Conceived Without Sin (5 page)

The Rosary is a preparation for heaven,
she thought.

Heaven.

Donna continued to pray, meditating on the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary here and there between concentrating on the words of the prayers. She pictured
Our Lady, a young girl herself, accepting the huge responsibility to conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear the Son of God. She pictured Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth, with John jumping in the womb.

Why were you good, Mary?

In Donna's heart, Mary answered the simple question with a simple answer. To Donna, the answer came as a thought, and was not accompanied by lightning bolts or mystical
phenomena.

Because God is Goodness Itself and she desired to please God.

The answer made sense to Donna.
God is Good. God is Good. I'm here on this earth to please God,
she repeated to herself. It was like the axioms she had learned in Geometry class;
the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. God is good; pleasing God is good; pleasing God requires that
I be good.

There were
a hundred different ways to put it.

Donna did not stay in the church for hours. In fact, she prayed for less than half an hour. Other than an unusual ability to concentrate on the mysteries and words of the Rosary without distraction, she did not feel one outward sign of the grace that flooded her heart on that day. But she was never the same. The ember of grace she received during the Sacrament
of Confirmation four years earlier was inflamed that day. Now it was up to Donna to keep the fire burning, and she did. That weekend, she went to confession for the first time in over two years.

She got into the habit of visiting the Blessed Sacrament on her walk home from school at least a few times a week, even if only to say a quick
I love you
to her new friend, Jesus.

When the boys came at
her over the next few years, rejecting the Three Bad Things was as easy as turning down a glass of poison. She found herself attending daily Mass with her parents before school, and even got her best friend, Gloria Santini, to go to Mass with her. Picking up a devotion to Saint Anthony seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Besides, the guy's amazing. Ask Uncle Tony, and you get instant
results,
she now thought as she looked over at the silent stranger driving the truck.

She could tell that there was a goodness in Sam; he wasn't a barracuda. She just knew. Like most good women, she knew she could trust her instincts, now that the Three Bad Things weren't mucking up the works.

"You don't talk much, Sam, do you?"

He looked away from the road and gave her a quick, toothy smile.
He confirmed her question with silence and a slow shake of his head.

A few minutes later, he said, "Don't worry, Donna. Buzz can talk enough for ten men."

4

Months earlier, in a suburb of New Jersey, a tall, well-built man slammed the door of his car just after climbing in.

From the rearview mirror, Mark Johnson saw the smile on his wife's face as she stood behind the screen door of their home.
His daughter Angela was standing there, too, in front of his wife Maggie. Maggie said something to the girl, and closed the front door slowly, as if to mock Mark's anger.

He started the car, and pulled out of the driveway. His heart sank.
She's happy I'm leaving. Happy! She's relieved!

She had kicked him out before, but had always let him return the next day. One time, two years earlier, she had
been the one to leave him, taking the girls for a week to stay with her mother in Maryland. Not this time. Maggie was staying put. This time she had forced him to pack his clothes.

He had called her bluff, and she had won.

"If that's how you feel, Mag, why don't I just move out!" he had screamed an hour earlier, losing his temper, at the end of another long discussion-turned-shouting match.

They
had stood in their newly remodelled kitchen. He had taken a night job for a security company to pay for it last summer. They were on opposite sides of the new island with the cook-top stove. Maggie had insisted on that stove.

The kitchen was so bright and cheerful. Angela was coloring in her Our Lady of Fatima coloring book at the kitchen table, listening with one ear. It remotely annoyed Mark
that Angela rarely cried when the arguments came. She was used to them.

Maggie's pretty eyes had sparkled. "Okay," she had told him smugly, almost serenely. "But if you do leave, you're not coming back until I say so, and under my conditions."

She had the youngest, little Meg, in her arms. Meg was burying sobs into her mother's breast. Sarah, the oldest, was at soccer practice.

"Fine! I'll move
out!" he yelled, calling her bluff.

"Good. You go pack," she closed the deal calmly. "I need to get dinner together. I'll pick up Sarah later."

She turned away from him and opened the refrigerator, and began pulling out ingredients for the meal.

He had never hit Maggie, and the urge he felt now as she ignored him, having outmaneuvered him, was sudden and fierce.

He took a step back, afraid for
her, afraid for himself, not at all accustomed to the desire to strike her. He had just lost a battle. He hated to lose.

He was a warrior. A tough guy.

He retreated from the kitchen, and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. He found his luggage, gathering dust, in the back of the fancy walk-in closet he had repainted two years earlier. He resisted an urge to run downstairs to renegotiate
the treaty. She would no doubt make him beg, and mock his sincere apologies. She was tired of his apologies.

And he was too proud to beg. He had given his word to leave on her conditions. He was a man of his word.

What about the girls?

He put the girls out of his mind.

One hour later, he was driving away from his own home, not sure where he was going to stay for the night.

His late father had
also been a tough guy–a cop. And Mark's older brothers were tough guys who had made sure their younger brother was nothing less than a tough guy. He was also an honorable man, and, despite his love for his wife and their three daughters, he was supremely frustrated because he did not know why his marriage was crumbling out of his hands, falling down through mental grates into dark sewers. Beyond his
reach, irretrievable.

Mark was big, tall, muscular. He was an FBI agent. He had been an all-state football player and wrestler in high school, and received an appointment to the Naval Academy. He had towered over his fellow midshipmen, and earned second team All-American honors at tight end.

He was not a gentle giant, but there was a measured quality to his anger. He was calculatingly ferocious
when he thought the situation merited it. This fierceness induced fear in others. The calculation brought success. His voice carried over land like a ship's horn over water. His voice alone could stop a bad guy in his tracks at times when other agents needed bullets.

He had more of everything. More charisma. More strength. More intelligence. More savvy. More, more, more. Men who weren't tough
guys had a natural fear of him. The small fraternity who were also tough guys respected him, and saw him as a kind of modern king. Historians say Charlemagne was a foot taller than his peers, and his height alone commanded homage in an age so violent that war, not football, was a seasonal pursuit of the brave and wealthy.

But this king's marriage was crumbling. Mark Johnson was a Catholic. He
loved his faith. But his faith wasn't helping him–not yet. His Rosaries weren't answered. His wife didn't respect him.

Maggie. Once you told me that you wanted to be by my side forever.

Maggie, he remembered, was truly a queen when they met. Queen of the high school prom the year before he met her, and Homecoming Queen of Hood College, the all-women school she was attending the weekend he met
her at a formal.

She had not been able to keep her eyes off the king. As he drove away now, he remembered the tan color of her shoulders set off against a dress so white it made you squint. They had danced. Then he escorted her over to the ground-level balcony outside the reception hall. She was smiling. Looking at him.

"Let's get out of here," he had said.

"How?" she had asked, her blue eyes
sparkling.

"This is how," he replied, lifting her up, making her feel like a small girl with his strength, as he carefully swung his leg over the stone banister, and took her across the lawn to his Jeep.

He drove her to Main Street in Annapolis, and they talked and walked, arm-in-arm, on the crowded sidewalk. Passersby stared at the king and queen. He was in the full dress whites of the Naval
Academy. They made all that surrounded them seem a dull gray.

He could tell she wanted him. All the girls always did. Despite many opportunities to throw away his virginity, he had saved himself for
the one.
She had saved herself, too. Later, they would discover this secret about each other.

There was something different about Maggie that impressed him. She didn't fear him. She wasn't in awe.

Yeah, that's it. Maggie and Mom. My mom wasn't afraid of me either,
the tough guy thought now.

Then, as they had walked along the street, he saw a friend sitting at a table in Riordan's Saloon.

"Wait here," he told her.

"Why?"

"There's a guy I used to wrestle with in there. I'll be back in a minute."

Before she could say a word, he darted off, leaving her alone. There were two other buddies in
the bar, and Mark had few chances to drink at the Academy. One beer became two. But his queen was waiting, so he begged off on the third.

Twenty minutes after abandoning her, he returned.

"You're no gentleman," she seethed at him.

"What are you so upset about?"

"You left me here for almost half an hour! Take me back to the dance!"

He shook his head. "What?"

"Take me back."

She was really mad at
me.

"Let's just walk a little bit more…" he suggested, offering his arm and a charming smile.

"Take me back," she insisted, looking him in the eye. Not backing off. Not a trace of fear.

Maybe that's when I fell in love with her.

He had smiled. He started talking. He changed the subject. He was not a dumb jock. He knew how to express his ideas. They talked as he walked her back to the car. He made
her laugh in the car. He told heroic stories, in humble ways, of heroic battles he had fought. The Notre Dame game, when he had played with a busted up knee, got to her.

"My daddy played hurt," she told him. "He was an officer and a gentleman."

Later, when their first daughter had been born, Maggie hadn't uttered a word or let out a scream during the delivery. After Sarah came out, she told him,
"See, I'm a tough guy, too."

She had loved him, then. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. His house in the pleasant suburb of Montclair was miles away now.
Where am I?

Nowhere, man. Hey, didn't the Beatles sing that? I hate the Beatles.

He saw a Catholic church. He pulled into the driveway, parked, and went up to the large wooden doors. They were locked. He walked around the back, got down
on his knees at the wall closest to the tabernacle, which he saw through the stained glass, and began to pray.

What's going on, Jesus? I'm a failure as a husband. I'm losing my little girls. What's going on? I gave everything to her. I worked hard. I never cheated. All I want is some respect.

He wasn't at the end of his line, however. He was nowhere near tears. Mark Johnson really was a tough
guy.

He went to bed that night with swirling memories of arguments with Maggie banging around his head. He shouted at her. She snapped at him. Bang bang bang. Like gunshots.

And so it goes: another marriage on the ropes. One of millions. For all our love of work and cars and sports and magazines and minivans and computers and custom floor coverings and politics and sex and anything-but-anything-but-God,
we still go to bed at night with love and lack thereof on our lips and hearts and minds.

5

"Is Buzz your real name?" Donna asked as she looked around Buzz's apartment.

"No. It's a nickname. But if people use it all the time, it is kind of real, isn't it?"

Donna squinted in confusion. "Huh?"

"It's not a fake name," Buzz explained.

"You see Donna," Sam cut in. "I told you Buzz would confuse you
right off the bat."

"Are you trying to be funny?" she asked, noticing that everything in the kitchen had a car motif. There was a giant collage of classic Thunderbirds, cut from magazine ads, on the wall adjacent to the table.

"No, I'm serious. Buzz is my nickname, and it's my real name. My
baptized
name is Gwynne. Can you believe it?"

"Gwen?" Sam asked.

"Gwynne," he repeated, emphasizing the
i
sound of the
y.

"Pretty cruddy name if you ask me. Buzz is much better," Donna offered.

"Sure is," Buzz agreed, wiping his hands on his apron. He was in the middle of cooking a huge omelette on a large cast-iron skillet.

"So how did you get nicknamed Buzz?" Donna asked after a moment, looking Buzz in the eye for the first time since walking into the apartment.

"It's a long story." Buzz smiled
warmly.

"It's a great story. Tell her, Buzz," Sam said, adding, "It's a great story, Donna."

"Great, tell me this wonderful story," Donna said unenthusiastically.

"During dinner," Buzz conceded.

"Dinner?" Donna asked, turning to Sam. "I thought we were just gonna drop off Buzz's fridge."

"Oh yeah, thanks for picking up the fridge, Sam," Buzz interjected. "I'm cooking all these eggs for us because
they were sitting out on the deck. They're going bad."

"Hmmn, appetizing," Donna said sarcastically, but it was a friendly sarcasm.

"We'll be perfect gentlemen, my fair lady. Sam can't lift heavy things on an empty stomach," Buzz reasoned weirdly.