Thoughts of the day ahead replaced longing for reentry into the world of dreams. I was going to Mass, something I hadn’t done in five years. Could my mother be right? Was it possible to experience, once again, the sweetness of unity with God in His Church?
While dressing, I recalled attending Mass every Sunday with my parents. I’d been taught that missing even one weekly service was a mortal sin, for which I would be severely punished—by God. I’d believed in the command and the consequences of disobedience with all my heart, as my mother still does today. The law didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t about making sense. It was about following the rules. At least that’s how I had understood it at the time. God wanted me to follow the rules, and I didn’t ask questions. That, too, would have been a sin.
Praying the rosary was another ritual my family never skipped, though we performed this sequence of prayers by choice rather than as obedience to a church-made law. Meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries had required special effort on my part. The Agony in the Garden, Scourging at the Pillar, and Crucifixion presented images that were too painful to internalize and understand. I, like the apostle Peter, would have denied knowing Jesus three times before the cock crowed. I, too, would have feared death by crucifixion.
There had been so many regulations and so many unanswered questions that, ultimately, church had no longer filled the void.
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“Already?”
Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday included enough rituals and symbols to fascinate any child: ashes, palms, incense, Stations-of-the-Cross, benedictions, lighted candles, and Easter lilies.
My mind flooded with visions of stained-glass windows with the light and sparkle of transparent marbles, solemn-eyed statues of St. Theresa and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the altar covered with candles and starched linens like a table set for a special feast. I heard the steeple bell ring to announce the beginning of Mass and the peal of the Sacryn bells used during the Eucharistic prayer. I smelled the pungent aroma of incense, felt the padded kneelers, the wooden bench.
Would my old spot next to the Sixth-Station-of-the-Cross be unoccupied? If so, I’d sit there for old time’s sake.
“Remember how you used to give up candy for Lent?” my mother asked. “You had such a hard time, loving sweets the way you did, but you usually stuck to it. You were such a good little girl.”
The perfect child.
As we neared the church, my heart leaped in the same old way, my mood younger, clearer, lighter. The Gothic Revival building with its spired steeple stood ablaze in sunlight, so white, so pure that it appeared to illuminate from within.
Mother gripped my hand, and we took the red brick steps like new BFFs heading for the playground. When we reached the threshold, she took a raspy breath. “Ready?” Her face and cheeks were rosy, as though smartly rouged by a department store beauty consultant, her mood downright contagious.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
I laughed. “Let’s walk right through that door.”
We made it as far as the vestibule.
That’s when the dime life turns on flipped from heads to tails and my stab at happiness turned sour. Cliff stood between the pamphlet rack and the holy water font. The expression on his face resembled a smile, but no, my ex didn’t smile. He smirked. His eyes were as lifeless as the eyes of the pedestalled statues inside, not the eyes of someone in love.
My heart jabbed against cartilage and muscle like a woodpecker foraging for food. Since when did Cliff start attending Mass?
Then realization struck.
“Mom!”
I backed out of the vestibule door and down the brick steps, my mother following as if attached by a string. “But Marjorie, he’s such a good man.”
I pressed the palm of my hand to my chest in an attempt to ease the swell of pain throbbing within. The switch from exultation to deflation—from kindness to cruelty—had occurred so quickly that I was surprised I didn’t get a nosebleed.
“Marjorie?”
“Go on without me, Mom.”
“But—”
I looked up at the church and felt nothing.
The pipe organ burst into the first, deep notes of “How Great Thou Art,” and the steeple bell tolled, but I walked away.
Some kind of magnetic force held me close to the church’s perimeter, a force I didn’t attempt to shake loose. In my current dark mood, the peaceful, park-like setting of the grounds offered some comfort at least. I walked to the fountain located on the east expanse of lawn and sat on its ledge. With my back to the trickling water, I faced the wood-framed church and wondered if God had it in His expansive heart to accept me, considering I was sitting on the wrong side of its walls. The parishioners celebrated the Mass, visited with their friends, and drove away. And all the while, I sat, still as a statue.
I heard footsteps but paid them no heed, expecting them to continue their leisurely stroll along the paved walkway. Instead, they stopped, and someone said my name.
Seeking out the speaker, my gaze settled on the youngest priest I’d ever seen. His blond hair was unruly and certainly too long, and his silver-blue eyes glinted with what looked like pleasure.
“Remember me?” he asked.
His face tugged at my memory, but I couldn’t place him.
“John Phillip,” he said.
“Oh my God, Morgan van Dyke’s little brother?”
“In the flesh. But is that all I was to you, Morgan’s little brother?”
A rush of warmth rode the stored memories triggered by the mention of Morgan’s name. “John Phillip, are you masquerading as a priest?”
He laughed and spread his arms wide. “What you see is what you get.”
John Phillip had been a restless, mischievous young man, likely the reason I’d considered him less mature than I was, though we’d been about the same age. His parents couldn’t keep him still, yet he’d been too upbeat and friendly to punish.
My thoughts returned to Morgan, John Phillip’s oldest brother. Gorgeous Morgan, I’d secretly called him. I hadn’t known him well but had made it my business to find out all I could. He and his family lived on a dairy farm near Sacramento. They often attended Mass here because of its close proximity to St. Patrick’s Seminary. David, another of John Phillip’s brothers, was enrolled there in hopes of becoming a priest. So even though the family didn’t belong to this parish, twelve-thirty Mass provided a convenient place for them all to meet.
“Did David become a priest, too?”
John Phillip chuckled in the same old boyish way. “Heavens no. David’s married and has two sons. He and Morgan took over the dairy when Pop retired.”
“How’s Morgan? Is he married too?”
“No again. Big brother is too picky for his own good. Even Mom’s given up on him.”
“How about Teri?” The last I’d heard, John Phillip’s sister worked freelance for Sunset magazine while studying photography at night school.
The silver glint in John Phillip’s eyes turned gray. “Wish I knew. We haven’t heard from her in years.”
Silence followed, during which our gazes settled on the water cascading from the platform that supported a stone statue of St Francis of Assisi.
“Morgan’s looking for her,” John Phillip said, “but I don’t think he’ll find her alive.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He gave a brief nod and smiled. “I had a crush on you, you know.”
The quick change in subject confirmed that the old John Phillip was still alive and well.
“Church was never boring with you around,” I said. “You used to rock and sway to the music and play an invisible drum.”
“I was trying to impress you. Guess I did a pretty good job.”
I closed my eyes and played back the memories from all those years ago.
“You looked rather contemplative sitting there all by yourself when I came walking by,” John Phillip said. “Can I help in any way?”
I took in his boyish face, wondering if somehow, in his own mischievous way, he’d discovered the path to true happiness. “I don’t think so.”
He tossed up his arms as if breaking into a Hallelujah. “Hey, why not try me? You may find I’m still full of surprises.”
I liked his cheekiness, his irreverence to usual priestly seriousness. How had he made it through the seminary and into priesthood with such an upbeat attitude? I’d always thought that carefree spontaneity was quashed during a priest’s reshaping while a seminarian. I patted the fountain ledge next to me. “If you’re going to hear my confession, you might as well make yourself comfortable.”
John Phillip sat, folded his hands, and gave me his full attention.
“I haven’t been to Mass in years,” I said while taking in the church’s pointed arches, pinnacles, and lancet windows—great marketing tools for spiritual seekers like me. “Today I hoped to come back and feel something again, you know, like sneak in through a crack in the door and take up where I’d left off.”
No use in mentioning Cliff or my mother. If I had really wanted to celebrate the Mass, no one could have stopped me.
“You always appeared so devout, so calm, so together,” John Phillip said. “You were all I wasn’t, and I believed you’d become a nun.”
His words surprised me, though they shouldn’t have, being so close to the truth. Entering the convent had crossed my mind on more occasions than I cared to admit. But more as a running from than a calling to, especially after Morgan had disappeared off my radar.
“You’d never guess what Morgan used to call you,” John Phillip said.
“Out with it,” I said. “I know you’re dying to tell.”
“The little nun.”
So much for romantic fantasies. “Well, I called him hottie.”
John Phillip hooted with laughter. “I didn’t think the word, hottie, was in your vocabulary.”
“Some prime examples of false appearances,” I said. “You distracted me from my prayers, but so did Morgan, in a different way.” It felt good letting go of past secrets like pieces that no longer fit the current puzzle. Wrong size, wrong shape, wrong color.
“We all had a crush on you,” John Phillip said, “David, Morgan, and I. Of course, Morgan never admitted it. No cradle robbing for him, thank you. But I watched him watching you. In the name of brotherly rivalry, of course. All’s fair in love and war.”
“I never thought I’d say this to a priest,” I said between giggles, “but you’re full of it.”
John Phillip snorted, not unlike the snorts he once shared in church, along with the whimpering puppy sounds that had driven his parents nuts and caused his sister, Teri, to cover her mouth in amusement. “Actually, you scared me to death,” he said. “Whenever you favored me with a bit of attention, I got the shakes, wondering what I’d done wrong.”
“Now that I believe.”
“Enough about old times,” he said. “What brings you here?”
Crystal white clouds drifted past the sun, causing light and shadow to vie for attention, while I told John Phillip about Cliff, Dr. Mendez, and the Voice. Then, unexpectedly, I told him something I hadn’t put into words until that moment. “I think the Church has failed me.” It came out like a whispered prayer, and Father John Phillip apparently took it as such, because where I had expected censure and judgment, I sensed only connection and love.
“I prayed for a messenger but never guessed it would be you,” I said.
John Phillip dipped his fingers into the fountain and crossed himself. “As the saying goes, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’”
Couldn’t argue with him there, considering all the unexplainable things that had been happening to me lately. “Talking to you seems appropriate somehow.”
“I’ll always be that prankish kid to you,” he said, “which will make it difficult for you to value anything I offer.”
“No, please. I want to hear what you have to say.”
“Maybe it’s not the Church that has failed you,” he said, his eyes nearly the same color as Cliff’s, though warmed by sunshine rather than frozen by ice.
I drew in my breath, about to tell John Phillip that this line of thinking solved nothing. I’d heard it before, that it wasn’t the Church’s fault, but my own, that I no longer felt a connection.
He stopped me with the shake of his head. “And neither have you failed the Church.”
I felt caught between the urge to laugh and cry.
“You just aren’t open to its message right now.”
I stared at him, yet through him, realizing that he was right and had simply put into words what I should’ve known all along. Messages had been coming at me from all directions, but I hadn’t been listening.
“Like millions of other people, you’re trying to figure out who you are and why you’re here on this earth. Sometimes, understanding comes slowly, when you least expect it.” John Phillip studied me with the pensiveness of a priest rather than the levity of a prankster. “I happen to see a well-adjusted woman in front of me.”
I nearly laughed out loud. Well-adjusted was not a term my mother and Cliff would have applied to me right now, but I let the thought pass. Father John Phillip’s opinion came gift-wrapped with lightness and optimism and therefore carried more weight than the opinion of my detractors.
As we stood to go, I said, “I’ve never been able to talk to a priest before, but you made it easy. I predict you’re going to help a lot of lost souls and misfits like me.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many souls you may touch along your journey. You’ve just touched mine.” He paused and then added, “It reinforces my belief in miracles. I don’t belong to this parish, Marjorie. I was only visiting for old time’s sake, haven’t been here in years.”
“So we both just happened to show up at the same place at the same time,” I said, my inner skeptic betrayed by the noticeable edge to my voice. “It’s probably just a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said.
I could think of nothing more to say.
“Where are you going on your getaway?” John Phillip asked.
Sunbeams streamed through gaps in the clouds and illuminated the white steepled church, just like in my mother’s beloved Thomas Kinkade prints. “Carmel Valley,” I said.
A quick glance at John Phillip revealed an odd expression on his face. “That should be interesting,” he said.