Faith. Jennifer Haigh

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СКАЧАТЬ age that seemed supernatural, and undoubtedly had women—perhaps many women—in the years before.

      Art had known, always, that he was not like his stepfather. In the confessional he learned he wasn’t like other men, either. Men his age had wives and families; addictions, criminal records, mistresses, debts. They lived double and even triple lives, a fact that astonished him. To Father Breen, even a single life seemed a towering accomplishment.

      He lived like a teenager in the parish rectory. It was an imposing place, three rambling stories. On the second floor lived a full-time director of music and the two young curates; Holy Redeemer was a large parish, wealthy enough to support a full staff. They lived in a warren of small bedrooms and shared a single bath. Upstairs was a plush suite of adjoining rooms, strictly off-limits. It was the exclusive domain of the pastor, Father Frank Lynch.

      In every way Father Lynch lived above them. The whole house rang with his presence: his decisive step on the parquet floors, his manly laugh, his Old Spice cologne. To Art it was like suffering a second stepfather, only worse. Ted McGann’s style had been gruff indifference, but Father Lynch took palpable glee in tormenting him. Father Lynch was Ted times ten. At the dinner table he kept up a steady stream of banter, at the expense of Art or the other young curate—a Filipino named Renaldo Calderon, who spoke halting English and had the advantage of not understanding the pastor’s barbs. This left Art largely alone in his resentment of Father Lynch and his cronies, Father Bob DeSalvo and Father Marty Raab, local pastors who dined several times a week at Holy Redeemer. The three old boys had known each other for years; they’d developed a crude, jocular rapport more suited to a fraternity house than a rectory.

      And yet a fraternity boy would enjoy far greater freedom than the young priests did. Ten o’clock was their unofficial curfew; at that hour Father Lynch locked the rectory door, and no one else was allowed a key. Mealtimes were sacrosanct, snacking forbidden. Art earned at that time a hundred dollars a week; he was saving up for a used car. On Monday mornings he took Communion to the local hospitals, driving the parish sedan. Every Sunday night he had to beg Father Lynch for the keys.

      It was the old parish system—anachronistic in the late 1970s, a strange throwback. To Art, who still believed he was joining a progressive Church, the clerical pecking order came as a shock. But the Archdioceses of New York, Philadelphia and Boston—the hoary Irish axis—were notoriously conservative, still ruled by the old boys. For Frank Lynch and his ilk there had been no Roncalli, no aggiornamento. The Vatican Council had simply never taken place.

      At the dinner table they lamented the liturgical changes: the jazzy new hymns, the hippy-dippy vestments; the ritual exchange of the Sign of Peace, in which the faithful shared greetings and handshakes and sometimes, to Frank Lynch’s disgust, kisses and hugs. “It’s one big communal love-in,” he groused. Bob and Marty chimed in with their own complaints: the infants bawling through the Consecration, the communicants who, imagining themselves invisible, sneaked out the side door after receiving the Sacrament instead of returning to their pews. Not to be outdone, Frank spun a yarn about the teenagers he’d caught playing cards in the choir loft, oblivious to the Mass taking place down below. To Art it was like being trapped at the table with three aging comedians, each trying to upstage the others. It seemed an occupational hazard: priests were used to having an audience, unaccustomed to sharing the floor.

      At the table he was like a well-behaved child, seen and not heard. Yet in the parish his responsibilities were ponderously adult. Every Saturday, before evening Mass, he heard confessions. For two hours his parishioners confided their faults and failings; their most intimate affairs awaited his review. That he was expected to furnish guidance seemed utterly laughable—Arthur Breen, who’d known no intimacy of any kind. Yet no one else saw it; the cassock hid all that was lacking in him. It was to the cassock that these good souls confessed. Art imagined sending it to the confessional with no priest inside it, a long black robe dangling on a hanger. In many cases, it would have just as much wisdom to impart.

      He felt, most of the time, like an impostor. Over the years he’d had fleeting doubts about his vocation. Always he had pushed them aside. Certainty will come later, Father Cronin had promised; but certainty had not come. Would the Lord have called a man so clearly lacking? He could have chosen anybody. Why would He settle for Arthur Breen?

      Of course, he wasn’t entirely useless. Children adored him, lingering in his confessional. And the elderly asked little of him. Their expectations of the sacrament were largely ceremonial: a series of responses, a penance, a blessing. The problem was everyone in the middle, men and women in the jump of life, driven by human longings; crawling over each other like puppies in a dogpile, as Frank Lynch once said.

      Art had spent his whole life in the company of men, and yet he found them hardest to counsel. Hard, even, to talk with. With priests he could hold his own in conversation, but laymen were a different matter entirely. In their company he felt irrelevant, tolerated out of politeness like a spinster aunt. The men of Holy Redeemer were OFD—Originally From Dorchester: hardworking guys who’d made it out to this middle-class suburb, but still rough at the core. On the church steps after Mass he saw them talking. What, exactly, did they talk about? In the spirit of preparation he studied the sports page, until Father Lynch caught him at it. “There will be a test later, Arthur,” he admonished in a simpering tone. The breakfast table erupted in laughter, and Art, mortified, abandoned his efforts. Who was he trying to fool?

      With the parish women he had more success. About their concerns he understood even less, but their company was at least not adversarial. They mothered him. A cough or sniffle at the pulpit prompted a dozen worried inquiries. He was given hand-knitted scarves and sweaters, herbal teas and vitamins and once, an electric space heater. It must get drafty in the rectory, said the donor, one Mrs. Duddy, and in this she was not mistaken. The heater got him through a long Boston winter, until Frank Lynch discovered and confiscated it, grousing about the electric bills.

      If all this feminine fussing was occasionally grating, Art never resisted. The parish women cared for him, and he was grateful for their affection. As human connection went, he was a beggar at the banquet, unable to refuse love of any kind.

      Week after week they flocked to his confessional—Breen’s hen party, Frank Lynch called it, a sneer in his voice. Younger hens might have won his grudging respect, but these were past the age, women so long married that their husbands rarely figured in their confessions. They spoke of squabbles with other women, harsh words exchanged with sisters and daughters. It seemed that women, in the end, were concerned mainly with each other. Husbands became mere accessories, barely noticed, like the gold wedding bands they wore on swollen fingers and couldn’t take off if they’d tried.

      It was a role that fit him comfortably: confessor to the matronly, the homely, the stout, the plain. Younger women confessed, too, though not as often; and with them Art was less easy. The prettier the woman, the more awkward he felt. This generation—his own generation—had a different understanding of the sacrament, whose name had been changed from Penance to Reconciliation. Some took the new name to heart, and pulled aside the grille for a face-to-face chat.

      (Unless, of course, the revelations were of an intimate nature. Then the grille stayed closed.)

      One such confessant he recalled distinctly. Cindy Clay was a Vietnam widow—Art’s age, slender and fair-haired. Her flowery perfume lingered in his confessional. For the rest of the afternoon he’d know she’d been there.

      One Advent she made a memorable confession: she had used birth control. For no good reason Art felt himself sweating. As confessions went it was hardly incendiary: he had his own private doubts about Humanae Vitae, as did many priests he knew. The problem here was more basic: Cindy Clay had admitted contracepting, but not the act that necessitated it. In the eyes of the Church she was an unmarried woman, and the act in question was fornication. The facts of the matter were clear.

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