Page 33 of Sinner (Priest 2)
Tyler grumbles something on his end that sounds like, well, they should, which I ignore. Maybe, when looked at rationally, the Iversons weren’t to blame for the schism, but no one was thinking rationally the day of Lizzy’s funeral, and after the fallout, it seemed safer not to touch the still-smoldering pieces. Safer just to side with my parents and keep my friendship with Elijah separate from all the pain and alienation. Tyler had been the lone voice of dissent in the Bell clan, being the Mr. Conscience that he was, and it hadn’t changed a thing, it only made life harder for him.
That’s what having a conscience will get you.
Which is why it’s super inconvenient that I’ve grown one now.
Before Tyler can spin off into Lecture Mode, I explain to him about the gala and then about the issues with the Keegan property and the Good Shepherd shelter. And then, in a voice that is more faltering and faint than I care to admit, I tell him about her visit today. Her situation.
Her request.
Tyler listens quietly through it all, and it gradually becomes easier and easier for me to talk, and I have a moment when I wonder if this is how his parishioners felt when they gave their confessions. If he made it this easy for all people to talk to him, to stumble through their messy thoughts and lusts and regrets. I could almost resent him for it, except right now I’m nothing but grateful. I need this, I need the unloading and confessing and just to talk about it, because I can’t with anyone else.
“So then I told her I’d think about it and that we’d talk over dinner tomorrow night,” I conclude.
Tyler takes a breath. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
There’s more silence on the other end, and I’m done with the silence, I’m done with the uncertainty. It’s only been an hour since Zenny left, and I think I’ll be ripped apart from the sheer insanity of it all if I don’t find a way to fix it.
“So what do I do?” I ask impatiently.
“Well,” Tyler says carefully, “it sounds like she was able to neatly shut down all of your objections.”
“Yeah. It was humiliating.”
“Never argue with a budding theologian,” my brother laughs. “We like being the smartest one in the room too much.”
I snort at my wall of degrees. I used to think I was a pretty smart guy, but this afternoon proved that I’ve got nothing on Zenny.
“What do you think you should do?” Tyler asks. “Maybe that’s the best place to start.”
“I should say no,” I say after a minute. “I should stay far away from her.”
“Why?” Tyler asks.
“What do you mean, why?” I say in my best isn’t it obvious voice. “She’s young, she’s Elijah’s sister, and she wants to be a professional non-sex-haver.”
“Twenty-one is hardly jailbait, Sean, and also I imagine that your connection to Elijah is precisely why she feels safe with you. As for her vocation and how it intersects with sex, I would suggest that you’re looking at the intersection with the wrong lens.”
“Are you going into Lecture Mode?”
Tyler ignores me. “You might think that you’re so liberated from the trap of Catholic morality, but you’re still acting like a man who thinks sex is dirty. Like a man who believes in the concept of purity.”
“I don’t think sex is dirty,” I sputter. “I fuck literally all—”
“—all the time, I know, but listen to me: you can still fuck a lot and unconsciously believe these things. You can smugly think you’re better than all the people trapped in repressive paradigms, but still believe, deep down, that you have the capacity to taint another person with your cock.”
“I don’t think that,” I say, not at all convincingly.
“Tell me, Sean. Do you fuck strippers and socialites only because they’re conveniently around? Or do you fuck them because you feel like they’re already impure and you won’t hurt them with just a little more impurity of your own?”
I don’t have a ready answer to that. And I don’t like what I’m finding in my mind as I search for answers, which are the clammy skeletons of half-forgotten beliefs and sermons from hypocrites. I thought I’d thrown away all that shit years ago.
“Okay, let me ask you this,” Tyler says when I don’t answer. “When’s the last time you fucked someone you cared about? When’s the last time you fucked someone and hoped to God you never had to stop holding them?”
I swallow. “A while,” I lie.
Never is more like the real answer.
