Thomas M. Disch (3 page)

Excuse me a minute—” She stood up from her chair. “Is there a lady’s room here?”

Father Cogling smiled primly. “Outside and at the other end of the hall.”

As soon as Denise had left the room, her fiancé got up and said, “Yeah, excuse me, too.”

“So,” said Greg brightly, when there was only himself and Alison and the priest left in the room, “you were telling us about the Virgin Mary and the opportunity for chastity in marriage.”

“I take it that chastity strikes you as somehow ridiculous,” the priest said, abandoning even a pretense of civility. It was clear to him that this young man belonged to the new generation without any sexual compunctions whatever. Father Cogling had encountered others like him in this very room. It distressed the priest to think that such a young man might receive the sacrament of matrimony before the altar of St. Bernardine’s. It distressed him, as well, to think that the boy would involve a decent Catholic girl in his perdition. Indeed, it was likely that the process had already begun.

Father Cogling knew all too well from his experience in the confessional how rarely these days young women entered into matrimony without having already forfeited their virginity. What had once been the sinful exception was now the damnable rule.

“Surely. Let us discuss chastity in marriage, as the subject interests you. The patron saint of this parish, Saint Bernardine of Siena, actually had some vivid things to say on just that topic. For instance, Saint Bernardine, following the Decree of Gratian, declared that while it is wicked for a man to have intercourse with his own mother, it is much worse to have
unnatural

intercourse with his own wife. That’s to say, any form of sex that leads to an ejaculation outside the proper vessel.”

“You mean, like a hand job?” Greg marveled.

“If by that you mean masturbation, yes, certainly.”

“You’re telling me, Father, that if I jerk off, that’s worse than if I fuck my mother.”

“Greg! Please!”

“Sorry, honey. But I don’t know the theological terms for this sort of stuff. And the Father here doesn’t seem to mind my language. The important thing is we should understand each other, right, Father?”

Father Cogling nodded. “And to answer your question: Yes, masturbation would be a more heinous offense than incest, so long as that is conducted in a natural manner.”

“By natural you mean without using birth control?”

Father Cogling nodded.

“But if I used birth control while I had incest,
that
would be a whole lot worse?”

Father Cogling nodded. He had used the teachings of Saint Bernardine before to similar effect. Bernardine of Siena confounded and scandalized unbelievers. Non-Catholics were unaccustomed to the rigorous exercise of logic in matters of morality. “Well,” Greg drawled, “I’d better be sure my mother knows about this.”

But Denise had left the room, and with her went the only audience for his obscene humor. Father Cogling lowered his eyes with conspicuous modesty but not before he’d noticed, with satisfaction, that the young man’s fiancée looked stricken. Mixed marriages were almost always a mistake. Perhaps this young woman might come to realize that, even at this late date, two weeks short of the day appointed for her wedding. The gift of grace is unpredictable and sometimes even inconvenient. Caterers must be paid even when a wedding is canceled. But it’s a small price to pay when one’s soul is at stake.

“The reason I bring up the teachings of Saint Bernardine,” Father Cogling resumed, after a suitable interval, “despite the fact that his message is so… unfashionable, is because I know of no better way to impress on non-Catholics the importance we attach to the matter of birth control. It is not a foible, or a pious fable, or a moral option that might be changed in the course of time, the way Catholics once had to abstain from eating meat on Friday but now are under no such obligation. We are absolutely opposed to artificial methods of birth control, and as the husband of a Catholic woman, you must make a solemn and unconditional commitment to observe that prohibition in the conduct of your own married life.”

“You got it, Father,” Greg said. “As solemn as you like.” He stared at the priest with naked hostility.

At that moment there was a providential knock on the door. It was Robert, announcing a phone call for Father Cogling on the pay phone in the main hall. Father Cogling excused himself to Greg and Alison and went to the phone.

“Hello,” he said into the receiver.

“Wilfrid, I’m glad you’re there.” It was Father Pat, the pastor of St.

Bernardine’s.

“Pat—how is your mother? Did you
find
her?”

“She was out at the cemetery, as we thought she might be. She was in fine spirits, considering.”

“And… mentally?”

“Alzheimer’s is a one-way street, Wilfrid. Her memory always gets worse, there’s no improvement to be expected in that area.”

“But we can pray.”

“And that’s about all we can do. In any case, that’s not why I called.

Why I called is two separate things. First, I wish you would speak to your friend, Mr. Ober. He’s got hold of a list of the members of Agnus Dei and has been phoning them systematically in a tone that was described to me as menacing. I realize some people think Gerhardt sounds menacing when he says hello. I’ve spoken to him before, but he doesn’t seem to listen to me. He nods his head and says ‘Yes, Father,’ and then he’s right back to the same tricks.

Maybe he’ll listen to you. I know he’s zealous, but isn’t it enough for him to be involved in setting up the maternity center? He must learn discretion.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Father Cogling promised. “Though I doubt it will do much good. Gerhardt’s a little like your mother. As you point out, he nods his head and then goes off and does just what he wants to anyhow. What’s the other thing?”

“I’d like you to be on duty for me tonight. Something came up that I have to tend to.”

“Tonight is the Rosary Society?” He didn’t wait for an answer. It was Wednesday, which was when the Rosary Society met. “Fine, I’ll be there.”

“You don’t need to be at the whole meeting. Just show your face and eat a cookie or two.”

“Anything else? I should be getting back to my couples before they start the Reformation all over again.”

“They’re being difficult?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I’m sure of that, Wilfrid. Well, thank you.” He hung up.

“You’re welcome,” Father Cogling replied dryly. “And enjoy your night out.”

After he’d exited 694, Father Bryce drove to the far corner of the first large parking lot he came to. The lot served a mini-mall that housed a liquor store, a gun shop, a Chinese takeout, a carpet factory outlet, and two bankrupt businesses, one that still featured a sign in its window: WATERBEDS

50% OFF

LAST DAYS!

It was already dark at seven-thirty, and only the liquor store and the Chinese takeout were still open.

He’d left the rectory in mufti—tan dress slacks, a plaid sport shirt, sneakers—but even so he felt exposed and identifiable. If not as a priest, then as someone belonging to that part of the world where priests and what they stand for are a consideration. He found himself wishing the basic wish of his adolescence: that he could inhabit another body entirely, one that was larger and stronger and hairier, a body in which he could feel authentically masculine. The kind of body he had all through his life lusted to possess—not as a lover would possess his beloved in his embrace, but as a demon possesses, inhabiting another body, taking it over and evicting the prior tenant. Could there be a more hopeless desire? a more misguided paraphilia, or any sillier?

And yet how many others there were stuck in the same daydream, flies in honey.

It seemed at times the essence of homosexuality. Please, sir, would you be my mirror?

But no, that side of his character was more likely the result of having grown up as a twin, rather than of his being queer. Petey and Paddy, they make our hearts go pitty-patty. Karen Olsen had made up that jingle in the third grade, and it had followed the Bryce twins all the way through sophomore year at Ramsay High, at which point Patrick and Peter had escaped the daily psychic torsion of twindom by taking diverging paths to their disparate futures—Patrick to Etoile du Nord Seminary, Petey to a juvenile correction facility in Anoka. If they couldn’t be identical, then they’d be opposites.

Still the same symmetry.

Out of the Adidas bag on the seat beside him, Father Bryce took a small jewelry case covered with synthetic velvet, which had contained, some Christmases ago, a silver crucifix and chain. Now it held his mustache and a bottle of gum arabic. Twisting the rearview mirror aside to help, he dabbed the stickum onto his upper lip and deftly positioned the false mustache. Then he waited for the gum arabic to dry. In the mirror the mustache looked full and fierce and not quite his own, a mustache someone else had grown (Petey perhaps?) and he’d adopted, without making allowance for the contours of his upper lip (smiles were dangerous, grins impossible) or the more meager character of his other visible hair. Yet that was often the way with real mustaches, he’d been assured by the barber in Chicago from whom he’d bought the thing. And it was only natural that
he
would think it looked bogus, since he knew it was. But strangers who didn’t know him wouldn’t think to question the authenticity of his mustache. They would only think, what a show-offy mustache, and, with the addition of sunglasses and a baseball cap, the mustache would be all they would notice. He would be invisible behind it.

At least that was the theory, and his hope.

He debated whether he should allow himself a drink. Not now, certainly, with the further drive ahead of him. Alcohol had begun to affect him erratically. Twice he’d escaped DWT citations by virtue of his Roman collar.

Tonight of all nights he dare not take that risk.

So, with a sense of steely resolution, he ignored the delectable orange neon of LIQUORS and returned to 694, then followed it east through Fridley and New Brighton until it swung south proper and metamorphosed into 35E. Just before the highway crossed into St. Paul proper, he exited again onto Little Canada Road. And there in another bankrupt-looking mini-mall, as per his directions, was the tattoo parlor—Knightriders Kustom Ink—the only business with its windows still lighted. A single large Harley stood heraldically on the asphalt before the window. The lot was otherwise empty.

He couldn’t believe that it had actually come to this, that he was submitting to such an outrageous demand. But what was the alternative? Prison.

Even if he ran away to some other state, gave up the priesthood and tried to hide behind an alias and a false mustache, eventually he would be hunted down and brought to trial. They had their hook in him up through his butt and into his gut, and no amount of wriggling could help. It was this or prison or suicide, and he’d had three weeks in which to prove to himself that he didn’t have the nerve to kill himself. He’d gone so far as to read
Final Exit
, and he’d had a supply of the requisite pills for the last three years, ever since he’d cleaned out his mother’s medicine cabinet after she’d been taken to the Home. So it would not have required much in the way of physical courage. But what it required he lacked.

Did he then, secretly, deep down, still believe in hell? Was that what stopped him? Hell and its associated demonologies had been the first part of his faith to go, first fading into something vague and symbolic, the hell beloved by the more liberal interpreters of Dante, and then simply disappearing into the mists of a more and more mythological afterlife. By the time of his ordination he had reached a tacit understanding with his confessor that all beliefs of a pictorial or narrative nature were equally idolatrous, golden calves at whose devotions priests perform rituals for the benefit of those unable to face the dark truths shared by those initiated to secrets of the inner temple: that the tabernacle is empty and God an eternal, inapprehensible Absence. A cloud in a sky that is everywhere cloudy. He was in no hurry to get there.

The time has come, he told himself, it has to be done. But at the last moment before leaving the car he decided that it might be prudent to deposit his billfold and wristwatch in the glove compartment. When he opened the glove compartment he realized it wasn’t the dictates of prudence he was responding to but his addiction. For there, where he had no memory of having left it, was a nearly full pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s. So much for his good intentions of only twenty minutes ago.

He uncapped the bottle and took one siow, grateful swallow. The bourbon worked its usual magic at once. The impossible suddenly was possible, the undoable on its way to being done. He transferred billfold and wristwatch to the glove compartment, and after the benediction of another, slower, better-savored sip of whiskey, he got out of the car and tucked the bottle in his back pocket.

He checked to see that the car doors were locked and the windows rolled tight. He checked to see that his mustache was in place. He even brushed his Adam’s apple with his fingertips to be sure he was not wearing his collar, a gesture that had become semiautomatic in situations when he was off his clerical leash.