One day while walking down an aisle at the local grocery store, my attention had been drawn to a shelf displaying votive candles with images of different saints on the glass cylinders. One might have expected this at one of those shops dealing in religious icons and books and other kitschy paraphernalia, but at the Safeway? Even more surprising was a smaller grouping of aerosol cans that flanked the candles, each containing the scent connected to a particular saint. Spray and pray, I’d thought. I had never understood it, this bizarre conception that saints could intercede in one’s life. I remembered as a child riding in the backseat of Jimmy Harrington’s family sedan and watching the oval medal of Saint Christopher as it swayed on its chain from the rearview mirror, hung there, Jimmy’s mother explained, to protect them on all journeys. And I had seen ads in the classified pages of the Globe beseeching Saint Jude for help and seen, too, over the years, the occasional television reports documenting the hordes of pilgrims descending on Lourdes for healing, clinging to their last hope, arriving by the thousands, in wheelchairs and on crutches and being transported on gurneys. I had always been both unexpectedly moved by them and equally dismayed. I thought, too, of the front-yard shrines throughout Port Fortune with statues of the Virgin Mary ensconced in the upended bathtubs—Mary on the Half Shell people called them—and of the adults who had placed statues of Saint Francis in their gardens. I even knew a couple who’d buried a miniature replica of Saint Joseph by their front door in the belief that this would facilitate a house sale. “You have to bury him upside down,” the wife had told us over a dinner at the seafood restaurant by the harbor. “And when the house sells, you must unearth him and bring him to your new home,” her husband added. These were intelligent and educated people, skeptical in matters of politics and commerce and in no other way given to superstition. Their gullibility stunned me. It was all such shite. Although Sophie would have argued with me, I thought it was not much different than the Greeks and Romans and Norse with their pantheons of gods. But this was the twenty-first century, for Pete’s sake. What would it take to believe in all this shite? A lobotomy would be a start.
Early in our marriage, Sophie and I had reached a truce on these matters. She didn’t try to convince or convert me; I didn’t ridicule or subvert her faith and believed I was successful at hiding my true feelings. The only thing she asked of me, even before we married, was that our future children be raised Catholic, and I had agreed without hesitation. Thus I had surrendered our only child to this church. By its priests Lucy was christened and confirmed, and within the stone walls of Holy Apostles a funeral Mass had been said for her. In the end all the rites and rituals had offered no more protection for Lucy than Saint Christopher had for Jimmy’s family when their Ford Fairlane got hit by a drunk driver.
I flipped the book open to a random page and was surprised to see a painting that was not the mediocre schlock I had expected. I was arrested by the image of a man as slender as a boy, with a boy’s face, clad in what looked like white Jockey briefs. In the painting, he was lashed to a post and four arrows pierced his flesh, one each in chest, thigh, rib, and abdomen. Saint Sebastian, I read, a martyr who, when he refused to sacrifice to the gods, was shot with arrows and then clubbed to death. The protector of archers, athletes, and police officers. I turned to another page. Saint Apollonia, virgin and martyr, and protector of dentists. When she refused to renounce her faith, heretics broke out all of her teeth and then burned her alive. Protector of dentists. On another page, I saw a painting of Saint Bartholomew. He was depicted with a thick beard, receding hairline, and was holding a curved butcher’s knife. The text beneath the painting informed that Bartholomew had been flayed alive and was the patron saint of butchers and tanners. So you were shot with arrows and made the protector of archers, had your teeth broken and became the protector of dentists, were flayed and protected tanners? I doubted the church deliberately intended this to be ironic. As I thumbed through the pages, I scanned passages depicting lives dedicated to supreme good works and charity and lives ended by torture, a listing of the hunted and haunted, the beheaded and burned, crucified and stoned. The accompanying paintings were works of the masters, of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, El Greco and Holbein. I found these renderings to be deeply disturbing. It was hard to tell from the faces whether they were in agony or ecstasy.
What did I believe in that, in the face of torture and inquisition, I could hold tight? Lucy, I knew instantly. I would have suffered anything to have saved Lucy. And Sophia. That was my list. My daughter and my wife. My country? I considered the question. I had never been one of those people who needed to wear a flag in my lapel proclaiming proof of my allegiance. I had never served in the military, and in college I had signed a petition opposing a certain government policy. I didn’t hang a flag from our front porch, not even on the patriotic holidays when the entirety of Port Fortune was swathed in red, white, and blue. And yet, standing in the hall, staring at the faces of the saints and reflecting on the question, I believed I would not betray my country. But, then, who knew, when put to the test, what a man would do, what a person could withstand in the face of torture? Who knew what a person was capable of? As it turns out, we are all capable of much, much more than we would have dreamed.
Shadows crossed the room as the sun moved lower in the sky. I flipped to another page and was completely unprepared for what was depicted in the painting. A woman—nude to the waist—was having her breasts torn off with pincers. Saint Agatha, the text instructed. Protector of wet nurses. A wave of nausea swept me. I’d had more than enough of martyrs and of saints, of the torture and murder of virgins elevated into something sacred instead of profane. I was taken by an anger so violent I was queasy with it and slammed the book shut. I wanted the goddamn thing out of my house.
CHAPTER NINE
Father Gervase closed the book and lowered it to his lap.
Earlier a brief thunderstorm had rolled through, leaving the lilac leaves a magnified and brilliant green. The bench where he rested was still damp, but this hadn’t deterred him from coming out to sit in the garden situated between church and rectory. It was five thirty in the afternoon, and soon Holy Apostles would be on the summer Mass schedule arranged to accommodate tourists and returning seasonal residents, but for now this hour was free and the meditation garden was hushed and cool. There was a narrow stone bench nestled in an arc of lilacs and another in the shadow of a juniper, and this was where the priest sat. He inhaled the nitrogen-charged air deeply, almost greedily, drinking in not only the ever-present scent of the sea but also the daylight, which wouldn’t edge toward shadow until after seven, compensating for the enforced confinement of past winter days that he found more challenging each year. Lately he had daydreams about slowing down and moving to a warmer part of the country, a place of extended daylight. A reassignment to a seminary or retreat in Arizona, perhaps, or New Mexico, although he would miss being near water. There was always Florida, but he did not seriously consider it. Geography called to one, and, in spite of the climate, Florida had never appealed to him. The San Francisco area was a possibility. He had never been there and yet could imagine it—a more laid-back Boston with cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge. His ideal spot would be somewhere with a temperate climate and a suggestion of seasonal change. He had little control over the wishes of the church regarding his placement, but he liked to dream. He pictured a small place with a garden, one similar to the site where he now sat and that gave him such pleasure.