Our Lady of the Forest (38 page)

He'd given up plenty to be outside the game, and not just the opportunity for sex. Or rather he'd chosen to lose without playing—quit after the first few adolescent skirmishes—and so wouldn't pass on his genetic complement via the fleshly consolation of orgasm. He would also not know love's vaunted madness, its tragicomic mystery, except through God, an abstraction. He would love only an idea. So losses piled up. Including children. His nonexistent children's children. Finally an old priest in a home for old priests—maybe his sisters would visit him there if they weren't suffering from Alzheimer's disease or simply dead already. He would be, inevitably, a geriatric castaway; he could see that far into the future. It wasn't far in cosmic terms, as the poets insistently reminded him: brief candle, wingèd chariot drawing near, Oh my God, Father Collins thought, it was all of it a lot to ask! It was lonely and left him with reservations and riddled him with wounding doubts.

There was succor, as always, in the sound of the teakettle, though the succor he felt at this juncture in his thoughts only deepened his sense of personal crisis: he was an indoor male of domestic contents, beaten, gelded, impotent, unmanned—celibate and, by that fact, neutered. Ultimately it came to this: a hot cup of tea served scrupulously as perhaps the zenith of Father Collins' day, lending it an aura of meaning.

So he performed his daily tea-making rites: Monday, it must be orange pekoe. There was a cozy sewed by one of his parishioners into the shape of a hen at nest and he pulled that over the little teapot. Followed by the discipline of a thorough steep with its silent call for perseverance. He mused and meditated, shut his eyes, and imagined himself quitting the priesthood. But then what? Finally he poured himself a cup of tea and took it with its matching saucer as nursemaid for his vigil in the vestibule. He felt like a fussy baby with a bottle. But I'm a priest, he thought, on watch for a visionary. It ought to be shot in black-and-white by an understated European director. And he looked out the window into the night. There were puddles shimmering in the church parking lot. He paced, balancing his teacup carefully. He thought of checking on Father Butler. Instead he sipped his cooling tea and read the flyers on the bulletin board because reading and tea were his habitual manner of whiling away idle time. The Cross Family Committee. The Build Our New Church Fund. Acronym BONC. The parishioners on the steering committee preferred it as an exclamatory: BONC! Carolyn Greer's battered Volkswagen van pulled suddenly into the parking lot and behind it was a queue of cars as long as—longer than—a funeral procession, disappearing around the corner.

Father Collins set his tea on the table, unlocked and held the door ajar, and watched while Carolyn stepped from her van, followed by the visionary wrapped in a blanket; already cars were filling the spaces, pilgrims storming out of them with fervor. Father Collins recognized the humorless sentinels who had kept their earnest night-long vigil while he'd preyed ineffectually on Ann of Oregon. Greetings, he called. Good evening, Ann. And good evening to you, Carolyn. I'm afraid we'll have to keep the others out. The church isn't officially open right now. We're not holding services or anything.

The church is always open, said Carolyn. The church is owned by the people.

We're not socialists, said Father Collins. This isn't some kind of collective.

It ought to be.

But it isn't.

The visionary's fever had turned convulsive. Her pale lips, he saw, were trembling. Her glassy eyes were open wide—a fish cast up on his beach.

Carolyn had one arm around Ann. I thought, she said, of bypassing your church and going directly to a medical clinic but I didn't know where to find one.

Please come in, replied Father Collins. Ann, he said. You're looking worse. You'd better let me take you to a doctor.

The church, she answered robotically. We have to start building the church.

He admitted them and then blocked the doorway, and because looming there felt a little heroic it also felt like an antidote. God bless! he called. To all of you. You're welcome to keep your vigil here. In our parking lot. For as long as you wish. God bless you all!

He shut the door rapidly and turned the thumb latch. Two sentinels ran up to plead with him through the glass and he waved at them courteously and smiled dumbly. I brewed tea, he said to Ann. And there's a couch in my office. You can lie down there and be comfortable and put your head on a pillow.

Tea and a couch, said Carolyn. And maybe you could call a doctor.

I don't want a doctor, said Ann.

Shrouded in her blanket she looked biblical—an ancient Hebrew wrapped in a shawl, a beggar of Galilee, a peasant of Jericho, a Midianite languishing beside a well. There was also something medieval, monastic, and hairshirtish about her blanket and her pale face in shadow. Her afflicted appearance gave him pause and made him think first of diabolical possession—there were dark circles under her eyes—then of victim souls. This way, he urged her. Down the hall.

Mother Mary bless you, Father.

I'll run for the teapot, he answered.

He brought it on a tray with cups and saucers as if tea were the point of this gathering. His brother-in-Christ was making false civil noises about turning up the baseboard heater while examining the thermostat through his bifocals. Father Collins sensed that in his brief absence Father Butler had shrewdly established a tone of smarmy, tender condescension. An unctuous priest full of phony regard for an ingenue's decidedly ill health—the man was a cunning, sanctimonious fraud, but then, so was he himself.

Fever, Father Butler was saying, is the body's way of cooking out illness. As long as your temperature doesn't run too high, fever is probably a good thing.

Are you a doctor? asked Carolyn, seated on the couch alongside Ann with the ankle of her right leg propped on her left thigh, the casual posture of a man. A doctor, a detective, and a priest?

Father Butler smiled, bent at the knees, finessing the thermostat higher. In the Third World one becomes a jack-of-all-trades out of dire necessity and happenstance, Ms. Greer. I'm also an auto mechanic of sorts, an electrician, a plumber, a drainage engineer, a social worker, and a soccer coach.

And a witch-hunter too, Carolyn added. Don't forget about witch-hunter.

Father Butler sighed flagrantly to announce his irritation. Come now, he said. That's a little unfair. I'm only doing my duty here. Pressing an obligatory investigation into the claims Our Ann has made.

Father Collins, pouring tea, could not, at this, hold his tongue. We're genuinely interested, he said. We bring to the table no presuppositions. No assumptions regarding anything. What we want to discover is simply the truth. The truth and nothing more, Carolyn. So this is not just obligatory questioning. But it's also not a witch-hunt.

Well, said Carolyn. Straighten out your stories. Or is this good cop, bad cop?

Father Collins began to parcel out the teacups. The visionary bent to remove her damp shoes, drew her legs up under the blanket, and arranged herself in what appeared to be—he could see, in outline, the protuberances of her knees—the Buddha's lotus position. With her teacup and saucer, her head still covered by the blanket cowl, she looked to him like a frail swami being interviewed by the BBC.

Father Butler, in an act of sudden unilateral aggression, seized Father Collins' desk. He sat down behind it and took up a pen, which he began absentmindedly to fiddle with. Sometimes, he said, I use a tape recorder, but in this case I don't feel it's necessary. Not for the sort of informal dialogue I'd like to have right now.

Right, answered Carolyn. Just trading recipes. Or chatting up a Tupperware soiree.

Father Butler turned his stern gaze on Ann. Perhaps you remember from this morning, he said, the word I used to describe the process I'm trying my best to initiate here. A process the Church finds necessary for good reason. A process called discernment, Ann, whose purpose is, as I've said before, to discern the validity of your claims.

She's very ill, said Carolyn. I—

From the Latin
discernere
—to separate or distinguish between. With a special emphasis on accuracy. What I seek to do is to distinguish accurately between what is true and what is not true. Between hallucination and illusion on the one hand and a bona fide Marian apparition on the other. And from there—assuming that indeed we have a vision, which can be the case on rare occasions—to discern whether it is divinely inspired or diabolical in origin.

Ann said nothing. She sat with her teacup poised in her lap, a Mongolian in front of her yurt. Her cryptic expression, Father Collins thought, was appropriately unassailable and impervious to her inquisitor's rhetoric. Saint John of the Cross, said Father Butler, warns us to assume that extraordinary experiences must certainly arise from the forces of evil unless it can be proven otherwise.

Yes, said Ann. I welcome your questions.

Why is that? Why would you, Ann?

Your questions lead us where we're going, Father. Because Our Lady's message includes you too. Whether you know it or not.

Father Butler maintained his dismissive facade without the slightest waver. You understand that for the Church, he said, at the very best—
the very best
—a revelation such as the one you claim can have only limited significance? That even were I to find truth to your claims, your claims will never be part of the canon, part of Catholic theological faith, but only something a good Catholic
might
prudently accept as probable? Prudent acceptance of probability is approximately the Apostolic See's position on Bernadette at Lourdes, Saint Hildegard, Saint Bridget, Saint Catherine of Siena—the lot of them saints, let me underscore—and still the Church can go no further than to affirm a prudent acceptance of the possibility that their revelations are legitimate. That's it. No further. Not even with saints. So you see—we need some perspective.

Yes.

Yes, said Carolyn. I can see what you're saying. That the Church doesn't seem to trust women.

And if I might speak sweepingly, in generalizations, you should understand that for the Church, Ann, Our Lord Jesus Christ is the final word—through Christ, Our Father has spoken with finality and has embodied his full revelation.
Full
revelation,
entire
Word: nothing new to be added.

Yes.

So that a claim of visions involving revelations is potentially heretical in the sense of impertinent. At the very least, an insult to God. Saint John of the Cross is excellent on this when he tells us that anyone desiring visions is guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending God himself by living with the desire for novelty. So you can see—we take a hard line on this. On the possibility of heresy.

A person has to be baptized, said Ann, to be guilty of heresy, right?

You're not baptized?

No I'm not.

You're not a Catholic?

Not really I guess.

What are you then?

Nothing I guess. I've never gone to church, Father. I've never been religious until lately.

Father Butler tilted back in the desk chair and stuck the pen behind his ear, as if to say with these small gestures that his work was abruptly terminated. Why didn't anyone tell me this? he asked. Why are we even here?

You're just old-fashioned, Carolyn said. Loosen up. Free your mind. After all, Jesus was a Jewish guy. So he couldn't even eat the wafers at your church. Is that any different from Ann having visions? That a Jewish guy is your ultimate Christian? So why couldn't Ann see the Virgin Mary? I just think anything is possible.

I don't recall a case, offhand, where the purported visionary was not even Catholic. Not even a member of the faith in question! Surely this case is open-and-shut. Surely I have a reasonable query—Why would Our Lady reveal herself to someone outside Her church?

On the other hand, put in Father Collins, that Mary should choose someone so unexpected is not, I think, without precedent. The peasant visionaries at La Salette were young cowherds, after all. Bernadette Soubirous was out gathering firewood. The children at Fátima were humble shepherds. So who's to say that a girl gathering mushrooms is not, possibly, an appropriate candidate? A possible conduit for Our Lady's message? I'm not saying that she is or isn't. I'm only saying that the matter of baptism ought not to preclude an investigation. A thorough, complete investigation.

Father Butler drew the pen from behind his ear like an archer unquivering an arrow. Well, he said, our report on matters is duly expected. Even with this development. He tapped the pen against the desktop and sighed with weary sufferance. Well, he repeated. I suppose you're right, Collins. I suppose we had better proceed with this. Just to keep things to form.

How lucky for us, said Carolyn.

The visionary coughed, dropped the veil of her blanket, and pulled back her sweatshirt hood. She balanced her teacup delicately on the armrest. I'm so hot, she said. All of a sudden. And began, brazenly, to pull off her sweatshirt. She stood and Carolyn rose automatically and held down Ann's dirty t-shirt hem while she peeled herself, in a frenzy, out, Carolyn taking artful pains to ensure that the visionary's slim young midriff did not reveal itself. We'll turn the heat down, Father Collins said. Sudden turns of temperature, added Father Butler, are how a fever runs its course.

Carolyn hugged Ann and stroked her damp neck. It's all right, she said maternally. You're going to get better—I know you will. Just ignore these two strange clerics. Honey, she said. Your health. Come on now. You've got to get focused on your health.

         

The visionary passed an interlude in the bathroom lasting more than twenty minutes, during which Carolyn dropped in on her nervously half a dozen times. You need a doctor. No I don't. What's the problem? I'm having my period. Cramping? They're like terrible cramps. On top of your flu you're dealing with that. Let me just sit here a little while. Do you have any tampons? I don't use tampons. What about pads? I don't use those either. So what do you do? I use handkerchief and napkins. That's like barbaric or primitive or something. Well anyway it's what I do. That's like unsanitary and totally depressing. Anyway—I don't feel good. You don't sound good from out here either, I'm afraid you're going to pass out on the toilet. Can you bring me my sweatshirt? Carolyn brought it. I still have some of those Tylenol from breakfast. Maybe I'll take some. And my allergy pills. I'll get you some water, Carolyn said. She went to the priest's office to get Ann's teacup. How is she now? asked Father Collins. It's a girl thing, answered Carolyn. You guys wouldn't understand.