“I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware,” Kyle began.
“I apologize for that, someone should have mentioned it. On his good days he’s fine. People want to believe that means he’s on the mend. He’s very beloved.” The younger monk continued to hold the old priest’s hand with such simple affection that Kyle felt his throat tighten with emotion. The unself-conscious use of the word “beloved” caught him by surprise. Father McManahan, the friendly parish administrator who had informed Kyle that the Abbey of Gesthemani monastery needed a doctor to oversee their infirmary for a week, had filled him in on barely anything and Kyle had arrived carrying the slenderest set of facts: The regular physician, one Dr. Murrough, was scheduled for hernia surgery. The doctor meant to replace him had come down with a bronchial infection. They needed someone right away. The monastery was a good two-hour drive from Cincinnati, so it would be best for him to be in residence there, where they could put him up in the retreat hall. They realized it was a lot to ask, but it would be only a week. Kyle’s internal monologue had a quick enough answer to all of it: Only a week? My daily life is a Gethsemani. This one might be an actual break.
Which of course was completely unfair, absurd even, or at least it would have seemed that way to anyone who knew him. The past three years had slipped by with an idyllic ease. He was successful and well liked at Pediatrics West and had even been encouraged to take on some of the practice’s shifts at the local hospital. He and Van lucked into a charming prewar house in an exclusive section of Hyde Park, which they would never have been able to afford under normal circumstances, but the market was wobbly and the sellers were desperate. He hadn’t wanted to take on the debt, but Van’s parents stepped up and released the money they had been holding in trust for her from her grandparents. It was her money and she was his wife; there was no way to refuse, and why would he? The property was beautiful, with old-growth trees and dazzling azalea bushes, and the kitchen had just been redone with a Sub-Zero freezer and a chef’s stovetop. The wood detailing was stunning, the neighborhood impeccable. Van was in love with the location and the eccentric charm of the architecture. And there was money left over to pay off almost half of his med school loans! He was in his late twenties, and already he had money, health, looks, a great job, a gorgeous house, and his wife was beautiful, sociable, and educated. No one would have called his life a Gethsemani.
Still. When he mentioned to Van that he had been asked to take on this one week of service for the monks at the monastery, she had feigned enthusiasm for the idea with the clear implication that she would be enthusiastic about anything that would get him out of her hair. At two and a half, Maggie was the charming center of Van’s attention; they lived in a world of gold ringlets and stuffed animals and sticker books and fairy princesses. Oh, and new babies. In her seventh month Van was blooming, as they say, with expectant hopes that her second child would be a little brother for her spectacularly adorable first. The three of them—the second child already had such a vivid reality it was hard to think of it as a fetus—traveled in a kind of bubble apart from him. People stopped them on the street to coo about how lovely Van looked, and how cute Maggie was, and how the second pregnancy was going. And could these total strangers put their hands on her belly to see if the baby within would obligingly twitch on their behalf? At times Kyle wanted to partake in all this delightful nonsense, but it was a world that held him at bay with an insistent feminine disdain. He had heard that some little girls preferred their fathers, and he had even seen it, at the pediatrics practice, girls clinging to men who haplessly admitted that it created real problems at home when she wouldn’t go to bed for her mother. This would never be Kyle’s fate, at least not with his first child, who was so patently averse to him no matter what he did that he was convinced that behind his back Van had been poisoning her mind with tales of Kyle’s dark and loveless heart.