Conceived Without Sin (14 page)

"I still don't follow you," Sam replied.
"Can you give me an example."

Donna took a sip of tea, thinking.

"My sister Cindy and I have heart-to-heart talks all the time. We share stuff. Girl stuff. I could see a guy sitting in on that, and Cindy and me talking the same way. But if you and Buzz went on a hunting trip, and I went along, it would be a whole different thing than if I wasn't there."

"I get it. The secret life of men. Yeah,
we clam up when women are around. But it's not like we share our deepest and darkest secrets when we're alone. We talk in code. If we talk at all."

"What kind of code?"

"Action code. Take Ellie; I don't tell Buzz what I really feel about her. I'm not sure I could put what I feel about Ellie into words. This might sound weird, but I'm not sure I feel anything about her. She's just there, a word
or an image in my heart. It's like when I'm in the zone on the court. I can't miss. Every shot is a swish. I don't put words to how I'm feeling while I'm shooting. I'm just in the zone."

"I know about the zone," Donna offered.

"Do you? Or do you have a girl version of it? When I'm in the zone, I'm in another world. Except for Ellie, I can't say I've ever felt anything like being in the zone in
any other sphere of my life. Not even at my company."

There was a long pause in the conversation. Sam looked at his tea.

"Maybe guys don't talk about things like love and the zone because they don't have words for it," Donna finally observed.

"Yeah. Yeah, the words inside are in another language. That's why guys go away to be together. If it's not a bar, or a hunting lodge, or a boat, they go
away by watching television. We don't really talk when we're 'away' like that. We do stuff. That's the best way to translate the words in our hearts into the world outside.

"Buzz is a regular guy, despite being so different. Notice how he's always taking us places, going away. You know, maybe because you're a tomboy–"

Donna smiled at his frank statement.

"–Buzz and I have let you see behind the
curtain of the secret life of men. But there's not much to show you. The key is that we don't really talk to each other. Buzz and I talk a lot for men, I guess. And to tell you the truth, Buzz has gotten me to talk more in the last few months than I've ever talked in my life. I mean, talking about real things. God, if he exists. Women. Me talking to you now because he brought us here.

"He cuts
through the crap of life, the pre-programmed conversations we have every day at work and at bars with strangers. You know what I mean?"

"I think so," she said, straining to follow. She was a smart girl; she was letting him roll.

"Buzz has a way of cutting through to the real stuff. He was right about the ocean doing stuff to you. I can't put into words how that walk with you did something to me.
It knocked me off my usual thought patterns. I actually was thinking that there might be such a thing as a soul."

Donna's heart leaped when Sam said this.

"In here," he continued soberly, looking up to her from his tea. "I know there's no soul. But out there, today, with you, with the rain on your face, the soul didn't seem like such a preposterous idea."

"Buzz…" Donna said, not knowing why.

"I'm used to being certain about my atheism. Or agnosticism. Maybe the difference is that an atheist cares more about the subject. It was weird having a doubt. If there is a soul, then my whole world crumbles. Is a soul immortal? What happens after the body dies? How is it related to the body? The whole world would become a swirling cyclone of doubt. I might even be tempted to adopt a philosophy that
supplies ready answers, like…" he hesitated.

"Like Catholicism. Like our philosophy?"

He didn't answer.

"It's not a philosophy, you know," she said. It was not a rebuke so much as a reaction. "But I know what you mean. It doesn't have all the answers. Maybe all Catholicism has is the right assumptions."

"Huh?"

"Oh Sam. Think about it. Geometry has axioms. You can't prove them. You know–the shortest
distance between two points is a straight line–but if you don't accept axioms at face value, you can't
get
any answers. You don't believe because you accept different axioms. Like the soul. The Catholic axiom isn't complicated: There
is
a soul. It's immortal. God made it. It either goes to heaven or hell after the body dies–with a stop in Purgatory maybe before heaven. Simple."

"Simple?"

"You
understood it, didn't you?"

"Yes," he said, after a moment's reflection. His tone was low, soft.

I love your honesty,
Donna thought. She caught herself.
Careful how you use that
love
word when Sam's involved.

"Well,
your
axiom," she continued, "is that there isn't a soul, all for the reason you can't see it or feel it or touch it."

"Well," he rejoined, but lacking his usual certainty, "what is
there that exists that you can't see or feel or touch?"

Donna smiled.
Got ya.

"Love, silly. Love exists, Sam."

Sam immediately thought of Ellie, and the ocean, and the soul. And how all those things wouldn't be in his life if Buzz hadn't rammed into him during a pick-up game.

For the first time since Donna knew him, he didn't have a strong, ready reply. He stood up and stretched. He yawned.

Wow,
Donna thought.
He's stalling.

She let him stall. She never thought this moment would ever come. A chink in the agnostic armor of Sam Fisk.

Don't get too excited,
she thought.
He'll come back with something.

But he didn't. Not on that odd, generation-nothing day down the shore.

He excused himself, like a gentleman should before a lady, and went into the bathroom. He threw cold water onto his face.
He looked into his own eyes. He didn't see a soul there.

Good,
he thought.

But without conviction.

Chapter Seven

1

"I just don't get it," Sam said, putting his Stephen King novel down.
The Stand.
Buzz had recommended it to Sam. It was captivating. His beach chair was between Buzz and Donna's. The ocean was at low tide, and although the water was not warm enough to swim in, the sun was out, and the sky was clear.

The rain had passed, but the wind was steady. They hadn't bothered with bathing
suits. There were only a few others on the beach, spread far apart.

Sam was too distracted by Buzz's last statement to Donna to keep reading. "What do you mean, the Father sees the Son in you?" he asked.

"Don't feel bad that you don't get it," Donna said. "I barely get it myself. Tell us again, Buzz."

"Well, just make believe you're a believer, Sam, a Catholic. Catholics believe that they are
temples of the Holy Spirit; that the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts.

"They also believe that Jesus physically comes into our bodies when we receive Communion. But not just Jesus, but Jesus in His full divinity. He Who lives in us is not just the historical Jew who lived in Palestine, Who died and rose from the dead, but the very creator of the universe. In fact, the one Who keeps the universe
in existence–"

"I don't believe that–" Sam interrupted.

"I know, I know. No sweat. I'm just asking you to follow the logic."

"Okay," Sam replied. "I forgot. Keep going."

Donna adjusted the blanket over her legs. She kept them covered. Partly because she was cold, partly because she was modest, and partly because she thought her legs were chunky and was embarrassed.

"So," Buzz continued, "God the
Father is in heaven, ruling this universe, and He looks down at a Catholic. Let's say He looks down at Donna. Sure, it's more complicated than that, because we also believe that God is everywhere. Much of trinitarian theology is beyond our ability to comprehend, but for the sake of conversation, the Father is looking at Donna right now. Assuming that Donna is in a state of grace, then the Son is
dwelling in her. The Father sees not only Donna, and loves her, but also sees the Son. And the more Donna does the will of the Son, she is the Son to the Father.

"The morning prayer of Saint Patrick got me thinking about all this. 'Christ above me, Christ below me, Christ on my left, Christ on my right, Christ before me, Christ behind me'–it goes on and on like that–then 'Christ in the eyes of
those who see me, Christ in the ears of those who hear me speak' and so on. Or something like that. I don't have it memorized. If people can see Christ in us, then so can the Father.

"If Donna wants to really be a Christian, she should let Christ be Christ through her. That will connect her to the Christ in others, who are part of His Mystical Body. It connects her to the Father in heaven. It
connects her to the universe itself. Well, maybe not the universe. Sometimes I get carried away with my high-minded ideas. Maybe it connects her, in the fullness of time, to the past."

"That last part sounds like time-travelling," she observed. "And maybe you are getting carried away, Buzz."

"Weird, and as I said before, kind of beautiful," Sam added.

"Yeah," Buzz said. "Beautiful."

Buzz took
a sip of his Pepsi. Sam got up and stretched. From their low-slung beach chairs, he looked like a very skinny Gulliver.

"Your whole religion is weird. I hope you're not offended by my saying that. I never knew there was so much to it. Before I met you guys, I thought Catholics were all holy candles and rosary beads and superstitions."

"Scott Hahn said that Fulton Sheen said that millions despise
what they
think
is the Catholic Church, but less than one hundred hate what it really is," Buzz added.

"Who's Scott Hahn?" Donna asked.

"He's a really cool guy," he answered. "He's a Presbyterian minister who became a Catholic. I just heard a tape by him from the Kolbe Foundation, an apostolate from Indiana. The whole story of how he converted. Great speaker. Some of his Protestant friends are
converting in a trickle. I think it's going to turn into a river."

"Do you have it here?" Donna asked.

Buzz shook his head. "Too bad, we could have listened on the way home."

"So you're saying," Sam said, returning to the subject, "that most people don't understand what the Catholic Church is?"

"Even most Catholics; it's sad." Buzz started digging a hole in the sand next to his chair. Always moving.
Always doing something.

"It sounds like you need to be a college professor to be a Catholic," Sam observed.

"You don't have to be a scholar to be a Catholic," Buzz replied. "You have to be a mystic. For example, we believe that Jesus is in heaven right now, in His body, probably standing on something. He's wearing something. But He lived and died and rose almost two thousand years ago.

"At the
same time, we believe that He is also present in every tabernacle in the world: body, blood, soul and divinity. Forget about religion for a minute, and name one thing in all of the world that even remotely comes close to that for sheer funkiness."

Sam and Donna could think of nothing.

Buzz was on a roll, and kept rolling, the excitement rising in his voice. "That's why I don't mind your agnosticism,
Sam. In a real way, it makes sense. We're not trying to get you to believe in something that is ordinary or natural like a combustion engine, but rather, something that's far out, something supernatural. That's what
super
-natural means–beyond natural. You've got to believe a lot of funky stuff to be a Catholic."

Sam couldn't help but laugh quietly. Here was Buzz, the ultimate believer, the rock
of faith, telling him that being an agnostic was reasonable–and using it to somehow show that belief was authentic.

"I've got an example," Donna offered. "An example of how funky the Catholic faith is. It's one of my favorite things about the faith."

"Shoot," Buzz said. Sam looked at her.

"First, look up in the air, and keep looking up," she commanded. "Sit down for a sec, Sam."

"Huh?" both men
echoed.

She pursed her lips. "Just do it."

Sam sat back down. They dutifully looked up. It just happened that a seagull was circling over their heads, high up.

"Right now," she said, looking up with them, "I believe that three Guardian Angels are above us. They've been trying to get us to do and not do stuff all day. I've never seen them, or heard them, or had any physical proof they exist, but
I believe they're there."

"I don't," Sam said, enjoying the sky, and the freedom to let them know he didn't believe without losing their friendship.
I love these guys. I believe
that.

"I do," Buzz said. He laughed loudly. "Hey, Angel. If you're there, show me a sign."

"Careful, Buzz," Donna said, quite seriously. "It's dangerous to ask for signs."

"Yeah," Sam said. "That seagull might
drop
a sign."

"It's good luck to get pooped on by a bird if you're Italian," Donna said, still serious.

"That's why I'm glad I'm not Italian. For dumb Irishmen like me," Buzz said, "it's good luck to win the lottery and stuff like that."

"Is that really true about Italians?" Sam asked.

"Yup," Donna said. "My gramma said that all the time."

"Do Italians have other good luck signs, like getting cancer or getting
hit by a bus?" Buzz asked. "And can we look down from the sky now. My neck hurts."

They all brought their gazes down. They looked at each other.

They burst out laughing.

After the laughter died down, Buzz jumped up suddenly and sprinted toward the ocean, stormed into the water up to his hips, then smacked into a breaker, his arms and legs askew. His jeans and polo shirt getting soaked.

"He's a
nut," Sam said.

Buzz screamed in faux pain. "It's freezing!" he yelled.

"Then why do you hang out with him?" she asked.

"I could ask you the same thing."

2

The analogy queen sat on claustrophobic hill, holding court, a cigarette dying a certain death between her fingers. The queen's legs where folded Indian-style on a ratty, if not typical, couch in a rundown house she shared on Oak Grove Avenue
on the hill across from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She had crashed their party.

Judy Pierce, the analogy queen,
hated
Franciscan University of Steubenville, and was telling a group of innocent, devout Catholic students who went there with her why.

"You're nuts," her friend Silvio told her, his Spanish accent thicker because of the beers in his belly. He sat next to Judy, his arm scandalously
around her shoulders.

"I'm perfectly sane," she replied. "For a normal person like me, Steubenville is like going to prison, but worse, because in prison everybody else there is a criminal like you. Here, I'm an outcast. At Rutgers or Ohio State I would be considered run-of-the-mill for my beliefs, if not a bit prudish.

"But here I'm an outcast who everybody treats with pity and kindness, all
because I don't go to Mass every day and wave my hands in the air when I pray. It's just like this dream I had the other day, that I was ironing something in my room, when I looked down, I saw it was my term paper, not my skirt, and it started to burn."

"What does that have to do with not liking it here?" Michelle, a freshman, asked. Silvio rolled his eyes.
Dumb freshman. Never ask the analogy
queen a question.

"Michelle, it's like something I read in my philosophy class the other day," Judy began.

Silvio Morales tuned her out. He didn't much like Steubenville, either. But his dislike was not as passionate as Judy's. He was in love with her.

Judy was a fox.

She pulled another cigarette out of her pack. She gently placed her hand on Silvio's wrist as he popped his lighter for her. She
barely skipped a beat during her explanation to Michelle why Steubenville was Being
and
Nothingness, or at least
like
Being and Nothingness.

All sorts of rumors were going around about Silvio and Judy.

That they got drunk every weekend.

Buzzed maybe. Drunk, occasionally. But not
every
weekend,
he thought.

That they slept together.
Sure, we sleep together,
he thought,
but we actually sleep together,
as in snoozing, catching z's.

They did stuff with each other and to each other, but had not done what Donna Beck would have called one of the Three Bad Things. Judy wasn't ready. He wasn't sure he was, either. One of these days, though, that rumor might be upgraded into a true story.

Silvio was surprised that his small network of friends hadn't reported to him a rumor that Judy and he were cutting
off chicken heads in their spare time.

Never underestimate the power of rumor at Steubenville.

It was a small school, with a fairly modern campus atop a small mountain overlooking the Ohio River and the City of Steubenville. The little rust-belt town's claim to fame was that Dean Martin had been born and raised there.

And he never came back,
Silvio thought.

But for most parents and students and
supporters, Franciscan University of Steubenville was heaven on earth. For kids like Silvio and Judy, it was purgatorial punishment for being a wild high school kid.

An oasis of orthodox Catholicism for some.

A claustrophobic hill for Judy, Silvio, and their few friends.

Living off-campus in the tenements off Wellesley helped relieve some of the dullness and (to Silvio) hypocrisy, but not by much.

Judy came from a huge family that lived in California. She was the black sheep of a devout group of twelve children. Her father had money, and had bribed her with a new Subaru wagon to return after a disastrous freshman year, when she came within an inch of failing out.

Silvio's dad was a (now rare) steel worker from nearby Pittsburgh who got all caught up in the Charismatic Prayer Movement in
the seventies. Eduardo Morales had moved to Steubenville to join the charismatic community that had formed around the university. His father had traded steelworking for carpentry, then dragged his equally fervent wife, Silvio, and two daughters along.

Absolutely no choice was given to Silvio as to where he would attend college. Just being able to move out of his folks' house to live near his friends
had been a war of attrition.

But despite himself, and the dirty looks from Judy, Silvio had started going to Mass on Sunday.

Why?
he asked himself.

Because there's something about this place. And the homilies were great–interesting.

Some of the priests really spoke to him during their homilies. And he had gotten caught up in the singing a few times. There was another reason.

Grace.

Is that why
you haven't slept with Judy, Silvy?
a small voice asked him as his girlfriend surfed into another analogy.

He inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

First Mass. Next, you'll be going to confession.

The voice was starting to really annoy him.

Confession? What? Give up all the fun in life? Become like these weenies? No way.

In his heart, grace was begging to differ.

3

Donna was disappointed when Sam politely
declined to join her and Buzz for Sunday Mass.

"I'm going to my own services on the beach. I want to think," he told her, softening the blow.

He didn't miss much,
she thought afterwards. The Mass was twisted and bizarre compared to what she was used to in Ohio. No kneelers. Kids surrounding the altar steps for the homily.

And the homily!
Donna felt like gagging when the priest changed all the
words of the Eucharistic Prayer around to suit his tastes.

No mention of the Virgin Mary. Why don't I get to change around my responses? 'The Lord be with you.' 'Yeah, Father, and
maybe
with you.' I'm glad he didn't mess with the words of the consecration.