Three Marys

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘You could leave.’

  ‘They persuaded me to stay another six months. For the sake of the girls.’

  ‘What happens in six months?’

  ‘Mrs Torres told me the girls wouldn’t be as dependent on me after that.’

  ‘You’re here by choice. I don’t believe the same is true for the girls.’

  ‘I don’t go there,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should but I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone could legitimately criticize you for your role here,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty clear how much the girls love you.’

  She teared up fast. Cal had the sense she wouldn’t mind it if he touched her hand. She didn’t and he kept his fingertips on her knuckles.

  ‘Thank you for your help. The DNA testing is ultimately for them.’

  ‘What are you expecting, Professor of Religion? God’s DNA?’

  ‘I’m in the dark too,’ he said, sliding his fingers away. ‘I’ll text you when I know.’

  ‘Will you be coming back?’

  ‘If they invite me. I don’t know where we are.’

  He thought she might volunteer their location but she didn’t. Instead she smiled at him. ‘If you do maybe we could have that glass of wine.’ Then she caught herself. ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t cool.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said.

  She left him in the great room and George Pole came in to see him off.

  ‘Mrs Torres tells me you had a productive visit with the girls,’ he said.

  ‘I think it was. I asked them if they wanted to leave. They said they did.’

  ‘You also asked them what the next best thing would be. They answered, bringing their families here.’

  ‘Were you listening in?’

  Pole smiled and nodded. ‘We have baby monitors for safety.’

  ‘More honesty,’ Cal said. ‘Are you going to send for their families?’

  ‘It’s something that’s under consideration. You’ll be reporting back to the Vatican I assume?’

  ‘I will. Do you want me to carry a message?’

  ‘Please give Celestine my regards.’

  ‘What shall I tell him about what’s going to happen after this beginning of yours?’

  ‘Tell him that all will be revealed.’

  ‘And what do you want to tell me about the structure I saw out the window?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the same thing. All will be revealed.’

  TWENTY

  After Labor Day, Cal made a pilgrimage to Jessica’s office armed with a box of roses.

  ‘What are these for?’ she asked, clearly fully aware of the offering’s purpose.

  ‘Shit, Jessica, for being me I suppose. For ditching you on Nantucket, for leaving you with a depressed priest on a holiday weekend.’

  ‘Actually, we got along famously,’ she said, ‘and he wasn’t the least depressed – at least with me. He bordered on merry. Joe’s my new BFF. I used to say that gay guys were the best friends a girl could have. Now I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that priests are even better.’

  ‘Good to know,’ Cal said. ‘Anyway, to paraphrase Caesar, I went, I saw, I didn’t exactly conquer. But I got samples for DNA. Can I give them to you?’

  Jessica took the baggies with finger cots and hair and told him it would take a few days.

  ‘Was it a religious experience?’ she asked tartly.

  ‘It was more like visiting a girl’s boarding school.’

  ‘I’m awfully glad I wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘It might have given me unpleasant flashbacks.’

  ‘So, can I make it up to you with dinner on Friday?’ he asked.

  ‘Actually, Cal, I’m booked. Joe and I have a dinner date.’

  Cal thought he’d be speaking to Cardinal Da Silva and Sister Elisabetta but it seemed the interest in his report was so great that the pope wanted to participate directly. George Pole, the proverbial thorn in his side, was back sticking him again and Celestine wanted to understand his intentions. While Da Silva and Elisabetta asked questions, the pope stayed silent.

  ‘The infants, how did they seem?’ Da Silva asked.

  ‘Like infants, I guess,’ Cal said. ‘I haven’t been around many babies so I don’t have a good point of reference. To be honest, they looked pretty much the same to me.’

  ‘I see,’ Da Silva said, a bit deflated perhaps.

  Cal added, ‘If you were expecting that I’d say they all had little halos over their heads like a Renaissance painting, then no, they didn’t.’

  ‘I really don’t know what I was expecting you to say,’ Da Silva said.

  Finally, the pope’s voice came down the line sonorously. ‘I am more interested how George Pole seemed.’

  ‘Self-satisfied,’ Cal said. ‘A bit like the cat who ate the canary. Picture him with feathers coming out of his mouth.’

  ‘That is an image I can easily imagine,’ the pope said. ‘Did you get the impression that George was the one who conceived of the taking of the girls?’

  ‘He alluded to the involvement of other people but it was hard for me to judge whether he’s a pawn or a king.’

  ‘The only thing we know for sure,’ Celestine said, ‘is that he is no longer a cardinal.’

  Elisabetta asked, ‘Professor, did you get any sense of the timing of Pole’s next move?’

  ‘None. He said “all will be revealed” a couple of times. Does that mean days or weeks or months? Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘We can share something with you, Professor,’ Da Silva said. ‘Since Pole resigned as cardinal, we have received notice of a trickle of resignations of priests mostly from American dioceses with petitions for the dispensation of their clerical obligations. However, just within the past few days we have become aware of fifty resignations of priests and two American bishops, one from Missouri, the other from Louisiana, both ardent conservatives. One gets the idea that something is brewing.’

  Cal heard a series of sounds coming from the Vatican end of the call.

  Someone knocking on a door.

  A chair scraping as someone got up.

  Elisabetta talking to a man in the distance.

  Her saying something in Italian he couldn’t quite make out and the pope replying, ‘What did you say?’

  Cardinal Da Silva said into the speakerphone, ‘Sorry, Cal, could you just hold on a second?’

  Then he heard a TV transmission in the background that sounded like a news program.

  Then Elisabetta came back to the speaker and said, ‘I’m sorry, Professor, but we’ve got to hang up now. I’d suggest you turn on your television. There’s a picture of what is probably the building you told us about on George Pole’s ranch.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Cal didn’t have a TV in his office so he logged on to CNN from his computer. An anchorwoman was talking over an aerial shot of the structure Cal had seen from Sue’s window. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read: BREAKING NEWS: VIRGIN BIRTH GIRLS TO APPEAR TOGETHER.

  The footage appeared to be shot from a drone or a helicopter sweeping over the structure. The scale of the building was much greater than what Cal had appreciated from his myopic window view. What he saw that day was a section of a spike that suggested a church spire, but from his vantage point he hadn’t been able to take in its full character or visualize its peak. Now it was clear that this was a church – more than a church, a cathedral, its spire tipped by a giant cross of gleaming steel.

  It certainly wasn’t the first modernist cathedral that Cal had ever seen. Brazilians have an affinity for building outsized, provocative Catholic cathedrals on a grand scale, but the ones in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro were so futuristic that they barely resembled churches. Likewise, for the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco. This ranch cathedral was an unusual hybrid of a classic Gothic European design and modern architectural aesthetic. Instead of medieval stone, it was built with glass and steel. It had the traditional cruciform ground plan of a long
nave crossed by a transept and a soaring central spire but instead of the rather small and narrow windows of Gothic churches, the cathedral walls were all glass, greenish and mirrored, and it was in a mirrored surface that Cal caught the reflection of the helicopter that was shooting the live footage. After a short while the architectural parallel hit him. The client must have told the architect: build me a twenty-first-century version of England’s Salisbury Cathedral.

  It looked like it could accommodate several hundred worshippers but so far, all broadcasted shots were exterior. As the helicopter continued to circle the structure, the anchorwoman referred to briefing material the network had just received indicating that at any moment they would be receiving a live feed from inside the church, its location undisclosed.

  The anchorwoman said, ‘I want to stress that ordinarily we don’t run video that isn’t ours or that we haven’t previously vetted but because of the extraordinary level of interest in these missing girls, we are airing it with a brief delay to give us the opportunity to cut the broadcast if we deem the material is inappropriate. Let’s bring in our religious affairs correspondent, Henry Capriati, to get his views on what we’re seeing.’

  The reporter started commentating about the size and scale of the church, stressing that whoever built it was intending it to be used by large numbers of people. Then he said, ‘Clearly there is a high level of interest in seeing the three Marys and perhaps hearing from them for the first time. And now there will be a high level of interest in learning who are the individuals behind this construction.’

  Cal felt a tap on his shoulder. He’d been so glued to the computer that he had failed to see Joe Murphy coming in.

  ‘Thought I’d swing by to watch this with you,’ Murphy said. ‘You mind?’

  ‘Have a seat. Sorry there’s no seat belt.’

  ‘You think it’s going to be wild?’

  ‘How could it not be? Reached a decision on this semester?’

  ‘I’m not going to take a leave. Business as usual.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re feeling better?’

  ‘I am. Jessica’s been a help, if you must know. Thanks for making the introduction.’

  ‘I’m delighted, Joe, and somewhat amused. Jessica’s done nothing but bust my balls lately. I never pegged her as being the supportive type.’

  ‘I dare say your dynamic is different,’ Murphy said with a smile. ‘She’s been a good listener and a good sight cheaper than a shrink. She’s also funny. Turns out I respond well to humor. Who knew? It’s also refreshing that she’s a she. I haven’t had a female friend since my days before the seminary.’

  ‘Well, I’m—’

  Cal didn’t get ‘glad’ out of his mouth because the video feed abruptly switched to the interior of the cathedral accompanied by Bach’s Prelude in C Major for the organ. For all the modernity of the exterior, the interior was muted and strangely traditional. The tinted glass filtered out the brightness of the sun and bathed the interior in a greenish hue. The ceiling was vaulted and pale with wooden coffering evocative of flying buttresses. The floor was a green, mottled marble, the empty pews dark and lacquered. The altar, built of similar dark wood, stood in a polygonal apse decorated with a giant painted panel, a modern work paying homage to a Renaissance style of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms, except that there were three Marys and three babies.

  The camera smoothly zoomed on to the apse until a man appeared from a wing and approached the altar.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Cal said. ‘Holy, holy shit.’

  ‘Is that …?’ Murphy asked.

  Cal answered, ‘You’re damn right it is.’

  It wasn’t all that surprising to see George Pole making an appearance. Cal already knew he’d be involved in some way. What was eye-popping was what he was wearing. The man was climbing the altar dressed in papal vestments. But not fully modern ones. Some of his regalia and vestments had not been worn by pontiffs for ages, including his triregnum, a triple-tiered crown, his broad old-fashioned pallium worn over his white chasuble, and a red mantum, a cape that was so long and impractical that it hadn’t been used since the Second Vatican Council. And the staff he held in his right hand was not the modern papal ferula capped by a crucifix, but the ancient crozier, the bent pastoral staff fashioned on a shepherd’s crook.

  ‘What is happening?’ Murphy muttered.

  Standing at the altar, Pole surveyed the empty church. His audience was not there with him. It was in the ether, fed by TV cameras.

  The music faded and he spoke into a microphone. ‘Good day to you,’ he began. ‘My name is George Pole. Until recently I was a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. I resigned my position out of love for the Church and its glorious history. But it was no longer the Catholic Church I knew. I began to stop recognizing it when, as a youngster, it abandoned the Latin Mass. I began to stop recognizing it when it made a purposeful turn to so-called modernity and ecumenism that changed Catholicism in large ways and small. I particularly stopped recognizing it during this papacy when the Church became a vehicle more for social welfare than the welfare of the everlasting soul. Because of my abiding love for the deeply rooted traditions and theological underpinnings of the Church I could no longer be a cog in the wheel of what it has become.’

  Cal grunted a laugh. Pole had used the same phrase to describe his role in whatever this was.

  ‘As I contemplated my fate I did not have a clear vision of what might follow. I just knew that I could no longer keep on walking down the same path. And then something miraculous happened, something that points so emphatically and definitively to the glory and the wisdom of our almighty God. The Lord looked down from Heaven and reached out to touch three teenage girls from far-flung reaches of the globe. These girls were young and pure, virgins all. They were simple girls. They did not come from wealth and privilege. And despite their virginity – verified not only by experts within their own countries, but by Dr Richard Benedict, the president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, in a report I intend to release today – I say despite their virginity, these girls, all named Mary, became pregnant. They saw a divine light and they heard the voice of God tell them, “You have been chosen.” And now these girls have given birth to infant boys they have decided to call Jesus. Jesus Ruperto, Jesus Juan, and Jesus David. How, I ask you, do these Marys differ from Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus Christ? I for one, see no difference. Two millennia ago the world needed a savior and the Holy Ghost delivered him unto us. Jesus Christ still walks among us but most are blind to his presence. So, what has the Holy Ghost done? He has given us three new Sons of God to verily walk among us and counsel us, three new Sons of God to renew the Church and reinforce the message of the Gospels. We cannot be blind to these infants. I will not be blind to them. For they come at a time when the mother Church needs a renewal and I no longer believe that renewal can come from within. It must come from the outside. The Holy Roman Church is no longer relevant. That is why I have accepted the position as pope of a new Church, a Church steeped in ancient traditions, a Church that cares about your soul, not your politics; a Church for rich and poor; a Church for a new era, dedicated to Jesus Christ our Savior, dedicated to Holy Mary, Mother of God, but also dedicated to Jesus Ruperto, Jesus Juan, and Jesus David, and the three Marys, their Holy Mothers. For myself, I have taken the name of Peter, pope of the New Catholic Church.’

  Murphy spat out, ‘What a fucking asswipe.’

  Cal was thinking much the same thing but he said, ‘I’ve never heard you swear before, Joe. That has to be coming from Jessica.’

  ‘She’s bringing out the Galway in me.’

  Pole took a pause, perhaps imagining a crowd somewhere erupting in applause. When he continued he looked to the wings and said, ‘And now, I would like the world to meet the font of our inspiration: our Marys and their infant sons.’

  The organ music picked up again as Maria Aquino, Maria Mollo, and Mary Riordan each entered the ap
se holding on to their babies. The girls were dressed in identical outfits of long-sleeved white button-down blouses, black skirts coming well below the knee, and black flat shoes. The babies were likewise dressed identically in white shirts and the light-blue blankets that swaddled them. The Marias were smiling but Mary Riordan looked fed up and shirty.

  ‘Get a load of our Irish lass,’ Murphy said. ‘She looks as joyful as I did in my proof of life photo.’

  Pole came down from the altar to be among the girls. There must have been a Lavalier mic clipped to his vestments because he was perfectly amplified.

  ‘The Old Catholic Church as we will now call it will be outraged. They will be baying for our blood. They will condemn us as heretics. We will be called sacrilegious. But we will not be silenced and we will not be cowed. Our foundation is made of thick and everlasting bedrock. Our foundation is our new Virgin Marys and our new baby Jesuses. Now I, Pope Peter of the New Catholic Church, invite members of the Old Catholic Church including its priests, monsignors, nuns, bishops, even archbishops and cardinals and all its devoted faithful to join us. I also invite members of all Christian Protestant and fundamental faiths to join us. In fact, I invite members of any faith – Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, anyone – and people who have been agnostics or non-believers, to open their hearts to the miracle of virgin birth you can see with your own eyes. Join us.’

  ‘You going to sign up, Joe?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Where do I enlist?’

  ‘Before too long, this magnificent cathedral that we stand in today will be sanctified by me as the Cathedral of the Blessed New Virgin Marys. I will be conducting Mass on that day, a Latin Mass. The location of our cathedral will be made public and we will welcome the attendance of the faithful. Our Marys and their babies will be there to celebrate Mass with us. Have a blessed day.’

  The transmission ended and Cal blurted out, ‘Holy shit. What did we just see?’

  Murphy stayed in his chair, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I’ve developed a taste for strong drink lately. Is it too early?’