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Chapter Two

After Mass

After the concert, Father asked me if I’d light the candle on the Advent wreath at Mass. I said yes, hiding my delight. A couple of weeks later I sent him a Christmas card with Shirley Temple standing on tippy toes in her short skirt to hang an ornament on a tree. When he thanked me for it on Sunday, he looked at me like he didn’t want me to go. Then after Christmas Eve Mass, I kissed him on the cheek. The following week he asked if I’d wait until he was done greeting parishioners, so we could talk a few minutes. As he finished, he slyly popped a mint, and then walked over and said hi, his fresh breath curling into the air. He was in his clerical clothing and jacket—had taken off his vestments as soon as he reached the back of the church—and I was in my long, beige coat and a pair of heels, which I always wore so I’d look taller. The church patio had cleared out except for a straggler or two, and the ushers had locked up the heavy maple doors. With almost a foot’s difference between us, Father had his hands jammed in his pockets like he was trying to hide his excitement, and I was looking in his eyes trying to disguise mine. “You read the readings beautifully,” he said, blushing, and I said, “Your homily was great as usual.” Then he asked me about my job and family and, except for clearing his throat several times, he let me talk, which I loved. When we finally said goodbye, we hugged each other from the waist up as he nervously patted my back.

For the next three months, I walked out the side door. There was always such a long line of parishioners out the front waiting to shake his hand. I was afraid of what I’d started. I also knew Father would be disappointed when he got through the line, and there was no me. The fact that I could have this kind of effect on a man, on him, assuaged my unhappiness, made me feel in control at least for a little while. There were times when therapy made me feel more broken, like the day I remembered when my father had taken Nellie and me to Beefsteak Charlie’s and afterwards to the hotel he was staying in on Shore Parkway until he found an apartment. The waitress told him how gorgeous Nellie was, as I cut her meat and went up to the buffet three times. Then when we walked into his room, the haze of stale cigarette smoke made us cough as Papa put on the Mets game, closed the thick, dark drapes, and snored in the chair. I sat Nellie on the bedspread dotted with burn holes and tried teaching her Miss Mary Mack, pretending I didn’t feel lonely as the sun choked its way from beneath the hems. After a few minutes, her eyes got so heavy, I laid her golden head on the pillow. Alone in the dark with the glare of the TV and Papa’s snores mixing with Ralph Kiner’s voice, I started to cry softly. After a half hour I couldn’t take it any longer. I wiped my face and nudged Nellie awake so her crying would wake my father. When I got home, I pretended I was fine. I didn’t want to bother my mother. She always had so much to do. I was afraid she wouldn’t understand. Once I told RF, I cried for hours.

A few days before Palm Sunday, Father called me to ask if I’d fill in for a lector who had cancelled. He’d gotten my number from the parish files. Standing in my blue and white kitchen, I vaguely felt he’d crossed a line, but I was too excited to complain. When we spoke again after Mass, I looked in his hazel eyes and gushed, “Father, you listen. So many people don’t; they’re just thinking about what they’re going to say next. It’s nice.”

Then Good Friday happened.

I was with Janine at the three o’clock service, the hour that Jesus died. The church was cloaked in purple and swelling with people but quiet except for a sporadic cough. I was saving a seat for my friend Silvia who had something to tell me but didn’t want to wait until I got home from church. I tucked my hair behind my ear just in case Father Infanzi was one of the celebrants. Then he and two other priests including Monsignor Brennan were processing down the center aisle. Instead of heading for the presiders’ chairs as they would during Mass, they prostrated themselves on the altar. Silvia slipped into the seat next to mine, we kissed hello, and she waved at Janine.

I looked at the altar and felt an odd sense of satisfaction—Silvia and Father Infanzi in the same place. She and I’d been friends since third grade except for the first semester of high school. Since I was going to a different school than she was, I was hoping I’d make a new best friend. She was always so perfect and pulled together: her straight dirty-blonde hair never out of place, her science scores always higher than mine, her sins hardly worthy of confession. The night of our eighth grade awards ceremony, I’d had enough, but not because she was valedictorian. I had won the English award. It was all I’d wanted, but back at her house after the ceremony, she asked me to take a picture of her and her father. My father had not been there. I’m not sure if my mother or I even bothered to ask him. When I looked through the lens, Silvia and Mr. Pelusi both 5’7” and holding her certificate in front of them, looked like a couple—heads cocked, Neapolitan pride flooding their faces, especially his. I felt invisible, but I wasn’t sure why, which only made it worse. A few months later when we went off to high school, I tried to break it off with her. But when I transferred to Catholic school half way through the year, she stopped me in the hall one day and asked, “Ri, can we be friends again?”

I bowed my head thanking God for Father, when out of the corner of my eye I saw the emerald cut engagement ring on Silvia’s hand that she’d splayed on the pew in front of us. I’d known this day was coming—she’d been going out with Greg for a year—but I’d pretended it wasn’t. She was my only single friend left. Stung, I looked at the altar trying not to see the ring, but it pressed on me, springing up from the pew like a big, perfect bow, growing to the size of my envy. I wanted to drop my head on my sister’s shoulder, but she wouldn’t have understood. Even if she and the rest of my family knew that the only reason I was dating Rick—a friend of a friend who had called on Valentine’s Day—was so I’d have something to do on Saturday nights, they’d never suspect I felt a calling. They’d tell me I was only twenty-seven, I’d meet the right one, there was plenty of time.

I steadied myself as I looked at Father Infanzi on the floor. There was no way he was celibate because he couldn’t get a wife. He had a choice, which made his priesthood a beautiful sacrifice. It didn’t matter that he had lifted my phone number or that whenever we spoke he looked like he was struggling not to say something. All I saw now was a perfectly sweet, good looking man who would’ve made a wonderful husband giving his life to Christ. How did he do it? When the men rose from the floor and continued the liturgy, I was certain Father helped me overcome my jealousy. I lifted Silvia’s hand, looked directly at the gem, and mouthed as genuinely as I could, C…o…n…g…r…a…t…u…l…a…t…i…o…n…s and W…o…w. She smiled and mouthed in return, I k…n…o…w. After church, when Silvia showed off her ring to me, I proudly introduced Father Infanzi to her.

The next night at the Easter Vigil after Father had sung the Exsultet, and I approached the lectern to read, I looked in his eyes. It was a split second, but I could see how excited he got. After Mass I told him, “I didn’t know you could sing too,” and he laughed and said, “You look nice.” I walked away feeling lit up but unsettled, the same way I felt four days later when he called again. It was one thing for us to talk after Mass, another for him to call a second time for no reason. It felt wrong. I wanted his attention but on my terms. I’d told myself that this was just a budding friendship. His phone call had threatened that. For the next several weeks I walked out the side door again, but I was soon in line at the front door once more. His relief when he saw me was intoxicating. We started talking after Mass nearly every week. In June, when he was leaving to go on a cruise, I sent him a bon voyage card: I wish you some lucky strolls in the casino. I thought celibacy such an enormous sacrifice that he deserved a little fun. When he called to thank me, I felt the knot in my stomach again, but I said, “You’ll be missed.” Two weeks later, I asked him out to lunch.

I was standing near my car after Mass stalling, hoping that if I gave Father enough time to finish locking up the gates he’d come over before I drove away. I’d spent the previous weekend with Rick at our friends’ pre-wedding festivities in upstate New York, but I thought about Father Infanzi. I’d sent him another postcard: After driving beside Seneca Lake for a half hour, there’s still more lake. As beautiful as it is, I’m truly a city girl. Hope you’re doing well. I got in my car, put the key in the ignition, and pretended to search for something in my pocketbook. A minute later, Father was a few inches from my window telling me how special the postcards were. Then he told me that he was going on a second vacation, this time to the Midwest to visit his family and to go to Vegas. “Wow,” I said, feeling a little jealous, though I wasn’t sure why. Priests go to Vegas? When he added that he’d be gone for a month, I looked away and back at him. Then, before I lost my nerve, “Maybe when you return, I could show you around the college, and we could go to lunch?” He blushed and laughed nervously. Putting his hand in his pocket to calm himself, he said, “That would be very nice.”

Five weeks later on my 28th birthday, we were sitting in a quaint Italian restaurant, the salt tang of New York Harbor sweeping through the French doors. I was wearing a long flower-printed dress with short sleeves and had my hair pulled up softly on the sides. He was wearing khakis and a light pink button-down shirt with a beeper clipped to his belt in case the rectory needed him. Ordinarily I would have waited for him to call, but the day after he got home from vacation I called him. My birthday was the following week, and I wanted to spend it with him, not Rick who I’d slept with the night of our friends’ wedding. Afterward, I felt just as numb and disconnected from myself as I always did, but I hadn’t gone to confession, because I didn’t want to promise I wouldn’t do it again.

As we looked at the menu, I told Father how good the pastas and fried calamari were. “I like pasta puttanesca,” he said. When he couldn’t find it, I pointed to it, the sight of my hand near his making him blush more. After the waiter took our order, I complimented Father’s pronunciation. “A lot of people say calamary. It’s so wrong, it hurts the ear.”

“I know,” he said laughing. “That’s my half Italian side.”

“Your father’s father is from Puglia?”

“Right,” he said, impressed that I’d remembered. “And both your mother and father were born in Italy. You’re the real thing.”

I shrugged my shoulders to be cute, which made him laugh harder. “You studied Chemistry at Fairfield, right?”

He looked impressed again. “Yes, and you graduated from Westerly.”

I nodded. “Then the fall after graduation, I went to work in the Admissions office.”

“Where I bumped into you like a clod last April,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“It was an honest mistake. Soon after that is when I got the job in career placement, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last year.” By the time the waiter arrived with our platter of calamari, we were talking a steady stream. Both our mothers went back to college in their forties to become health care professionals; we were third-born and mildly introverted, almost always falling into the role of listener; his mother’s name is Maria. I asked him what he does in the parish even though I already knew, and he asked me about my job and the graduate course in autobiographical writing that I was taking, both of which I enjoyed so much it showed on my face. I told him I wanted to write a memoir one day, though I didn’t tell him that I cried in my professor’s office when he asked me what my very first memory was, and I couldn’t remember a thing. Half-way through our main course when we came to a pause, he started to laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve just never had lunch with a girl like you before.”

It was the moment when I should have steered the conversation toward vocation, asked him when he first felt called to the priesthood, told him that I also felt a calling, so that he wasn’t wondering for one more moment why the two of us were having a three hour lunch on my birthday. But I was making him laugh with a spontaneity I’d forgotten I had. He was hanging on my words. He seemed so different from the men I dated: innocent and child-like and easy to charm. I was looking for some answer to my life, something pure to save me and give me the courage to take the next step toward God. One of the reasons I was attracted to him was because I couldn’t have him, wouldn’t have to have him, but now all I cared about was how I might be able to keep him. For the hours that we talked and ate and paused while the sun danced its shadows on the hardwood floors, I was running as hard as I could from God. As we waited for Father to get his change, he said abruptly, “I’d be happy to be the priest at your wedding.”

At first I felt an odd sense of relief. He didn’t say if you get married. He said it as if it were certain, and hearing it from a priest, I allowed myself to think that maybe I had this whole calling thing wrong. Maybe I had misunderstood God all these years, but then I felt a sharp twist of irony. If I were to get married, I was pretty sure I’d want to marry him. Why did he have to say that? I couldn’t not feel what I was feeling. We had so much in common. The more I got to know him the more I felt I’d known him before, that it was our fate to meet. Maybe he was a gift from God, so I wouldn’t have to be completely alone; I’d be happy and fortunate just to have him as a friend. This couldn’t be the end. All I managed to say was, “That would be nice, Father.”

Later that night, when Janine, Julie, and I were gathered at my mother’s for cake, someone asked me if I had done anything special. I said as casually as I could, “I went to lunch with Father Infanzi.” The only one who seemed a little upset was Janine whose mouth tightened. “You did?” My mother asked intrigued, “What did you talk about?” imagining herself sitting with him. Then she added, “I always thought it’d be good for you girls to have a priest-friend.” And from Julie, a completely innocent, “Where did you go? That sounds really nice.” If Nellie were there, she probably would’ve been onto me, but she was twenty and never wanted to be with us. Right before my mother placed the cake in front of me with nine flickering candles, one for good luck, I boasted, “It was a three-hour lunch.”

Less than a week later, Father asked me out for a second lunch. While we waited for our food, he told me that one day when a woman had come to the rectory to talk to him about her marital problems, all he could think was, Go away, lady! Why can’t you be Maria? I bristled. I wanted him to prefer me, but I didn’t want him to own up to it that way. Besides, why was he bringing up another woman? When he asked if something was wrong, I said, “No,” but I was distant for the rest of lunch. Did all the unhappily married women call on him? Was he responding to them the way he was to me? When I walked out after Sunday Mass with a frown, he asked if he’d done anything wrong. I said, “Your comment made me nervous.” Two days later I received an apology in the mail: As privileged as he felt to be a priest, he needed to remind himself that he could cause great harm when he betrayed one’s trust in him. I had no reason to feel nervous in my own church, which I’d be attending long after he left. He was sorry. It’s what I thought I wanted to hear until I got to the part where he said he wasn’t trying to start anything, that he planned to be a faithful priest until he died. Now I felt jealous of the Church. When I called to accept his apology, he told me that he had just gotten home from helping a single mom whose house was in need of repair.

No priest had ever helped my mother or spent time with Nellie and me once our father was gone. It seemed like an odd form of charity. The next time I greeted him after Mass, I shook his hand as if he were any other priest and said, “Have a good week, Father.” He said warmly, “You too, Maria” and then reached in to give me a peck on the cheek, but he didn’t ask me to stay and chat. I walked away feeling slighted, more resolved to keep my distance. In the meantime, Rick and I broke up by Labor Day, and I met Sam, a physician’s assistant who rescued me from a table of misfit singles at a wedding in October. Fifteen minutes into our first date, with the pain still palpable on his face, he told me that his ex-wife decided on their honeymoon that she didn’t want to be married. I was hoping he’d like me enough to forget her, but I knew from the obligatory kiss he gave me on our third date that I was wrong. I still went home four nights in a row hoping for a blinking red light on my answering machine. By Thursday, I had to accept that I wasn’t going to hear from him. It was the same week that Grandpa Nino died, my mother’s father with his bald head and mischievous blue eyes who wanted all of us to run businesses from home so we didn’t have to pay taxes, who always said, “Go the straight way,” and “Se Dio vuole,” if God wants, and who prayed the Rosary for us every day. Grandpa whom I loved, with whom I couldn’t walk or talk with because of his Sicilian dialect and missing leg, which he lost the year I was born when he was walking home one day and a drunk driver crashed into him.

I pulled out a pot from the set my mother had bought me for when I got married and put water up for pasta. While I waited, I obsessed. Maybe if I had said or done something just a little bit differently, Sam would have called. Here was more proof that I wasn’t meant to get married. Something would have worked out by now. As for Father, if God had wanted us to be together, he would have allowed us to meet before he entered the seminary or at the very least before he was ordained. How could God send me such a wonderful man I couldn’t have to corner me into a vocation I didn’t want? All these months I hadn’t said a word to him about my calling: letting him believe that I was available, sending him mixed messages as I dated other men, trying to get back at him for something I couldn’t put my finger on. Just because I was jealous, though, didn’t mean Father was doing anything wrong. He was reverent and dutiful on the altar, spoke so admiringly and proudly of Christ. If God wasn’t giving me a husband—if He expected me to lead a celibate life—then at the very least He owed me a special male friend. He owed me Father.

Once the pasta was done, I reached into the cabinet to get the colander, and that’s when I saw the bulletin from St. Stephen’s sticking out beneath it. I tried not to read the list of priests’ names but saw Father James Infanzi, Parochial Vicar. I shut the cabinet quickly and ate my dinner staring at the wall. It’s not a big deal if I call him. He’s celibate and looks happy. Maybe he can help me. But it’s going to look like I’m interested in him that way. No it won’t. I haven’t done anything wrong. But what would I start by calling him? He’ll probably ask me to lunch again and then what? I looked at the phone, then away, and then back again. It’s not unusual to call a priest when your grandfather has died. Before I knew it, I was dialing the number and asking for Father Infanzi. He expressed his condolences, but I could hear a breathless excitement in his voice. We spoke for a half hour about my grandfather and how difficult Janine was taking it, and about how hard I found dating, though I implied that I had turned Sam down. Sounding relieved, Father said, “He must be crushed.” I said, “I don’t know about that” and he said, “That’s hard to believe,” which made me smile. When I asked him how his week was going, he said he got stuck late a couple of nights doing more repairs for the single mom.

“The same woman whose husband left and has three sons?” I asked, disappointed that she was still in the picture.

“I told you about her?”

“Yes, of course. Why? Is anything—” I stopped and waited until he was done clearing his throat, expecting his perfect attention. “Is anything wrong?”

“No, no, I just didn’t remember telling you about her.”

“Did you do contracting work before the seminary?”

“Yes, in fact my two good friends, Matt and Roger? I told you about them.”

“Sure.”

“The three of us were talking about going into contracting, but then I decided to become a priest. Matt was pretty upset.”

“He probably felt abandoned.”

“I think you’re exactly right.”

“Father, does this woman plan on paying you at all?” I asked, growing angry at her.

“No, nothing like that. I told her I wouldn’t charge her.”

Before I could think or say anything else, he was telling me how happy he was that I’d called, that it was Sam’s loss, that he’d pray for my grandfather, and then, “Maria, is there any way we could go to lunch again? I promise not to make any more inappropriate comments.”

I clutched the receiver, my doubts erased by the sound of my name in his voice. “Do you think that’s the best idea?”

“I don’t see why it has to be a problem.”

And then as if it was any less dangerous, “What about coffee instead?”

I let him pick me up at my apartment on a Thursday night, though I waited outside for him. I ordered cappuccino, and he ordered tea before he brought the waitress back, “You know what, can you make that an Irish coffee?” Facing me from behind him was Audrey Hepburn from the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in which her character, a call girl named Holly Golightly who’s still dressed in the black gown from the night before, is looking into the window of Tiffany’s to soothe her fears. She’s beautiful and polished and goes to a lot of great parties, but as the movie unfolds we learn she’s running from the truth. Father asked me how I went about helping students get jobs, so I told him about the company visits, the on-campus recruitment, the job consortia, as I tried my best not to get foam on my lips. He remarked admiringly, “You’re so together.”

After that night, I called him to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving, and in December we saw each other four nights in a row at the parish mission and spoke twice for an hour. I still didn’t say a word about my calling. A week before Christmas when we went for coffee a second time, I asked him in to bless my apartment. He shook holy water and made the sign of the cross in each of the rooms including my bedroom where the floor lamp cast a dim glow on the ceiling as I stood in the doorway, so he couldn’t see me and my bed at the same time. Turning around, he looked in my eyes and said, “What a cozy place you keep.”

A few days later I was at a rectory near work telling a priest I didn’t know that I had a vocation. The sight of Father liking my bedroom had unnerved me that much. But sitting across from the trim, forty-something Father Relici who was donning an Augustinian black capuchin, I couldn’t bring myself to say “nun.” It wasn’t just celibacy that troubled me. I didn’t want to take a vow of poverty either. I didn’t want to wear a habit or live in a convent. If I had to have a vocation, I wanted to be like a diocesan priest, like Father Infanzi who got to keep his paycheck and had his own car and bank account. The only way a Catholic woman could give her life to God and be independent was to remain single, but what was the use of that? Even if I were certain the single life could be a real vocation, people would never understand. They’d ask me, “Haven’t you met anyone?” or think, What a shame she never married. I wanted a title, something that would explain me, a life that would make me feel worthy and visible. I blurted, “Father, I feel called to the clergy.”

“Are you saying you want to convert, so you can become a female minister? Because in the Catholic Church, clergy means priests and deacons, men only.”

“Oh no, I’m Catholic. I think I just got my words mixed up,” I said feeling humiliated but determined. I told him how my relationships lasted three months tops and how I thought that was a sign from God that I wasn’t meant to get married. I said nothing about Father Infanzi. What would I have said, I’m falling for a priest, and I think this confirms I have a calling? Then I added half-jokingly, “Not all the guys I dated were losers,” but Father Relici didn’t grin, not even a slight upturn of his lips. I tried to recover with, “Some were very nice guys.”

“Nuns serve in so many capacities. They work in hospitals, schools, they’re presidents of colleges.”

“Father, I’m really struggling with the idea of celibacy.”

“There are so many good women religious out there who you could talk to,” he said, dabbing his pointer finger into a piece of dust on his mahogany desk and then flicking it off.

“Is it hard, Father? Do you find it difficult?” desperate for him to say something consoling like, The struggle will go away.

“I could allow myself to think about what my wife would have looked like, my children, my house, where I’d be now, but I don’t. I try not to think about what I’m missing. What would be the use?” He dabbed and flicked another piece of dust off his finger. “You know, it’s a good life. You get the privilege of touching so many people’s lives.”

“I’m just really afraid I’ll have to commit to something before I’m ready,” I said, feeling the sting of tears in my nose.

“It’s not like that. Discernment takes a long time. The nuns—the Sisters—they wouldn’t rush you.” Then, maybe because he sensed my independence, he told me that some nuns rent apartments if it’s convenient to their ministry and there isn’t a convent nearby, which made me feel a little relieved. He got up from his desk, walked over to his shelf where the books were in perfect size order and pulled out a royal blue, soft covered book, A Guide to Religious Ministries for Catholic Men and Women.

“A good person to start with is Sister Lorraine in the vocations office. Here she is,” he said, marking her phone number with a highlighter and handing the book to me. “Thank you,” I said, opening to a random page where the picture of a cross rose up from the New York skyline and across the top, Sisters of Charity.

Two nights later on Christmas Eve, I was sitting in front of the crèche after Midnight Mass when Father Infanzi, revved up from saying Mass for the largest crowd of the year, asked me to go for coffee. I had wanted to stay in front of the manger, hoping the Baby Jesus would give me the courage to finally tell him about my calling, especially given the beautiful homily he’d delivered. After his joke about how Italians know the meaning of the word “manger” from the order, “Mangia, mangia,” which got him the big laugh he was hoping for, he explained that Christ not only humbled himself by coming as an infant, but also by being lain in a manger where animals ate from. He is food for the world, for us. It was the most precious explanation of the Incarnation I’d ever heard, and I felt the same profound warmth as when I drank Christ’s blood. But then Father switched to his brother’s excitement when his wife gave birth. He used the phrase, “born of love for his wife.” I had been sitting in the lector’s seat so close to the pulpit that if I reached out my arm, I could touch Father’s garment, feel his thigh beneath it. Julie and Nick were expecting their first child in a week, the first baby in our family, which made me feel more insecure. When Father ended by explaining that Deism is the opposite of Christianity, that God couldn’t get more involved in our lives than by taking on our human nature, something inside me broke, and a tear fell from my eye. How could God give me the gift of womanhood and then ask me to give up marriage and motherhood? Why was He taking care of every other woman but me?

“I promise not to keep you out too long,” he said, looking at me like an eager boy.

“You know what, Father? Coffee sounds nice.”

There was no one in the diner whom I recognized, which I was glad about, though I still told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Father was wearing a long, black coat that made him look so handsome, it hurt. He took it off, revealing his cleric shirt with only the tip of the white tab collar showing, and then he stuffed it in the booth and sat down. I stood at the rack near our booth with my coat in my hands so he’d get the hint. “Oh, gosh,” he said, “I should be getting that for you.” I said, “That’s okay,” as if I hadn’t given it any thought.

Within minutes we were drinking coffee and exchanging the gifts we hadn’t told each other we were buying. I bought him How Houses Learn, a book about how the character of houses develops over time. I didn’t realize it, but I was implying that his character needed developing. When I’d hung around after morning Mass the day before, he admitted that he hadn’t been an ideal seminarian. First, he brought up the fact that when he was walking down the stairs in the rectory to meet Janine for the first time, all he could think was: “Whoever this girl is, she smells really nice. The seminary never smelled like that.” It was something he’d already told me, but I pretended it was the first time. Then he told me that sometimes when he was in the seminary, he’d throw enough clothes for the weekend in a laundry bag, so the rector would think he was going home, but he was headed to Atlantic City with Matt.

“Really?” I said, disappointed but also a little turned on. It was something like me telling my mother I had sorority meetings on Thursday nights in college when I was really headed for the bars. Then he said, “I almost didn’t make it to ordination.”

“What?”

“Three priests voted me in, three didn’t, and one was indecisive.”

“Wow. Really?” I said, my heart sinking.

“I’ve never told anyone this before. I never told my mother.”

“Why?” I asked, starting to feel uneasy.

“I figured once they voted me in what was the point?”

“How did they convince the indecisive one?”

“One of them said to him, ‘We have a real man here, and you’re going to let him get away?’” Father propped his elbow on the back of the pew, his hand so close to my face he could graze my cheek. Then he added, “The indecisive priest later told me that he pictured me in the suburbs with a wife, kids, and picket fence.” He said it as if he were fishing for me to say, “I do, too,” as if he were suggesting we get together. He was telling me what he’d been trying to all year. He was hungry, maybe even a little angry. A peaceful priest doesn’t take a woman out and talk about how good her sister smells, doesn’t repair a single woman’s home and then get nervous when he’s asked about it. The split vote made complete sense. It was the same ambivalence I pretended I didn’t feel. Father was going to help me answer God’s call. We were going to be each other’s best friend and celibate significant other. He was a fulfilled priest. I had no idea how much I was fooling myself. His hunger and anger mirrored mine. Despite the knot it my stomach, I said, “I’m glad you wound up here and not the suburbs.”

“How Houses Lean?” he asked, ripping off the last bit of wrapping paper.

“Learn, How Houses Learn,” I said earnestly. “You know, because you like houses? Because you would have gone into contracting?”

“Maria, this is beautiful, just beautiful,” he said lifting it over our coffee cups, trying his best to look at it and not me. “How Houses Learn,” he repeated slowly. Then he put it down and handed me a meticulously wrapped gift. “And this is for you.” I rubbed my hands together to express goodie. I tore the paper, stunned to see the name of my favorite store and then a pretty soft wool turtleneck in the perfect earthy color.

“Wow, how did you know my style? I like it so much.”

“I’ve been looking at you for a while now,” he said his face turning rose.

I looked into my cappuccino before I raised it to my lips.

“Last year you sent me a card. This year I get to sit with you.”

“I remember. It was a black and white of Shirley Temple putting an ornament on a tree.”

“That’s it,” he said, taking a gulp of tea.

“Did you like this year’s card?” I asked sheepishly. It was a picture of Raphael’s cherubs. Inside I wrote: Although I come across as very together and composed, I feel as if I’ll always be working through past hurts. Meeting you and initiating the friendship has given me the chance to trust a man again. The fact that you listen and are genuinely excited by the things/stories I share is such a gift (more than you can know). I treasure you in my life. May all the good you do for others be returned hundredfold to you (as I’m confident it will).

“Of course I did. What a blockhead I am. I loved it.”

We were in the diner for over an hour before I asked him what time it was. He was wearing a thick, expensive-looking watch, a Rolex, though I didn’t know it at the time. I asked him if it was new. “This? Just a gift from someone in the parish,” he said loosening his collar from his neck. It was an awfully showy gift for a priest to accept, one that could only be from a woman, but this was a man who knew which store to shop for me in, what fabric and color and even size I liked. No man had ever zeroed in on me so quickly. I was so swept away that I didn’t realize when he changed the subject. In fact, by the time he got my coat off the rack and held the door for me, I’d forgotten about the watch. Then standing beside our cars—mine a red, two-door with a spoiler on the back and his a Chevy sedan with the bumper sticker that read, Pregnant? Call 1-800- 325-LIFE—he said, “This has been my best Christmas ever,” and I said, “I’m so glad.” The next night, Christmas night, when he was leaving Janine’s where he’d been invited for dessert and I was sitting on her couch wearing the turtleneck he gave me, I looked in his eyes with such longing that I knew it would excite him. Several weeks later he told me that all he’d wanted to do was hug the life out of me.