“Because it’s the tamest one I have about her.”
“I see,” he said although he didn’t. Marcus had explained his predilections to him a long time ago but Ballard never asked for details. He didn’t need them. He certainly didn’t want them. “I believe you once told me those in your community engage in a consensual sort of violence. Is that the sort of violence you’re talking about? The consensual sort?”
“It’s fantasy,” Marcus said, his face a brick wall—hard and impenetrable. “You don’t have to play by the rules in a fantasy.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then.”
“It’s a ‘no.’ ”
“Well…” Ballard began and shrugged. “Take out the part at the ending about fucking, and you have most of my thoughts about Margaret Thatcher. Hate that woman, God forgive me. I also mentally decapitated a man who cut me off in traffic the other day. Good thing we’re judged only on our actions, not our fantasies.”
Marcus laughed a little. “Now I remember why I asked you to be my confessor.”
“Even the most intelligent people have to be reminded of the obvious sometimes. You are not judged by what you think, but what you do. We all have horrible thoughts, thoughts that shame us, thoughts we don’t even want God to see.”
“It scares me, Stuart. The thoughts I have about her. I acted on a fantasy once. The first time I was with Kingsley.”
“When you put him in the school infirmary for three days?”
“He could barely walk when I was done with him. He wanted it. He enjoyed it. He even thanked me for what I did to him that night and told me he loved me for the first time. Cold comfort…”
“When I was 17, I got into a drunken bar fight in Liverpool. Broke a Scouser’s nose. Spent a night in the nick. St. Ignatius himself—”
“I know. He was arrested for street fighting.”
“Son, we’re all idiots when we’re teenagers. You’ve repented, been absolved. Don’t throw God’s forgiveness back in His face. Don’t throw Kingsley’s back in his.”
“You’re right. I know you are. I do accept his forgiveness, and God’s. The fear of doing it again, however, to her…”
“Sexual repression and suppression is the reason that we have priests in parishes who belong in prisons. I tell all my priests the same thing—vow of celibacy or not, you are a sexual being. God created you to be. Honor that part of yourself. Take care of your sexuality in a healthy way. If you’re having fantasies, have them. Enjoy them. Don’t fight them. Don’t deny them their place in your psyche. But don’t give them power over you.”
“Stuart, tell me the truth—if she and I become lovers at some point in the future, would it truly interfere with my ability to be a good priest?”
“Not if you don’t let it. I know far too many Protestant pastors and ministers who are married with children and do God’s work to believe that. There’s a reason the hierarchy is notorious for looking the other way when priests have lovers, but excommunicate those who get married. Half the priests in Rome have lovers—openly. The bishops don’t care who you’re fucking as long as the Church comes first and they can still move you around like a chess piece. You get married and have children? Then the Church isn’t first in your life anymore.”
“Eleanor makes it so easy to wake up in the morning. Knowing there’s the merest chance I’ll see her that day compels me to church knowing at some point that day she’ll be standing in my doorway telling me off about one thing or another. I am lost in my love for her.”
“I want to stop you, find you, bring you back. And yet…” Ballard said, aching with sympathy for Marcus, for himself, for all the priests he knew who were good men who’d chosen the Church over their own hearts. “If I were your age and had it to do all over again…”
“Yes?”
“Well, let’s just say poor Miriam would wear out her knees from a certain activity that is not related to praying.”
“I didn’t need that image in my head.”
“Turnabout is fair play, my boy.”
They talked of other things all the way back to the church. Music mostly. Marcus had been invited to join a chamber orchestra. Ballard had been given tickets to an Aerosmith concert by a friend. Marcus asked him if he knew anything about a band called Pearl Jam. Better guitar-playing than Nirvana, Ballard informed him, but that wasn’t saying much. When they arrived back at church they stood in the narthex by the altar. Ballard lit a candle and raised it in a salute.
“For her. I’ll be praying for her,” Ballard said.
“I thank you on her behalf. I have yet to stop praying for her.”
Marcus lifted a match and lit a candle of his own.
“Who is that for?” Ballard asked.