Forgive Me Father For I Have Loved (29 page)

“That had to have been hard for the couple you just described, especially for her because a Muslim could be murdered for that.”

“You’re right, she could have been and more than likely would have been killed if she were still living in her native country...but she was brave, and needed out of the area. The world was larger than she realized; from her new standpoint, she saw that there were all sorts of people in it, and they weren’t evil because they didn’t believe as she did. No one man had treated her with that much respect and love, ever. Her husband wooed her with his heart. He’d won her over...and he didn’t even have to say one word.”

Damn that man!

Rhapsody played back the conversation so many times in her head; it now seemed to be on auto-replay, looping over and over. She didn’t think Dane really understood how powerful those words were, or maybe he did, she wasn’t certain, but one thing she did know—it was just what she needed to hear to put her mind more at ease. The man was open and willing, and if that Muslim and Hindu couple could do it, with death looming over their heads, surely she could give it a try as well...

~***~

Dane stared at the brown box from Josh. It still sat there unopened. One side had been crushed a little by a gym bag he’d placed atop it, as if to try to hide it from his sight. He’d been dreading delving into it, and today was no exception. He’d tried a couple times to speak with Rhapsody, the way he’d done with Josh, but realized she simply wasn’t ready. He surmised she was afraid whatever his confessions were, would bring their courtship to a halt. The woman admitted now several times she was falling for him as well after all; she had a dog in the fight. He was ready to come clean, but he knew he couldn’t rush these things. Everything had its season.

Pushing the box to the far side of his desk, he paced his apartment, biding time until he made his trip to the hospital to pray over the sick and hospice patients. After a few minutes, he walked back toward the box, ran his hand over the top of it, the thick layers of double tape smooth under his touch. He stepped away once more, shoving his hands in his pockets as he just stared at it. The months had gotten easier, but a part of him dreaded what may lie just beneath the corrugated surface, possibly starting a fire storm that he’d burn up in—heated memories that would take him down, down, down.

He’d been upbeat and in good spirits; he didn’t want anything to wreck his mood.

Looking at the time, he sat on his bed and passed sweating hands roughly through his freshly brushed hair.

You may as well get it over with...

He walked back toward the box, resigned to tear the damn thing open, but paused when his cell phone rang. He sighed, slightly relieved, and looked at the caller ID.

“Hi Mom,” he answered, then walked to his bedroom window to look out and watch the cars moving up and down the street during lunch hour traffic. He sniffed, feeling the beginning stages of a cold coming on. Looking to his far right, he saw a car almost rear-end another, one of them honking. His thoughts drifted as she began to speak.

“Hi, Dane,” she said, full of chipper. Her mood, warm and comforting, cut his daydreaming short, dragging him gently by the arm into the here and now. He could almost envision her wrapped in her apron with the tiny sunflowers all over it, and her brown flats that made her diminutive feet look even smaller than they naturally were.

“What are you up to? I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” she asked.

He heard what seemed to be pots and pans lightly banging together, and running water.

“Oh, just been busy is all. How are you doing?” He forced a smile, knowing it would reflect in his tone and hopefully appease her.

“Just washing up some dishes. I made your father and me a wonderful stew. You should come over and have some! It had fresh carrots from the farmer’s market, they really do make a difference,” she said proudly.

“I bet it was delicious, Mom. How is the old man?” he teased.

“His ankle has been bothering him again.” She sighed. “I told him to not to try to move the couch by himself but you know how that goes.”

“Yeah, you know Dad though. He thinks he is He-Man.” Dane slipped a hand in his pocket and casually scratched above his brow as he continued to gaze at the passing vehicles. “Next time, have him call me before he decides to be a one-man moving crew.” He laughed lightly. “I could have helped, all of us could have helped. He could have called Joseph or Anthony if I wasn’t available.”

“I know, but you know how your father is, stubborn to his core. To him, admitting he needs help means he isn’t man enough to handle it by himself.”
Yeah, and sometimes I have the same affliction. I guess I got it honest.

Dane nodded as they shared a brief silence.

“Dane,” the cheer was clearly out of her tone as her voice deepened, “I was thinking...I know, all of these years, you’ve had a lot on your shoulders, and I want to just tell you, thank you, you know, for...being a listening ear to me. I just...”

Dane closed his eyes and suppressed a groan. She was doing it again. He couldn’t take it. On one hand, he wanted her to simply let sleeping dogs lie; on the other, he was grateful she was acknowledging the past trauma but then, his gut twisted. Alarm bells struck and he opened his eyes.

Why is she saying this to me right now?

“Is something wrong?” he blurted.” We talked about this...right after it happened
and you told me... you told me you didn’t want to discuss it ever again.”

“Well,” she hesitated, “no, nothing is wrong per se, just, well, I suppose you are owed the truth,” she said solemnly. He heard the water turn off and her light footsteps across the kitchen floor. A chair slid across a floor, and he assumed she’d sat in it. “After you received the money from my father, it brought up some old memories...it has been a tough few months.”

Dane cradled the phone in the crevice of his neck as he continued to stare out the window, now leaning slightly against the frame.

“I know it seemed strange to everyone, Mom, that he didn’t leave it to you—you being his only living child and all.” He sighed. “I didn’t know what to say...I couldn’t offer an explanation.”

Dane briefly reflected over his deceased Uncle Luigi’s funeral, which had left his mother an only child at the age of forty at the time. He was just a thirteen year old boy, fascinated and mesmerized with the church and life in the parish. His cousins, he’d never laid eyes on some, lined the back of the church with dark, worn leather jackets over their crisp black suits. They were the epitome of the stereotypical ‘tough east coast guys’ he’d read about...and they were
‘la famiglia’
. This was
his
family, a rough bunch who were taught just like his mother to act like a man and swallow your pain as if it were chocolate cake. And whatever you do, you don’t say one word to let your oppressor know he’d found a weakness. Just obey. Say the rosary in the morning, curse out some punks late at night, and head back home to wash the blood off before supper.

He’d tried in earnest to live that way, to stand in the crammed chapel in
Manhattan, New York, while they had given reverence to the Italian war veteran and big brother and protector of Maria Caruso. He recalled looking up at his mother, not understanding that her tears were shed that day for a myriad of reasons he was far too young to yet understand but later, he most certainly did.

“Of course you couldn’t.” She laughed, one chock full of sorrow. “It reinforced what I always suspected.”

“...Which was?”

“That my father knew what had happened. If he did, he never forgave me...”

Dane was quiet for a moment as he deliberated over her words. “Well, if that is true, Mom, it is not Grandpa that had to forgive you, but God, and yourself.”

After a few moments, he heard his mother’s soft cries. He dropped his head and stared down at his feet. The outside traffic seemed to be growing louder and louder, as if he were in the midst of downtown
Detroit versus the corner of Hope and Understanding. Everything around him felt tight, overpowering and devouring. All of these years, he’d tried to bury the past, repress it, as he became further and further weighed down with the secrets of others—and the worst one of all was his mother’s, a woman he adored, loved and respected. And yes, resented. He understood
what
she was, however. A woman who was incapable of facing her true self and the real world, the ugliness that lay just beneath the polished surface. She’d tried to clean away the memories with a smile. The stickiness, the crud, just set there, taunting her no doubt, no matter how much she denied it. She’d soon discover the muck would return time and again to mar her present, all the way from a childhood that caused her shame. For, simply and truly, one cannot erase the past, and the past is what it is.

“Mom, don’t cry,” he said. “It’s over, okay? You have to stop beating yourself up about this. God gave you a second chance; it’s called today, and tomorrow...”

But the sobs kept coming, muffled, probably trying not to alert his father. She seldom cried, and it always unnerved him to see the outwardly sweet woman come undone at the seams.

“I...will let you go.” She sniffed. He heard her blow into a tissue as she regained her composure. “I just needed to get that out I suppose,” she said with forced cheerfulness.

“I hope you feel better, Mom. And... I love you.”

“I love you, too, so much, Dane...and... don’t forget about that stew. Come by and have a taste.”

“Okay, I will, Mom. Thanks... Bye.” He softly closed his cellphone and tucked his hands under his arms as he looked back out the window. These were the moments that made him want to dive tongue first into a pint of warm, soothing liquor—preferably Jack Daniels. He debated calling his AA sponsor but felt okay after a few moments. It wasn’t as much of a struggle now—the urge simply lingered in the air during times like this and he always declined, refusing to step one foot back into his old ways of coping. He tossed his cellphone on his bed, turned back toward the window and prayed. After he was finished, he grabbed his jacket and car keys to head to the hospital. At least this time, it wasn’t him that was in need of intervention...

~***~

One week later...

“I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Dane sprinkled the head of the infant baby girl, her ruby cheeks bathed in streams of colorful light filtering through the stained glass. The droplets fell away from her head, his fingertips moist from the Holy Water, while her parents grinned from ear to ear as they turned toward the congregation, chock full of pride. Their extended family began to gather and he stood and watched. For now at the least the third time in his priesthood, he burned with resentment. Once again, his heart ached with jealousy. He was nursing a new secret, the one that involved the woman that he was madly in love with—the one that he’d just spoken to an hour prior—and now he stood here, in his robe and a forced smile, looking at something he could never have in his position.

And, he was faced with the question—
“But why?”

What he was taught had made perfect sense to him at one point. He listened to the men he looked up to explain to him that he couldn’t have two masters; you can never be married to two at once. You have to serve with all of your heart, free from distraction.

You can’t serve the church as a priest, Son, and have a family. You’d be torn in two directions...

You can’t have sex, because fornication is a sin, and since you can’t get married, it in fact would be fornication. And you can’t get married, because you already have a wife...

And so the vicious cycle of reason continued. Dane drowned in a sea of thoughts and reflections, combing through all of the things that upset him. Old wounds became fresh, raw and sensitive. He thought about so many things related to his life, his relationship, his family and the Church. He thought about the sex abuse scandals that had hit like a storm, a scarlet letter on the Church, which was now under scrutiny—even the innocent appeared guilty. All of the secrets, lies and deception...

At the time, he was outraged, not just with the Church, but with the judgments from non-Catholics that looked at him with suspicion, as if he, too, were in some way a sexual deviant simply because he was a priest. It became tiresome...the questions:

“Did you know that priest that did that? He spoke at your parish before...”

“My friend’s brother was one of the victims of Fr. so and so, what are you all going to do about it?”

And so on, and so forth. So many things had gone wrong; the real issues weren’t being touched upon, only the symptoms. The Church was treating the illness with pseudo-prescription medicines, instead of spiritual lifestyle changes. No, you can’t turn a person into a pedophile—either it is in them to do such a deviant deed, or it is not, but the entire culture that he was knee deep in caused him to have complete awareness of his religious surroundings. How could something be so beautiful and so vile, all at once?

Over the last few days, Dane studied his Bible, the same Bible he had practically memorized, knowing his search would be fruitless. But he had to. He was trying to find something,
anything,
that would explain to him why God would not want him to have a relationship and marry. He read the passages with a discerning eye, with new logic, and was hit with the deep desire to dismiss them. He loved being a priest and he knew he was good at it. He believed he could do both, but how? They’d never allow it. The Church would wash their hands of him if he didn’t break it off with Rhapsody, at once. Probably transfer him to some other parish, far, far away—or worse, in a foreign country to help with one of their missions. Some place, far from Rhapsody.