Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories (18 page)

Below on the long beach he could see fishermen casting lines into the sea and reeling in and casting out again and further up the beach were figures of men and women—maybe a dozen or two dozen—outstretched on the strand taking the sun, and others running into the waves and back or diving
into the pounding surf. The noise of the ocean and their voices seemed even more distant than he’d gauged at this height.

Out on the sea he could make out pleasure boats in their various odysseys, seabirds diving, what looked like schools of fish feeding on the surface. He wondered how long he’d have to watch and if the season was the right one to see a whale or a dolphin, or great sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs, or any of the countless other creatures that would never appear in Findlay, Ohio, no matter how long one looked out into the light or dark. There were cloud banks in the distance and the line between the sea and the sky, and what he reckoned might be the edge of Long Island far in the distance, grew less and less articulate and for a moment he wondered if he might be entirely lost.

VI

T
HE MEETING
with the bishop had gone fairly badly. In retrospect, Adrian was not surprised. This was Ohio and these were the 1980s, and they were Methodists and what did he expect the bishop to do?

“It’s not,” Bishop Maghee was eager to assure him, “that Clare left you, or the divorce, or that your children might be scandalized,” though he felt duty-bound to cite, in the prayer he began the audience with, that caution from the Gospel Matthew, to wit:
If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were
drowned in the sea…Woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes.

Nor was it the “very reasonable” concern about a suddenly single man with, “let us say, adult desires,” ministering to churchwomen made vulnerable by their “religious dilemmas.” The issue of “clerical continence” was not the thing. Though the bishop was pained to remind him, it was not unheard of—a clergyman preying on a parishioner or vice versa.

“Romance and religious fervor are so often confused.”

It was simply the concern the bishop had for Reverend Littlefield’s emotional well-being which seemed, if reports were even partially true, something he ought to be tending to. And all he was recommending, after all, all he was actually insisting upon, all he had actually conferred with the district superintendent and Reverend Hinkston about was a “little respite” from pastoral duties—neither millstone nor drowning—only a temporary “leave of absence” until after the holidays; three months of personal reflection, “with pay of course,” during which time both Adrian and the good people at St. Mark’s could “reassess their relationship.”

The bishop gave Adrian a list of “Christian counselors,” approved by the district, none with offices nearer to Findlay than Toledo and Cleveland, who would be “helpful and discreet” and who would bill the UMC directly for “up to six months of therapy and an evaluation.”

“We must take care of the caretakers, Adrian, minister to the minister—that’s what we are called to do!” said Bishop Maghee, and looking at his wristwatch, extended a hand for Adrian to shake.

“
FOR FUCK
sake, Adrian, what’d you say?” Father Francis Concannon was no stranger to the ways of bishops.

He and Adrian were sitting in the leather wingback chairs in the library at St. Michael’s Rectory the day after the Reverend Littlefield had been called to see the bishop of the Western Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church.

“What could I say? ‘He who sings prays twice’?”

“Of course you’re right. It’s like farting at skunks—trying to gainsay a bishop. The whores.” Father Concannon said “whores” to rhyme with “lures,” and added, “The fucking wankers…my own’s a dodgy client just like yours.”

The priest had made tea and was pouring it.

“I gave him all the ammo he’d need, what with the singing. And of all things, Beatles tunes.”

“The Pentecostals would call it talking in tongues. And brought the snakes in for you to fucking dazzle.”

THE REVEREND
Adrian Littlefield, recently quit by his adulteress wife, recently angry and lonely and bone tired of the duties of single parenting, recently despairing, recently at wit’s end over his prospects, recently drunk, recently stoned, recently a patron of a topless-bottomless bar in Windsor, and only a matter of hours after having sex with his children’s babysitter, whose first name he could remember but whose surname had escaped him, had stood in the sanctuary under the massive stained-glass likeness of Christ his Lord and before the faithful congregants of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church on South Main Street in Findlay, Ohio, and, uncharacteristically lost for words, cleared his throat, opened his arms as Moses before the Red Sea, and raising his inexplicably grinning face
heavenward, instead of commencing a sermon, sang out, off-key but enthusiastically, in evident praise and thanksgiving for all of his recent iniquities:

He stepped from behind the oaken pulpit, stationed himself in front of the altar, and smiling widely, raised his voice again.

He was into the next verse though he wasn’t entirely sure he knew it,
And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me…
and might have even made some sense of all of it, but the Reverend Dr. Hinkston, his senior pastor, sensing something in his associate’s manner was terribly amiss, and worried that the eleven o’clock service was about to go seriously off-track, rose from his seat behind the pulpit and led the people in polite applause, then wordlessly, by nod and glaring, signaled the ushers at the back of church to pass the
plates for the offering. A couple of spiky-haired teens dressed in black and emblazoned with tattoos and seated with their perpetually embarrassed parents, arose during Adrian’s brief solo and, thrusting their fists into the air, took up the chorus:
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be,
while one air-keyboarded the piano chords and the other air-guitared the heavy bass notes of the refrain, all the while nodding their spiky heads furiously in time. Marilyn Rubritus, the unmarried and, it was rumored, heavily medicated daughter of the long-widowed Geraldine Rubritus, stood in the middle of the pew she and her mother had occupied quietly for nearly half a century, unknotted her long silver hair from the bun it had been in all her life, till it fell in quick luxuriant waves over the red cashmere sweater she always wore to church, and began to sway with the singing rhythmically, her arms outreaching and her palms upturned, her bony shoulders and skinny hips achieving a kind of tidal sway, and the look on her face one of ecstasy, the way you’d imagine young hippie girls at Woodstock years before. Cleta Locey, the organist, never one to be caught off guard, had taken up the tune, which of course she knew, while the Reverend Hinkston tried, from his side of the sanctuary, to eyeball her to quit and the ushers moved with the gilded plates up the aisles and everyone, reaching for their tithes and offerings, looked back and forth at one another wondering what it was they had just suddenly witnessed. It had lasted only a couple of minutes, but it was sufficiently outside the pale of their erstwhile church experiences that they knew something unforeseen and unplanned had happened.

“Did you see them,” whispered Adrian, still grinning like a simpleton, “the heavenly hosts?” as Reverend Hinkston led him to the vestry, while the bell choir, after a series of dagger looks
from the senior pastor, and accustomed to playing for time, took up their rendition of “How Great Thou Art.”

After removing his stole and cincture and robe, and following the Reverend Hinkston’s directive, Adrian collected his children from their Sunday school classes, loaded them in the family Honda, and drove them home. He sang all the way home. And because he could not keep from grinning, Damien and Sarah grinned back at him. For the first time in months they all looked joyous.

“
I TELL YOU
, Francis, it was the closest thing to inspiration I have ever felt—the breath of God—as if I’d been suddenly loosed from the bonds of gravity and routine. Always before, I’d be trying to say something that’d touch their souls while they’d all be trying not to fall sleep. But this was different. I tell you, Francis, I felt
alive
and they looked
alive
to me. For the first time I looked out over that little sea of faces and saw them all as fellow pilgrims. Not fellow United Methodists, or fellow Christians, or fellow sinners. Just fellow humans in search of the way home. And I could see that what they didn’t need was another sermon. It’s as if I could see myself in them: hapless and lonely, holy and free, all of us somehow in it together, Francis, just trying to find our way, wondering if we’re ever going to make it.”

The priest nodded and smiled and sipped his tea while Adrian carried on.

“It was an apparition. They looked like innocents, Francis. Angels—every one of them. I tell you, I could see their wings. I could see them readying to take their flight, Cora Perkins, fat Bill Wappner, the grievous Fielding couple with their punk-
rock twins. They just all looked so lovely to me—these people whose people I’ve been burying and marrying and baptizing. Poor Marilyn Rubritus, old Henry Richardson in his wingtips and banker’s suit, Art Geyer with his homely wife, the Morris sisters, just turned fourteen and fifteen, proud of their new figures, the way boys are suddenly watching them; Freda Chambers with her goiter and bug eyes, they all looked like cherubim and seraphim and archangels. And all I wanted was to tell them that everything was going to be all right. Everything would turn out fine—I could see it all, Francis—they’d all be just fine and flying again.”

“A beatific vision!” Father Francis said. “Was that some dope or what!”

“It wasn’t the dope, Francis,” Adrian said. “I think it started after Mary…what’s her name?”

The priest sat up in the wingback, set his mug on the side table, and leaned into the conversation.

“Mary De Dona? What about her?”

“Well, she came to me in the night. There was this dream and I just woke up and she was…
there
.”

“There?”

“Well, she was on top of me, and she was naked, and, well…”

“The beatific vision!” Father Concannon sat back, pressed his head into the high back of the chair, smiling broadly.

Adrian looked puzzled.

“A ‘pastoral’ visit!” The priest was evidently not surprised. “God bless her. Now there’s a woman with really priestly instincts.”

FATHER FRANCIS
Assisi Concannon explained to the Reverend Adrian Littlefield how, ever since she’d come to St. Michael the Archangel’s parish school, Mary De Dona had made known to him the depth of her devotions. She had expressed in a variety of ways her willingness to do whatever she could to assist him in his priestly mission. She had arrived in Findlay the year before to replace one of their retiring teachers. Little was known about her. She had answered their ad in the
Ohio Catholic
. She had her teaching certificate and was Catholic, or Italian at least, and parochial schools couldn’t be that particular since they paid a good deal less than the public schools. And she was wonderful with the children. That much was obvious from the start. They all loved her and all of the parents loved her and the other teachers all approved as well. Even the nun who served as principal of the school and was famously cranky and stingy with praise, spoke glowingly about Mary De Dona.

“We rented her one of the condos we’d made, in the former convent, off the parking lot. Just behind here. Can’t get nuns to live in them anymore. Well, couldn’t get nuns anymore, period. But Mary was delighted with the space, the stained-glass windows and tiny rooms, the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap on the woodwork. She moved in with her dog and easels and books and that was that.”

The priest recounted to Adrian how one night the winter previous, she had come to the rectory greatly agitated, with her huge black dog in tow and begging for a blessing on the beast.

“It was late and I was alone here, sitting up watching
Hill Street Blues
, and she said the dog wasn’t well, couldn’t sleep, and would I bless it. Of course I thought she’s some kind of a head
case, out there in her bathrobe with red boots on and a stocking cap and the wind lashing and the snow piled everywhere. But I wanted to get back to the TV so I blessed the thing, a quickie, but blessed it nonetheless, and said I hoped that would do it, but she insisted I use some holy water. So before I know it, I’ve got the two of them—this huge dog and this tiny woman in her nightdress, standing in the vestibule of the rectory, dripping with the weather, and I’m off looking for holy water, with which I eventually drench the two of them—Dante, the dog, that’s what she calls it, and Mary De Dona—and bless them both in Latin for fuck sake and she’s shivering with the cold and I’m holding open the door for them, and she reaches up behind my head, stands on her tiptoes, and kisses me. On my own mouth! Then off she goes with goddamn Dante, shouting ‘Thank you Father, thank you Father’ all over the neighborhood.”