Forgiveness 4 You

I WAS REACHING THE FOR THE DOOR HANDLE OF THE TAXI WHEN A MAN spoke into my ear. “Excuse me,” he said, so close I could smell the sharp limey scent of his cologne. “Would you mind sharing a cab?”

Actually, I did. It had been a long day of meetings, and the French lunch had been tasty but miniature—a saucer of scrambled eggs drizzled with foie gras, and two poker chip–sized hamburgers (one for Madeline, one for me) served on an oblong plate with some snarled carrot garnish and one radish like a staring eye. I’d wondered if my brother the chef would approve.

“My parents would kill me for eating this,” Madeline had said, using bread to soak up the last puddle of duck fat before closing her eyes, tipping her head back, and placing this last bite on her tongue. “All those poor little ducks with their feet nailed to planks, being force-fed till they nearly explode,” she’d said after she’d finished chewing, her lips slick with grease. “Does it make you feel guilty?”

And I’d nodded, not because of the fattened ducks but because of what I’d been thinking as she swallowed. Now, three hours later, I was exhausted, ravenous, and horny, and I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.

In addition, sharing this fare would pose an ethical problem. Madeline had tucked fifty dollars into my hand before showing me out the door of Mason & Zeus, sweetly suggesting I take a cab. Pocketing half of her cash would be pathetic, if not actually wrong. I was about to say no, tell him I was a surgeon headed to the hospital on an emergency. But the man I saw when I turned was still half-boy, barely in need of a shave, and though he was well-dressed, right down to his long pointed shoes, he had an air of desperation that made me relent.

“I know. I’ve seen you around the neighborhood, Father. That’ll be fine.”

“Get in,” I said, stepping aside and into the slush of a sudden springtime melt. The man-boy obediently bent and folded himself into the back seat of the cab.

I briefly considered walking away once he was in the cab. It was rare for people to recognize me from my church days before I spotted them and ducked inside a florist or a travel agency to hide out until they’d passed. It wasn’t that I resented or disliked my parishioners. There were, in fact, many I missed. But I could never adequately answer their questions, and this caused me frustration that bordered on muteness. My sudden departure, the abrupt absence of “calling.” How could I explain to people what I did not understand myself?

I had somehow agreed, while thinking mostly about Madeline’s grease-smeared lips, to think about offering my services as confessor to a clientele that she assured me was accustomed to paying for succor and could find peace no other way. It was a transparent argument, much like the rationalizations I’d used as a very young man when making money without actually doing any work. What drew me now wasn’t—I was acutely aware of this—a desire to help wealthy people with their guilt, but rather a desperate need to keep myself in a relationship with this woman, with her wit and occasional honesty. But more than that, I hungered for the activity she brought into my life, the welcome newness that kept me from re-living, alone every evening, the transgressions of my own long-ago past.

Now I needed to get home, to do what Madeline and her people called my “homework.” I was to write a personal statement about forgiveness that their writer could refashion into a mantra, whatever that was. I’d been assured it was important, that these words would be the cornerstone of “our” enterprise. (“Our?” I had echoed. But she’d simply nodded and gone on.) To encapsulate and deconstruct the purpose of absolution in a few paragraphs, it was a lofty task. A real challenge. And the Saturday night sermon writer in me was itching to give it a shot.

So I climbed in to the taxi and slammed the door with purpose, the set of barbells I sometimes raised and lowered while watching TV finally paying off. My posture—leaning back and against the smeared window to my side—should have indicated a wish for silence. But my cabmate was intent.

“My name’s Chase,” he said, proffering a long hand with a large gold watch at the wrist, glinting in the afternoon sun.

“Gabe,” I responded as we shook, but the boy squinted at me as if I must be wrong.

“What are you doing downtown, Father McKenna? Church business? I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

“Well, actually, it was more personal,” I said. Why should I tell this young man anything? It was none of his concern, and, besides, my errand was too difficult to explain. We had twenty minutes together in this back seat—maybe thirty, when you took traffic into account—and I searched my mind for something agnostic to say.

“You probably don’t remember me,” said Chase. “I was younger when we met.”

“Younger than you are now?” That hardly seemed possible. He was a floppy-haired, Justin Bieberish boy.

“Yeah.” He grinned, pointing up with one dexterous finger. “It’s the face. Everyone thinks I’m … innocent.” He let out a loud rather dramatic sigh. “If only they knew.”

I nodded, determined not to bite at his bait. What I really wanted was a pot pie out of my own freezer and time to think about what had just happened at Mason & Zeus. I closed my eyes and willed Chase to be silent. Of course, that didn’t work.

“Gabe,” I said, grudgingly opening my eyes. “I left the church last year.”

At which I softened, because it was as good a response as most. “Me, too, some days. But it was time.”

We rode for a few moments in a companionable quiet. Dusk was melting its pink over the city and inside something had changed; we’d become partners in this ride. The cab had bad shock absorbers, and as it bumped up and down through the streets, Chase bobbed like a toy.

“Do you remember Laura Larimar?” His voice was hopeful, clear as a child’s.

I startled. Yes, it was nine years ago. But how could I forget? First there was her name: Laura Larimar sounded like it should belong to a 1940s movie star, the sort of spitfire who wore pants and rode a bicycle and sparred with Clark Gable or Cary Grant. (Nights in the rectory, I watched a lot of Turner Classic TV.)

But there was also her hair, a shade of red that had never seemed real. It wasn’t carroty orange or strawberry blonde. Laura Larimar was the only person I ever saw with red hair that actually was the color of ripe strawberries, nearly scarlet. It was thick, too, and long. There was so much of it that the makeup artist at the mortuary had to wash it in sections and lay it out on pillows overnight alongside Laura’s body so it would dry.

Her family came to me on a Friday, as I was closing up. They didn’t have a church. They were part of that earthbound, non-religious movement, the one espousing hemp clothing and hybrid vehicles that took hold in the wake of Whole Foods. They recycled their aluminum cans and kept an herb garden and sent money to Planned Parenthood. That was their belief system. But when their daughter died it was all suddenly not enough.

Once, long ago, Laura’s mother had been Catholic. She wanted the full treatment, with an open casket and altar boys and incense. Despite my church’s ironclad policy, I agreed. After the service, her father—he had not spoken one word up to that point; I wasn’t sure he could—handed me an envelope and said in a strange, high voice it was for “the priest’s discretionary fund.” Inside, there were ten new $100 bills.

“Yes,” I cleared my throat. “I remember Laura Larimar.” And in that moment I remembered the newspaper photo: a slim, frightened boy who looked, perhaps vaguely, like the little brother of this young man.

This was the point I’d been told, just a few hours before, that I’d have to learn to manage. I needed what Madeline called a “talk track” to convert people gently from free confessions to paid. It would be easy, she assured me, once I got the hang of it, once I’d developed and memorized my speech. Lawyers who were asked for free advice did this all the time; they wore it like armor at parties. It would help, she said, to have business cards and privacy forms that I gave people to sign. But here in this cab, it was just the two of us. Well, the three of us, technically, if you counted the driver. And I had a sense he was listening, though he kept his eyes straight ahead on a creeping bus.

“I’m not a priest anymore, Chase,” I fumbled, caught between my revulsion at the idea of asking for payment and fury at him for cornering me in this cab.

“I know.” He leaned back and scrutinized me. “So this isn’t quite as lucky as I thought.”

“When I saw you, I thought it was outrageous. Like a sign from God. I could finally get over all my hang-ups and stop … this.” Chase waved his hand around the ashy-smelling inside of the cab. “Always looking for a taxi.”

“You don’t live South, do you?” I asked, staring again at his shiny Italian shoes.

“I wasn’t.” Chase leaned forward, elbows on knees, as if we were about to make a real estate deal. “I was coming back from lunch. I work downtown.”

“Here’s the thing, Father.” I started to speak, but Chase held up one hand in a “stop” motion. “I know, I know. You’re not a priest anymore. But you kind of are, because you can never really stop, right? And you did Laura’s service. I remember it, every word. How you called her ‘a barely touched soul’ and talked about how God would take care of her in the kingdom of heaven. I was there the whole time. And you kind of saved me that day. Except …”

I waited. Now was the time I should ask him for money, for an envelope slipped my way with new hundreds inside. But how? Once I took off the collar, people stopped feeling obligated that way.

“I haven’t driven a car since that day. Two days, I had my license! Two days and I was showing off in my Dad’s Hummer, and I made a really stupid fast turn that killed Laura Larimar. Bam! Just like that. No going back. I got out and saw her lying there, and I could never drive again.”

“Did you stop because you’re afraid?” I couldn’t help asking. I was genuinely curious. And of course, with my question the moment for a transaction definitely slipped away.

“No! That’s what’s wild.” Chase leaned forward even further until our noses were practically touching. “I stopped because I’m not afraid. I loved that feeling, going so fast that I knew I couldn’t quite pull it back. And I walked away from that accident without so much as a bruise. Humvees, man. They’re built to protect the rich guy inside.”

This was a conundrum. It felt like a puzzle I had to solve: If I absolved Chase of his guilt would he buy a car with his obviously sizable salary and plow into some other young girl? Because here’s what most people don’t understand: Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. The purpose of penance is to remind, and no one in the world understood this better than I. But I did not want to cultivate in Chase a man like myself, shaped and driven entirely by the most terrible thing he’d ever done.

“I think there’s some sort of evil inside me, Father.” Chase leaned over in his seat, protecting a gut pain I knew. “It’s this power thing that comes out when I think I’m a big shot. Buying two-hundred-dollar ties, ordering bottle service. I don’t like it in myself. But at the same time, I can’t seem to stop.” He pulsed forward—the pain was worse, I could tell—and shook his head.

Then he took a long breath before launching into the next logical thing. “There’s this woman I’ve been seeing. Rachel,” he said. “And it’s gotten kind of weird that I don’t drive. She has to pick me up for our dates, and I just thought, maybe …”

Abruptly, he sat back. Though the sentence hung unfinished, midair, Chase had the look of a man who had just expressed his last thought.

It was breathtaking, how perfectly God had arranged this challenge for me. Chase was my doppelganger. He’d been a couple of years younger than I at the time of his transgression; he was a little older now than I’d been when I confessed to Sol. But Chase—unlike me—had the chance of escape. He was still near the beginning. He could see a road out of his guilt and was asking for my help to get on it.

I sat and seethed for a few seconds, freshly sickened by the waste of my own young life. I wanted Chase to suffer just as I had, two full decades at least, or my sacrifices made no sense.

Look, I wanted to say to this addled, privileged boy. You’re talking right now to the grown version of yourself, a guilty man who’s had sex exactly three times in the past two decades: once with a lonely widowed parishioner, once with a Canadian prostitute, and just a couple months ago in a cringing festival of degradation with a woman who only wanted a warm place to sleep. I know what it’s like to encounter a big obstacle between picking up a Rachel and driving her into bed. What’s so special in your case? Talk me into this. Why should I make it easy for you?

Our own driver had apparently decided to take a side route. He lurched off Michigan Avenue and onto a block cluttered with people and posh boutiques. Chase and I were jostled together, elbows and hands bumping unintentionally. His face lit with worry. “What if we hit someone else while I’m telling you about Laura?” he asked. “Would that somehow be my fault, too?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the cabbie muttered. “Would ya rather I take Wacker all the way ‘round and charge ya double?”

“Absolutely.” Chase tossed his flop of hair, fancy-tie attitude showing. “That would be fine.”

“Hey,” I hissed, pretending it was low enough the cabdriver couldn’t hear. “I have fifty dollars cash. That’s it.”

I stopped to consider this. Chase was willing to put up money in order to finish this conversation. He would pay a cabdriver a hundred dollars to keep me captive and listening—and our eavesdropping cabbie certainly had no moral problem with that. Were I stationary, sitting in an office or a coffee shop, what would be the difference if Chase’s money went directly to me?

In the midst of fretting over the transaction I became calmer, and my better self won the battle with the swindler I used to be. It was wrong, I decided, to punish this boy out of a selfish sense of justice and Schadenfreude. Instead, I thought of a more priestly angle to take.

“Chase,” I said, and he sat up straight like a student. “Did you take pleasure from Laura Larimar’s death? Was there even the tiniest bit of satisfaction as you hit her? Did you feel a sense of achievement or power or, or … victory, at that moment?”

He sat considering for a full $9.60 (by the taxi’s ticking meter) before he answered. “No, I can honestly say I didn’t. It was horrible. The second I felt her on the car and then“—he swallowed—“under the front right tire, it was like this constant unbelief inside me. You know? I just wanted to take it back.”

Chase shook his head. “Not exactly. I mean, I knew I hadn’t done it on purpose, and my mom kept telling me, ‘You have nothing to feel guilty about. You didn’t do anything wrong.’ That’s the first thing she said when she came to the police station to get me.” His face took on a pinched, rabbity look that I assumed was meant to emulate his mother; I remembered her now from the church and he wasn’t far off. “‘Don’t you start feeling guilty about this!’ she kept saying.” Chase switched back and forth between his own uncertain voice and a preachy, higher one. “Or she’d tell me, ‘It was an accident, like an act of God.’”

I snorted. I couldn’t help it. In that moment my head was filled with many thoughts—all of them unchristian. “Tell your mother you have it on good authority that your running a girl over with a Humvee was not an act of God,” I said.

Chase shrank inside his woolen coat, like a man preparing to disappear in a wisp of smoke. “So you do think it was my fault?” he croaked.

It had been a long day, and I was so hungry by now that the frozen pot pie had started to sound not just essential but delicious. I put one hand to my aching gut and sent God a silent request for guidance. But it was as if I could hear Him answer. This time, Gabe, you’re on your own.

“You killed Laura.” I said it so baldly that even the cabbie drew in his breath. “But …” I took a breath and recalled what it was like to be this boy. I could see the dull chaos in Chase’s eyes. I’d felt exactly this way: paralyzed by what I’d done to Aidan—how carelessly you could wreck a life in hours, minutes even, and never get the chance to go back!—furious with fate, afraid that my soul was ruined and the rest of my life as meaningless as a polluted river. There was a chorus of honks from outside, and I had to wait for them to die down. Then I went on.

“There was no bad intent behind your actions. No evil. None. You did something careless and human and understandable. Most of us have been that reckless at one time or another. Yes, you were the instrument that caused Laura’s death. It was in some sense your fault. But it was not a fault you could control.”

“I don’t understand,” Chase said. I half expected the cabbie to chime in, too.

“Chase.” I placed my hands together and closed my eyes, as much for the dramatic effect as for the moment of contemplation. It never hurts to pull out the old clerical look. “What you did, driving as you did, was wrong and unthinking, but that is exactly what humans do. Especially sixteen-year-old boys. It caused a girl’s death, which is horrifying but also …” Always in the end it came back to this word. “Forgivable.”

“Your parents,” I broke in, “thought that if you admitted to feeling remorse, you’d be held responsible and thrown in jail. Or they’d be sued for millions, and their insurance rates would go up.” There, that felt good. It was exactly the sort of truth I was not allowed to say as a priest.

I nodded vigorously. “You’re supposed to feel bad and wish that day had never happened for the rest of your life. But you’re also supposed to learn to drive again and pick up your Rachel and, carefully, remembering how large the consequences can be, drive her to dinner.”

Briefly, I was lost in memory. I had touched that girl’s glorious clean hair. I had offered my arm to her mother and let her lean on me, a small woman who’d become densely heavy with grief, as we walked away from the cemetery. I’d had occasional nightmares about Laura Larimar, dreams I was not proud of that turned from funeral to orgy and featured a bizarre amount of oral sex.

“Yes,” I said. And I found that I actually meant it. “I forgive you, Chase.”

We rode in silence for only a few minutes before the taxi pulled up in front of my dank, smoke-hued building. To the left of the stoop, a drunken woman in rags held her HOMELESS AND DESPERATE sign. Chase peered out the window.

When Chase finally swiveled his head there were tears on his cheeks, and he appeared suddenly mature, a boy I was ready to send back out into the world.

“What can I do, Gabe?” He was reaching into his pocket for his wallet even as he asked the question. “Please,” he said placing something crisp in my hand and then closing my fingers. “I’ll be careful. You, too.”

I didn’t look back as the cab drove away. It felt like a week had passed since I left my bed that morning, and I stood for a moment looking at the building, seeing it as Chase must have: the sheet hanging on floor three and the garbage scattered by a sub-basement unit. The shadow where the address above the door used to hang.

Climbing the stoop past the tattered, toothless woman, I stopped to look at what Chase had given me. There were three $50 bills and two twenties, probably whatever he’d had in his wallet. I paused and fought my baser instincts for a moment. Then I pulled out one of the fifties and handed it to the woman, who looked at me with suspicion.

I nodded. “Be with God,” I answered before I could stop myself. And then I continued climbing toward home.

Challenge: Client needs a name that will translate easily for the general public, as well as a URL that is easy to spell and discoverable using keyword searches. Easy options (e.g., Forgiveness.com, Forgiver.com) are already owned and in use. Forgiveness.net is available—and should be purchased—but cannot stand alone due to the fact that users habitually type “.com” instead.

The following is a range of options with our top recommendation on page 2 of this document.

GabeForgives.com

Personalizes McKenna as the forgiver and offers nice layout possibilities. Would also buy GodForgives.com (surprisingly available!) and could potentially create a campaign around the two, Gabe and God, for great halo effect. Could be problematic if business were sold or incorporated.

4Giveness

Interesting play on the word that lightens the message and may make younger consumers feel more comfortable with the concept. Great ad campaign possibilities around the number “4.” Primary disadvantage is that URL won’t pop on word searches for “forgiveness.”

YourAbsolution.com

One of our favorites because it’s direct and conveys authority. Currently owned by a core strengthening exercise program (“your ab solution”) but could be purchased. Concern is that 30–40% of consumers polled cannot define “absolution” and an even greater percentage would not use it to search.

Forgiveness&Freedom.com

Love the double “F” plus the ampersand. This option also speaks to the benefit for consumers of freedom from guilt. Major issue with direct competitor Emma Goldman, a television actress and “spiritual coach” who offers forgiveness services at ForgivenessandFreedom.com.

OUR RECOMMENDATION:

Forgiveness4You.com

This URL is available and offers the primary benefit of discoverability terms related to forgiveness, absolution, and guilt. The symbol “4” gives it a slightly playful spin, lightening the weight of the word “forgiveness”; they also make clear that the benefit is to the consumer—with this service, they will receive personal forgiveness in an easy, friendly environment.

We’ve already purchased Forgiveness4You.com. If client is ready to move ahead, strongly advise purchasing Forgiveness4You.net and Forgiveness4You.org, as well as Forgiveness.net and Forgiveness4You.co.uk.

Hi Mom—

Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. Work has been crazy. But I did receive the package and thank you. The pants fit great, and I love the paisley (where did you find those?). But did you have to send the cookies? I’m not in college anymore, and it’s just me here most of the time—Rebecca is “in love” and I never see her unless she and her BF have a fight—so of course I ate all the cookies myself, and tomorrow I probably won’t fit into the pants. Bad combination, Jill!

My job is strange. I didn’t get a raise at my review, even though I got an “exceeds expectations,” b/c we’re supposedly in “cost-cutting mode” so investors will see that we’re making money and decide to buy us. Scott says (have I mentioned Scott? he’s one of the creative directors) that if we’re bought everyone will get a big bonus on the day the deal goes through. That’s what happened to a friend of his in New York, and he took the money and started his own shop. So Scott and I might start something together if that happens. I think you’d really like him. He’s brilliant. Maybe next time you come to Chicago we can have lunch or something?

Anyway, here’s the really bizarre thing that’s happening at Mason & Zeus. We’ve got a client who used to be a priest, and he’s going into business doling out forgiveness to people, like in confession, but they don’t have to go to church. They just come in and pay him, like, $1,000, and he’ll forgive them for whatever they did.

So I’m helping start this whole business, which seems to be something our CEO dreamed up. It’s a very high-profile project, and this is probably my best chance to make director before I’m 30.

But it’s all really surreal, and I’m not sure I like it. I mean, what if a murderer or a rapist comes in and pays the fee? Do they get absolution even if they’re not sorry, the same as if they went to confession with Father Monahan? But then I think well that’s a bad example, b/c if they’re not sorry, what does it matter if the priest who’s forgiving them is real or not?

And there’s another part of me that’s like, what about the Catholic Church? Isn’t this kind of disrespectful?

But at work I’m totally on board because Madeline (that’s our CEO) would replace me in a second if she didn’t think I was 100% behind this concept. It’s really rare for Madeline to be this involved with anything, and Scott says it’s a great opportunity to get on her good side—or it would be, if she had one. Scott is so funny. And he has an adorable little three-year-old girl called Magenta; he named her because he’s a designer and he wanted her to feel like a piece of art. He’s such a unique person, Mom. I really think you’d like him.

I’m kind of curious for your opinion about the priest thing, since you still go to church. I keep going back and forth inside my own head b/c there’s that huge sex scandal and all those abused boys, so on the one hand I think the Church isn’t doing its job very well. But taking money to forgive people seems kind of awkward to me and like it might be disrespectful toward real priests.

Please don’t tell me you think it’s a terrible, immoral idea and I should quit, because that isn’t really an option. I’ve got eight more months on my lease, and Rebecca can’t ever find the $$$ to pay her part of the cable bill.

I hope you and Daddy have a good time on your trip to New Mexico. Happy 50th! I love you, Mom, and I’ll talk to you soon!!!!!

Joy

Hi honey—

You ask some tough questions, and I can’t really give you the answer. Our church doesn’t even have confession anymore, at least not the private kind that I did when I was a kid. Now we do something called “communal confession,” where Father Monahan has us think about our sins during a certain part of the service and then, after a couple minutes, he bestows a group absolution. I’m so used to it now I don’t think I could go back to the old way where I have to say things out loud. Not that I ever had much to say. That was the big problem for me when I was young. I was such a good girl I was afraid the priests were bored with my confessions! LOL

But about this Scott. He sounds very nice. How old is he? Is he divorced? I think it’s very tricky to get involved with someone you work with and you should be very careful.

We’ll call you from Santa Fe.

Love,

Mom

III