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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: From Whence I Came The second installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
14
Adultery & The Sin of Pride
I woke up extra early, so early that it was still dark out. My mental wheels started turning, the cogs crashing and grinding as they tried to process all that had happened over the past few days. I knew that getting back to sleep would be impossible. I gave up on sleep and decided to get up. I crept into the bathroom and got in the shower. Shawn and I had a bath the night before, but that had been more about having a place to enjoy the afterglow than getting clean.
As I washed, I thought about Bem and his fantasy. I understood the desire to be warm and safe and to not have to make any decisions or deal with the greater world. As I'd previously reflected on the old me over the years I'd spent with Shawn, I realized that the entirety of my alcoholism was due to the desire to escape. That seemed to be what Bem wanted. He wanted to escape the stress of his life into the perceived safety of Shawn and my relationship.
"Why?" I asked myself aloud as I shampooed my hair. "What could he have to run away from? He's rich, he's got a great gig managing Divided Light, he's got friends and endless sex partners...why would he want to escape from that? He talked about noise and people in pain. Is he in pain? Does he hear people in pain inside his head? Does he hear voices?"
I stopped talking to myself aloud as I rinsed the shampoo suds from my long hair, but the wheels in my head didn't slow. They kept turning and clashing and trying to reason out what was bothering my friend. I didn't get anywhere with my musings. I needed more information and the only place that it could come from was the very place I couldn't get it. I was not going to ask Bem to tell me his troubles for fear of driving him away from me. He and I didn't have secrets from each other, or at least, I didn't have any secrets from him. I hope he trusted me as much as I trusted him. I figured, when he was ready to talk, we'd talk. Until then, all I could do was be there for him.
I dried off, dressed, then went downstairs to find something to do and to avoid waking Shawn and Bem. I found Mary on the couch in the living room, sitting in front of a blank TV screen. She was dressed for the day. Her white top and modest black jeans were back, and her hair was up in the severe bun again. She looked terrible though, obviously exhausted and pale with dark bags under her eyes. "What's up?" I asked. "Couldn't sleep?"
She dragged tired eyes to look at mine. "I've been awake all night. When it got near dawn I decided to get up. How about you?"
"I'm usually an early riser but this is extreme even for me. I woke up and started thinking. I knew I'd never get back to sleep."
"Plans?" She asked.
"We're short on breakfast stuff. We're short on everything, really. I was gonna run over to the Zenith. It should be opening about now. You want to come along?"
Mary looked away. She made me wait for an answer while she stared out of the bay window and toward the sun that had just peaked over the horizon. "Sure." She said finally.
We drove downtown and found ourselves the only ones in the store. Mary and I walked the aisles in silence except for the uneven click-clack of her low heels on the tile floor. Her silence frustrated me. I didn't understand why she'd bothered to come along if she wasn't going to talk to me. I'd hoped to use the time with just Mary and me to figure out where I stood with her. I tried to start conversation with a question that had been on my mind since Mary first stormed into Joe's living room the day we arrived. "Do you hate me, Mary?"
Mary dithered over the boxes of cereal in the breakfast aisle. She made me wait for an answer. She selected a box of cereal, then put it back. She picked out another, then put it back. She moved away from the cereal shelves empty-handed and started her answer when she'd gotten several paces ahead of me.
"I don't know how to feel. You're my brother, but you really haven't been since Mom and Dad died. Even before that we hardly saw each other, we never really got along, then you left without a word. I know from the story you told us that you didn't have a choice, but I didn't know that at the time. I worried you'd killed yourself."
Mary stopped and wheeled on me; her tone deepened to become accusatory. She even pointed at me. "Your will was all about Joe, like I didn't exist. That was a slap in the face. Now you're back, married to a MAN! I don't know what to do with that. My faith tells me it's wrong, but you're happier than I ever remember you being, you look good, and your husband is nice."
Mary's pointing hand went to her healed cheek and her speech shifted to be about Shawn. "He fixed my face, with MAGIC!" Mary stopped speaking for a beat, seemingly stunned by what she'd said, then she went on in a lower tone. "I don't know how to feel. I'm mixed up. I don't think I hate you." She turned away and strode along the aisle.
I grabbed a box of granola bars from the shelf and threw them in the cart like I hated them. I knew I was taking my anger out on the bars, but better them than my sister. I didn't like her answer, but when I thought about it, I realized it was more than I'd expected from her. "We can start with that, I guess." I muttered to myself.
Mary and I shopped a little more, in more silence, and were in the dairy section when Mary suddenly became animated. We'd been trying to decide between two percent and skim milk. Mary threw the gallon of skim back on the shelf, snatched the two percent from my hand and put it back, then grabbed two gallons of whole milk and plopped them in the seat of the cart. She lunged at a bag of individually-wrapped mozzarella cheese sticks, tore it open, took a stick out, tore it open, and snapped her teeth through it. She pointed the bitten end of the cheese stick at me like it was the end of a Billy-club.
"I don't," Mary paused to roll the bite of cheese into her cheek so she could talk without choking on it, "I don't know who I think I am to judge anyone. My marriage is a mess. Do you know my husband isn't the father of my kids? I seduced a delivery driver that came to the house. The twins are his daughters." Mary paused again to chew the cheese in her mouth and to snap another bite off the stick. My brain screamed in surprise, both that my sister had an affair, and that she admitted it to me of all people.
"I never told him," she admitted under her breath, her eyes downcast, "and he was killed on his route one day, about three months after we...you know. I kept my mouth shut and let my sterile husband take the credit for my girls."
Mary looked up and shouted at me. She brandished what was left of the cheese stick at me like she planned to strike me with it. "You helped me after I said horrible, hateful things to you and Shawn! You should've lined up behind Ezekiel to slap me instead!"
Mary's self-loathing anger boomed along the aisle and echoed through the empty store. I grabbed her shoulders and put my face even with hers. She took another bite of the cheese stick and chewed while I held her. She wouldn't even look at me.
"HEY! HEY!" I shouted in her face. "It's fine. I forgive you. Stop beating yourself up. Who cares where your kids came from as long as you have them, and they love you? As for Shawn and me, we don't judge you. Me and you, we've missed out on a lot with each other, but we're family and I love you."
"Do you?" She asked.
"Do I what?" I asked back. I'd said a lot and didn't know which part she was questioning.
"Do you love me? It's OK if you don't. I haven't given you much reason to."
I was shocked at how much of myself I heard in my sister's voice. She sounded sad and self-loathing, miserable but somehow still hanging in there and living. My heart went out to her. That seemed to be happening a lot lately. I pushed Mary's chin off her chest to force her to meet my eyes. "You're my sister and I love you." I repeated.
My reassurance seemed to calm her. She ate the last bite of her cheese stick and held the bag up to me. I took one and struggled with the wrapper. Mary pushed the cart down the aisle, talking as she went. "I'm sorry for dumping all that on you. It meant a lot that you came to check on me last night. I was proud to see how angry you were. It made me think you still loved me after everything. I really thought you were going to kill Ezekiel when Bem took me upstairs."
"I really wanted to, Mary." I admitted and finally won my battle with the cheese wrapper. "When I saw him hit you, for just an instant, I thought I was going to. It took all my self-control not to erase him like that piece of hard candy. I didn't do it for two reasons; I'm not a killer, and you never would have forgiven me."
I caught up with Mary and she poked my side so I would look down at her as I chomped into my cheese stick. "Could you really do that, erase a whole person?" She asked and sounded like she didn't believe me.
I admit to feeling challenged when I answered her. "I'll tell you a secret." I leaned down to whisper in her ear. "Erasing the man that hurt my sister would have been like swatting a mosquito, but without the blood stain."
Mary cringed, and I worried I'd said too much, then she smiled. "That's cool."
Mary was quiet another moment like she was thinking something out. "Church, I'm sorry I called you a sinner."
"And a sodomite?" I prompted and hoped I wasn't getting greedy.
I'd confused her. "But you are one of them, aren't you?" She asked.
"Yes," I admitted and almost choked when I swallowed some cheese that I hadn't chewed all the way, "but you don't have to call me one. What's the difference between a devout person and a zealot? Connotation."
Mary nodded with understanding. "I'm sorry I called you a sinner and a sodomite."
"Apology accepted." I hugged her sideways and finished my cheese stick as we walked toward the checkout.
A very small version of my sister's voice asked, "do you think Shawn can forgive me?"
I knew Shawn's forgiving nature meant that he would readily forgive Mary if she presented him with a real apology, but I wasn't going to let her off the hook by admitting that. I didn't want to torture her, but I thought she needed to sweat a little as a lesson against the verbal brutality she'd directed toward my husband and me. "You'll have to ask him. Shawn is a caring person. He understands family bullshit. If you give him a genuine apology, he'll most likely respond with genuine forgiveness."
Conversation died as we went through the check-out line and picked back up as we crossed the parking lot toward the car. Mary brought Shawn up again. "He's really amazing. What he did for my face, I keep touching it to remind myself. He really loves you, doesn't he? You love him to."
"More than anything I've ever loved." I readily admitted.
"Isn't he," she started to ask something, then shook her head, "never mind."
"What?" I pressed.
Mary sighed and asked her question. "Isn't he young for you?"
I smiled at my memory of when I'd asked Shawn the same question. I gave Mary some of the reasoning Shawn had used then. "Twenty years isn't much when you can live to three-hundred. On Solum, twenty years is nothing. Shawn and I have met couples who are fifty years apart. Some people say that even a hundred years is OK. I don't know about that, but to each his own."
Mary shook her head. "Will you live that long now?" She asked.
I shrugged. "I don't know. I hope so. Every minute I get to spend with him is a good minute. I want as many of them as I can get."
Mary raised her shoulders in a shrug to match mine. "It sounds so strange, but after last night," she touched her cheek again, "I believe everything you've told me."
I didn't see where her statement needed a response, so I left it alone and unloaded the cart into the car trunk. As I did it, I noticed Bem's Domination Dominion bags. They'd slid across the trunk floor with the logo side down. I'd forgotten about the damn things. I thanked the god I didn't believe in for the small favor of them being logo side down, and I piled the groceries on top of them.
Mary stayed quiet until we got in the car and were idling toward the parking lot exit. She got my attention with a poke to the side. "The way he talked about you last night, the way you looked at each other when you danced, that kiss, it wasn't just passion or lust. That might have been the most beautiful kiss I've ever seen. I didn't know tenderness like that was possible. Congratulations, Church, you've made me jealous of two gay men." Mary's face brightened for a moment, then it dropped again.
I thought she deserved to know the truth about how I felt about Shawn. I hoped it would give her some hope that real love was possible. "Mary, he saved me. I didn't believe love existed, but he showed me it does. He rescued me. Shawn shined his love into my life, and I bloomed."
"That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard." She sighed. "I didn't know you had it in you."
"He's great in the sack to." I added.
"OH!" She hit my shoulder with an openhanded jab. I'd forgotten Mary was a hitter. "You always did that stuff to embarrass me." She tried to look indignant but failed. She couldn't suppress her laughter. Snickering built into hysterics for the both of us. "I knew the brother I remembered was in there somewhere!" Mary said with another shot to my shoulder.
We got to the house and made too much noise dragging the grocery bags in. Joe was up and dressed already. He was wearing dress pants, a nice buttoned-down shirt, shiny black shoes, and was tying a necktie in his reflection on the clear plastic that was the surface of the microwave door.
"What's the occasion?" I asked.
"I'm going to mass today. I want you to come with me, both of you, everybody." Joe said as he put the finishing touches on his Windsor knot.
I refused with a clipped, "no," and opened the refrigerator to put the cold stuff away.
Joe was instantly exasperated. "You have nothing to thank God for?" He demanded.
I glared at him over the open refrigerator door. "No, I don't, just like I don't have anything to thank Santa Clause for. I'm not going to mass, don't push me." I went back to putting the cold stuff away.
"You really have abandoned your faith, turned your back on God."
I slammed the refrigerator shut and crowded my brother with my anger front and center. "Damnit Joe! I don't need this nonsense."
Joe's anger flared back at me. He gripped his cane and the color rose in his neck. "I'm having a flashback to when I was ten and had to watch you have this same fight with Dad, right here in this house. Dad was right that time. Everyone needs to believe in something outside of themselves. Why do you resist that?"
"I'M NOT GOING TO MASS!" I screamed in my brother's face.
"WHAT'S GOING ON?" Shawn cried from somewhere. I stepped out of the kitchen to see him standing in the upper floor hallway, right at the top of the steps. I guessed, from the way he was dressed, that our argument must have caught him in the middle of getting ready for the day. He had on tan shorts, a tank-top undershirt, and socks but no shoes. "Why are you fighting?" He asked.
I leaned on the edge of the wall that supported the hall closet door with my arms crossed over my chest in a display of defiance. "Joe insists I go to mass with him. He wants us all to go."
Shawn came down the steps, went passed me, through the living room and into the dining room. He waved for me to follow. "Come on, come outside." His voice carried a hint of exasperation but was otherwise firm and even. "You and me, back yard, right now." Shawn went through the dining room and sunroom. He struggled a moment when he tried to open the wrong set of sliding doors. Frustration spiked inside him as he stepped back to look for the right set. He found it, opened the door, and waited next to it.
I shoved off the wall, passed through the house, and went outside. Shawn sat me on the yard swing and sat next to me. He opened the conversation. "I know this is hard for you and I know why. I know all about the issues around your family's religion. The trouble is, we're staying in your brother's house, accepting his hospitality, and trying to avoid conflict. Can you stand it for an hour? It will make Joe happy and will take the pressure off our situation. If you can't, I'll go in there myself and tell Joe we won't go, but I'd like you to try. Please."
"Why can't he just leave it alone?" I pleaded with the wrong person.
"You know the answer to that. Joe would be failing in his duty as a Christian if he didn't at least attempt to restore your faith. You helped him. He wants to help you."
"It's not helping, it's hurting." I crossed my arms and felt myself sulk.
"I know that." Exasperation was in Shawn's voice again and radiating through our link. "Don't you think I know that? I'm asking if you can endure it for an hour."
My mind reeled over the years of conflict that I experienced in that house. I remembered the last argument I'd had with my father when I was twenty and moving out. He said I was messing up my life leaving home, working in construction, not going to college for a white-collar job. My normally taciturn father spent the week before I left preaching my mistakes to me at every opportunity. The last straw, the final blow up was when the truck was packed, and I was getting ready to leave. My father's parting words were a proverb, "Remember, son, `He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.'"
I exploded. The repressed anger of years spilled out like a volcanic eruption. "I'M TROUBLING THIS HOUSE?" I raged. "WHAT ABOUT YOU? Can't you make a FUCKING point without a bible verse? Why was it always the church and God before us? Did you ever give a damn or are we here just because God told Adam to be fruitful and multiply? DAMN YOU!"
My father didn't say a word in reply, not even his expression changed. He cleared his throat with a violent a-HEM and checked his watch like he had somewhere to be. I gave up on my attempt to reach him, on my attempt to be acknowledged. I gave up on any satisfaction I ever thought I'd get from the wreckage of the relationship between me and my parents. I gave up on my home. I got in the rented truck and drove away, leaving my father standing in the driveway. I didn't speak to him or my mother until I showed up at Mary's high school graduation two years later.
That memory didn't get me any closer to an answer for Shawn. I felt his frustration with the situation and his desire to understand and to help. I groped for something to say, and my thoughts spun back over my entire young life. All the events blended into one experience. I told Shawn things he already knew.
"My father was a self-righteous, small-minded, zealot. My mother was exactly the same. In the twenty years I lived here, neither of them ever told me they loved me or was proud of me. All they ever did was criticize and quote The Bible. They sent us to Bible study to learn to love our neighbors and our enemies alike, but they could never love their family. Because my parents and the faith were so entwined, my hatred for the one spilled onto the other. Going to mass is like going to visit my folks."
"Your parents are dead." Shawn reminded me like that simple fact could erase the years of torture. "They can't judge you anymore. This is not about your relationship with them, it's about you and your brother. You have to bury the past."
"It's not that simple and you know it."
Shawn coaxed me to uncross my arms and took my hand, like he always did when I was overwhelmed. He used his calmest voice as he soothed and persuaded me. "I know, but I'm with you and Bem is with you. You don't have to face it alone. Please, try. Get dressed and drive us there. If you can't go in, you don't have to. If you do go in, and you need to leave, I'll leave with you. It will mean a lot to your brother. I think it will mean more to him than it will hurt you."
Shawn had me. He was right and he knew that I would see he was right. His reasoning left me with only two choices; I could either accept his logic and go, or I could be a complete child and flatly refuse. "Alright, I'll go." I relented but still didn't like the idea. I rationalized the decision to myself and him at the same time. "I guess I can go to mass once every twenty-six years."
We went back into the house, and I apologized to Joe for getting excited. He accepted, a little smugly I thought, and we all went through our normal morning routine of eating breakfast and getting ready to go. Joe decreed we'd go to ten-thirty mass and would leave, `not get in the car, but leave' at a quarter to ten.
We left the house right on time as Joe instructed. I drove the five men while Mary took Joe's smaller German sedan with her daughters. I dropped Andy and Joe at the rear entrance of the church, where there were fewer steps for Joe to negotiate, and drove the remaining three of us around to the parking lot. I found a spot and parked but went no farther. I sat with my hands welded to the wheel while I looked at the cross-shaped Lincoln emblem on the center of the steering wheel horn button. I was silent and motionless long enough for Shawn to get worried.
"I don't like this." I broke my silence. "I haven't been inside that building in a very long time, but it still intimidates me."
"It's just a building, Church. It can't hurt you." Shawn stated the logical like it was all that mattered.
"It's not the building." I argued as I pried my hands from the wheel and slid them nervously around the frayed vinyl wrapping. "It's the tearing open of old injuries, the rubbing raw of long-closed emotional scars. It was in that building that I learned fear. I was taught by small-minded men to be afraid of the wrath of an imaginary being. Inside that pile of bricks, the biblical message to love my fellow man was warped into prejudice and narrowed to a specific type of straight-jacketed love. Any other love and all passion were prohibited. That's not the home of a benevolent God, it's a house haunted by the angry spirits of an unhappy past and I dread it."
I looked at my hands and realized they were welded to the wheel again. My hands gripped it so tightly, my knuckles were white. Shawn put his hand on top of mine and tried to massage it open. "You're not a defenseless child anymore. You're a powerful man with friends...a world saver, a hero. We'll go in together. You don't have to be afraid with us there."
"Yeah!" Bem shouted from the back seat and punched the air. "And if we see any small-minded men or angry spirits, we'll kick their asses!"
I laughed and instantly felt better for having Shawn and Bem with me. "Thanks, Bem, don't get carried away." I settled and sat for another minute while I fiddled with my bracelet. "Seriously though, thank you both. I wouldn't go in there without you."
We got out of the car and crossed the parking lot. Bem pulled on my sleeve as we got close to the building. He seemed worried about something. "Are we going to see Mary's husband here?"
"No, he works at another church, one town over. Same religion, different congregation."
Bem nodded his understanding as we climbed the steps to the entrance. The three of us entered the church on Joseph's side near the alter. I opened and held the heavy, brass bound, white-painted door with the stained-glass pattern set into the top half of it. Bem and Shawn passed through in front of me. As I went in and let the door close behind us, the scent of the church hit me like a right hook to the jaw.
Bitter memories, sparked by the forgotten odor, flooded to my mind. Fire and brimstone masses from years past reared like specters and brought with them the dread of a religion that hated my kind. The memories poured in like water through a breached levee...Sundays spent in Bible study, Wednesdays at Catechism class. The lessons taught by prim acid-faced women and disapproving old men. All the ceremony and chanted platitudes forced on impressionable children too young to understand, but plenty old enough to fear.
I felt apprehension from Shawn. He seemed to struggle with the memories as well, even though they weren't his. He reached out to clasp my hand. I held it for a moment and took comfort in its tight warmth. I dropped his hand when I remembered where we were. I shook my head at Shawn and tried to convey without words that this was not the place for a display of affection between men. He nodded his understanding, and we found our seats. As I sat, I slipped my left hand in my pocket and closed it on my watch. The ritual action didn't make me feel any better, but it gave me something to hold onto that wasn't Shawn.
The priest entered in the normal ritualized way. He was not the man I remembered. `The old man who held that position in my youth must be long dead,' I assumed. This man was in his later middle age. He was a big man, tall and broad, but heavy set, like a boxer or a football player gone to seed. He had dark hair streaked with grey and a very expressive face. His face had a prominent jaw and strong, square features that were softened by a lot of sagging skin. The extra skin exaggerated the priest's smiles, deepened his frowns, and waggled as he spoke to add emphasis to his words and gestures.
His expressions helped to hold my attention as he said the mass. The service was largely as I remembered, many of the hymns I knew by heart. Shawn had no problem keeping up, and he even helped Bem the couple times that he faltered with the ritual. The bulk of the ceremony was simple routine, memorized and unchanged. I felt myself fortifying my mental defenses as the time for the homily drew near. This was where the former priest would have unleashed the fire and brimstone. It turned out that I didn't need the fortifications.
Instead of hellfire and damnation, the priest, who's name I then knew to be Father Miller, preached empathy and compassion for our fellow human beings. He reinterpreted the Good Samaritan story and expanded its meaning. Father Miller said that, if a Samaritan could show compassion to a Jew, a Samaritan who had good reason to loath the Jews who looked down on the Samaritans and treated them poorly, then all of us should have compassion for each other, no matter who or what they are.
It was a kind, paternal sermon about accepting people as a package, their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failings. Father Miller spoke of appreciating what each individual brings to the human experience even if they don't share in the faith. "Samaritan or Jew, black or white, man or woman, young or old, liberal or conservative, heterosexual or homosexual; all are people created by God and loved by him. And if God loves all people, shouldn't we show each other the same love?" The priest reasoned.
His mention of homosexuals shocked me. The priest of my youth never mentioned them except as part of an epithet damning them...us...me. To hear this priest tell his congregation to embrace those who the old priest said should be hated...it made me wonder what else the man preached. I enjoyed the sermon. It felt like a conversation instead of a set of marching orders. It was a very refreshing change from what I remembered.
When the service ended, and the recessional played, I stood to leave. Joe put his hand up and stopped me. I sat back down to wait with the others until the church was empty and Father Miller was making his way back up the central aisle. The priest stopped next to my brother and greeted him like an old friend. "It's good to see you, Joe. You seem better. You're moving better than I remember. Big group with you today; family, friends, or both?"
Joe stood, prompting all of us to rise, and moved carefully into the aisle. "I'm trying an unorthodox treatment that seems to be helping. I came to be thankful and brought the people important to me. I'd like you to meet everyone." Joe introduced the group as we filed from the pew. The way he trotted us out to the priest made me feel like a game show contestant. Joe introduced each person to Father Miller. He gave each person a name and identified their relationship. Joe disappointed me when he reached me and Bem and Shawn. "This is my brother, Church, and his friends, Shawn and Bem."
"Hello, Father." I shook the priest's hand. "Joe understated one point. Bem is my very good friend. Shawn is my husband."
The priest's handshake didn't falter, and his expressive face didn't betray any judgement. "Wonderful." He said as he traded my handshake for one with Shawn. "I hope you two are very happy. Are you moving to the area? Will you be joining the congregation?"
"We're just in town to see Joe and Mary." Shawn replied, seemingly as surprised as I was at the priest's acceptance. "I'm not even Catholic."
"It's never too late." Father Miller said graciously. "If you'd like to talk about converting, or anything at all, I have office hours every day during the week."
I was stunned into silence. I'd introduced Shawn as my husband as a direct challenge to Father Miller. It was a challenge he met without even flinching. Even more impressive, he welcomed us into his parish. To say that I was surprised would have been a gross understatement.
After some light pleasantries, Father Miller glanced at his watch. "I'm sorry to cut this short, but I have three baptisms this afternoon and a few other things demanding my time. It was nice to see you, Joe, and wonderful to meet the new faces. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again." He waved and hurried away.
Joe looked my way with a self-satisfied smirk that made his face look very smug. "Come on, Andy," he called, "I need help down the steps. Meet us around back please, Church."
If I was on my toes, I would have said something about committing the sin of pride inside the church on Sunday. As it was, Shawn had to pull me to the exit. I was in complete shock from my `Father Miller experience.'