Chapter 4 #2
What are you doing? You can’t just touch him. He’s a priest, for God’s sake.
Molly spun back to the rack of Santa costumes.
“I think we’ve probably got all we need from this rack.
I’ll go start on the elves.” She scurried across the room, darting behind a rack of green and red candy-cane-striped costumes.
Once she was out of sight, she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.
It’s just a stupid crush. You’ll get over it.
It didn’t matter that she’d been telling herself the same thing for over a year. At some point it would be true, right?
It had to be.
Caleb’s chest burned as he folded robe after robe and shoved them into one of the oversized trash bags, his skin beneath his black clerical shirt singed from where Molly’s hands had lingered.
She was avoiding finishing their conversation from the diner, steering them to topics of the weather or the specials menu at Lemon and Thyme or other equally inconsequential things every time he tried to get them back on track.
He didn’t want to spend the rest of the day with this awful weight in the pit of his stomach, this dread that they weren’t understanding each other when he’d come to think of her as one of the people who understood him best.
But she clearly wasn’t going to allow them to hash it out, which sent confusing ripples of something hot and primal through his blood.
Something demanding he hold her still and make her understand.
Something he definitely couldn’t do anything about, so instead he shoved another lamb onesie roughly into the garbage bag at his feet.
The sooner they finished packing up the costumes and went home, the better. But they couldn’t get back to Aster Bay without spending another three hours together, alone, in his car. What had he been thinking, letting her join him?
You weren’t. And now you’ll have to spend the rest of the week repenting for all the unholy thoughts you’ve had today.
And yet, it wasn’t the unholy fantasies that troubled him most.
“Back at the diner,” he began, his voice cutting through the quiet that had settled over them as they worked, “you were angry with me.”
She set aside the shepherd’s outfit she’d been folding and blinked up at him. “I’m sorry. I—”
“I’m not looking for an apology. I want to know why.”
Molly seemed to consider this as she finished with the shepherd’s outfit, placing it into an oversized trash bag already full-to-bursting with costumes. When he’d begun to think she might not answer him, she said, “I wasn’t mad at you. I don’t understand you.”
The confession felt fragile, gossamer thin, like if he looked at it head on, he’d spook her and she wouldn’t say any more. And he had to know more. So he reached for another angel costume and took his time folding it, keeping Molly in his peripheral vision as he worked. “What don’t you understand?”
“You became a priest because you wanted to help kids who were lost feel loved instead.”
It stung like an accusation. “I did. I still do.”
“And yet you chose an institution that consistently tells kids who they are is wrong.”
“That’s not what we’re trying to do—”
“Dennis O’Brien.” She said the name like a curse, and he struggled to place it. “Briana Murphy.” When he didn’t seem to be getting it, she threw up her hands in frustration, exhaling harshly. “Alex Lambert.”
The name of the current high school senior shook something loose in his brain and he realized each name she’d given him had been a student at St. Anthony’s at some point in the recent past. “I’m not following,” he said.
“All of those kids, and countless others, are tortured by the idea that their Church—their God—doesn’t love them as they are.”
She might as well have slapped him, the words landing like a blow he hadn’t expected. “Why?”
“Come on, Caleb,” she scoffed. “Dennis was suspended his junior year.”
“He chose to withdraw and enroll in the public high school instead of returning for his senior year,” he said, the story coming back to him.
“But why was he suspended in the first place?” she pushed, her eyes blazing with a mix of indignation and withheld tears.
“I…I don’t know. Bruce handles all the suspensions. I—”
“He was suspended for kissing another boy in the school parking lot. It took more than a month after he came back before he would even speak in class, and then he was gone. Briana Murphy wouldn’t sign a pro-life petition circulated in her religion class.
She told her guidance counselor—in confidence—that she’d been driving other girls from the school to Planned Parenthood when they needed services and were too afraid to ask their parents for help. Bruce—”
“Called her parents.” Caleb dragged his fingers over his closed eyelids. “I remember.”
“And you did nothing while she was treated like a criminal.”
He dropped his hands, helpless in the face of her disappointment. “The principal is in charge of disciplinary action.”
“Even when that disciplinary action is a punishment for disagreeing with the Church? That’s the behavior of a dictator.”
How could he make her understand? It wasn’t that he always agreed with Bruce—in fact, most of the time he strongly disagreed—but that wasn’t the point. They were both cogs in the same machine and they each had their part to play. “It’s not my place to tell Bruce how to do his job.”
“Then whose place is it?” She shook her head, dashing away a tear from the corner of her eye before it could fall.
“Those kids have enough to deal with without also wondering if they’ve betrayed God simply by existing.
And your Church, the people deputized to spread its teachings amongst vulnerable kids, they aren’t concerned with helping those kids feel loved. Only with their obedience.”
“I don’t care about obedience.” The word was ash in his mouth.
“But you don’t stop it. You’re the only one who can and—”
He loosed a bitter laugh. “You think I have far more influence than I do.”
“You said you wanted to serve God by loving His people, but I can’t imagine a God who would want His people to feel the way your Church has made those kids feel.
So who are you serving, Caleb? When you stand by and let Bruce Day terrorize our students for daring to not conform to the most hateful of the Church’s teachings, who are you serving then? ”
Each accusation pierced his skin, like shards of glass embedding themselves in sinew and muscle, a scrape he would remember each time he pressed on the spot.
It’s not that he hadn’t known about the incidents she flung at him, but maybe he hadn’t fully considered their implications, the ways in which his silence had become complicity.
He’d always comforted himself that the more regressive teachings of the Church were outweighed by the good, but for the students she’d named, there was no such balance.
And if even one of those students felt less loved because of the teachings he’d devoted his life to, could that wrong ever actually be balanced out?
“And Alex Lambert?” he asked, his throat raw.
“Alex Lambert has been getting detention every day because he refuses to remove a rainbow flag pin from his backpack. If he gets one more week of detentions, he’ll be ineligible for Valedictorian.”
He shook his head, slashing his hand through the air. “No. Withholding the recognition of our best student’s academic achievements for uniform violations is too petty even for Bruce.”
“Is it?” She leaned against the heater at the edge of the room, the disappointment in her eyes so much worse than her anger.
“You know the worst part? Alex wears that pin so other students know he is a safe place for them. Bruce told him it wouldn’t be enough to remove the pin.
He needed to repent and beg for God’s forgiveness.
But what should he be asking for forgiveness for?
For being a good friend? For daring to show kindness to someone the Church has deemed a sinner? ”
“That’s not—He can’t—Why didn’t I know this?” Caleb stammered, his stomach roiling.
“I don’t know, Father. How have you turned a blind eye to the harm being done in God’s name all these years?”
“The Church has made mistakes. I have made mistakes.” He held her gaze, pleading with her for the absolution he hadn’t realized he needed. “But surely the good I’ve done outweighs the harm?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded so small and helpless he wanted to wrap her in his arms, to comfort them both with the physical closeness he had no right to desire. “How can you stand it? The hypocrisy, the hatefulness disguised as love. That’s not love, Caleb.”
“I know.” The fierceness of his reply startled them both, and something seemed to settle in her eyes.
“You could love so big, Caleb, if you’d stop letting the Church tell you how.”
“You two are still here?” Caleb looked up to see Father David in the doorway to the classroom. “I thought you would have left at least an hour ago.”
Caleb glanced around the room. It was mostly packed in boxes and bags now, the racks standing empty, but he hardly saw any of it, his mind spinning with the things Molly had said.
Guilt congealed in his stomach, mingling with a longing for something he was afraid to name. “We must have lost track of time.”
“You better get moving. The snow’s coming down hard now.”