“I’m telling you what you already know. God is testing you. He’s testing you the same way He tested your father. Your father failed. So far you seem to be passing.”
“So far.”
“Go on. Tell me the whole story.”
“The whole story?” Marcus sighed. “I was born, I lived, I fell in love with Kingsley. And we dreamed…”
Marcus spoke for a long time. He told the story of a long ago conversation between two teenage boys in love. Then a warning from his friend Magdalena in Rome who swore she could see his future. In his future she saw the girl he’d once dreamed of. Marcus told him of seeing her for the first time and recognizing her instantly and somehow she seemed to recognize him. From the very beginning they could communicate almost without words. Why? Why had God brought him into her life? Marcus had been consumed with the question for a week until the phone call from the girl’s mother came. Help, she’d said. Eleanor’s been arrested. Five cars stolen all at her criminal father’s behest. And Marcus could help. Only he could help. But Eleanor wouldn’t accept his help. Not unless Marcus made her a promise.
“Twisted your arm, did she?” Ballard asked.
“Between letting her go to juvenile detention versus telling her I’d sleep with her someday? I’ll admit it was hardly Sophie’s choice.”
“If it had been Miriam facing jail time…I would have done the same thing. I can’t help but wondering, however…”
“However?”
“However…your Eleanor chose being lovers with a priest fourteen years her senior who is also a sadist over a few years in detention. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, perhaps? She can’t possibly know what she’s getting into, choosing an affair with you. Even if she was twenty, thirty, being with a priest is its own sort of prison sentence.”
“And that, Stuart, is why I’m here talking to you.”
Marcus crossed his arms and leaned back against a crypt. The evening sunlight tangled in Marcus’s blond hair. If he’d been wearing anything other than a cassock, he’d look like a male model posing for a photo shoot.
You could have been an actor, Marcus, with that face of yours, Ballard thought while looking at him. You could have been a concert pianist. You could have been a world-renowned psychologist, a legendary academic, a groundbreaking linguist. There is no reason for you to have chosen the priesthood. And that could only mean one thing—he hadn’t chosen the priesthood. The priesthood had chosen him. God had chosen him. And if Marcus was right and God was behind bringing him and his Eleanor together, then it could only be for one reason. It was part of His divine plan. Whatever the hell that was.
“I’ll give you my confession,” Ballard said, the thought stirring a memory. “When I first saw you eleven years ago, I thought the order had only let you in because you’d look good on the recruiting posters.”
“The Society of Jesus has posters? I should get one for Eleanor. I’ll sign it for her.”
“Don’t be a smartarse. You know everything is about marketing these days. Look at you—tall, handsome, a genius, a polyglot. I don’t even want to know how many languages you’re fluent in by now. We Jesuits are inordinately proud of our intellectual heritage and our vows of poverty. And here you are, brilliant beyond reason, handsome beyond reason, and wealthy beyond reason. You bestowed all your gifts at the foot of the cross, put on the collar, and made us look good in the process. I’m surprised they don’t have you doing commercials. But then I realized something after getting to know you. When they looked at you, they saw a priest. And that’s what I saw too.”
Marcus smiled but didn’t speak.
“I do envy you,” Ballard continued, “and not for the reason you might think. When I was a boy I loved reading Doyle’s Sherlock stories. I was amazed by how clever Sherlock was, deducing a man’s entire life from the scuffs on his shoes. And you were like that—but for the soul. One glance at the scuff marks on the soul, and you could see a man’s sins. What a blessing.”
“It doesn’t feel a blessing most of the time.”
“It’s a gift—a gift tied up with a string attached. God gave it to you to use for His glory. And you do.”
“I try.”
“You’ve seen into this girl’s heart, haven’t you?”
“Of course I have.”
“What do you see when you look at her?”
“I see…” Marcus closed his eyes. “There’s a spirit in her, something with wings, something that keeps her aloft, high above everything that would bring her crashing to Earth. At the very heart of her is a well of joy. She has a fearlessness to her I’ve never encountered before. She’s not afraid of me. She’s not afraid of anything. She’s smart, dangerous, manipulative, and utterly untamable. She is the freest person I’ve ever known. I couldn’t get her to shut up with a ball gag and a muzzle.”
“What’s a ball— Wait. Don’t answer that. I forget who I’m talking to sometimes.”
“Apologies,” Marcus said, a hand on his chest, courteous as a prince. “My point is she has no filter. I could sit back and listen to her talk for hours. If I asked her to, I think she would.” He closed his eyes and released a deep breath. “I can’t get enough of her.”
Father Ballard stepped forward and rested his hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “You’re terrified, aren’t you?”
Marcus slowly nodded. “I never thought I would see Kingsley again, not after that day in the hospital. When I met her, saw her the first time, I let myself love her. Completely. Unreservedly. I never meant to act on that love, only to enjoy it, rejoice in it… I could be an astronomer and she every star in the night sky. We’d never touch, of course. No astronomer ever touched a star. But I could live for her light… Unfortunately, my resolve to love her chastely didn’t last much longer than five minutes.”
“Chaste love is overrated,” Ballard said, knowing that of which he spoke.
“I’m awash in love and confusion,” Marcus said. “I thought I would never see Kingsley again. I let myself love her because I thought I would never see him again. And then…”
Ballard’s pity swelled in him like a wave that crashed upon his heart. Marcus had mourned for his Kingsley with the bottomless grief of a widow. And as soon as he’d let go of his grief, let himself love anew finally…his lost love had come back to him.
“Marcus, my boy, you were a beautiful ruin when I met you eleven years ago. And I can’t tell you the joy it gave me to see you come back to life, to see how being a Jesuit healed something inside you. I have loved you like my own child. I want you to be happy and I want you to feel joy and be loved. And I never want you to be lonely or to make the same mistakes I did. That’s every good father’s wish for his child—be happy, be good, don’t get hurt. You are walking through a minefield, son. I can’t look. But I can’t look away either.”
“Help me,” Marcus said, the words an order and not a plea. “You’ve counseled dozens of priests in situations like mine. Help me do this right. For her sake.”
Father Ballard stepped back and sat on top of a tombstone bearing the name of Forrest, clasped his hands between his knees, and looked upward to Heaven. God forgive him for this but he couldn’t bear to let Marcus live with same regret he’d carried for thirty years.
“I was 15 my first time,” Ballard said at last. “Father Mack Donnelly came to school, talked half of us into signing up, I went straight home and told my father I’d been called to be a priest. Two hours later I was sitting in the kitchen of the lovely young widow Gloria Anderson. Dad went for a walk. When he came back an hour later, I was a grinning idiot. I’d fucked that woman five times in one hour. My enthusiasm far outweighed my stamina. But what do you know? I didn’t give being a priest another thought until I was twenty. My father was a wise man. Then again, boys have it so much easier than girls, don’t we?”
“Much,” Marcus said emphatically, likely thinking of his sister.
“Can you imagine a father taking his 15-year-old daughter to get def
lowered by the friendly neighborhood widower? What a job for a man that would be, eh?”
“If such a position were open, I’m certain Kingsley would volunteer.”
“He’d have to stand in line.” Ballard laughed and rubbed his forehead. “Poor girls. We never let them have any fun, do we?”
“That might be what I love most about Eleanor. She doesn’t ask permission. She does what she wants.”
“Maybe this girl can survive a life with you after all.” Half a life, anyway. Although Ballard wouldn’t say that out loud. He looked Marcus straight in the eyes. If he was going to do this—and Ballard knew Marcus was—he would make sure it was done right.
“Wait until she’s 18,” Ballard ordered. He rarely gave Marcus orders, rarely gave anyone orders. This was an order.
“I plan on waiting longer than that. The longer I wait, the more likely it is she’ll let go and move on.”
“Tell yourself that. Miriam’s loved me thirty years.” Ballard crossed his arms and looked to the ground at his own feet of clay. He looked up at Marcus and met his eyes.
“For starters, let her date other men. Encourage her to go to college. If anything will get her away from you and the Church, it’s college. Whatever you do, do not get her pregnant. If you do, you leave the priesthood that day. Don’t take a single night to think it over. If she gets pregnant, you call your bishop and your superior. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. Plan to get caught. You probably will get caught. When you do, you take full responsibility.”
“I do take full responsibility.”
“If it hits the press, she’ll need a place to hide. Something like this will make the news. Make sure she has somewhere to go, or she’ll end up with her pretty face on the front page of the newspapers.”
“Kingsley will take care of her. He can get out of the country easily if it comes to that.”
“You have friends at your church?”
“My secretary Diane. Should I warn her?”
“Does she love you? Is she loyal?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Then no, don’t tell her. If she’s loyal, she’ll lie for you. Leave her out of this. There’s no way for this to happen without you committing some egregious sins. Keep them on your own head. No one else’s.”
“Anything else?”
“Pray for her. Pray for yourself. Pray this girl falls in love with someone else and leaves you before you do any damage.”
“I’ve been praying that since the day I met her.”
“If she wants to leave you, let her leave. I don’t care if you think it’ll kill you to let her go, let her. And it won’t kill you. But you’ll wish it did. I speak from experience.”
“If she leaves, I’ll let her go.”
“I don’t care how intelligent she is, how mature, how beautiful or insightful or whatever it is you tell yourself to justify your feelings for her—she’s 16. You get caught fucking her and may God have mercy on your soul because no one else on Earth will. Myself included.”
“I accept that.”
“Once you break the vow of celibacy with one person you’ll want to break it with everyone you meet. It’s like cheating on a diet. You have one bite so you tell yourself you might as well eat the whole thing. The second the vow shatters everyone will be a temptation. Don’t give in. If you put this girl through the misery of being in an affair with a priest, at the very least you can give her your fidelity. Let her have whomever she wants. You stay faithful.”
Marcus’s gray eyes flinched. What Ballard had said hurt. Good.
“Marcus—”
“What about Kingsley?”
“What about him?”
“I love him too.”
“I don’t care. You get her or you get him. You’ll have to choose.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s 16, and you’re a bloody priest. She’s Catholic. She’s a child of God. And you’re going to bring her into a sinful relationship that could ruin her life. You don’t get to cheat on her as well. If you can’t give her a real marriage, you can at least give her the semblance of one. No cheating.”
“It’s not like that in our world—”
“Fuck your world, Marcus. I live in the real world. It’s fidelity or it’s cheating. If she’s not enough for you—”
“More than enough for me.”
“Then you have your answer. You told me what you did to your beloved Kingsley. He’s a child of God too and deserves better than to be hurt like you hurt him.”
“I’m a sadist, and he’s a masochist—”
“That’s not what I was talking about. You married his sister and she died because she caught you two together. I don’t care what you and he did in bed together. I care that you betrayed his love for you. He’s not here to speak for himself so I will stand in his stead and speak on his behalf. You don’t get to hurt him ever again. Do you understand that?”
Marcus turned his head and looked away, far away, in the distance. The sun was setting over the Manhattan skyline. The sun rises on the just and the unjust. Which were they?
“I understand,” Marcus finally said.
“Good.”
“Kingsley… I wasn’t a priest when he and I were together. But she’s only known me as a priest. He’ll never understand why I became a priest, never accept. She will. I think she already does.”
“I don’t say this very often,” Ballard said. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but I’m saying it to you. You were born to be a priest. It’s who you are and what you are and you will never be at peace if you leave the Church. It would be like cutting the wings off an angel.”
“I know that. I was never at peace until I became a priest. Even now, in the midst of all this turmoil in my heart…I’m still at peace.”
Ballard nodded. “You are at peace because you’ve built your house upon the Rock. The winds and waves have come now. When they pass your house will still be standing. And I’ll be standing by you.”
“Is loving her a sin?”
“No. Love is never a sin. If it’s a sin it’s not love. And if it’s love it’s not a sin. But that’s not what you’re asking. You want to know if making love to her is a sin.”
“Is it?”
“I think God’s view of sex is far removed from what the Church teaches. All I can say is that if the peace you know in your heart evaporates after your first night with her, you’ll know you’re in sin.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t then God is more forbearing than we give Him credit for,” Ballard said.
“Tamar dressed like a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law. Ruth got a husband by instigating intercourse with a barely conscious Boaz on the threshing floor. King David had over a dozen wives. King Solomon had seven hundred or more—”
“And Jesus Christ had none. We aren’t living in the Old Testament.”
“We aren’t living in the New Testament either,” Marcus said. “1 Corinthians 7:9, ‘But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.’ Seems a stark contrast to the grin and bear philosophy behind the vow of celibacy.”
“No one forced you to be a priest.”
“John 6:68,” Marcus said as if that were the only answer. Perhaps it was.
John 6:68. Ballard knew the verse well. Many disciples had walked away from Christ and his hard teachings. To his twelve, Jesus had asked, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” And in John 6:68 Peter had answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
When it came down to it, all priests became priests for this reason—the good ones at least. Because of the love of God. Because they had nowhere else to go.
By now the sun had left them behind. At this rate they’d be walking home in the dark. But no matter. Ballard had been Marcus’s confessor for eleven years now, a priest for thirty. He was a man accustomed to darkness.
; “Have you ever thought…” Marcus began and met his eyes. “Have you ever considered, that perhaps the only thing God cares about, the only thing He wants is for us to love Him and to love each other?”
“Dangerous words, young man.”
“They were Christ’s words. Matthew 22: 36-40. What if He doesn’t give a damn who we sleep with as long as it’s consensual? I don’t care what Kingsley does and with whom he does it as long as he’s safe and he’s happy. I have trouble believing God loves him less than I do.”
“You’ll put priests out of a job with thinking like that. If it was all free love and unregulated freedom, it would be anarchy.”
“It would be Heaven.”
“That it would be. That it would.”
“I was meant to find this girl, meant to love her. God is behind this. I don’t know why,” Marcus said, “but this I believe.”
“If you believe, then I believe. But don’t fail her.”
“I promise I won’t.”
Ballard shook his finger at him. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I know you. I watched you eviscerate an entire room of novices during a theological debate.”
“It was a debate.”
“We were debating mercy. And you showed none. You have a capacity for arrogance that borders on cruelty. And not only can you be cruel, you enjoy your own cruelty while you’re inflicting it on another human being.”
“That was ten years ago. I have learned a modicum of humility and self-control since then.”
“Not enough. You are a dangerous man, Marcus Stearns. I’m most grateful you’re a priest because I’d rather have you with us than against us. At no point should you let yourself lose control of your impulses with that girl. Not like you did with your Kingsley.”
“I won’t. With her or him.” Marcus sounded sincere and Ballard believed that he was. But he’d seen Marcus lose his temper before, saw him reduce grown men to tears with a handful of well-chosen words. He would pray, Ballard would. He would pray for them all.
At last Ballard stood up and brushed the dirt of the dead off his shoes. He waved his hand and together they headed back toward the entrance of the cemetery.
The Confessions Page 3