Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Jason
I head for the birding platform instead of the bar after the rehearsal. I didn’t bother to stop at the casita for my binoculars, because I’m not starting an eBird checklist here; I just need a place to sit for a minute. To pray, maybe, but I don’t know what I’m praying for.
Thankfully, no one else is here when I arrive.
No people, anyway. It’s only a few seconds after I settle on one of the benches that a pair of blue-gray tanagers swoop in and perch on the wooden railing.
Then some scarlet-rumped tanagers show themselves in the small bush on the side of the clearing, and within moments, it’s a passerine party at the birding platform.
I’m smiling at a couple of euphonias fighting over the last scraps of banana, when Kelsey approaches. The birds scatter, the bolder ones to the safety of branches within the thicket of bushes surrounding the platform, and I know they’ll be back.
“Can I join you, Dad?”
“Sure, honey.”
She settles on the bench next to me, then sets her backpack on her lap and withdraws a tall bottle and two small glasses. She hands one glass to me, sets the other on the bench on the other side of her, and unscrews the cap of the bottle. A delicious orange and clove aroma wafts out.
She pours three fingers of the amber liquid in my glass and two fingers in her own, then screws the cap back on and tucks the bottle back in her backpack. She sets the backpack on the floor at her feet and holds her glass out toward me.
“Macallan 18,” she says. “A peace offering.”
I clink the rim of my glass against hers. “How did you find this?” The restaurant’s bar doesn’t stock this brand of Scotch.
“Logan bought it for Adrienne as a sort of wedding present. Actually, I think it was supposed to be for celebrating a deal they made just before they left. I don’t think he’ll mind why we drink it, though.”
“And will Adrienne mind us drinking it?”
Kelsey shakes her head and takes a tiny sip. “It was her idea.”
Of course it was. My soon-to-be daughter-in-law and I share a taste for good whiskey. I take a sip and hold the liquor in my mouth for a few seconds, letting it seep into my membranes, then swallow. “Thanks, sweetie.” It’s very good Scotch.
“Daddy said I should come talk to you.” The birds have returned and flitter around the bushes and the empty banana peels pinned to the fence rail.
Kelsey’s looking at the birds rather than me.
“I told him the same thing I’m about to say to you.
I really don’t understand what’s going on with you two. What are you doing, Dad?”
“I’m entitled to a private life, Kelsey. What I do behind closed doors isn’t something I owe you a report on.”
“That’s not what I—“ She presses her hands to her face for a moment, her drink tucked between her knees, then drops them. “I’m not trying to police your sex life. I don’t care who you sleep with.
But Daddy? Really? You work for the Church, Dad.
You’ve built your whole life around Saint Sebastian’s. ”
“I’m aware of my own employment situation, thank you.”
“Don’t be glib.” Her voice sharpens. “I left the Church, Dad. I know what it costs to be queer and Catholic. I know what it feels like to realize that the institution you were raised in doesn’t have room for who you actually are.”
I don’t have a response to this.
“So either you’ve thought about this and you’re risking your job, your community, everything you’ve spent your whole life building—” She’s blinking hard now, her eyes bright.
“Or you haven’t thought about it at all, and you’re just, what?
Having a fling with my father during my wedding week and hoping nobody notices? ”
“It’s not a fling.” The words come out before I can stop them.
Kelsey goes very still. “Then what is it?”
I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I’ve spent the last two days telling myself it’s just physical, just this week, just scratching an itch. But sitting here with my daughter’s eyes on me, I can’t make that lie come out of my mouth.
“It’s complicated,” I say instead.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.” I take a breath, trying to steady myself. “Kelsey, I hear you. I do. Everything you’re worried about, I’ve thought about it too. I know what’s at stake.”
“Do you?” Her voice wavers between anger and something that sounds more like fear. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re ‘complicating’ your way into getting fired.”
“I’m not—” I set my glass down and mirror her air quotes back at her “—‘complicating’ my way into anything. I know this looks reckless to you. Maybe it is. But I’m not a child, Kelsey.
I’ve spent my entire adult life being careful.
Being responsible. Doing what was expected of me.
” I pause. “I’m not saying I have answers.
I don’t. But I need you to trust that I’m not going to blow up my life without thinking about it first.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, Dad. The thinking.” She shakes her head. “You’ll think yourself in circles until you’ve rationalized staying in the Church, and then you’ll spend another fifteen years being careful and responsible and alone.”
The words land harder than I expected. Fifteen years. Has she noticed more than I thought?
“I’m not going to hurt Victor,” I say quietly. “Whatever else happens, I promise you that.”
“What about hurting yourself?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
Kelsey sighs and takes a long sip of her whiskey. The fight seems to drain out of her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to yell at you.”
“Could have fooled me.”
She huffs something that’s almost a laugh. “Yeah, well. This is a really weird, fucked-up situation, Dad.”
“I know, hon. Believe me, it’s not how I expected this week to go, either.”
Kelsey shoots me a look, but there’s less fear and anger in it. We sit in silence for a moment, watching the birds resettle on the railing.
“Can I ask you something?” I finally say.
“Sure, Dad.”
“When did you decide to leave the Church? I mean, was there a specific point where you decided, or did you just start slacking off on attending Sunday Mass and suddenly realize how long it had been since you went?”
She looks sideways at me, but I keep my eyes on the birds. I’m sure she knows why I’m asking—or why I’m asking now—but I’m also genuinely curious.
She looks out across the clearing for a minute.
“It was a conscious decision, Dad. But I think it was a long time coming, actually. There was this day—I don’t even remember when, but it was probably during Lent, it must have been Holy Week.
And I was maybe fourteen or so? We were sitting in a pew together, waiting to go to confession, and I was so annoyed.
Like, just seething with anger and irritation.
You must have noticed, I guess, because you asked me what was wrong. ”
Kelsey, at fourteen, spent a lot of time seething with anger and irritation, so I can’t say that this particular incident rings any bells for me.
“I figured I’d go ahead and tell you—you asked, right?
So I told you exactly how I felt. That I hated going to confession.
That I found it humiliating to list off for some old, male priest things the Church considered sins.
That half the time, I didn’t remember specifics about any sins anyway, so I’d make things up just to have something to confess, and isn’t that lying?
And that even when I thought of something to confess, I didn’t find the experience of confession helpful or soothing or comforting or anything else confession is supposed to give someone.
Plus, if I were sorry for something bad I’d done, wouldn’t God know that already and forgive me?
Why did I need to tell a priest my sins to get God’s forgiveness? ”
“How very Lutheran of you,” I say with a smile.
Kelsey snorts. “I don’t think fourteen-year-old me would have been happier in a Lutheran church.”
I take the last sip of my whiskey and Kelsey pours us both more from the bottle. “What happened? What did I say after that little speech?”
Kelsey smiles, a faraway, distant look in her eyes. “You sort of looked at me for a minute and I was afraid I was going to get a lecture on the importance of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But then you said, ‘Okay. You don’t have to go, then.’”
I don’t remember telling her this, but I definitely would have remembered a fight the likes of which we’d have had if I’d tried to force Kelsey to go to confession. What would be the benefit of forcing her in the first place?
“I said, ‘Really?’ and you said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t mean anything to you, then there’s no point to doing it, is there?
’” Kelsey shakes her head. “Dad, you have no idea how relieved I was. I mean, you, of all people, giving me the okay to not participate in one of the major sacraments of the Church…it was, I don’t know, like a turning point, I guess?
Like, I started to question other things about the Church, and I gradually realized that I didn’t need to be a practicing Catholic to be a good person. ”
She pauses, swirling the whiskey in her glass. “But I guess to answer your question: I left the Church when I realized that I’m a lesbian and the Church doesn’t love me the way Jesus would have loved me.” She sips her whiskey, then looks sideways at me again. “The Church rejected me first, Dad.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I know.”
“You didn’t, though.” She’s not looking at me now.
Her eyes are on the tanagers squabbling over the last tiny bits of banana.
“You never made me feel like there was something wrong with me. Even when I came out to you and I was sure you were going to give me a lecture about the Church, you just…let me be who I was.”
“You’re my daughter. I love you exactly the way you are.”
“I know.” Her voice is quieter now. “That’s why this is so hard to watch. You gave me permission to question everything. To figure out who I was on my own terms.” She finally looks at me. “Why can’t you give yourself the same permission?”
The question sits between us. I don’t have an answer. Or rather, I have too many answers, none of which I can say out loud. Because I’m not brave enough. Because I’ve spent too long being who everyone expects me to be. Because I’m terrified that if I let myself want this, I’ll lose everything else.
I take a sip of my whiskey instead of answering. “Do you still believe in God, Kelsey?”
She looks at me, like she knows I’m avoiding her question, then stretches her legs out in front of her and takes a deep breath and lets it out.
“I don’t know, Dad. Sometimes, when I’m diving and I look around at the vastness of the ocean and all the life in it that’s so very, very different from us, I feel something that might be closest to a belief in God.
Then, when I’m back at the lab and looking at all the data we’ve accumulated about just the one species of octopus I’ve been studying, for example, I think science has legitimately sounded a death knell for believing in some all-seeing, all-knowing creator who gives two shits about what any random humans do in bed with each other. ”
“Well, I’m not sure how much the God I believe in really cares about what people do in bed together, either, as long as they’re not hurting anyone else.”
Kelsey gives me another sideways look and, Mother of Mercy, I did not mean that the way it sounds.
For the love of all the saints in heaven, please, please do not let my stepdaughter take that as confessing that I know anything about kinky sex with her father.
Or her mother, for that matter. Or anyone.
Kelsey shakes her head. “I’m still weirded out by all this. Just so you know. But I love you. And I want you to be happy. Even if it takes you a while to figure out what that looks like.” She drains the last of her whiskey, then tucks the bottle and her glass back in her bag.
“Thank you, honey.”
She stands, then hesitates. “One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful with Daddy.” Her voice is firm but not unkind. “I know you said you won’t hurt him. But he’s been alone a long time, too. And I worry—“ She stops, presses her lips together, then continues. “I think this might mean more to him than you realize.”
Before I can ask her what she means by that, she’s already heading down the path toward the restaurant.
I sit for another moment, watching the tanagers return to the railing, and finish my whiskey.
I think this might mean more to him than you realize.
Is she right? I’ve been so focused on my own confusion—my own guilt, my own fear—that I haven’t stopped to think about what Victor might be feeling. He’s been patient with me. Generous. He’s let me set the pace, take what I wanted, without asking for anything in return.
He said he’s fine with casual sex. What if he’s not as casual about this as I’ve assumed?
I push the thought away and stand up.
Tomorrow, I walk my daughter down the aisle. That’s enough to think about for now.