Mortal Sin (22 page)

He rested both hands flat against his thighs and cleared his throat. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been three months since my last confession.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve committed the sin of disobedience on a number of occasions. I counseled young couples about contraception, in direct violation of Church canon and in defiance of the orders of my bishop.”

Michael tapped the fingers of one hand against his knee. “I seem to recall you were going to work on that.”

It was impossible to read the expression on Michael’s face. “I’ve tried,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Have you prayed about it?”

“I’ve tried prayer. But my heart just isn’t in it. I’m having a great deal of difficulty accepting the Church’s stand on this issue. When I think of the AIDS epidemic, I just—” He shook his head, knowing there was no sense in continuing. Michael was well aware of his feelings. He’d professed them often enough.

“All right. What else?”

“I lied to my secretary. It was just a small lie, but the Commandments don’t differentiate between white lies and whoppers. It’s just that sometimes, it’s maddening, the way she hovers over me. I’m a grown man. I don’t need a twenty-year-old girl telling me how to live my life. I already have the Catholic Church to perform that function.”

He thought he saw a hint of a smile on Michael’s face, but he couldn’t be sure. His friend cleared his throat. “Go on.”

His fingertips dug into the flesh of his thighs. “Of late,” he said, “I’ve found myself entertaining certain… inappropriate thoughts… about a woman.”

Michael shifted position, sat up a little straighter. “Impure thoughts?”

“Not so much impure thoughts as a simple awareness, whenever we’re together, that she’s a woman. And that I’m a man.”

“Is there really a difference between the two?”

He glanced up, met Michael’s eyes, carefully considered his question. “I’m not sure.”

“Impure thoughts, sexual awareness. They don’t seem so far apart to me. Is there a possibility of removing yourself from the situation?”

“I can’t do that. She came to me for help. Her niece ran away, and the police won’t help her. She has nobody else. No family, no friends who can do anything for her. Only me. I can’t just leave her twisting in the wind.” He paused, met Michael’s eyes, read his own truth in their depths. Sighing, he rubbed his temple and said, “I suppose I don’t want to remove myself from the situation.”

Michael leaned forward, hands bracing his knees. “You do understand how dangerous this is? If you continue to have contact with this woman, if you continue to have impure thoughts about her, you’re placing your soul in .”

“It’s not that big a deal, Michael. It’s not as though we’re out having wild sex. I barely know the woman.”

“If it wasn’t that big a deal, you wouldn’t be here.”

One by one, his muscles began to tighten. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand, Clancy. I’m your friend and confessor. I want to help. Make me understand.”

“I was dying! Decaying, one wretched molecule at a time. I couldn’t breathe anymore.” He leaned forward, impatient to make his friend understand. “I’m alive again, Michael. Alive for the first time in more than ten years. I don’t think I can back away. I don’t think I’m willing to give that up.”

“Even knowing that you’re risking your soul?”

“As a priest,” he said, “I walk a narrow line every day of my life. Since the day I entered the seminary, I’ve never crossed that line. Sarah and I are friends. Nothing more. We’re both aware that anything more than friendship is an impossibility. The fact that I feel something more for her doesn’t change the nature or the truth of the situation. I haven’t shared those feelings with her, and I don’t plan to. But there’s a connection between us, a positive energy, that’s truly remarkable. The woman makes me feel good, Michael. For the first time since Meg died, I wake up in the morning eager to face the day. How can it be wrong for me to want that feeling to continue?”

“Friendship is one thing. Sexual feelings are something altogether different.”

He raked fingers through his hair. “But I’m not acting on those feelings! I have no intention of acting on them.”

“But they’re still there, festering in your heart. Blackening your soul.” Michael leaned forward. “Stop seeing her. For the sake of your own salvation, stop seeing her now.”

“Is that your advice as my confessor?”

“It’s my advice as your friend.”

“With all due respect, Father, I’m going to have to reject that advice.”

“You have to reflect on God’s plan for you, Clancy.”

“I can’t. I’m too conflicted right now to be certain any longer what His plan is for me.”

Michael shook his head in sorrow and bewilderment. “I have to confess I’m not sure quite what to do. I’ve never been faced with a situation like this before.”

“Nor have I. You know, Michael, I think we were shortchanged in seminary. They taught us philosophy and theology, taught us how to deliver a homily and how to conduct all the rituals of the Church. They emphasized to us, over and over again, that lifelong celibacy is a gift from God. But they neglected one tiny detail. They forgot to tell us how we were supposed to achieve it.”

He stayed for dinner, but after the fiasco that had occurred in the confessional, awkwardness weighted the air between them, buoyed by a distance that had never been there before. Normally, they spent hours talking about everything from the sacramental mysteries to the price of fuel oil. But tonight, conversation was stilted as they both attempted to avoid treading on ground that possessed all the stability of quicksand. He made his goodbyes early and returned to Saint Bart’s, where he hunched over his desk with a single lamp burning and attempted to navigate the maze of Federal paperwork Ruth had somehow coerced him into taking over.

Red tape. Everything in his life seemed to be a matter of one step forward, two steps back. He spent an inordinate amount of time jumping through hoops. Now, here he was again, only this time the hoops had been placed in front of him by Uncle Sam instead of the Vatican.

Not that he minded the paperwork. Federal forms were needlessly complex and a pain in the behind, but he’d been through this before, which made him an old pro in Ruth’s eyes. Truth be told, it came easily to him. Aside from being tedious, filling out forms didn’t overtax his patience or his faculties. He might prefer people to paper, but he didn’t consider working with it a hardship.

Tonight, though, he had difficulty concentrating. It had been a mistake to take Sarah with him today. As he followed her down aisle after aisle of screaming sexual come-ons, it had been far too easy to imagine certain scenarios that had no business crossing his mind. The tension between them, pain intertwined with pleasure, had been torturous.

Michael was right. He should stop seeing the woman. For his own peace of mind, if not for the salvation of his soul. But how was he supposed to explain it to her?

I can’t see you any longer.

I can’t see you any longer because I have a crush on you, and I’m not allowed to.

It sounded ridiculous. As though he were a seventh-grader who’d been grounded for staying out too late on a school night. The embarrassment factor was more than any mortal man should be expected to bear.

I can’t see you any longer because I want to bury my face in that cloud of silky brown hair and breathe in the sweet, perfumed scent of woman that emanates from you in waves whenever you move.

I can’t see you any longer because I want to run the tips of my fingers over that smooth, taut flesh and find out if it really feels as soft as it looks.

It did. He knew because he’d touched her one rainy Sunday afternoon, had cupped her chin in his hand while he scrubbed mascara circles from beneath her eyes. Touching her had been impetuous and foolhardy, but he’d been compelled to do it. It was all he’d been able to think about as he stood with her in the entry way of the church and made inane conversation just to keep her in his sight for a few more seconds. All he’d been able to think about while they washed dishes and traded banter in Sheila Rafferty’s kitchen. All he’d been able to think about as she clicked past him in Sheila’s driveway wearing three-inch heels and a demure, calf-length skirt that showed a teasing hint of what promised to be magnificent legs.

As a priest, he wasn’t supposed to look at a woman’s legs.

He supposed the infatuation would wear itself out in time, since nothing inappropriate could ever happen between them. He’d been blessed with a conscience, as well as the capacity to think. Human behavior was always a matter of choice. It was what separated man from the lower mammals, what helped Clancy to maintain his faith in humanity despite the overwhelming sin and sorrow he saw in the world around him. Man had the ability to choose between good and evil, right and wrong, righteousness and immorality. As long as the potential to choose the higher ground remained intact, the earth would continue spinning in its orbit, and goodness would continue to give evil a run for its money.

He forced thoughts of Sarah Connelly and his own state of disgrace to a far corner of his mind and firmly closed the door on them. Brooding was counterproductive at the best of times, and Ruth’s paperwork wouldn’t finish itself. He plucked a cinnamon candy from his jar, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. The candy sent a swift sugar kick through his bloodstream. With a brief glance at the clock, he settled back down to immerse himself in page after page of mind-numbing governmental gibberish.

Time passed. The clock ticked in the silence. He waded deeper into the tangle of Federal double-talk, so deep he didn’t realize he was no longer alone until a voice from out of nowhere wrenched him from his stupor.

“Burning the midnight oil, eh, Father?”

Bleary-eyed, he glanced up, freezing at sight of the two men standing just inside the door to his study. Both in their mid-twenties, both of Hispanic descent, they’d moved so silently he hadn’t heard their approach. The tall, scrawny one with the scraggly hair and the flinty eyes closed the door and stood rigidly in front of it, arms crossed, jacket open just enough so the butt of his gun was visible. The one who crossed the room to stand before the desk was shorter, more compactly built, a little older, a lot better looking. His dark hair was slicked back, and around his neck he wore enough gold jewelry to drag him straight to the bottom if by chance, some dark night, he ever accidentally tripped over his own feet and fell into Fort Point Channel.

Cheech and Chong, all dressed up for Halloween.

Muscle. He might have spent the last eleven years wrapped safely in the bosom of the Catholic Church, but he’d grown up on the streets of Southie, where crime was a way of life. He’d been raised by a mother whose connections were a little shady, had spent his adolescence walking a narrow line that might have taken him in a totally different direction if certain people hadn’t refused to let him fall on the wrong side of the law. He’d lived in the real world long enough to recognize muscle when he saw it. But whose muscle? And why were they here?

With slow deliberation, he dropped his pen, leaned back in his chair. Propping an elbow on his armrest, he threaded fingers together over his abdomen. “Gentlemen,” he said. “To what do I owe this honor?”

Apparently Cheech was the spokesman. He picked up the ceramic pig from the corner of the desk, turned it this way and that, studying it from all angles. Boldly meeting Clancy’s gaze, he said, “We’re here to convey a message from a friend.”

“I see. My friend, or yours?”

“Could be both,
amigo
. Depending, of course, on whether or not you pay attention to the advice we’re about to give you.”

“By all means, go ahead. Enlighten me.”

“The message is simple, padre. Back off.” Cheech ran a finger along the smooth ceramic surface of the pig, traced its spread wings, its rounded belly. “Our friend would like to suggest that you stop asking questions, stop poking into what’s none of your business. Drop the issue, go back to saying Mass and lighting candles, and forget any of this ever happened.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. Coolly, he said, “Or?”

“We’d hate to see anything happen to you, padre.” Cheech met his eyes, raised the pig to shoulder level. “Being such devout Catholics and all, it would pain us greatly to see some kind of tragic accident befall a priest.” Still holding
Clancy’s gaze, he deliberately loosened his fingers. The pig fell to the floor and shattered.

“Perhaps you’d like to convey my response back to your friend.” Clancy leaned forward, rolled his chair up to the desk, and rested both elbows on the desktop. “Tell him I don’t scare that easily.”

Shrugging, Cheech said amiably, “It’s your funeral, padre.
Buenas noches
.”

It wasn’t until after they’d gone that he realized his muscles were knotted into steely bands. He took a deep breath, let it out, forced himself to relax. When the adrenaline rush had settled, he got up and locked the outside door, then made a quick check of the rest of the church. Melissa was always hounding him about leaving the door to the parish office unlocked after she left at night. Too much riffraff in the neighborhood, she said. He was leaving himself too open, too vulnerable. He could be robbed, mugged, even killed. But her pleas fell on deaf ears. It was his policy to be available to his parishioners, no matter how late the hour. Whenever he was in his study, the door was unlocked.

Maybe it was time to rethink that policy.

When he was certain the building was locked up tight, he got a broom and dustpan from the janitor’s closet and swept up the pieces of the shattered pig. Then he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and took out the Smith & Wesson .38 Special. He’d bought it after Meg died, when he’d reached rock bottom and was running on equal measures of booze and rage. Nearly a dozen years had passed since then, and still he wasn’t quite sure if he’d intended to use it on himself or on the monster who’d been responsible for her death.

Its weight felt odd in his hands after all these years. As he ran his fingers along the smooth, cool barrel, dark memories swirled through his brain, memories of countless hours when he’d sat alone, bleak with despair, gun in hand and obliter-ation on his mind. A different man, a different lifetime. He’d kept the gun as a symbol, a reminder of how far a man could fall before God lifted him back up and gave him renewed hope.