by Selena Kitt
“I got you a treat.” Father Michael slid a cinnamon roll across the table, its circumference nearly eclipsing the plate it was resting on. It was covered in sticky, gooey icing. “Your favorite.”
“Yum!” Erica began picking at it with her fingers, moaning softly as the sweetness melted on her tongue. She spoke to him with her mouth full. “Oh my God. This is heaven!”
Father Michael smiled around the rim of his coffee mug. “I’m sure there are unlimited amounts of cinnamon rolls in heaven, although God might deny them to bad girls who take his name in vain.”
“So worth it.” Erica sucked cinnamon sugar off her sticky fingers. Father Michael watched her with interest. “Did I tell you what I found in my mother’s journal?”
She still hadn’t managed to get into the rest of the locked boxes hidden under her bed. She hadn’t told Father Michael what she’d read about her mother and Father Patrick. She’d held it back, seeing how he idolized the older priest. She told herself broaching the subject now was simply a strategic move, but even she couldn’t hide the truth. It was total feminine manipulation on her part. She wanted to know if the road she was traveling on was one-way.
“Some of it. Just that she was part of the Mary Magdalenes and it was some sort of secret society.”
“Well there’s more… although I’m afraid to tell you.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid you won’t approve...”
“How often have you known me to judge?” He gave her a one-raised-eyebrow look. It made him look boyish, which wasn’t that difficult to do, given his baby face features.
“Well apparently… my mother had a crush on Father Patrick. Way back when. It was before she met my dad.”
“Is that so?” Father Michael digested this information, putting his coffee cup down on its saucer. “Interesting. What did she say?”
“Actually I think it was mutual.” Erica watched his face for a reaction.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know how far things went,” she said, peeling back layers of her cinnamon roll. “But I do know they kissed.”
Father Michael didn’t say anything, looking down at his cup. She wondered if he was thinking about their kiss, the brief, forbidden touch of their lips. She hadn’t intended to kiss him. She hadn’t planned it. It had just happened, but she couldn’t get it out of her head. It had stayed with her, and she needed to know if it had stayed with him too.
“I think they may have had an affair. I haven’t read any more to find out. I’m not sure I want to know.” That was a lie. Of course Erica wanted to know. Father Michael looked at her, and she saw on his face he knew she was lying. “Have you ever been with a woman, Father Michael?”
“I shouldn’t answer that question.” Father Michael moved his cup around on the saucer, spinning it slowly in the opposite direction. “To tell you the truth, I shouldn’t be meeting with you here like this at all.”
“Why not?” Erica sucked her sticky fingers into her mouth, licking off all the sweetness.
“I think you know why.” He sat back, just looking at her. His eyes were a bright, cloudless blue, although the depths of them were more ocean than sky. She found herself lost in his eyes more often than not.
“I’m just curious.” She shrugged, taking a sip of her overly sweet coffee. “I didn’t know it was a crime to ask.”
“It isn’t a crime. But it’s also not appropriate.” He sighed. “I drove you home that night, and it was an act of charity. But this… meeting for coffee, what we’re doing here… this is stepping over the line.”
Erica inclined her head, catching his gaze. “Do you want to stop?”
“Honestly? No.” The look in his eyes, the longing there, made her feel weak.
“I know.” She sighed, glancing as the bell over the door jangled, seeing Buddy Crenshaw in the doorway. She hadn’t seen him since the night at the drive-in, and seeing him now, out of the blue, was like stepping into quicksand. She was drowning, unable to save herself.
“Are you okay?” Father Michael put his hand over hers.
“Fine.” Erica shook her head, looking down at the table.
“Buddy Crenshaw?” A dark look passed over Father Michael’s face as he glimpsed the boy who had just come into the shop. “Was it him?”
Erica just nodded, staring into the beige liquid sludge at the bottom of her coffee cup.
“Excuse me.” Father Michael stood, leaning on his cane.
Erica panicked, grabbing his arm. “What are you going to do?”
“Stay here.”
She watched as Father Michael confronted Buddy, pulling him off to the side, away from the line of customers waiting to make an order. She held her breath, straining to hear them, but Father Michael kept his voice down. She could only hear a murmur of it. But Buddy Crenshaw was hearing it full blast, his face red, gaze dropping downward, and the more Father Michael talked, the smaller Buddy Crenshaw seemed to get it. He actually appeared to be shrinking, cowering in the corner of the donut counter, trapped there by Father Michael’s anger.
Erica blinked up at Father Michael as he returned to the table. Buddy Crenshaw slinked by them, not bothering with whatever he had come into the Mayflower for in the first place. She hardly noticed him, looking up at Father Michael, seeing him not as a priest, although he was wearing his cassock and collar, he always was, but as a man. She had broached the subject, asking him those questions, because she wanted to know how he felt. Now all she had to do was look at his face.
“We better go.” Father Michael leaned on his cane, the same cane he had lifted in a threatening stance as he dressed down Buddy Crenshaw, an act she was sure no priest should ever contemplate let alone follow through with. He had rescued her that night when he found her walking home from the drive-in as a priest, but just now, he had protected her like a man. She saw it on his face, in his eyes. He cared as much as she did, and he was just as confused and conflicted about it as she was.
“My cinnamon roll,” Erica protested. She grabbed the last bit of it, popping into her mouth, and using her fingers to get the stray icing off the plate.
They walked outside, side by side, toward the church. There would be mass, and Father Michael and Father Patrick would lead, and Erica would sit and kneel in the pews like a good girl, but no rule, no religion, nothing could stop her feelings for him. She knew it was true. And she thought he knew it too. They walked in silence, up the block, neither of them knowing what to say to the other.
When they got close to the church, Father Michael took Erica’s hand in his, stopping her. She looked up at him, waiting. She knew he was going to end things. She knew it. She didn’t want to hear it; she wanted to run away so she wouldn’t hear the words. Instead, she waited patiently for him to say it.
“Erica...” He sighed heavily, looking down at her hand in his.
Here it comes.
He cleared his throat, his voice hoarse. “See you tomorrow? Same time?”
She could barely breathe, let alone speak, so instead she just nodded, a slow smile spreading across her face.
Erica tried bobby pins, keys, hammers, and screwdrivers, and still those little metal boxes stayed locked. She almost asked her father if he knew where the key might be, but thought better of it. She didn’t want him to know she had them. She was sure he wouldn’t approve. But her curious nature was driving her to madness. She had to know the rest of the story. Had father Patrick and her mother consummated their relationship?
She was far enough into the Mary Magdalenes to understand her mother’s experience in the order. They were doing a ritual—Erica’s first—for All Saints’ Day, the day after Halloween. She had delicious fantasies about writing an exposé on the Mary Magdalenes, citing her mother’s journals as proof of their existence, and her own experience as a journalist, living the story from the inside. The only hitch in her plan was her fear of what Father Michael would say when he found out she had sacrificed herself in suc
h a way.
Solie had been cooking and cleaning all week in preparation for the upcoming Halloween masquerade ball her father held in the warehouse every year. They used to have it in their big house by the river, but it had grown in the past five years since her mother’s death, accommodating more and more people. If Solie hadn’t had been a cleaning tornado that week, Erica never would have discovered the second set of keys. She cleaned everything, even hired extra help to dust and polish and wipe down everything, vacuuming the sofa cushions and mopping the floors.
It was Solie who set the mouse trap under Mr. Nolan’s mahogany desk, baiting it with peanut butter, which was far more effective than cheese, she claimed. Erica heard it snap one afternoon while Solie was out grocery shopping and her father was at a meeting somewhere—he said he wouldn’t be home for dinner. She was afraid to look, afraid to find the horrible sight of a mangled mouse in the trap, but she tore herself away from American Bandstand and went to check. The trap had been sprung, turned over on its face, but there was no mouse. Erica picked up the trap, studying it, curious. Something had set it off. Then she heard scratching. It seemed to be coming from inside the desk.
She opened the left-hand drawer, where the sound was coming from. There were file folders in here, her father’s client folders, business stuff. She didn’t know. But the scratching was behind that. She pulled some of the file folders out, laying them on top of the desk to make room so she could see to the back. She pulled the rest of the files forward, peering into the space behind them. Two beady, glassy eyes stared back at her and she jumped back, screaming in surprise. When she dared to look again, the mouse was gone, but she saw he had been holed up in a compartment at the very back of the drawer. He had clearly been raiding their house for material to build his nest.
Erica pulled the rest of the file folders out of the drawer, putting them with the others on top, and disengaging the drawer from its tracks, pulling that off too. Now there was enough light she could see to the very back. There was a hollow space at the back of the desk where the mouse had taken up residence. It was as wide and as tall as the drawer and tucked inside the secret compartment was a leather zippered pouch. She reached back and pulled it out, unzipping it and finding the jackpot. They were keys. Like the keys in her father’s desk drawer, but these keys were labeled. Every key had a code written on a sticker stuck to the face the key.
She poured the keys out on the desk, wondering which one might fit the boxes she had under her bed. Her boxes didn’t have codes on them, like the ones she had discovered in her father’s darkroom. All of the keys had number and letter codes, except for three. Those three had just two letters: S. P. She thought about it for a moment, wondering. It could mean anything. Her intuition told her the “S” must stand for Susan, her mother. Her maiden name had been Parker. Erica took the keys to her room, pulling the boxes out from under her bed.
She tried the first one, no luck. Then the second key, turning it in the lock. It turned easily. Erica felt her heart soaring, her belly fluttering with excitement, as she pressed the latch and the case opened. She expected more diaries, red leather bound five-year editions packed with her mother’s handwriting, but instead there were film reels. Frowning, she picked up one of them, holding the film up to the light, trying to see what images might be captured there, but she couldn’t really tell. She would have to watch them to find out.
She contemplated setting up the projector. It was packed away, way in the back where she’d found her mother’s journals. But she knew another place there was a projector. Erica quickly unlocked the other two cases, finding film reels instead of diaries in those as well. A little disappointed, but curious about the content of the films, she put the reels back in the cases, unlocked now, and carried them into the living room.
She found the key that would unlock her father’s hidden darkroom, pulling aside the tapestry to unlock the padlock and slide the bolt. She took the film reels inside, going through the developing room, into the back room, where the projector was waiting. Heart hammering hard in her chest, knowing Solie wouldn’t be gone more than an hour, she threaded the reels and turned the machine on. She watched, seeing her instinct had been spot on, because these films were of her mother. A much, much younger version of her mother. She was sitting on a porch with a dog in her lap, smiling and waving at the camera. Behind her was a woman Erica could only assume was Leah’s mother. She looked like another version of Leah, like a sister or a cousin.
These were home movies. Just home movies. Disappointed, Erica went to turn off the projector, when the scene changed. No longer her mother and Patty, now there was a room full of masked people. Her brain associated it immediately with the masquerade balls they held every year, but this wasn’t at her house, nor was it at the warehouse. This was somewhere else, a large space, the people masked but many of them completely nude.
She stared, watching, seeing a masked man standing in front of a girl who was strapped down to a table. Was it a table? She couldn’t be sure. There were two girls. One wearing a dark mask, the other one white. The film was black and white so she couldn’t differentiate the color. As she watched, the man who was clearly officiating, wearing a black mask to cover his features, a priest’s cassock and a priest’s collar around his neck, made the sign of the cross over the first girl, placing something directly between her legs, something small, like a poker chip or… the Eucharist. He moved to the next girl and did the same, placing a Eucharist on her shaven labia.
Was he giving them communion? Erica knew enough about the Mary Magdalenes to know what she was seeing must be part of her ritual. Like the ritual she would be participating in the night after Halloween. What had she agreed to do? What had she gotten herself into? Her initiation had been nothing in comparison—she was stripped down, forced to surrender everything, yes—there were candles and words in Latin, responses she memorized without understanding their meaning.
But it had been nothing like this.
The priest was saying something, his lips moving, and he took a silver pitcher, pouring some sort of liquid between the first girl’s legs. The priest, and Erica could only assume it was Father Patrick, she thought so by the way he moved, the shape of his jaw, poured the liquid between the second girl’s legs, then raising the pitcher into the air, saying more words, Erica didn’t know what, and there was applause. It was silent, of course, because the movie had no sound, but people were putting their hands together
Now the tables, what she thought were tables but were in fact giant wooden crosses, were rising. The girls were strapped to them, their arms fastened to the horizontal bars across, their legs open, kept that way by a metal bar put between them. The girls were masked, but Erica had known both women her whole life. She would’ve recognized them masked or unmasked. It was her mother and Leah’s mother. She had no doubt. They were masked, their bodies painted, and still, she knew.
The camera panned back, taking in the whole scene, and Erica saw other masked girls in the room, some of them wearing light-colored masks, some of them dark, the entire room filled with masked men and women. The room appeared to be round, and there were rooms, open to view with sheer curtains, all along the walls, one after the other, and in every room there were masked men and women in various positions, having sex—everywhere, they were everywhere.
The camera focused again on the crosses, raised to a forty-five degree angle so everyone could see them, and then they began to lower. She was sure of it—the girl in the white mask was her mother. The Mary—the Virgin. The girl in the darker mask—it had to be red—was Leah’s mother, the Magdalene, or the Magdala. She realized the S and P on the keys meant Susan and Patty. The crowd was applauding again as the crosses were lowered, leaving the women flat on their backs.
More masked man moved to unstrap her legs, taking off the bar that had held them spread eagle, and Erica watched with dawning horror, as priests lined up to take turns with the women.
Erica heard the front door
slam and she nearly screamed, turning off the projector and grabbing the reels. She shoved them back in the box, closed it, and grabbed the others she had brought with her, slipping out of the room, hearing Solie grunting and complaining, calling for her. Quickly, Erica locked the padlock, letting the tapestry fall into place. She returned the key to the drawer, faced with all the file folders up on top of the desk, the mess she’d made. She stashed the boxes full of film in her father’s closet, shutting the door, and running down the hall to meet Solie.
“There you are! I could use some help!”
“I’m sorry,” Erica apologized. “I found the mouse.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.” Erica made a face. “He got away.”
She helped Solie with the groceries, then showed her where the mouse had been nesting. The leather pouch with the keys was no longer there. But Solie cleaned up the mouse nest, and reset the trap, putting all the file folders back in the drawer. While Solie was busy putting away groceries and making dinner, Erica managed to stash the keys back in the hidden compartment and retrieve the three boxes of film reels from her father’s closet.