Priest. Part 22

"f.u.c.k you," I replied, without any heat. It didn't really matter. There was only one woman I wanted, and she was gone, and no number of internet fangirls (and fanboys) was going to change that.

"Please tell me that you're not going to do the celibate thing even now that you've been lateralized."

"Laicized, and it's none of your f.u.c.king business."

Sean threw a soy sauce packet at my head and seemed to enjoy the effect quite a bit, so he threw several more, the a.s.shole, and then pouted when I winged a container of sweet and sour sauce into his chest and spilled pink goop all over his latest Hugo Boss dress s.h.i.+rt.

"Uncalled for, d.i.c.kweed," he muttered, scrubbing futilely at the fabric.

And that was mostly my life-arguing with my brother, eating s.h.i.+tty food, generally having no idea what to do next. I thought about Poppy constantly, whether I was researching graduate programs or whether I was with my parents, who were supportive but tentative, as if afraid that saying the wrong word would make me have a Vietnam flashback and start crawling on the floor with a knife between my teeth.

"They're afraid you're going to hulk out, because of all that stuff on the internet and they think maybe you're repressing your feelings about it or something," Ryan had helpfully explained when he'd overheard me mention it to Aiden and Sean. "So, you know. Don't hulk out."

Don't hulk out. How funny. If anything, I was hulking in, shrinking and folding into a smaller man, a weaker man. Without Poppy, it was as if I had forgotten all the things that made me into Tyler Bell. I pined for her like a person would pine for air, incessantly, gaspingly, and it left so little room to think about anything else. I couldn't even watch The Walking Dead because it reminded me too much of her.

"I'm lost," I admitted to Jordan one day after Thanksgiving. "I know I did the right thing by leaving the clergy, but now there's so many choices-so many places I could go, so many things I could do. How am I supposed to know which one is the right one?"

"Is it because they all feel wrong without her?"

I hadn't mentioned Poppy to him at all, so his acuity unnerved me, even though I should know better by now. "Yes," I said honestly. "I miss her so much it hurts."

"Has she tried to contact you?"

I looked down at the table. "No."

No messages. No emails. No phone calls. Nothing. She was done with me. I supposed this meant she'd seen me that day in her house, that she knew I knew about Sterling, and that almost made it worse. No explanation? No apology? Not even the charade of feeble excuses and well wishes for the future?

I knew she'd moved away from Weston-Millie called to give me weekly updates on the church and my former paris.h.i.+oners-but I had no idea where she'd gone, although I a.s.sumed it was to New York City with Sterling.

"I think you should try to find her," Jordan said. "Get some closure."

Which was how I ended up at the strip club with Sean that December. He'd practically imploded with excitement when I had asked him to bring me, talking about getting me laid, getting him laid, and also about how we should bring Aiden, but not tonight because he wanted to focus on my game.

"I don't want to hook up with a stripper," I protested for the ten thousandth time as we rode the elevator up.

"What, they're too good for you now? You were f.u.c.king one just a couple months ago."

G.o.d, had it been two months already? It felt so much shorter than that, except the times when it felt longer, the times when I was sure it had been years since I'd last tasted the sweetness of Poppy's body, since I'd felt her c.u.n.t so warm and wet around my d.i.c.k, and those were the times I'd found myself so painfully erect I could barely breathe. Luckily, Sean was desperate to climb the ladder at his job and worked lots of late nights, and so I had the penthouse to myself most of the time. Not that jacking off ever helped-no matter how often I came into my hand thinking of her, it never dulled the ache of losing her, it never softened the blow of her betrayal. But betrayal or not, my body still wanted her.

I still wanted her.

"That was different," I told Sean now in the elevator, and he shrugged. I knew I'd never be able to explain it to him, because he'd never been in love. p.u.s.s.y is p.u.s.s.y, he would say whenever I tried to make him understand why I didn't want to be set up with some random girl he knew, why I didn't want to date at all. What was so special about hers?

The club was busy-it was a Sat.u.r.day night-and it only took a couple vodka and tonics to convince Sean to go do his own thing. I stayed near the bar, sipping a Bombay Sapphire martini and watching the dancers out on the floor, remembering what it was like to have Poppy dance for me and me alone.

What I wouldn't give just to have a few of those moments back-her and me and that G.o.dd.a.m.n silk thing around her neck. With a sigh, I set my drink down. I hadn't come here to reminisce. I came here to find out where Poppy went.

The bartender came down my way, wiping down the bar. "Another?" she asked, gesturing to my martini.

"No, thanks. Actually, I'm looking for someone."

She raised an eyebrow. "A dancer? We usually don't give out schedule information." For safety reasons, I could see she wanted to say, but she didn't.

I couldn't even be offended, because I knew how it looked to her. "Actually, I'm not looking for schedule information per se. I'm looking for Poppy Danforth...I think she used to work here?"

The bartender's eyes widened in recognition. "Oh my G.o.d, you're that priest, aren't you?"

I cleared my throat. "Um, yeah. I mean, I'm not technically a priest anymore, but I was."

The bartender grinned. "That picture of you playing Frisbee in college-it's the background on my sister's work computer. And have you seen the Hot Priest memes?"

I had indeed-for better or for worse-seen the Hot Priest memes. They were made using the picture that used to be on St. Margaret's website, the one that Poppy admitted to looking up all those months ago.

I thought maybe it would be easier if I knew what you looked like.

And is it easier?

Not really.

Now that we had established I wasn't just some random guy hara.s.sing dancers, I tried again. "Do you know where Poppy went?"

The bartender turned pitying. "No. She gave her notice so fast, and she didn't tell anybody why she was quitting or where she was going, although we all knew about the pictures, so we guessed it had something to do with those. She didn't tell you?"

"No," I said, and I picked up my martini again. Some truths went better with gin.

She hung her towel off a nearby rack and then spun toward me again. "You know, now that I think about it, I think she left something here when she came to pack up her things. Let me go grab it."

I tapped my fingers against the stainless steel bar, not letting myself believe that it was something as important as a letter left specifically for me, but still craving it all the same. How could she just have left? Without a word?

Had it all meant that little to her?

Not for the first time, my chest went concave, crumpling inward with the pain of it. The pain of one-sided love, of knowing that I had loved her more than she had loved me.

Is this how G.o.d feels all the time?

What a sobering thought.

The bartender came back with a thick white envelope. It had my name on it, Sharpied in hasty, thick strokes. When I took it, I knew immediately what it was, but I opened it anyway, more pain slas.h.i.+ng through my gut as I pulled out Lizzy's rosary and felt its weight in my hand.

I held it up for just a minute, watching the cross spin wildly in the low light of the dance floor, and then I thanked the bartender, slung back the rest of my martini, and left, leaving Sean to have his strip-adventures on his own.

It was over. Really, it had been over the moment I'd seen Sterling and Poppy kiss, but somehow I knew that this was her definitive signal that there was nothing left between us. Even though I'd given the rosary freely, as a gift, had never thought once about wanting it back, she had seen it as some sort of bond, some sort of debt, and she was rejecting that bond, just as she'd rejected me.

Yes. It was time I accepted it.

It was over.

I'd love to say that I walked out the club and used this newfound closure to get my life together. I'd love to tell you that a white dove came fluttering down and the heavens opened and G.o.d told me exactly where to go and what to do.

Most of all, I'd love to tell you that the rosary-and the implicit message it sent-healed my broken heart, and I spent no more nights thinking of Poppy, no more days scouring the internet for mentions of her name.

But it took longer than that. I spent the next two weeks much like I'd spent the two weeks before I got the rosary back: listening to the Garden State soundtrack and apathetically filling out applications for different degree programs, imagining in vivid detail what Poppy was doing right then (and whom she was doing it with.) I went to Jordan's church and mumbled my way through Ma.s.ses, I exercised constantly, and I immediately undid all that exercise once I finished by eating s.h.i.+tty food and drinking even more than my Irish bachelor brothers.

Christmas came. At our big family meal, we had this Bell family tradition of saying what our perfect present would be-a promotion, a new car, a vacation, that sort of thing. And when we went around the table, I realized what I wanted the most.

"I want to be doing something," I said, remembering laying on Jordan's pew and fantasizing about distant sh.o.r.es and dusty hills.

"So do it," Aiden said. "You can do anything you want. You've got, like, a million college degrees."

Two. I had two.

"I am going to do it," I decided.

"And what is it?" Mom asked.

"I have no idea. But it's not here."

And two weeks later, I was on a plane to Kenya on an open-ended mission trip to dig wells in Pokot, for the first time running to something, rather than away.

Seven Months Later "So you're a lumbers.e.xual now?"

"f.u.c.k you." I shoved my bag into Sean's chest so I could dig out some money for the airport vending machine. Dr. Pepper, the Fountain of Youth. I almost wept after taking the first sip, the first cold, sweet, carbonated thing I'd had since the Nairobi airport.

"So no pop in Africa, eh?" Aiden asked as I took my bag back and we started walking out of the airport.

"And no razors apparently," Sean said, reaching over and giving my beard a fierce yank.

I punched him in the bicep. He yelped like a girl.

It was true that I had a fairly extensive beard, along with a deep tan and dramatically leaner body. "No more pretty boy muscles," Dad had remarked after I'd walked in the door and he'd hugged me. "Those are real-work muscles."

Mom had just pursed her lips. "You look like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments."

I felt a bit like Moses, a stranger both in Egypt and in Midian, a stranger everywhere. Later that night, after the longest shower I could ever remember taking (months of one-minute, tepid showers had instilled a deep love of running hot water in me,) I laid down on my bed and thought about everything. The faces of the people-workers and villagers alike-that I'd come to know on such an intimate level. I knew why their children were named what they were, and I knew that they loved soccer and Top Gear, and I knew which of the boys I'd wanted on my team when we played impromptu rugby games in the evening. The work had been hard-they were building a high school along with better water infrastructure-and the days were long, and there had been times when I'd felt unwanted or wanted too much or like the work was pointless, bailing out the t.i.tanic with a coffee tin, as Dad would have said. And then I would go to sleep with prayers circling in my head and wake up the next day, refreshed and determined to do better.

I wouldn't have left, honestly, if during my monthly satellite call, Mom hadn't told me about the pile of acceptance letters waiting for me at home. I could literally have my pick of universities, and after a lot of thought, I'd decided to come home and pursue my PhD at Princeton-not a Catholic seminary, but I was okay with that. Presbyterians weren't so bad.

I pulled Lizzy's rosary out of my pocket and watched the cross spin in the low city lights filtering in through the window. I'd taken it with me to Pokot, and there'd been many nights when I'd fallen asleep with it clutched in my hand, like by holding on to it, I could hold on to someone, except I didn't know who I was trying to feel close to. Lizzy maybe, or G.o.d. Or Poppy.

The dreams had started my second night there, slow, predictable dreams at first. Dreams of sighs and flesh, dreams so real that I would wake up with her scent in my nostrils and her taste lingering on my tongue. And then they'd changed into strange ciphered visions of tabernacles and chuppahs, dancing shoes and tumbling stacks of books. Hazel eyes bright with tears, red lips curved downward in perpetual unhappiness.

Old Testament dreams, Jordan had said when I called him one month. Your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions, he'd quoted.

("Which kind of man am I?" I'd wondered aloud.) No amount of prayer, no amount of hard, exhausting work during the day, made the dreams go away. And I had no idea what they meant, except that Poppy was still very much inside my heart, no matter how much I distracted myself during my waking hours.

I wanted to see her again. And it was no longer the wounded lover who wanted it, no longer the anger and the l.u.s.t both demanding to be satisfied. I just wanted to know she was doing okay, and I wanted to give her the rosary back. It had been a gift, she should keep it.

Even if she was with-f.u.c.k-Sterling.

Once I had that thought, it was impossible to shake, and so the idea became completely embedded into my plans. I was moving to New Jersey, and New York City wasn't far away. I would find Poppy and I would give her the rosary.

Along with your forgiveness, came a quiet thought out of nowhere. A G.o.d-thought. She needs to know that you've forgiven her.

Have I? Forgiven her? I nudged one arm of the crucifix to set it spinning again. I suppose I had. It hurt-deeply-to think of her and Sterling together, but my anger had been poured into the African dust-poured away and sprinkled down, sprinkled as sweat and tears and blood onto the soil.

Yes. It would be good for both of us. Closure. And maybe once I handed off the rosary, the dreams would stop and I could move on with the rest of my life.

The next day, my last day home, Mom took scissors to my beard with an almost creepy glee.

"It didn't look that bad," I mumbled as she worked.

Ryan was. .h.i.tched up on the counter, for once without his phone. He had a bag of Cheetos in his hand instead. "No, dude, it really did. Unless you were trying to look like Rick Grimes."

"Why wouldn't I? He's my hero."

Mom clucked. "Princeton students don't look like Paul Bunyan, Tyler. Hold still-no, Ryan, he can't have Cheetos while I'm doing this."

Ryan had shoved the bag in my outstretched hand after hopping down to find his phone ("This is so sick. I have to Periscope it.") I sighed and set the Cheetos down.

"I'm going to miss you," Mom said, out of nowhere.

"It's just school. I'll be back to visit all the time."

She finished with the scissors and set them down. "I know. It's just, all you boys have stayed so close to home. I've been spoiled by having you all here."

And then she burst into tears, because we weren't all here, hadn't been all here since Lizzy.

"Mom..." I stood up and hugged her tightly. "I love you. And this isn't permanent. It's just for a few years."

She nodded into my chest, and then sniffed and pulled away. "I'm sad because I'll miss you, but I'm not crying because I want you to stay." She met my eyes with her matching green ones. "You boys need to live your lives without being chained down by obligation or grief. I'm glad you're doing something scary, something new. Go and make new memories, and don't worry about your silly mother here in Kansas City. I'm going to be just fine, plus, I still have Sean and Aiden and Ryan."

As much as I wanted to scoff, I couldn't. Sean and Aiden were attentive in their own ways, never missing a family dinner, carving out time to call and text during the rest of the week, and Dad was here. Still, though. I worried. "Okay."

"Sit down, so I can finish up on this monstrosity of a beard."

I sat, thinking about leaving home behind. I'd seen enough grief as a priest to know that people never really moved on, at least not in the linear, segmented way our culture expected people to. Instead, Mom was going to have good days and bad days, days where she circled back to her pain and days were she was able to smile and fuss over things like beards and the cost of Ryan's car insurance.

Mostly, I knew that I wouldn't be able to carry her pain for her, even if I stayed here. We'd each have to find our own ways of living with Lizzy's ghost, and we'd have to find them in our own time. I felt like I'd already started, and maybe Mom had too.

"Now, go shave," she ordered me now, brus.h.i.+ng at my face with a dry towel and dropping a light kiss on my forehead. "Unless you've forgotten how."

Moving wasn't so hard. I found an inexpensive apartment not too far away from campus and used my dwindling savings to put in a deposit. I'd be a teaching a.s.sistant as well as a student, and the stipend was enough to cover room and board, even if I would have to take out a few loans for tuition. I didn't have much to move, really, all of my furniture having belonged to the rectory and my weights being left in Kansas City. Clothes and books, and then a futon and a table I scrounged from Craigslist.

After settling in, I spent a long day or two trying to hunt down a new address for Poppy on the internet, even just a place of work, but there was nothing. She was either very careful or very quiet or both-the last mentions of her that I could find were around the time of her graduation from Dartmouth, and a handful of campus dance performances from her time at the University of Kansas a few years ago.

I could find no trace of her, and I even went as far as calling her parents, using numbers I found online for her father's company and for her mother's non-profit. But they were well-guarded by rings of a.s.sistants and receptionists, none of whom seemed inclined to give up any information about Poppy or forward me on to her parents. Not that I could blame them; I probably wouldn't give out information to a strange man either, but it was still frustrating as h.e.l.l.

Why did she have to leave Weston? Why did she have to leave the rosary? Maybe if she hadn't, I wouldn't be consumed with the idea of giving it back...