The Confessions Read online

If he were forty years younger…

  “I found a picture,” she said at last. “I didn’t mean to find it. I wasn’t looking for it. I just found it. Last week.”

  “This all started last week?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you found a photograph?”

  Behind the arm draped over her eyes she nodded.

  “Where did you find it?” Ballard asked.

  “In his old Bible. He keeps private things in it—love notes from Kingsley from their high school days, the bookmark I made him once, the list of questions I wrote for him when I was 16 that he promised to answer for me one day… All his most special secrets he keeps in this Bible. He left it at my house one night, and I flipped through it for no other reason than plain heathen nosiness. Is nosiness a sin?”

  “Venial.”

  “Shit.”

  “Keep talking. You found the photograph in his Bible?”

  “I did. Of her.”

  “Of Grace.”

  “Yes. Of Grace holding Fionn. As a baby. He’s a toddler now, but he was a baby in the picture. And on the back of the photograph Grace had written the date and a short message.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Grace wrote, Søren, Here’s the picture you asked for. It’s in black and white because I’m blushing so much. All our love, Your Grace and Fionn.”

  “Is that what bothered you? That she called herself his Grace?”

  “No, she does that even with me: Nora, Miss you! Come visit us soon. Love, Your Grace. It’s a joke.”

  “Ah—‘Your Grace.’ Aristocracy nonsense. So what’s wrong then? That he asked for the picture? It’s really not unusual for the father of a child to want to have a picture of his child. He hasn’t met his boy yet, has he?”

  “Not yet. Next year. Søren wants to wait for reasons he hasn’t told anyone. I think he wants Fionn to be old enough to remember him in case, you know.”

  “In case it’s their only meeting?”

  She nodded, swallowed visibly. He had touched a nerve, a soft spot. Good. It meant they were getting closer to the heart of the matter.

  “A photograph of his son in his Bible shouldn’t be much of a surprise. So why did it bother you so much?”

  “The picture is of Grace nursing Fionn.”

  “Ah, I see.” Stuart nodded and rubbed his chin in understanding. “A very private and intimate picture. Hence the blushing.”

  “A private and intimate picture he asked her to send him. And that’s a big deal because Grace is so modest that she never nursed Fionn in public. She never even nursed him in front of me or her own mother. Only alone or in front of Zach, her husband.”

  “And in that photograph.”

  “A photograph which he kept in his Bible along with Kingsley’s love notes and my list of questions and the bookmark I made him. He keeps his heart in that Bible. There are no other pictures in there, and we have dozens of pictures of Fionn. But that picture…”

  “That must have stung,” Stuart said, employing the art of the English understatement.

  “Stung? Ever had your genitals whacked with a wet whip?” she asked.

  “That bad?”

  “That bad. And the worst part?” Eleanor sat up again and faced him. “I don’t even know why it bothers me. It’s a beautiful picture. Absolutely gorgeous. Grace is luminous in it. Fionn is…a miracle. And even more than that, he’s Søren’s son. Of course he wants to keep a picture of Grace and his son in his Bible. I just didn’t expect it to be that picture. I just…” She held up her hands. “I didn’t expect to find it in his Bible. If he’d shown it to me, it wouldn’t have hurt. But he didn’t show it to me. Why can’t he hide creepy fetish porn from me like a normal boyfriend?”

  “Did you just use the words ‘normal’ and ‘boyfriend’ when referring to Marcus?”

  “I forgot myself. Sorry.”

  “Let me ask you this—do you think he was deliberately concealing this photograph from you? Or had he simply not shown it to you yet?”

  “If he were deliberating hiding it from me, he wouldn’t have put it in his Bible. If he wanted to hide it from me he would have kept it in his room at the Jesuit house. No women allowed in there.”

  “So he wasn’t hiding it from you but he never showed it to you?”

  “Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than he wanted to protect Grace’s privacy. Except it does mean something because it’s in his Bible. And it’s the mother of his child with his child and she’s nursing him. I just wish I knew why it hurt. I don’t want kids. I was overjoyed when I learned about Fionn. I wasn’t shocked at all they’d slept together, considering what we’d all just been through. I even sent her to him. And, to be perfectly frank—”

  “Please, be frank.”

  “While they were together, I was in the next room fucking Kingsley, and Wes was fucking Søren’s niece Laila down the hall. Your typical post-traumatic event life-affirming fuck fest, right?”

  “But of course.”

  “I’m not jealous they slept together—God knows they both needed each other that night. I’m not jealous she had Fionn. I’m not jealous they had a child together, and that I didn’t have his child. So what is it? It’s not like me to not know myself. Why do I feel this way? Why does this hurt? I’m losing it, Father Ballard. No, I’ve lost it.”

  He might have laughed at her words if he hadn’t seen the look in her eyes. This was a woman in pain. “You know, a wise man once said, ‘Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap.’ ”

  “Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap,” she repeated. “Sounds like St. Ignatius.”

  “Jerry Seinfeld actually.”

  Her eyes widened and she looked at him with new appreciative eyes. “You’re his opposite, you know. You and Søren? You are ontological opposites.”

  “I know him well enough to take that as a compliment.”

  She put her hand on her forehead and exhaled heavily. “It’s a compliment,” she said. “Definitely a compliment.”

  Stuart stood and she looked up at him in a question.

  “Sit, sit,” he said. “Stay there.”

  He picked up his chair and moved it closer to her. When he sat again she had composed her face back into that beautiful mask but the pain was still in her eyes. He reached out and held open his hands to her. She slipped her hands into his and he held her trembling fingers.

  “Pain is knowledge,” Stuart said again. “Adam and Eve fell when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. That fall hurt. You saw that picture and it was a bite of knowledge that you wish you’d never tasted. Isn’t it?”

  “It could be.”

  “You were walking along and ran into something you didn’t know was there. And it hurt the way it always hurts when you walk into something you didn’t see in your path—a doorknob, a chair leg, a secret your lover of nearly twenty years was keeping from you. You didn’t stub your toe here, however. You stubbed your soul.”

  “He never told me he wanted that—that in the picture. He never said a word about it,” she said.

  “If he had, what would have happened? If five years ago, let’s say, he sat you down in his living room and said, ‘Eleanor, I want you to have my children.’ What would you have said to that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know I wouldn’t have had his children. Not even for him would I have had a child I didn’t want to have.”

  “If he had asked you, would you have said no right away? Or would you have had to think about it?”

  “I wouldn’t have said no right away. As much as I love him, I would have at least thought about it, if I could go through with it, if I could change who I was enough to be something I didn’t want to be.”

  “And when you told him no, would that have been an easy conversation?”

  She whispered her one-word answer. “No.”

  “Why not? Yes or no is such an easy answer.”

  “Not when the question is ‘Will
you have my children?’ The no would have been as hard to say as the yes.”

  “Do you think he wanted to spare you that? Do you think he was trying to protect you from having to answer that question?”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  “And that photograph you found…that photograph he keeps among his most private and cherished possessions…when you saw it, perhaps you saw a side of him you didn’t know was there. The side of him that does want, you know…” Stuart’s voice trailed off. It was better to let her say it.

  “He wants to see the mother of his child nursing his son.”

  “That,” he said.

  “It’s something I could never give him. Maybe that’s why it hurts. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes again.

  “It hurts when we realize we can’t give everything to the person we love, that we can’t be everything to the person we love.”

  “It hurts,” she said, nodding.

  “You had a gap in your knowledge of him. And that must have hurt because surely after so many years together you would know his soul by heart. But you don’t know everything there is to know about him. You learned he had a side of himself he never shared with you.”

  “I thought I knew everything. I thought we’d reached that point where we were honest with each other, truly honest. After all we’ve been through—”

  “After all you two have been through, it’s a miracle you can even be in the same room together, much less still in love with each other. Devotedly and passionately in love.”

  She gave him a wan smile. Such a pretty girl. No wonder Marcus couldn’t get enough of her even after decades of loving her.

  “I have to remember I’m his lover, not his confessor,” she said.

  “I am his confessor, lass. Even I don’t know all his secrets. And I don’t want to know them. You see all this gray hair? Each strand is one of his bloody secrets.”

  She smiled again, but didn’t laugh. He could tell she wasn’t quite ready to laugh yet. But they were getting there.

  “How do you think you sinned here?” he asked her. “Do you think it’s a sin for a woman to not want children?”

  “I spent a year in a convent with women who didn’t want children, and they were some of the godliest women I’ve ever known.”

  “Do you think it’s a sin that a tiny part of you wishes you could have been everything to him?”

  “Yes, I think that is a sin,” she said. “Pride. Thinking I’m enough to be everything to him. And I’m not. I already knew that because of Kingsley, but I’ve known about Kingsley for decades. Kingsley was Søren’s first love, and I respect his primacy. But this is different.”

  “It is different. Kingsley is a man,” Stuart continued. “He can’t have children. You’re a woman. You can. And you chose not to, and now he’s had a child with someone else. You love the woman. You love the child. You love him. But…”

  “But.” She squeezed his hands in hers. The girl had a strong grip. Lots of hidden strengths in this lady. No wonder she’d survived so long with Marcus. “Once upon a time I said something breathtakingly cruel to Søren.”

  “What did you say?”

  “We were standing in his church and we…we’d been broken up for a few years by then. There were children everywhere, all around us. They were doing something—practicing for the Easter pageant, I think. Anyway, here we were, broken up and he wanted me back, a very vulnerable, horrible, hard place for anyone to be in. And while we were there surrounded by dozens of kids, I said, ‘I wanted to have your children once.’ ”

  “That was cruel, wasn’t it?”

  “Unconscionably cruel and the worst part is that I knew it. I said it to hurt him, and I knew it would hurt. And he responded…not very well.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “When I was 17, I decided what sort of life I wanted and that life didn’t include having children. But if that’s what he wanted, if what’s in that photograph was something he dreamed of, something he desired, he should have told me. He had a thousand chances to tell me, to ask me, to share his heart with me. You know what it is? It’s not jealousy right here.” She tapped her breast again. “It’s anger. I am angry at him for not telling me how much he wanted that. He should have told me. Even if it meant putting our relationship through another trial, he should have told me. I’m furious at him for not trusting that our love was strong enough to go through that together. That’s what hurts. That’s why it stings. Because I wanted to know that. Because that’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? That there’s this part of him that desires fatherhood and to sit in a chair in front of the mother of his child and watch while she nurses their son? That’s nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be embarrassed about. That’s something special, something beautiful. It’s a diamond in his heart, and he kept that diamond hidden from me. And he shouldn’t have kept it hidden. He didn’t have to give me that diamond. He just had to show it to me. Because it’s so…fucking…sweet. Isn’t it?”

  Her tears came then, big ones to wet the shoulder of his cassock all the way to his skin. Stuart held her against him, her arms around his neck and her head on his arm. And she cried like a baby and he rocked her like a baby because she was a baby. God’s child, right here in his arms. God’s little girl. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” Psalm 38. And here was a brokenhearted child of God right in his arms. What a blessing to be a priest with tenderhearted sinners like this in the world.

  “It’s very sweet,” he whispered. “Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you about it. He’s not a very sweet man, is he? A real arsehole most of the time.”

  She shuddered in his arms with tears and laughter.

  “Can’t stand him myself,” Stuart continued. “Big blond brute strutting around with all his height and his massive brain and his handsome face—and he’s getting too old to still be that handsome. You better believe I resent the hell out of it.”

  “Tell me about it,” she groaned. “He’s prettier now than he was twenty years ago. I hate him.”

  “Oh, and there’s that look he gives you. You know the look. The magnifying glass in the sunlight look, and you’re there on the sidewalk like an ant burnt to a crisp.”

  “I know that look,” she said between ragged breaths. “I’ve been that toasted ant more than once.”

  “He gets off on it, you know,” Ballard said. “Gets off on seeming scary and tough. And all this time he had a gooey secret marshmallow in his heart. He was probably too embarrassed to tell you about it. You might think he’d gone soft. No man wants to go soft in front of his lover.”

  “Oh no, not soft. Anything but that.”

  “You’re allowed to be hurt that he kept a side of himself from you. So many men keep secrets from their wives and lovers—drinking habits, drugs, gambling, cheating. That makes sense, keeping the bad stuff a secret. But he kept the good stuff a secret from you. I think that would hurt worse. I think that would hurt the most.”

  “It does hurt the most. I know all his darkness. I could carry that. I could handle all the bad stuff and the hard stuff and the scary stuff he’s told me. And here was this one beautiful shining secret part of him, and that’s the part he kept from me? It’s not fair. We aren’t sweet people, Father. Not me, not Kingsley, not Søren. We’re a lot of things but we aren’t sweet. And all along he had this sweet fantasy, this lovely longing for something like a teenage girl imagining her wedding day, and he never shared that with me.”

  “Even when he’s sweet he still manages to be a bastard somehow. You ought to cane him. I hear you’re good at it.”

  “The best in the business.”

  “You know there are two things you have to consider here, Eleanor,” he said, patting the back of her head. “First of all, maybe he didn’t know he had that diamond, as you call it, until he had his son. I’ve known many a man who swore up and down he didn’t want children until he became a father. Then overnight he becomes a new man. You’re imagining he kept a
secret from you. You have to admit he might not have known the secret himself. The heart’s a labyrinth, even our own hearts, even to us.”

  “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “You also have to consider that the reason Marcus never told you about his desire to have children wasn’t because he knew you’d say no. There’s a good chance he didn’t ask you because he thought maybe…maybe you would say yes.”

  She sat up and looked at him. “He thought I might say yes?”

  “It’s not out of the realm of possibility for a woman in love with a man to change her mind about having children. It happens all the time. And what would have happened if you’d agreed to have his child? What would he have done?”

  “He would have left the priesthood,” she said. “The day I told him I was pregnant, he would have called the bishop.”

  “Of course he would have.”

  “He doesn’t want to leave the priesthood or the Jesuits. He’s never wanted to leave.”

  Ballard nodded. “Whether he wants to admit it or not, Marcus is a human being. And human beings often want things they can’t have. A man wants to lose weight, but he also wants to eat ice cream. A woman who wants to marry also wants to run from relationships because she’s afraid of turning into her mother. A man who wants to be a priest also wants to marry and have children—”

  “He did have a child.”

  “With a married woman. He wouldn’t leave the Church to marry a woman who was already married. No reason to leave the Church, right?”

  “After we found out about Fionn, after Zach told us, I asked Søren about that night with Grace and what happened. All he said was, ‘Little One, please believe me, I was meant to do this.’ And I believed him. When I held Fionn in my arms I knew it was true. He was meant to be that boy’s father. Why, I don’t know and I don’t care. But he was.”

  “I’m old school where children are concerned,” Ballard said. “I think every child is part of God’s plan. But maybe this little boy—this miracle as you call him—maybe he’s a very special part of the plan.”

  A fresh tear ran down her cheek. She started to wipe it away with the back of her hand, and he handed her a tissue from his stash.