Page 94 of Roommate
“How would that even work?” I ask carefully. “The Catholic church does not approve of me.”
He tips his head side to side, as if weighing the idea. “Technically speaking, the Catholic church disapproves of actions, not people. Although most of the congregants who walk through my door have done some things that the church dislikes. Birth control, for example. Or divorce. But that doesn’t matter to me. I am not a walking rule book. And I don’t disapprove of you at all. And I don’t judge you, either. That’s not my job. My job is to love you as one of God’s most sacred creations. And I am very good at my job.”
My fucking eyes fill with tears. “I’m having kind of a hard day,” I say by explanation.
“I can see that. But so am I, because I’m expecting two hundred people for dinner in forty minutes. So I need to do something.”
“Go, go,” I say waving him toward the door. “I’ll be fine.”
“Sure you will be. But I meant that I need to ask you a favor. Would you come and help me serve two hundred meals for a couple hours? You may not approve of the rolls. We buy them frozen. But we could use an extra set of hands. And it seems like you already cleaned your house from top to bottom, so…”
I laugh. “This was all one big recruiting mission? You are slick.”
“No, I’m innocent.” He spreads his hands and smiles at me. “But we are always shorthanded. And you’ve finished your supper.”
I look down at my plate and see that he’s right. I’ve hoovered the entire meal in a short period of time. The meal that this man brought me when he suspected I was sitting home alone today. “I’m very handy in the kitchen,” I admit. “But I won’t come if you think my parents will show up. I don’t have the stomach for that tonight.”
“Well, I don’t have a tracking device on their car. But I have never seen your parents at one of our community dinners. They’re Sunday-only Catholics, as far as I can tell.”
I realize that I have no earthly idea how my parents spend Christmas. And that makes me feel a little blue once again.
“Come on, Roderick. It’s right across the green,” Father Peters says. “You could throw a rock and hit the church.”
“That sounds like vandalism,” I say, lifting my now-empty plate off the coffee table.
“I don’t mean literally,” he scoffs. “The church disapproves of that. It’s in the rule book.”
“I’m sure it is.”
* * *
Five minutes later I’m locking the door and then heading down the driveway with the priest.
“So, is there any particular reason why today was especially hard?” he asks.
“Well, sure. I really like Vermont, but I’m not sure I can stay.”
“Why is that? Seems like you have a good job with people who care about you.”
“A fair point,” I grumble. “But see—I like people. And I need people in my life. That’s a good thing, right?”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“But it has a dark side. Before I came here, I was with a guy who wasn’t a very good guy. But I stuck with him anyway, because I don’t like to be alone. Then I came to Vermont, and I started dating a good guy. No—a great guy. But he’s not ready.”
“Ready for—?”
“For me. I’m kind of a lot to handle. I have a lot to give, but he isn’t ready to receive everything I want to offer him. And it doesn’t look like he’s going to be ready anytime soon. So unless I want to put my life on hold for the foreseeable future, I probably need to leave. This is a small town, and I don’t want to put pressure on him. But it’s just so depressing. I feel like I’m going to be bumping around from guy to guy like a drunk pinball for the rest of my pathetic little life. When all I want is to find the right man and be very good to him.”
I need a big, gulping breath of air after all that word vomit. I can’t believe I just emptied my heart to a Catholic priest, of all people. But he’s a really good listener. He’s probably trained for that.
“That does sound heartbreaking,” he says as we round the corner toward his church. “But the self-awareness you have about this problem is a precious thing. Not all of my parishioners can see their troubles as clearly as you can.”
“I’m not always this lucid,” I promise him. “I stayed with that other rat for three years.”
“And how long have you given this new guy?”
“Not long,” I hedge. “But it feels so familiar. I know he’s going to let me down. So I feel like I should just get it over with, and save us both the anguish.”
