Priest: A Love Story

I slept perhaps three hours total that night. I stayed up late reading the Bible, perusing every passage about sin that I knew of until my tired eyes refused to focus on the words any longer, sliding over them like two magnets with the same charge. Finally, I crawled into my bed with my rosary, mumbling prayers until I drifted off into a restless sleep.

A strange kind of numbness settled over me as I said Mass that morning, as I laced up my running shoes afterwards. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was emotional exhaustion, maybe it was simply the shock of yesterday carrying over into today. But I didn’t want numb—I wanted peace. I wanted strength.

Taking the country road out of town to avoid Poppy, I ran farther than I normally did, pushing myself harder and faster, moving until my legs cramped and my breath screamed in and out of my chest. And instead of going straight to my shower, I staggered inside of the church, my hands laced above my head, my ribs slicing themselves apart with pain. It was dark and empty inside the church, and I didn’t know what I was doing there instead of my rectory, didn’t know until I stumbled into the sanctuary and collapsed onto my knees in front of the tabernacle.

My head was hanging, my chin touching my chest, sweat everywhere, but I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and I couldn’t pinpoint the moment my ragged breathing turned into crying, but it was not long after I went to my knees, and the tears mingled with the sweat until I wasn’t sure which was which.

The sunlight poured through the thick stained glass, jewel bright patterns spilling and tumbling over the pews and my body and the tabernacle, and the gold doors glinted in darker shades, somber and sacred, forbidding and holy.

I leaned forward until my head pressed against the floor, until I could feel my eyelashes blinking against the worn, industrial carpet. Saint Paul says we don’t have to put words to our prayers, that the Holy Spirit will interpret for us, but interpreting wasn’t needed this time, not when I was whispering sorry sorry sorry like a chant, like mantra, like a hymn without music.

I knew the moment I was no longer alone. My naked back prickled with awareness and I sat up, flushed with embarrassment that a parishioner or a staff member had seen me crying like this, but there was no one there. The sanctuary was empty.

But still I felt the presence of someone else like a weight, like static along my skin, and I peered into every dim corner, certain I’d see someone standing there.

The air conditioning powered on with thump and a whoosh, the change in air pressure slamming the doors to the sanctuary closed. I jumped.

It’s just the air conditioning, I told myself.

But when I looked back up at the tabernacle, golden and stained with color, I suddenly wasn’t so sure. There was something anticipatory and sentient about the silence and emptiness. It suddenly felt as if God were listening very intently to what I was saying, listening and waiting, and I lowered my eyes back to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered one last time, the word hanging in the air like a star hangs in the sky—glimmering, precious, illuminating. And then it winked out of existence, at the same moment I felt my burden of sorrow and shame wink out of existence.

There was a beat of perfect completeness, a moment where I felt as if I could pluck each and every atom out of the air, where magic and God and something sweetly beyond complete understanding was real, completely real.

And then it was all gone, all of it, replaced by a deep feeling of peace.

I exhaled at the same time the building seemed to exhale, the prickling on my skin disappearing, the air vacant once again. I knew a thousand explanations for what I had just felt, but I also knew that I really believed only one.

Moses got a burning bush, and I get the air conditioning, I thought ruefully as I got to my feet, rising as slowly and unsteadily as a small child. But I wasn’t complaining. I had been forgiven, renewed, released from guilt. Like Saint Peter, I’d been tested and found wanting and forgiven anyway.

I could do this. There was life after fucking up, after all, even for those who lived without fucking.

The next two days passed without event. I spent Thursday lounging on my couch while watching The Walking Dead episodes on Netflix and eating Cup of Noodles that I’d made by using hot water from my Keurig.

Sophisticated, I know.

And then Friday. I got up and prepared myself for the morning Mass as I always did, a few minutes late, reminding myself for the thousandth time to rearrange the sacristy, and then readied myself to walk into the sanctuary. Weekdays Masses are short—no music, no second reading, no homily—sort of a like drive-thru Eucharist for the extremely faithful. Like Rowan and the two grandmothers and—

Jesus help me.

Poppy Danforth.

She was sitting in the second row, in a demure dress of ice blue silk with a Peter Pan collar and flats, her hair in a loose bun. She looked prim, composed, modest…except for that fucking lipstick, fire engine red and begging to be smeared. I looked away as soon as I saw her, trying to recapture that holy sense of peace I’d been given on Tuesday, that sense that I could master any temptation as long as I had God on my side.

She needed something from this place, from me, something way more important than what we had done on Monday. I needed to honor my office and give it to her. I focused on the Mass, on the words and on the prayers, pleased to see Poppy doing her best to follow along, praying especially for her as I performed the ancient rites.

Please help her find guidance and peace.

Please help her heal from her past.

And please please please help us behave.

When it was time for Eucharist, she lined up behind the grandmas and Rowan, looking a little uncertain.

“What do I do?” she whispered when she got to the front of the line.

“Cross your hands over your chest,” I whispered back.

She did, her eyes still on mine, her long fingers resting on her shoulders. She cast her eyes back down, looking so lovely and yet so frail, and I wanted to hug her. Not even sexually, just a regular hug. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and feel her breathe into my chest, and I wanted to tuck her face into my neck as I kept her safe and protected from her past, from her ambiguous future. I wanted to tell her and have her know—really know—that it would be all right, because there was love and because someone like her was meant to be out in the world sharing that love, like she had done in Haiti. All that joy she had felt there—she could feel it anywhere, if only she’d open herself to it.

I placed my hand on her head, about to murmur a standard blessing, and then her eyes lifted to mine and everything shifted. The floor and the ceiling and the cincture tight around my waist to encourage pure thoughts and her hair feather-soft under my fingertips and my skin on her skin. Electricity skimmed down my spine, and every sense memory of her—her taste and her feel and her sounds—shocked through me.

Her mouth parted. She felt it too.

I could barely get the blessing out, my throat was so dry. And when she turned to walk back to her pew, she also looked stunned, as if she’d been blinded.

After Mass, I practically bolted back to the sacristy, not looking at anyone or anything as I did. I took my time removing my vestments, hanging the way-too-expensive embroidered chasuble on its hanger and folding my alb into a precise, neat square. My hands were shaking. My thoughts were incomplete fragments. Things had been so good this week. And things were going so well during the Mass, even with her all adorable and devout and so fucking close, and then I touched her…

I stood for a minute in my slacks and shirt and stared at the processional cross, (feeling a bit betrayed, if I was being honest.) If I was forgiven, why hadn’t God also removed this temptation from me? Or given me more strength to bear it? To resist it? I knew it wasn’t fair to hope that Poppy would move away or become a Baptist or something, but why couldn’t God eliminate my attraction to her? Deaden my senses to the way she’d felt under my blessing…deaden my eyes to those red lips and bright hazel eyes?

Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Even Jesus had said those words. Not that they had worked out so well for him…why was God so willing to leave bad cups all over the place?

I left the sacristy in a strange mood, trying to summon that ethereal, distinctly nonphysical tranquility I’d felt earlier, and then I turned the corner and saw Poppy standing in the center aisle, the sole parishioner remaining.

I honestly didn’t know what to do. We were urged to flee temptation, but what if my job was helping the temptress? Was it more wrong to sneak away, to leave her without help, and avoid the lust and desire? Because of course, the lust was my own problem, not hers, and no excuse to be cold to her.

But if I did go to her, what else was I risking?

More importantly, was I risking it because I wanted to risk it? Was I only telling myself I cared about her spiritual development, so that I could be near her?

No, I decided. That for sure wasn’t true. It was just that the actual truth was so much worse. I cared about her as a person, as a soul, and I wanted to fuck her, and that was the recipe for something much worse than carnal sin.

It was a recipe for falling in love.

I would go to her. But I would put her in contact with the leader of the women’s group, direct Poppy to seek guidance from her instead of me, and hopefully the occasional Mass would be the extent of our interactions.

Poppy stared at the altar as I approached.

“Aren’t there bones inside there?”

“We prefer the term relic.” My voice had that unintentionally deep timbre again. I cleared my throat.

“Seems a little macabre.”

I gestured towards the crucifix, which depicted Jesus at his most bloody, broken, and tortured. “Catholicism is a macabre religion.”

Poppy turned toward me, face thoughtful. “I think that’s what I like about it. It’s gritty. It’s real. It doesn’t gloss over pain or sorrow or guilt—it highlights them. Where I grew up, you never dealt with anything. You took pills, drank, repressed it all until you were an expensive shell. I like this way better. I like confronting things.”

“It’s an active religion,” I agreed. “It’s a religion of doing—rituals, prayers, motions.”

“And that’s what you like about it.”

“That it’s active? Yes. But I like the rituals themselves too.” I looked around the sanctuary. “I like the incense and the wine and the chants. It feels ancient and holy. And there’s something about the rituals that brings me back to God every time, no matter how foul my mood is, no matter how badly I’ve sinned. Once I start, it all sort of fades away, like it’s not important. Which it isn’t. Because while Catholicism can be macabre, it’s also a religion of joy and connection, of remembering that sorrow and sin can’t hold on to us any longer.”

She shifted, her flat bumping against my shoe. “Connection,” she said. “Right.”

In fact, I was feeling connection right now. I liked talking religion with her; I liked that she got it, got it in a way that a lot of lifetime churchgoers didn’t. I wanted to talk to her all day, listen to her all day, have her breathy words whisper me to sleep at night…

Noooooo, Tyler. Bad.

I cleared my throat. “What can I help you with, Poppy?”

She held up the church newsletter. “I saw that there was a pancake breakfast tomorrow and I wanted to help.”

“Of course.” The breakfast was one of the first things I’d started doing after coming to St. Margaret’s, and the response had been overwhelming. There was enough rural poverty and poverty in nearby Platte City and Leavenworth to guarantee a steady need for the service, but there were never enough volunteers and we were slammed the two times a month we hosted it. “That would be so much appreciated.”

“Good.” She smiled, the hint of a dimple appearing in her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

I prayed extra last night. I woke up at dawn and went on an even longer run than the ones I’d been taking, crashing into my kitchen sweaty and exhausted, causing a casserole-unloading Millie to tsk at me.

“Are you training for a marathon?” she asked. “If so, it doesn’t look like you’re doing a very good job.”

I was too out of breath to even sputter a protest at that. I grabbed a bottle of water and drank the entire thing in several long gulps. Then I stretched out facedown on the cold tile floor in an attempt to lower my core temperature.

“You do realize it’s dangerous to run in the heat, even in the morning. You should get a treadmill.”

“Mmphm,” I said into the floor.

“Well, regardless, you need to shower before the breakfast. I ran into that delightful new girl last night in town, and she said she was going to help us today. And surely you want to look nice for the new girl, right?”

I lifted my head and looked up at her incredulously.

She dug the toe of her purple pump into my ribs before stepping easily over me. “I’m going to the church now to help them mix the batter. I’ll be sure to help Miss Danforth get settled if I see her before you get there.”

She left and I peeled myself off the floor, taking a minute to clean the sweaty torso-print with paper towels and a cleaning spray. And then I went back and showered.

It ended up being surprisingly easy to stay focused at the breakfast itself. It was so busy, and I tried to make a point to sit down at every table over the course of the morning and get to know the people who visited. Some had children who I could send home with backpacks stuffed with school supplies and peanut butter, some had elderly parents I could refer to local eldercare services and charities. Some just were lonely and wanted someone to talk to—and I could do that too.

But every so often, I’d see Poppy out of the corner of my eye, smiling at a guest or bringing a fresh stack of trays out, and it was hard not to notice how at home she looked in this environment. She was genuinely kind to the visitors, but she was also efficient, focused and able to ladle scrambled eggs at a rate that made Millie declare her an honorary granddaughter. She seemed so at peace, so unlike the troubled woman who had confessed her sins to me.

I ended the morning batter-splashed (it was my job to carry the giant bowls of batter over to the stove) and finger-burned (ditto with cooking the bacon) and happy. While I probably wouldn’t see any of these people at Mass anytime soon, I would see them again two weeks from now, and that was the important thing—it was about filling bellies, not winning souls.

I told Millie and the other two grandmothers to go home and rest while I cleaned up, not seeing Poppy and assuming she’d already left. I hummed as I folded up the tables and stacked the chairs, and as I wheeled the mop bucket out onto the floor.

“How can I help?”

Poppy was at the foot of the stairs, tucking a piece of paper back into her purse. Even in the dim basement light, she looked unreal, too rare and too lovely to gaze at for longer than a few seconds without pain.

“I thought you’d left?” I said, moving my gaze back to the very safe mop and bucket in front of me.

“I went up with a family earlier—I heard the mother mention some issues with late taxes and since I’m a CPA, I offered to help.”

“That was really generous of you,” I said, again feeling that frantic, squeezing feeling that I’d felt yesterday, that feeling like I was losing my footing with her and starting to flirt with something much worse than pure lust.

“Why are you surprised that I did something nice?” she asked, stepping toward me. The words teased and joked, but the subtext was clear. Don’t you think I’m a good person?

I immediately felt defensive. I always assumed the best of people, always. But I guess I was a little surprised at the depth of her earnestness to help—I had been when she’d told me about Haiti too.

“Is it because you think I’m some sort of fallen woman?”

I dropped the mop in the bucket and looked up. She was closer now, close enough that I could see where a small cloud of flour had settled on her shoulder.

“I don’t think you’re a fallen woman,” I said.

“But now you are going to say that we are all fallen sinners in a fallen world.”

“No,” I pronounced carefully. “I was going to say that people who are as smart and attractive as you don’t typically have to cultivate skills like kindness unless they want to. Yes, it surprises me a little.”

“You’re smart and attractive,” she pointed out.

I flashed her a grin.

“Stop it, Father, I’m being serious. Are you sure that it isn’t because I’m a smart, attractive, advantaged woman that you don’t feel that way?”

What? No! I had been one class short of a Women’s Studies minor in college! “I—”

She took another step forward. Only the mop bucket was in between us now, but the bucket couldn’t stop me from noticing the elegant curve of her collarbone under her sundress, the faintest suggestion of cleavage before the bodice began.

“I want to be a good person, but more than that, I want to be a good woman. Is there no way to be both completely woman and completely good?”

Shit. This conversation had gone from taxes to the darkest corners of Catholic theology. “Of course, there is, Poppy, to the extent that anyone can be completely good,” I said. “Forget the Eve and the apple stuff right now. See yourself as I see you—an openly loved daughter of God.”

“I guess I don’t feel so loved.”

“Look at me.”

She did.

“You are loved,” I said firmly. “Smart, attractive woman that you are—every part of you, good and bad, is loved. And please ignore me if I fuck up and make you feel any differently, okay?”

She snorted at my swearing and then gave me a rueful grin. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to corner you like that.”

“You didn’t corner me. Really, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

She took a step back, like she was physically hesitating about telling me what she was about to say. Finally she said, “Sterling called me last night. I think…I guess I maybe let it fuck with my head.”

“Sterling called you?” I asked, feeling an irritation that was way beyond the scope of professional concern.

“I didn’t answer, but he left a voicemail. I should have deleted it, but I didn’t…” She trailed off. “He repeated all those things he’d said before—about the kind of woman I am, where I was meant to be. He said he’s coming for me again.”

“He’s coming for you? He said that?”

She nodded and red rage danced at the edge of my vision.

Poppy evidently saw this, because she laughed and put her fingers over mine, where they’d been gripping the mop handle so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. “Relax, Father. He’ll come here, try to woo me with more stories about vacations and vintage wine and I’ll reject him. Again.”

Again…so like last time? Where you let him make you come before you made him leave?

“I don’t like this,” I said, and I said it not as a priest or a friend but as the man who had tasted her just one flight of stairs away from here. “I don’t want you to meet with him.”

Her smile stayed but her eyes changed into cold shards of green and brown. I suddenly appreciated what a weapon she would have made in a boardroom or on the arm of a senator. “Honestly? I don’t think it’s any of your business if I do meet with him or not.”

“He’s dangerous, Poppy.”

“You don’t even know him,” she said, removing her hand from mine.

“But I know how dangerous a man can be when he wants a woman he can’t have.”

“Like you?” she said, and the mark was so ruthlessly and perfectly aimed that I nearly staggered back.

The weight of the overtones collapsed onto us like a rotten ceiling—Poppy and Sterling, yes, but Poppy and me, my childhood priest and Lizzy.

Men wanting what they shouldn’t: the story of my life.

Without another word, Poppy turned and left, her strappy sandals clacking on the stairs. I forced myself to take several deep breaths and try to figure out what the fuck had just happened.