Priest: A Love Story

My phone buzzed violently on my counter.

It was Monday, two days post-not-really-sex, and I was thinking about how I was meeting Poppy in just a few minutes for lunch. I was cleaning the counter and remembering what the view had been from this exact location two nights ago.

I didn’t even try to puzzle out what the text said. It was from Bishop Bove, and my boss was not only terrible at texting but also really insecure about his terrible texting, so I knew he would call right after he sent the text to make sure I got it (and then translate it for me.)

Sure enough, my phone rang a moment later, The Walking Dead theme song echoing in my kitchen. Normally I would hum a couple of bars, normally I would be more than happy to talk to the gruff, principled man who was reforming our diocese and fighting for reform alongside me, but today, I only felt a prickling trepidation, as if he knew somehow what I had done last night. As if he would guess it the minute he heard my voice. “Hello?”

“Are you going to the Mid-America Clergy Convention next year?” Bishop Bove asked, skipping straight to business. “I want to put a panel together. And I want you on it.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, and I realized my palms were actually getting sweaty, like I’d been called to the principal’s office or pulled over or something. Shit. If I felt this nervous on the phone with him, what would I do when I saw him in person?

“I think this is finally the year we’ll get the panel we want in there,” the bishop said. “You know how long I’ve pushed for it.”

The panel we want…the panel on abuse. Bishop Bove had submitted proposals to the continuing clergy education organization for the last four years and had been shot down every time. But the leadership within the organization had shifted, younger organizers were in charge, and I knew that Bove had been told privately that he would finally get his controversial panel.

But how was I going to sit in a hotel ballroom staring at a sea of priests and presume to lecture them on the perils of errant priest sexuality? I glanced down at my countertop, where I’d slipped inside Poppy. Not all the way. Not all the way, but enough to come. Enough to make her come. I rubbed my eyes, trying to block out the sight.

Could a vow be not all the way broken? Could a sin be not all the way committed?

Of course not. And even if no one ever knew about it, I realized that I’d destroyed my legitimacy with myself, and maybe that was worse than my public legitimacy being destroyed. What had I gotten myself into? Was I ever going to be able to let myself speak about—preach about—the things I cared the most for again?

“Tyler?”

“If you get the panel, I’ll be there,” I mumbled, still rubbing my eyes. I was seeing sparks.

Better than seeing my sins.

“I knew you would. How’s St. Margaret’s? How’s Millie? She gave the diocesan bookkeeper hell last week for misplacing your quarterly tithe reports. I heard she reduced the poor man to tears.”

“Everything’s good here, everything is going really well,” I lied. “Just gearing up for all the fall youth stuff.”

And you know, halfway fucking hopeful converts.

“Good. I’m proud of you, Tyler. I don’t say that often enough, but the work you’ve done in that town has been nothing short of a miracle.”

Stop, I begged him silently. Please stop.

“You are doing Christ’s work, Tyler. You are such an example.”

Please, please stop.

“Well, I’ll let you go. And the panel—I’ll text you the moment I hear.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Fine, I’ll call. Goodbye, Tyler.”

I hung up and stared at my phone a minute. I had woken up telling myself that yesterday was my starting over day. My being chaste day. And that today would be even easier. So why did I feel like my sins were still haunting me? Still dogging my steps?

Because you haven’t confessed them, Tyler.

I was an idiot. I should have done this at the very beginning. I sat on one side of the booth every week—why hadn’t it occurred to me to seek out the other side? To seek out the absolution and accountability that every person needed?

Next week. I would go down to Kansas City next Thursday to visit my confessor—a man I went to seminary with—and then I would have dinner with Mom and Dad and everything would be so much better.

I felt a little swell of relief at this plan. It was all going to be okay.

Poppy had come to Mass yesterday morning and sought me out afterwards to arrange our lunch plans for today. I’d wanted to have lunch with her right then—or have her for lunch, I hadn’t been sure—but she’d ducked away the moment our plans were figured out, and then I’d been swarmed by the usual crowd of after-service lingerers. Was she trying to keep her distance? And if so, was it because she wanted to? Or as a perceived favor to me?

The thought that this would be how we would behave around each other from now on—businesslike and abrupt—made me acutely miserable.

Which was stupid, because it was what I had wanted—no, what I should want—but I didn’t. I wanted both lives—the life where we were believer and priest and the life where we were man and woman—and every moment that passed without my mouth on Poppy’s skin, more and more of my willpower bled away, until I was left with the uncomfortable knowledge that I would endure whatever guilt or punishment I had to in order to touch her again.

Today these thoughts still clouded my head when I gathered my things and walked the two blocks to the nearest winery. I had expected to see Poppy by herself but was pleasantly surprised to see her chatting animatedly with Millie in the wine garden, an open bottle of something white and chilled on the table.

Poppy waved me over. “I invited Millie—I hope that’s okay?”

“Of course, it’s okay,” Millie interrupted before I could answer. “This boy can barely tell time, let alone budget for a major project.”

I mock-frowned at her. “I’ll have you know that I’ve got a very organized pile of Post-It Notes and bar napkins in this bag.”

Millie huffed, as if I’d confirmed every one of her darkest fears. I glanced over to Poppy, some immature part of me wanting to make sure that she had laughed and then wishing I hadn’t once I took in how marvelous she looked. She wore turquoise skinny jeans and a nowhere-near-loose enough t-shirt, a soft thin cotton that reminded me of the shirt she wore Saturday night…the shirt I’d sucked her nipples through. Her hair was in a messy braid thrown over one shoulder, and her eyes were more green than brown in the sunlight filtering in through the vines covering the pergola, and her lips were back in their trademark red, and why did she have to be so fucking sexy all the damn time?

“Sit, my boy, before the Riesling gets warm,” Millie told me. “Now, Poppy, tell Father Bell what you just told me.”

I pulled out a wrought iron chair and settled in, already sweating in the early September heat. Millie poured a third glass of cool wine and I accepted it, grateful to have something I could stare at other than Poppy.

“Well,” Poppy started, “to start off, I’m not familiar with what you guys are doing for fundraising or what you have done in the past, so I don’t want to step on any toes or anything.”

“You won’t,” I promised.

“But tell me if I do. This is your project after all.”

“It’s the church’s project,” I said. “And since you’ve been coming to St. Margaret’s, I’d say that makes it your project too.”

She flushed a happy little flush, as if this pleased her, tracing circles around the edge of her iPad as she talked. I remembered my thoughts about her during our meeting, that she was a born volunteer, someone who loved to help. I saw it in her eyes as she talked, the excitement and the purpose. “I’ve noticed that Weston has a huge number of seasonal festivals, which isn’t unusual for a bed and breakfast town,” she was saying. “And I noticed on the church website that you advertise that you keep your doors open for visitors during these festivals—have you ever done more?”

“Not really,” Millie said.

“And how many visitors do you usually get?”

I tried to remember. “Three? Four?”

Poppy nodded, as if I’d proved her point. “I think a festival is a perfect opportunity to bring in more donors, if we take advantage of it the right way. This building is over one hundred and fifty years old—and that kind of old charm is exactly what people are coming for. That and booze. So you set up on the sidewalk, you give away local wine and whiskey from the distillery, but you stay away from the usual church sale fare. They’re not coming in to buy recipe books or rosaries—they are coming in to see. And you give them the booze for free, so they feel unconsciously obligated to you.”

I could see the Business Poppy right now as she layered through her points efficiently and easily, rolling her stylus through her fingers as she talked. I saw the wealthy boarding school girl, the Dartmouth grad, the woman engineered for large boardrooms and corporate victories.

“So anyway, you make the church a destination for the people wandering around. That’s step one. But more importantly, you reach out to the local newspapers and the Kansas City television stations. You turn St. Margaret’s into a local interest news story, the kind that goes viral on Twitter and Facebook. The church is about preserving Midwestern tradition—you emphasize the things Millie says you are planning to do—keeping the original windows, restoring the original hardwood floors and repairing the old stonework. People love that stuff. And then, step three, which is really step zero because you do this part before you do anything else, you make a Kickstarter for the renovation, so that when the stories air and the posts get reposted, there’s an easy link for people to follow. You’ll increase your fundraising footprint from the Weston area to the entire Kansas City Metro—and possibly even farther out than that.”

This woman was so damn smart. “So why not just do the Kickstarter and the news thing?”

“Because,” Poppy said, leaning forward, “you need to bring a crowd of people into the church, to see it with their own eyes, to learn about its history and potential restoration. You need them to go back to wherever they came from and seed the push. They’re the ones who will be the most likely to start sharing and tweeting, they’re the ones who will help you overcome that first clutch of inertia, because they are invested now, they’ve spent time and energy in St. Margaret’s. They are your disciples. You teach them, and then you say, ‘Go thou and do likewise.’”

“You’ve been reading up on your Bible,” I said approvingly.

She smiled. “Just a little. Millie invited me to the Come and See meeting next week. That verse was on the back of the brochure.”

The Come and See meetings were for people interested into joining the Church, and now it was my turn to hide my happy reaction. Despite everything that had gone wrong between us, she was still sincerely interested in exploring the faith.

“I think your idea sounds fantastic,” I said. “We’ve pretty much exhausted all of the usual means, and I think our own parish is tapped dry of funds. You make it sound so easy though—how expensive will it be to offer free wine? How do I even get in touch with the news people?”

Poppy tugged the cap off her stylus with her teeth and starting jotting notes onto her iPad. “I’ll take care of it. The wineries here will donate the wine—that’s easy. And the news stations are always looking for stuff like this, it’ll be little more than sending an email, which I’ll do this week. And I’ll set up the Kickstarter too. You will see—it’s not that much work.”

“It feels like a lot of work,” I admitted. “I mean, I think you’re right and I want to do this, but it does feel like a lot.”

“Okay, it does look like a lot, but really, I promise it won’t be. Especially with me doing the setup—all you’ll have to do is be charming and square-jawed for the cameras.”

Millie patted my arm appreciatively. “He’s good at that. He’s our secret weapon.”

Poppy’s eyes flicked to mine. “Yes, he is.”

We spent the rest of the hour planning, deciding on what festival made the most sense for our fundraiser (Irish Fest) and who would do what (Poppy would do mostly everything, but Millie and I agreed to be conscripted wherever we were needed, giving Poppy our personal email addresses and phone numbers.) And then Millie climbed in her gold Buick sedan and drove the two streets over to her house while Poppy and I walked back in the direction of the church.

“I won’t be able to come to confession today,” she said out of nowhere. “I have a conference call. I hope that’s okay.”

“Most Catholics only go to confession once a year. You’re fine.” But I was a little disappointed. (And of course for all the wrong reasons.)

“I was wondering…”

“Yes?” I asked hopefully.

“This is going to sound stupid. Never mind.”

We were crossing the main street now, from shady sidewalk to even shadier sidewalk, and all around us was the noise of the breeze in the leaves and the birds and the faint roll of cars far away. I wanted to tell her that right now I’d give her anything, I’d give her everything, so long as we could stay in this peaceful bubble of early autumn forever, just the two of us and the leaves and the green warmth that made it so easy to feel loved by God.

But I couldn’t tell her that. So instead, I said, “I don’t think you’re capable of asking a stupid question, Ms. Danforth.”

“You should reserve judgment until I ask, Father,” she said in a voice that was half laugh, half sigh.

“I’m Catholic. Judging is my thing.”

This earned me a real laugh. She squinted up at the brick edifice of the church as we approached and then squared her shoulders, as if deciding to go for it. “Here’s the thing. I want to do this…this God stuff. I think maybe it’s the first choice that’s felt right since I walked off that stage at Dartmouth. But I have no framework for even thinking about living a religious life. I know I’m supposed to show up at Mass and I’m supposed to read the Bible and that all seems straightforward enough. But praying…I feel foolish. I feel clumsy. I’ve never really done it before and I’m not sure I’m doing it right.” She turned to me. “So I guess I wanted to know if you can help me with that. With the praying.”

I meant to tell her that prayer wasn’t a test, that God wasn’t grading her on how well or how eloquently she prayed, that even sitting in silence counted. That we Catholics had prescribed prayers to circumvent exactly this kind of crisis. But then the breeze blew a strand of hair across her face, and I without thinking reached up and brushed it back behind her ear, and her eyes drifted closed at my touch, and fuck fuck fuck, what had I been about to say?

“Tonight,” I said. “After the men’s group. Come find me and we’ll work on it.”