Cross Dressing (18 page)

“No, there’s too much to do yet. We’re making progress, slowly, but still…” Father Michael cranes his neck to see if any supply trucks are on the horizon. “Our work here is too important to walk away.” He raises his voice above the clamor of ten thousand refugees. “I’ve written to Catholic Relief Services. I’m sure help is on the way …”

Though Father Michael is unaware of it, the worldwide emergency relief business has grown in recent years from a three-hundred-million-dollar-a-year enterprise to an eight-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The civil wars in Sudan and Chechnya; genocides in Kosovo, Burundi, and Rwanda; factional fighting in Liberia and Afghanistan; the civil unrest of Somalia; the famine in Bahr al-Ghazal—these and dozens of other events around the world have left millions of sick, wounded, and starving refugees in dire need of assistance.

Indicative of its capacity for charity, mankind responds to this need with staggering sums of money. And, of course, when
ever such sums of money are gathered together, mankind also reveals its vast capacity for profiteering.

Rwanda in 1994 is an excellent example. After several national governments and large charitable agencies sent two billion dollars in emergency money to deal with the refugee problems, 170 relief agencies hustled in to get a cut of the loot. According to the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, $173 million mysteriously disappeared over the following three years, apparently pilfered by fly-by-night outfits.

Despite the eternal frustration inherent in such work, organizations like Doctors Without Borders, CARE, Oxfam-America, and the Red Cross continued to try to help. And it isn’t just the people employed by these large charity organizations who are moved to do this sort of work. Certain individuals—people like Father Michael—refuse to surrender even in the face of this Sisyphean task, so they step into the fray and deal with it.

Father Michael bends down to a young boy, prone on the ground. He is bloated and dying and covered with skin ulcers. “Kala-Azar,” he says, using the common term for the protozoal infection that has severely enlarged the boy’s spleen and liver. “It’s the damn sand flies,” he says, “but then, they’re God’s creatures too.” Father Michael takes a rag and wipes the boy’s bleeding nose and gums. “He is wasting, like all the others.”

The woman from the Red Cross nods as she looks out over the sea of dead and dying. “I hope those supplies get here soon.”

Father Michael crosses himself. “You hope, I’ll pray.”

I
t took him a couple of hours, but the owner of Fernando’s finally got Ruth to tell him who she was and where she lived. He tracked down the Care Center’s number and called Sister Peg, who came over and picked her up. Sister Peg had been worried about Ruth ever since, so she made a point to go to her room every afternoon to have a little talk.

“Have you heard from Michael?” Ruth’s eyes showed little hope.

“No, I think he’s doing something for Monsignor Matthews.” Sister Peg had no idea where Father Michael was, but she didn’t want to worry Ruth. “I expect him back soon.”

Ruth nodded, but in truth she wasn’t optimistic. For some reason men had a tendency to disappear on her. But Ruth didn’t want to dwell on that, so she and Peg traded small talk for a few minutes before Ruth asked Sister Peg where she was from.

Peg told her about growing up in San Bernardino and how her father had died of cancer. “My mom was in pretty bad shape after that, emotionally and financially. I think that’s why she remarried so soon.” Sister Peg shrugged. “Unfortunately I didn’t like my stepfather. We didn’t get along at all,” is how she put it. “So I ended up moving to Hollywood to live with a friend of mine.” She shook her head as she recalled those days. “We were young and crazy and it was fun, for a while anyway. We had a great apartment in the hills and we went to clubs all the time, but it all cost more than I made as a waitress. After a while I just got tired of all the money hassles and I started to feel like I needed something else in my life, you know, another direction.” She gestured at her habit like she never expected to become a nun. “And eventually I found it.”

Ruth reached over and patted Sister Peg’s hand. “Well, thank goodness for that.” Ruth had a vague sense that Peg had left some details out of the story, but she didn’t think it was her business to pry. “I think this must be what God intended for you.”

“I think so.” Sister Peg didn’t like to lie about her past, but she didn’t see any point in going into the gory details either. The truth was that within a month of moving in, Peg’s stepfather began coming to her room late at night after her mother had gone to sleep. Peg’s grades slipped and she began feeling
guilty and depressed. The abuse went on for nearly a year before Peg finally told her mother. Her mother became violent, screaming and accusing Peg of lying and trying to destroy their family. She grabbed Peg and slapped her repeatedly in the face before Peg got away from her. She moved to Hollywood and had a string of crummy jobs. After the money situation got really bad and they were about to get tossed out of their apartment, Peg’s friend said she’d found an easy way to make money. And for a while Peg went along with it.

“You know, it’s funny,” Ruth said. “It’s different with Michael, since I watched him grow up and become a priest. But it’s hard to imagine that you were ever anything but a nun. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Sister Peg smiled. “It’s hard for me to imagine too.”

D
an was glad to be alive. He was in his Sylmar apartment, propped up in his new vibrating leather recliner, surrounded by three thousand dollars’ worth of television, DVD, and audio equipment. The kitchen was full of food and fine wines from Sterling and the Monterey vineyards, and his closet was filled with some serious wool. But like an increasing number of Americans who had discovered that buying everything in sight didn’t guarantee happiness, Dan was miserable. Oddly, his dissatisfaction had nothing to do with wanting a larger TV. Dan realized, as he flipped through two hundred channels of satellite-delivered entertainment, that there were only two things he really wanted. He wanted another shot at his own life and he wanted his brother back.

Unfortunately these were things over which Dan had no control, and as his expensive new watch began to chime, he realized these were also things he didn’t have the time to be worrying about. Dan turned off the chime and pulled himself from his chair.
I better leave now or I’ll be late for my own funeral.

In light of his shopping extravaganza, Dan felt guilty about the less-is-more service he had purchased for Michael, sort of a reverse-buyer’s-remorse phenomenon. But the credit cards had come when they had come, and there wasn’t any credit left on them to upgrade to the next level of ritual, and for that matter, there wasn’t any time. Not wanting to run into Butch Harnett at the cemetery, Dan had put a notice in the papers that his funeral was tomorrow, so any delay to upgrade would probably lead to Dan’s arrest. He’d stick with the cheap funeral.

Dan drove to the cemetery, his guilt compounding like credit card interest because Ruth wouldn’t be there for her son’s funeral. Ruth probably didn’t know Michael was dead, though it was possible she’d seen the news on television. If that was the case, she would be under the impression that Dan was the dead one. She wouldn’t have called his apartment looking for him if she heard he was dead, would she? How much sense would that make? Dan couldn’t worry about what his mom knew at this point. Right now he had to lay his brother to rest.

T
o the lone gravedigger who was leaning against his shovel in the shade of a nearby mulberry tree, it looked like a sad little memorial service. A single priest standing by the small hole in the ground he had dug an hour earlier. The gravedigger assumed the priest was the dear departed’s confessor, which meant the stiff had either died alone or alienated every friend and family member he had. The gravedigger couldn’t decide which would be worse.

Dan wasn’t sure how to proceed, never having presided over a funeral. He had prepared a few things to say, but he didn’t know where to put the ashes while he said them. It was too soon to put Michael in the ground, so Dan held the urn
in his left hand while holding his script in his right. He glanced at the words he had scribbled down, stuff cobbled together from memory. It was the usual graveside script about how it pleased Almighty God to take the soul of the brother here departed. There was talk of hope for the resurrection to eternal life, through Jesus Christ. There was the clause about committing his body to the ground, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that sort of thing. It was fine, time-tested material, and when Dan had scribbled it down, he thought it was what needed to be said.

Now that the time had come, however, Dan realized he had more to say. His mind was choked with guilt and he needed the words to express his emotions, but words failed him as his guilt grew. It was bad enough that he had popped for a cheap funeral, worse that he hadn’t told his mom, but to top it off, Dan’s scheme might have sent his good brother straight to hell. Try living with that.

Instead of reading what he had written, Dan considered just speaking off the cuff.
Goddammit, you son of a bitch. Why did you have to die? Why were you off in the godforsaken Third World taking care of others instead of taking care of yourself or your own mother? What were you thinking? Why did you leave me alone to deal with all this?
But he couldn’t say that. It was bad enough that the thoughts had entered his mind. Dan wiped the tears from his eyes and carried on.

The gravedigger kept watching from under the mulberry tree. He had to wait until the priest was finished before he could go shovel the dirt back into the hole.

Dan tried reading from the sheet of paper, but it wasn’t coming from his heart, so he put the paper away. He cradled the urn in his hands and looked at it, hoping something profound would spill from his soul, but all he came up with was
plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief death is.
Fortunately he had the good taste not to say it.

He brought the ashes to his chest and he held them close. After a moment, Dan knelt and slipped the urn into the ground. Then, using his hands, Dan scooped up the dirt and buried his brother, all the while thinking:
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

The gravedigger shrugged and walked off.

T
he office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is in an ordinary-looking office building on Wilshire Boulevard halfway between Beverly Hills and downtown. There are a few photos on the lobby wall, a local Bishop here, an old Pope there, but it’s nothing fancy. The current issue of
The Tidings
, Southern California’s Catholic weekly is stacked on a small wooden table just inside the door. The office is populated by good, hardworking Catholics of both the ordained and the lay variety who, for the most part, handle the administration of nonspiritual matters.

Although no one will acknowledge it—indeed, there are few who even know about it—the Church has another office, this one in a polished forty-two-story container on The Avenue of the Stars in Century City. This furtive location had a better decorator with a much larger budget than the office on Wilshire Boulevard.

Monsignor Matthews was one of the many who were previously unaware of this location. As he rode the elevator to the thirteenth floor he began to worry about being called to a meeting with no named purpose held at this mysterious place. When the elevator doors opened and the cool air rushed in, Monsignor Matthews feared he had been found out.

Matthews was a financial analyst for the Church and, over the years, he had done some poking around in the books. Although he was never able to get an exact figure, Monsignor Matthews once calculated that only twenty-eight cents of every
dollar given to the Church ever reached the poor. The Monsignor had the nutty idea that Jesus had something else in mind; consequently, for the past few years he had been diverting Church funds from certain accounts and turning the money over to Sister Peg. He did this because he knew things about the Church that he couldn’t reconcile with his understanding of Scripture. Monsignor Matthews felt the Church wasn’t living up to its potential, so he was doing his best to right the wrong—to help those in need. He was working from the inside.

He stepped into the reception area and felt as if he’d been transported to another time and place—the Inquisition came to mind. The floor was a spectacle. It was Italian pink marble inlaid with three-hundred-year-old ceramic tiles which formed the seal of Vatican City in the center of the large room. The windows were covered with heavy fuchsin drapes, completely blocking the bright Southern California sun. The space was gently illuminated by muted, recessed lighting.

Monsignor Matthews was holding his small briefcase. Inside was some unfinished paperwork and a copy of David Mamet’s
Speed-the-Plow
. He always carried reading material with him in case he got stuck in traffic, as had happened on the way to Century City. Matthews had become a big Mamet fan after seeing
House of Games.
He found Mamet’s use of colloquial dialogue authentic, plus he knew some higher-ups in the Church who reminded him of the real estate agents in
Glengarry Glen Ross.

Matthews was as tall as your average Monsignor. His straight brown hair was cut short. He had quick eyes and a resourceful aspect. But in this calculatedly ecclesiastical place Monsignor Matthews felt small and inept. He stood in the center of the room, looking and listening, though there was nothing to hear. After a moment, he folded his arms against the chill. The room was cold, the atmosphere like a climate-controlled museum.

Monsignor Matthews had arrived early and no one was there to tell him what to do or where to go, so he looked around while he waited. He was drawn to a large portrait on one of the walls. It was Pope Gregory IX, an imposing, grim-looking cleric from the eleventh century. Matthews marveled that the Church had ever fallen into hands such as his.