Page 38 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
“I chose this religion,” she said, hugging herself. “I chose this religion where everyone has these huge families, where it feels like having a baby is the most important thing a woman can do. And what does it mean for me as a woman if I can’t do this one thing? What does it mean for me as a Catholic woman?”
I winced. “Poppy, no one would ever think you were ‘less than’ because you—”
“Because I had a miscarriage? Because I may not be able to carry a child? Look at the Bible, Tyler. Where are the godly infertile women in there?”
“Well, Sarah—”
“Ends up having a baby,” Poppy interrupted. “Same with Rebecca and Rachel and Hannah. Every infertile woman in the Bible is eventually able to give birth. What does it mean if I never ca
n? Does it mean that I’m not blessed or righteous? That there’s something wrong with my soul as well as my body?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
I took a minute to answer, because I was near tears myself seeing her so devastated and also because I was still working through my new understanding of my guilt and how it had colored the way I’d read the scriptures for so long.
“The Bible was written in a very specific time and place, for a very specific culture,” I explained. “I think that in the biblical environment having a child was the ultimate sign of God’s grace and blessing. That Sarah ends up having a baby is the Bible’s way of showing God’s love and care for her—not God redeeming her through her womb, but through his love. That love can take any form. For the ancient Canaanites, it was children, but for us, it could be something completely different.”
I gestured around the church, at the altar and at the crucifix and at the tabernacle. “All of this—the lengthy bible readings and the liturgical rigmarole and the Eucharist—what do you think it’s here for, lamb?”
She blinked, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
“It’s to remind us of our shared humanity. Of our quest to do better. And most importantly, of the fact that God loves us and helps us during that quest. Let Him love and help you now. Let Him give you grace.”
The shimmering God-feeling intensified, and Poppy lifted her face to the crucifix. She tilted her head, as if listening to something only she could hear.
The bright overhead lights came on and a vacuum started running somewhere in the distance. The smell of smoke indicated the snuffing of candles in preparation for closing the church for the night, and still we didn’t move.
Finally Poppy turned to me and said, “Okay. I will.”
And then, holding hands and with tears still drying on our faces, we walked out into the biting cold of early, early, early Christmas morning. Up ahead the stars winked, like the Star of Bethlehem, and somewhere a baby was being born.
Maybe one day it would be ours.
But one hour into Christmas morning, a new beginning was being born for Poppy and me, and for now, that was enough.
Poppy
one year later
Three a.m. Christmas morning. You have me sitting at the edge of a pew, my hands folded in my lap. I wanted this, I remind myself. I asked for this. But still, I’m nervous. Nervous that we’ll get caught certainly, (although it’s Jordan’s church and I know he won’t be back inside until dawn.) And I’m nervous about why—why we are acting out this fantasy or memory or whatever it is. It makes me nervous how much I want it, how much I dream about it. And it makes me nervous how aroused I am right now, doing nothing more than waiting for you in a dark, empty church.
When you asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I’m sure this wasn’t what you expected to hear.
Your footsteps echo throughout the lofty sanctuary, loud and clear in the silence, and then I feel it, the gentle tap of two fingers on my shoulder, and I look up.
I practically come just by looking at you.
The flickering glow of candles illuminates your cheekbones, your square jaw, your nose that’s bumped slightly in the middle from the time your brother pushed you face-first off a trampoline. Your face is scruffed with a day-old beard, and your hair has grown a little longer than you usually wear it, just long enough for me to slip my fingers through and grab onto. A small smile is on your wide mouth, just a hint of that dimple I love so much, and as always, you’re so hot and intensely fuckable that I have to restrain myself from diving for your dick.
But it’s what you’re wearing that sets me off: belted black pants, long-sleeved black shirt, and—God help me—your collar.
Your collar, snowy white against the black of your shirt and setting off the strong lines of your throat. Your collar, which looks so natural on you, as if you’d never stopped wearing it. As if you were born to wear it. Did you know that you walk differently with that collar on? Stand differently? As if you’re bearing both a burden and a joy at the same time. It’s fascinating and beautiful and so fucking magnetic.
“I’m Father Bell,” you say, as if we’re meeting for the first time. “What brings you to the church today?”
Role-play. We haven’t done it very often, so even though my heart is already racing and my thighs are already squeezing together at the sight of you in your collar, I feel a little self-conscious when I say, “I’ve never really been in a church before. I guess I’m just looking for guidance.”
We’re play-acting a version of how we first met. Me, lost and vulnerable, wandering into a church. You, intelligent and friendly and trying not to notice how your body responds to me.
You sit down on the pew, keeping two careful feet between us. For propriety. For morality. If this had been five years ago, I would have looked down, abashed at my own desire for you. I would have tilted my body away, trying to preserve your vows as I battled off the strongest attraction I’d ever felt in my life. But five years ago, we were in a church to pray.
