Chapter Text
Part i. Me and the Devil
Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children,
to be self controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind,
and to be subject to their husbands so that no one will malign the word of God.
- Titus 2: 4-5
Chapter 1
You open your eyes to the same room you had when you were fifteen years old. Light streams in through the white-and-rose curtains, lighting up a gray lattice rug between the small, nickel-plated bed and a white wooden chair that matches a white desk with a hutch. The chair you can no longer sit comfortably in but the hutch itself is filled with erasers, jelly bracelets, peeling stickers, and old, faded origami fortune tellers and swans, all nestled next to a dozen books, including complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia and a Youth’s of Today Bible you got for your seventh birthday from your aunt. Somewhere in there still sits the forgotten drafts of the first and only novel you attempted to write at fourteen. It was a complete rip off of the Chronicles of Narnia but you were so proud of it until your sister stole it and read it to the entire table at Thanksgiving. Your dreams of brave lions and brilliant girl-queens were dashed that day, along with any hope of becoming a writer.
You stare at that set of books, untouched for at least ten years, and wonder what would have happened if you had had the courage to become a writer. Probably not as wealthy as being a cardiothoracic surgeon had provided, nor as myopically famous as one of the best surgeons in the country.
And yet, if fate wasn’t entirely cruel, then you most likely wouldn’t have ended up back at your parent’s house, waiting in almost physical agony for the call that would either save your life or end it.
There you go, being dramatic again, your mother would say. No, the call wasn’t about some medical results for you, but certainly regarding the results of a Mr. Bob Warner’s failed thoracic aortic dissection repair.
You could still hear his cardiologist begging you not to go through with the new experimental procedure. And with a grin afforded to most male surgeons, you had done it anyway. Because failure never happened to you. You simply didn’t allow it. You didn’t get to be the best if you failed at a highly dangerous, highly experimental surgery that had been only done once before. If a man could do it, and you knew that blow-hard, self-important asshole who did, then why not you?
You’re still not quite sure what or when everything went sideways. All you remember is walking into the operating room, the cardiologist still screaming about arrogance or something down the hall and then . . . blood. So much blood. You were pushed aside because you were doing nothing, just standing there as Robert Warner, father of three and husband of thirty-five years, flat-lined on your table.
How could it have gone so fucking wrong?
You ask yourself that question every morning since arriving back in your hometown in Liberty Blue, greeted with the same petulant light that was never this bright or invasive in New York. Every morning passed without a single call or text from your hospital administrator, telling you they had worked it all out and of course, you could come back to work. Of course, it was all taken care of and they were so wrong to send you away like some fucking shameful secret because it looked bad for the hospital to keep you around while the litigation was still being sorted. Of course, the family understood and in fact wanted to apologize for all the stress that the lawsuits and the public outrage and the embarrassment caused you.
A wave of emotion threatens to rise but you push your palms into your eyelids until you see a dance of lights and the back of your head hurts.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
The knock on your door is so loud it almost startles you. After living alone for the past five years, you forgot what living with other people sounded like.
“Darling,” your mother softly croons with an edge to her voice that is uniquely your mother’s way of being annoyed, “you’ve unfortunately missed breakfast and we’re all going to be late to church if we don’t leave now.”
Which meant we’re going to be late because of you and that isn’t something your mother would forget to mention for the rest of the day.
Your plight to skip Sunday mass had fallen on deaf ears. So here you are, in your childhood bedroom, going to church on Sunday exactly as you had until you left for college. Back then, your entire life was ahead of you — you had made damn sure of that — and now, here you are again, only this time, that bright light you saw at the end of the tunnel has faded. Here you are again, fourteen and ashamed that you ever thought you could be a writer. Ten and wishing you had friends like Susan, Lucy, Edmund and Peter. Seven and wondering why your prayers never seemed to reach God’s ears, no matter what you did, and what exactly you had done to God to make him so mad.
You say something back to your mother to get her to leave and she does, bustling down stairs to no doubt inspect the guest bedroom for perfection for the millionth time before your sister and her husband arrived later that day.
You swing your legs over the edge of the bed and the frame creaks, protesting in its age. Your hands are clamped tight around the edge of the mattress, everything inside of you trying to still your muscles and thighs and the cramped tendons in your hands. And that is the crux of it, isn’t it? You stare at a point in the carpet – where you spilled red nail polish, the color of your sister’s cheerleading uniform, when you were sixteen and on the phone with a boy for the first time – and force your hands to quiet, to settle. They revolt and a shudder passes through you. You lift your hand to the window and watch the gentle tremor, the slightest shake begin at your wrist and end at your fingers.
This began the night Robert Warner, father of three and husband of thirty-five years, died and it hasn’t stopped. No one knows about it, of course. Not your mother, not your sister. Certainly not the hospital. If they knew, there’d be no going back. Take you out to pasture and shoot you, the only meat you were ever good for.
The tremor passes and you breathe and you smell stuffed animals and dust motes.
You’ve just turned thirty and you feel older in your bones than you ever have before. The light from the window is bright and it hurts your eyes.
The pantyhose your mother lent you for this morning’s service smells like moth balls and lint as you slide them up over your toes. You hate the color of the pantyhose but are quietly grateful for them as you realized in the shower that the paint on your toenails has chipped and something about walking into a church in over a decade with unmanicured nails makes you squirm a bit.
You stand from the bed as you pull them over your thighs and your hips. You wish you had gotten laser waxing and the bikini treatment before you left New York. The thatch of hair at the conjunction of your thighs was growing back and while it had been five years since Mark died, and obviously there’d be no one since, you felt a bit uncomfortable, a little unclean. You at least were baby-smooth everywhere else, but you made a mental note to pick up a new razor at the store to manage it as best you could.
The majority of your clothes from New York sported straight black lines with solid and bold colors. God, you loved your clothes and how you missed the rest of them desperately. The silk Ravella blouses and sleek Valentina black pencil skirts. Knee-high leather boots from Saint Laurent Jane and sleek Louboutin pumps for the days instructing a new batch of med students. And then of course, there were your scrubs — cotton you wore like a badge of honor. Flimsy material but hell, it made you feel like a superhero. Part of a club that only those willing to commit sleepless years of blood, sweat, and tears could be a part of. Special.
The material underneath the cotton lace dress is not real silk, but it’s smooth as you slide it up over your hips and over each shoulder. It’s your mother’s so it’s a bit too big for you, sticking to places it shouldn’t in the Texas heat. Your mother thought the clothes you brought with you from New York were too “flashy” for a Sunday church service but you had fought tooth and nail against wearing anything else. Your clothes had cost more than a downpayment on a house so let them foam at the mouth over it. No, you weren’t married. No, you didn’t have kids, but the nearly absurd amount of wealth and fame you had built entirely on your own had to mean something. You had a brilliant mind that you never let idle because if you weren’t going to follow the correct, chosen path for a woman, then damn it, it meant everything.
All of it had to mean something.
You close your eyes, fisting the dress in your palm. Your hand tightens, a tremor not far behind, but you will it away and after a moment, draw the burnt orange cardigan over your exposed shoulders.
You slide your phone, wallet, lipstick, and the pack of cigarettes your mother doesn’t know about into your purse and take a step back in the mirror.
You look like a pumpkin, you decide. An empty, hollow Jack o’ lantern with its guts torn out and a smile carved into its face. But at least you look like a proper Christian.
The church, in the twelve years you’ve been gone, has gotten an upgrade. White limestone, common in the Texas hill country, has replaced much of the wood and the faded brick has been blown out entirely in favor of tasteful stained glass windows. They even replaced the gaunt and web-covered Jesus floating above the altar with a simple yet clearly expensive solid wood cross. That is one change you can abide by – the old crucifix in the right light looked positively possessed, you remember as you stare up into the tall ceiling a few minutes before mass starts.
The other change, curiously, is the darkened cloth hanging in front of the stained glass windows, like the world’s most depressing kitchen curtains. The gloom gives the church a slight chill and the sense of being miles underwater, trapped in an airless, forbidden place. This change is distinctly new and yet no one had even considered explaining it to you.
To no one’s great surprise, you, your father, and your mother had actually arrived early to Sunday mass. Your mother, ever the conductor to the chaos of the household, had no doubt planned for a delay to arrive exactly at the time she meant to. Your father, who had dressed in his Sunday best the moment he had woken up, had no greater insight into your mother’s machinations. He did as he was told; he showed up, looked nice, and was perfectly, entertainingly cordial. When company left, he grew quiet and went back to his study to listen to old records with headphones on, like an automaton powering down.
He had once tried to show you his records but your mother expressed her dissatisfaction with her pursed lips and the quick admonishment: “that’s no music for a lady.” He had never tried again after that.
Today, he sits in the third row from the front, grinning softly and quietly tapping his fingers to a beat that didn’t match the deep church organ playing solemnly behind the altar. Your mother stands near the church doors, handing out psalm cards and brilliantly greeting everyone with a “peace be with you.”
She had told you to sit by your father, but jitters keep you on your feet, like a cramp you couldn’t walk out. You’re not quite sure what you’re nervous about – with that terrible crucifixion gone, you don’t even feel the lamentful eye of God you – so perhaps it’s the hour long sermon coming that made you want to walk around, even if it is just to stare blankly at the old Virgin Mary statue crammed into a corner.
Sermon. The word people used even in a secular context to express moments when you were going to be lectured, most often by a droll, pretentious know-it-all. The moments when you were meant to feel small and shameful — meant to feel bad for all the things you had no idea were wrong or, shockingly, offensive to the All-Seeing-Sky-Man.
The stone statue of the Virgin Mary stares down at you, cheeks stained with creek water pumped down from her eyelids in eternal, maternal sorrow for you and your damned sins. Her hands outstretched, every bit of her body reeks of patronizing, diminutive disgrace.
If only you listened, she says sorrowfully without a hint of irony.
Oh fuck off, you miserable cow.
The organ slows in its song, finally stops, and begins again — less awe-inspiring and more funeral procession.
You don’t need to hear your mother hiss behind you to know it’s time to take your seat. So you do, sliding in between your mother and father, the lace dress sticking to the back of your legs.
A crescendoed wave of heels hitting stone, old knees cracking, purses and coats shoved aside — the climactic rise of parishioners begins at the back of the church and flows like a riptide to the pew where you and your parents are sitting. Above the heads of churchgoers, you can see two glowing candles and an obtrusively large cross, gliding by as if on their own accord. The singing has begun and your mother’s offkey notes grate in your ear.
Altar boys, shockingly young to you, wander by, their faces drawn slack with boredom, the cross and candles hiked high on their narrow shoulders as they lead the clerical procession. You swear you saw a camera flash go off from no doubt a parent aggressively proud of their son’s involvement in the church community.
Probably already sending it off to Walgreens to be ready to print and hang on the fridge next to —
The live wire from your brain down to the rest of your body is snipped and the world falls almost instantly silent in the cavern of your skull.
The priest that follows the boys is not Monsignor Bill.
Not by a long shot.
Monsignor Bill, who gave your first Communion at eighteen after baptizing you as a baby in this very church, had to be at least pushing ninety.
This man was not.
The murky light from the covered windows covered his dark skin in muted blues and oranges, like a kaleidoscope of bruises, the gold thread in his vestments twinkling sickly as he walked by. His head, bent low against the tips of his fingers in prayer, was covered in lush black curls, matched only by his thick, demure eyebrows. Long black lashes shuddered against smooth cheeks as he whispered quiet prayers to himself, gaze to the stone floor.
This priest is young, fervent, and what feels like a punch to your gut.
“Porphyria.” Your mother whispers in your ear and the world suddenly has sound again. You blink several times to register she has just said a complete nonsense word to you.
You tear your gaze away from the front of the church and look at your mother, her head down and still singing the hymn at a more digestible volume.
“What?” You whisper back. She glares at you like you just screamed at the top of your lungs, but she slides closer to you, leaning forward to your ear again.
“Porphyria,” she says again more firmly. She sidles even closer as if anyone could hear her above the music. “The poor priest has it. That’s why we cover the windows. It affects the skin. His body doesn’t get enough proteins. We’ve been all too happy to accommodate him after Monsignor Bill retired.”
Who is he, you begin to ask, but your mother launches herself away from you as the new priest stands at the altar, his arms outstretched.
“Peace be with you.” His voice is smooth, like warm, unmolded clay, hands wide and square. He looks every bit the priest — absolutely no reason for the alarm bells going off in your head.
But it’s his eyes, you decide, there’s something not quite right about his eyes. They’re empty and, with their dark coloring, look almost black. Like the endless roving of the eyes of a shark.
You glance around.You want to know if everyone else can see it, the emptiness, too but you get the feeling they can’t. No, every face stares upward, welcoming, enraptured. No one else sees but you. You swallow and try to focus.
“And also with your spirit.” The church intones back.
What the fuck? When did it change from “and also with you”?
Mark always liked that bit. Mostly because it sounded hilariously similar to what the Jedi remarked to each other in passing. He’ll be pissed that they changed it, you quietly grin to yourself.
But then you remember. He won’t.
You school your face, keeping the flush from reaching your cheeks, as your eyes fall to a point at the back of the church, the same place they always fell when the service got particularly mind-numbing.
But then the new priest’s voice broke out again, the organ’s music dying like the last bellow of a mournful dragon, and your gaze unwillingly shifted to the pulpit.
“Good morning, everyone. I’m so pleased to see so many of you out today.”
This is where Monsignor Bill would call out various parishioners he knew in the pews, specifically asking about their mother or their cats or their herds of cattle. This is where Monsignor Bill, having been at the parish for over fifty years, would get the crowd feeling welcome, united as a community and a family of sorts. The town was never small enough that everyone lived on top of each other, but it was never big enough that anyone got lost through the cracks – or at least that’s what Monsignor Bill convinced them of. He, like any good priest, was a force unto himself; both god and man that easily wore the baseball cap of unbiased confidant and close personal friend of the Man Upstairs who would always put in a good word for you. Not unlike the adult version of Santa Claus – both having the same relative percent chance of existence, as far as you were concerned.
But the new priest did not do that. Whether a little crowd play was not his style or he simply didn’t know the parishioners well enough to do, it’s unclear.
He adjusts his weight from one foot to the other, clears his throat, and reads a passage from the Old Testament.
That’s absolutely not how Monsignor Bill would have opened mass and you cannot deny the feeling that more than anything, this priest wants to get out of the church as quickly as possible. He speaks with conviction, with certainty, but with all of the passion of a tenured professor giving his hundredth lecture to an intro level course.
You glance around and find, surprisingly, the congregation doesn’t seem to mind. They listen, blankly, not in a rush to leave, but perhaps finding little inspiration. As if attendance was a box they had to check before going about the rest of their day.
“You, O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel,” he reads, his voice echoing in the small space. “Awake to punish all the nations. Do not be gracious to any who are treacherous in iniquity. The word of the Lord.”
The priest finishes reading and looks up at the crowd almost expectantly.
“Praise be to God.”
The music begins again and you feel as though you are watching the world’s worst play, conducted by tired actors on a tired stage.
He calls on the congregation to open their hymnals to page two-seventeen, How Great Thou Art, and raise their voices up to heaven. They all join in, of course, invigorated, not perhaps as one community but as individuals have been personally blessed.
When your mother leans over again, you hear her with perfect clarity: “That’s Father Peter. He’s new.”
The Texas sunlight continues to be unyielding in its brightness, even brighter beneath the dark depths of inside the small church. You blink against the explosion of color behind your eyes, the small cardigan sticking wetly to your back as sweat blooms across your skin in the dry air.
Your father had sauntered off to get the car, annoyingly leaving you here to wait with your mother as she gathered up the cards and chattered with the members of the PTA who had also stayed behind to gossip as much as to help with the winding down of the mass.
Usually, your mother explained after most of the church was empty, Father Peter is not well enough to say farewells at the end of service, but with it being late October when the hours of the day were shorter, he had managed to make time . . . to the apparent joy of the women of the congregation.
The small crowd of them, both young and old, part of the PTA and otherwise, surrounding the young priest did not escape your attention. You purposefully glare into the sun, hoping for sudden blindness.
Soon, the husbands and sons left standing in the lawn out front can no longer pretend to be invested in the repeated question, “so how was the game last night?”, and they shuffle along their wives and mothers and sisters, like farmers huffing at clucking chickens. Some titter and balk but all follow out into the sun, where apparently Father Peter cannot follow, much to their dismay.
You hear your name being called and that is indeed your mother. You walk back into the semi-darkness and immediately feel cornered. She is standing by the new priest, waving you over. They are both staring at you. He’s staring at you with those dark eyes. But now, up close, perhaps you wouldn’t call them predatorial, yet still something doesn’t sit right.
You peel back your lips in what you hope is a smile and not the grimace you feel it to be.
Father Peter extends his hand first and hearing your name from your mother, repeats it, in that same, soft reverent lilt he addressed the congregation with. At that moment, you feel your arm seize and behind your back, your hand shudders again. No, not now. You clench your hand into a fist, beating back the tremor, and it settles like a caged dog heeling at the feet of a cruel master. You reach forward and take Father Peter’s hand, hardening your gaze as much as your muscles in your arm.
The inside of his palm is cool and dry. You meet his eyes as you shake hands and he blinks, eerily still for half a second, before glancing back at your mother and breaking the hand shake. His hand slips back into his robes as though he had just touched a leper.
It’s distance, you realize. His role in the community prevents him from physically keeping everyone and everything at a distance, but it’s given away in his eyes. You feel it even when he looks away, but you want to turn your head, to catch his gaze again, to follow that cavern as far as it would go.
“So wonderful to meet your daughter, Diane. I’ve heard such good things.” That voice could melt butter.
He addresses you again. “Where’s your husband?”
Your heart constricts as your mouth falls open. Something in your eyes must have slipped because those fervent brows knit together an instant before your mother nearly steps in between you two.
“Oh, no, no, no. You’re thinking of Grace, my other daughter. She and her husband will be coming in later this afternoon. My sweet girl here — she — her husband is —,”
“Dead.” You finish for her. You practiced saying it a thousand times in the mirror so you could say it again, now in front of a complete stranger who deserved nor needed to hear about Mark’s brief but agonizing battle with lung cancer, which left him the shell of a man he was just six months after your wedding day. You practiced saying Mark was dead almost every day in the five years he had been gone, if only to remind yourself of life’s unimaginable cruelty.
“Oh, yes, dear, it’s very sad,” your mother says, a faint blush on her cheeks. But you choose to ignore her, suddenly defiant before this man of God who dares judge you, unmarried and childless at the ripe old age of thirty.
But he doesn’t. Instead, the distance closes ever so slightly — he turns towards you — and you can almost feel the wave of painful sympathy come crashing down on you. Almost as if he knows what it’s like to lose a spouse. To lose the love of your life to a circumstance you could neither prepare for or run from. A flare of anger breaches inside you. How dare he —
“I’m sorry.” Father Peter says with an unearned gravitas and, for the first time in years, your throat feels plugged and your eyes burn because he does know. Somehow, he’s lost something precious that he can never, never get back and you —
“Ol’ Danny Girl,” your father calls his favorite pet name for your mother, his silhouette taking form as he strolls through the church door. Immediately she stiffens like a cat caught in the rain.
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” she snaps at him before she remembers where she is. She whips back around to Father Peter and grabs his arm, jolting the connection between your gaze.
“We’d love to have you around for dinner tonight!” Your mother trills. “Grace and her husband, Nick, would love to meet you. Are you good with kids? My granddaughter, Abigail, is just the sweetest thing!”
How can they not feel it — the way he burrows back in on himself, a galaxy of space erupting between him and everyone else. Father Peter raises his hands, mouth bending down in an apology and an excuse. You almost feel sorry for him, the way your mother pounces on him, her latex claws digging in a bit deeper.
“Oh, please, you must come! We so rarely get to see you after church and we’d love the opportunity to get to know you better.”
Clearly, the man had no idea how valuable it is to be chummy with the local priest in a small Catholic community, especially to a group of women whose entire goal in life is to one-up the others.
Father Peter frowns gently, as if he desperately wanted to say yes, but there was something truly holding him back. Unlike the service where he seemed to recognize that was an act of duty, there is a desperation, a fight against a natural reflex. But then he swallows and nods.
“What time? What should I bring?”
Your mother preens and releases her death-grip. “Just after seven and just a bottle of wine! Looking forward to it!”
She doesn’t exactly squeal, but something similar escapes her as she follows your father down the steps, taking him in her arms in a truly genial way you had not seen in years.
He’s watching your parents go, the frown lines growing deeper as if he’s considering he’s made a massive mistake.
“Not sure if you know what you’re getting yourself into,” you begin even though you’re not sure this guy deserves a warning. Your fingers itch for the cigarettes in your purse but that seemed like one too many strikes against the Lord.
At that, he makes a sound that could be considered a chuckle, if it didn’t sound like someone coughing, clearing out cobwebs.
“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger. Strike the bell and bide the danger,” Father Peter murmurs with his lyrical voice. “Or wonder, till it drives you mad, what would have followed if you had.”
You frown. He mistakes your confusion for ignorance. He shakes his head. “It’s not from the Bible. It’s —,”
“C.S Lewis. I know.”
He blinks and for the first time since meeting him, he looks at you. Really looks at you, and is surprised by what he sees. There’s something about him that absolutely does not look well fitted to be in a chasuble.
The back of your mouth is dry and you swallow. “I’m not that quick with a scripture verse. Instead of reading the Bible as a child as my mother would have wanted, I read Lewis.”
“And others?” He asks. You nod. Your mind, once used for storing the smallest details of the endocrine system, still had room for the old favorites you kept close to your heart, imbuing them with a sense of magic under the covers at night with a flashlight.
“Though here at journey’s end,” you say, unable to stop the smile as it spreads over your face. “I lie in darkness buried deep, beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep, above all shadows rides the sun and stars forever dwell.”
“I don’t want to insult your intelligence by asking if you know about the great theological and philosophical debates Lewis and Tolkien had.” Father Peter says, a thick eyebrow raising.
“Then don’t,” you respond a bit hotly.
His mouth squirms in what could have been a smile but he drops his gaze to the floor.
“We shall by morning, inherit the earth. Our foot's in the door.” He intones with a light air of a challenge.
You nod, slightly impressed. “A priest who knows Plath. Must be the end of the world as we know it.”
“Now don’t insult my intelligence by assuming the bible is the only book I’ve ever read.” Father Peter says, crossing his arms in mock seriousness. “Though, I suppose, in fairness to you, it’s only recently I’ve expanded my reading.”
“What? Not finding all the answers in the Good Book any more?” You tease.
Father Peter swallows, the sense of falling rising in his eyes again, the distance coming back. “Not all the answers are there. Any good priest knows that.”
You immediately feel like you’ve poked at something you shouldn’t have but before you can change the subject, he continues:
“How long are you going to be in town?”
As if he expects to see you again.
You notice, to your mounting horror, he’s not sweating even in the late autumn heat. In fact, his skin looks fine. No signs of any disease that would give him third degree burns in sunlight. From the chasuble that looks too gaudy and sharp against his soft skin to his thick black hair, he looks . . . just . . . fine.
Something shifts in the air between you, like the first lance of lightning shot over a thunderstorm. It sparks up your spine and pinches your airways. The dark brown of his eyes flicker black in the shade. And then he takes a small but visible step backwards, as if someone were drawing his strings across the stage. Your body would rock with humiliation if his want wasn’t at that moment almost palpable. But the next moment comes and you’re left wondering if you really saw anything at all because that would be insanely inappropriate.
Your mother calls you and he releases you from the grip of his gaze.
“Careful, Father,” you say, laughing because anything else would make you scream, “or we’ll have nothing to talk about over dinner.”
You trot down the steps, not waiting for him to reply, before dashing out into the open fields of sunlight.
A/N prt 2: The Sylvia Plath line is from her poem, Mushrooms, because my kink is Father John is a feminist.