“Then what?”
“Are you at all familiar with the new cathedral?”
“Not intimately. I know an awful lot of people think it’s a mistake to expend money on a monumental building when it would be better spent elsewhere.” Restitution for victims of priest abuse, for instance, I thought but managed not to say.
“I’m not unaware of the controversy about the cost,” the priest said. His tone held a wry note that surprised me. “No, I’ve come because Cardinal Kneeland wants to commission you to paint portraits of the saints. To hang in the nave.”
“Saints?”
“Yes,” Father Gervase said. “A series of paintings of the saints.”
The saints. I nearly laughed. “Sorry. I’m not interested.”
“You know that before you even talk to the cardinal? Before you hear what he has in mind?”
“I know that.”
“I wonder,” Father Gervase said. “Might I ask why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you dismiss the idea so readily. Why you won’t consider it?”
Which reason do you want? I thought. Because I want nothing to do with your church. Because I don’t believe in your saints. Because the very idea sickens me. Because I want to be left alone.
Father Gervase waited patiently, his eyes kind.
Perhaps it was this show of kindness, but I surprised myself by saying, “I don’t have the heart for it. Not anymore.”
The priest studied me for a moment. “You might be surprised at the capacity of your heart.”
Christ, I thought. Next he’ll be giving me some shite about turning the other cheek. “I’m not your man, Father. Tell your cardinal he’ll have to find another artist.”
A small sigh escaped the priest’s lips, the briefest of exhalations. He began to speak and then stopped.
“I hate to be rude, Father, but if there is nothing else, I’d like to get back to my work.”
“Of course. Of course.” The priest rose, slowed by hips that clearly pained him.
Still holding my coffee, I led him to the foyer, both surprised and relieved that he had surrendered so easily.
At the door Father Gervase turned toward me, his eyes studying my face in a way that gave rise to a deep discomfort which I must have betrayed, for he broke the gaze and said, “It was kind of you to see me.”
“Not at all.” Now that I was nearly rid of him, I could be generous. I allowed myself a flash of sympathy for this man sent on the orders of his superiors. Orders of his order, I thought. I offered my free hand.
Father Gervase enfolded it in both of his but said nothing. His blue eyes again fixed on me, and I was acutely aware of being assessed. “All right, then,” he finally said, and then, as he turned to go, “Doughnuts in pairs.”
I closed the door, thought, That was freaking weird. I carried my empty mug back to the kitchen, left with an uncertain sense I had missed something. It was then I saw the yellow packet on the chair. Swearing, I grasped it and hurried to the door, but I was too late. Even as I shouted and lifted my arm, waving the damn packet like a semaphore, the priest backed out of the drive. I shouted again, but he pulled away. I exhaled my irritation in a long sigh. Either he would return when he realized what he had forgotten, or I would have to drive over to the rectory and deliver it. Neither option appealed.
I felt from the package’s contours that it was a book. Without hesitation—I owed the priest nothing—I slipped it from the bag. The Illustrated Book of the Saints. I snorted at the cover, a garish depiction of Gabriel kneeing before Mary. The Annunciation in gaudy purples and magentas and greens. I could just imagine the art inside, if one could call it art. I pictured romanticized renderings in Technicolor. Golden rays of light spilling from the heavens. Lutescent halos big as meat platters. Illustrations similar to those in the Bible I’d received as a child, another of my parents’ gifts. I could picture them still. Joseph and the coat of many colors. Daniel in the lion’s den. Mary and Joseph in the stable. Bowdlerized Disney versions of biblical history. No cow dung in that manger. I understood then that the priest had fully intended to leave it behind. And what? This was supposed to make me what? Make me want to paint saints? I snorted again, this time at this pathetic transparency.
Instantly the rage—the anger that lay low but never disappeared, that had been stirring since the moment in the attic when I’d looked out and seen the priest walking up the steps, the anger Sophie told me was transference and thought would ease if only I would talk to someone about it, the anger she said was driving us apart and she could no longer live with—this rage woke. I flung the book at the door, narrowly missing a sidelight, and it fell to the floor with a thud. Screw you, Father Gervase, I thought. Screw you and the horse you rode in on. I was trembling. Sophie was right to be afraid of my anger. So dangerous. Unpredictable. A grenade, pin pulled, ready to obliterate all that had not already been destroyed.
Perhaps, like my wife, you are repelled by my anger, but before you judge me imagine yourself in my shoes, and just by doing so can’t you feel the heat spreading through your chest, the release of it? Can’t you understand? Once I would not have believed this, but now I understand too well that there is in all of us, even the most pacific and composed, an enormous capacity for rage, asleep maybe but present nonetheless, waiting for the single thing that will uncage it.
A faint hissing echoed in my head, then ringing, and then all was muted, as if I were paddling underwater. In this liquid void, the priest’s parting words rose up.
Doughnuts in pairs.
CHAPTER TWO
Doughnuts in pairs.