Flight Dreams (30 page)

She didn’t sleep well overnight. Yesterday’s hearing spawned thoughts that kept her addled and awake despite her self-assurances that the long period of uncertainty had ended. Now, though, as she walks past the town square and approaches the church, her trepidation gives way to a sense of relief, as though the dreaded confrontation with her brother were already behind her.

It feels strange to touch the big gnarled handle of the church door—unfamiliar and foreign, without the significance that the act of entering church has held for her in the past. She walks through the vestibule, strolls down the center aisle, and sits in a front pew. The candles on the altar are already lit—tongues of fire aglow in the dimness of the sanctuary. Muted voices drift from the sacristy as the priest instructs an altar boy in details of this odd private Mass. She hears the clink of heavy glass cruets being prepared for the Eucharist—one filled with water, the other with wine.

As she waits for the service to begin, her gaze travels to the stained-glass windows, normally radiant, but inky black at this early hour. Then her gaze crosses the aisle to the windows on the opposite wall, and she can just discern the figures depicted in the glass, enlivened by the grayish light that begins to fill the eastern sky. East, she thinks—that’s home, beyond the windows, beyond the mountains.

Her musing is interrupted by the clang of a bell as Father McMullen and the boy appear in the arched sacristy doorway and walk to the foot of the altar. As they mutter their Latin dialogue, Helen does not follow in her missal as she always has, but allows her mind to stray again to other matters, rehearsing the conversation she must soon have with the priest.

Forever unchanging, like a relic embedded in stone, the Mass continues along its prescribed course. The woman in the front pew sits, stands, and kneels, blessing herself with the sign of the cross, as she has done countless times during her life. But she participates without emotion, through force of habit. She feels suddenly, irreparably detached from these surroundings, as if her mind had floated from her body and were looking down upon her from a remote corner of the vaulted ceiling.

She sees the room as if with new eyes. She sees the statues no longer as models of virtue, but as gaudily painted plaster. As for the scenes still brightening in the windows, she no longer views them with the comfort and ease of meeting old friends; she is jolted by the quaint, mythical nonsense of doves and dragons, reverent camels and warring angels. Then she peers at the priest, her brother, who stands before the altar. She no longer sees Father James McMullen as the man of deeply rooted beliefs who has dedicated his life to a holy mission; she sees him with instant clarity as a pathetic earthbound creature with his mind in the sky who has doomed himself to live a lie. In the solitude of her conscience, she weeps at her recognition of the real world, then she laughs—with a child’s ecstatic joy, a joy that stems from the rational consistency of seeing things, really
seeing things,
exactly as they are.

The service wears on predictably, with its age-old verbatim sameness, toward the climactic moment of transubstantiation. The priest bows low over the wafer of bread and summons God’s presence, Christ’s body, as the altar boy lifts the silver bell from its velvet cushion and rings it with three sharp snaps of his wrist. The priest bows low again and peers into the gold chalice.
“Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei,
” he utters—This is the cup of My blood. Over the years, he has performed this rite daily, surely ten thousand times. But this time, the wine is cloudy, tainted. This time, when he dreams the waking nightmare of his twin brother’s crime, he is not haunted by it, but inspired.

He eats the bread—but does not drink the wine.

Instead, he turns to his sister and descends the stairs to the edge of the sanctuary. “Come,” he bids her. “Drink from the cup of our Savior’s blood.”

She rises from the pew as commanded and steps toward him. They stand on opposite sides of the communion rail, their faces a foot apart. He raises the chalice and touches it to her lips. She stares into the wine for a moment, then into his eyes. With the tips of her fingers she nudges the cup back toward the priest and tells him, “I’m going home, Jamie.”

His nostrils flare. He steadies the shaking chalice with his free hand.

She adds casually, almost flippantly, “I thought you should know.”

“I… don’t understand,” he stammers. “Tomorrow the estate can finally be settled. We’ve waited so long—you and I—seven years. This is what we both wanted. We agreed. To back out now would be betrayal. It’s a sin!”

“Never mind
my
sins,” she snaps. “What of your own? What Christian motive led you to entice me out to this desert? I’ve hurt people who love me, I’ve stripped away my very identity, I’ve spent seven years with you in this squalor—and for what?
Do I have to say it?
Do I have to say that you’re no better than the rest? Face it, Jamie—your only interest in my ‘immortal soul’ has been my money and its service to your bullheaded mission.”

He backs a step away from her, speaking rapidly. “Be careful, Helen. Judge not, that you may not be judged. Let him who is without fault cast the first stone.”

“Stop
that!” she says, venting a fierce frustration. “That’s drivel. You can’t just quote your way out of every tight corner. You can’t get through life on slogans.”

“Slogans!”
he says, backing to the first step of the altar. “Your words border perilously upon sacrilege, Helen, while the words of Christ are the words of
life.
‘I am the way,’ He said. ‘I am the way, the truth …’”

“Stop it, Jamie.” Her voice is now calm as she leans over the rail that separates them like a wall. “That won’t work anymore—not on me. You can believe anything you wish, but wishing and believing won’t change reality one iota. Here I am, fifty-six years old, and I spent all those years hoping and praying and worrying about the depth of my faith. And what has all that anguish accomplished? What
could
it accomplish?”

The young altar boy, terrified by the priest’s reaction to the confrontation, has sidestepped out of the sanctuary and peers back through the sacristy door.

Helen continues, “I’m fed up with the sniping and craziness I’ve found here, and I’ve come to question the purpose of it all—to say nothing of
your
motives, Jamie. I no longer find The Society worthy of my husband’s hard-won fortune. Not another dime. If I hurry, I can get myself—and my cats—on a plane to Chicago this morning. Mark Manning needs me there.”

“Manning
needs you?” shouts the priest, aghast, backing up another stair toward the altar. “What about the needs of Holy Mother Church? For God’s sake, what about the needs of your own flesh and blood?” He clasps the chalice close to his chest, sloshing wine down the brocade of his chasuble. “Manning is responsible for this betrayal. The sin of your infidelity rests upon
his
blackened soul—may it burn in hell for eternity!”

Helen is still restrained in the face of the priest’s raving. She tells him, “Mark Manning is a friend. He helped me. But I made up my
own
mind. I accept full responsibility for my actions—and it’s high time.”

The priest trembles as he glares at the woman who watches him serenely over the communion rail. With anger still mounting, he extends an accusing finger. “You blaspheme!” he bellows, his ire matching that of any judge of the Inquisition. “Saint Paul tells us plainly that man is justified before his God
by faith alone.”

Backing up to the top stair of the altar, he drops the chalice—it bounces and clanks on the marble. He crosses both arms before him as if to ward off an evil presence. “Only faith has the power to heal and make us whole—faith in a God we can never know and only dare to love. Faith alone is what raises man from the filth and mire where he wallows with the other animals. Faith permits him a fleeting vision of the divine.” The veins pound visibly up his neck and through his temples. “Almighty God is a merciful judge, but the wrath of the Lord will be upon those who have heard His words yet fail to believe. Woe to the unfaithful!” he cries. “Woe to the infidel!” he screams again, enraged—but this time he chokes on his words.

Suddenly breathless, he feels a crush of pain against his chest, like steel bands tightening around his torso, his arms, his neck. He felt this pain once before and recovered, but now it assaults him ruthlessly. “My … my
God,
” he gasps as he struggles to inhale, fingers clawing to loosen his collar. His legs can no longer support the weight of his body, and he collapses before the altar. His head cracks soundly against an edge of the stone steps. His foot kicks the consecration bell from its cushion and sends it skittering across the polished floor until it crashes with a final, mangled clatter against the wrought-iron base of the pulpit.

“Go!” says Helen to the ashen-faced youngster as she fumbles to open the gate of the communion rail. “Run to the rectory. Tell Father’s housekeeper to call an ambulance.” As she steps into the sanctuary, the boy darts from the church, but she knows that his efforts will be futile.

The priest’s eyes are barely open, squinting with agony and fright. One hand still flails lamely at his neck. The other beckons Helen to his side.

She kneels on the steps next to him, opens his collar, and takes hold of his hands. Trying to speak, he drools blood from the corner of his lips. She leans close to his mouth, and he whispers several sentences to her.

He shudders, then exhales his last breath.

A couple of hours later in Chicago, Roxanne gulps coffee from a mug at the table in Manning’s loft. She wanted for them to meet—“it’s
imperative
”—before the afternoon court session, so Manning invited her to his home, since the office would surely be chaotic today.

She slaps a folder closed and tosses it atop one of several stacks of files on the table. “Please be aware,” she tells him, “that you could be in bigger trouble than Humphrey Hasting if Judge Ambrose holds you in contempt.”

Manning isn’t listening. He’s busy unwrapping an oblong parcel, a three-foot tube that has just been delivered to his door.

She continues, “Your elusive testimony about Helena Carter yesterday made great headlines, but I’m afraid you’re going to find yourself in some very hot water because of it.”

He’s got it open. Clumsily, working with only one good arm, he pulls out a roll of papers that springs open on the kitchen counter, smelling distinctly of ammonia. He grabs various cooking utensils to anchor the curled corners.

It’s a set of architect’s blue-line prints. The top page is a floor plan, vaguely familiar but largely meaningless to Manning—a cryptic profusion of symbols and lines with overlapping arrows that mark dimensions. He turns to the second sheet, a similar plan, probably another level of the same building. He pages through more of these technical drawings, then a sequence of elevations that look like walls, and finally a perspective—a detailed, colored rendering of a large interior space drawn three-dimensionally. Manning turns the page and finds another perspective, as if looking at the same room from its opposite corner. Glancing up from the drawings and into his unfinished loft, the plans suddenly make sense. He has his bearings.

Roxanne says, “Mark, this is important—and you haven’t heard a word. What on
earth
is so interesting over there?”

“Christmas gift from Neil.” His nose is buried again in the plans.

“Ohh?”
She rises from the table to join him, looking over his shoulder.

“Can you believe it?” he says, more to himself than to Roxanne. “Neil has been here only once, and he knew I was at a loss for ideas for the place. Just
look
at this!”

The empty, boxy loft space has been transformed into a sculptural network of platforms and balconies, creating a complex interplay of masses and voids. While the overall composition of the room is boldly artful, this has not been achieved at the expense of function, for the distinct areas of the space are thoughtfully suited to their various purposes—conversation, reading and writing, sleeping and bathing, cooking and eating, storage. Though the aesthetic is decidedly modern, the effect is neither stark nor sterile. On the contrary, rich detailing and knowledgeable, playful allusions to styles of the past lend an inviting, livable atmosphere to the design. Even the Clarence Bird painting is sketched on a prominent expanse of wall, where it appears comfortably at home.

Roxanne says, “God, Mark, it’s fabulous.”

“Maybe a little
too
fabulous. How could I possibly build this?” He flips through the final sheets of the plan, where there are detail drawings of cabinetry, trim, and light fixtures—all custom—followed by a materials list that includes granite and beveled glass. “Reporters aren’t
that
well paid.”

Then, at the bottom of the last page, he spots a yellow Post-it note. In Neil’s forceful hand, it says, “Together, I’ll bet we could swing it.”

Manning freezes, stares at the note, reads it several times, catches his breath. Then he realizes that Roxanne has also seen it, and he turns to face her, braced for the worst.

“Congratulations,” she says quietly, without inflection. “Or should I say, ‘Much happiness’? One
tries
to be politically correct, but the protocol of these modern relationships isn’t quite hammered out yet.”

Manning can’t read her tone. The words are genial enough, but their sarcastic edge is ominous. He suspects she’s ready to blow. “Roxanne, I …”

“Mark”—she stops him—“I’m over it.”

A pause of relief. He takes her fingers into his hand. “I’m sorry you were hurt. I never meant to lead you on.”

“You didn’t. I was playing with fire, and I knew it. My passions were real enough—you’re a hot man, Mark—but the booze had me out of control.”

“I was tempted to say something,” Manning tells her.

“I wish you had. But it was ultimately something I had to deal with myself. I binged on Thanksgiving and screwed up royally with a client after the long weekend. That’s when I knew I had to stop. I’m doing much better now, but withdrawal was a bitch.”