Page 27 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
“Are those difficulties your fault or hers?”
Snow flurried around me as I parked the truck in the faculty lot and trudged to my office. “Mostly mine.”
Millie didn’t say anything for a moment, but she did let out a few of those strange coughs that made me cringe to listen to.
“Millie, have you told a nurse that you haven’t been feeling well?”
“They know,” she said dismissively. “It’s just a cold. Everyone gets them this time of year. Besides, I’m so sick of having them fuss over me. I miss being in my own home.”
“I know you do.”
More silence. A cough. “Sometimes I think it’s not worth it to be here.”
Her words sank through the murk of my depression and began pinging soft alarms in my mind. I stopped at the door to the building, my hand on the handle, snow drifting around me. “Millie, what do you mean by that?”
“Oh nothing. Just an old lady’s rambles, that’s all. I’ll keep you and Poppy in my prayers this week.”
“Okay, Millie. And I’ll be praying for your cough.”
After we exchanged goodbyes, I stepped inside the building and typed out a couple quick texts to Mom and Jordan, asking if they could check on Millie this week. Mom always did, but I wanted Jordan there too. He could tell right away if someone was soul-sick, and that’s what I worried about with Millie. More than a cough, soul-sickness could kill someone like her, someone who needed a sense of purpose and independence to live.
Both Jordan and Mom responded with assurances that they would check on my old friend, and so I headed to my office to meet with a couple students and then I spent the rest of my day in the library, writing Poppy letters that she would probably never read and plodding through the last several thousand words of my conclusion.
And so the week went on, each day worse than the last, each day that Poppy didn’t call or text like a fresh version of hell, and I became a shadow of myself. Not eating, barely sleeping, my focus so intent on Poppy and what she was doing at each moment that I couldn’t attend to anything else.
It was a miracle that I made it to my dissertation.
It was an even bigger miracle that I could force myself to speak words, sentences, coherent thoughts. I was glad Professor Morales was on maternity leave, because I didn’t want her to see me like this. Fucked up and clumsy, and lackluster in my defense, even as the board members raved about my conclusion and how practical and visionary it was. Morales would have been proud of that part, at least.
And then the biggest miracle of all: I made it through. As Jesus said, it is finished, and so I walked out of that building with my doctorate in theology, four years of my life finally sealed shut and packed away. I was supposed to be happy now, I knew. I was supposed to be giddy with my accomplishment and the chance for a new phase in my life.
But I was also supposed to be celebrating with my wife right now. I was supposed to be kissing her, holding her, whispering wild promises in her ear.
Instead, I ate a greasy dinner alone in a mostly-empty restaurant, watching Christmas shoppers pass by the window, listening to holiday songs so familiar and overplayed that they’d become meaningless background noise peculiar to this one time of year—no more notable than cicadas chirruping in the summer heat or raindrops pattering against the window in the springtime. Just the noise that goes along with cold wet weather and the smell of gingerbread.
I went back to my hotel, turned on the shower and stripped down slowly, climbing in and sitting on the floor of the tub. I didn’t cry, though. I just sat, empty and worthless, feeling the water sluicing across my skin like so much rain, and trying not to remember all the showers that Poppy and I had shared. All the wet kisses. All the skin and steam and breathy moans echoing off the tile.
Did I make a mistake leaving the clergy?
The thought surfaced out of nowhere, fractured and shifting like a reflection on the sea. But once it appeared, it couldn’t be unthought, no matter how fleeting or ephemeral it had been.
When I’d left, I’d felt so certain, so confident that I was following God’s plan for my life. That I was setting my feet to the path that would lead to self-actualizaton and modern-day sainthood and a full, rich life. I was so certain that it didn’t matter what happened between me and Poppy, it didn’t matter where the road took me, it only mattered that I step outside the safe bubble I’d made for myself and start taking real risks again.
There was no whisper of that confidence now, no lingering scent of that certainty. Because if all of my pain and effort meant that I was a PhD sitting alone in a shower, then what had all of it been for? What had the world gained by me leaving the clergy?
Poppy was right—I liked to hide behind vocations, behind callings—and scholar was so much worse than priest because at least priests helped people. At least they brought people closer to the Lord. Everything I’d gained as a student, I’d gained for myself. It hadn’t even netted anything positive for my marriage.
And if Poppy left me, actually left me and filed for divorce, I would break. Not just my heart, and not just my mind, but my soul and my body—it would splinter into brittle dead shards and I would be finished.
Lord, where are you? I asked the ceiling numbly. Why do I feel so alone?
And that was when the phone rang.
I scrambled out of the tub, grabbing a towel and running into the hotel room. My phone was lit up and buzzing its way across the end table.
Please let this be the answer to my prayer.
Please let this be Poppy.
