Forbidden Fruit (9 page)

Instinctively, I said, “That must have hurt her a lot.”

“Oh, it did. If only she had given Johnny up as soon as he was born.”

“Did you advise that?”

“What else? Tis so much harder once the woman bonds with her baby. But she made the sacrifice for Johnny’s sake. I had to
help her over this difficult passage of her life.” He gazed at the boy’s picture. “Johnny was special, y’see, so much life
and joy he had.”

“What became of him?”

“I saw to it that the little feller was adopted by a wonderful family. He’s very happy now.”

It sounded as if he was still in touch with Johnny, who, by my reckoning, was now about ten. That pleased me.

I said, “Are you sure he’s happier than he would have been with his natural mother?”

“Absolutely.”

I disliked that kind of certainty. You could only be that sure by blinding yourself to most of the facts of life.

“What,” I asked, “became of her?”

“His mother? She wanted to become a children’s nurse.”

I thought,
My God, she gives up her own child so she can take care of other people’s
.

He was saying, God-like, “I provided the money. I presume she married. She probably now has a family of her own.”

The indifference he showed to the mother’s fate was in stark contrast to his interest in the little boy.

“May I see him, Eamonn?”

He handed me the picture. Staring out at me was what looked like a miniature replica of Eamonn. Even the bump in his top lip
was the same.

“Well?” he demanded.

Was he confessing his sin or asserting his pride? Was he daring me or warning me? Did he want my criticism or approval?

Masking my desolate feelings, I handed the picture back with “A fine little boy.”

He continued searching my eyes to find out what I was thinking, but I did not know that myself. I could not even be sure if
my imagination had misled me.

I had taken it for granted that his fumblings of the night before were proof of sexual inexperience. What if they simply proved
that he was not good at sex or that several years had passed since his last intimate relationship?

One thing had not varied: he liked to keep me guessing. With him, nothing could be taken for granted. Once again, I had the
impression that only he was entitled to call the tune. And I could not guess the next note because this was jazz and he improvised.

When I retired for the night, he walked up and down the corridor, reciting his breviary. Those prayers scared me now and made
me jealous. They also intimated that he had only the holiest intentions toward me and if bad things were to happen, he would
not be the guilty party.

At about one o’clock, his bedroom door opened and closed.

My racing heart asked, What next? What did I want to happen? I had had enough surprises for one day.

Minutes later, I saw the doorknob of my room turning slowly. An exciting moment. How was he coming to me, as a priest or a
lover? Would he be dressed in full pontificals, so to speak, and tell me, “Sorry, I made a mistake.” Or was he coming to me
naked in body and soul to confess his need?

The door edged open and he entered in stages. First his head with the keyhole eyes. A long-distance call perhaps? No, enter
his sturdy torso in a dressing gown over pajamas with—no small detail—the cord of his gown tied so tight it almost cut
him in half. He had a glass of brandy. Was this his shield, his comforter, or a painkiller for the big good-bye? If the last,
what anesthetic had he brought me?

As he closed the door and came slipper-slapping toward me, he handwarmed the big glass globe. Watching the brown liquid going
round and round, I felt drawn into a whirlpool. His body and mine entwined and eddied in the act of love. He and I were inside
the glass, lovers’ eyes hypnotized, mingling inextricably one with another.

He sipped the brandy. The first move had to be his.

“I had to say Mass today, Annie.”

“Don’t you always?”

He nodded. “But after what happened last night…”

Happened. He made it sound less like something we did than an act of God, say, a volcanic eruption.

He went on. “I felt I had to go to confession.”

Ah
, I thought,
so this
is
good-bye
. He couldn’t live with a bad conscience. But why hadn’t he said so by the fireside? And why get into pajamas and come into
my room to say it? Was he wanting me to play the part of Eve so that he could enter my bed, enter me, and plead not guilty?

Sitting on my bed, he explained that he had told his confessor that he had had physical relations with a woman.

I hated that. A “woman.” Wasn’t Eve, mother of all trouble, called “Woman” in the Genesis story? And why the ambiguity of
this phrase
physical relations
? This was plain, glorious, earthy sex. We weren’t just wrestlers, for God’s sake. It worried me that he used words to camouflage
reality.

“My confessor told me to break it off, Annie.”

Ah, his confessor had seen through the smoke screen. This
was
good-bye. It had been fine for the few hours it lasted.

“I told him, Annie, I didn’t agree.”

I gasped.

“ ‘I have an obligation to this woman,’ I said. ‘She is badly damaged in body and mind and can only be healed by a deep love.’
“

He was speaking of me in the third person like a medical client. Was he to be my therapist or my lover? Was last night’s wandering
over my body with his hands a benediction, his priestly way of making me a good Catholic?

Eamonn was so like my father. Was that why I was so attracted to him? Daddy, too, had a split personality and enjoyed equally
the good and bad in himself. His denial of the bad, like Eamonn’s, was unconscious because it was necessary for his survival.
He had been beaten by his German mother and his denial of the bad was his way of coping with the results.

In Eamonn’s case, the abuse was spiritual. Mother Church had imposed unreal guilt and shame on him when he was a child, and
this is the worst form of abuse there is.

Daddy was a gifted doctor, a devoted husband and father, a fighter for the downtrodden. At the same time, he drank so much
he sometimes had to take a three-day break from his practice; and I know he whored around.

Eamonn was a marvelous, self-sacrificing pastor but he, too, drank too much and badly needed a woman.

Another similarity: Daddy and Eamonn were both jazzmen. Jazz entered deep into my psyche because Daddy had it in his bedroom,
his car, he even had it piped into his bathroom so he would never be without it. Both he and Eamonn had a superb sense of
rhythm. Most of all, they played life, they
made up
life as they went along. Eamonn was now jazzing around with me, inventing a music for me.

But he was right about one thing: I
was
wounded and far worse than he imagined. All the same, there was a massive denial on his part. He offered me love in the guise
of medicine—“Take one twice a night.” I accepted it because I needed it. The truth would out in the end. Either he loved
me or he was just out for the kicks.

“Your confessor,” I asked, “gave you the green light?”

“I think he saw my point of view.”

One snicker from me would have torn apart his closely woven web of self-deceit. He and I had been brought up with the same
moral code. We both knew there was no justification for what he was doing.

I had one advantage over him: guilt was not my enemy but my friend and accomplice. Being a bad Catholic is the best religion
there is. Catholicism was my guide to happiness because by now I felt that it was unnatural. Turn its beliefs about behavior
upside down and, behold, fulfillment.

However twisted men had made me, I was far more normal than Eamonn in one other respect: my fears, like my God, were real
and not invented.

He never mentioned the confessor’s name but I presumed it was Father O’Keeffe. In my brief meeting with him, I saw how he
idolized Eamonn. Maybe, like me, Father O’Keeffe looked on him as a magician, as someone who was not bound by the usual rules.

“You mentioned your point of view. What is that?”

“Oh,” he said, taking another sip of brandy, “that this is a passage in your life and someone must go with you and help you
face its dangers.”

The phrase
passage of life
brought me back to the mother of Johnny, Eamonn’s spitting image. How had he helped her? Had he first messed up her life
and torn her child from her before magnanimously helping her through a dark passage of life?

Moreover, did he intend to come into my bed so he could make me sound and chaste at the end? If he had sex often enough with
me, might I end up like the Virgin Mary?

“Eamonn,” I said, “I’m so grateful.”

Another contented sip of brandy. “If God were here, He would approve of what I am doing.”

I really didn’t need this unorthodox foreplay. Only he needed convincing that sex was wholesome. That is why he had been forced
to tamper with his God, making Him surprisingly tolerant toward a celibate bishop having “physical relations.”

“Read the Gospels, Annie. The essence of Our Lord’s message is love. I told my confessor, ‘If love is what she needs, that
is what I am obliged to give her.’ “

I nodded understandingly.

“When Jesus let a street woman wash His feet, everyone was scandalized. Good men, they said, never let any woman touch them,
let alone a whore.”

Thanks
, I thought.

“The same with Mary Magdalene, a prostitute. For all the snide comments of scribes and Pharisees, Jesus let her stay around
so He could heal her.”

Tears of laughter at the thought of Jesus taking Mary Magdalene into His bed sprang into my eyes, which, I think, he interpreted
as gratitude.

“If Christ were in this room now, Annie, He would understand.”

I could just see it: Jesus walking over to Eamonn while he burrowed away on top of me, tapping him on the shoulder and saying,
“Well done, Bishop, keep it up.”

In a quick mental somersault, it occurred to me that he really
was
doing a brave thing in loving me. What if from his point of view, it was a Christ-like sacrifice? What if we were driving
along a road so perilous that not even his driving skills might be able to stop us going over the cliff? Into what? Not the
sea, but the fires of hell. For me, heaven and hell were within but for Eamonn they were real places, and he was terrified
of ending up forever in hell.

If these were his thoughts, thanks for your trouble, Eamonn, but I really don’t want to be on the receiving end of episcopal
sympathy. I didn’t like Catholicism in a church; I certainly didn’t want it in my bed.

“Love, Annie, covers a multitude of sins.”

Because I really did love him, I spoke honestly.

“If you’re only doing this for me, I’d rather go home. I don’t need healing that badly.”

“Believe me, Annie, you do.”

I had had my say. The decision was his now.

Even talk of religion was sexy, in fact the sexiest thing of all because it stressed the forbidden. So the pump was already
primed. Now we were both raring to go.

T
IS QUITE CHILLY TONIGHT, ANNIE.”

“It’s warm as toast in here.”

“Would you mind if I —?”

“You want to sleep next to me?”

“Maybe.”

After a minute or two’s delay, he put his brandy glass on my bedside table, kicked his slippers off, and crept in beside me
with his bathrobe on.

I said, laughing, “This is uncomfortable.”

“Shush, girl, your giggle can be heard in Killarney.”

I laughed even louder. “If you’re concerned about modesty, why not wrap yourself in concrete?”

“Annie —”

“It’s okay,” I said. “If you really feel safe like that, leave the thing on.”

I turned to the wall and pretended to snore.

I couldn’t make him out. He had decided on my form of therapy; why delay implementing it?

He moved around restlessly while 1, eyes open, still snoring, turned over again to play with the cord of his robe and tickle
his face with the tassle.

“Don’t do that,” he begged. “You might leave a mark on my eye and how will I be able to explain it?”

Finally, I untied the cord.

“There, Eamonn,” I said, coming awake, “more comfortable?”

“Indeed.”

“Fine,” and I started to play with the buttons on his pajama jacket, undoing the top three.

He hooted at this. “I am like a woman being stripped.”

“No, Eamonn,” I said, leaving his buttons alone, “you’re a big boy and you can leave any time you want.”

For answer, he put his hands under my nightgown and started to stroke my thighs and fondle my breasts. He was like a clothier
testing the texture of his merchandise, the silkiness of the thighs, the bruise-like swelling of the breasts, the roughness
of the nipples.

He removed my nightdress and threw it on the floor.

“Give it back,” I cried.

For a moment, he thought I was resisting him.

“I might have a panic attack.”

“You won’t need that thing while I’m here.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “I might run out of the house naked and you’d have to shoot me to preserve your honor.”

He retrieved my nightdress and I rolled it up under my pillow. He then unclothed himself in a frenzy and the man took over
from the priest.

Soon he was sating himself on me as before. And, though this time his erection lasted long enough for him to enter me, he
ejaculated early, causing him to whimper, “God, not again.”

I appreciated the fact that his distress was on my account, not his.

“No matter,” I said, soothingly. “If you make that a big problem, it’ll only get worse. Forget it.”

“How can I?”

“Part of the trouble,” I suggested, “is you drink too much. Guilt, shame, and drink are a pretty potent mix.”

“But I’m thinking of you, Annie.”

I waved his objection aside. If he knew more about me, he would worry less. For me, penetration was almost scary. What endeared
him to me was that though he was starved of affection, he saw me as a human being and not an object.