by Monica Wood
If I could sit in your church for a while, he says to the old man. If I could compose myself.
The old priest leads his visitor to the church, which is well lighted and decorated with lilacs bubbling out of glass jars that look like the ones Vivienne used to bring into St. Bart’s when she was in charge of the altar.
Thanks, Father, he tells the old man, who looks him over and asks, Do you need to say a Mass?
He nods, and the old man, who knows a priest in distress when he sees one, leads his visitor to the sacristy, opens the door, shows him a drawer containing a tiny key that opens the tabernacle.
Everything’s laid out, he says. I’d stay, but I’m waiting for a pair of souls I’m trying to talk out of a divorce.
Not for years and years has he stood on this side of the altar, but the composing moment returns untrammeled, that instant calm, the silent white expanse of laid-out linen filling his vision, his mind, and what comes to him first is the Latin of his seminary days, and the memory of one of his first Masses, at a prison in Thomaston, and the inmate who grabbed his sleeve afterward, saying: Father, I watched your face when you were foolin with the host, and I said to myself, Christ, this guy buys the whole works.
He’s become used to sitting in the pews, as a husband and stepfather, a parishioner like any other, and he believes in the liturgy still. But this is different, standing here, bent over the altar with his hands on the chalice. He remembers anew, believes anew, believes in a way no one can know except another priest who lifts the brittle white disk —Do this in memory of Me—the bread no longer bread, the wine no longer wine.
As a boy of twelve he believed wholly. A called boy, he believed. Time shifts and flitters, loops and flattens. He is fourteen, in spring, riding in his sister’s bottom-heavy Dodge Dart station wagon, hanging his head hard out the window, eager as a dog. Oh. His first whiff of Maine.
His sister calls to him, his big sister, Elizabeth, his beloved: Get your face inside, Mikey, I don’t plan to lose you too.
Their mother, their father, their uncle, their baby brother, gone. He counts, too, the cats and dogs that vanished over the years, and Johnny-Boy, the crippled crow that patrolled his mother’s flower patch, yelling “Hi, Johnny! Hi, Johnny!” all day long. All of them gone, dust to dust beneath the furrowed earth.
They drive and drive. Maine is not beautiful in the way of Prince Edward Island. It is beautiful in a way he has not thought to imagine. He takes in the flooded sky, the changeable, spooling land.
Look how much life is left, he wants to say. Not in those words. He is young, tongue-tied, alight with possibility. He invents a sort of poetry for this place, naming everything he sees as a way of receiving it. His sister’s loaded car wends south along the shimmering coast, then inland, away from the water. I’m sick of ocean, his sister tells him, following a river in and in. They encounter furred ridges and tree-lined roads, purple valleys split by rivers. He glimpses the arrogant stacks of mills and factories shouldered into the landscape, senses a dropping away of farmland, ocean, the calm and rolling countryside they have left forever.
His sister slows down, creeping down a main street in a town upon a river, a shoe factory just across the bridge. How about this? she asks.
He spots a rock in the river, an emergent, gray-backed boulder. Upon this rock, he thinks, then blushes at his audacity. He is no St. Peter, but he will try.
He loves God. He is in love with God. There is nothing but God, and the state of Maine, and his sister.
Now I’ll have to find us a man, his sister says, laughing.
So he prays and prays. At last they find him: Bill Finneran, a setup man at the shoe shop, his commodious Irish laugh the most enthralling of all his enthrallments. He doesn’t mind that the woman he wants comes packaged with a little brother. And why would he mind? She’s strong and redheaded, quick to kiss, looking for a place to land.
You learn to meet God everywhere, is what he was taught as a child in church, so he meets God here, in Maine, in this town on a river, the ocean many miles away but close enough to smell if the wind blows right. He meets God in the parish church that he will, years hence, be called to and then banished from. He meets God in Bill Finneran, who will become his brother-in-law and send him to college on the strength of a bank account stashed with overtime and moonlighting, who will welcome him back home eight years later and smile through the ordination rite in his ugly brown suit and applaud with hands stained orange with shoe dye. In time a baby will arrive, a new beginning named for her mother. They’ll call her Lizzy.
Okay then, his sister says, halting the car. Factory, river, town. What do you think, Mikey?
Meet God everywhere, is what he thinks, flush with certainty. Here at the beginning, on this clear spring day in the State of Maine, United States of America, meeting God seems easy. It is Elizabeth, after all—Elizabeth, his favorite—whom God spared.
Time is layering again, moving back and ahead simultaneously, expanding and contracting. Dressed in sweat-crushed clothes and a borrowed surplice he lifts the chalice, the consecrated host: Do this in memory of Me. God, my father, my savior, my every breath, I meet you. You who punish and forgive, You who weep and rejoice, You who have given and taken all I have, You who refuse to abandon me, You son of a bitch, my only friend.
He lifts his head as if to find his lost parishioners, Vivienne in front with the girls at each side, the little boys squirming on the lap of one aunt or another. Row upon row of fine faces, hymnals opened to the same white page, mouths opened to the same word of the same prayer. He can almost smell the wet coats and incense, hear the thudding of children’s shoes against the kneelers, Vivienne’s awkward vibrato, Lizzy’s effortful alto, the swaggering off-key stylings of the parish-council treasurer, the flutelike notes emanating from the kissed throat of Vivienne’s sister Pauline, who stands in the low balcony with the twelve-voice choir. In time’s layered way, his parents seem to be sitting out there, too, and the churchgoing farmers of his boyhood, and the complicated seminarians with whom he prayed and fasted in a city that spoke an effervescent French and loved dessert.
Outside, the stars begin to blink on. He thanks the old priest and resumes his journey, the road dark now, and winding. So little traffic here, off the highway. The road pleases him; the smallest sensation of pleasure, or remembered pleasure, reaches him through the air lock of his grief. He took this road on instinct. The codger’s route, Frannie calls roads like this. He can drive as slow as he likes, praying for his anointed child. It will take a long time to get home.
TWENTY
I opened the file in nearby Payson Park, where Father Mike used to take me after our twice-a-year shopping trip, or as my reward for waiting in a room with no books as he conducted church business in the Chancery. We liked to stroll the winding lanes, often all the way down to the cove to feed the ducks that snapped up the Cheerios we brought in wrinkled bread bags. The park had changed since then—cobblestones thrown over for asphalt drive-throughs, ball fields chain-linked into territories.
The file contained Father Mike’s resignation, a perfunctory note that nonetheless began, With bottomless sorrow. There were also a couple of letters between the Chancery and the Department of Human Services, and three transcribed interviews, each headed “Unofficial.” The transcripts—signed by a nun in the front office, everything prepared within the family—began with a set of names, each of which opened a flower of memory.
Monsignor Frank Flannagan, co-chancellor, Diocese of Portland. Snowy beard and glittery blue eyes, Santa Claus in disguise.
Father John Derocher, pastor, St. Peter’s, Bangor. High summer, hot weather, Father Jack arriving with a bottle of wine and photos from his trip to Italy.
Mrs. Ida Hanson, reporting party. Shoes unlaced on sore feet, support hose rolled to the ankles.
Ms. Shelley Costigan, Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Bloomy cheeks and a nunlike mouth, hair cut high across her brow. Her face came to me with unbidden cl
arity. Of course she was young and out of her depth, in a difficult job impossible to prepare for.
MS. COSTIGAN: To be absolutely clear, Mrs. Hanson. You witnessed Father Murphy engaging in improper sexual activity with the child?
MRS. HANSON: I just told you they were in his bed. It was April first, I remember, because we had a snow overnight and I said the snow must be an April Fool’s joke.
MS. COSTIGAN: Okay, so you’re saying that he was molesting her in his bed?
MRS. HANSON: You tell me.
FR. DEROCHER: What kind of an answer is that?
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: Let her talk, Jack.
FR. DEROCHER: These aren’t answers. You never stayed with them, Frank. The child adores him, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.
MS. COSTIGAN: May I?
FR. DEROCHER: If Father Murphy is going to be accused of something this foul, I for one think the accuser should be more specific.
MRS. HANSON: I’ve been a member of this parish for sixty years, Father Derocher. I was here when Father Devlin was a curate. Even if I wasn’t a Catholic, I think I know that a grown man isn’t supposed to share a bed with a nine-year-old girl. He keeps books in his dresser, about girls and their private parts.
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: This is informal, right?
MS. COSTIGAN: You’re the one recording, Monsignor.
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: I’m just confirming. For the record.
FR. DEROCHER: This goes nowhere, right? You’re calling this informal.
MS. COSTIGAN: Preliminary, Father. We’ll see what turns up.
FR. DEROCHER: Nothing is going to turn up.
MRS. HANSON: It’s always the ones you don’t suspect. There was that young day-care worker in Delaware, sweet as pie. Abusing babies with forks.
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: Mrs. Hanson, you were about to explain what you saw.
MRS. HANSON: My sister-in-law belongs to St. Bonaventure, and there’s all these stories about what’s going on up there and nobody’s doing one thing to stop it.
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: Whatever the troubles at St. Bonaventure, they have nothing to do with this interview, Mrs. Hanson.
MRS. HANSON: People talk, is all. And it’s not impossible for a priest to commit a mortal sin.
MS. COSTIGAN: Can we get back on track?
MRS. HANSON: The Church had no business putting a child in a situation like this in the first place. What would a priest know about raising a child? A girl especially. She wasn’t even toilet trained. They should have known full well the effect this would have on the parish.
MS. COSTIGAN: Can we please get back on track please?
MRS. HANSON: No limits, anything she wants. You would not believe what he allows that child to eat. I might as well have been invisible, nobody so much as gives me a how-do-you-do. And it wasn’t just this household affected, I can tell you, it was the whole parish. The child wants guitar music, presto, everybody has to suffer a hoedown before the Offertory without so much as a do-you-please to the parish council.
MS. COSTIGAN: You said you saw Father Murphy molesting her.
MRS. HANSON: Well, that first time I didn’t actually see it happening. This is April first I’m talking about. Father Murphy overslept. That was highly unusual all by itself, I can tell you. He’s always up early because he doesn’t like my coffee. He mixes eggshells in with the grounds, some notion of his from who knows where. They do things different where he comes from. Eggshells. I got there at six to start breakfast, as usual. The bedroom he uses is downstairs, just off the parlor. The door was wide open, and there they were. A nine-year-old girl and a thirty-eight-year-old man. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me. Guilty as sin, I can tell you that.
MS. COSTIGAN: Did Father Murphy say anything?
MRS. HANSON: Nothing. He got up, looked at the clock. Not one word of explanation. He might have said something about snow in April being unusual, I’m not sure. By the time I had breakfast ready they were both dressed, acting like everything was normal. Normal as pie.
MS. COSTIGAN: And the second occasion?
MRS. HANSON: A couple of months ago. First of September or thereabouts. It was right around when our neighbor’s husband ran off. The Blanchard children were moping around. Their mother was keeping to herself. It was a bad time as it was, so I decided to keep shut.
FR. DEROCHER: It’s my understanding that you in fact did not keep shut, Mrs. Hanson. In fact, it’s my understanding that the rumors in this parish have been flying around like a plague of locusts.
MRS. HANSON: I’m not the child molester here, Monsignor. He gives her liquor.
MRS. HANSON: Father Murphy cut my hours, like I said, around the time she turned four. He wanted to cook suppers himself, and that’s fine, he has every right. I cooked all the meals when Father Devlin was here. I was live-in, you know, before Father Murphy came as a curate. Father Devlin didn’t honestly need a curate. God rest his soul. He was a peach. And he knew the meaning of thank you. Believe you me.
MS. COSTIGAN: Can we?
MRS. HANSON: Oh. Well, you said every detail. All right. We’re talking about the second occasion now? Around the first of September? I worked until three that day, as usual, but after I got home I realized I’d left my glasses in the parlor. I had a letter from my daughter in Florida, which naturally I wanted to read, so after supper I went back for the glasses. I thought Father Murphy had gone up to Bangor like he said he was going to, to visit you, Father Derocher. After school Lizzy was to go straight to the Blanchards’. In my opinion, Monsignor, that’s where you should have placed her from the start-up, with somebody like Vivienne Blanchard. God knows the woman could have used the help.
MS. COSTIGAN: So you went back for your glasses.
MRS. HANSON: St. Bart’s isn’t but a mile from me, so I thought, why not, it’ll take a few minutes and then I’ll be able to read Rose’s letter. It wasn’t exactly dark, but you’d need a light on inside, so I figured no one was home since there were no lights on that I could see. I thought Father Murphy was still in Bangor. He parks in the carport next to the parish hall, so I never noticed the car. The house wasn’t locked, but I figured he forgot. He forgot things all the time, absent-minded, his mind everywhere else but where it belonged. So I let myself in, thinking I was alone. I wanted my glasses. That’s all I was doing.
MS. COSTIGAN: And you saw what?
MRS. HANSON: Heard, at first. Certain noises.
MS. COSTIGAN: What kind of noises?
MRS. HANSON: The driveway is a long one, you know. The only house within eyeshot is the Blanchards’, and even at that you’d have to really be looking. All those trees. And in fall everything gets kind of filled in, with the goldenrod and whatnot. It’s a handy little spot if you’re put in mind to do things you don’t want seen.
FR. DEROCHER: I’d like to know where this is going.
MRS. HANSON: Well, I found my glasses in the parlor, and like I said, his bedroom is right there, and I heard these—I heard noises. Of a certain type. It was, they were certain noises of a certain type of intimate nature. I was so shocked I dropped my pocketbook right there on the parlor floor.
MS. COSTIGAN: What happened then?
MRS. HANSON: Well, there was some noise behind the door. It was open just a little ways. I heard her voice—well, it was like a cry. But not sad crying. The other kind. This is embarrassing.
MS. COSTIGAN: You’re doing fine.
MRS. HANSON: I couldn’t make out any words, but she sounded ashamed, and who wouldn’t be? I went over to the door, I don’t know why, and then the door flies open and there he is.
MS. COSTIGAN: Did he say anything to you?
MRS. HANSON: He asked what on Earth I was doing in the house. All snappy, too, I might add. He’s in this bathrobe, which is on every which-way, and his hair, too, all sticking up, it was disgusting. I was disgusted right down to the last rattle of my bones.
MS. COSTIGAN: Then what?
MRS. HANSON: I caught her turning over in the be
d, covering herself up, but I could see the shape of her there, and the tail of her nightgown plain as day, this white one she wore all the time with red dots on it. She was hiding. Protecting him. You should have seen his expression. He slammed the door in my face and I wanted to throw up.
FR. DEROCHER: He keeps cats. Could you have seen cats moving in the bed?
MRS. HANSON: I think I can tell the difference between one of those filthy cats and a girl in a nightgown.
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: You came back the next day?
MRS. HANSON: Same as usual. Six o’clock. He didn’t say a word about it.
MS. COSTIGAN: The first time was on the first of April, the second time in early September. We’re almost into December. Why come forward now?
FR. DEROCHER: That’s what I’d like to know.
MRS. HANSON: Her shirt, is what it was. One of those shirts, tanks I think they call them, hot pink, sparkles on the front, very suggestive. Just disgraceful. Like some kind of showgirl. I hadn’t seen the thing for a while, but there it was again. Like a streetwalker would wear. That was it, the last straw. I said to myself, that’s it, you can’t hold still another instant. My niece’s daughter works for the State. I called her that very afternoon. She’s the one who got everything rolling. Well, I suppose you know that.
FR. DEROCHER: You suspected that an innocent child was being abused on the premises since last April, and yet you stayed on as the housekeeper, going into that house every day.
MRS. HANSON: I needed the money, God help me. And besides, I just told you: She isn’t an innocent child.
TWENTY-ONE
Monsignor Frank Flannagan, co-chancellor, Diocese of Portland.
Father John Derocher, pastor, St. Peter’s, Bangor.
Ms. Shelley Costigan, Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
Elizabeth Finneran, age nine.
MSGR. FLANNAGAN: Just a couple of little questions, Lizzy.