicious?

  Chapter Five

  You have managed to turn a splinter of annoyance into a gangplank the board will most certainly want to send you down.” Hightower paced.

  “I never said suicide was natural selection for gay priests. And there was no discussion about a chancellorship for anyone, much less myself.”

  “And yet, here it is.” He slapped the offending morning edition down on his desktop.

  “I’m sorry but—”

  “Roger Thurgood Sr. contacted me this morning to say it’s refreshing when a right-wing conservative is willing to take an unpopular stand against gays.”

  “Oh, nooo.”

  “And Thurgood is now a big supporter of yours and intends to intervene on your behalf with the board regarding this article, stating that you have the courage of your convictions.”

  “I don’t want him intervening on my behalf. He stands for everything I do not.”

  “And now, like it or not, he stands for you. Fortunate for you, your press coverage has eclipsed his anger over his grandson’s unhappiness with your class. You live under a lucky star, it would seem.” He looked down at the work on his desk, letting me know our talk was over. I stood up quickly and headed for the door. “Oh, Dr. Westbrooke, obviously any assignment I might have given you regarding the press is withdrawn.”

  Lips clamped shut to avoid saying something acrimonious, I stormed out of his office, apparently looking so threatening that Eleonor jumped up from her desk and followed me like a worried mother.

  “Now, you settle yourself down. You’re going to bust an artery if you don’t just breathe.” She clamped a large black hand on my forearm with such force I stopped abruptly. “Breathe. Breathe. Breeeathe.”

  “I never said those things. I treated her with respect and she sabotaged me and I am going to call her and have it out with her.”

  “She’ll just print whatever you say while you’re ‘having it out with her,’ and from the look on your face, you don’t want that printed.

  I suggest if you’re going to talk to her at all, you do like these political candidates and have some third party set up the ground rules in advance—off the record, no microphones, no notes, and no follow-up articles.”

  “You’re right. Okay. Thanks.”

  Outside I made a point to slow down and keep breathing at an even slower pace. At a ninety-degree angle, a swift-moving form, obviously bent on intersecting me, picked up speed. Professor Gladys Irons, in a gray cape and skirt, black oxfords, and a strange cap that made her look like a Salvation Army reject, had me in her sights, and before I could find an avenue of flight, she had her arms around me.

  “I am so proud of you. Proud. I knew the gumption was there.

  I’ve just been praying it would come out, and then like a valiant soldier you moved to the front of the line and you fired against the enemy and we will take up arms behind you.” The scratchy cape scrubbed my cheek, making it itch as she whispered into my ear. “The anti-gay salvo.

  We all wanted to say it, but no one had the courage. Then you said it.

  God punishes them.” And for a horrifying moment, I realized Gladys sounded like my father. Together, they could well be the proverbial army of God.

  “He apparently does…putting them in the midst of straight people.”

  I pulled back from her, but not before she clasped my hand so firmly that I wondered what she did in her off hours, and then genuflected so quickly I was dragged to the ground with her.

  “Let’s pray together.” Her eyes fluttered on the way to closing.

  Dennis’s batlike cassock was never so welcome floating toward me, and I could see the mirth in his eyes as he said, “Dr. Westbrooke, did you fall? Let me help you.”

  “We’re praying, Father O’Shane.” Gladys giggled slightly.

  “Ah, prayer, the balm of heaven.” He clasped her hands, pulling her up off her knees and onto a nearby bench. “Oh, heavenly Father, Gladys and I pray”—he glanced at me to let me know I could move out of the circle of Gladys’s admiration—“for your continued love and guidance…”

  I moved over by a large stand of trees out of Gladys’s line of sight and let Dennis’s voice lull me into a state of calm. Minutes later, I peeked out of my hiding place to hear Gladys gushing over Dennis’s attention. Pleased, no doubt, with her own godliness, she floated away across the commons. Dennis found me leaning up against a sturdy oak, the horrors of the last forty minutes nearly buckling me at the knee.

  “Did you see it?” I asked, referring to the newspaper article, and he nodded. “Gladys will have it laminated into cafeteria place mats.

  Every right-winger will think I’m one of them.”

  “You’ve got to talk to that woman.” He obviously referred to Vivienne Wilde.

  “I intend to.”

  “Let me set it up. Just like a debate. Ground rules. No notes, no microphones. A neutral location.”

  “Have you been talking to Eleonor Washington?”

  Like a good priest, he remained silent, refusing to betray the confessor, so I continued my tirade.

  “You can’t set it up right now because I’m so mad I would stab her with a letter opener. What in hell possessed her to print that about me? It’s patently untrue and unfair.” I stormed off, furious with life in general and with my
situation in particular. A priest couldn’t lash out even when lashing out was called for.

  * * *

  That night I sat on the porch of my farmhouse after tossing the horses some hay and drank half a bottle of red wine, pausing only to pet Ketch as I morosely contemplated what had been wrongly written.

  I kept the lights off so Sylvia wouldn’t know I was home. Though I was certain she’d only toyed with me in a drunken state, I didn’t need anything else pressworthy in my life. What could possibly have been Vivienne’s motive? To spread lies, create a sensational story where there was none, get back at Hightower through me? Should I ring her and demand a retraction? I’d like to snatch her golden hair right off her pretty little head. I must have inadvertently pulled on Ketch’s fur as I thought it because he let out a sharp squeak and quickly rose and moved away from me. I apologized profusely. All I seemed to be doing lately was denying or apologizing.

  Rather than confront Vivienne in my current state, I uncharacteristically chose avoidance, preferring to focus on something else—packing for the convention in Berkeley.

  I phoned my father just to hear his voice and he said he’d seen the newspaper and he was completely enraged, forgetting that he’d already called me about the article and had told me that he considered it a risky but brilliant strategy.

  “Who in hell does this Wilde woman think she is? People have been assassinated for less. In fact, I think that’s exactly what’s needed here.”

  I realized the days in which my father could be counted on for solace and applicable solutions were certainly waning, if not over. I suspected he became bombastic and outlandish to either entertain himself or simply to hear the energy of his own voice and know he was still alive. I quickly changed the subject.

  “Do you have a pen?” I asked.

  “Yes, do you want to borrow it?” he replied, and I grinned, thinking he was teasing me as he did when I was a child.

  “I want to give you my hotel number in Berkeley. Four, one, five…” I said, and listened as he scribbled.

  “Four, one, nine—” He butchered the area code.

  “Five. ” I corrected him.

  “Five what?”

  “The hotel is four, one, five—”

  “Why would I need the number of a hotel?”

  “Because that’s where I’ll be?”

  “Are you there now?”

  “No—”

  “Then why do I need the number?”

  Like most crazy people, he had a point. I told him to forget the hotel and simply call my cell phone, which set off another series of questions about my cell-phone number, and I finally told him to forget the entire topic—I would call him.

  “So you’re headed for California—Jose’s Queerville. It’s a viper pit. In fact, the entire state is made up of degenerates. All driven by the entertainment industry—”

  “I’m sorry, Father. I’ve got to go meet Dennis.”

  “Thank God for Dennis. We all need ballast, my dear. Good-bye.”

  He hung up and I fought a feeling of angry guilt, the sensation that made me want to shout obscenities at my father and then throw myself on the ground begging forgiveness for being impatient with the behavior of a man who didn’t know who or where he was much of the time. Perhaps it was time to talk to him about assisted living or a retirement village, but that seemed so demeaning to a man who had once commanded troops in battle.

  I sulked. The truth was I had really liked Vivienne Wilde, wanted to be her friend, found her interesting and attractive, and she had tricked me, turned on me, used me. I was a good judge of character and somehow I had misjudged hers.

  Chapter Six

  At dawn I phoned the teenage boy down the road and asked him to check on the horses while I was gone, then dropped Ketch off at the kennel and kissed his big furry mug good-bye, telling him I would be gone only two days. From there I drove to the airport, parked in the long-term parking garage, and took a shuttle to the terminal. After hours of standing in line, being searched and scanned, I was finally offered a seat on the plane, where like a captive monkey I drank from a small cup of water and packed my jaw with peanuts. Air travel required the patience of…a saint.

  Several hours later, after a bumpy landing during which a woman whipped out her rosary and began saying her beads, I was in a cab on the way to my hotel.

  The cabbie chatted away. “We’re going right by Berkeley campus off Shattuck Street.”

  I leaned back, waiting for the elegant sprawl of the campus to come into view—the architecture an unlikely mixture of Spanish roofs and Roman columns.

  “Too much traffic. I’ll take Center Street. It’ll be—”

  “No, don’t turn here.” I sat up suddenly, my voice loud and reactionary. Center Street had been the vortex of my pain decades ago, and now a stranger’s mention of it resurrected that memory.

  He slammed on the brakes and looked at me in the rearview mirror.

  “You okay?”

  “I need to get to my hotel.” I didn’t want more flashbacks of the day Jeannette and her husband stood there, lying to me. I needed to get to my room, unwind, shower, order up some food. I need to center myself. The irony—I had to get away from Center Street to center myself. I twisted the gold signet ring around and around on my little finger, playing with it like a teething child seeking comfort from the constant ache.

  * * *

  The following morning I sat onstage in a large hotel ballroom flanked by three other theologians in what had been billed as a frank discussion of the sexuality of Jesus—a topic that simply nailed for me the American obsession with sex, when perfectly sane people wanted to spend an afternoon talking about the sex life, or lack thereof, of their deity. If He died for our sins, isn’t that enough? Does He have to account for His love life?

  The buxom woman moderator introduced the four of us. A learned professor of religious sociology from Harvard who looked like a large heron in his silver suit, his white hair flying back off the top of his head as if he’d been in a hundred-mile-an-hour straight-line wind. A short, overly energized Methodist minister from New York who looked pinched. And a gypsylike professor of feminist studies who kept eyeing me when she thought I wasn’t looking. After an hour, I knew the Harvard-heron wanted understanding, the mini-Methodist wanted celibacy, the flamboyant feminist wanted sexual freedom, and I wanted out. “Can we really say that Jesus was so human that he had relationships as we might?” The moderator tugged at her tight tweedy vest. “Dr. Bird?” Staring at the heronlike man and hearing him addressed as Dr. Bird amused me.

  “Mary Magdalene was assumed to be Jesus’s wife, according to the gnostic Gospel of Philip. But Jesus’s kisses to Magdalene were platonic,” Dr. Bird chirped.

  “If I may.” The gypsylike professor raised her hand. “Joseph, Jesus’s father, was a good Jewish man respected in his community—”

  “Adoptive father,” the Methodist minister interjected in support of the Virgin Birth.

  The gypsy professor couldn’t contain herself. “Talmudic law required that a good Jewish father do five things for his son—circumcise him, redeem him, teach him about the religious laws, teach him a trade, and obtain the appropriate wife for him. Jesus was circumcised, then an animal sacrifice offered up to ‘redeem him,’ religion and the trade of carpentry taught to him. Why would Joseph stop short of finding him a wife, when not to do so was forbidden? Further, Mishnaic injunction states, ‘An unmarried man may not be a teacher.’ Jesus was certainly a teacher.”

  A young man in the audience stood up. “So when Vatican II wrote, ‘Priests through virginity or celibacy are consecrated to Christ in a new and exalted sense,’ it should have added, too bad Christ Himself couldn’t have remained celibate?”

  I jumped into the fray. “Celibacy was not Christ’s message. It was the message of Greek philosophers a century before Christ. By the time Christ arrived, the Christian cult was competing to outdo the pagan cults by being bigger virgins than they w
ere. After Christ died, church father Tertullian outlined the order of excellence in relation to sexual activity. At the top of the list were virgins, people born of virgins, which is a very short list.” The audience laughed. “Then married couples who engage in sex for procreation, and, of course, last are those who have sex and actually enjoy it.”

  “On that note, let’s open the floor for questions.” The moderator let out a gust of wind, no doubt relieved to gain control again.

  A steady stream of people snaked into the center aisle and lined up to take the microphone. A disheveled, sandy-haired fellow directed a question to Dr. Bird on the Greek variations of the word “love.” I noticed a familiar figure behind him. Unable to see clearly with the lights glaring overhead, I put on my glasses for better distance.

  The woman spoke into the microphone. “Vivienne Wilde, with a question for Dr. Westbrooke.”

  My heart flew into my throat. How dare she stalk me after having sabotaged me in the press?

  “As an Episcopal priest, what do you personally believe about Jesus’s sexuality?”

  It took me a moment to gather my thoughts and decide politically how to answer her question but be true to myself. “The Episcopal Church’s position is one of tolerance. While we do believe in the celibacy of Christ, we do not—”

  “What do you personally believe?”

  “She’s kind of putting you on the spot there, Dr. Westbrooke,” the minister from New York joked, which bought me a few seconds.

  “It’s not important what I think personally about—”

  “It is to me,” she said. I paused. The moderator made a guttural sound, as if to step in and perform a rescue operation, but I held up my hand.“I’m honored, Ms. Wilde. If we believe that Christ took the form of a human, a male, like other men on earth, and I do, then we cannot lop off the sexual part of his being simply to satisfy our puritanical preferences.” I stopped at that. There was a beat before Vivienne Wilde smiled and thanked me and sat down.