But there was silence … except for the very distant sound of some revelers caroling on State Street. He stifled another burp.
“What would you like to tell me?” he finally prompted, and it was then he gathered that the woman was so distraught that she had been silently crying. He saw her lift a handkerchief to her eyes, and he caught the scent of perfume wafting off the fabric.
“I have sinned,” she said, before stopping again.
“So have we all,” he said, consolingly.
“In a way that no one has sinned before.”
He’d even heard that before, too. “I doubt you have broken new ground,” he said, hoping to ease her strain with a tiny touch of levity. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s troubling you and we’ll see what’s to be done?”
“It’s not something you’d ever understand.”
“Try me.”
“It’s not something God would ever understand.”
He began to wonder if he had more on his hands than a lonely woman seeking absolution on a lonely Christmas Eve. There was always the chance that this might be someone in need of clinical attention. For just such emergencies, he carried, as did all the confessors, a cell phone in the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Now why would you say that?” he replied as soothingly as possible. “God forgives everyone. If you are truly sorry for your sin, and offer it up to God, He will take that burden from your heart. That’s what the holy sacrament of confession is all about.”
“But what if you have transgressed against His will? What if you have transgressed against Nature?”
He also wondered if perhaps she might not be a little bit drunk. Maybe she’d come here straight from some holiday bash, tipsy and suddenly overcome by remorse for some youthful crime. An abortion, perhaps? He’d heard that sad story too many times to count.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, and though he leaned close to see if he could smell the scent of alcohol, all he got instead was another whiff of the cologne from the handkerchief … but with something underneath it.
“The church? You shouldn’t be in the church?”
“Alive,” she said. “Alive.”
Now he knew that this was a deeply troubled woman, not just some conscience-stricken partygoer, and he had to be very careful and alert in what he said. He felt another pang of the heartburn, and sat up straighter in his chair. The air in the close confines of the booth was growing warmer and more redolent of her perfume. He wanted to sneeze but squeezed the tip of his nose to stop it.
“That’s a very grave thing to say,” he said, “and a very sad thing to be convinced of. I’m quite sure that it’s wrong, too. How long have you felt that way?”
At times like this, the line between priest and therapist became perilously thin.
She laughed, a bitter hard laugh, and this time the scent of her breath—cloves and spearmint—did come through the screen, but again it commingled with that same troubling note from before. Was it hers, or his own? He felt himself sweating, and another hot gust of indigestion burbled up in his throat. He longed to open his half of the booth and let some fresh air in.
“How long? I can’t tell you that,” she said, in an oddly coquettish tone, like a woman who’d been asked her age at a dinner party. “I just need to know what happens to people who have committed grievous sins. Is Hell real? Do you really go there? Is it for eternity? Is there any way out?”
“Now, now,” Father DiGennaro said, “you’re jumping the gun here. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Let’s leave Hell out of the picture altogether and let’s just talk about—”
“Why can’t you give me a straight answer?” she demanded. “Why can’t anyone ever give me a straight answer?”
He remained silent, not wanting to throw any potential fuel on the fire. He took the cell phone from his pocket and held it low, so that she wouldn’t see its glow.
“I can’t go on like this,” she said, her face just inches from the screen that divided them. “Don’t you understand that? Life is just a … a dead tree, with dead leaves that fall forever. They fall and fall and fall, and there’s nothing but more dead leaves to fall after that.”
Father DiGennaro could not help but be reminded of the Tree of Life motif with which the cathedral was imbued, from its doors made to look like overlapping planks of wood to its two-hundred-foot-tall spire. Was she reacting on some level to that? He would have to tread with extreme caution.
“I’d get out if I could,” the woman was saying, “but I don’t know how. I don’t want to go from bad to worse. You can certainly see why I wouldn’t want to do that, can’t you?”