Priest: A Love Story

My screen door slammed shut, and I jumped out of my kitchen chair, expecting Poppy or an angry horde of parishioners or the bishop here to excommunicate me, but it was just Millie, her arms laden with frozen casseroles.

She bustled past me into the kitchen, the late afternoon light shining through her stiff, brick-red wig as she started unloading her cargo.

“You are too clean,” she said by way of greeting, scowling at the fastidiously neat countertops. “Boys your age should be messy.”

“I’m hardly a boy, Millie,” I said, walking over to help her move the food into the freezer.

“At my age, anyone under sixty is a boy,” she said dismissively, shooing me out of the way so she could put one of the dishes in the oven.

Millie was approximately one hundred and thirty years old, but she was not only one of my most active parishioners, but the sharp-as-a-tack bookkeeper for the church. She’d been the one to insist that we upgrade to iPads and Squares for our bake sales and Fish Fry Fridays, and the one who spearheaded the installation of fiber optic internet when nowhere else in town had it yet.

She’d also adopted me as a sort of project when I moved up here, new to town and new to living any place other than a trendy Midtown apartment in walking distance to a Chipotle. She’d clucked her tongue at my age and my appearance (her nickname for me was “Father What-a-Waste”) and showing up once a week with food (even though I’d protested a thousand times that I could cook for myself [mostly ramen noodles, but still.]) And after she’d met my mother and they’d spent an hour talking about the best temperature of water to use in piecrust dough, it was all over. Millie adopted my mother as well, along with my brothers, who got packages of cookies sent to their sleek offices in downtown Kansas City every week.

Except today I felt unworthy of her bustling, fussing attentions. I felt unworthy of everything—this house, this job, this town—and I just wanted to sit here at my kitchen table until I died.

No, that was a lie. I wanted to do something—run or lift weights or scrub the tile until my hands bled—I wanted penance. Funny how many times I had counseled my flock about the real nature of penance, the real weight of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, and my first reaction to sinning with Poppy was to punish myself.

Or at the very least, exhaust myself so that I couldn’t think actual thoughts any more.

“Something’s bothering you,” Millie decided, sitting at the table and folding her hands together into a bundle of papery skin and old rings. Someone once told me that she’d been one of the first female engineers in Missouri, doing surveying for the government when they built the interstate system through the Midwest. And it was easy to believe now, with the no-nonsense look she was leveling at me, with those sharp eyes searching my face for every detail.

I did my best attempt at an easy smile. I have a nice smile, I admit. It’s one of my most effective weapons, although I lobby it more against congregants than co-eds these days. “It’s just the heat, Millie,” I said, making to stand.

“Uh-uh. Try again,” she said and nodded back to the chair. I sat again, fidgeting like a kid. (Millie has that effect on me. Our bishop once joked after meeting her that she should have been the Mother Superior at an abbey a hundred years ago, and all I have to say about that is that I would feel sorry for any nun working under her.)

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, keeping my voice light. “I promise.”

She reached across the table, covering my large hand with her thin, wrinkled one. “The thing about being old is that I know when people are lying. Now, last time I checked, you were in charge of an entire parish. You wouldn’t lie to one of your parishioners, would you?”

If it was about having almost-sex on the sanctuary floor? A fresh wave of guilt flooded through me as I realized that I was compounding my sins now. I was lying (and lying to a good person who’d done nothing but take care of me.) Suddenly, I wanted to tell Millie about this afternoon, about the past couple of weeks, about this new temptation that was the oldest temptation on earth.

Instead, I stared down at our hands and didn’t answer. Because I was prideful and defensive and furious with myself. And that wasn’t all.

I wanted to do it again. I wanted Poppy again. And if I told someone my sin, I’d be accountable. I’d be bound to obey my vows, I’d be bound to behave.

Nothing about Poppy Danforth made me want to behave.

But I’d be risking everything by not behaving, my job and my community and my duty and my sister’s memory and maybe even my eternal soul.

I lowered my head onto Millie’s hand, careful not to rest the full weight against her fragile bones, but desperately needing comfort. “I can’t talk about it,” I said into the table. I wasn’t going to lie. (Except how often did I tell my youth group about lies of omission? When exactly had I started making the sharp left turn into being a hypocrite?)

Millie patted the back of my head. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the pretty young woman who bought the old Anderson house?”

My head snapped up. I don’t know what my face looked like, but she laughed. “I saw you two at the coffee shop last week. Even through the window, I could see you guys made quite a couple.”

Fuck. Did she suspect? And if she did, did she judge me for it?

“She was looking at the renovation spreadsheets. She’s got a background in finance and an MBA from Dartmouth.” I didn’t mention that she also had a background in seducing wealthy men by dancing on a platform. Or that her cunt tasted sweeter than heaven.

“Maybe she and I will have to get together for coffee sometime,” Millie said. “Since you can barely add two communion wafers together. Unless, of course,” she said, watching my face, “you’d rather keep the meetings just between the two of you.”

“Rem acu tetigisti,” I said, sliding my eyes away from hers. You’ve hit the nail on the head.

“I’m going to assume that means, ‘You’re right, Millie, I am deplorable at math.’”

It didn’t.

“I’ve always said that you were too young and too handsome to lock your life away. ‘Trouble will come of it,’ I said. ‘Mark my words.’ And nobody marked my words.”

I didn’t answer. I was staring at our interlocked hands again, thinking of the silence in the sanctuary after I’d come all over my stomach, the feeling of Poppy’s wet heat pressing down on me. I’d taken two showers, scrubbing myself to the point of pain, but nothing could erase the feeling of her skin on mine. The feeling of warmth splattering on my stomach as she watched with hungry, feral eyes.

“My dear boy, you do realize this is perfectly natural. What was the homily you preached your first month here? That part of healing would be celebrating normal, consensual, Godly sex?”

I had preached that. Setting aside the fact that I had enjoyed my share of consensual sex in college (consensual, but not always normal, mind you), I had a firm theological belief in the importance of human sexuality. Almost every variation of Christianity had been in the business of suppressing sex and its enjoyment, but suppressed desires didn’t just disappear. They festered. They created guilt and shame and, in the worst cases, deviancy. We weren’t ashamed to enjoy food and alcohol in moderation—why were we so afraid of sex?

But obviously, I had meant this message for my congregation, not for me.

“What was it you quoted?” Millie asked. “Mere Christianity? ‘The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins…that is a why a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.’”

“Yes, but Lewis ends that paragraph with: ‘Of course, it’s better to be neither.’”

“You are neither. Did you really think that by wearing a collar every day you would stop being a man?”

“No,” I said, agitated. “But I thought I would be able to control my desires with prayer and self-discipline. It’s my vocation. I chose this life, Millie. And am I going to abandon it at the first temptation?”

“Nobody said anything about abandoning. I’m simply saying, my dear boy, that you could choose not flagellate yourself over this. I’ve lived a long time, and a man and a woman wanting each other is by far one of the least sinful things I’ve seen.”

I’d set out the Bible study curriculum for the men’s group at the beginning of the year, so it was nothing more than awful coincidence that tonight was the beginning of our discussion on male sexuality. Despite Millie’s practical advice, I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening cultivating a very robust form of self-loathing, doing push-ups in my basement gym until I couldn’t breathe or move or think, until it was time to come to the little faux-wood-paneled classroom on the far side of the church.

I knew Millie had been trying to make me feel better, but I didn’t deserve to feel better. She didn’t know how far I’d already gone, how much of my vow I’d already broken. Probably because she would never assume her priest would be so weak as to actually act on his desires.

I rubbed my face vigorously. Wake the fuck up, Tyler, and figure this out. It had only been a couple weeks, and I’d completely failed at keeping my shit together. What would I do for the next two months? The next two years? She was here to stay and so was I, and there was no way I could let what happened this afternoon happen again. I mean, if Millie seeing us together once (innocently and in public) had given her ideas, then what would happen if we started actually sneaking around?

I lifted my head and greeted the men as they drifted in. Of all the groups and activities, I was the most proud of this group. Typically, women were the driving force behind church attendance; most men only came to Mass because their wives wanted them to. And especially after my predecessor’s crimes, I knew that the men in particular—many of whom had sons who were the same age as the victim—would harbor a deep anger and a mistrust that would not be overcome by typical methods.

So I hung out at the local bars and watched Royals games. I enjoyed the occasional cigar at the town tobacco shop. I bought a truck. I organized a hunting club at the church. And all the while, I continued to be open about my own family’s past and all the ways that the church needed to—and would—change.

And gradually this group coalesced, growing from two old men who’d been going to church so long that they’d forgotten how to stop, to a group of forty, ranging from recent graduates to the recently retired. In fact, we’d grown so big that next month we were starting a new group.

But what if I had just undone three years of hard work? Three years of toil thrown away for half an hour with Poppy?

If I seemed distracted, nobody noticed or commented on it, and I managed to not choke on my own words as we read through passages in 2 Timothy and Song of Songs. At least, I managed not to choke until we reached one verse in Romans, and then I felt my throat close and my fingers shake as I read.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do…for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.”

What a wretched man I am.

What a wretched man I am.

I had come to a town cracked wide open by the vile actions of a predator and I had vowed to fix it. Why? Because when I looked up at the stars at night, I could feel God looking back down. Because I felt the wind as His breath on my neck. Because I had bought my faith with a great deal of struggle and pain, but I knew that my faith was also what gave my life shape and purpose, and I didn’t want the Church’s failures to deprive an entire town of that gift.

And then what had I done today? I had betrayed all of that. Betrayed all of them.

But that’s not what made my hands shake and my throat tighten. No, it was the realization that I had betrayed God, perhaps more than I’d betrayed the people in this room.

My God, my savior. The recipient of my vehement hatred after Lizzy’s death and also the presence that had patiently awaited my return a few years later. The voice in my dreams that had comforted me, enlightened me, guided me. The voice that had told me what I needed to do with my life, where I needed to go to find peace.

And the worst thing was that I knew He wasn’t angry with me. He’d forgiven me before it had even happened, and I didn’t deserve it. I deserved to be punished, a hail of fire from above, bitter waters, an IRS audit, something, anything dammit, because I was a miserable, loathsome, lustful man who’d taken advantage of an emotionally vulnerable woman.

What a wretched man I am.

We wrapped up Bible study, and I cleaned up the coffee and chips robotically, my mind still dazed by this newest wave of shame. This feeling of being too small, too awful, for anything less than hell.

I could hardly bear walking past the crucifix on my way back to the rectory.